The King James Conspiracy

by Phillip DePoy

  “Another body!” he exploded. “In the hall. But we have caught the killer! I found him with his bloodstained hands upon the corpse. The body was still warm. And you will not believe your eyes, Brother. He is one of us!”

  Timon stepped quickly out of his room and closed the door behind him. A vague scent of nutmeg wafted outward from the cell. Before Timon could ask a single question, Spaulding was off, running down the hall toward the door.

  “Of course I first sought out Deacon Marbury,” Spaulding chirped over his shoulder, “but he is not in his rooms. He is nowhere to be found. I am beginning to fear the worst, in light of the events—”

  “Who has been killed, Dr. Spaulding?” Timon demanded, catching up with the man.

  “Did I not say? Mr. Lively! Our leader! He has fallen.”

  Spaulding slammed the palms of his hands into the door, and the two men burst into the morning sunlight.

  “Naturally, as his second, I have immediately assumed command of our group,” Spaulding reported breathlessly. “The work of the scholars must continue apace. This is essential. We must not lose momentum. That is precisely what the devil desires. This man, this murderer—his treachery must not be allowed to hinder our progress.”

  “And you have caught the murderer?” Timon asked, unable to keep his doubt from his voice.

  “I myself caught the man in the act!” Spaulding repeated as his pace quickened.

  The morning sun was a golden coin—not enough to purchase much warmth, but sufficient to brighten the air.

  “And you say that the killer is—”

  “One of us! Yes. A scholar—a demon in our midst.” Spaulding was nearly running.

  “Name the man,” Timon demanded impatiently.

  “Wait. You shall see. The eye can scarce believe the scene.”

  “And he is in the Great Hall with the body.” Timon strode gracefully, easily keeping pace with the more frenzied Spaulding. “You placed a guard.”

  “No.” Spaulding slowed, but only slightly.

  “You somehow secured him to a desk or a chair?”

  “I commanded him to stay where he was. He agreed.” Spaulding’s irritation blossomed.

  “Certainly you understand,” Timon began, not quite realizing that his smile revealed his derision, “that he will be gone by now. A man who has committed murder would scarcely—you spent some time looking for Marbury?”

  “Nearly an hour.”

  “Then you took more time in finding me.”

  “Perhaps the half of another hour,” Spaulding snarled. “But you seem not to grasp the fact that I caught the man as he was working his foul deed. He is known to us all. There is no escape. An old man does not travel well or quickly.”

  “An old man?” Timon bit his upper lip.

  “Look for yourself!” Spaulding exploded.

  They were only a few feet from the doors to the Great Hall, and they flew the distance. Spaulding grasped both handles and flung wide the portals.

  A lone figure sat, a bit slumped, at Mr. Lively’s desk. A nearly spent taper’s halo embraced him.

  As Timon drew nearer he saw that the old man was in prayer, eyes closed, lips moving.

  On the floor at his feet lay a body.

  21

  “Is that Dr. Chaderton?” Timon whispered.

  “The very same!” Spaulding responded vociferously.

  Chaderton, startled, sat upright, eyes popped open.

  “As you perpend,” Spaulding sneered, “the man saw the wisdom of my command and has remained as I instructed.”

  Chaderton craned his neck, squinting. “Is that Brother Timon?”

  “It is, sir,” Timon answered softly.

  “Good.” Chaderton lifted himself off the stool and brushed flat his black robe. Without a hat, his hair obeyed no law. “I have been meaning to speak with you. Deacon Marbury has the utmost regard—”

  “Deacon Marbury may well be another of your victims, sir!” Spaulding shouted, scurrying to Chaderton’s side. “This is known to us.”

  “Marbury is in London on urgent matters with the King,” Timon told Chaderton calmly, ignoring Spaulding. “When he returns, I believe we shall have a greater understanding on these crimes, and their dark purpose. That is Mr. Lively on the floor?” Timon glanced to the corpse.

  “I found him more or less as he is now.” Chaderton folded his hands, upon which, Timon noticed, there was no blood. “My first thought was that he had fallen asleep. It happens to all of us. I myself have spent more than a few hours napping on these cold stones when some animated nepenthe has overtaken me. I went to wake him and discovered the blood, just there.”

  Chaderton pointed to a sticky spot on the floor, as if someone had poured brown honey onto Lively’s side.

  “Nothing more?” Timon asked.

  “I realized that he was dead and I determined to fetch Deacon Marbury—and you,” Chaderton answered, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “Then Dr. Spaulding bounded into the room and assailed me with his assertion: his assumption that I was the assassin.”

  Timon was taken off guard by Chaderton’s low humor. The old man had called Spaulding an ass five times—twice in one word. Without warning, Timon burst out laughing.

  “Who would expect this schoolboy humor, sir, from such a distinguished scholar?” Timon asked Chaderton.

  Chaderton only offered a shrug.

  Spaulding seemed not to understand what had happened, which made Timon even more amused.

  “I caught him bending over the body!” Spaulding sizzled.

  Timon’s head snapped in Spaulding’s direction. “Do you see, Dr. Spaulding, that Lively has been stabbed? Where is Dr. Chaderton’s weapon? And do you see that the blood on the floor is not running? That means it is old, not fresh. Lively has been dead all night, I surmise. Finally, the man whom Mr. Lively allowed to escape from this very room the other night, the actual murderer, was young, agile, smaller than Dr. Chaderton, and, incidentally, left-handed.”

  Spaulding sputtered but produced no actual English words.

  “You pointed to the victim with your right hand,” Timon confided to Chaderton.

  “And I do not, alas, count agility among my current talents,” Chaderton admitted, sinking back down to the stool at Lively’s desk. “You should have seen me, however, when I was sixty! Lithe!”

  “Now then,” Timon said, primarily to himself.

  He stepped around Chaderton and knelt beside the body. The face was still obscured by shadows.

  “Have you seen the face?” Timon asked.

  “I confess,” Chaderton said wanly, “that I was afraid to look. Harrison’s face, so disfigured, has appeared more than once in my dreams.”

  “Marbury told me.” Timon drew in a breath and rolled the body onto its back.

  The face was mutilated, but scarcely to the extent that it could not be identified.

  Three stab wounds killed Lively, Timon thought: two at the heart and one at the liver. There was less blood than there should have been.

  “Dr. Chaderton, Dr. Spaulding,” Timon sighed, “may I ask you to examine this face? I believe it is not nearly so destroyed as was Harrison’s, am I correct?”

  Spaulding, grumbling, shuffled his way to the body. Chaderton stood once more and held his breath.

  Both men stared.

  “This is monstrous,” Chaderton whispered, “but nothing compared to Harrison’s mutilation.”

  “Harrison could only be identified by his clothes and his cross,” Spaulding confirmed in full voice. “Lively’s face is readily discernible.”

  “This may mean that the killer was interrupted in his work,” Timon said. “Someone else may have seen this body before Dr. Chaderton did. Someone may even have witnessed this murder.”

  “But—,” Spaulding began.

  “And Marbury told me,” Timon said slowly, “something about a message . . . the mouth.”

  Timon’s hand reached out.

&nbs
p; “No!” Spaulding objected.

  “There was a note in Harrison’s mouth,” Chaderton whispered.

  Timon’s lips thinned. His right hand moved deliberately toward the dead man’s lips. Hovering for a moment, his fingers worked open the mouth, the teeth, and plucked out a bit of paper. It was still wet with saliva.

  “Yes.” Timon held up the note, wincing. “A very unpleasant—”

  “What does it say?” Spaulding insisted.

  Timon unrolled the note and held it closer to the taper on Lively’s desk. The words were difficult to read, the wet ink had blurred.

  “I believe it says,” Timon ventured, “‘The enemy of man’s salvation uses all the means he can.’”

  “It is a warning from the killer!” Spaulding snapped. “He will do anything to stop our work!”

  Timon knew he had heard the words before—a dim memory, a vague image, the corner of a forgotten room.

  “If our work is indeed the salvation of man,” Chaderton said softly.

  “Could these lines,” Timon mumbled, “be from some ancillary text or excluded volume—”

  “Apocrypha,” Spaulding snarled. “Why would Lively waste his time with that?”

  “No.” Timon stood. “I would recognize a line from any of the apocryphal books I know. Mr. Lively was the presiding scholar for this Cambridge group. Would he have had access to documents that other scholars would not?”

  “Not likely,” Spaulding sniffed.

  “Most definitely,” Chaderton said at the same time.

  “And Harrison was the—I beg your pardon,” Timon said to Chaderton, “he was the primary judge of all the other scholars’ qualifications. So he too might have been privy to certain information—”

  “Never,” Spaulding insisted. “Harrison was a Scot!”

  “Your point is not clear to me,” Chaderton admitted to Timon, ignoring Spaulding.

  “The killer may be eliminating scholars in a certain order,” Timon explained. “First he kills the first man to see all the documents used in these Cambridge translations: Harrison. Second he strikes down the director of the project, the second man with such knowledge.”

  “There will be a third victim?” Chaderton whispered.

  “Precisely,” Timon affirmed.

  “Nonsense.” Spaulding’s word seemed sneezed more than spoken. “We must remove this body from the hall at once, before anyone else sees it. And I must insist upon the same silence concerning this murder as we agreed was best when Harrison was killed. No one must mention this event.”

  “Mr. Lively was the director of this project,” Chaderton said patiently. “Certain proprieties must be observed, certain personages informed.”

  “I suppose you could be right,” Spaulding wheezed. “Authorities must be assured that I am in command of the group; I am in charge. I wonder if it would be best to take a brief hiatus in our work at this juncture.”

  I must know who is killing these men, and the precise reason for these murders, Timon thought. And I must prevent more bloodshed if I am to complete my own task—or there will soon be little left for me to commit to memory. If I am to fulfill my orders, these killings must cease. What an unusual circumstance for me. God must surely be laughing.

  “Brother Timon, rouse yourself, man,” Spaulding squeaked. “This is no time for reflection. Lug these guts from this hall at once.”

  Timon allowed himself to gaze into Spaulding’s eyes just long enough to see Spaulding shiver and look away.

  “The door at the end of the room,” Timon said, “does not appear to be an exit.”

  “A cellar,” Chaderton answered.

  “Lively will keep down there until Marbury can see him.” Timon moved to take hold of Lively’s ankles, staring up at Spaulding. “Are you persuaded, now, Dr. Spaulding, that Chaderton is not the murderer?”

  “Certainly not!” Spaulding glared down at Timon. “I expect you to use all your wiles to interrogate Dr. Chaderton and obtain a confession. I leave him in your care.”

  “I see.” Timon pulled on the dead man’s ankles. Neither scholar made the slightest move to help.

  22

  When Timon returned from the cellar, only Chaderton remained in the Great Hall. He was still seated at Lively’s desk.

  “Dr. Spaulding,” Chaderton intoned, “has scurried off to inform anyone who will listen that he is now in charge of things. If I were an alchemist, I would turn myself into a bee that could float behind him and watch the rich pageant. Alas, my talents are more practical.”

  “Why would Dr. Spaulding be so quick to suspect you of this murder? I wonder.” Timon paced a bit in front of Dr. Chaderton.

  “He does not like me. Everyone knows it. And I confess I may have slighted him upon occasion. Surely you see how easy that would be to accomplish. And how tempting. Apart from that, I could not say—”

  “Will you walk with me, Dr. Chaderton? You and I must make a show: I must appear to interrogate you, and you must appear to defend yourself against a charge of murder.”

  Chaderton stood. “You do not concur, then, with Spaulding’s conclusion. Should I be grateful, or insulted?”

  “As I have said, the true murderer is more lithe, younger, and of slighter girth than yourself.”

  “Insulted, then.” Chaderton smiled.

  “And there is the fact that Spaulding is an idiot,” Timon continued, avoiding Chaderton’s eyes. “We must consider that.”

  “His understanding of Hebrew is quite complete,” Chaderton protested.

  Timon ceased his pacing and stood in front of Chaderton. “Complete but not artful. Whereas your reputation for the same subject hangs in the very air around Cambridge.”

  “That is the odor of old age,” Chaderton corrected. “Please do not mistake it for an accomplishment.”

  “I am unused to modesty. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Then let us go out into the Cambridge air and clear our heads.” Chaderton made for the door. He was quite vigorous for a man approaching his sixty-eighth year.

  “If you are of a mind,” Timon said, striding beside the older man, “I would first like to walk around the outside perimeter of this building. We may find something that tells us more about our killer. Deacon Marbury and I attempted something like it the night before last.”

  “You found nothing?”

  Timon studied Chaderton’s face. “I believe that the killer lingered last night, after killing Lively, after nearly being apprehended twice. The demon is bold, reckless, and seems immune to capture.”

  “And you believe that I can help?”

  “I believe that two sets of eyes are better than one for this sort of work.” Timon hid a slight smile. “You may see something that Marbury and I did not.”

  “Excellent! I am to aid you in your investigation. I shall enjoy that.”

  They picked up their pace and were out the door.

  “What are we looking for?” Chaderton said, his eyes darting everywhere about the foundation of the building.

  “Anything that does not seem in its place, any footprint, all discarded items—”

  “Everything, in short,” Chaderton concluded.

  “Yes.”

  The two men kicked and pawed over every inch of earth around the Great Hall. They considered and discarded rocks, snails, rusty nails, gopher holes, buried chestnuts, a squirrel’s skull. The walls of the Great Hall rose high into the air, topped by amber tiles. It sat at the end of a common yard that was surrounded by several such buildings: the deaconage, several dormitories, a chapel. The walkways between the halls were dotted with trees and shrubberies, but no garden relieved the severity of the yard.

  “You are a Protestant,” Timon said distractedly after half an hour’s fruitless activity had passed in silence.

  “You surmise this by my black robes or by my rusty reputation?” Chaderton asked, bending to examine and then to pocket a bit of paper in the dirt.

  “When I was quite another ma
n, a younger man, I heard your sermon at Paul’s Cross, in London. I believe the year was 1578.”

  “Just so.” Chaderton straightened and rubbed his back. “I was quite proud of that sermon.”

  “Your father was not.”

  “Marbury said you knew everything.” Chaderton’s expression softened. A bit of zeal for the investigation left his eyes. “And now you drag out that old ghost.”

  “He was a Catholic, your father.”

  “Devoutly. Sternly. He was greatly disappointed when I rebelled—some fifteen years before you heard me speak. I applied to my father for some pecuniary aid shortly after my religious awakening. Our estate was quite vast. He sent me a torn purse with a groat inside and told me to use it for begging. And then he disinherited me.”

  “You did not go begging.”

  “If I stare at this wall long enough,” Chaderton said barely above a whisper, “I can conjure him, you know. In my mind’s eye he is raging, impenetrable as these stones. He never heard me sermonize. I did not attend his funeral. I am an old man, and yet I am reduced to a child’s incomprehension whenever I am visited by my father’s ghost.”

  “And for the sake of a disagreement over something so insubstantial as words.”

  Chaderton raised his face to the sun and folded his hands in front of him, near his heart. “I see. You are, in fact, interrogating me.”

  “I have absolutely no suspicion,” Timon protested, “that you are a murderer.”

  “I do not refer to that.” Chaderton stood frozen. “Your investigation goes in many directions.”

  “I do not know your meaning.”

  “Do you not?” Chaderton laughed. “You are attempting to lead me into a discussion of ‘something so insubstantial as words.’”