The Laughing Hangman

by Edward Marston

  There was a long pause before flickering light slowly appeared. A branched candelabra was carried on stage and set on the table, which had been used during the brief rehearsal. A figure lowered himself onto the bench behind the table and set out some rolls of parchment before him. He seemed as confident and relaxed as if sitting in his own study.

  ‘I expected you,’ said Caleb Hay with a smile.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Sooner or later.’

  ‘Then you will know why I have come.’

  ‘Put that dagger away, sir. I am not armed. I will not talk to a man who threatens me with a weapon.’

  ‘It is for my defence.’

  ‘Against what? An old man with a pile of documents?’

  Nicholas nodded and sheathed his dagger. Candlelight now illumined the area immediately in front of the stage. He looked across to the place where Raphael Parsons had fallen. The body had been removed but the floor was still covered by a dark stain. Caleb Hay glanced down at it.

  ‘Master Parsons held one rehearsal too many in here.’

  ‘Was he your next victim?’

  ‘Do not look to me. He was killed by a disgruntled father.’

  ‘And spared a more lingering death at the end of a rope,’ said Nicholas. ‘Is that why you were lurking in the precinct this evening? Until you could come upon him alone here in the theatre? Until you could let yourself in with Master Fulbeck’s keys and take him unawares?’

  ‘Why should I wish to murder Raphael Parsons?’

  ‘For the same reason that you murdered Cyril Fulbeck and Jonas Applegarth.’

  ‘The Master of the Chapel was my trusted friend. As for your fat playwright, how could a weak fellow like myself hoist such a weight upon the gallows?’

  ‘With the aid of a workbench,’ said Nicholas. ‘It was easier to lever him up from that. You used another lever to bring Jonas to the Queen’s Head in the first place. That letter, purporting to be from Lawrence Firethorn. An able scrivener would have had no trouble in writing that.’

  ‘Able scriveners are quiet, sedentary souls like me.’

  ‘You are not as weak and harmless as you appear. That was the mistake that Cyril Fulbeck made. Thinking you safe, he let you close enough to strike.’

  ‘He let me close enough a hundred times, yet lived.’

  ‘The case was altered the last time you met.’

  ‘Pray tell me why,’ challenged Hay. ‘Here I sit at a judicial bench and yet I am accused of unspeakable crimes. A friend whom I cherished. A playwright whom I never met. What flight of folly makes you link my name with their fate?’

  ‘Religion!’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘The old religion.’

  ‘All three of us were Dominican friars? Is that your argument?’

  ‘No, sir,’ returned Nicholas. ‘I thought at first the theatre was the common bond between them. Cyril Fulbeck was involved with the Chapel Children and Jonas Applegarth was engaged by Westfield’s Men. One here at Blackfriars and the other at the Queen’s Head, both places of antiquity in their different ways and therefore fit subjects of study for a historian of London. Only someone who knew each room, cellar and passageway at the Queen’s Head could have evaded me.’

  ‘I hear no sound of the old religion in all this.’

  ‘The Clink.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘You spent a day imprisoned there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hay. ‘I made no secret of that.’

  ‘It is a place where religious dissidents are held,’ said Nicholas. ‘Even a short stay there is recorded by the prison serjeant in his ledger. I found a way to peep into its pages. Master Caleb Hay was taken to the Clink but three months ago, his name and offence duly entered in the ledger.’ He took a step forward. ‘Documents favouring the old religion were found in your possession. You were held there as a Roman Catholic dissident.’

  ‘Held but soon discharged.’

  ‘On the word of the Master of the Chapel.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Hay, rising to his feet. ‘I am a historian. Those documents were at my house so that I might copy them. They are a legitimate part of my work. Go search my study. You will find papers relating to John Wycliffe and others touching on the Jewish settlements in London. Does that mean I am a Lollard or a member of the Chosen People?’

  ‘Cyril Fulbeck was deceived.’

  ‘And so are you, sir.’

  ‘He later came to see that deception.’

  ‘Wild surmise!’

  ‘Blackfriars,’ said Nicholas calmly. ‘The wheel has come full circle, Master Hay. This is where it started and must perforce end. Blackfriars was a symbol of the old religion to you. I recall how lovingly you talked of its past. Your father-in-law, Andrew Mompesson, only fought to keep a public playhouse out of the precinct because its noise would offend his ears. You had a deeper objection still. To turn a monastery into a theatre was sacrilege to you!’

  ‘It was!’ admitted Hay, stung into honesty.

  ‘Vulgar plays on consecrated ground.’

  ‘Anathema!’

  ‘The Children of the Chapel mocking the Pope.’

  ‘I could never forgive Cyril for that!’

  ‘And then came Jonas Applegarth,’ continued Nicholas. ‘The scourge of Rome. A man whose wit lacerated the old religion in every play.’

  ‘I saw them all,’ said Hay, bitterly. ‘Each one more full of venom and blasphemy. I thought Friar Francis was his worst abomination until you staged The Misfortunes of Marriage. What a piece of desecration was that! He stabbed away at everything I hold dear.’

  ‘You made him pay a terrible price for his impudence.’

  ‘It was downright wickedness!’

  Caleb Hay took a few moments to compose himself. When he looked down at Nicholas again, he gave an amused chuckle.

  ‘You have done your research well.’

  ‘It was needful.’

  ‘You would make an astute historian.’

  ‘My study was the life of Caleb Hay.’

  ‘How will that story be written?’

  ‘With sadness, sir.’

  ‘But my whole existence has been a joy!’

  ‘It was not a joy you shared with your wife,’ reminded Nicholas. ‘She knew nothing of your inner life. You kept her on the outer fringes as your drudge. It was she who first made me wonder about the genius to whom she was married.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘The fear in her eyes. The terror with which she climbed those stairs to call you. What kind of man locks out his wife from his room? What does he keep hidden from her behind that bolted door?’

  ‘You have divined the answer, Nicholas Bracewell.’

  ‘I think that I was not the only one to do so.’

  ‘No,’ confessed Hay. ‘Cyril Fulbeck got there before you. That is why he had to die. Not only because of this abomination in which we stand. He threatened to denounce me, and my bones are far too old for a bed at the Clink.’

  He picked up the candelabra and held it high to light up a wider area of the stage. He shook his head ruefully.

  ‘Centuries of worship wiped uncaringly away!’ he mused. ‘A religious house turned into a seat of devilry. Innocent children schooled in corruption. A heritage ruinously scorned.’

  The elegiac mood faded as he began to chuckle quietly to himself. His mirth increased until he was almost shaking. Then it burst forth in a full-throated laugh that Nicholas recognised at once. He had heard it at Blackfriars before and also at the Queen’s Head. The difference was that it now lacked a note of celebration. As the laughter built and raced around the whole theatre, it had a kind of valedictory joy as if it were some kind of manic farewell.

  Ni
cholas was thrown off his guard. There was a calculation in Caleb Hay’s mirth. The laughter came to a sudden end, the flames were blown out, and the candelabra was hurled at the book holder by a strong arm. It came out of the gloom to strike him in the chest and knock him backwards. Nicholas recovered and pulled out his dagger. He felt for the edge of the stage and vaulted up onto it. All that he could pick out in the darkness were vague shapes. When he tried to move forward, he collided with a bench.

  He was convinced that Hay would try to make his escape through the rear exit and groped his way towards the tiring-house. A sound from above made him stop. Light feet were tapping on the rungs of a ladder. Hay was climbing high above the stage. When Nicholas tried to follow him, a missile came hurtling down to miss him by inches. It was a heavy iron weight which was used to counterbalance one of the ropes on the pulleys. Nicholas moved to safety and considered his choices.

  As long as he was trapped in the dark, he was at a severe disadvantage. Caleb Hay knew where to hide and how to defend himself. With no means of igniting the candles, Nicholas sought the one alternative source of light. He felt his way downstage, jumped into the auditorium and made for the nearest casement. Sliding back the bolt, he flung back the shutters to admit the last dying rays of a summer evening. One window enabled him to see the others more clearly and he ran down one side of the theatre to open all the shutters. When he turned back, he could see the stage quite clearly. He approached it with his dagger still drawn.

  ‘There is no way out, Master Hay!’ he called.

  The familiar chuckle could be heard high above him.

  ‘Come down, sir.’

  ‘I’ll be with you directly,’ said Hay.

  ‘It is all over now.’

  ‘I know it well.’

  ‘Come down!’

  ‘I do, sir. Adieu, Nicholas Bracewell!’

  Caleb Hay tightened the noose and jumped into space. The long drop had been measured with care. The rope arrested his descent with such vicious force that there was an awesome crack as his neck snapped. Six feet above the stage that he despised, he spun lifelessly until Nicholas stood on the table to cut him down.

  The Laughing Hangman had chosen his own gallows.

  ***

  ‘I regard this as a noble act of self-sacrifice, Edmund.’

  ‘It was the least I could do to assuage my guilt.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  ‘Yes, Lawrence. I was too envious of Jonas.’

  ‘That is not crime.’

  ‘I sought to oust his work from our repertoire.’

  ‘Only because we gave him precedence over you.’

  ‘That rankled with me.’

  ‘The fault was mine for riding roughshod over you.’

  ‘All faults are mended this afternoon.’

  ‘Amen!’

  Lawrence Firethorn and Edmund Hoode were putting on their costumes in the tiring-house at The Rose. In view of the circumstances, Hoode had insisted that the privilege of performance at a proper theatre should go to The Misfortunes of Marriage. It would act as a fitting epitaph to the rumbustious talent of Jonas Applegarth and meet the upsurge of interest in the play which the murder of its author had created. The Bankside playhouse was packed to capacity for the occasion. Hoode was the first to concede that The Faithful Shepherd would not have provoked the same curiosity.

  Barnaby Gill bounced across to them in a teasing mood.

  ‘Is all well between you now?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should it not be?’ said Firethorn.

  ‘Rumours, Lawrence. Scandalous rumours.’

  ‘Ignore them.’

  ‘They are far too delicious for that.’

  ‘Edmund and I are the best of friends,’ said Firethorn with an arm around Hoode’s shoulder. ‘We have too much in common to fall out.’

  ‘Too much indeed. Including your dear wife, Margery.’

  ‘That is slander, sir!’

  ‘A hideous misunderstanding,’ said Hoode.

  ‘They speak otherwise at the Unicorn,’ prodded Gill. ‘There they talk of the bigamous Margery Firethorn. One woman with two husbands. So much for the misfortunes of marriage! I give thanks that I never dwindled into matrimony.’

  ‘It is only because the Chapel Children rejected your proposal,’ rejoined Firethorn. ‘You’d be bigamously married to every boy’s bum in the choir if you could!’

  Gill flew into a rage and Firethorn threw fresh taunts at him. Hoode found himself back in his customary role as the peacemaker between the two. He was home again.

  Nicholas Bracewell gave the warning and the company readied themselves for the start of the performance. Its actor-manager had a last whispered exchange with Hoode.

  ‘Turn to me when you are next in that predicament.’

  ‘To you, Lawrence?’

  ‘I have a remedy even better than Margery’s.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Why, man, to take a woman off your hands and into mine. If this Cecily Gilbourne was too hot for your unskilled fingers to hold, you should have given her to me. My palms are proof against the fires of Hell.’

  ‘Margery’s was the eftest way.’

  ‘I would have been a sprightly unicorn to the lady.’

  ‘Then why did she not choose you in the first place?’ said Hoode. ‘No, Lawrence. The matter is ended and my debt is paid off to you both.’

  ‘What debt?’

  ‘I inadvertently disturbed your nuptial pleasure. By way of reprisal, Margery pulled me from the delights of the bedchamber. An eye for an eye.’

  ‘A testicle for a testicle!’

  Firethorn’s chortle was masked by the sound of the music as Peter Digby and the consort brought the play to life once more. Westfield’s Men soared to the occasion.

  The Misfortunes of Marriage blossomed at The Rose. Its plot was firmer, its characters enriched and its satire more biting and hilarious. The company took full advantage of the superior facilities at the theatre to make their play a more exciting experience. Many dazzling new effects were incorporated by Nicholas Bracewell into the action, including one he had borrowed from Raphael Parsons and adapted for their own purposes. Trapdoors allowed sudden appearances. Flying equipment permitted the dramatic descent of actors and scenic devices. With the book holder in control behind the scenes, the pace of the play never faltered and its thrusts never missed their targets.

  The acclaim which greeted the cast as they were led out to take their bow by Firethorn was so loud and so sustained that they could have played the final scene through again before its last echoes died. When the actors plunged back into the tiring-house, they were inebriated with their success. Barnaby Gill was dancing, Richard Honeydew was singing, Edmund Hoode was quoting his favourite speech from the play and John Tallis was croaking happily. Firethorn himself went around hugging each member of the troupe in tearful gratitude.

  Even James Ingram was infected by the mood of celebration. He confided his feelings to the book holder.

  ‘It is a better play than I gave it credit, Nick.’

  ‘The play is unchanged,’ said Nicholas. ‘What has altered is your perception of it.’

  ‘True. It is so much easier to appreciate when its author is not here to obstruct my view of its virtues.’

  ‘Jonas was here this afternoon.’

  ‘In spirit, if not in body.’

  ‘That was his voice I heard out there on the stage. Even your mimicry could not reproduce that sound. It was a distinctive voice, James. Too harsh for some, maybe. You have been among them. But impossible to ignore.’

  ‘Westfield’s Men have done him proud.’

  ‘No playwright could ask for more,’ said Hoode, joining them as he pulled off his costume. ‘Jonas Applegarth was a t
rue poet. He died for his art. It is a tragedy that we only have this one play of his to act as his headstone.’

  ‘We may yet have a second,’ suggested Nicholas.

  ‘Has he bequeathed us another?’

  ‘No, Edmund. But you could provide it.’

  ‘I could never write with that surging brilliance. Only Jonas could pen a Jonas Applegarth play.’

  ‘Work with him as your co-author.’

  ‘How can he, Nick?’ said Ingram. ‘Jonas is dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ added Hoode with a touch of envy. ‘He outshines me there as well. Not only did he live with more of a flourish, he died in a way that made all London sit up and say his name. Edmund Hoode will just fade away, unsung, in some mean lodging. That is what I admire most about Jonas Applegarth. His own life was his most vivid and unforgettable drama.’

  ‘Then there is your theme,’ urged Nicholas.

  ‘Theme?’

  ‘Put him back up on the stage in full view.’

  ‘Jonas?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Ingram, warming to the idea. ‘Change his name, if you wish. But retain his character. Keep that humour. Keep that wit. Keep that belligerence. If ever a man belonged on the boards with a mouth-filling oath, it is Jonas Applegarth.’

  ‘His death will certainly give me my final scene.’

  ‘The play foments in your mind already, Edmund,’ said Nicholas with a smile. ‘Write it as an act of appreciation. Let him know that Westfield’s Men cherish his memory. We loved him but did not have time to tell him so before he left us.’

  ***

  It took Anne Hendrik a long time to make a comparatively short journey. The audience at The Rose was too large and too inclined to linger for her to make a swift exit from the theatre. She and Preben van Loew were forced to wait until the earnest discussions of the play gradually subsided and the press of bodies thinned out. The Dutchman escorted her home before going on to his own house in Bankside.

  There was no hurry. Nicholas would be delayed even longer than she had been. First of the company to arrive, he would be the last to leave, having supervised the removal of their scenery and costumes, the cleaning of the tiring-house and the collection of the money from the gatherers. There would be a dozen other chores before he could begin to think of slipping away.