Knaves Templar

by Leonard Tourney

  “He whom I am to meet shortly,” Matthew said.

  “The very man,” Thomas said.

  “I pray God he speaks plain English and not Latin or law French,” Matthew said.

  Thomas laughed pleasantly. ‘ ‘He speaks plain enough— too plain for some who have felt the lash of his tongue. For the rest, I admit we lawyers have our terms of art to blabber

  among ourselves to the mystification of the laity. And, of course, the customs and traditions of the Temple itself, hundreds of years in the making. ’ ’

  “Must I learn a new tongue, then?” Matthew asked jokingly, although he feared in part it might be true. For right there on the busy thoroughfare, elbow to elbow with strangers, he was gripped by a sudden and fierce homesickness. How he missed the familiar sights and smells of Chelmsford, and the plain, honest English of buying and selling cloth.

  “Take courage, Matthew,” Thomas said cheerfully, seeming to sense his companion’s shift of mood. “Even as Vitgil guided Dante into the depths of hell, I will be your guide and translator.”

  Thomas laughed at his own jest, but Matthew prayed the obscure joke might not prove prophetic. He knew little of Virgil and Dante beyond their names, but whether hell was a real place or a figure of speech, he understood the word meant mortal danger.

  A shrewish voice with a harsh London accent said, “Come in,” and Matthew followed Thomas into the little office with its overly large desk and tall cabinet stuffed with books and papers and smelling of mildew and ink and wood smoke. There was a single lancet window giving view to the desolate garden, and a little hearth with a fire laid. Behind the desk sat the owner of the voice that had so unceremoniously welcomed them—a pale young man with thin blond hair lank about his ears and parted in the middle. He had high cheeks, a thin, straight nose, and a complexion as smooth and hairless as a girl’s. His eyes were hard and close-set, and although by Matthew’s estimate he could not have been above thirty, there was a sullenness in his expression that made him seem older, as though he had seen much of life and found it wanting in whatever lesser mortals thought worthwhile.

  “Is Master Hutton in?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “He is, Master Cooke.”

  There was a silence. For a moment, the clerk’s eyes fell to what he had apparently been reading before.

  “Well, tell him I and the father of a prospective member of the House would be honored to speak to him. We do have an appointment, Phipps.”

  “He has someone with him just now.”

  “Tell him I and Master Stock of Chelmsford await his pleasure,” Thomas said impatiently.

  The man whom Thomas had addressed as Phipps sighed heavily, slipped from his chair, and went to a closed door opposite the one Matthew had just entered. He knocked softly and then went inside. As soon as he was out of sight, Thomas whispered, “That’s Theophilus Phipps, Master Hutton’scleik and secretary. It’s his humor to be perverse. Hutton you shall find quite pleasant.”

  “What’s this new paternity you have thrust upon me?” Matthew asked.

  “A little invention of my own,” Thomas said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Since you were so good an actor in Derbyshire, I thought you might play doting father in London. A useful stratagem, I think. Phipps has the longest nose in the Temple. Should he sniff out your present purpose, the whole Temple should know of it before vespers. Discretion is always to be advised. Other than Master Hutton, only you and I will know the real reason you are here. ”

  “I am to be a gentleman, then, for only gentlemen’s sons are admitted,” Matthew said.

  “An advancement in station, over Derbyshire. Be grateful for small blessings.”

  Matthew smiled and nodded agreeably. The door opened and Phipps came out. He was followed by a student, by his cap and gown, a man in his twenties and strikingly handsome, but at the moment somewhat crestfallen.

  “You may go, Master Keable. And next time, use the brain God gave you.”

  The author of this admonition now appeared over Keable’s shoulder. Matthew saw a corpulent personage of about fifty years or thereabouts, with sparse gray hair crowning a large round head in which the eyes seemed almost lost in the rolls of pink flesh. The chastened student passed them without a word or nod. The Treasurer invited Thomas and Matthew

  in, his large face changing at once from a mirror of stem disapproval to benign hospitality.

  The Treasurer’s office was large and square, generously windowed and comfortably furnished. A wall opposite was given over to books, row upon row, rising from floor to ceiling. Other walls were hung with portraits of stem-faced men wearing judges’ robes and chains of office.

  Matthew looked around briefly and then studied the Treasurer himself. When preliminary greetings were past, Hutton said: “Master Stock, that you are skilled in such service as we presently require, I have on the authority of Master Cooke here. His word and also that of Sir Robert Cecil, a special friend of mine.”

  “Sir Robert does me too much honor if he has commended me.”

  “Too little if he has not sung your praises to the Heavens, ’ ’ Thomas inteijected. “And not just in Chelmsford has Master Stock given good service.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” said Hutton, beaming with approval. “Now, you must understand that you must proceed in this business with haste and secrecy. ”

  “Ido, sir.”

  “Three gendemen of our Society have met mysterious ends within a fortnight. Should it be made known that these were murders, we’d have blind panic—a cheerless prospect for an otherwise joyous season, to say nothing of the scandal to these hallowed halls, where, if anywhere in England, the law should not be so grievously flouted.”

  “I understand the first victim left a letter?”

  “Edward Litchfield,” said Hutton. “Sir Peter Litchfield’s son and heir. Foolish boy, quite spoiled. A too-ready recourse to his overly provident father’s purse caused him to engage in one escapade after another. The letter claimed that it was the disgrace of his misconduct that was his undoing. ”

  “And so he slit his wrists. May I see the letter?”

  “Certainly.”

  Hutton reached in his desk and withdrew a piece of paper. He handed it to Matthew.

  The message written there was brief and composed in a round, childish hand. To Matthew its sentiments seemed forced and calculated, as though written not in a passion of self-loathing, as it proclaimed, but with an ulterior motive:

  My disgrace weighs heavily upon my head. Perhaps in Heaven I will receive that grace denied me in this mortal sphere. Forgive one and all the hand raised against itself.

  Matthew read the words aloud, after which Hutton said: “Very bad theology, if you ask me. If he really thought suicide a key to Heaven, he was a greater heretic or ignoramus than a prodigal.”

  Matthew asked where the note was found.

  “Stuffed in his pocket,” Hutton answered.

  “Are you certain the writing is his?”

  “I thought so,” Hutton said. “Thomas concurred. Yet Sir Peter denied it was written by his son, although he allowed it was a fair imitation.”

  “Then that point is unsetded,” Matthew said. “Of course, the father would prefer to have his son’s death interpreted as murder rather than suicide. What other evidence is there that the death was not what it seemed?”

  “The razor. It was clutched in Litchfield’s left hand.” “And?”

  “Litchfield was right-handed,” Thomas said.

  “We believe the evidence was contrived to make Litchfield’s death seem a suicide,” Hutton said. “The razor inexpertly positioned in the left hand. The note a forgeiy.” “We supposed,” said Thomas, “that if a stranger had done the murder, he would not have had access to Litchfield’s own razor. Nor would he have been familiar with Litchfield’s writing. Indeed, would have had no need to make murder seem otherwise. That the razor, a fine piece of cutlery, was left behind at all rules out theft as a motive, even
though Litchfield’s purse was gone.”

  Matthew thought for a moment, then said, “Assuming it was murder as you suppose, the killer knew his victim, had access to his razor and his writing, and had good reason to

  disguise cold-blooded murder as self-slaughter. Suspicion must fall upon his chamberfellow. ”

  “That would have been Peregrinus Monk,” said Hutton, looking very grim.

  “I assume he has been questioned,” Matthew said.

  “As much as a dead man can be questioned,” Hutton answered. “For he hanged himself the morning after.”

  “Did he also leave an explanation?”

  “A mere phrase scrawled upon the wall. Sorrow beyond enduring, it said. That was the phrase, wasn’t it, Thomas?”

  Thomas said that it was.

  “Words that suggest contrition more than melancholy,” Matthew observed. “Do you think he killed his friend and then himself from guilt?”

  “Perhaps,” said Hutton. “The real question is why. Why should he have compounded the crime by disgracing Litchfield’s memory with a feigned suicide? These things don’t happen without a cause.”

  Matthew agreed. The heat of passion might occasion manslaughter, even in a well-meaning, law-abiding soul. A case came to mind. One of his own townsmen, and a very decent fellow too, who had covered up his crime for years until a later murder had brought it all to light. But Litchfield’s murder, if that was what it was, had been cold and calculating. Murder by design. The razor would have had to be procured before, poor Litchfield reduced to insensibility. Then a vicious bloodletting, as in a butcher’s shop.

  He asked about the third victim.

  “Poison,” Hutton answered, his round, fleshy countenance even more distraught and disapproving. “One of the benchers, Hugh Giles.”

  “What manner of poison was it?” Matthew asked.

  Hutton shrugged. “The doctor was unsure. No vial or other receptacle was found. The doctor said there were a number of possibilities. Realgar, aquafortis, white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis causticus, cantharides. I mention but a few, being no physician or apothecary. One of the other gentlemen said he thought Giles had received

  some jellies and tarts for a present, and these could have been contaminated, but not even a crumb was discovered.”

  ‘‘But the doctor was sure it was poison?”

  ‘‘It was unmistakable. I saw the dead man’s face. It was horrible to look upon. A true lesson in the mortality of mankind and the fragility of the flesh.”

  “And did this Giles, like the others, leave a note behind him?”

  Hutton shook his head. “There was none. Only the testimony of those close to him that he had been morose lately. He was of a religious turn, you see. A great reader and reciter of the Sacred Scriptures. Before he died he burned all his papers and many of his books. He is said io have kept a diary in which he wrote regularly. But it evidently was burned too. A heap of ashes was found in the hearth.”

  “Did he have a chamberfellow?”

  “Turner, another bencher, but he’s been gone the whole term. At the time of his death, Giles had the chamber to himself.”

  “If there was no note, why is it supposed Giles took his own life?”

  “Only that there was no evidence to the contrary. It was rumored, however, that he was heavily in debt.”

  “Was the rumor true?” Matthew asked.

  The Treasurer looked surprised at the question. “Why, by the mass, I supposed it was. It is not unheard of. What young man has enough money, or the patience to earn it? London is an expensive city, Master Stock, and a lawyer must dress well to be taken seriously.”

  “Then you don’t know for sure that it is true, this matter of debts. Whom he might have owed, how much, and upon what terms?”

  Hutton admitted he did not know absolutely. His voice was edged with defensiveness. “After all,” he said, “a gentleman may have debts and yet his closest friend be ignorant of the fact. It isn’t the kind of thing one broadcasts from the housetops.”

  “Yet rumor knew it,” Matthew observed, as much to himself as to Hutton. “No creditors have come forth since Giles’s death demanding their money?”

  “Not that I have heard of. What of you, Thomas?”

  Thomas agreed. He had heard of no creditors, he said. “The Templars sometimes borrow money from each other. Gambling is a popular, and often dangerous, recreation, you see. It is quite possible that whoever Giles owed erased the slate clean upon his death. It would have been a charitable gesture.”

  Matthew thought the image of Giles as a debt-ridden gambler mightily incongruous with his reputed piety, and said as much. Hutton grudgingly admitted the incongruity, then supplied Matthew with several instances in which it was otherwise. “Those religiously disposed, to the degree he was, are often afflicted with torments of the flesh, which I suppose compulsive gambling to be,” the Treasurer said. “The man was a Puritan of the first water. With talk of disease and death, dressing in sad colors, and speaking lightly of this frail existence.”

  “Now that I think of it,” said Thomas, “I believe I would have called Giles saturnine rather than melancholy. He was respected for his learning. And he knew his Bible, even as Master Hutton has said. But something was eating at him. I noticed it even while I still resided in chambers, before my marriage, and would converse with him familiarly. I considered him my friend, arid had invited him to Thomcombe for the nuptials, but he said he couldn’t come, and was evasive about the reasons. He said there was something in London he had to see to, and would be no more specific than that. I thought little of it at the time. We were friends, but not such good friends that I should miss him on my wedding day. Besides, I supposed what he had to see to was some suit at law.”

  Matthew asked if there was anything else then, some piece of evidence not yet disclosed. He looked at the Treasurer, awaiting an answer. Hutton’s face was a heavy face of stolid self-government and administrative rectitude, the face of a man who seemed to know passion only by hearsay—a face to be painted and then hung upon the walls like the others

  around them, serious, intent lawyers’ feces. Matthew suspected Hutton’s legal practice had concerned wills and deeds, things writ upon paper, and not the passions of the heart, for he had obviously been uncomfortable speaking of these matters.

  “As I said,” Hutton began, “Giles burned his papers. But not all.”

  “We found a sort of list,” Thomas explained.

  “In one of his shoes. Clearly a deliberate concealment. Perhaps he feared it would otherwise be found.”

  Hutton handed Matthew the new clue. It was a piece of foolscap that had been folded and refolded. On it were written five names in a masculine hand more hurried than careless:

  Prideaux

  Braithwaite

  Litchfield

  Monk

  Giles

  Matthew read the names aloud, unsure as to how to pronounce the first and making the last syllable of the name rhyme with “ducks. ” He commented, “Three of the five are dead. A sinister proportion. What of the others—this Prideaux and Braithwaite?”

  “Prideaux is a mystery,” Hutton said. “No one is enrolled in the Middle Temple with that name. As for Braithwaite, he lives—an utter barrister of some accomplishment. I showed him the list and asked him what it meant, but he could make no sense of it. He insisted he had never heard of Prideaux.”

  “Was he not fearful of being included on a list of mostly dead men?” Matthew asked.

  “He made light of it,” Hutton said.

  “A curious response. I myself would be unnerved to be on the list,” Matthew said. “What manner of man is he?”

  But the Treasurer was interrupted before he could answer. Phipps stuck his head in to say that Hutton’s next appointment waited without.

  Hutton nodded, and Phipps closed the door behind him. Hutton said: “Your investigation must be carried out with discretion, as I have said, Master S
tock. There can be no public acknowledgment of your purpose. Even among the benchers and readers of the Inn. We three alone will know your true mission here and by whose great authority you act.”

  “Thomas has already provided me with a guise when he introduced me to your clerk,” Matthew said. “I am to be the father of a son who would fain join your Society, and I am here as a scout to see if the Temple be a fit habitation for him.”

  Hutton smiled broadly and said, “Why, this is an excellent subterfuge. And well within the circumference of belief. For we often have fathers who come here for the very purpose you pretend. Indeed, some fathers who are themselves Templars share their chambers with their own sons. I will have Phipps make arrangements.”

  Hutton rose, signaling that the interview was at an end, and went to the door. Matthew heard him exchanging words with Phipps. In a few moments he was back again. “It’s done, Master Stock. Your accommodations are provided. There is but one vacant chamber and it shall be yours as long as necessary.”

  Hutton’s face seemed troubled. Matthew guessed the cause. “My chamber is the one previously occupied by the dead men?”

  “Yes,” Hutton said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I would gladly house you elsewhere were there room. But you see, we are a large company of several hundred souls, like rabbits in a warren.”

  Matthew asked why the chamber had not been claimed by another, since space was at such a premium.

  “Ah,” Hutton said as he escorted Matthew and Thomas to the door. “The Kingdom of Fear is more ancient than that of Reason, and it bears greater sway. But surely a man of your practical experience has no fear of ghosts? Besides, it will put you in the very gullet of the mystery. I assure you the chamber is well placed, both convenient to the Hall and commanding a fine view of the river and Temple garden. In spring and summer they are quite lovely.”

  Matthew thought about the garden. He had passed through it on the way to the Treasurer’s office. It might be lovely indeed in the spring and summer, but it was now winter, and viewing it would be pleasing only if one exercised a considerable amount of imagination. As for ghosts, Matthew had no fear of the dead in their narrow subterranean rooms. It was the living that he feared—a cold-blooded murderer not content that his victims die, but that they also be disgraced as suicides. He said to Hutton, ‘‘Only tell me how I shall find the chamber appointed me and I will shift for myself.”