The Dirty Duck

by Martha Grimes

  • • •

  Before he left the nave, Melrose examined the choir and the unusual carvings of small gargoyle-like faces on the arms of the seats. As he took a step backward he found his leg had struck something, which turned out to be the hindquarters of someone stooping down between the tiered benches.

  “Oh, sorry,” said the youngish man, scrambling to his feet and adjusting a strap over his shoulder, which was attached to a rather large square case. At first Melrose thought it must be some elaborate camera equipment, except that the case was metal. A Geiger counter, perhaps? Was the chap looking for some radioactive material in the choir? “Did you lose something?” Melrose asked, politely.

  “Oh, no. Just looking underneath the seats.” The wooden benches folded up against the backs when not in use. Not all of them had been returned to their upright position. “At the carvings. They’ve even got them underneath,” he explained.

  “The misericords, you mean?”

  “That what they’re called? Funny things. Whyever’d anyone carve them there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  • • •

  Melrose decided that he was somewhere in his late thirties, not quite so young as he’d supposed; it was that fresh-faced look, as if he’d been scrubbed by a hard-bristled brush, that was deceptive. He was fairly tall, brown-haired, and undistinguished-looking in his seersucker suit and perfectly hideous polka-dotted bow tie. He ran his finger around his collar in the manner of a man who disliked ties. His accent was either American or Canadian; Melrose had never tuned his ear to the difference. Most likely American.

  “You from around here?” the man asked, as he followed Melrose up the nave and past the guardian of the red velvet cord.

  “No, just visiting.”

  “Yeah, me too.” His tone suggested that he had finally found a comrade in this vast wasteland of Stratford, as if all of the visitors here were wandering in the desert. “Neat church, isn’t it?”

  “Neat, yes.”

  The American stopped among the chairs and prayer cushions and shot out a blunt, spatulate-fingered hand. “Harvey L. Schoenberg from D.C.”

  “I’m Melrose Plant.” He shook the other man’s hand.

  “Where from?”

  “Northants. That is, Northamptonshire. It’s about sixty or seventy miles from here.”

  “Never been there.”

  “Most visitors haven’t. Nothing there especially interesting except rather pretty villages in rather pretty country.”

  “Listen,” said Harvey Schoenberg, shouldering open the heavy door of the church, “don’t knock it.” He said it as if Melrose had been discrediting his homeland. “I only wish July was like this in D.C.”

  “Exactly where is Deezey?” asked Melrose, puzzled.

  Schoenberg laughed. “You know. Washington, D.C.”

  “Ah. Your capital city.”

  “Yeah. Of the good old U.S. of A. Hell of a climate, though, let me tell you.”

  Melrose had just decided to leave the church walk for the riverbank when Schoenberg, walking beside him, said, “Who’s Lucy?”

  “What?”

  “Lucy.” Schoenberg pointed down at the stone walk. The inscription lay carved in the stone at their feet. “She a friend of Shakespeare’s or something?”

  “I think it’s probably a family name, the Lucys.” With his silver-knobbed walking stick, Melrose pointed to the left and right, to the ground beneath the lime trees. “Buried there or here, I imagine.”

  “Weird. We walking on graves?”

  “Um. Well, I thought I’d walk by the river, Mr. Schoenberg. Nice meeting—”

  “Okay.” He hitched the strap of the big metal box farther up on his shoulder and continued with Melrose across the grass. He was rather like a lost dog whose head one had patted in the park and who wasn’t about to let one off so easily.

  “I notice things,” said Schoenberg, folding a stick of gum into his mouth, “because I’m collecting information for a book.”

  It would, Melrose thought, be ungentlemanly of him not to inquire into its nature, and so he did.

  “It’s on Shakespeare,” said Schoenberg, chomping away happily.

  Inwardly, Melrose heaved a sigh. Oh, dear. Why in heaven’s name would this American, his face as freshly scrubbed as a new potato, want to go wading into the shoals of those dangerous waters?

  “There must be a whole sea of books on Shakespeare, Mr. Schoenberg; aren’t you afraid you’ll drown?”

  “Harve. Drown? Hell, no. What I’ve got is something completely new. It’s really more on Kit Marlowe than Shakespeare.”

  Melrose was almost afraid to ask: “Exactly what is your subject? I hope it hasn’t to do with establishing authenticity.”

  “Authenticity? Meaning who wrote them?” Schoenberg shook his head. “I’m writing about life more than literature. It’s really Marlowe I’m interested in, anyway.”

  “I see. As a scholar? Are you affiliated with some institution?”

  “Never even got my master’s. I leave the egghead crap to my brother. He’s chairman of English at this college in Virginia. I’m meeting him in London in a few days. Me, I’m a computer programmer.” He patted the metal box and hitched the strap up on his shoulder.

  “Really? I have always felt there were far too many department chairmen in the world and far too few computer programmers.”

  Harvey Schoenberg’s smile was wide. “Well, there’s going to be a lot more, Mel. The computer is going to change the world. Like this little baby, here.” And he tapped the box as if it were a bundle of literal baby.

  Melrose stopped in his tracks, and some hungry swans, hoping for action, rowed over. “You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Schoenberg—”

  “Harve.”

  “—that that is a computer?”

  Harvey Schoenberg’s dark eyes glittered through the cobweb of shadows the willows cast across his face. “You bet your little booties, Mel. Want to see it? On second thought, let me buy you a beer and I’ll tell you all about it. Okay?”

  Not staying for an answer, Harvey started walking away.

  “Well, I—” Melrose was not sure he wanted to know all about it.

  “Come on, come on,” motioned Harvey Schoenberg, as if they were about to miss a bus. “The Dirty Duck’s just across the street. Or the Black Swan, whichever. How come it’s got two names?”

  “The Black Swan section is their restaurant, I believe.”

  Schoenberg looked over his shoulder at the river. “Where do they get the swans? Just for fun I checked them out and ran a little program on them to see which time of day was the least likely for them to crowd up at the bank for crumbs. The Ishi figured it all out for me.”

  Melrose was not quite sure from which end to approach this information. “I suppose they get the swans from a swannery.”

  “No kidding. Kind of like a chicken farm, or something?”

  The Black Swan was just ahead. Melrose felt the need of a drink. “Not exactly.” He gazed up at the bright blue sky and wondered if he had a touch of sun-madness. “What,” he asked, “is an Ishi?”

  “Ishikabi. This little baby. Japanese, converted by yours very truly.”

  Harvey Schoenberg was clearly on a nickname basis with everything in the world, including his computer.

  • • •

  Sun-madness relieved by a drink of Old Peculier, Melrose waited—not without trepidation—for Harvey Schoenberg to sort it all out. The Ishi sat on a chair near Harvey, making a third at their party. The front of the case had been lifted to display a small screen and a keyboard. There were a couple of slots for some disks, and on the green screen pulsed a tiny white square. The Ishi’s heartbeat, apparently. It throbbed so rapidly there that Melrose was sure it and Harvey were both raring to go.

  “Who Killed Marlowe?” said Harvey Schoenberg.

  “Well, no one is quite certain what hap—”

  But Harvey was shaking his head so hard his bow
tie bobbed, and he adjusted it. “No, no. That’s the name of my book: Who Killed Marlowe?”

  “Really?” Melrose cleared his throat.

  “Now,”—Harvey leaned over his folded arms across the small table so that his nose was not all that far from Melrose’s own—“tell me what you know about Kit Marlowe.”

  Melrose thought for a moment. “Kit, that is, Christopher,”—Melrose hadn’t quite Harvey’s genius for nestling up to strangers—“Marlowe died in a tavern brawl, as I remember, drinking in a pub in Southwark—”

  “Deptford.”

  “Ah, yes, Deptford—when there was some sort of disagreement and Marlowe was stabbed by accident. Well, something like that,” ended Melrose, seeing a sort of piratical smile on Schoenberg’s face.

  “Go on.”

  Melrose shrugged. “With what? That’s all I know.”

  “I mean about the rest of his life. The plays and so forth.”

  “I was under the impression you weren’t interested in the literary aspect.”

  “I’m not, not like the eggheads who keep fooling around with the bard’s stuff, trying to show that guys like Bacon wrote Shakespeare. But Marlowe’s relationship with Shakespeare, now that’s something else.”

  “I don’t think Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were all that friendly. Marlowe’s reputation was pretty well established when Shakespeare came along. He’d already got Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus on the boards and was thought to be perhaps the best playwright in England. Then there was something about his politics. Marlowe was an agent, a sort of spy . . .”

  As Melrose’s recitation continued, Harvey sat there nodding away energetically, like the teacher waiting for the idiot-student to complete his rote-learning so the tutor could jump in and correct it.

  “Tamburlaine was written while Marlowe was still a student at Cambridge, or at least part of it was. Amazing piece of writing for someone that young. Then there was Doctor Faustus—”

  “ ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,’ ” said Harvey, rather sadly.

  “That’s right.” Melrose warmed to him a little. “How’m I doing?”

  “Great. You really know a lot. You a professor, or something?”

  “I do occasionally turn my hand at lecturing at one of the universities. Nothing much.” Melrose drained his glass of beer and poured the remaining dregs from the bottle. He was feeling a bit dizzy, whether from the Old Peculier—which was strong stuff—or from Harvey Schoenberg—even stronger stuff—he didn’t know.

  “Literature, right?”

  “French poetry. But getting back to Marlowe—”

  Leaning closer, his voice low and level, Harvey said: “The Earl of Southampton. What do you know about him?”

  Had Melrose been standing in a rained-on doorway with his coat collar turned up he couldn’t have felt more like he was passing along secret information. “Southampton? Wasn’t he Shakespeare’s patron? A patron of the arts?”

  “Correct. Young, rich, handsome. Pretty boy Southampton.”

  “Really, now. You’re not suggesting Shakespeare’s sexual life was suspect. I think that’s rot.”

  Harvey seemed surprised. “You read the sonnets?”

  “Yes. That doesn’t show anything but affection, loyalty—”

  “You could’ve fooled me.” He leaned over the Ishi computer and did some of the fastest fingerwork Melrose had ever seen. The tiny white square jumped around and words scrolled up on the screen.

  Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

  That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse—

  He seemed to think this was indisputable evidence. “If the shoe fits . . . But that’s not the point. Hell, I don’t care what these guys did in bed. Of course, we all know Marlowe was a little Nellie—”

  “We do?”

  “Sure. What the hell do you think all that Walsingham business was about? Oh, I know one of the theories says that Kit got stabbed in a brawl over some dame of ‘ill-repute’ and died from it. Then there was some other big deal about Marlowe whooping it up on a pleasure-boat and getting in a fight and going overboard.” Harvey snorted, thereby sending both theories to their watery grave. “Listen, don’t you believe it. It was Tom Walsingham who was Marlowe’s real friend.” Harvey winked and adjusted the awful bow-tie. “Hero and Leander’s dedicated to him.” Harvey shoved his glass aside and leaned toward Melrose as if the two of them were running spies. “The Walsingham family had plenty of dough and plenty of influence. It was Tommy-boy that recruited Kit as a mole—”

  Melrose cleared his throat. “What century are we in, Mr. Schoenberg?”

  “Harve—and got him sent off to Spain and planted in an abbey to find out what the Catholics were up to. You know. Mary, Queen of Scots. That bunch.” Harvey sat back, drank his beer.

  “I’ve heard of her, yes.”

  Harvey sat forward. “Well? No wonder Kit nearly wigged out when they tossed him in the slammer. Tom Walsingham had influence, for God’s sakes. He could have prevented all that. So what’s he do? Lets Kit take the rap . . .” Harvey waved his hand in disgust. “Like the CIA or M-5. ‘But if you’re caught, Double-O-Seven, we don’t know you,’ et cetera.”

  In spite of himself, Melrose persisted: “We’re talking about a time of extraordinary political and religious conflict. You couldn’t go round espousing the seemingly heretical ideas of a Faustus and in your personal life go round spying on the Catholics in Spain without getting into trouble—”

  Harvey Schoenberg made a dismissive gesture. “Big deal. And on top of that there was the plague. Bad news, a plague.” Harvey inspected his nails as if looking for telling signs. “I know all of that. But, see, that’s where everybody got off on the wrong foot about Marlowe’s death. The ones who don’t think he was killed by accident—accident!—you ever hear of someone getting a sword in his eye by accident?” Harvey shook his head at the sort of scholarship which could attempt to birth a lion and bring forth a gnat. “So that’s out. Where the mistake was, was that the ones who knew Kit was murdered thought those guys who met him in the tavern in Deptford killed him for political reasons; that they were afraid if Kit was taken in he’d spill his guts about Walsingham and Raleigh and the whole schmeer.”

  Melrose had been picking the label from his bottle of beer throughout this discourse, an unpleasant habit which he had, up until now, never stooped to. “I take it you think otherwise?”

  Once again, Harvey leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “Listen, for four hundred years people have been trying to prove what happened in that tavern in Deptford. The only witnesses, too bad, were the principals, right?—there was this Poley, Skeres, Frizer. And Marlowe, but he was dead, poor bastard—”

  “One of the greatest, if not the greatest loss to English literature we’ve ever known.” Melrose, who seldom pontificated, felt a need to. Actually, he felt rather drunk. A defense, no doubt, against the hounds of total unreason. “Twenty-nine, he was—”

  Literary loss cut no ice with Harvey Schoenberg. He had bigger fish to fry. “Yeah, he died. But that’s life. The point is, most people seem to think this Skeres and Frizer were like hit men for Walsingham and it was, like I said, political. Well, you know what I say to that?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Bullshit.” Schoenberg sat back, looking smug, arm draped over back of chair.

  “Really?” Melrose was almost afraid to ask, but felt his resistance had been pretty much worn down to the ground. “What happened, then? Who do you think was responsible?”

  Harvey Schoenberg flashed that smile at him, piratical, conspiratorial, like a man with a knife between his teeth. “You won’t tell anyone my theory?” And again he tapped the computer. “I got it all in here, all the evidence.”

  “Tell anyone? I guarantee they could put me on the rack and I wouldn’t breathe a word of it.”

  “Shakespeare,” said Harvey Schoenberg, happily drinking off the dregs of his pint
.

  3

  Melrose stared at him. But Harvey Schoenberg seemed not at all distraught that he had just come to the most imbecile conclusion in literary history.

  “Are you really trying to tell me that you think William Shakespeare was responsible for the death of Christopher Marlowe?”

  Harvey’s gray eyes glittered like shards from a broken mirror. He smiled. He nodded. He offered Melrose a cigarette from a pack of Salems.

  “You’re talking about the greatest writer who ever lived.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” Harvey leaned across and lit Melrose’s cigarette. “I mean, temperamentally speaking, you know what writers and painters and so forth are like. Unstable. Geniuses are probably the nuttiest of all.”

  “Shakespeare was not ‘nutty.’ ” Melrose coughed on the smoke of the minty-tasting cigarette. “Indeed, from what we know of him, Shakespeare was an extremely sensible, level-headed businessman.” Why was he arguing with this American and his crazy theories? The legacy of too many talks with Agatha, perhaps?

  Harvey hitched one foot up on his chair, leaned his chin on his knee. “Point is, what do we really know about any of these guys back then? Hell, they didn’t even spell their own names the same way twice.” He dribbled ash on the floor. “Marloe, Marley, Marlowe, even Marlin—I must’ve counted seven, eight different spellings—how the hell can we tell what they signed or wrote or what?”

  “For what motive? What earthly motive would Shakespeare have for doing away with Marlowe?”

  Harvey leaned back over the table and said, “Mel, haven’t you been listening? The Earl of Southampton, that’s why.”

  “But the Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare’s patron! Not Marlowe’s. That wouldn’t—”

  Harvey sighed, as if he were tired of repeating a lesson that should have been learned long ago. Once again, he turned to the computer, punched the keys and said, “If you don’t think there was enough jealousy going there to sink a battleship, then you’re nuts. You said you read the sonnets. Well, just look at this.”

  Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,