The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Shooting a malevolent glare at Martin, Pilbeam led the way into the courtyard of the house. Rain streaked the stones and timber of the facade. Windows turned a blind eye to the chill gray afternoon. The odors of smoke and offal hung in the air.

  A door opened, revealing a plump, pigeon-like woman wearing the simple garb of a servant. She greeted the visitors with, “What do you want?”

  “Good afternoon, Mistress. I am Dr. Erasmus Pilbeam, acting for Lord Robert Dudley.” He offered her a bow that was polite but not deferential.

  The woman’s suspicion eased into resignation. “Then come through, and warm yourselves by the fire. I am Mrs. Odingsells, the housekeeper.”

  “Thank you.”

  Within moments Pilbeam found himself seated in the kitchen, slurping hot cabbage soup and strong ale. Martin crouched in the rushes at his feet, gnawing on a crust of bread. On the opposite side of the fireplace a young woman mended a lady’s shift, her narrow face shadowed by her cap.

  Mrs. Odingsells answered Pilbeam’s question. “Yes, Lady Robert was in perfect health, if pale and worn, up until several days before she died. Then she turned sickly and peevish. Why, even Lettice there, her maid, could do nothing for her. Or with her, come to that.”

  Pilbeam looked over at the young woman and met a glance sharp as the needle she wielded.

  The housekeeper went on, “The day she died her ladyship sent the servants away to Abingdon Fair. I refused to go. It was a Sunday, no day for a gentlewoman to be out and about, sunshine or no.”

  “She sent everyone away?” Pilbeam repeated. “If she were ill, surely she would have needed an attendant.”

  “Ill? Ill-used, I should say . . . .” Remembering discretion, Mrs. Odingsells contented herself with, “If she sent the servants away, it was because she tired of their constantly offering food she would not eat and employments she had no wish to pursue. Why, I myself heard her praying to God to deliver her from desperation, not long before I heard her fall.”

  “She was desperate from illness? Or because her husband’s . . . duties were elsewhere?”

  “Desperate from her childlessness, perhaps, which would follow naturally upon Lord Robert’s absence.”

  So then, Amy’s spear through the heart was a symbolic one, the pain of a woman spurned. “Her ladyship was of a strange mind the day she died, it seems. Do you think she died by chance? Or by villainy, her own or someone else’s?”

  Again Pilbeam caught the icy stab of Lettice’s eyes.

  “She was a virtuous God-fearing gentlewoman, and alone when she fell,” Mrs. Odingsells returned indignantly, as though that were answer enough.

  It was not enough, however. If not for the testimony of Amy herself, Pilbeam would be thinking once again of self-murder. But then, his lordship himself had said, a fall down the stairs could no more be relied upon by a suicide than by a murderer.

  The housekeeper bent over the pot of fragrant soup. Pilbeam asked, “Could I see the exact staircase? Perhaps Lettice can show me, as your attention is upon your work.”

  “Lettice,” Mrs. Odingsells said, with a jerk of her head. “See to it.”

  Silently the maid put down her mending and started toward the door. Pilbeam swallowed the last of his soup and followed her. He did not realize Martin was following him until he stopped beside the fatal staircase and the lad walked into his rump. Pilbeam brushed him aside. “She was found here?”

  “Yes, master, so she was.” Now Lettice’s eyes were roaming up and down and sideways, avoiding his. “See how narrow the stair is, winding and worn at the turn. In the darkness . . . ”

  “Darkness? Did she not die on a fair September afternoon?”

  “Yes, yes, but the house is in shadow. And her ladyship was of a strange mind that day, you said yourself, Master.”

  Behind Pilbeam, Martin muttered beneath his breath, “The lady was possessed, if you ask me.”

  “No one is asking you, clotpole,” Pilbeam told him.

  Lettice spun around. “Possessed? Why would you say such a thing? How . . . What is that?”

  “What?” Pilbeam followed the direction of her eyes. The direction of her entire body, which strained upward stiff as a hound at point.

  The ghost of Amy Robsart descended the steps, skirts rustling, dark eyes downcast, doubled in pain. Her frail hands were clasped to her breast. Her voice said, “Ah, woe. Woe.” And suddenly she collapsed, sliding down the last two steps to lie crumpled on the floor at Pilbeam’s feet, her headdress not at all disarranged.

  With great presence of mind, Pilbeam reached right and left, seizing Martin’s ear as he turned to flee and Lettice’s arm as she swooned. “Blimey,” said Martin, with feeling.

  Lettice was trembling, her breath coming in gasps. “I did not know what they intended, as God is my witness, I did not know . . . .”

  The revenant dissolved and was gone. Pilbeam released Martin and turned his attention to Lettice. Her eyes were now dull as lead. “What have you done, girl?”

  “They gave me two angels. Two gold coins.”

  “Who?”

  “Two men. I do not know their names. They stopped me in the village, they gave me a parcel and bade me bring it here.”

  “A parcel for her ladyship?”

  “Not for anyone. They told me to hide it in the house was all.”

  Pilbeam’s heart started to sink. Then, as the full import of Lettice’s words blossomed in his mind, it reversed course and bounded upwards in a leap of relief. “Show me this parcel, you foolborn giglet. Make haste!”

  Lettice walked, her steps heavy, several paces down the hallway. There she knelt and shoved at a bit of paneling so worm-gnawed it looked like lace. It opened like a cupboard door. From the dark hole behind it she withdrew a parcel wrapped in paper and tied with twine.

  Pilbeam snatched it up and carried it to the nearest windowsill. “Watch her,” he ordered Martin.

  Martin said, “Do not move, you ruttish flax-wench.”

  Lettice remained on her knees, bowed beneath the magnitude of her defeat, and made no attempt to flee.

  Pilbeam eased the twine from the parcel and unwrapped the paper. It was fine parchment overwritten with spells and signs. Beneath the paper a length of silk enshrouded something long and hard . . . Martin leaned so close that he almost got Pilbeam’s elbow in his eye. Pilbeam shoved him aside.

  Inside the silk lay a wax doll, dressed in a fine gown with puffed sleeves and starched stomacher, a small headdress upon its tiny head. But this was no child’s toy. A long needle passed through its breast and exited from its back—Pilbeam’s fingertips darted away from the sharp point. The doll’s neck was encircled by a crimson thread, wound so tightly that it had almost cut off the head. A scrap of paper tucked into the doll’s bodice read: Amy.

  Again Pilbeam could hear the revenant’s voice: A spear through my heart and my head so heavy I could barely hold it erect. So the spear thrust through her chest had been both literal and symbolic. And Amy’s neck had been so weakened it needed only the slightest jolt to break it, such as a misstep on a staircase. A misstep easily made by the most healthy of persons, let alone a woman rendered infirm by forces both physical and emotional.

  It was much too late to say the incantations that would negate the death-spell. Swiftly Pilbeam re-wrapped the parcel. “Run to the kitchen and fetch Mrs. Odingsells,” he ordered Martin, and Martin ran.

  Lettice’s bleak eyes spilled tears down her sunken cheeks. “How can I redeem myself?”

  “By identifying the two men who gave you this cursed object.”

  “I do not know their names, master. I heard one call the other by the name of ‘Ned’ is all.”

  “Ned? If these men have knowledge of the magical sciences I should know . . . .” She did not need to know his own occupation. “Describe them to me.”

  “One was tall and strong, his black hair and beard wild as a bear’s. The other was small, with a nose like an axeblade. He was the one named Ned
.”

  Well then! Pilbeam did know them. They were not his colleagues but his competitors, Edward Cosyn, called Ned, and John Prestall. As Lord Robert had said, they were ill-nurtured cozeners, their loyalty suspect and their motives impure.

  Perhaps his lordship had himself bought the services of Prestall and Cosyn. If so, would he have admitted that he knew who they were? No. If he had brought about his wife’s death, he would have hidden his motives behind sorrow and grief rather than openly revealing his self-interest and self-regard . . . .God be praised, thought Pilbeam, he had an answer for Lord Robert. He had found someone for his lordship to blame.

  At a step in the hall Pilbeam and Lettice looked around. But the step was not that of the apprentice or the housekeeper. Amy Robsart walked down the hallway, head drooping, shoulders bowed, wringing her hands.

  Lettice squeaked in terror and shrank against Pilbeam’s chest.

  With a sigh of cold, dank air, the ghost passed through them and went on its way down the hallway, leaving behind the soft thump of footsteps and the fragile voice wailing, “Ah woe. Woe.”

  Pilbeam adjusted his robes and his cap. Beside him Martin tugged at his collar. Pilbeam jabbed the lad with his elbow and hissed, “Stand up straight, you lumpish ratsbane . . . ”

  “Quiet, you fly-bitten foot-licker,” Lord Robert ordered.

  Heralds threw open the doors. Her Majesty the Queen strode into the chamber, a vision in brocade, lace, and jewels. But her garments seemed like so many rags beside the glorious sunrise glow of her fair skin and her russet hair.

  Lord Robert went gracefully down upon one knee, his upturned face filled with the adoration of a papist for a saint. Pilbeam dropped like a sack of grain, jerking Martin down as he went. The lad almost fumbled the pillow he carried, but his quick grab prevented the witching-doll from falling off the pillow and onto the floor.

  The Queen’s amber eyes crinkled at the corners, but her scarlet lips did not smile. “Robin, you roguish folly-fallen lewdster,” she said to Lord Robert, her voice melodious but not lacking an edge. “Why have you pleaded to wait upon us this morning?”

  “My agent, Dr. Pilbeam, who is apprenticed to your favorite, Dr. Dee, has discovered the truth behind my wife’s unfortunate death.”

  Robert did not say “untimely death,” Pilbeam noted. Then her Majesty turned her eyes upon him, and his thoughts melted like a wax candle in their heat.

  “Dr. Pilbeam,” she said. “Explain.”

  He spoke to the broad planks of the floor, repeating the lines he had rehearsed before his lordship: Cumnor Place, the maidservant overcome by her guilt, the death-spell quickened by the doll, and behind it all the clumsy but devious hands of Prestall and Cosyn. No revenant figured in the tale, and certainly no magic circle in St. Mary’s, Oxford.

  On cue, Martin extended the pillow. Lord Robert offered it to the Queen. With a crook of her forefinger, she summoned a lady-in-waiting, who carried both pillow and doll away. “Burn it,” Elizabeth directed. And to her other attendants, “Leave us.” With a double thud the doors shut.

  Her Majesty flicked her pomander, bathing the men and the boy with the odor of violets and roses, as though she were a bishop dispensing the holy water of absolution. “You may stand.”

  Lord Robert rose as elegantly as he had knelt. With an undignified stagger, Pilbeam followed. Martin lurched into his side and Pilbeam batted him away.

  “Where are these evildoers now?” asked the Queen.

  “The maidservant is in Oxford gaol, your Majesty,” Robert replied, “and the malicious cozeners in the Tower.”

  “And yet it seems as though this maid was merely foolish, not wicked, ill-used by men who tempted her with gold. You must surely have asked yourself, Robin, who in turn tempted these men.”

  “Someone who wished to destroy your trust in me, your Majesty. To drive me from your presence. My enemy, and yours as well.”

  “Do you think so? What do you think, Dr. Pilbeam?”

  What he truly thought, Pilbeam dared not say. That perhaps Amy’s death was caused by someone who intended to play the Queen’s friend. Someone who wished Amy Robsart’s death to deliver Lord Robert Dudley to Elizabeth’s marriage bed, so that there she might engender heirs.

  Whilst some found Robert’s bloodline tainted, his father and grandfather both executed as traitors, still the Queen could do much worse in choosing her consort. One could say of Robert what was said of the Queen herself upon her accession, that he was of no mingled or Spanish blood but was born English here in England. Even if he was proud as a Spaniard . . . .

  Pilbeam looked into the Queen’s eyes, jewels faceted with a canny intelligence. Spain, he thought. The deadly enemy of Elizabeth and protestant England. The Spanish were infamous for their subtle plots.

  “B-b-begging your pardon, your Majesty,” he stammered, “but I think his lordship is correct in one regard. His wife was murdered by your enemies. But they did not intend to drive him from your presence, not at all.”

  Robert’s glance at Pilbeam was not encouraging. Martin took a step back. But Pilbeam barely noticed, spellbound as he was by the Queen. “Ambassador Feria, who was lately recalled to Spain. Did he not frequently comment to his master, King Philip, on your, ah, attachment to Lord Robert?”

  Elizabeth nodded, one corner of her mouth tightening. She did not insult Pilbeam by pretending there had been no gossip about her attachment, just as she would not pretend she had no spies in the ambassador’s household. “He had the impudence to write six months ago that Lady Robert had a malady in one of her breasts and that I was only waiting for her to die to marry.”

  His lordship winced but had the wisdom to keep his own counsel.

  “Yes, your Majesty,” said Pilbeam. “But how did Feria not only know of Lady Robert’s illness but of its exact nature, long before the disease began to manifest itself? Her own housekeeper says she began to suffer only a few days before she died. Did Feria himself set two cozeners known for their, er, mutable loyalties to inflict such a condition upon her?”

  “Feria was recently withdrawn and replaced by Bishop de Quadra,” murmured the Queen. “Perhaps he overstepped himself with his plot. Or perhaps he retired to Spain in triumph at its—no, not at its conclusion. For it has yet to be concluded.”

  Lord Robert could contain himself no longer. “But your Majesty, this hasty-witted pillock speaks nonsense, why should Philip of Spain . . . ”

  “ . . . wish for me to marry you? He intended no compliment to you, I am sure of that.” Elizabeth smiled, a smile more fierce than humorous, and for just a moment Pilbeam was reminded of her father, King Henry.

  Robert’s handsome face lit with the answer to the puzzle. “If your Majesty marries an Englishman, she could not ally herself with a foreign power such as France against Spain.”

  True enough, thought Pilbeam. But more importantly, if Elizabeth married Robert then she would give weight to the rumors of murder, and might even be considered his accomplice in that crime. She had reigned for only two years, her rule was far from secure. Marrying Lord Robert might give the discontented among her subjects more ammunition for their misbegotten cause, and further Philip’s plots.

  Whilst Robert chose to ignore those facts, Pilbeam would wager everything he owned that her Majesty did not. His lordship’s ambition might have outpaced his love for his wife. His love for Elizabeth had certainly done so. No, Robert Dudley had not killed his wife. Not intentionally.

  The Queen stroked his cheek, the coronation ring upon her finger glinting against his beard. “The problem, sweet Robin, is that I am already married to a husband, namely, the Kingdom of England.”

  Robert had no choice but to acknowledge that. He bowed.

  “Have the maidservant released,” Elizabeth commanded. “Allow the cozeners to go free. Let the matter rest, and in time it will die for lack of nourishment. And then Philip and his toadies will not only be deprived of their conclusion, they will always wonder how much we kn
ew of their plotting, and how we knew it.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” said Lord Robert. “May I then return to court?”

  “In the course of time.” She dropped her hand from his cheek.

  He would never have his conclusion, either, thought Pilbeam. Elizabeth would like everyone to be in love with her, but she would never be in love with anyone enough to marry him. For then she would have to bow her head to her husband’s will, and that she would never do.

  Pilbeam backed away. For once he did not collide with Martin, who, he saw with a glance from the corner of his eye, was several paces away and sidling crab-wise toward the door.

  Again the Queen turned the full force of her eyes upon Pilbeam, stopping him in his steps. “Dr. Pilbeam, we hear that the ghost of Lady Robert Dudley has been seen walking in Cumnor Park.”

  “Ah, ah . . . .” Pilbeam felt rather than saw Martin’s shudder of terror. But they would never have discovered the truth without the revenant. No, he would not condemn Martin, not when his carelessness had proved a blessing in disguise.

  Lord Robert’s gaze burned the side of his face, a warning that matters of necromancy were much better left hidden. “Her ghost?” he demanded. “Walking in Cumnor Park?”

  Pilbeam said, “Er—ah—m any tales tell of ghosts rising from their graves, your Majesty, compelled by matters left unconcluded at death. Perhaps Lady Robert is seeking justice, perhaps bewailing her fate. In the course time, some compassionate clergyman will see her at last to rest.” Not I, he added firmly to himself.

  Elizabeth’s smile glinted with wry humor. “Is that how it is?”

  She would not insult Pilbeam by pretending that she had no spies in Oxfordshire as well, and that very little failed to reach her ears and eyes. And yet the matter of the revenant, too, she would let die for lack of nourishment. She was not only fair in appearance, but also in her expectations. He made her a bow that was more of a genuflection.

  She made an airy wave of her hand. “You may go now, all of you. And Dr. Pilbeam, Lord Robert will be giving you the purse that dangles at his belt, in repayment of his debt to you.”