by Anna Castle
"Mr. Bacon?" Trumpet sounded very young, and to Tom's ears, very girlish. No one else noticed. "I think my uncle killed the Fleming."
"Welbeck? Did he?" Bacon's gaze turned inward for a moment. "Is he our conspirator?"
"Yes, sir."
"You knew this before?"
Trumpet shrugged. "He's my uncle."
"So he is." Bacon accepted that excuse without further question, to Tom's relief. He was on tenterhooks every time Bacon's attention turned toward Trumpet. How could anyone believe that winsome moppet was a boy?
Bacon asked, "How certain are you?"
Trumpet shrugged. "Certain enough. I found a pair of bloody cuffs. He didn't come home Saturday night. When I woke up Sunday morning, his things were gone, his saddlebags with most of his clothes and money. His horse is gone too. I checked the stables."
"And there's this." Tom took the clay mold from his purse and handed it to Ben, who passed it to Bacon. "I found a set of these inside a hollowed-out almanac."
Bacon clucked his tongue. "Waste of a good book." He turned the disk in his long fingers, examining it carefully. "Fascinating. Do you have a shilling piece handy, perchance?"
Tom found one and gave it to him. Trumpet drew a false coin from his purse and passed it over as well.
"Fascinating." Bacon laid the three items on the coverlet to compare them. He tried each shilling in the mold, testing the fit. "Well crafted." He passed the three pieces to Ben, who tucked them into his writing desk, apparently assuming they were to be kept as evidence. Tom frowned at the loss of his shilling.
"The Fleming's death is accounted for, then," Ben said.
"My uncle is a murderer." Trumpet sounded forlorn.
Bacon's brow furrowed. "There are degrees, recognized even in the law. The Fleming may have objected to his payment. He might have seen that the coins were false. He was a large man, strong and threatening. Welbeck may have been defending himself."
Trumpet looked somewhat comforted. "I don't think he killed Mr. Smythson, though."
"Why not?" Bacon asked.
Trumpet explained about his uncle's demonstrations of grief and anger over the failure to bring Smythson's killer to justice. "Why bother?" he concluded. "If it was just me."
"Hm," Bacon said. "Slender evidence. Yet I'm inclined to agree with you. It doesn't fit. The crypto-Catholicism and its corollaries do fit. Nathaniel Welbeck was a man who enjoyed learning other men's secrets and playing roles, like an actor on a stage. Receiving contraband from abroad, counterfeiting: these would have seemed clever games to him. He would relish conducting such business under the noses of his fellow Graysians. The thrill of danger was sufficient motivation. He had, I believe, no real desire to unthrone our queen." He held Trumpet's gaze. "I do not believe your uncle poses any genuine threat to the state. However, Lord Burghley will have to be informed of his involvement here. It will not be safe for him to return to London for some time."
Trumpet nodded.
"In his defense," Bacon said, "consider this: the moment his exposure became imminent, he fled. A man of masks, he chose to hide himself. He did not kill again to prevent discovery. He might have murdered you, for example." He smiled cheerfully at Trumpet, who looked thunderstruck by the idea.
Bacon continued to explore his new theory aloud. "If he were planning to abscond, why linger to have the limner arrested? And why send her that basket? Why loiter at Gray's, waiting for me to rise so he could push me down the stairs? If Welbeck had learned that Smythson was aware of his seditious activities, I believe he would simply have vanished earlier. He would not have followed him to the tiltyard to murder him so near the crowds at the tournament. Nor can I imagine Smythson confronting him in such a location and provoking him into a rage. That part makes no sense to me."
He fell silent. He turned his gaze to the coverlet, his eyes roaming sightlessly across its surface while he thought. Tom could almost hear the joiner's felted mallets tapping as pieces of marquetry snicked into place in his mind.
The lads made faces at one another. What now? None had any ideas to put forward even if any had the nerve to interrupt Bacon while he was thinking.
They didn't have to wait long. Bacon began nodding his head. Soon a slight smile appeared on his lips. Another moment passed and then he raised his eyes. "I've been looking at the problem of Smythson's murder from the wrong perspective. I was distracted by my lord uncle's suggestion that a Catholic conspiracy was the cause. Although —" He broke off with a chuckle, his light eyes dancing. "Without the Catholic business, I would never have been charged with this investigation. That was a bit of bad luck for our killer."
Ben said, "You were bound to discover him."
Bacon shot him a fond glance. "I was. Eventually. Two threads have been tangled together here from the start: Welbeck's dramatic machinations and Smythson's murder. We have teased out the first thread. Now we can examine the second.
"Then you think someone killed Smythson on purpose," Tom said. "But why?"
Bacon held up a finger. "A contrario. I am now convinced that Smythson's death was an accident."
"He was stabbed more than a dozen times!" Trumpet cried. "How could that possibly be an accident?"
"It was an accident in the sense that it was unplanned," Bacon said. "The excessive violence suggested frenzied rage or panic, arguing against a case of simple theft. I failed to ask myself why a murder committed to prevent the discovery of a Catholic conspiracy would require such violence. Surely it would have been planned and a less histrionic method employed? And a more private locale. I ignored that odd detail when I should have given it my full attention on the grounds that it was so odd."
"We couldn't imagine how Mr. Smythson could inspire anyone to a frenzy," Tom said.
"You couldn't," Bacon said with a touch of his old hauteur, "but I should have. Especially after we discovered that a frightening menace, one that might inspire panic, was prowling those lanes south of Whitehall at the critical juncture: the Wild Men from the Earl of Essex's pageant."
"Those costumes were fairly hideous," Ben said.
"And we know they were chasing someone," Trumpet added.
"And they were cup-shot, according to their friends." Tom wouldn't care to meet one of those burly retainers, lion-drunk and looking for trouble, in those shadowy alleys, even without the fearsome costumes.
"They made a tale of it," Ben said. "Laughing about it later with their friends. I've got a bone to pick with you, Counselor. Remember?"
"Precisely," Bacon said. "That was a central bit of evidence that I foolishly regarded as peripheral. Assuming that the crimes centered on Catholic conspirators at Gray's, I was inclined to brush aside these little irregularities. I failed to examine the initial premise. A classic fallacy."
"It's understandable," Ben began.
Bacon wagged his finger again to cut him off. "Not for me. I won't make that mistake again should I ever be presented with another problem of this nature."
"But the Wild Men weren't the ones that were killed," Trumpet said.
"They were not," Bacon said. "This is what I think happened: Smythson was possessed of more than knowledge concerning Catholics at Gray's. He was also the chief counsel for a very wealthy and litigious man."
"Sir Amias Rolleston." Ben grinned. "Everyone wants a piece of that pie."
"It is a large and succulent pie. I might be interested myself, if most of his suits weren't juridically routine and patently baseless. Really," Bacon said, his words gaining speed, "it is far too easy these days to drag one's neighbors into court on frivolous grounds. Half the populace is waging law against the other half. It enriches the courts but impoverishes the nation."
He broke off and smiled sheepishly at the lads. "But I digress. We know that Smythson was expected at my lord uncle's house that afternoon. It is not an implausible assumption that our killer followed him, hoping for a private conversation. Perhaps he thought he could persuade Smythson to give him some small portion of
the Rolleston cases. A brief or two; a foot in the door of a wider practice. But on his way, he attracted the attention of the Wild Men, who proceeded to amuse themselves by teasing him.
"For men such as those, an old grudge against lawyers would be enough. They chased our man through the lanes, taunting and menacing him, until he feared for his life. He may have simply stumbled into Tobias Smythson hobbling along. In his terror, he must have believed himself to be under attack and responded in kind. Perhaps he was blinded in some way, by panic or sweat dripping from his brow."
"His hat might have slipped over his eyes." Tom demonstrated with his own hat.
"Quite plausible." Bacon gestured to Ben, who passed him a silver goblet. He took a few sips and handed it back. "Where was I? Ah, yes. I suspect that if our man had been taken up by the authorities at that moment, with his terror writ plain upon his face, that he would not have killed again. And he himself might have been allowed to live. His violent deed had been done in self-defense, or so he thought. He would have been expelled from Gray's and disbarred from all English courts, but he might have kept his life.
"Instead, as the days turned into weeks and no punishment ensued, he grew more comfortable with his deed. Bolder. He'd stolen two fat purses from Tobias Smythson along with the letter to Lord Burghley. He knew about the conspiracy from the letter. I suspected at the time that a page was missing: he must have kept the one that laid out Smythson's suspicions about the counterfeiting. He had money, both false and true, and the means to gain more through blackmailing the counterfeiter, if he could watch and wait and discover his name. He must have felt quite successful until he heard rumors that I was prying into Smythson's death."
"Stephen." Tom clenched his fist.
"Not necessarily," Bacon said. "Rumor volat. Gossip is endemic in closed societies. At any rate, Smythson's letter and its contents provided our killer with a method of deflecting my attention. To my discredit, it succeeded. And there the matter would have rested. Smythson's murder would have gone unpunished, as well as Shiveley's, but for the antics of Nathaniel Welbeck, who did not have the sense to suspend his operations."
"I doubt that he could have," Trumpet said. "Looking back, I think he'd been expecting those pamphlets for months. There wasn't time to send a letter to France."
"Another stroke of ill luck for Smythson's murderer," Bacon said. "Had the Fleming been left alive to return to his own country, I would not have been inspired to reconsider the evidence presented in Shiveley's death."
"Yes, you would," Ben said. "We had the pamphlet I took from his sack."
"That's right. I'd forgotten. And that development was made inevitable by our unwilling witness, the beauteous limner." Bacon gave Tom a wry look. "Although, if she had been pox-marked or elderly, we would not have had the pamphlet either."
They fell silent. Tom was grateful for the chance to work through the sequence of causes and effects in his own mind. He felt as if he were back in Cambridge, slogging through a formal argument. Only this subject matter struck closer to home than Cicero's De Oratore.
"God works in wondrous ways." Bacon broke the silence. "Each seemingly disparate element was a vital link in the chain. Our job was to connect them properly."
Tom scratched his beard. He was due for a shave. "The murders were done from fear, then. First, fear of the Wild Men. Then, fear of discovery."
"Fear was the efficient cause." Bacon held up a finger like a lecturing tutor. His didactic pose was undermined by the fringed shawl and the neat little cap. Ben gazed at him with affection. "The final cause is greed. Or envy, perhaps, would be more apt. Our murderer lusted for money and status, the pursuit of which prompted him to follow Smythson. That murder, so far from having evil consequences, gratified his greed by advancing him to a larger purse. Smythson held a high position in this Society of ambitious men. His death opened a gap. Filling that gap opened others, so that his death indirectly benefited many men. Myself included: I gained a Reading, a desirable plum that ripens only twice a year. The murderer pushed me down the stairs to take my place as Reader as much as to prevent me discovering his identity."
Tom was flabbergasted. He could imagine no punishment more dire than being forced to expostulate in public on a statute of the law. To kill for the privilege was an act unfathomable.
"We still don't know who Smythson's killer was," Trumpet said. "My uncle wanted those things too: the Readership, the Rolleston cases. We only moved into chambers with a hearth hot enough for a crucible after Smythson's chambers were vacated and the previous tenant moved out."
"Mr. Bacon's hypothesis narrows the range of possible suspects, though," Ben said. "Only ancients need be considered."
"And benchers," Bacon corrected. "A well-performed second Reading can provide the boost a bencher needs to raise himself to a judgeship."
"Fogg!" Tom slapped his hand against the bedpost, setting the fringe around the tester swinging and making Bacon jump. Ben glowered at him. "Fogg wrote the writ that put Clara in Newgate."
"He did not," Bacon said. "We settled that yesterday. But we can't rule him out. His secretary might have written it. However, Mr. Whitt is correct: we have narrowed the field."
Tom tried to list the ancients in his head, working his way around their table in hall. "It's still better than twenty men."
"We can reduce that number. Most barristers have no interest in Reading. The expense and the burden of study are considerable." Bacon sighed. "If the Readership was his goal, pushing me down the stairs might well succeed. I can't Read now. I've sent a note to the bench asking for a postponement until August."
Trumpet said, "Whoever is chosen next had best be on his guard."
"Unless it's the killer," Ben said.
"Who will it be?" Tom asked.
"Treasurer Fogg is the most likely candidate, in my view," Bacon said. "He's due for a second Reading, and he has been campaigning vigorously for a seat on the Queen's Bench."
Tom tried to remember everything he knew about Sir Avery, mainly from seeing him at the Antelope. "He has a foul temper. It easy to imagine him flying into a rage."
Bacon nodded. "A hot temper coupled with high ambition."
"Then he's our man." Trumpet shifted his stance, ready to go out and start doing something. "We should warn the rest of the benchers. We should have him taken into custody."
"Not yet," Bacon said. "So far, we have only supposition. I can think of two other men who are equally well qualified."
"My uncle," Trumpet said. "But if he's the one, we'll never know. He can live hidden for years among our Catholic cousinage in Derbyshire."
"His ambitions will draw him out of hiding eventually," Bacon said. "He'll yearn for a larger stage. Little effort would be expended in the apprehension of a man who killed a foreign smuggler in self-defense. When the current fever of conspiracies around the Scottish queen cools, his crimes may be entirely forgotten."
"I don't want it to be Mr. Welbeck," Tom blurted.
Ben and Trumpet laughed, but Bacon smiled. "Because then we'll never know for certain. I feel the same." He cocked his head, eyes twinkling. "There remains one fully qualified candidate."
Ben's long face rumpled in thought. He began shaking his head before he spoke, as if arguing with himself. "You can't mean Mr. Humphries."
"I do mean George Humphries. In fact, I find little to choose between him and Sir Avery."
"But he's — he's —" Trumpet began.
"He's an oaf," Tom supplied. "A nithing. I can't see him shooing a goose from his path, much less murdering a grown man in the middle of the street."
"Can't you?" Bacon said. "Geese are far more intimidating than mild Tobias Smythson. And don't forget: we surmise that Smythson's murder was in main degree unintended. I can easily imagine Humphries being driven into a panic by the Wild Men."
"Me too," Trumpet said. "My uncle often used to make fun of Humphries in the privacy of our rooms. He said the benchers would never elect him to Read. He doubt
ed the man was capable of speaking sensibly in public for three minutes, much less for three days."
"True," Bacon said. "He has never been a serious candidate. The men of the bench represent the Society, as well as govern it. They must be men of standing, education, and family. They must be possessed of at least a modicum of social grace. Humphries has none of these qualities and his knowledge of the law is superficial to boot.
"He is also a man singularly incapable of insight into his own nature. I don't believe Smythson would ever consider employing him in any capacity, however persistently he might have asked. Sir Avery might have gained himself a piece of the Rolleston pie by persuasive asking. But Humphries can be deaf to other men's opinions. He has seniority, he has complied with all the overt requirements: to his mind, that is enough. He is also possessed of a deep-seated resentment that sours his perceptions. Are you acquainted with his personal history?"
"That his father squandered the family estates on frivolous lawsuits?" Tom asked.
"And that he alienated the whole county in so doing?" Trumpet added.
Ben said, "Everyone knows Humphries's story. It's a cautionary tale about the perils of litigiousness. We get an earful of it in our first year."
"As did I." Bacon smiled in a way that reminded Tom he had been a student once, not so very long ago. "Humphries believes the world of law owes him recompense for luring his father into penury. One other clue, perhaps: he was oddly eager to escort me to my chambers on Saturday night. He loitered near the door and attached himself to me as I left. Had the Essex party not arrived at that moment, I might well have met my Maker on that night."
Ben's face paled. "Thanks be to God there was gaming in the hall!"
Bacon laughed, tilting his head back into his plump pillows. "That's an amusing syllogism: gaming attracts numbers; there's safety in numbers; therefore, gaming increases safety." He drew in a long breath and let it out in a long sigh. "His intentions may have been innocent. He may even have feared for my safety and intended, in his awkward way, to protect me. If only I could remember who I spoke with on the landing. At times I can almost hear the man's voice, but it eludes me."
