Most Secret

by John Dickson Carr

  Three or four bouquets are hurled up at her from the pit. All but one fall short, tumbling among the fiddlers. The bouquet which lands at her feet she picks up. Her next move, unless you have cause to observe it, you will never see at all. A small, folded paper is thrust deep among the flowers of the bouquet.

  As though glad to be rid of the Roman matron, a graceful figure in blue-and-orange goes dancing across the stage. She stops where she has stood once before, facing sideways towards the royal box.

  “Hail, Brutus! Hail, noblest Roman!”

  Dolly holds up the bouquet for all to see. She postures in a kind of triumph. She flings that bouquet over the edge of the stage, over the box rail, and into the lap of the king.

  And now they think they understand.

  The audacity of it is such that the whole audience stares with the breath stuck in its throat. Even Nell Gwyn, as impudent a baggage as ever appeared here, has never dared go as far as this. Nelly has imitated my Lady Castlemaine to her face, copying gown and speech and gesture. But to throw a bouquet to the king in public, with Madam Barbara sitting in the box above, is a piece of effrontery which risks every lightning bolt from backstage.

  Grandee keeps an expressionless face. Sedate Citizen gapes. Fop cranes his neck uneasily to look towards the royal box, and then up in the gloom at Lady Thunder sitting motionless, her pomander ball at her nose. But, with a sudden and shattering roar, not-to-be-cozened Public in the top gallery comes to life. It cheers. It whistles and stamps and makes sounds indicative of osculation. Down pours that noise in a cataract, flooding the wits of Sedate Citizen. And King Charles, let it be confessed, King Charles responds well to the challenge.

  Nobody sees him take something from the bouquet and slip it into his pocket. The rest may be seen by anyone. He rises. He sweeps a bow to the queen sitting beside him and hands her the flowers.

  Afterwards there will be people to tell you that never, in all the years she has lived and is to live in England, did Queen Catherine wear such a look as she did (for an instant) then. Perhaps they exaggerate. Perhaps they were not here. But this dark-faced little lady would seem, momentarily, to have had fine eyes. Otherwise she gives little outward sign, save for a pinched and ghostly smile. The bouquet—which is only the common field flowers anyway, and much bruised as well—she takes carefully into her hands. When she dies in Lisbon, nearly forty years from now, they are to find the withered stalks among her possessions, along with the pious Latin books and the crucifix.

  But at this moment the actors, who have been shifting about in a restless manner during the uproar, betray a certain impatience. Mr. Hart bawls out, for attention, a repetition of his last speech to Portia: “Leave me with haste!

  He motions to Lucius (Mr. Robert Shatterell), who bends close to his ear and shouts, “Here is a sick man who would speak with you!” They bring on the sick man, a truly ghastly-looking fellow who nevertheless can yell as loudly as anyone else; and all three contrive by lung power to quell the tumult. The King, his chair tilted back, regards everything with great amiability.

  The play goes its relentless way. Caesar is stabbed, relapsing suddenly into a couple of Latin words at his dying moment; Mark Antony praises Caesar and buries the conspirators, who are already bound for the plains of Philippi. Still rain beats on the cupola roof. The remaining candles burn low, flaring out in sheets of grease. It is as though you could hear, off-stage, an ominous clang of arms. The king still has not moved. He allows several acts to be played before he takes a note from his pocket, unfolds it, and scans it casually.

  Inside the tent of Brutus, represented only by two chairs and a table with a lighted taper, the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius breaks out. There is more talk concerning the honour of Rome. Hart, tall and shadowy, with his helmet gleaming, turns from the table. He strikes the short-sword rattling at his hip.

  For I can raise no money by vile means.

  By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,

  And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring

  From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash

  By an indirection. I did send

  To you for gold …

  King Charles looks up with a curious expression. He rubs his long nose. For a second or two he regards the stage inscrutably. Then he tilts back his chair again, and falls to fondling the necks of his dogs.

  X

  AT WHITEHALL, IN ONE corner of the Palace Yard, the great bell called Old Tom struck eight. Its voice was muffled by the falling rain, but they heard it distinctly in Bygones Abraham’s lodgings off the Shield Gallery. Bygones and my grandfather sat in the withdrawing room, with two candles burning in silver holders on the table between them; and once more they waited.

  Much could be told of what befell in the few hours after they discovered Pembroke Harker stabbed through the back of the neck in the cupboard. If I need not recount this fully, it being a grisly story, there are reasons why parts of it must at least be indicated.

  Kinsmere never afterwards forgot standing in the Hebe Room at just before three o’clock. He remembered the sky darkening towards storm outside the windows, the cupboard’s open door, the trussed and gagged dead man lying face down in so much blood, and the buzz of the circling flies.

  “Ay!” said Bygones, from deep in His throat. “It’s a pretty sight, as you were thinking: a most wondrous pretty sight! ‘Now sacrilegious murder hath broke ope—’”

  There was a light footstep outside the door of the Hebe Room; the latch was lifted; Dolly Landis stood in the opening.

  Kinsmere leaped at the door of the cupboard. He shut and latched it, but not before Dolly had seen. The colour drained from her face: it was plain that her knees must be trembling like her mouth. She took a faltering step inside, and jerked out her elbow to close the door behind her.

  “Pem! Is he—?”

  “Yes!”

  “Dear God, b-but what happened? Who did it?”

  “While we were a-sitting idle in there …” Bygones began.

  You could still hear the flies buzzing inside the cupboard. Kinsmere went forward to grip Dolly’s arm.

  “We don’t know what happened or who did it. But no oracle is needed to foretell the future. If anybody but you had walked in, it would be said I did it.”

  “Not so!” retorted Bygones. “You’re concerned enough, in all conscience; let’s own it freely and damnably; yet not as actor-in-chief. Never think it: they’d call me the culprit!”

  “YOU?”

  “Lad, lad, think further on this!” Bygones lumbered in the direction of the windows, his feet crunching in broken glass; then he swung round again. “Here’s all the signs of a duello: behold ’em. There’s you with a wound in your shoulder, there’s Harker with blood on his sword, but also,” and he pointed, “there’s Harker stone dead of a stab never made in any duello.

  “D’ye see how they’ll read it? You engaged him, which is true enough. He wounded you: likewise true. Then, when he’d ha’ spitted you on the point, I stepped in from behind and finished him with a knife. No matter that this is false: no matter the lass can say it’s false! Who’d believe her? And no source of help to you either. This is a great business, a wicked business, a hanging business; they’d nub us both together on Tyburn Tree. That’s where you’re in the right of it. If any person was to come in here and find him—”

  One of the flies, loose from the cupboard, rose up and brushed Kinsmere’s cheek; he flinched as though he had been stung. And, at the same moment, somebody outside in the passage tapped softly but insistently at the Hebe Room’s door.

  If he flinched at the touch of the fly, which was wet and glutted, still he did not hesitate. With a gentle hand he put Dolly to one side, and instantly yanked open the door.

  Outside stood the tapster who had served them with their meal in the other room. He was a small, bald-headed, servile man, with his sleeves rolled up and a splashed apron round his waist. He had a quick, eager, squeaky voice.


  “Please, sir,” says he, “I am come for the thing in the cupboard.”

  Bygones Abraham lumbered forward, but his help was not needed.

  “Are you so?” spars Kinsmere, feeling the fly hover back again. “Now what hell’s nonsense is this? What d’ye mean, fellow?”

  “If you please, sir,” wailed the tapster, “don’t look so! I studied no offence … it was only the gentleman …”

  “What gentleman?”

  “He passed me on the stairs, sir, and did pluck at my sleeve. The lady and the two gentlemen in the Cupid Room, he said, had left in the cupboard here a certain thing they would doubtless desire to have carried downstairs. A box or portmanteau, was it? Some parcel of bottles, or the like? Sir, sir, can I tell fortunes or read minds?”

  “Attend only to your proper business. Did the gentleman say anything else?”

  “Nay, sir; but he laughed.”

  “Laughed, did he? And what was he like, this fine comical fellow? Can you describe him?”

  “Sir, sir! ’Tis dark on the stairs, as you must be aware! Had a gentleman’s voice; ’tis all I know. Besides!” The tapster’s little eye rolled up. “Under favour, and most humbly craving your pardon, need I describe him? For sure the gentleman was of your party?”

  “He attached himself to us, God knows,” returned Kinsmere. “But not for long, I am glad to say. And sure you can recognize a jest when you hear one?”

  “A jest, sir?”

  “Did we not tell you, when you served us,” interposed Bygones, in so menacing a tone that the tapster shied back, “did we not tell you a friend of ours—aforetime in the Cupid Room with this lady—had drunk himself insensible, and was put by? Did we not tell you this?”

  “Ay, sir, truly you did!”

  “He is in that cupboard,” said Bygones, “and hears nothing. But he is a proud man; he would not care to be seen as he is now. As for the merry joker who spoke to you, his jest was none so comical as he made out. Still, if it diverted the rogue …!”

  “Well, sir, your friend’s score is paid. He paid it to Big Mike. I know, when he was served with roast mutton. You’ll not leave him in the cupboard, though? If I fetched other tapsters, we could—”

  “No, let be!” interrupted Kinsmere, as the other set foot inside the door. “We’ll stand guard between this room and the next, and decide what’s to be done. Meanwhile, be off! Here’s something for your trouble; but be off, I say; see to it we are not intruded upon again!”

  And he slammed the door in the tapster’s face.

  Afterwards it was not easy. A sluggish line of blood had crawled out from under the closed cupboard door. Though it was all but invisible under the darkened sky, with puffs of warm air blowing through, more flies had gathered for a feast.

  “And there we are, ecod!” Bygones indicated it. “Lad lad, that was well done! You can face a mort o’ troubles and stand like a rock, though you turn queasy when it’s all over. Meanwhile—”

  “Was it well done?” says Kinsmere, feeling the nerves jerk again in the calves of his legs. “And is it all over? I am not convinced of this. Damn those flies!”

  “Will he come back, do you think?” said Dolly, who still breathed hard but had regained some part of composure. “You gave him money; will the tapster come back?”

  “For my part, lass,” Bygones told her, “I am more concerned with a mighty humorous fellow who laughs on the stairs when he has just done a murder. Ayagh! Should he carry his tale to a magistrate, and make report of our misdeeds in full …”

  “He’d not dare, surely?” Dolly cried. “When he needs must give his name and say how he knows? He’d not dare?”

  “This joker, in the solemn estimation o’ Bygones Abraham, would dare almost anything. Oh, body o’ Pilate! He might not make report, ’tis true; he’s done what he came to do, and all is fair and rosy; but lay no wager thereon. Meanwhile, what’s to be done? We can’t leave Harker there forever, yet we can’t smuggle him belowstairs with the place still filled and roaring. Meanwhile, I repeat, what is to be done?”

  “Let me suggest it,” answered Dolly. “And don’t, pray don’t call me fool and rattle when I say there’s but one course to pursue! We must have counsel in this; we must have assistance in this; and there’s only one person …”

  “If you mean the king—”

  “I do indeed mean the king. And—”

  “Lass, lass!” Bygones was horror-stricken, making volcanic noises in his throat. “This must never be! This presumes too much!”

  “You are on his service. In some sense—foh, we are all on his service! And whose interest but the king’s is so deeply bound up with what has passed this day?”

  “There’s sense in what you say, it may be. But … oh, ecod! Dare I approach His Majesty with my tuppenny woes? Or, even if I dared, could I do this?”

  “Nay, not easily! As King’s Messenger, save on frequent occasion when you must risk your life, you are not even presumed to exist. As for this dear boy here, this mighty swordsman who met Pem and beat him when no other durst do it, he is utterly unknown at court and would never get near the king. Besides, there is the question of time. Have you marked St. Dunstan’s clock for the past quarter hour or more? Have you heard it?”

  “For the past quarter hour,” Kinsmere admitted, as Dolly lifted her eyes to him, “I would not have heard the Last Trump had it sounded then.”

  “ ’Tis gone three and well beyond! His Majesty will set out soon for the play; and I must be off too. Well!” said Dolly, rapt and carried away. “You should not approach him, either of you. But I can do it!”

  “You?”

  “Even I! Attend to me!” Dolly ran her hands up to his shoulders, looking him in the eyes. “I can send him a note, unseen and unsuspected by anyone. Never mind how! There’s an elderly man in the pit throws me flowers each time after my first exit, no matter if ’tis an ill day and I play badly. I can convey a note to the king, asking for private audience. Oh, please, may I do this? You have done so much for me! May I not do this small and trifling thing for you?”

  That look, so pleading and ingenuous and yet proud, would have moved anyone. Yet all it did was turn Kinsmere’s brain.

  “No, you may not!”

  “Sweet, sweet! And wherefore not, prithee?”

  “Because already you have been too much in fear and hazard. Because this is no small or trifling thing. Be not moved, Dolly, by any sudden and foolish feeling of gratitude, simply for the reason that… that …”

  “As God sees me,” said Dolly, “you have no notion how I feel towards you, or what I would not do for you if I could! This is not gratitude, foolish one. And I run no hazard; truly I don’t Let me feel—oh, let me feel!—that in some idiot’s way I can serve and assist you! Is there nothing, nothing at all, I can do for you?”

  “Yes. You can give me a kiss.”

  “Oh, body o’ God!” roared Bygones Abraham.

  He stumped over to the windows, cursing viciously, and then returned.

  “I am a long-suffering man, mark’ee. My patience is of the angels. I would see all young people happy and at fornication. But here’s a man murdered with a knife in his neck, here’s a hangman awaiting both of us unless the king interferes; and what she can do, ecod and strike me blind, is to ‘give you a kiss.’ Lad, lad, your destination would be Bedlam if it wasn’t Tyburn. And there’s good sense in what the girl tells us.”

  “No, I say!”

  “But I say yes,” pleaded Dolly, clinging to Kinsmere and speaking at Bygones past his shoulder. “Indeed, there is the most wondrous good sense, and you at least will agree I’m in the right.”

  “Ay, lass, it may be so. Still! Should the king think it not prudent to concern himself—”

  “Do you read him so? I don’t And this I tell you too. You have spoke much of a wicked jester would run any hazard or do any act. But what of the king’s self? He is a careless man, belike. Yet he sails so close to the wind, even by ordinary,
his councillors must shake in their shoes and clap hands to their periwigs lest the whole craft overset. Save that he would have no violence and order no man’s death, there is not an imprudent deed on earth he would not risk either. Be of good heart, both of you. I will do what I propose; I will be of some use and service; I will do it!”

  And so, of course, it was eventually decided.

  Dolly left them at half past three, not even permitting Kinsmere to accompany her belowstairs. He and Bygones must stand guard in the Hebe Room, as both were agreed. Dolly, rapt and exalted and starry-eyed, flew into the next room and returned with several still-unopened bottles of claret. Then she was away in her grey cloak. She would send them word by note, she said; and, should it be necessary to refer to the king in writing, she would show herself conspirator-subtle by designating him as “R” for old Rowley.

  Afterwards they waited.

  They gathered up the scattered playing cards of the carouse last night. They set right the overturned chair. They lighted the tallow candle in its pewter holder, and put it on the table. And so, while the dead man lay in his cupboard and the flies still quested for his blood, they sat down with the cards to play at piquet.

  “Well, lad, here it is. We may fillip up, cross or pile, as to what shall happen now. If that comical fellow did in fact seek out a magistrate, and send him with a couple of constables to seek us out …”

  “Well, if he did,” says Kinsmere, “we shall know soon enough—and see gaol soon enough too. Meanwhile, there’s no damned measure we can use save to keep our heads.”

  “Ay, lad, fair enough! Spoken like a true King’s Messenger!”

  “What’s this again of King’s Messengers? Cut for deal, can’t you?”

  At just past four o’clock the rain tore down. Doors banged belowstairs; footsteps stamped and voices rose; once they heard a drunken man being put into the street. On another occasion foot-falls approached their door, but went past to the Cupid Room and returned without stopping.