A Missed Murder

by Michael Jecks

  Humfrie said, ‘Perhaps if you tell us who normally looks after the stretch of the river from the bridge up towards the Temple, we can ask him and maybe bring in some more money.’

  Mal considered, and then the sun broke through once more. ‘A good idea. First, though,’ and he turned to me again. His hand lifted towards my throat, and I watched it approach without the faintest ability to do anything.

  I don’t know if you have ever seen a man hunting a hare? They are not the brightest of creatures. If a huntsman comes across a hare in a field, he will crouch down, remove his cotte or cloak, prop it on a stick, and then creep around, giving the hare a wide berth. Nine times out of ten, he will be able to get behind the hare and simply knock it on the head, because the daft animal will keep watching the garment, rather than the moving man.

  Well, in that room, I would have said that I was the gawping, terrified hare, and Mal was the hunter. As I stood there, watching his hand approaching me, I knew that my time was done. I had gambled my all, and it was not good enough. I was about to end my days with a dim henchman’s hands squeezing the life from my neck. I just hoped he wouldn’t want some fun before, like maybe seeing if he could snap off each of my fingers first, or cutting my nuptial tackle away to satisfy his bestial amusement.

  And then, all of a sudden, I realized that I was not the hare. He was. Because all the time he stood there staring at me, a huntress was stalking him, and just as he was about to reach out and throttle me, Jen gave a shrill cry and launched herself at him.

  I saw his eyes widen with horror, and then she was on him. She scratched and gouged at him with her rather blunt nails. ‘What do you mean, all the men of the city? ‘’Sblood! You think you can make an accusation like that of a lady and get away with it, you dull-witted shag-bag! You shit-for-brains! You think I’m just some slut you can insult?’

  All the while her hands were clawing at him, and when he tried to reason with her, her dainty foot snapped out and flattened his codpiece. It must have crushed his tarse and tackle. I winced, and I saw Humfrie flinch; Mal gave a great roar of agony.

  She continued all the while. ‘You think I’m just some bitch-booby, you great lummox! I’ll soon—’

  She would have gone on a lot longer, I have no doubt, but at this point he decided to stop her assault. One hand grabbed a wrist each, and then he gripped both in one hand.

  ‘You mad whore,’ he said, and drew back his fist.

  I couldn’t watch. One blow from that lump would detach her head, I was sure. I turned away, and there was a sort of soggy, nasty sound, a bit like a hammer striking a cabbage: crunching and wetness were roughly equal, and deeply unpleasant. When I turned back, Mal was on his back and Humfrie was thoughtfully slapping a rock- or sand-filled leather sack against his palm.

  He looked up at me. ‘He was going to hurt her,’ he said simply.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ Jen said. ‘Oh, I knew I could rely on you!’ She threw her arms about his neck, and he gave me a look of embarrassment, as if to say, ‘Children, eh?’

  The two of them turned about and made their way from the room. At the doorway, Humfrie turned and saw that I was still rooted to the spot.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he called.

  ‘Do you think he was injured, Father?’ Jen asked as we walked away from the bowling alley.

  I looked over her head towards Humfrie. He studiously avoided my eye. ‘I’m sure he—’

  ‘Jen! He’s dead!’ I shouted. I was still feeling queasy. It was not that I cared about him, you understand. Let us be sensible, the man was a torturer and murderer. He wasn’t the sort of fellow I was going to weep tears over, especially since I was pretty sure that Mal had intended murdering me. His expression when he looked at me had not inspired confidence. Nor had the sight of his fingers reaching for my throat.

  ‘We are no nearer finding any money, are we, Father?’ Jen said.

  Humfrie looked at me. ‘No, but I think I’ll do the job anyway,’ he said. ‘It may be useful in the future to have men in power who have made use of me. If the men that Jack here knows think I can do a good job for them, it may help me if at any time I need their support.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Not that I would mention his name, of course. Blount may well wonder why I had decided to sub-contract my killings, after all, and he could decide that he could cut out – or cut down – the middle man.

  Besides, there were other things to concern me just now. First, who was this man who had brought news of Thomas’s death; second, where was the Spaniard’s purse; and, third, where would Mal have put the other two? And what did he mean about Jeffry’s two purses being “gambling debts”? Mal had worn that sly expression when he had said it, and then said that the money was his own. I didn’t believe him at all. Yet what other reason could there be for the two purses being handed over so willingly? And why would Jeffry look so happy at giving them up? He was the sort of man who would be desperate for any spare money, and the idea of throwing away two purses of gold would appeal to him as much as going to a barber to have all his teeth pulled out with pliers. Jeffry would prefer to sell his daughter into slavery than do that.

  Thinking about teeth, I suddenly had a vision of Ramon again. I had to think about what I could say to Master Ramon about the events that led to Luys’s death. He would not be happy to hear that I had learned nothing, nor that his master was, sadly, dead. I had a flash of memory, which mostly involved his eyes staring down the length of his blade. It was not reassuring.

  No, I had to think of something I could do or say usefully to protect myself. Perhaps I should merely take what I could from the house and run? There were plates of pewter and silver that I could convert to cash. It may be difficult, but it is better to be alive and aware of problems than dead and have none.

  With this in my mind, I prepared to take my leave of Humfrie and his deplorable daughter. The silly strumpet could have had me killed in there. I owed her nothing after the shock she had given me with Mal. ‘Well, it has been good to learn nothing from Mal,’ I said. ‘So now, I had best try to—’

  ‘I will seek out this Michol and see how best to remove him,’ Humfrie said. ‘You had best wait in your house until I speak to you, in case I need you to help me.’

  ‘Can’t Jen help you?’ I said, not unreasonably. After all, she was his daughter.

  He looked at me, and his look gave me to understand that he didn’t think Jen would be the perfect accomplice. I don’t know why. To me she seemed eminently suitable.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, with as much grace as I could manage. ‘But I do have other things to do as well. I must see if I can learn what did happen to Luys.’

  ‘Why?’ Humfrie asked.

  ‘Because his men asked me and I don’t want them playing rapier practice with my body.’

  ‘Just invent something,’ Humfrie said. ‘They’re Spaniards. They’ll never know better.’

  It was tempting, but I also wanted to learn what I could about the purse Luys had been carrying. Mal had not told us who was Thomas’s officer for that stretch of the riverbank, but now I had an idea I might be able to find out. If I could, I would be able to sidle out of the city before anyone noticed me. ‘I will be back at my house before Vespers.’

  He looked at me very straight, but then nodded. ‘Very well. And then we shall see what we need to do.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and took my leave of them, turning and striding back towards the river. I had an idea.

  There are many men who make their living from gamblers and their gulls. Being in the bowling alley with Mal had reminded me of another place, only a bowshot from where Jeffry and Luys had both died.

  It was an elegant-looking place from the outside. There were no piss-stains at the walls, and the pile of garbage waiting to be collected was of only a moderate size. The building itself was a bit of an oddity, because the frontage was mostly brick, filling in the gaps between the timbers. It was the sort of place that spelled comfort and good
manners, and indicated that any visitor should feel safely at home here.

  I walked past the front and down the side alley to the door that led to the kitchen. Here I rapped at the timbers.

  Of all the places that Falkes had opened in his time as the master of the city’s felonious fellowship, this was one he could not copy. He generally tried to take over the bowling alleys and gambling dens that he favoured, but every so often one would evade him. This, because it was partly owned by the Lord Mayor and certain of his acquaintances, was safe even from Thomas. His companions, and especially those who aspired to great positions in the city, persuaded him to leave this institution alone, and largely because he had so many others to manage already, to the surprise of many, he did.

  It was not the sort of place that would welcome a man like me. When I was a mere thief of other men’s purses, I was frowned upon. Now that I was grown to be a great man, in my own way, I was still ignored by the men who would frequent this building, because I was known to be a member of Parry’s household and, as such, a supporter of Lady Elizabeth. To be popular in this place, a man must be an enthusiastic supporter of Queen Mary, not her half-sister.

  The door opened and I was confronted by a man with a sharp face, pale in colour, with a dimple in the middle of his chin. Grey-green eyes peered at me with a slight frown. He was slight in build, with a fringe of sandy hair that ran about his ears while leaving his pate bare, as if it had washed away in the last rains. The look he gave me displayed a sort of world-weary resignation. It was the sort of look the bottler to a duke would use when answering his door to a beggar.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, and would have closed the door, had I not taken the precaution of shoving my boot in the way.

  ‘Come, now, Hugh. That’s no way to treat an old friend, is it?’ I said with an evil grin.

  ‘Is that you, Jack? Christ’s ballocks, I thought it was some peddler … What’s happened to your doublet?’

  I glanced down at my old clothes. ‘Until yesterday you would have been impressed. But I was robbed of my doublet and cloak, and had to put on old clothes.’ I saw the way his eyes slid down my doublet. ‘These are my second best.’

  ‘Only second?’ Hugh said.

  Hugh was one of the old school. He had learned his basics at the western side of the city, where there was a better quality of gentleman, and a superior form of bodyguard to go with him everywhere. To dip your hands into the purses over in that part of town, you have to be quick and careful, and – if you’re spotted – even quicker on your feet. Hugh was very quick and capable, which is why he had this job now.

  ‘How goes it, Hugh?’ I said.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘There’s no need to be like that,’ I said, hurt. ‘Can’t an old friend come to speak with you now?’

  ‘Yes. But what do you want?’

  You see, Hugh had been invited into this special gambling den because he was a known master of thieving from the pockets of the rich and generally foolish. That was one thing, but there was another aspect of his skills that impressed his new masters: the fact that he could do it under the noses of the bodyguards employed by the fellows who knew their own limitations. He could take the money from a purse even when the guards were watching him, knowing that he was likely to be a thief.

  With such skills, he was soon in demand as the perfect man to monitor the gambling dens where the most money was being used. Now, with an irony that was surely only to be found in London, the man who was perhaps the scourge of the majority of gambling hells of the city was the man employed to ensure that no one was robbed. And since he knew of my past and my skills as a foist, he was naturally keen to know what it was that made me so interested in his own place of work.

  ‘I’ll not have you harming my business here,’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘But what I was thinking was that perhaps you might have seen something.’

  He gave me the sort of look that a parent reserves for their child who has just been discovered in an untruth. ‘I have seen many things, Jack. Get your foot out of my door.’

  ‘But this was only two evenings ago. A man was killed in the entrance to the alley up near the wharves.’

  ‘I had heard there was a body. There’re often dead men found out that way. It’s been taken to the nearest pub to wait for the Coroner, I expect. Serves the fool right. You don’t go to the wharves unless you want to risk your life. It’s full of sailors up there, and you know what they’re like. They’ll stick a knife in your belly as soon as look at you.’

  ‘I don’t think this was a sailor, Hugh. I was on the wharf. I just put the fellow down because he was tired, and when I got back to him, someone had killed him.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  I could hardly say, ‘Oh, just killing a man,’ so I gave him a grin and indicated that I had been busy with a wench.

  ‘Your smile would turn milk rancid,’ he said. ‘What were you really doing?’

  ‘I can’t say. Honestly, I truly cannot. But it was not anything to do with the man. And when I came back, I had a lump on my head the size of a goose’s egg. Look, it’s still here!’ I said, turning my head.

  He expressed an extreme reluctance to touch my scalp. ‘I’ll believe you this once,’ he said. ‘So what has it to do with me?’

  ‘Nothing. But the man had a magnificent purse, which to me looked heavy enough to be full of gold.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘Not at all. It was his own. But when I found his body, the money was gone.’

  ‘So you were cultivating this fool, but another thief got to him first and knocked you down into the bargain? Ha! That’s good!’ he laughed.

  I was unimpressed with his amusement. ‘So?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone coming into the place that evening with a large amount of pelf, no. There were few enough in that night, to be honest. Only the Chamberlain, and a few of the Aldermen. The gambling wasn’t very brisk, and the girls weren’t busy, so it was easy to keep an eye on things, and you know me: I always watch for possible thieves.’

  ‘You didn’t see a man with more money than he would usually hold?’

  ‘Several. But not the sort who’d wander the streets killing strangers to steal their money.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was disappointing, but hardly unexpected.

  I withdrew my boot and was about to give him a farewell when he frowned. ‘There was one … but no, it’ll be nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your friend, the Lawyer. He was here with a young maid who was worth looking at. Only a little cheap tart, but such a bust – you had to see it to believe it was real. Flashing eyes, too.’

  My mouth began to fall open as he described Agnis in perfect detail.

  ‘What do you mean, what was I doing? I was out, having fun, wasn’t I? Why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun in my life now and again?’

  She was in her noisome little chamber at the top of the ladder when I reached the place. After all, it was close by Hugh’s establishment. ‘What were you doing going to the gambling den with Abraham?’ I demanded.

  ‘I was having a drink with a pleasant man who doesn’t shout at me all the time! What’s it to you, anyway? I was just having a bit of fun. He took me there to show me how he gambled. Didn’t seem very good at it to me, mind. He lost almost everything.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Quite a lot. Not a huge amount, but, well, I don’t think he has a lot to lose, does he?’

  ‘No. You’re right there.’ This news had sent me thinking hard about Abraham. ‘What, did you follow me?’

  ‘No! How could we know where you were? We finished our drinks, and Willyam suggested a game, and we all went walking up the road. I was coming back here anyway, and they said they’d walk with me to protect me. It was a good idea. It was late. Should I have ignored their offers? What right do you have to make me walk about alone in danger in the dark?’

  She spoke fir
mly and with a growing passion. Her eyes flashed and her bosom heaved, and I could not help but stare and smile.

  ‘You can keep your eyes off my assets, too,’ she declared. ‘You stayed here one night, and now you think you can own me, do you? No man owns me!’

  ‘I thought you said that Master Blount was your master?’

  ‘He is a man I can work with, nothing more. Why should I want a master? I had a husband, and he died. Any other man will die, too. So I waste my love and affection and efforts on someone who’ll die? Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me! You men, you just think about a woman as something to warm your bed – you don’t care about us as people, do you? You would take me now, and then what? You’d walk away without a backward glance. You wouldn’t care if you’d broken my heart, left me with child, or given me the pox! Well, I’m not foolish enough to fall for your languishing glances, Jack Blackjack, so be away with you! You will not share my cot here, so go find a floozy who’ll let you into hers.’

  ‘I don’t want to do anything like that! I was just asking because the man I was with that night died out in the alley. You didn’t tell me that the others were all here with you that night.’

  ‘What if I had? They are your friends, aren’t they?’

  Ah, and there she had a point, you see. Because the three were comrades-in-arms of a sort. There is a camaraderie between men who participate in the military, in the law, and in the more flexible industries such as the one in which I was employed. However, I was about to point out that there was a significant difference between the trust involved between, say, two soldiers who have fought and survived a battle, and two thieves who tried to rob the same man; and then I reconsidered. After all, I had experienced battle with a man at my side who was as keen to kill me as I was to kill the enemy, and I had lived with a small group of criminals who had, some of them, been happy enough to see me lying in a ditch with a knife in my belly. Perhaps there was more of a similarity than I would have thought originally.

  ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Master Abraham actually did fetch me home, which is more than you did!’