An Honourable Murderer

by Philip Gooden

  “Do you enjoy playing Ignorance?”

  “All parts are grist to the player’s mill, you know. We take what comes.”

  “So you are a peasant one day and the next day you’re a bishop.”

  “Or a murderer,” I said, then added quickly, “or a king.”

  Was it my imagination, or did she tug a little harder on one of the points when I said ‘murderer’?

  “It must be diverting to play someone else, to step aside from yourself,” she said.

  “Oh, we are most of all players when we play ourselves,” I said complacently.

  She was silent for a moment as she leaned forward to tie the final point in my costume. Plenty’s handmaid was herself quite plentiful. I wondered whether she’d been as impressed as I had by my philosophical comment about playing oneself. Evidently not, though.

  “That is nonsense, what you just said, Nicholas,” she said, standing tall again. “There. You are no longer undone.”

  “Thank you, Maria. Not for telling me I’m talking nonsense but for doing me up.”

  I considered making some joke about ‘ruin and undoing’ – don’t raise your eyebrows, enough writers have done it, including WS – but thought it would probably go down badly. Neither jokes nor high-minded musing seemed likely to work with this woman.

  She smiled. I smiled back. No hard feelings. Then Maria went to rejoin her mistress, who by this time had finished with Bill Inman.

  There was something wrong here, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It wasn’t just to do with the inevitably subdued atmosphere in the audience chamber and the fact that last time we’d rehearsed the masque a man had died. I looked round the room while the break in the action continued – Ben Jonson was in deep discussion with the musicians – and saw most of those whom Ned Armitage had identified as being in the gallery shortly before Blake’s death.

  There was Martin Barton, the red-haired satirist and spindle-legged playwright, decked out as Poesy and Drama. He had his arm round the shoulder of the young bricklayer whom I recognized from the Line and Compass tavern. Verney was his name, wasn’t it? I wondered what pretext Barton had used to get his friend past the Somerset House gatekeepers but then reflected that it was open house in this palace. I wondered too at Barton’s brazenness. Success with The Melancholy Man must have gone to his head, so that he enjoyed flaunting his perilous tastes in the Queen’s house, thinking himself invulnerable.

  In another part of the chamber there was the dazzling Doña Luisa de Mendoza, dressed in not very much, and the rather less dazzling Lady Fortune, dressed in hopeful green. And there was the dapper Giles Cass, garbed as Suspicion. He carried his elaborate lantern for peering into the corners of men’s lives and wrapped himself inside the cloak which was painted over with eyes. Like many non-professional players, Cass probably enjoyed dressing up. This one-time supporter of Raleigh was again enjoying a conversation with the two Dons whom John Ratchett had identified from my description. One was a Count, I remembered, and the other a lawyer, the one with a sallow face and hawk-like eyes. Of all the people in the room, it was perhaps Cass of whom I was – not inappropriately – most suspicious.

  As I was looking about someone grabbed my arm. I turned round to stare into the glazed eyes of Jonathan Snell the younger.

  “Master Revill, Nick, what have you got to say? Have you found the ring that belonged to your father yet?”

  No, only a handkerchief, I said, taking out this feminine item and showing it to Snell. Did he know who it belonged to? Snell shook his head. As for the ring, I went on, perhaps it hadn’t been mislaid here in the audience chamber after all. Then I started on a lengthy explanation of how, after a visit to their workshop in Three Cranes Lane and through the good offices and memory of Ned Armitage, the names of those who were present in the gallery shortly before Sir Philip’s death had come to light. I was on the verge of saying that, if Jonathan was persisting in his theory that the man had been murdered, then it would be possible to attribute motives to most of them. But Snell waved his arms impatiently.

  “I’ve changed my mind, Nick. I was mistaken. It was definitely an accident.”

  “But the ropes holding up the chair, you were so certain they’d been tampered with.”

  “My father is surer-sighted than I am, even with these,” said Snell, tapping his glasses. “My father is more experienced than I am. My father is right, usually.”

  He said this in a curiously defeated way and I did not fully believe him. A trace of this must have shown in my face. He was about to say something else when a long-haired, stubbly individual in artisan’s clothing tugged him by the sleeve.

  “Yer father wants yer.”

  Jonathan looked slightly alarmed.

  “All right, Turner. Tell him I’m coming.”

  “Wants yer now.”

  As this hairy individual – whom I presumed to be another member of the workshop gang, Thomas Turner – almost dragged the son off, my feeling of unease deepened. Whereas before I’d been nearly ready to be convinced that Sir Philip Blake’s death was indeed an accident, now it appeared to me to be a likely case of murder again. Jonathan’s vehement denial somehow suggested the opposite of what he intended.

  The rest of the practice passed off uneventfully. Ben Jonson descended in the person of Truth and gave his seal to the perpetual amity which would henceforth exist between England and Spain. He looked comfortable in the flying chair, and you would never have thought from his expression that a man had fallen to his death at this very spot less than forty-eight hours ago. Queen Anne was naturally missing from the rehearsal but otherwise everybody was there, and remembered their lines and moves even if they went through them somewhat mechanically.

  The most unsettling aspect of the day so far was what I discovered when I went to the antechamber which had been set aside as a tiring-house. I took off my rustic cloak of Ignorance and put on my day clothes. As I was doing so, I discovered a note stuffed into the pocket of my doublet.

  I’ve grown wary of notes left for me to find. It’s happened to me before. They are always tantalizing and generally an invitation to walk into trouble. So was this one, most likely, an invitation to trouble. But it was signed, or at least initialled, by someone I knew.

  J.S. Jonathan Snell.

  It said: I cannot say more now. Come to the Three Cranes yard at nine. J.S.

  Would you walk into trouble, if invited? Or would you crumple up the note and throw it to the corner of the room and do your best to forget you’d ever found it?

  So how was it that for the second time on an August evening I found myself making my way towards Three Cranes Lane shortly before nine o’clock? Stupidity, perhaps? Foolhardiness? The need to get to the bottom of this strange business?

  The second time was very much like the first time. The sky was clear and high and showing more than the first touches of darkness. The tavern with the sign depicting the three long-necked birds stood at the corner of the lane. It was quiet as the grave. A sharp draught still funnelled off the river. And here I was standing at the gate of the Snells’ yard.

  As before, it was unlocked. As before, the contents of the yard were neatly arranged. Piles of timber, the shrouded windlass, the two carts sitting side by side. I walked up the yard and pulled open one of the double doors. Everything about the ground-floor space looked and smelled the same. Everything except for a red chest or trunk placed slightly to one side of the entrance. I recognized it as the item of stage furniture which Ned Armitage had been painting on my first visit to the Snells’. It was intended for Worcester’s Men, he’d said. They were playing at the old Curtain playhouse in Shoreditch. The purpose of the trunk, I recalled, was for a player to hide himself inside. It had probably been painted red so as to draw the eyes of the audience. Red for danger and display.

  It was growing dark in the workshop. I called out, not expecting a response, and none came. The place felt unoccupied. I reached out a careful hand towards the tr
unk, as if the paint might still be wet. It was dry. There was a handle on the lid. The trunk was surely empty, so why did I need to open it? But I did need to open it. I pulled at the handle and levered up the lid. Peered into the interior. Shadows suddenly seemed to swoop down from the gallery above. There was a buzzing in my ears.

  Curled up inside the trunk was a body. It was on its side, with its knees drawn up towards the chin and its arms wrapped round the shins, as if clasping itself to itself for a final comfort.

  I reeled back. The trunk squatted there in the growing darkness, its lid gaping like a monstrous mouth. I had a choice. I could have walked – or rather run – away from the workshop. Could have pretended that I’d never visited this place. Or I could report the discovery to the headborough and let the authorities take charge. There was no doubt about which would be the responsible course of action.

  I was for running away, though.

  But first I had to make sure of something.

  This was the second time, after all, that I’d encountered a corpse in the Snells’ workshop.

  I moved towards the trunk once more and nerved myself to make a proper inspection of its contents. It was hard to see much. The head of the body was shrouded in darkness in a corner of the chest. I bent forward and prodded at the curled shape. It was surprisingly springy. The position of the body, with its arms locked round its legs and its head twisted into a corner, would have been impossible for a living person to maintain for long. But this wasn’t a living person. It wasn’t a dead person either.

  The body in the trunk was that figure – half scarecrow, half mannequin – which I had first glimpsed over by the wall of the workshop. A glance showed that it no longer sat on the pile of tarpaulins. Instead someone had placed it in the trunk. The Snells must use it to experiment with the various devices and mechanisms constructed in their workshop. In fact it could take the place of a person in most situations. If you wanted to test the dimensions of a trunk you would fold up your mannequin and stuff him inside it. Unlike a player, he couldn’t complain or answer back or demand a pay rise. You could even leave him shut up overnight and he would not reproach you for it in the morning.

  I’d been deceived not only by the fading light but by the fact that, when I’d first glimpsed the mannequin against the wall, he wasn’t wearing clothes. He was bare, made of coarse linen on the outside and most likely stuffed with rags or horsehair on the inside, probably with internal weights of wood or metal to give him the necessary heft. He lacked the features for a face. Now I could see that he had been dressed in a top and leggings even though the detail of them was invisible to me.

  “What have you got to say for yourself, old man?” I said to him. “You gave me quite a fright, thank you.”

  Then I laughed slightly and coughed as if to cover up my words, and moved away. In truth, I think I was a little frightened that the figure nestling inside the trunk was going to unbend itself and sit up.

  I was standing in the centre of the ground floor underneath the well which extended to the roof. I wondered where young Jonathan Snell was. It must have gone nine o’clock by now. As if in answer, a bell rang out from a nearby church to signal that it had only just reached nine. Odd, that much more than a handful of minutes seemed to have passed since I’d entered the workshop. I would give Snell a few moments more to show himself.

  Instinct told me to leave now, though. No one was here, no one was going to come here. It was eerie, this darkening work-space. To my right were the steps leading to the upper floor and next to them the steep wooden slide. Ropes and cables dangled overhead.

  Instinct told me to leave but I ignored it. I moved forward and stumbled against something. I looked down. At first I took what I saw for a further trick of the eyes or the product of an overworked brain. For there was another figure down here, a different one. It was lying on its back at the foot of the slide. Not a real body, surely. I bent down to examine it. In the first case, what I had taken for a corpse inside the trunk turned out to be false. Couldn’t this figure too be an artefact?

  But it was real. The dead man’s outflung hand was still warm and waxy to the touch. You cannot simulate that. I did not want to feel any further although I held my own hand in the region of his face to detect any wisp of breath. Nothing. There was just enough light remaining to pick out the red doublet. The outline of a solid, plump shape was discernible in the gloom. His head was twisted to one side as if he couldn’t bear to look at what had been done to him. This was John Ratchett.

  I climbed the stairs until I reached the gallery. The trapdoor which gave access to the slide was hanging open and I skirted it warily. It was larger and more sophisticated than the trapdoor in the Globe stage (which you simply pulled up and down by hand). As far as I could see this one was opened by tugging on an upright metal lever set to one side. Doing this must release a catch. In the old days when barrels had been stored on the upper floor they would have been shifted to this point and then rolled down the slide. Now it had happened to a man. If you were standing, unawares, on the trapdoor and someone pulled the lever to release the catch . . . Was that what had happened? It must have been. Ratchett was not long dead but when he’d been in the workshop the light would still have been good. He could hardly have tumbled through the open trap accidentally. I visualized an anonymous hand tugging on the lever and Ratchett dropping through the hole, his head and limbs striking the slide in a tangle, his body hitting the ground with fatal force as Sir Philip Blake’s had done.

  And then the last light from outside disappeared and I was left by myself in the dark. I groped my way back downstairs. Quiet as a ghost, I skirted the body, retraced my steps out of the workshop and through the yard where I stumbled against an outcrop of cut timber. And so once more back into Three Cranes Lane. I shut the gate quietly behind me.

  My way home – that is, back to my lodgings with Mrs Buckle in Thames Street – lay to my right. Instead I turned left down towards the river.

  It was a warm night. A few dusty stars were starting to appear. I wanted something clean and fresh, or as clean and fresh as the summer air from the river could provide.

  I sat down on the wharf, looking at the fireflies that were watermen. For a long time I gazed at the movement of the lights on the water, my mind a blank. The movement of the boats, which during the daytime appears random, is transformed after nightfall to a kind of dance. This dance was comforting to me at the moment. Over my right shoulder crouched the three cranes which gave this spot its name, together with the stone house known as the Vintry.

  It is not always wise to linger about the banks of the Thames after nightfall – and indeed I had recently been attacked on the opposite bank (and been ‘rescued’ by the late John Ratchett in an incident which I still did not completely understand). But this was the north side of the Thames. It should be less dangerous. In any case, after discovering a body which I had initially taken for real and then another body which I’d at first hoped was false, I felt careless of consequences. If someone wanted to sneak up on me and deprive me of the meagre contents of my purse, then let them do it. My predicament would not be significantly worsened.

  But when the cooler air from the river started to clear my head, I understood that I was not thinking straight. Far from getting worse, my predicament was, in one aspect at least, getting better.

  John Ratchett was dead. There was no doubt about it. The man who had been in the pay of the French ambassador was dead. The man who had paid me with French gold was dead. The man who had tricked me into supplying him with information was dead.

  And so Nicholas Revill was freed of an obligation, wasn’t he?

  Here my instinctive good sense in slipping away from the scene of the crime like a guilty man became apparent. It was because I might well have been that guilty man in the eyes of the world. No doubt there were plenty of people who’d have an interest in seeing John Ratchett dead or at least out of the way. If he toiled in the twilight world of spies and i
ntelligencers then he must have many enemies. I was one of them. It couldn’t be denied that Ratchett’s death was convenient for me. I could no longer be ‘persuaded’ or threatened by him to spy on activities connected with Ben Jonson’s masque.

  It was possible that he had lied about being in the pay of the ambassador La Boderie, just as he’d allowed me to believe that he was employed by the Privy Council. Maybe he’d worked only for himself. But he was still a dangerous man and – although I owed him a small debt for having come to my aid on the Southwark side of the water – I couldn’t be too sorry that he was gone. However, if anyone was searching for a person with a likely motive for wanting Ratchett dead and gone, then I possessed one of the likeliest. So, it was sensible to have left the Snells’ workshop without alerting anyone to Ratchett’s death.

  There were several mysteries here. What had the man with the red doublet been doing in Three Cranes Lane? Sniffing around, presumably, smelling about in corners. Good dog, good intelligencer. Had he been summoned to a meeting in the workshop like me, or had he gone there of his own accord? The biggest question, of course, concerned the identity of the individual who had pulled the lever while Ratchett was standing on the trapdoor. Individual? Perhaps there had been more than one of them.

  I got up from where I’d been sitting at the edge of Three Cranes wharf and paced around in the mild August night. From the river came the occasional splashing of oars, the subdued cries of the watermen. Sound travels better at night, especially across water, but the watermen are also less clamorous. I paced around the wharf and thought.

  There was an improvised quality to this killing, it seemed to me. Whoever had committed the crime had employed the nearest means to hand, the most convenient method. A trapdoor, a lever. That argued against planning and premeditation. It suggested that Ratchett had turned up at the workshop, sniffing around. That he’d been discovered and got rid of on the spur of the moment. But why had the body been left lying at the foot of the slide? He was not long dead. I couldn’t understand why whoever had done it had not also disposed of Ratchett’s remains.