An Honourable Murderer

by Philip Gooden

  Gertrude was a murderess, of course.

  Or, if she did not actually have a hand in her first husband’s murder, she connived at it.

  Or, if she did not connive at it, she was happy to accept the result: a fresh man in her bed.

  I wondered about the obscure country cousin Lady Jane was marrying. Had she too connived at Sir Philip’s death to secure a fresh man in her bed?

  My sweet Bianca?

  There is a whore in Othello who goes by the name of Bianca. She is in love with that bone-headed lieutenant, Cassio. The wicked Iago says somewhere in the play that it is the strumpet’s curse to beguile many while being beguiled by one. And he was right too, if my experience with my friend Nell was anything to go by. For Nell had loved me, and me alone, as I believed . . .

  But enough of that.

  Iago’s claim about strumpets did not apply, however, in the case of my newish whore Blanche, the girl from Bordeaux. She was not beguiled by me, despite the similarity of her name to WS’s Bianca.

  Blanche . . . Bianca . . . both names are to do with whiteness, with purity, and so are highly inappropriate for a whore. For an instant, a little bit more than an instant, I wondered whether Shakespeare had also been a patron of the Mitre brothel in Southwark and had there encountered a French girl whom he had transformed into an Italian one.

  Pleasure with Blanche was a pleasure but it was still business. A candle on a table near her bed illuminated a sand-glass which regulated her time – and her customers’ time – more strictly than a preacher’s. In this everyday object I saw a disconcerting reminder of my father the parson, who would often position a sand-glass on the edge of the pulpit when he started to sermonize. His was a simple object created from two bulbs of glass joined with tallow. After the first half-hour was up he would turn it with a flourish. Blanche’s device of measuring time was smarter than my father’s but she kept as strict a watch on her sand-glass as my father’s parishioners kept on his.

  On my next visit to the Mitre I found myself following the events in Othello. It was as if Shakespeare was writing my behaviour. Just as the play was guiding my suspicions about a hidden manipulator of events, an off-stage Iago, so too it was guiding me in more minor decisions. In the same way that Cassio makes a gift of a handkerchief to Bianca, so I made a gift of a handkerchief to Blanche. Cassio’s handkerchief comes, indirectly, from Desdemona. Mine came from – who knew where it came from? It was the one that I’d obtained from Ned Armitage at the Three Cranes yard, under the pretence that I knew its owner.

  It was a gift made on impulse. I fished it out of my pocket while I was dressing at the end of a visit to the Mitre.

  “I have a present for you, Blanche.”

  “Pour moi? But wot izzit? Show me.”

  “You must close your eyes.”

  She did, though it was so dim in her little room that there wasn’t much difference between keeping one’s eyes open or keeping them shut. It had been the same in Nell’s crib at Holland’s Leaguer. Whether it is to preserve the strumpet’s blushes (unlikely) or to enhance her charms (more probable) or to save the client from a knowledge of his shame (but this depends on the client), Blanche was one of those who liked to keep things dark.

  Blanche took the handkerchief which I placed in her hand. She brought it close to the single candle and examined the fine cutwork and the embroidery of dainty red spots. The feel of the material alone would have indicated quality. Blanche sniffed at the handkerchief.

  “Zis – it belong to a lady?”

  “It does now.”

  She giggled, as if she understood this somewhat oily compliment. Probably she did. I felt that she understood more than she let on.

  “Do men give you many things, Blanche?”

  “Now and zen.”

  She glanced instinctively towards the wall. There was an array of objects hanging from hooks and nails. I’d noticed them before. They reminded me of trophies, items won in combat. Now I took the candle from the bedside and passed it over the items. Some of them might have seemed out of place in a brothel – a crucifix, for example, and a little psalter such as a well-born lady might carry – although I have learned that no one can be as pious as a whore in her holy moods. Other items, like a pomander and a silver necklace, were more predictable. She was obviously the recipient of quite a few gifts, rather more often than now and zen.

  At some of them I paused and said, “This was a present?” and “This one too?”

  Blanche squinted at the object, nodded and mixed her yeses and her ouis until she said, with a touch of irritation, “Why you ask?”

  “I don’t know. Just curiosity. I am glad you are so – popular.”

  “And you – you zink I am worth – ’ow you say – worth ze candle, Nicholaas?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, replacing the candle by her bedside as if to demonstrate the literal truth of the saying. The light flickered across her breasts. There was a mole on the upper part of her right breast, which I had not noticed before (the mole, I mean). I also noticed that, according to the sand-glass, my time had run out. For once Blanche hadn’t mentioned this, and I was secretly pleased. I settled up with her and left the Mitre.

  Instead of going back over the Bridge straightaway, I hung around a couple of my old haunts hoping to find some company, preferably of the playhouse variety. But I saw nobody in the Knight of the Carpet and the only people I recognized in the Goat & Monkey ale-house were that disreputable couple, Tony and Charity Thoroughgood, who had attempted to rob the Buckles outside the Globe playhouse. They pretended not to know me, but I caught Tony casting sidelong glances in my direction and then nudging his wife and whispering in her ear. He was most likely saying something about the impudent player who’d deprived them of a nice little haul during one fine evening back in the spring. I wouldn’t have lingered in the old Goat but I was damned if I was going to shift because they were there, nudging and whispering, so I ordered a pint from Master Bly, the landlord, and sat somewhat morosely in a corner, watching the Thoroughgoods.

  As I did so, it occurred to me that they might be the ones responsible for that attack on the river bank, the one from which John Ratchett had rescued me. There’d been a woman shouting “Kick ’im! Kick ’im!” and that could have been Charity Thoroughgood in an unrefined, bloodthirsty mood. I’d been assuming that the attack was somehow linked to Ratchett’s machinations but perhaps it was coincidental, and he had genuinely preserved me from a worse kicking. If I’d felt in a more bloodthirsty mood myself I’d have confronted the Thoroughgoods there and then but instead I glowered at them from my corner before forcing my thoughts elsewhere.

  I thought of the snug chamber in the Mitre brothel. All those trophies on the wall. Blanche had certainly done well. Many men must appreciate her talents. I wondered why men give gifts to whores, over and above the necessary payment. Is it because they – because we – wish to turn a cold transaction into an exchange which is warmer, more human?

  I didn’t know the answer to this question but it joined a jumble of others inside my head. To begin with, there was something about the scene in Blanche’s crib which niggled at me, although it hadn’t crossed my mind until I was sitting down in the corner of the Goat & Monkey. What was it? It hovered at the edge of my mind but I couldn’t drag or tease it out into the open. I felt it was connected in some fashion with the business surrounding the death of Sir Philip Blake, but that made no sense at all. What linked a nobleman in the Strand and a whore in the Mitre? There was an obvious answer to this – indeed, it was barely a question – but it wasn’t at all the answer I was groping for. I concluded that the link was no more than that handkerchief, as tenuous as that. The handkerchief that had belonged to one kind of lady and now belonged to another kind.

  And why on earth had I questioned Blanche so closely about the presents she’d received from her customers? This was a present? and This one too? Such an inquisition was a sign of jealousy, to be sure. Pray God I wasn’t falling f
or a whore once more. I remembered what it was like to lose my heart, or a portion of it, to such a woman. It doesn’t make for peace of mind, because it’s impossible to forget what she does for a living. Also, there’s not much future in it, either for them or for us. For the most part whores get raddled and then proceed to fall apart with the pox. A few grow into madams, like Bess Barton in Holland’s Leaguer, and a few more marry and turn respectable. One or two may even marry up. But they rarely escape their past. If a customer weds a woman from the stews, then he is well advised to move with her to another town so as to avoid people’s wagging tongues.

  No, if I was thinking of marrying it could be no whore. A widow, a young and beautiful widow, such as Blanche had recently supposed I was lodging with, would do me fine. Mrs Buckle could not be described as either young or beautiful. But neither was she old and crabbed, not by a very long way. And, with her, the other reason for marrying a widow (in other words, money) would be quite absent since she had next to none. But I could not marry her – even assuming I really wanted to, even assuming she would be willing – since she was still haunted by her husband. Her jealous husband.

  Jealousy is the green-eyed monster, says Iago. Once jealousy possesses you it turns your life into a torment. Better to sleep in ignorance and believe that your bed has never been disturbed. Otherwise, a lifelong torment. And a torment beyond life perhaps. Can jealousy be felt after death? Mrs Buckle’s husband was troubling her from the security of the grave. Had Sir Philip Blake, another dead husband, been the jealous type during his lifetime? Would he be returning from the grave to haunt his ample wife once she’d married her country cousin?

  This imminent remarriage, the indecent haste of it, made me think once again of Gertrude in WS’s Hamlet.

  Then my mind went spinning off in new directions, sparked by that play.

  Two more questions.

  What are the reasons why a ghost comes back to earth?

  And how can you best expose a murderer?

  When it came to exposing a murderer I couldn’t do it by myself, that much was obvious. Since Abel Glaze had broached the idea that there was something odd about Blake’s death without any prompting from me, I took up the subject with him again.

  He listened. His first reaction was to doubt what I was saying and I grew a bit tetchy.

  “But you were the one who claimed that an injustice had been done, Abel. You asked what we were going to do about it. What we were going to do.”

  “And your answer was that we should think on it. Are you the only one who’s allowed to change his mind, Nick? Maybe it was an accident after all.”

  “All right. I’ll do this alone.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Abel. “Or at least not until you’ve told me exactly what it is you’re planning to do.”

  “Better than tell you, I’ll show you.”

  Once again Abel and I had been talking in the Globe. This time it was at the end of an actual performance of Othello, which had gone off very well. There’d been tears for Desdemona, gasps and hisses for Iago, and absolute silence for Othello. Henry Condell said something complimentary about my Roderigo, which was pleasing since I’d been playing at close quarters with him. Now we had changed out of our stage-gear and were tired, sweaty and cheerful. Abel congratulated me too, in his ironic style, on my portrayal of a dupe. In this expansive mood I took him to one side and unfolded my rediscovered suspicions about the Blakes, based in particular on the news that Lady Jane was shortly to remarry. As I said, he was sceptical at first, but agreed to follow me.

  We didn’t have far to go, only to the roof of the playhouse.

  There were galleries and private boxes at the upper level, favoured by the better-off customers as well as those who valued their privacy, usually the same people. The boxes were provided with curtains, ostensibly to protect the occupants against the rain or the sun but really to safeguard their secrets from prying eyes. But above and behind the stage could be discovered different secrets, ones relating directly to our stage-play world. Up here, for example, was the ‘thunderrun’, a descending trough of wood down which an object like a bowling ball was sent when the noise of thunder was required on stage. There was a pole up here from which our flag was flown during performances and, by tradition, it was from a position at the foot of this pole that a musician blew a trumpet each afternoon to announce the imminent performance.

  The most important feature of this upper world was a hut or cabin which housed the equipment used to lower objects or people to the stage floor, and occasionally to raise them up. In essence this was similar to the machinery employed by the Snells during the Somerset House masque, that is a hoist and a windlass-type device to control the hoist as well as a permanent chair for the deus ex machina. There were whole webs of rope and cabling inside the hut, and set into the floor was a hinged trapdoor which opened on to the painted canopy or ‘heavens’ above the stage.

  I’d always thought of the hut as being small – which it was in comparison to the grand scale of the playhouse – but it was large enough to accommodate half a dozen people, even if in cramped conditions, as well as all the lifting-and-lowering equipment. If the hut had been able to take off and fly away and settle down on a farmstead somewhere it would have made a very ample home for a peasant family or two. It had an entrance which faced the door leading from the passage in the upper gallery. It had a thatched roof and several little windows, and on top of the thatched roof was the statue of Hercules symbolizing our company of players. Hercules was up here because this roof-peak was the highest point of the entire theatre. One thing held up another, beginning with the theatre itself. The Globe contained the stage that was roofed by the canopy which carried the hut which wore the little thatched roof that sustained Hercules who bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  I’d been up here before but never ridden down in the chair. Nor did I intend to now. All I intended was that this spot on the top of the Globe – on top of the world, one might say – should be the place where a murderer was unmasked.

  Around the hut there was a wide wooden walkway, covered with rushes to prevent too much echoing from footsteps. Beyond this the canopy roof turned to thatch and sloped slightly. If you laid yourself out flat and started to roll as a child rolls down a hill, there was nothing to stop you falling out and down into the groundlings’ area before the stage. It was a disconcerting thought but one that only occurred to me when I was up here, dozens of feet above the ground.

  Abel and I stood on the walkway at the front of the hut looking at the view over London. In winter this is often obscured by smoke and dirty air but at the end of a fine summer’s day there is usually nothing more than a heat haze which, rather than impeding the view, softens it. The distant towers and spires on the far bank assume a golden strangeness which you know does not properly belong to them. To our right was London Bridge. If I’d squinted I could have made out the blobs – the traitors’ heads – displayed on the southern end. Distance did not lend them any enchantment.

  “What are we doing up here, Nick?”

  “This is where I plan to bring him.”

  “Him?”

  “Bring him. Bring her. The person who was responsible for the death of Sir Philip Blake.”

  “Because whoever it is is afraid of heights?”

  “I don’t like heights much,” I said. “But the person who killed Blake wasn’t afraid of heights, I think, because they must have been fiddling around with ropes and so on in the gallery at Somerset House. No, it’s more that I hope to startle this person into giving himself away. Or herself away.”

  “Like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons,” said Abel.

  This was a line from Hamlet. Abel had recently been told he might be given the part of Horatio in a forthcoming revival, so it was on his mind. Even so it was funny how that play kept cropping up. The line he’d quoted describes how the ghost is startled by the crowing of a cock. Funny how ghosts kept cropping up.


  “Yes, it’s what Hamlet the Dane does,” I said. “Tries to scare a show of guilt out of a murderer. Shows his uncle Claudius a murder in a play, like the murder he committed, hoping he’ll give himself away by his reaction.”

  “That’s an old device,” said Abel.

  “Maybe, but sometimes the old ones are the best ones. Anyway, we’re not going to stage a play so much as a – a situation.”

  “How? What situation?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  I told him.

  He said it was a madcap scheme. Did that mean he didn’t want to take part, I asked. No, he said, he’d still take part. Nonetheless it was a madcap scheme. He was probably right.

  The first thing we had to do was to obtain the costume which Blake had been wearing when he plunged to his death. The last time I’d seen the ‘robe of Truth’ it was shrouding his corpse in an antechamber in Somerset House. No, that would have been the second to last time, since Ben Jonson had worn it for the actual performance. Therefore Bartholomew Ridd must have recovered it and had it cleaned in time for the masque. The fact that a man had died in the cloak, and that it was spattered with blood and gore, was immaterial.

  We needed to borrow the costume but an outright request was impossible. Even to ask about costumes was risky unless it was to do with a forthcoming performance, since Ridd would grow suspicious and want to know why we were asking. Abel and I went to visit Bartholomew in his quarters, one of a couple of small rooms which led off the tire-house. We chose a quiet moment. Ridd was sitting on a stool, examining a doublet.