The First Murder

by The Medieval Murderers

  It appeared the playwright had taken his own life. It looked like that. Yet he had not, Nick thought. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason – he was too shaken, too confused at this moment – but Dole had not killed himself. This was a murder.

  Nick took a couple of steps back from the body so that he was standing just outside the entrance to Dole’s room. He twisted round as he heard footsteps rapidly mounting the stairs. His first thought was that it was the murderer returning to see that the business was complete, or to retrieve something he’d left behind, or to take care of an inconvenient witness . . .

  Nick fumbled in his clothing. He sometimes carried a small dagger, even though it was against the law for a man of his rank to do so. Yet today he had nothing with him, no means apart from his hands of defending himself. He could have retreated into Dole’s room, where the dead body, framed by the doorway, dangled from its makeshift noose. But he did not. Instead he shrank against the wall to one side of the tiny area between the top of the stairs and Dole’s door. He readied himself to lash out with his arms and feet.

  A shape, the head and shoulders only, emerged at the top of the stairs. It paused for an instant as though to take in the scene before it. Nick couldn’t see who it was but he could hear breathing. Then the man made a kind of leap up the last couple of steps and whirled about as he reached the top. He was carrying something, a stick most likely. He struck out with it and, by chance, the blow caught Nick in the guts. He gasped in pain and doubled up on the floor.

  He had no chance to defend himself properly. All he could do was to curl up and wrap his arms about his head for protection as the man rained down blows on him. From somewhere in the distance, among the blows and the attacker’s grunts and his own involuntary cries, he heard a voice, a woman’s voice. This seemed to go on for many minutes, although it was probably less than a single one. Then came the woman’s voice, nearer at hand, saying: ‘Stop, I tell you, stop!’

  And, mercifully, the blows faltered and then ceased.

  ‘There now, Mr Revill,’ said the woman. ‘That should ease your discomfort.’

  Nick Revill winced as she applied the tincture to his face and bare arms and shoulders, which had borne the brunt of the blows. Nick was sitting, dressed only in his hose, on the bed in the woman’s chamber. She was perched on a stool facing him, dabbing at the weals and bruises with a tincture which, she said, was a mixture of plantain and arnica. Sara Atkins was the landlady of the house where Christopher Dole had lived and died. She was the mother of Stephen, the young man with the close-set eyes. In the aftermath of the attack Nick had forgotten his false identity and announced that he was Nick Revill of the King’s Men. Sara Atkins was contrite, not because he was a player with a famous company but because she was a good-hearted woman. And perhaps because she felt guilt over her son’s behaviour.

  For it was Stephen Atkins who had attacked Nick. His story was that, after directing Revill to Christopher Dole’s room on the top floor, he suddenly grew anxious that the visitor might be some sort of thief or ne’er-do-well. Without consulting his mother, and arming himself with a stave, he ran up the stairs, pausing at the top when he glimpsed the suspended body of the playwright through the open door. He could not see much more, since the only illumination came through the little window in Dole’s room. Stephen’s instinctive reaction was that the recent arrival at the house must have done this thing. At least that’s what he claimed. To protect himself he went on the attack, winding Nick with a lucky stroke and then continuing to rain down blows on the player until Mrs Atkins appeared and commanded him to stop. This was the explanation he gave to his mother even as Nick was being helped to his feet.

  Sara Atkins was more clear-headed than her son. She asked Nick for his name. She asked what he was doing in her house. (‘Visiting Christopher Dole. I’m a player as he is – as he was.’) Then she turned to her son and questioned how long had elapsed between the visitor’s arrival and Stephen’s rush up the stairs. When she heard that it was no more than a couple of minutes, she said that there would hardly have been time for their visitor – ‘What is your name again, sir? Ah yes, Nicholas Revill’ – hardly time for him to have disposed of their unfortunate lodger. After making sure that Nick could stand unaided, she went towards the body, which was hanging in the deep gloom of the room and put out a gentle hand, almost stroking the dead man’s face. Then she pointed out that her lodger had grown cold, and so must have been gone for some time.

  ‘Poor Christopher. This is a dreadful thing,’ said Mrs Atkins, shaking her head and closing the door of the little upper room. She was quite composed, considering what had happened. Nick was ushered by her into her chamber on the floor below.

  Stephen didn’t comment on the corpse or apologise for his actions but continued to look at Revill as though the player might still be a thief or even a murderer. Mrs Atkins told him to go and fetch the headborough to report Dole’s death. The snow was falling again and it was almost completely dark outside.

  ‘A dreadful thing,’ the landlady repeated after she’d finished with her application of ointments. She was referring to Christopher Dole, not Nick’s injuries. ‘A terrible crime.’

  ‘Why do you say crime, Mrs Atkins?’ said Nick, carefully drawing on his shirt again.

  ‘Self-slaughter is a crime,’ said the landlady. ‘A crime against God. What are you doing, Mr Revill? Stay here.’

  Nick was pushing himself off the bed while Mrs Atkins attempted to keep him there with a hand on his shoulder. She was quite an attractive woman, small, with a firm jaw and wisps of black hair poking from under her cap. Attractive enough that Nick had been conscious of sitting facing her while dressed only in his hose. Attractive enough that he shrugged off his hurts in a manly way rather than making much of them.

  ‘I must look at the body again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You say that Mr Dole killed himself and I admit it looks like that, but I will show you that it cannot be.’

  Nick picked up one of the candlesticks that stood by the entrance to the bedchamber and clambered up the stairs once more, Sara Atkins behind him. The blows that Stephen administered were beginning to smart. Nick felt angry with the landlady’s son even if, on the face of things, his suspicions might have been partly justified. At the top, he again opened the door of Christopher’s room. By the light of the candle, he had his first clear sight of the playwright’s swollen face, his head canted to one side against the beam, his tongue protruding from his mouth as the home-made noose bit into his neck. It occurred to Nick that he had not seen Christopher Dole alive. Now he would never have the chance to ask him whether he really was the author of The English Brothers.

  Aware of Mrs Atkins close behind him, he raised the candle and glanced rapidly about the room to see if he’d missed anything on his first look round. But every surface was bare, apart from the top of the desk where stood the stubs of two burned-out candles and a pile of half a dozen books. He took the top one. A scrap of paper tucked inside it fluttered to the floor. Nick bent and picked up the paper. There was a scrawled line of writing on it. He couldn’t read the words in the poor light but they didn’t appear to be in English. Hurriedly, he stuffed the paper inside his shirt.

  Then he examined the book. It was a copy of The English Brothers, identical to the one Nick was carrying. Not proof exactly, but a sign that Dole was the author. Nick remembered that the dead man’s brother, Alan, was expecting some item to be returned to him. What was it? It couldn’t be the disputed play, since the bookseller already had a copy. He opened the dead man’s chest but there appeared to be nothing inside apart from a heap of undershirts. There was no sign of anything of value in the room.

  ‘How long did he lodge with you?’ asked Nick. The landlady was at his shoulder.

  ‘He was with me several years. He was no trouble.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Yesterday. Or perhaps it was the day before. I cannot recall. He k
ept irregular hours and he kept to himself.’

  ‘Did he have many visitors?’

  ‘I do not believe so.’

  ‘Your son said that I was the third person to call on him in the space of a day.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Mr Dole did not kill himself, Mrs Atkins. Look. To raise himself even those few inches above the floor in order to put his head in the noose he would have to be standing on something.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘The only way he could have hanged himself was to stand on a piece of furniture and then kick it away as he hung from the ceiling, but he did not do that. See.’

  Nick spoke urgently. Once again, he raised the candle and shifted it from side to side so that its beams filled every quarter of the tiny chamber. Mrs Atkins was an intelligent woman. Surely she could see the situation for herself. Each of the few items in the room was several feet away from the hanging man, and each was neatly placed against a wall. Even the stool, which would normally have been by the desk, was against the wall facing the door. There was no way in which the man on the rope, who would have been struggling involuntarily for his breath even if he had chosen to do away with himself, could have ensured that whatever he balanced on (stool, chest) was tidied away after use.

  ‘Perhaps he stood on the bed and somehow swung himself across,’ said Mrs Atkins, who was reluctant to give up the idea that her lodger was responsible for his own death.

  Christopher Dole had slept on a simple truckle bed, the sort without posts or a canopy, but equipped with wheels so that it might be pushed into some corner for a servant’s temporary use. It was a melancholy sight, a reminder of Dole’s lowly position in the world. Yes, it was possible he might have somehow used the bed as a makeshift scaffold. But there were no marks or indentations on the threadbare blanket, which was stretched tight across the thin mattress. No one could have stood on it without leaving a trace of his feet, as Nick showed with another sweep of the candlelight.

  There were only two possibilities.

  Either Christopher Dole, using the chest or stool to position himself under the ceiling beam, had taken his own life and then someone had come in to put the furniture back afterwards . . .

  . . . or he had been murdered.

  Any further conversation with Sara Atkins was prevented by the return of her son in the company of the local head-borough or constable. Both men tramped up the stairs with flakes of snow melting on their hats and capes. The constable, whose name was Daggett, and Stephen came crowding into the top-floor room, which was not large enough to hold five (including the dead man). Daggett seemed not to be as slow-witted as many London constables, or at least the ones that Nick had previously encountered. He greeted Mrs Atkins by name. He didn’t ask Nick who he was. Perhaps he assumed that the player was a lodger in the house. He gestured that the others should leave the room while he examined the body.

  After a brief time, and tugging at an ear-lobe as if to signify thought, Daggett came out onto the equally crammed space at the top of the stairs.

  ‘This is a clear case of self-slaughter,’ he said, echoing Mrs Atkins’ words.

  Nick saw that the general opinion was against him. There was no point in airing his suspicions of murder. Now the constable observed the fresh bruises on his face. His gaze flickered between Nick and the body hanging in the room behind him.

  ‘I fell in the snow,’ said Nick. ‘Fell flat on my face.’

  Everyone appeared satisfied with this explanation. Leaving Stephen and Daggett to take down the body, Nick and Mrs Atkins returned downstairs, this time to a ground-floor parlour, where a fire was burning. The landlady seemed relieved, perhaps because the story of Dole’s killing himself was becoming the accepted version – so much more convenient than a murder – or perhaps because Nick explained away the harms her son had caused him.

  She gave Nick some aqua vitae, saying that her husband had always used it as a restorative. From the wistful way she said it, Nick guessed she must be a widow. She took a nip herself, and then another one. The fiery liquid warmed Nick and took away some of the hurt from his injuries. Mrs Atkins talked about Christopher Dole, for whom she seemed to have a bit of a soft spot. Nick found himself agreeing to tell Alan Dole of his brother’s death. Then he found himself thinking that perhaps Christopher had somehow brought about his own demise. After all, if that was the conclusion everyone else was coming to . . .

  There was a bustle in the lobby outside. It was constable Daggett departing. Mrs Atkins went out to see him off. Nick stayed sitting by the warmth of the parlour fire.

  Gazing into the coals, he asked himself: who would want to kill a poor, out-of-fashion playwright?

  Then Nick recalled that Christopher Dole had managed to incur the hatred or anger of several persons: the printer, George Bruton, who called Dole a bastard and said he owed him money; his own brother, who claimed that Christopher had committed ‘foolish crimes’, and who had uttered some threatening words against him. True, these individuals talked about Dole as if he were still alive, when it was evident he had died earlier. But this could just be clever talk, meant to hide their own guilt.

  And then, to add to the list, there was William Shakespeare. As well as WS, there were probably others unknown to Nick with reason to dislike Dole. For an impoverished and neglected playwright, he certainly seemed to have a talent for making enemies.

  Nick retrieved the fragment of paper he’d picked up from Dole’s floor. By the better light of the parlour, he was able to read the words. They were not English, but Latin. There were only four of them, and they were easy to understand. What he read caused a chill to come over him, for all the heat from the fire.

  The door to the parlour opened. Nick turned his gaze from the slumbering fire but his expectation of seeing Sara Atkins again was disappointed when Stephen entered the room alone. The landlady’s son glanced briefly at Nick before pouring himself a good measure of the aqua vitae, which he swallowed in a single gulp. It crossed Nick’s mind that he too might be a suspect for Dole’s killing. Without saying a word, Stephen made to go out the door.

  ‘A moment . . . Stephen,’ said Nick. ‘Where is the body now?’

  ‘Cut down and laid out upstairs.’

  ‘I have a couple of questions for you, and I think you owe me some answers, after . . .’ He indicated the bruises on his face.

  Stephen shrugged and leaned his lanky frame against the panel-work by the door.

  ‘You told me that two other people came to see Christopher Dole recently.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘There was a gentleman who called yesterday afternoon. I knew Mr Dole was absent but I directed the visitor to go upstairs to Dole’s room since the day was turning nasty, and he was insistent on seeing our lodger. From his voice and manner, he was obviously an individual of refinement, not someone to be turned away into the cold.’

  ‘So this gentleman waited for Christopher to return?’

  ‘I encountered Dole when I was on my way out, and told him he had a caller, so they must have met upstairs.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I cannot tell you. His clothes were good but he was wearing a hat with a wide brim and it threw most of his face into shadow.’

  ‘He didn’t give his name, I suppose?’

  ‘You suppose wrong. He did give his name.’

  Nick waited and said nothing. He let the silence stretch out. He looked at the fire. Eventually the landlady’s son gave way: ‘He said he was called Henry Ashe.’

  Nick couldn’t help starting in surprise. So Henry Ashe, the imagined author of The English Brothers, was real after all. To cover his reaction he said, ‘You keep a close eye on the comings and goings in this house, don’t you, Stephen?’

  ‘I’m not sure what business it is of yours but, yes, I do. My mother is somewhat casual about callers.’

  ‘And there was another caller, you said?’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before or after the well-dressed man? Mr Ashe?’

  ‘After.’

  ‘What did this one look like? Was he wearing a broad-brimmed hat as well?’

  Stephen shrugged. ‘I did not see him, but I heard him. I heard someone going upstairs, not one of our lodgers, since I recognise them all by their treads. I was aware of steps mounting to the very top floor, therefore I assumed this person was on his way to visit Christopher Dole.’

  ‘But you did not see who it was, even though you like to know who’s coming and going here?’

  ‘What I don’t know is why I have to account to you, Mr . . . er, for what I do or do not do. You have no authority.’

  No, I have no authority, thought Nick. No more than you have authority to rain down blows on me and then pretend to forget my name. But he could not think what else to ask. In his grudging way, Stephen had provided quite a lot of information. Nick was curiously relieved that Stephen had not been able to describe the second visitor to the house.

  Mrs Atkins returned. She was carrying Nick’s doublet and cloak, which he had left in her bedchamber. Nick was pleased to see her, quite apart from getting relief from her son’s company. Stephen slipped out of the room. Nick promised again to inform Alan Dole of his brother’s death. He didn’t go over his suspicions that Christopher might not have killed himself. He was no longer so sure that he wished to pursue them anyway. Mrs Atkins told him he might return to her house, if he wished, to have more salves and ointments applied to his hurts. Was she saying this because her son had done the damage or because she wanted another visit from him?

  Sara helped him on with the rest of his clothing. She was gentle, and she grasped him lightly but slightly longer than was needed. Nick felt warmer, from the fire, from the aqua vitae, from her attentions.