A Murder too Soon

by Michael Jecks

  ‘It was my right!’ Sir Walter spat. He looked like a school bully brought to judgement.

  ‘No,’ I said coolly. ‘It was your decision to try to defraud your wife’s family, but it was not your right.’

  I continued. ‘Her death came too soon. His plans were broken asunder as a result. However, there was one last avenue to pursue: Lady Elizabeth’s seal. His wife took it so that she could, on behalf of the Queen, control Lady Elizabeth’s correspondence. If he could find Lady Elizabeth’s seal, he could use it. Either he could sell it back to the Princess, or he could give it to the Coroner to prove that Lady Elizabeth had plotted against her sister. It would be a forged letter, of course, but Sir Walter wouldn’t let a detail like that get in his way.’

  ‘You speak proudly enough now,’ Sir Walter said. ‘You’re little more than a peasant with straw and mud between your toes! Beware when you walk on a quiet road without anyone watching!’

  Blount quickly stepped forward and grabbed my arm anxiously.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.

  ‘Please, Jack! Don’t lose your temper. If you attack him here, there are too many witnesses,’ Blount said, loudly enough for all to hear. ‘You cannot fight him here and now, Jack!’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. I was a little confused by his act, until I realized that he had just demonstrated to all present that I was a lethal enemy. I stared at Sir Walter, who was watching Blount and me with sudden alarm, before continuing.

  ‘I will ignore the rudeness of that interruption for now. I won’t bicker with fraudsters. However, Sir Walter had no reason to try to kill his wife. That responsibility lies with another.’

  ‘If Sir Walter did not wish to see his wife dead, who did?’

  The calm voice was quiet, but it carried like a banshee’s scream in that room. None of the men turned to look at Princess Elizabeth but me. I smiled at her as coolly as I could.

  ‘My Lady, I am embarrassed to admit that a lot of the men in this chamber have come to the conclusion that only one person wanted Lady Margery dead, and that was you. They think that because she was selected as a spy for your sister—’

  ‘Half-sister,’ she murmured.

  ‘Of course,’ I bowed. ‘They felt sure that because of that, you wanted Lady Margery dead. Especially since she had taken your seal.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Sir Henry said. ‘Surely that gave the Princess here a distinct motive to have the woman killed? She has the men in her household. Any one of them could have escaped from the gatehouse and come here to commit murder, and returned later.’

  ‘They could, yes, but since they were all equally aware that the Princess was friendly with Lady Margery, they would hardly have murdered her.’

  ‘What?’ Sir Henry blurted. ‘But surely they hated each other?’

  ‘No, Sir. As I said, they had been friends since childhood. Lady Margery was considerably older, but used to know Lady Elizabeth’s family well, and had played with Lady Elizabeth as a child.’

  Lady Elizabeth nodded. ‘I looked on her as an older sister. Her family and my mother’s were friends for many years.’

  ‘Murdering Lady Margery was not a way to court her favour,’ I said. ‘No, this was nothing to do with the Lady Elizabeth,’ I said, bowing to her again, in case she had been in any doubt as to my loyalties.

  ‘Quite so,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps you would explain about the seal?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and pulled out a seal on a chain about her neck. ‘It is here.’

  There was a grunt of disbelief from Lady Anne, and her father leaned forward with a frown on his face. ‘But Lady Margery had it, and—’

  ‘And you thought that her murderer had used it on the document you waved about?’ Lady Elizabeth said curtly. ‘Do you truly believe that I would seek to remove my half-sister from the throne, from where she rightfully rules her kingdom? Do I look like a traitor? Besides, if I were to do such a thing, would I be so base and foolish a knave that I would allow the message to be committed to paper? Would I allow it to pass through the garrison of my prison, assuming that it would succeed? Do I look to be so dull-witted?’

  For all that her tone was calm and unemotional, the anger was there for all to see; it was simply held in check for now.

  ‘No, my Lady,’ I said. ‘That is why the seal was always so problematic. No one here realized that you still held it in your safe keeping. Lady Margery refused to consider removing it, so, after taking it in public, she returned it to you in private. Which is why your ladies-in-waiting were so upset to hear that she had died. They, like you, knew that she was more an ally than a gaoler.’

  Blount was faster on the uptake than the others. ‘Lady Margery passed it back to the Princess?’

  I took a haughty line with him. ‘The Lady Elizabeth is just there, Master. You can ask her.’

  He glanced at her, and then coloured as he realized his rudeness, and quickly bowed low. ‘Your Highness, forgive me. This is all such a surprise.’

  ‘Quite,’ she said, with a level of sardonic amusement I had never heard in a lady so young before.

  ‘So,’ I continued, ‘there was no royal seal about Lady Margery when she was killed.’

  ‘But if there was no seal,’ Lady Anne said, ‘why did she die?’

  Her father nodded. Then his head shot up and he turned to stare at Sir Walter. ‘Do you mean that Sir Walter killed his own wife to steal the seal?’

  I sighed. ‘Sir Henry, don’t forget, he knew that if he killed her, he would lose everything. Why would he kill her? No, he took her seal two days before Lady Margery was murdered. Afterwards, he hunted high and low for the Princess’s seal, but that was because he thought that he would be rewarded by Lady Elizabeth or her enemies, were he successful.’

  ‘Then who killed the poor woman?’ Sir Henry said.

  ‘There are others here who have their own motives,’ I said. ‘For one, there is Harvey.’

  ‘Who?’ Sir Walter said.

  ‘Sir, Harvey is a renegade priest, or so he would describe himself. However, he is an altogether more clever fellow than that. He is working for someone else.’

  ‘Hold hard!’ Blount said urgently, glancing at Sir Thomas.

  ‘I believe that Harvey had himself installed here as priest in order to maintain contact with the Lady Elizabeth. He, as her confessor, was able to win over her confidence, naturally. He is a deeply kind, amiable, open-hearted man. That is apparent to all who meet him.’

  Blount was shaking his head and mouthing something, but although I smiled at him and nodded accommodatingly, I did not stop. ‘He was certainly a keen pair of ears when someone wished to speak with him. As he would be. A spy has a duty to listen to all who wish to open their mouths before him.’

  Sir Thomas had joined Blount and was glaring at me fixedly. There was none of the affable gentleman about him now. He exuded a dangerous calmness, like the peaceful winds before a great storm.

  ‘The thing is, none realized that he reports to another strong character: Harvey was installed here at the behest of Sir Thomas Parry. Sir Thomas was not satisfied that the interests of the realm were adequately guarded, and wanted his own pair of eyes and ears here. Everything that has happened here has been related to him without the interference of another man’s bias.’

  ‘At least he had no reason to want to see the lady murdered,’ Sir Thomas said.

  ‘No. Of course he wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Besides, he’s one of the only people who was not seen anywhere near the scene on the day of the murder. It was all the others about here who were visible and present and had the opportunity to kill her. And so we come to the poor squire, whom we all know so well. Many are the people who told of his affair with Lady Margery. All spoke of her flirtatiousness with younger men. All those who knew nothing of her, anyway. Even her husband suspected her, and I saw him threatening the squire in the court. However, the squire had nothing further from his mi
nd. His love was reserved for his beloved, who sadly died in childbirth.’

  Lady Anne’s face hardened at the mention of him and ‘his beloved’. I hastened onwards. ‘But there is one other who did want to control the situation here. And this is the person who murdered poor Lady Margery.’

  I paused and looked about the room. Sir Walter stood very still; Blount was glaring at me now, promising violence to come; Lady Elizabeth stared at me as though suspecting that I could be moon-crazed; Bedingfield looked utterly confused and the Coroner simply furious.

  But I didn’t care about any of them. Instead, I stared at Anne.

  ‘You did it for the best of reasons, I know,’ I said. ‘But you shouldn’t have killed her.’

  ‘Her?’ Lady Elizabeth said with genuine surprise.

  Lady Anne was calm; standing before me she looked almost as regal as the Princess behind her.

  ‘There was no one else, was there? Obviously, I couldn’t have done it. Master Blount here was in the yard, as was the squire. Sir Walter was about that part of the palace, but he had no wish to kill her off. One-Eye, Huff, was near, but he wasn’t bright enough to stage the scene. Because that was what you did, wasn’t it? You waited until Sir Walter arrived, and then you flung down the pewter so that anyone coming would find him. However, you hadn’t expected him to run off so quickly. You’d thought that he would be appalled to find his wife dead, whereas in fact he was only desperate to run away to think. With her gone, his little fraud was irrelevant. Most important, he stood to lose everything. No, the only person there who was keen to remove Lady Margery was you, because you could see how unhappy your father was.’

  ‘Who couldn’t see it? He was mortified to have to guard the sister to the Queen. Father had been here before, looking after the Queen’s mother. He was as loyal as any when Queen Mary asked for support against Lady Jane. Everyone acclaimed her as the new Queen, but not my father. While others wavered, he declared for Mary wholeheartedly. And as reward, she gave him this poisoned chalice: the chance to guard her own sister. Fail, and he could be viewed as a supporter of the rebels; succeed, and he would be tainted with the job of gaoler for years to come. What sort of a position is that? Poor Father didn’t ask to be sent here to monitor Lady Elizabeth. He was imposed on, without the finances or the rewards commensurate with the position.’

  ‘So you decided to implicate Lady Elizabeth in a plot.’

  ‘Well, I had heard that Lady Margery kept a seal on her necklace. It made sense to me to borrow it and create a letter …’

  I saw Princess Elizabeth’s eyes sharpen at that.

  ‘So you wrote a letter, purporting to come from Lady Elizabeth, and you needed the seal. You went to the passage and waited, and when Lady Margery appeared, you stepped behind her in the gloom, took her chin in one hand and drew your knife across her throat, killing her immediately.’

  Lady Anne looked away, as if my angry stare was painful.

  ‘Then, when you were sure she was dead, you looked for the seal – but it wasn’t there.’

  ‘No. Only the Crucifix.’

  That made me frown for an instant. Something grated. I peered over her shoulder at the Princess and saw that her eyes were narrowed as she listened intently. ‘And you wrote out the letter. But your forgery failed, because it was not the Princess’s seal,’ I said sternly, glancing at the Coroner. ‘No matter that some declared it genuine.’

  ‘I am not responsible for that,’ the Coroner said quickly. ‘How would I recognize one seal above another? It looked authentic to me.’

  ‘You should, perhaps, have made certain by asking others who might know it well, rather than leaping to conclusions,’ I said.

  ‘What of the clatter of plates that you heard?’ Blount said.

  ‘That was all a part of the stage-acting. Lady Anne realized it would be difficult to put the blame on anyone. So she hatched a ploy. She wanted Sir Walter to be persuaded to leave. He had made himself entirely unwelcome with all the staff, after all. So she had an idea. She took a pewter plate or bowl, and waited at the top of the stairs. When someone came, she hoped it would be him.’

  ‘No, she sent a boy to fetch me,’ Sir Walter said, eyeing Lady Anne with loathing. ‘The boy said it was my wife who called me. I hurried to her, not knowing what she wanted, and when I arrived, I found her dead. Then this plate rattled down the stairs, and I was convinced that I would be accused of the murder, so I left her and hurried out to the yard. There I met Matthew Huff, and told him to go and find my wife as though he was the First Finder. I said that there would be money in it for him, and he was nothing loath.’

  ‘It was your wife sent the boy for you,’ Lady Anne said quietly. She was still looking at me with bemusement, as if astonished that I could have put together all the evidence to conclude my story. ‘She wanted to speak with you about something. I heard her in the yard instructing the boy to find you. I killed her and waited for you. When you arrived, I threw the plate down the stairs.’

  ‘And you came back just as I found the body,’ I said.

  ‘I felt bad to see you appear,’ she said. She gave a graceful little shrug of her delicate shoulders. ‘It seemed kinder to save you at the time. Besides, I never liked Huff. He was not a pleasant character.’

  ‘You still let me think you thought I could have committed the murder,’ I said a little heatedly.

  ‘I could hardly let you see that I knew you had not done it because I had, could I?’ she said.

  Bedingfield stood. Neither of us had paid him any attention for the last while, but now I felt truly sorry for him. His face was pale and drawn, like a man who has become inflicted with a poison or the plague. His eyes were raw as though he had been weeping for a week, and the lines about his face looked to have become graven more deeply than ever I had noticed before. ‘Master Blackjack: enough! Lady Elizabeth, Sir Walter, Coroner, Sir Thomas, can I beg a few moments of your time? I crave a favour. I … this is an enormous surprise, as you will understand. However, to place the responsibility for a murder on a young lady’s shoulders, a young lady who could have expected a long and joyous life, that is a grave undertaking. Better by far to allow her to leave.’

  ‘What would you have us do, Sir Henry?’ Sir Walter said in his sneering tone. ‘Leave a murderess to depart hence and find another victim?’

  ‘No! She will never commit such an offence again, I am sure,’ Sir Henry said hollowly. ‘Leave her to go from here. I will stand trial in her place and allow justice to take its course.’

  Lady Elizabeth stood with a flounce of silken skirts. ‘Sir Henry, you are asking us to participate in a shabby deception. I can understand the desire of a father to protect his daughter, but you cannot expect me to acquiesce in such an arrangement.’ She looked at me, standing with her chin a little raised. I thought for a moment she was going to address me. Instead, she turned with a loud rustling of silks and walked from the room.

  ‘That is that,’ Sir Thomas said. ‘I am sorry, Sir Henry, but without the Princess’s support, there is no way we could agree to any form of concealment. What would the word of each of us be against that of the Princess? Even if we wished to help you, it would be impossible.’

  Sir Henry nodded, his head remaining low. He was suddenly an old man, and I felt sorry to see him brought so low. Lady Anne stood at his side, pale, perilously beautiful, but unbending. She had caused this disaster, but she would not apologize for it. It was for others to react as they wished.

  I left the room feeling very low. I had done my best to show who was guilty, but it was not a source of pleasure or pride, only of sadness.

  I walked about the palace that afternoon, avoiding everyone. Master Blount seemed to hold me responsible for the death, or perhaps for placing the blame firmly upon another when he thought it was my own act. The Princess’s face kept returning to me. How she looked so pale, how her eyes had narrowed. There was something I had missed. Perhaps it was the lack of nutrition, I thought.

&nb
sp; But I didn’t want to mingle with people from the palace. Later I ordered the groom to fetch me a pony; I mounted it and left the palace, heading for Woodstock.

  Yes, I know that there were still ruffians about, but most were in Woodstock’s gaol by that time, and I had need of fresh air and a sense of freedom.

  There were bodies piled by the gatehouse, outside the courtyard for those who had tried to hold the palace against Parry’s men, and others inside, nearer the chapel, for those who had served Bedingfield and Parry to the death. There were not so very many, thankfully. Even those I had seen with apparently grievous injuries had, many of them, lived. Some, of course, would soon succumb to infections or just the simple shock of their wounds, but many may yet survive long enough to dance a jig from a rope.

  I’d had enough of death and blood. The reek of blood from a wound, as it grows sour and sickly in the sun, has to be smelled to be believed. It’s horribly like rancid pork, and after the last days, I swore I’d never eat pork again. Only ham or bacon for me in future.

  I jogged along the road without thinking. With my mind empty, I entered Woodstock, the horseshoes clattering every so often on stones or cobbles. The pony seemed to know its way around here, and I wasn’t concentrating. My head felt entirely empty, as though I’d been working so hard that every thought had been sucked from it. My heart felt oddly similar, leaving a hollowness in my breast, as if all emotions had also been torn from me. I was little more than an exhausted husk.

  The pony stopped. I looked up to see that we were outside the tavern. There was the sound of chatter from inside, but it was a lot quieter now than last time I came, when Parry had his bravoes in there with him. Now it was clearly more an evening with the local peasants and a few travellers. That was all to the good as far as I was concerned. I threw the reins to a waiting stableboy, weighed my purse in my hand, and entered.