A Verse to Murder Read online

  A Verse To Murder

  A Tom Musgrave Mystery

  Peter Tonkin

  For:

  Cham, Guy and Mark

  As always.

  Copyright © Peter Tonkin 2019

  The right of Peter Tonkin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Poisoned Poet

  Chapter 2: The Arcane Astrologer

  Chapter 3: The Occult Chamber

  Chapter 4: Dead Man’s Place

  Chapter 5: The Pursuivant Marshal

  Chapter 6: The Ancient Abbey

  Chapter 7: The Sin Eater

  Chapter 8: The Silence and the Night

  Chapter 9: The Master of Deceit

  Chapter 10: The Man in the Marshalsea

  Chapter 11: The Men with the Motives

  Chapter 12: The Dangers of Deception

  Chapter 13: The Blame Game

  Chapter 14: The Guts and the Heart’s Desire

  Chapter 15: The Cunning Fox

  Chapter 16: The Angry Ape

  Chapter 17: The Doubting Thomas

  Epilogue: The Facts of the Case

  Chapter 1: The Poisoned Poet

  i

  ‘When shall we three meet again?’ asked Will Shakespeare, last to arrive but nevertheless in a hurry to leave, Tom Musgrave observed; still uncertain as to why the other two had called him here in the first place.

  In the heartbeat of silence that followed Will’s question a talon of lightning clawed the leaden sky outside the garret window, flooding the cramped room with an instant of brightness no sooner there than gone. It froze the three men in place: Will Shakespeare glaring impatiently out at the storm, Tom Musgrave looking down at the bed and John Gerard the herbalist bending over it. The instantaneous bolt illuminated the shabby walls of the bedchamber above the Golden Lion tavern on King Street hard by Westminster. It gilded the rickety furniture, the crazy desk laden with manuscripts, scrolls and letters.

  But most of all it lit up the dead man.

  The corpse was that of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland and current Sheriff of Cork, the poet Edmund Spencer. It lay on its side atop the piss-soiled, rumpled blankets, facing away from the window and looking across the bedding towards the inner wall. Looking was the right word, thought Tom, for the dead poet’s eyes were wide even though they obviously saw nothing. What had so recently been a man, a client at his school of fencing and a friend had been transformed by death into an object; into something that was no longer a person but a puzzle. One needing an urgent solution for this death was neither natural nor accidental. The eyes suggested this but the ear proved it.

  The Master of Logic in Tom’s keen mind devoured the scene narrowing his own eyes and seeking the tiniest detail that might help solve the deadly conundrum which he had been called upon to investigate. To which John Gerard in turn had been summoned. John was more than a mere apothecary - he was an expert on all things toxic and had helped Tom overcome more than one attempted poisoning. John, moreover, had been treating Spenser for the discomfort caused by a burst eardrum and had dispensed a range of herbs to the poet, designed to ease pain, aid restful sleep and hasten recovery. Drugs which were only safe when taken in controlled doses, for, as with many medicines, large quantities could be lethal.

  The pair of them were too late to prevent the death in this case and were working to explain exactly what had been done to cause it. Later, Tom would examine why the murder had been committed and, finally, who was guilty of the lethal act. Working independently of any legal authorities called upon to perform a more formal investigation; fighting almost as actively as the murderer to stay well clear of the clutches of the law, especially as those enforcing it were all-too often swayed by fractured and mutually antagonistic politics rather than by evidence adduced or proof presented.

  The pupils of Spenser’s staring eyes gaped cavernously. Tom recognized that as a sure sign the dead poet had taken a great deal of belladonna. An effect confirmed by Will, whose company of actors used belladonna to widen the eyes of the boys playing girls and women; young Robert Goffe’s eyes had been swimming in the stuff as he played Juliet to Burbage’s Romeo for instance. But belladonna was a potent poison as well as a useful piece of stagecraft and an effective sleeping-draught. Had Spenser consumed sufficient quantities to kill himself, Tom wondered. If so, why so? If not, what other more lethal poison might have been employed to snuff out his life? In any case, pouring the concoction into his ear instead of down his throat - as appeared to have been done here - was suspicious to put it mildly, and seemed to Tom to rule out accidental overdose.

  *

  Beneath its staring eyes, the cadaver’s shadowed mouth was agape. A thread of vomit escaped from the lower corner to ooze through moustache and beard and soil the pillow as the excess of urine dampened the blankets below. Spenser’s whole slight frame seemed to be locked in a rictus like his face - as though it had been turned to cold stone by some witchcraft, as Tom had already discovered the instant he tried to move it. But it was that darkly crusted ear that made the situation so remarkable.

  The well of Spenser’s uppermost ear was caked with some thick liquid most of which seemed to have seeped into the dead man’s head; in the absence of any other likelihood, thought Tom, certainly put there to kill him; he could think of no other reasonable likelihood. The cold calculation of the murderous act was further emphasized by the bandage lying on the pillow behind the dead head. For the bandage had been tightly bound over the damaged ear itself the last time Tom had seen it. Tom’s observation confirmed by John Gerard who had bound the bandage in place himself twelve hours ago when the poisoned poet had still been alive and visiting the apothecary for treatment and more medicine.

  But Spenser had clearly collapsed onto the bed too exhausted to remove any of his clothing other than his shoes, thought Tom. Too worn out even to use the chamberpot and crawl beneath the blankets. So what could have prompted him to go through the complicated process of taking the bandage off his ear then pouring his medicine into it? If, in fact, he had taken it off himself; if indeed, he had been capable of achieving the difficult task of pouring anything into his ear without slopping it all over the side of his head, his shoulder and his bedding, all of which were reasonably clean. In any case, that was something which seemed disturbingly unlikely. Trying to apply the pain-killing medicine directly to the seat of discomfort might be logical were the place easy to reach but Tom could not conceive of Spenser, too fatigued to remove his clothing doing such a complicated thing. Besides, there was the matter of the floor.

  ii

  Immediately after the flash of lightning came the crash of thunder, which was instantly followed by the fearsome drumming of the downpour. Tom glanced up at the ceiling which seemed sound enough even beneath this almost Biblical battering. There was not the slightest sign of a leak anywhere. And yet there was dampness on the floor - the ghost of a sizeable puddle close by the bed-head suggesting that someone wearing wet clothes had lingered there. Someone other than Spenser who had so obviously kicked off his shoes and collapsed directly into bed; whose upper clothes were, in any case, quite dry as well as quite clean. Which was a remarkable fact in itself for an icy Christmas had been succeeded by rain-storms of singular ferocity, last night’s succeeded almost immediately by this morning’s. Someone else had lingered, dripping, long enough to remove the bandage from the drugged victim’s ear. And, logic suggested, to pour in the poison.

  Furthermore, Tom observed, there was a trail of smaller marks leading back and forth between the dead man’s bed and th
e door opening out into the modest parlour; patches of dampness that he and John had been careful not to obliterate with their own dripping cloaks.

  Below Spenser’s waist, however, things were different. He had emptied his bladder forcibly and his clothing and bedding were sopping wet - a fact that seemed somehow to have disturbed John.

  Tom raised his voice over the noise. ‘The tavern-keeper’s boys were off to summon the constable as well as to guide us here. The constable will have summoned the Queen’s Crowner or the Earl Marshal by now, for Spenser is certainly important enough to warrant a full, formal postmortem investigation and The Golden Lion is well within The Verge.

  ‘Less than a mile from Westminster Palace,’ said Will. ‘Certainly nowhere near the thirteen miles from Her Majesty’s person covered by The Verge.’

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Tom. ‘We may therefore expect the Queen’s Coroner or Earl Marshal’s men; and when they arrive there will be all hell let loose…’

  ‘Let us meet when that hurlyburly’s done then,’ suggested John as he finished collecting samples of the dark stuff round Spenser’s ear and the vomit on his pillow. ‘You should both come home to me and we’ll test whatever this liquid is and the vomit it appears to have generated.’

  ‘You go on, Will,’ suggested Tom. ‘John and I will deal with The Crowner or the Earl Marshal’s men. They will be here for much of the day I would judge. Or at least it will be if they suspect foul play as sharply as I do. So, look for me by sunset.’

  *

  ‘Look for you where? Where’s the place?’ asked Will, distracted by the corpse on the bed and deafened by the thunder-clap, the raving wind and pounding downpour alike, and yet keen to be gone. Still, Tom calculated, not quite sure why he had been called here in the first place - his acquaintance with the dead man was social: little more than rivalry between two master poets, each jealous of his reputation and wary of any challenge from the other. Though Tom was well enough aware that such rivalry could prove fatal if it grew bitter enough. It was not yet a year, after all, since Ben Jonson had only escaped hanging by pleading benefit of clergy for the murder of rival Gabriel Harvey committed over just such a matter.

  But Will was called away from the room and the corpse by the immediate responsibilities that filled his mornings under normal circumstances - as a Sharer in the Globe Theatre part-way through construction on Sir Nicholas Brend’s field in Southwark; as the playwright responsible for generating a new play to open it; as the soon-to-be occupant of a lodging south of the River as close to the new theatre as possible; and as the would-be lover of Rosalind Fletcher, the woman he was planning to share that lodging with while his wife Ann and their family stayed in distant Stratford.

  ‘Meet us at High Holborn at set of sun as John suggested,’ said Tom more loudly, ‘where we can look further into this matter. Spenser was less than fifty years old. He was fit and healthy apart from his ear when we last saw him. And now look at him. If it’s not poison it’s witchcraft; if not witchcraft then it’s poison.’

  ‘Poison poured into his ear as he slept,’ said Will, shaking his head at the horror of it. ‘That will haunt my nightmares for some time to come.’

  ‘It will be among the last of my thoughts before I go to sleep, certainly,’ concurred Tom and John Gerard nodded silent agreement as Will vanished through the door.

  Moments later the playwright was little more than a ghostly grey figure lost beneath a hooded cloak, hurrying eastward along King Street. Tom and John stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down through the trembling, rain-spattered bedroom window as they watched him vanish into the deluge.

  ‘You’re certain?’ asked Tom

  ‘My apprentice Hal is certain,’ answered John Gerard. ‘I have interrogated him thoroughly and there can be no mistake. Even though he did not see the face of the man who purchased the belladonna and the hemlock, he is absolutely sure about the name he gave and will swear to it if called upon by Queen’s Crowner or Earl Marshal. The man who bought all that deadly poison yesterday evening was William Shakespeare.’

  iii

  Moments after Will disappeared, a troupe of horsemen came thundering up King Street from its eastern end to rein to a stop outside the Golden Lion. The leader glanced up before dismounting and heading for the street door immediately below. Tom only got a glance at the man’s face but it was enough for him to identify the impatient visitor. ‘It’s our namesake, John,’ he said grimly. ‘Sir Thomas Gerard the Knight Marshal.’

  ‘The right hand of the Earl Marshal,’ nodded the apothecary.

  ‘And the Earl Marshal is Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. Whose main mission as Earl Marshal is to protect the Queen against Jesuit assassins,’ added Tom. ‘So Earl Marshal Essex thinks that if Spenser has been murdered, there’s a Catholic plot behind it because of Spenser’s links with Ireland. Though it serves his ends to say so because he is all afire to take an army westwards and crush the Catholic rebellion in Ulster. Especially as Her Majesty has promised him the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and has only to sign the commission for him to get under way.’

  But the Earl Marshal could be right, thought Tom as Sir Thomas and his men came pounding up the stairs. For Spencer had recently found himself at the heart of a murderous mystery involving not only the bitter rivalry between Essex and Walter Raleigh but also Irish Catholic assassins, secret messages, riots in the City and attempts on the lives of Raleigh, his family and household - all of which had only been resolved six days ago at the Queen’s Twelfth Night festivities.

  Tom usually dealt with Queen’s Crowner Sir William Danby when his path crossed those of Her Majesty’s many law officers. But he knew all about the tall official striding through the door into the dead poet’s bedroom. Sir Thomas Gerard was a Staffordshire man, already a star rising steadily at Court though still only thirty five. Home tutored from childhood, he had been accepted into Caius College Cambridge at the age of sixteen, completing his studies swiftly - able to enter Parliament as MP for Lancashire at twenty. Now, having become an accomplished soldier in the mean-time - following Essex to war in France and knighted by him before the walls of Rouen - he represented Staffordshire, where Robert Devereux, already the Earl of the county of Essex, was building yet another power-base. This one bestriding the path he would have to take when he led the army he was already assembling, arming and training into Ireland as Lord Lieutenant.

  Moreover, as well as being Earl Marshal Essex’s deputy and MP for a county he coveted, Sir Thomas had been Captain of The Isle of Man for the last four years. Man, which reared out of the Irish Sea to stand half way between Staffordshire and Dublin. Whose mighty Castles of Rushen and Peel were already filling with the sorts of supplies, arms and armaments such as Essex might require as he faced the rebellious Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone in Ulster. Or - as increasing numbers of powerful men were beginning to suspect - when he brought his army back to England and tried to snatch Queen Elizabeth’s throne.

  *

  Oddly, for one of Essex’ faction, Sir Thomas favored the swashbuckling style of sweeping moustaches and arrogantly pointed beard made famous by Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh rather than the long beard of square Puritan cut favoured by the Earl himself. He had every bit of his superior’s arrogant abruptness, however. ‘Who are you Sirrah? What are you doing here?’ he demanded as his men crowded into Spenser’s bedchamber behind him, filling the modest space to overflowing.

  ‘Thomas Musgrave, Master of Defence, Sir Thomas. Master Spencer came to me for lessons in the art of rapier-play. We became friends, as the people at the Golden Lion know.’

  ‘And you?’ Sir Thomas glared at John.

  Before John could answer, one of the men at Sir Thomas’ shoulder spoke for him. ‘That is John Gerard, Sir Thomas. Calls himself a herbalist and apothecary. Little more than a country bumpkin with a little learning such as a wise woman or a midwife might impart.’

  ‘A choice pair,’ sneered another of the Knight Marshal’s re
tinue. ‘Friends to Will Shagsberd, who poor Robert Greene rightly called upstart crow.’

  Tom recognized these speakers too. The first, a slight, almost dwarfish, figure had a high, lined forehead, the hair swept back into rats’ tails on his collar, the sunken eyes, the venal lips not quite concealed by the oily fringe of his moustache, the spread of beard falling across his upper chest; it was Simon Forman, astrologer, occultist, serial seducer of innocent maidens, hanger-on of Raleigh’s notorious School of Atheists, which Will had characterized as The School of Night. Not so much a school of learning as a sinister group who met to discuss forbidden subjects. As well as Raleigh, The School of Night comprised Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Harriot the astronomer, Simon Foreman, seemingly - a late arrival perhaps. And Christopher Marlowe, poet, playwright and spy, atheist and blasphemer, dead these six years - murdered in Deptford as efficiently as Spencer here lying dead on the bed. A dagger thrust through the eye for one poet; poison dropped into an ear for the other.

  The second speaker, his beard cut roughly in Essex’ puritan style was the man who completed dead Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander which had been published little more than a year ago; one of Will’s greatest competitors and most implacable rivals - especially now that Marlowe and Greene were both dead. This was the poet and playwright George Chapman. His eyes blazing feverishly, his cheeks lank, his neck scrawny, his frame too slight for the ill-fitting clothes he wore. A man desperately near to starvation, thought Tom.

  ‘Whatever your reasons for being here, they are done now,’ snapped Sir Thomas. ‘If you wish to have any further involvement in this matter, you may report to my prison, the Marshalsea, and discuss it with my aide the Pursuivant Marshal or the Keeper of the Keys there.’

  After a moment of silence, he turned. ‘Clear the way,’ he ordered. ‘These two are leaving.