A Verse to Murder Read online

  Tom allowed John to go first, following his friend across a floor now puddled with water from the new arrivals’ cloaks, pausing to turn as he himself went through the doorway, just in time to see Simon Forman standing in the largest puddle of all beside the bed-head with Chapman at his shoulder, closing those staring eyes and carefully replacing the bandage over Spenser’s ear. Then, frowning suspiciously, he turned and followed John across the little parlour and down the narrow stairs, wondering why Simon Foreman was rearranging Spenser’s corpse instead of examining it as John Gerard and he had done.

  iv

  The two men paused in the empty vestibule between the stair foot and the street door which stood half open revealing a bedraggled groom holding the Knight Marshal’s horses. ‘He was speaking in jest was he not?’ whispered John. ‘He does not want us down at the Marshalsea?’

  ‘A grim enough jest, but a jest in truth,’ answered Tom, who relished the idea of visiting the notorious prison no more than did his friend, though Sir Thomas’ mention of his assistant the Pursuivant Marshal raised something in Tom’s capacious memory. He dismissed the thought as he turned to more immediate concerns, first amongst them the manner in which the areas south of the River were policed and who had the power to arrest and detain John and himself if they wished to do so.

  Tom’s longtime associate Talbot Law policed the Liberty of the Clink on the south bank of the Thames, enforcing the laws against drunkenness, violence, robbery, card-sharping and all the other illegal pastimes popular in the area owned by the Bishop of Winchester outside the walls and jurisdiction of the City of London. The Liberty of the Clink being the most famous of the traditionally lawless areas forbidden to the Lord Mayor, his various district constables and their City watchmen.

  The Liberty of the Clink lay immediately across the River from the City and on the South Wark. But further south still, down by the Borough, stood the prison manned and run by the Earl Marshal and his associates the Knight Marshal and the Pursuivant Marshal. It was a grim place with such a fearsome reputation that Wat Tyler had burned it to the ground two hundred and twenty years earlier during the Peasants’ Revolt. But it had been rebuilt almost immediately, such was the demand for its use. It currently housed anyone suspected of carrying Catholic sympathies too close to treasonous action or such as could not pay the fines for failing to attend Protestant services dictated by the Recusancy Acts. Traitors such as members of the Babington plot, though they were questioned in the Tower by the terrifying torturer Topcliffe before being hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Drawn and quartered, at the Queen’s personal command, while still alive.

  At least, so said Robert Poley, spy, spymaster, sometime associate of Tom’s; the man who broke the Babington plot and saw the conspirators die in September 1586, witnessed the execution of its centre - Mary, Queen of Scots - in February 1587; and, apparently coincidentally, held Christopher Marlowe still on the evening of Thursday, 30th May 1593 with Nicholas Skeres while Ingram Frizer ran his deadly twelve-penny dagger into Marlowe’s right eye.

  Jesuit priests passed through the Marshalsea on their way to their martyr’s Heaven via Tyburn or The Tower. As did pirates, such as captains Wickens, Woodes and Venables - who had used the Isle of Man as a base for their maritime depredations and lived to regret it courtesy of Sir Thomas Gerard in both of his roles. As had any sailors from Philip of Spain’s several armadas unlucky enough to have been wrecked on the shores of sternly Protestant England or brutally Calvinist Scotland as opposed to staunchly Catholic Ireland - where they interbred with more welcoming Catholic locals. And finally, increasingly, so did those who could not meet their financial obligations in Elizabeth’s progressively debt-ridden society. Men like the desperate, impecunious and unlucky George Chapman.

  *

  Tom and John lingered in the doorway at the foot of the stairs, looking glumly out at the deluge that neither man was as powerfully motivated as Will Shakespeare to brave. In any case, thought Tom, he needed to visit the Golden Lion before going with John to interrogate Hal his apprentice who had identified Will as the purchaser of so many poisons. Like Romeo in the play that was named for him. What had Will’s character so aptly said? A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear/As will disperse itself through all the veins/That the life-weary taker may fall dead.

  Tom had to interrogate Hal rather than merely question the boy, for his evidence seemed to prove that Will was involved in the deadly matter at the very least, Romeo’s words suggesting some expertise even beyond Will’s acquaintance with belladonna and its uses on the stage. Perhaps even that Shakespeare was the murderer himself. Though, allowed The Master of Logic, Will had shown shock and horror at the sight of Spenser’s body but not a trace of guilt. He had been motivated to leave the death-chamber by impatience and responsibility, not by the desire of a murderer to flee the scene of his crime.

  Tom had been watching his friend closely because it was what John had revealed about Hal’s evidence that caused Tom to call Will to the dead Spencer’s room in the first place. But then, admitted Tom to himself as he pushed wide the inner door leading directly to the Golden Lion, Will was an actor as well as a poet and playwright; an actor schooled in making his face betray only the emotions he wished it to present to the world.

  On that thought he and John stepped through into the tavern’s parlour. Even before the arrival of the first customers, which would be soon - as midday was approaching - it was a bright, warm room with a fire blazing in the wide grate, a haunch of Kentish mutton spitted there beginning to cook. The men and women who rented and ran the place were all assembled in the golden glow as though the warmth could cure the nervousness they all plainly felt at being associated, even by mere proximity, with such a dreadful occurrence. Tom wondered whether they yet suspected that their guest had been murdered. But someone must. No matter who had discovered the body, the innkeeper would have gone up to check matters out; must have seen as much as Tom of the wet floor, the staring eyes, the disturbed bandage, the dark oil round the ear.

  ‘I have a question or two,’ he said. ‘First for whoever discovered the body and then for whoever summoned myself, Apothecary Gerard and the authorities.’

  The men and women crowding round the fire looked nervously at one another. No-one spoke but no-one needed to. A pale young parlourmaid was seated on a three-legged stool clutching a tiny glass of amber liquid that looked like French brandywine, recovering from the shock of her discovery no doubt. And two strong boys on the cusp of manhood were glowering as they dripped onto the floor beside her and steamed in the heat of the fire. They were all looking at the barrel-bellied tavern keeper, whose normally cheery countenance wore a thoughtful frown as he calculated the odds between open honesty and a more careful version of events. No doubt balancing the possibility of profit on the one hand against that of prison on the other, thought Tom. So no-one said a word in the mean-time.

  ‘Remember,’ said Tom, ‘I am the Master of Logic not the Pursuivant Marshal. You cannot do any damage to yourselves by being open with me. And, at the very least you can test your stories in preparation for Sir Thomas Gerard’s arrival amongst you. Which is imminent.’ He glanced meaningfully upward to the ceiling that was echoing to the footsteps on the floor immediately above.

  A point well made to himself as well as to them, thought Tom, who was all too vividly aware that he needed to question the staff of the Golden Lion as swiftly as possible, for Sir Thomas had warned him off in no uncertain terms and if Tom and John were still examining the people who had first found the body when the Knight Marshal and his men came back downstairs, then he and the apothecary would almost certainly see the interior of the Marshalsea prison whether they wanted to or not.

  v

  ‘Let us start with last night,’ prompted Tom. ‘Did anyone see or hear anything untoward last night?’

  The tavern keeper gave a bark of humourless laughter. ‘Think, Master Musgrave. The Lion is a popular tavern, full and frantic even o
n a midsummer’s night, as well you know, for you have supped here often enough. On winter evenings such as last night, all wet and freezing, you’d be hard-put to pack an extra body into the place! No sir. Master Spenser came in - after attending West Minster, seated in a draughty corridor awaiting the attention of the Council all day, he said. Having come via Holborn where he collected medicines from Master Gerard there and had the bandage on his bad ear changed. He sat close by the fire as his cloak and clothing dried. He supped his ale...’

  ‘As he should not have done,’ interrupted John. ‘I warned him strictly against mixing strong liquor with the medicines my apprentice prepared for him. It was nothing as weak as small beer I suppose?’

  ‘No sir. Not the best - that was too expensive he said - but a good strong Kentish ale for all that. Then he broke his bread so to speak - taking a lusty piece of a good fish pie. Once he was full-bellied, dry and warm he went aloft - because the noise in the parlour made his ear hurt and his head ache as he said. And that was the long and the short of it. No further interruptions. No sinister strangers. No new faces to be seen at all in fact. And as to hearing unusual sounds - why the Earl of Essex could have led his Irish army up the stairs and we’d never have heard a footstep or been any the wiser.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Tom. ‘This morning then. Margery, is it?’

  Margery the parlourmaid looked up from her empty glass. The brandywine had restored her colour and her confidence. ‘I went up to awaken him at dawn as is my duty, sir. I took him a fresh-baked manchet loaf and some butter, a glass of milk and some water. I put them on the table in his little parlour and knocked on his chamber door. He had been sleeping so soundly of late because the herbs Master Gerard prescribes him to soothe the pain in his poor wounded ear and help him rest seem to put him in the deepest swoon.’

  ‘Especially if washed down with strong ale,’ added John grimly. ‘Much of which seems to have come out again sometime in the night.’

  Margery glanced at him, her eyes wide, then she resumed her story. ‘I often have to shake him by the shoulder to awaken him. But this morning I found him stiff and cold when I did so.’

  ‘What did you do then, Margery?’ asked Tom gently.

  ‘Why I came out again, took up the bread and milk and brought them back to the parlour here. Mistress Murrel was about and I told her what I had found and she went to tell Master Murrel.’ The fat tavern keeper and his lean wife both nodded agreement with Margery’s story.’

  ‘Then she swooned dead away on the floor,’ added master Murrel weightily. ‘As though clubbed.’

  ‘A sudden shock will do that,’ observed John. ‘I have seen it happen. Especially in young women of a nervous and hysterical nature.’

  ‘And you took over matters then, Master Murrel?’ asked Tom.

  *

  Murrel glanced at his wife. ‘I did, sir. That I did.’

  ‘By visiting the room yourself?’

  ‘Just so, Master Musgrave.’

  ‘And you observed…’

  ‘Well, neither the outer door nor the bed-chamber door was properly closed - and Margery insists that she left them just as she found them. So Master Spencer either left them open last night or whoever entered his rooms left them open when they left. Though in truth, neither door has a lock.’

  ‘The outer door at the foot of the stair leading from King Street up to Master Spencer’s rooms was unlocked when I arrived this morning,’ said Tom. ‘Had you unlocked it?’

  ‘No, Master Musgrave. As far as I know, no-one in the Lion came or went through that door at all. But you are right. It was unlocked though fast-closed when I checked it after examining the body.’

  ‘So Master Spenser must have failed to secure it when he came home last night.’

  ‘He often does, sir, and has done so more often since the hurt to his ear and the medicines he took.’

  ‘I see. Well, proceed.’

  ‘There was wetness on the floor both of the parlour and the bedroom which Margery again swears did not come from either the milk or the water she had carried. And there was wetness also on the stairs leading up from the street door. It was that convinced me someone must have come up into the room, for although Master Spencer was wet enough when he first arrived in the Lion last night, he was warm and dry when he went to bed. And, from the state of him I’m certain he could not have crept out into the storm then back again himself. Not that he had any reason to do so that I can conceive of. I saw the body just as it was and took the liberty of shaking it quite hard - with no effect of course - except that I moved the bandage that had been lying on the pillow a little further from master Spencer’s head…’

  ‘Margery, did you shake Master Spenser firmly enough to move the bandage? To uncover Master Spencer’s wounded ear perhaps?’

  ‘No, sir. The bandage was on the pillow.’

  ‘Very well. And you, Master Murrel, reacted very properly by looking over the situation then sending Romulus and Remus here out to summon the authorities.’ Tom nodded towards the two glowering boys.

  ‘Well…’ Murrel frowned in confusion.

  ‘Their names are Nathaniel and Nicholas,’ said his wife, glancing at the two dripping youngsters as Murrel floundered, failing to understand Tom’s classical allusion. ‘And yes, he sent them out, Nate to yourself, sir, as being the poor man’s closest acquaintance, via Holborn not ten minutes from your door to alert Master Gerard who gave Master Spenser the medicines that he took last night. Then you sent him on to Bishopsgate to summon Master Shakespeare in turn. The other lad, Nic, went to alert the constable but by Nic’s own account he was sent on further with one of the constable’s men to Essex House and the Earl Marshal, which explains why Nate and Master Shakespeare arrived before Sir Thomas and his men.

  ‘Is that so, Nic?’ Tom looked at the youth who was shifting from foot to foot, none too happy at being the subject of discussion.

  ‘Aye,’ he answered gracelessly. ‘But as soon as I said who the dead man was, the constable ordered I should go straight and report to the Earl Marshal as the matter likely involved some Catholic plot him being the Sherriff of Cork and such. And besides the Master Spenser had been an associate and sometime pensioner of the Earl of Essex’.’

  ‘And the Earl Marshal summoned the Knight Marshal having sent you back. Tell me, did you speak with the earl himself?’

  ‘No! As you might expect the constable’s man and I were kept hanging about in a little room after they finally deigned to admit us to Essex House. Kept us waiting for well over an hour I should judge but offered neither food, drink nor welcome of any sort. Eventually I spoke not with the earl but with two other men. A large man as looked like a soldier and had precious little patience and a slighter, slimmer man dressed in black with dark hair swept back and a pointed beard.’

  ‘Sir Gelly Meyrick and Sir Francis Bacon as like as not; young Francis the lawyer rather than his elder brother Sir Antony the sickly secretary and spymaster,’ mused Tom. ‘Essex’ right-hand man and one half of his chief intelligencer - at least the one Bacon brother who can get out of bed, up and about…’

  But even as he entertained the thought, the footsteps on the stairs outside warned him that his interrogation was at an end.

  vi

  Tom and John stood in the shadowy doorway of Master Christie’s book-shop opposite the Golden Lion. The rain had eased as noon passed and the storm wind lightened so that they had no need to shelter from the elements. They lingered there, sharp-eyed, to observe what the Knight Marshal, his astrologer-apothecary, the starving poet and their men were up to.

  Sir Thomas was in the parlour with a couple of strapping assistants, no doubt wringing out of the men and women there much the same story as Tom already knew. Simon Forman was clearly in charge of the corpse, however, though George Chapman was busily making himself useful. No sooner had Tom and John taken up residence in the doorway and Sir Thomas vanished into the tavern than one of his men appeared, mounted up and gal
loped away eastward towards the City. Now, as Forman led a little cortege out onto the street carrying a sheet-wrapped bundle about the size of a slight man’s body, the horseman reappeared with a carriage close behind. Giving a furtive glance up and down King Street - which apparently failed to notice the two witnesses opposite - Forman gestured to his men. The carriage door swung open, revealing the shield with its broad band and three red circles which formed the arms of the Earl of Essex. The corpse was loaded into the carriage. Foreman followed it. Chapman followed Foreman. The telltale door slammed but over the sharp sound, Tom heard Forman order ‘Essex House!’ The driver obediently whipped up his horses, executed a tight turn and rattled away back towards The Strand and Essex House.

  Tom and John lingered until Sir Thomas and the rest of his men emerged, mounted up and trotted away.

  ‘Is there more you wish to ask Master Murrel and the folk at the Golden Lion?’ asked John.

  Tom shook his head. ‘No. My next task is to examine Hal your apprentice and see can we discover more about this hooded, muffled and all-but faceless stranger who bought such suspicious amounts of questionably legal poisons and who called himself Will Shakespeare.’

  John’s premises in Holborn were a half-hour walk from King Street. As they followed the road towards Charing Cross, the weather moderated further. By the time they were hurrying along Cockspur Street past St Martin’s Field towards Shaftesbury Avenue which took them in turn above Long Acre and into St Giles, the sun was shining pallidly through the skirts of the departing storm.

  St Giles led them past the right-turn into Drury Lane with Southampton House on their left. Tom looked across the private grounds to where the great mansion stood bathed in strengthening brightness. Will Shakespeare had been intimate with those chambers and corridors, he thought, not so long ago when Henry Wriothesely the third Earl of Southampton was supporting his rise to poetic notoriety, much as George Chapman was currently hoping that Essex would do for him. Southampton was the dedicatee of Will’s poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece - and the subject, it was suspected, of some of his more extravagant love sonnets: perhaps, therefore, Will’s lover. Whatever the truth of that, Southampton was certainly Essex’ closest friend and supporter. This mysterious element in the playwright’s history stopped Tom from ever trusting him absolutely, no-matter how amicable they were, irrespective of what deadly matter they were facing.