The Masque of a Murderer

by Susanna Calkins

  “Master Blackwell,” she called, still trying not to gag. Her teeth began to chatter. If possible, the shop seemed colder inside than it was outside. “Master Blackwell?”

  Cautiously she moved into the back room, and that was when the smell became overwhelming. On some level, her nose and mind informed her of the obvious. Master Blackwell was dead. She began to back away, and that was when she saw him, a dark shadow in the corner, lying in a makeshift straw matting bed, covers pulled up to his shoulders. Drawing up her courage, she peered more closely at him, still holding her nose. She saw no obvious signs of foul play. No blood or any wounds, at least none that were visible.

  Perhaps he’d frozen to death or succumbed to sickness. Maybe he just died of old age. Indeed, was that a slight smile on his face? Maybe he’d met his maker with peace in his heart. Lucy hoped so, turning away.

  She was about to leave when the stacks of printed materials caught her eye. Unlike at Master Aubrey’s shop, these tracts and ballads were not tied in carefully organized bags hung from pegs. Rather, they seemed loose and unorganized. Many were covered with stains or mildew or were stuck together, carelessly preserved. She wondered if perhaps Master Blackwell had begun to be too ill to keep them in order, and she felt a sudden pang.

  A closer examination, however, revealed that the printer did seem to have followed a rudimentary method of categorizing the different tracts, sorting them by type. Religious tracts. Petitions to the king. Monstrous births—there seemed to be quite a few of them. Witches. Merriments. And finally, a stack of murder ballads and tracts. She began to rifle through them, feeling uncomfortable, knowing that Master Blackwell was lying dead behind her. She set each one aside after glancing it quickly. Some she was familiar with, others she’d never seen before. A Terrible Tale of a Most Barbaric Murder. An Unnatural Mother Kills Her Children. A True and Strange Tale of a Murder in Leicester. And one she knew very well. From the Charred Remains, a Body.

  As Lucy neared the end of the stack, one jumped out at her. The True and Most Unfortunate Tale of a Player’s Last Play, Having Been Beset by Thieves, on the Duke’s Own Stage.

  She was about to put it in her pack when a thought struck her. “If I take this one tract, am I looting?” she wondered out loud. She looked guiltily toward Master Blackwell’s still form. “Perhaps if I simply replace it with another?”

  So she pulled out another tract and laid it carefully on the pile, not wanting either earthly or divine authorities passing judgment upon her.

  “Rest in peace,” she whispered to Master Blackwell’s corpse before carefully shutting the door behind her.

  Doubling back, she informed the Fletchers. As she imagined, they were deeply shocked and saddened by their long-term neighbor’s death. It had been a hard winter on them all, and the bonds of community had yet to be reforged. Lucy left then, knowing that they would do right—belatedly—by their old friend.

  18

  The next morning, as the light of dawn filled the room, Lucy rolled over in her bed and pulled out The Player’s Last Play from under her pillow. After she had returned from Smithfield last night, Master Aubrey had her doing all manner of chores. She had nearly embraced the printer when she saw him, hoping that he would never come to such a sorrowful and lonely end as Master Blackwell. Lach gleefully piled on as well, so that it had been quite late by the time she had stumbled in exhaustion to her chamber. She had sat down at the table, only to realize that Will must have used the last of the candle stubs she kept in a wood box by their small hearth. Too tired to sneak back into the shop, she had simply fallen into bed, immediately succumbing to a heavy dreamless sleep.

  Since Will had not yet arisen, Lucy thought she would take a few minutes to read the tract. Only a few pages in length, it described how Basil Townsend had been set upon and murdered on the stage of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theater. The rest was taken up by an account of a “Strange Celestial Experience that had Beset the Evening Sky.” Master Aubrey sometimes did the same, adding a bit here and there to stretch out a tract that was shorter than originally intended.

  Just as Herbert Bligh had told them, the assault had seemed to occur well after the final performance had concluded for the evening. Few people had witnessed the attack, and those that had been around were vague in describing the characteristics of Townsend’s assailant. One of the female players, Deborah Evans, called him a monster of a man, while Gerald Markham and another female player, Grace Little, called him a smallish sort of fellow. They both claimed that it might well have been a man named Abel Coxswain, whose wife might have sinned with Townsend.

  They all agreed on one point, however—that the attack had occurred swiftly and the assailant had fled, after plunging his knife into Townsend’s chest. Herbert Bligh said that Townsend, a bit of a rover, was not one to respect the sanctity of marriage, and had recently taken up with another man’s wife. So Coxswain, it seemed, had been the primary suspect.

  Nowhere did the account say, though, whether Coxswain had been brought to trial. Instead, the piece ended with a few words from Herbert Bligh, reminding the gracious reader that “the stage is just a poor substitute for the drama of the reality of every man’s life.” That sounded like the pompous player she had met.

  Lucy went downstairs and began to prepare the morning meal and start their business for the day. A strange fog seemed to have settled over her thoughts, due in part to poor Master Blackwell’s sad demise. Still, the cloud over her thoughts could not keep her from thinking altogether. Could Esther Whitby have been responsible for the deaths of the family with whom she had lived?

  When Master Aubrey was down in the cellar and Lach was out by the woodpile, Lucy stole the opportunity to ponder the tract again. Why had the searcher thought it important to provide Julia Whitby with information about Basil Townsend’s death? “This is the dandy I was telling you about,” Lucy mused, recalling the line under the searcher’s sketch. She read the tract again, looking for any detail that would help make the connection clear.

  Then she held the piece closer to her eyes. A few words jumped out at her again, and suddenly something that had been hidden was clear.

  “Master Aubrey!” she called down to the cellar. “It is vital that I speak with Master Hargrave at once.” Without heeding his reply she began to run out of the shop, only to find Lach barring the way.

  “Where are you off to now?” he asked suspiciously. “Leaving all the work to me again?”

  “No! This is no jest. I think that the magistrate’s daughter is in real danger. I am afraid for her life, I am. I know that I could lose my apprenticeship, but I must speak to Master Hargrave first, and then I must warn her. Please, I beg you. Let me by.”

  To her surprise, Lach stepped aside and let her through without another word.

  Lucy rushed out the door and began to run, grateful that for once she did not have the heavy pack pulling painfully on her shoulder and bumping against her back.

  * * *

  When she arrived at the Hargraves’ ten minutes later, Lucy breathlessly tried to convey to Annie her urgency in seeing the magistrate.

  “He’s not here, Lucy,” Annie said, a scared look in her eyes. “Shall I fetch him? I know that he went to see Dr. Larimer for an early-morning meeting.”

  “Yes, no, I don’t know,” Lucy said. Now Cook and John were looking at her with deep concern.

  “Lucy?” Adam appeared then, entering the kitchen. “What is it? I heard your voice and I could tell something is wrong. Why do you need to speak to my father? Is Will all right?”

  “Oh, Adam!” she cried out, her voice breaking.

  He drew her out of the kitchen then and into his father’s study, shutting the door behind them, not caring about propriety. Holding out his arms, he embraced her tightly.

  Then, taking her hand, Adam pulled her to the low embroidered bench under the window, one that she had frequently cleaned when she had served as his father’s chambermaid, so that she was sitting close beside
him.

  “Now tell me,” he commanded, turning her face toward him. “What is wrong?”

  Lucy hardly knew where to start. In fits and starts, she told him what the Fletchers had said about Esther Grace, as well as seeing Master Blackwell’s body. Although she expected his customary scolding not to undertake such investigations, instead he pressed her to him again. “Sweetheart,” he murmured against her hair. “These are all terrible things.”

  “There’s more,” she said, extracting herself gently. She pulled out the tract describing the murder at the theater, and pointed to the name of one of the witnesses.

  “Grace Little?” he read, frowning. “I don’t understand. Who is she?”

  “I think she is Esther Grace. Jacob Whitby’s widow. And this one, Deborah Evans, I think she’s Deborah, that other Quaker. She never seemed like the others, not a Quaker at all.” She knew she was babbling and it was difficult to stop. “Maybe they are both impostors.”

  He took her hand then. “Lucy, you’ve had a bit of a shock and—”

  “No, please, listen to me.” She explained. “Your father is convinced that he had seen Esther Grace before. She came before him on the bench.”

  “Yes, he told me. He also told me that he looked through his trial notes, and he did not see her name. There are probably many women named Grace.”

  “That’s true.” She paused, trying to steady her jumbled thoughts. “All right, then. Let’s set this murder aside. Consider what the Fletchers told me about Esther Whitby, or as they knew her, Esther Grace. They think that Mr. Beetner met her at a brothel on Leather Lane.” In a small voice she added, “Are you familiar with that place?”

  “Oh, let me think. Is that the one near the coaching inn? Or is it the one above the smithy’s shop?” When she stared at him, he nudged her with a little laugh. “Lucy, I hope you do not think that I have intimate knowledge of all the brothels in the city.” He sounded amused, although a little wary, too. “No, to answer your question. I am not familiar with that brothel.”

  Lucy flushed. Continuing, she said, “It’s just that the brothel is not too far from Thiery’s Inn. Isn’t that where you lived, when you were finishing your legal studies?”

  She spoke in a rush. She had seen Adam embrace another woman once, and that was painful enough to remember. She looked down, staring at a dark knot in the wooden floor.

  “Lucy,” he said gently, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Look at me.” When she did, he continued. “I’m not a saint. I’ve never claimed to be. I can tell you this, I have never paid for a whore.” He cocked his head, his grin returning. She could tell he was trying to dispel her conflicted mood. “I must say, I like seeing your jealous side. It makes me think I’m in your thoughts sometimes, when you’re not finding dead bodies or hunting down murderers.”

  Seeing her exasperated sigh, he chuckled. “Ah, that is more like it. I am still not sure where you are going with this.”

  Lucy was still stumbling over her words. “That brothel is also very close to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theater, and perhaps—”

  A quick knock on the door caused them to move apart just as Master Hargrave entered the study, a serious look on his face.

  He looked at Lucy, who had risen to her feet. “Sit, child,” he said. “You look like you have had a fright.” He then gave his son an expectant look.

  In a clear and coherent manner, Adam summarized everything Lucy had just told him. He concluded, “She was just trying to connect Esther Grace with a brothel on Leather Lane, as well as to the murder of Basil Townsend, one of the Duke’s Players. There are definitely some strange connections here, although I am not yet certain how—or if—it all fits together.”

  Lucy held out the tract describing Basil Townsend’s murder.

  “Oh, I remember that case,” Master Hargrave said, a dawning look on his face. He turned toward the chest where he kept all his trial notes. They waited as he looked through the carefully stacked papers until he found the one he was looking for. “Ah, here it is. Yes, Abel Coxswain was accused and stood trial.” He read through his notes.

  “What was the verdict?” Adam asked.

  “We had to let Coxswain go. There was no formal evidence against him, nor could we determine any motive.”

  “Sir, why had Mr. Coxswain been accused?” Lucy asked. “Do you know?”

  The magistrate consulted his notes. “There was some indication that the murdered man and Coxswain had several altercations in the past. Fisticuffs. Spats. That sort of thing. There was also some evidence that Townsend had been involved with Coxswain’s wife. Also, Markham claimed that he had seen Coxswain running away from the body. Another witness—a Deborah Evans—had accused Markham of the murder, except”—he skimmed the tightly written pages—“she appears to have recanted on the stand.”

  “What about Grace Little?” Lucy asked eagerly. “Did she appear on the stand?”

  Again the magistrate consulted his notes. “No, she did not. She never took the stand. I remember sending out a constable to bring her in, although the address she had provided was false. She had disappeared.”

  “Oh,” Lucy said, disappointed.

  “However,” the magistrate said slowly, then stopped. He gazed at one of the dark beams that ran the length of the white ceiling. “I remember now. She was there. The woman we know as Esther Whitby. She was staring at the witnesses from a front-row bench. That’s why I remember her piercing purple eyes, so harsh and so cold. She was in my courtroom, although I did not know who she was. Lucy,” he said, looking back at her, “I believe you are right. She was connected with that trial. Whether she was connected with the murder, of course, I cannot say.”

  “Can we prove any of this?” Adam demanded. “Is there any proof that Grace Little and Esther Grace are the same woman? That she was present at the trial?”

  Lucy thought about this. “Mrs. Fletcher said that Mr. Beetner seemed to have known Esther Grace straightaway. Called her by name, he did. So that would mean she was already Esther Grace when she became employed with the Beetners before the plague, but after this trial.” Her voice trailed off. “What is it?”

  Master Hargrave coughed again, looking away, and Adam looked embarrassed. Still, he answered her question. “From what you said, Esther Grace seems to have appeared on Mr. Beetner’s doorstep, having known him, it seems, from the brothel. When he saw her, he called her by the only name she likely went by. Grace.”

  “Oh, I see,” Lucy said, catching on, trying to ignore the flush that flooded her cheeks. “Since his wife was likely there, to cover up his indiscretion, he called her ‘Miss Grace,’ making her first name into her last name. To make her more reputable. Because he should not have known her in a more intimate way.”

  “She might then have created ‘Esther Grace’ on the spot,” Adam said slowly. “Leaving in the midst of the trial. Finding her way to the Beetners.”

  “The timing is about right,” Lucy said, then added, “Mrs. Fletcher suggested that Mrs. Beetner never saw a letter of reference. I don’t imagine there was one anyway.”

  They were all silent as Master Hargrave read his trial notes again and Adam perused the tract. They were briefly interrupted when Annie came in with some steaming mugs. Giving them a quick frightened look, she set the tray down on the table and left the room. Only the magistrate reached for one, raising it to his lips, continuing to ponder the long-ago trial.

  Lucy had begun to anxiously pace the floor, her thoughts still too unsettled for her to sit down.

  “Lucy,” Adam said suddenly, breaking the silence, “why did you think the Quaker Deborah was an impostor?”

  Lucy stopped then and looked at him. “Why, I don’t know exactly.” She frowned, trying to think. “I suppose it’s because she admired my boots.”

  Adam and his father exchanged a glance. Hearing how foolish she sounded, she hurriedly tried to explain. “I mean,” she said, “she was not like Miss Sarah. Humble. Devoted to God.” She gl
anced at the magistrate. “Forgive me, sir.”

  “That is all right, Lucy,” the magistrate said. “Pray, continue.”

  “She seemed,” she said more slowly, “as if she were playing at being a Quaker. That she had not truly been called to the Lord at all. Certainly, not as the others had. And—” Her mind suddenly summoned an image of Deborah holding the lacy handkerchief.

  “What is it, Lucy?” Adam asked.

  “She was holding a handkerchief. I remember admiring the stitching. Esther Whitby commented on it being too frivolous for the Quakers and bid her to put it away.”

  “And did she?” Adam asked her.

  “No, not right away.” Lucy hesitated. “It’s just that I remember thinking that Deborah was sort of taunting Esther, in front of the others. It makes me wonder what was going on between them.”

  Something was still nagging at her. “Oh, and there was a verse inscribed there.” She sang the tune. “She clasped a little posy, a posy full of grace…” She looked at Adam and the magistrate, saying the line more slowly, emphasizing certain words this time. “She clasped a little posy, a posy full of grace. Little and Grace. Grace Little! Maybe that handkerchief did not belong to Deborah at all!” She looked at them triumphantly.

  Both Adam and the magistrate seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

  “That would be quite a coincidence,” Adam said slowly.

  “And would she use another woman’s handkerchief? A rather intimate object, wouldn’t you say?” Master Hargrave added.

  She felt her sense of triumph vanishing. “Maybe I got carried away,” she said.

  “Perhaps you did, Lucy,” Adam said carefully. “Or not.”

  “Well, there’s no time to waste,” the magistrate said, setting aside his mug and standing up. “There is definitely something suspicious about both of those women. I intend to remove my daughter from their reach.”