“She obviously knew who I was,” I said.
Sir Robert Cecil and I had met in the past but not known each other well before this violent death brought us together. Now, I thought how like his father, Sir Willam Cecil, he was. I had known Sir William, that most able of Elizabeth’s councillors, very well indeed, quarrelled with him badly once or twice, but always admired his intelligence and his complete devotion to the good of Elizabeth and the realm of England. His son Robert was shorter of stature and had a crooked spine which gave him a hunched shoulder but this didn’t affect his mind, which was as acute as that of Sir William. On his side, he knew my history and was at ease with me, however much he had bullied my landlady and the servants.
“Sir Robert,” I said, “I know very little about the conference; only what was said at the inquest. The purpose is to arrange a peace treaty with Spain, it seems. Does anyone really want to disrupt it? Where will it be held?”
The inquest had finished an hour ago. George, Meg and I were with Sir Robert in Whitehall Palace, in the study which his father had used. The sun was out again, making the river outside sparkle, but our mood was sombre.
“An embassy from Spain,” said Sir Robert, “has come to settle the terms of the agreement. The conference will be held in Somerset House, not far from your lodgings, beginning on the 7th of August. Somerset House belongs to the king. So does the idea of the treaty. King James would like a signed peace with Spain to be among the first major achievements of his reign. You would think that everyone would welcome freedom from the fear of another Armada, but, yes, there are those who would wreck the whole enterprise if they could. Ardent Puritans who don’t want to talk to Papists, ever, about anything, and ardent Catholics longing for a revival of their religion, with a Spanish army to back it if necessary.”
“But how could anyone wreck the conference?” said George Hillman with some impatience.
“I wish I knew! If only Mistress Powell had lived a little longer! The dainty little dagger that killed her is as nasty a weapon as ever I saw. I cut my thumb just by touching the edge.” He exhibited the mark. “The hilt is unusual but we have enquired among silversmiths, weapon-makers and your neighbours too and no one recognizes it. I marvel,” said Sir Robert, “that she lived as long as she did.”
“I said from the first that she must have been attacked very shortly before she reached us,” George said. “The coroner agreed, did he not?”
“Yes. It can only have happened minutes before she arrived at your lodging. Unless she was actually killed inside it.”
“That isn’t possible,” I said grimly.
“So that leaves the street, the interior of a coach, or a nearby house as the scene of the stabbing,” Sir Robert said. “No one admits to seeing or hearing anything noteworthy. To comb the whole of London for missing young married women is somewhat beyond us but no London constable or magistrate has heard of a missing girl called Powell – or Eleanor, either. Girls who aren’t called Catherine are mostly Mary or Elizabeth! The choice of names for girl babies isn’t wide. No young wife of any name or description has vanished from anywhere near you. Your landlady and your neighbour Thomas Furness both have daughters of the right age, who have married and left the district. We did wonder if one of them had come back under a false name for any reason, but they hadn’t. Mistress Bennett’s girl, Kate – another who was presumably christened Catherine . . .”
“Called after her mother, I think. Mistress Bennett’s name is Catherine,” I said. “Almost every family has a Catherine – Kate for short – in it somewhere. My father,” I added dryly, “was married to three of them.”
“So he was. Well, Mistress Bennett’s Kate is married to a Mr White and to make sure she wasn’t the murdered wench, I sent someone to see her. She was at her home in Chelsea village. By the bye, I’m sorry we questioned your landlady and your servants so fiercely, Mistress Stannard, but they were all on the premises when the girl died. We must examine every angle. As it happens, Mistress Bennett and the Whites are all devout Puritans, and Mr White has been officially warned, twice, against preaching in public and speaking against the bishops. However, we concluded they had nothing to do with this.” Unexpectedly, he produced a wicked grin. “You were alone with the girl for a few minutes, Mistress Stannard. I know you used to carry a dagger. I suppose you didn’t stab her yourself?”
“Sir Robert!” said Meg, outraged. I contented myself with looking at him. He grinned again.
“No. I grant that you’re a most improbable suspect. I wish I could find a probable one. If only I knew who this girl was!”
“She isn’t Furness’s daughter either, I take it?” I said.
“His girl is twenty-seven years old and her name is Margaret, for a change! She was married eight or nine years ago to a Mr Westley, a smallholder in Kent. Your landlady knew her before her marriage and the Player Will Shakespeare was a guest at the wedding but neither of them can recall what Margaret looked like so they can’t tell us whether she is the dead girl or not. However, Furness – he’s a widower – said she wasn’t his Margaret and he spoke the truth. I sent someone to Kent to make sure.”
“I take it that, like Kate White, she was at home with her husband?” said George.
“When my messenger reached the Westleys’ farm, Mistress Margaret was not only at home, she was lying in and the midwife announced the birth of a son while my man was actually in the house. Mistress Westley had had a hard time and was very ill. Furness says he didn’t even know she was expecting a child. He seems much attached to her. He was horrified to hear how badly things had gone with her and said he would write to her husband. I gather that she was so ill that she may actually have died but, if so, it wasn’t on your parlour floor, Mistress Stannard.”
“And Furness himself?” I enquired. “After all, he lives next door to my lodgings. Every angle, you said, Sir Robert. No one has stabbed Margaret, but I suppose Furness could have stabbed Eleanor, whoever she was.”
Sir Robert sighed. “Furness’s father was in trouble several times for not attending church, and once for sheltering a priest who was on the run, but Furness himself seems to be a dutiful Anglican and a law-abiding family man. His fellow actors agree with that. He says he was out at the time of your return from Greenwich and that his two servants were out too, on various errands. There seems no reason to disbelieve him. I can’t arrest anyone simply for living next door to you! In fact,” said Sir Robert bitterly, “we have found nothing but blind alleys.”
“What more can be done?” Meg asked seriously.
“Every precaution has already been taken that anyone can think of, to protect the conference. The King’s Players will stand round the walls of the conference chamber and not just for ceremonial purposes. They’ll watch for anything untoward. They haven’t been officially informed yet of this extra duty but they will be by tomorrow and I think some of them already suspect. They always seem aware of what’s afoot in the world. I think they scent it in the air, like hounds.”
His look of worry deepened. “I hope we’ve thought of everything. The Players won’t be armed – we’re not allowing weapons into the room at all – but there will be armed guards in the antechamber just outside and at all entrances to Somerset House. The proceedings will probably take most of August and last for some hours each day and refreshments will be served during the sessions. Two of the Players, different ones each day, will fetch the trays from the kitchen. We’re not letting any servants into the room. Servants come and go; we can never be sure we know the backgrounds of them all. We know more about the Players and they’ll watch each other, too. Somerset House will be searched from cellar to roof beforehand, as well.”
Meg said: “I’ve thought of something that George and I might do to help – if you will, George.”
“What is it?” said Mr Hillman, but indulgently. He glanced at Sir Robert. “I grew accustomed, long ago, to having married into a family where all the women have inquisitive natures.”
“This Eleanor,” said Meg, “knew my mother was coming to London and knew where to find her. Very likely she is connected to the district where we’re lodging. Well, Kate and Margaret grew up there. They might well remember other girls like themselves who went away as they did, but may have come back – perhaps visiting. We could go and talk to them. Your enquirers just went to see if they were safely at home. Perhaps . . . well . . .”
“Perhaps they didn’t ask the right questions, she means,” said Hillman helpfully. “From the sound of it, I doubt if Margaret Westley could have answered questions anyway. But if by good luck she has recovered after all, perhaps she could now.”
“Very well.” Robert Cecil was decisive. “If you will undertake that, I’ll see you are given the right directions for finding these two woman. And Ursula, there is something you can do, if you will. Will you be an extra pair of eyes and oversee the refreshments? Watch the preparation and escort the trays to the conference chamber? With your eyes wide open.”
“Of course! I wish I could do more,” I said.
“If this isn’t enough,” said Sir Robert, “I’m sure I don’t know what is!”
By the tenth day of the conference, I was tired. I had been on duty in the anteroom to the conference chamber day in and day out, except when escorting those who were fetching refreshment trays. My mirror that morning had shown me a face unwontedly pale, and hazel eyes which were still bright but had new lines around them. Sybil was predicting that soon I would collapse and be brought back to her feet first.
So far, nothing untoward had happened except that everyone – except the Spaniards, who knew nothing of the crisis – was on edge and jumping at shadows. The Players were the worst, perhaps because they were actors whose lives were, literally, saturated in drama.
Richard Burbage, who at first had gone in for striking elegant poses, had given this up and just looked careworn. Big, craggy Furness, when detailed on the second day to help in fetching the mid-morning refreshments for the eleven dignified gentlemen round the negotiating table, tripped in the kitchen doorway and nearly sent a whole trayload of winejugs sliding to the floor.
Edward Alleyn said he couldn’t sleep properly and had nightmares when he did sleep, and if anyone burst into the conference room waving a knife, he would be too tired to do anything about it.
“And you should have seen us when there was a tap on the conference room door,” the actor-playwright Will Shakespeare had confided to me. “It turned out to be just a clerk with a fair copy of the first draft agreement but, when he knocked, Sir Robert Cecil dropped his pen and we all looked at the door as though the devil might come through it.”
Shakespeare talked to me when he could, for he seemed to find me intriguing. “You puzzle us, you know,” he said on that tenth day, as he and Furness, vivid in their scarlet ceremonial livery, emerged from the conference chamber, on their way once more to collect the mid-morning trays. “You seem an unlikely person for this task. If anything did happen, what could you do?”
“I know what you see, Mr Shakespeare,” I said, rising from my stool to join them. “Just an ageing dame in dove-coloured damask, with an unfashionable ruff. I can’t walk fast, and my arms . . .” I held them up in their big quilted sleeves “ . . . are like sticks. I am here to observe, to recognize, if I can, any suspicious pattern before it develops, and give warning. That’s all.” I smiled. “There was a time when I carried a dagger in case I had to defend myself and once or twice I even used it, but I have no weapons now.”
I gestured towards the armed men standing round the anteroom. “If there’s a crisis, the guards must deal with it; or yourselves and the principals, if it happens inside the conference room. I see that your rota is repeating itself, by the way. You and Mr Furness have both carried out this errand before.”
“But we had different partners. The rota is arranged that way,” Shakespeare said as we made our way down the short flight of stairs to the kitchen regions. “What an extraordinary woman you are,” he added. “And your family is remarkable, too. Sir Robert has told us that your daughter and her husband have gone to Kent to interview Furness’s daughter, and why. They are not yet back?”
“No, not yet.”
“I hope they learn something but it seems like aiming at a very distant target.”
“We felt we had to try anything we could think of. I am sorry I can’t go faster.” The stairs had a steep curve and I found them awkward. Shakespeare had matched his pace to mine but Furness was tramping impatiently ahead.
“A minute here or there doesn’t matter. But it does seem strange that no one can identify Mistress Powell.”
We had no more time to discuss it, however, for now we were entering the steamy, vaulted kitchen of Somerset House, where the dinner which the conference members would eat at midday was in preparation under the eyes of wary and suspicious guards, and trays were being laden with a small mid-morning repast: little pies containing fruit or meat, almond cakes, goblets, and jugs of wine. There was a dry white vintage and a light red, both French, and also a sweet and heavy red wine from Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The Spaniards liked it and had brought their own supplies with them.
Furness was already rumbling an enquiry about how carefully everything had been tasted. He was also complaining that we were behind time. He shot me an irritated glance, blaming my slow footsteps for it.
“Everything is ready,” said the chief cook, also irritably. “There are the trays and yes, everything has been tasted and the wine casks freshly broached. Nothing venomous ever went out of this kitchen or cellar either, believe me! The very idea is an insult. And,” he added crossly, “I’ve had two assistants dismissed for being Puritans so now I’m shorthanded as well as insulted.”
“I understand they were known associates of a man called White, who’s done some seditious preaching!” growled Furness, as he gathered up his tray. “Come!” he said to me and Shakespeare, and stalked out of the kitchen ahead of us.
As the days went on, I had grown more watchful, rather than less. This time, as we neared the top of the stairs, something unusual caught my attention. Somewhere ahead, was an unexpected murmur of voices.
Furness, also hearing them, came to a sudden stop and once more, his tray tilted perilously. Shakespeare turned to look at me, rolling his eyes heavenwards in exasperation. Furness steadied himself, checked a sliding wine jug, and said anxiously: “That’s a woman talking! But no strangers are supposed to come into the house! Who . . .?”
“I think it’s Meg,” I said. “She and George must be back from Kent. Go on, Furness!” We followed him up to the short passageway at the top and along it to the anteroom. There indeed we found my daughter and son-in-law awaiting us and they wasted no time in greetings. “We have news,” said George, stepping forward into our path. His amiable face was unusually grim. “No further, please!”
“But the gentlemen are waiting for us!” protested Furness. Round the walls, the guards tensed, changing their grip on their pikes.
George didn’t move. “Meg, tell them what we’ve learned.”
“We went to Kent to see Margaret Westley, who was born Margaret Furness,” said Meg. She looked tired and hot, her dark hair straggling damply from under her hat, skirts and boots dusty. “But there’s been a muddle. Margaret is nearly as common a name as Kate. I’m called Margaret, really, and there are many many more.”
“What is this woman talking about?” demanded Furness angrily.
Meg glanced at him. “Your daughter married the younger of two brothers, who lived together on the same smallholding. The elder brother’s wife was called Margaret as well. The enquirer Sir Robert sent found a Margaret Westley there with her husband but she was lying in and very ill. He was never allowed to speak to her and her husband was too distracted to be questioned closely. The enquirer wasn’t welcome in a household in such confusion. He accepted that the Margaret Westley who was having the baby, was the former Margaret
Furness but he never actually asked her maiden name.
“What is all this?” Furness, impatient as ever, made to walk past George Hillman but a guard lowered a pike in front of him.
“The Margaret Westley who was lying in, is not Mr Furness’s daughter but her sister-in-law, the elder brother’s wife. She did recover from her confinement and we’ve talked to her. The younger brother, the husband of Margaret Furness, died last year,” said Meg. “And as Mr Furness well knows, two months ago his daughter remarried – an innkeeper she met when he came to Kent to visit relatives. She went with him back to his home in Southwark. We’ve been there, too. She went off, on the morning of the day she died, to visit her father. She meant to stay a week. When she didn’t come home as expected, her husband went to find her and Furness here told him she had left for Southwark at the right time and he didn’t know what had happened to her.”
“Her husband’s name,” said George, “is Nicholas Powell, and he called her Eleanor. It was her second name, apparently. When she was a Westley, she took to using it, because it was confusing to have two Margarets in the house.”
“You are Eleanor Powell’s father?” Shakespeare said to Furness. “But you said you didn’t recognize the body! Was it you who . . .?”
“No, it wasn’t!” bellowed Furness. “But who would have believed me if I’d said so? Yes, she came to visit me. Then she set out for home, and the next I heard, a young woman had been found murdered in this woman’s house!” With his head, he indicated me. “I was asked to look at her and yes, it was my girl! But I didn’t say so. I told her husband I’d report her missing but I kept quiet. Seems she’d been babbling to Mistress Stannard about some threat or other to this conference. I could see myself in a dungeon if I said she had anything to do with me. I held my tongue and my breath! I don’t know who killed her. I only know I didn’t but I repeat, who’s going to believe me?”
The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits Page 3