The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  “You talk to me of understanding?” I hissed. “I would think that I comprehend vastly more than you. I know you were born well enough, that you came of good yeoman stock, that you were taught to think of generosity of spirit, and that killing was only right when it was to protect yourself from attack. You weren’t brought up to be a conspirator!”

  “And what do you know of me, King’s Officer? Do you understand my mind?”

  “No, but as your brother I had hoped you might comprehend mine!”

  “I . . . Simon?”

  I could hardly bring myself to answer. It hurt so much to see him like that, his expression cracking from anger into pain. Yet I could still see that picture in my mind. The dead, the wounded; gore splashed against the walls . . . I felt sick at the thought of it. “I am Simon.’

  “Sweet Mother of God!”

  “I am not here to save you, brother,” I warned him sharply. Dear Heaven, how I wanted to think that there would have been a purpose in that! “I am verifying details of your testimony.”

  “You must, though! Think of Martha and the children, brother! Think of them! You can’t let me be hanged.”

  “Do you really think you could escape from here? No one escapes from the Tower.”

  “Men have escaped, though,” he said.

  My scalp moved. It was impossible that he should know – and then I realized his comment was innocent.

  “There is no possibility of escape, brother. You have to accept that and take what comfort you can in the knowledge that you will soon be judged. I pray that you will be saved before the end.”

  “Simon, my soul is safe – but you could save me! Others have lived, why not I? All I need is a fleet horse and clothes. Perhaps a roll of blanket, some food, a little wine, I mean, an outlaw must have sustenance! Then I could ride northwards . . . if I made it to Scotland, I could be safe enough. A ship may take me to Spain, and there I could start afresh. You could come with me, Simon! We could do it together! Escape to a new life. Freedom, and the true faith – who could ask for more?”

  “Shut up! You think I would consider running away? Run from what? From your evil conspiracy? Your gunpowder plot? I am safe here. I’ve proved my honour, and I can live contentedly.”

  “What does any of it matter? You and I, we’re brothers, Simon. That’s the thing! Come, save me and we’ll . . .”

  “Tresham was honourable enough to try to save his family. What did you do, Thomas?”

  “Me? What should I have done?”

  “Did you never think about who might have been there in the House of Lords when you blew it up? Did you never think about your own brother?”

  “Simon, I would have tried to save you, but there was no time. No, I couldn’t . . .”

  “And you never thought about your niece, I suppose, or your sister-in-law? They were to have been there as well. I had arranged for them to be present in a near chamber to view the majesty of the occasion.”

  “They were going to be there?”

  “I saw the results of Essex’s rebellion four years ago. Were you there? No? There was a fight. I believe your master Catesby won some renown for his sword-play. The Earl of Nottingham demanded that he should come out, and Essex said boldly that he’d rather be blown to heaven than surrender. But he gave up in the end. And meantime, while I was there, I saw a young woman caught between the earl’s men and Essex’s. She was there with her daughter, mere innocents who happened to walk into the wrong road that day. They died, Thomas. They were killed. What happened to their souls, I wondered. Surely God would take them to himself? Would you have wondered that, if you walked past the House of Lords on the sixth of November and saw my wife and daughter lying amid the rubble?”

  At last he understood my rage. He saw he could expect no assistance from me. He was, in my eyes, damned. Trying to destroy government, he would have destroyed me and my family. How could he expect me to forgive that?

  “I didn’t know they’d be there, Simon.”

  “You knew I would. You were prepared to see me killed.”

  “For the faith. Never for anything other than that.”

  “Me, my wife and child. You would have seen us torn to pieces, brother. So don’t harangue me about brotherhood or loyalty. They mean nothing to you.”

  And his face crumpled. My little brother’s face crumpled. The sobs tore at his breast just as the gunpowder would have torn mine, had his conspiracy succeeded.

  Sitting here now, by my fire, I can see his wretched features again. Despair ravaged, his hopes built up when he recognized me at last, only to be dashed to jagged, cruel splinters when I revealed my loathing for him.

  Except it wasn’t true. I still loved him.

  There was a knock at my door. A serving girl answered it, and soon thereafter my master was in my rude hall. I rose and offered him my seat, but with his customary generosity he waved me back into it and stood before my fireplace, holding his hands out to the flames. “You saw him?”

  “I did, my Lord.”

  “And he knows?”

  “Less than we’d hoped. He thinks he killed Tresham. Thinks he heard him screaming as he died here. The secret is safe.”

  “A good agent, Tresham. Or I should say Matthew Brunninge. You are sure that there was no hint that your brother knew of his escape?”

  “He has no idea that Tresham was your agent, nor that the confederate who rode with him to Tresham’s house was another of your men. He has no idea that Tresham has escaped to Spain. I am convinced of it.”

  “Good. In that case I must return to my house and prepare papers.”

  I saw him to the door. There was nothing else I could do. And as I stood there watching my Lord Salisbury walking with that long-legged stride of his, I wondered whether Tresham, or Brunninge as he now was, would ever be safe. No agent who could betray one side to another was ever entirely safe. Lord Salisbury was a man of honour, yes, but he was also pragmatic. I only prayed that I remained useful to him.

  So I shut the door and smiled thinly at my wife. She was safe, and our child was upstairs sleeping. I drank a quart of wine and stared into the fire for an hour or more before I could bestir myself to go to my bed, and strangely all the while I saw not my wife and child’s faces as I had earlier. No. Now I saw only poor Thomas’s features, agonized as he was hanged, castrated, and finally drawn.

  It was an appalling scene, made all the worse by the knowledge that I would have to witness it for my Lord Salisbury.

  Loyalty, under the new king, was more important than horror at seeing a brother butchered.

  A DISOBEDIENT DAUGHTER

  JEAN DAVIDSON

  Perhaps the greatest dramatist of the Jacobean age was John Webster, yet we know virtually nothing about him – perhaps even less than we know about Shakespeare. We know his father married in 1577 so Webster was probably born around 1579/80 and it is possible he was a coachmaker before he became involved in the theatre. The earliest reference to him as a playwright is in 1602 in connection with a now lost play, Caesar’s Fall. Most of his work was in collaboration with others apart from his two great plays, The White Devil (1609) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613). There is much darkness and violence in these plays, such that you can’t help but wonder what might lurk in Webster’s own life and origins.

  The following story is set early in Webster’s career, around 1606. Jean Davidson is the writing alias of editor and literary agent Dorothy Lumley. She has also written the Victorian romantic thriller A Bitter Legacy (1993) and the contemporary crime novel Guilt by Association (1997).

  John scarcely noticed that it was a bright spring day, albeit a chilly one. As he strode the mile or so down Holborn from the Inns of Temple towards Smithfield, with its stinks from the cattle market and slaughterouses, he felt his black mood settle even more heavily on his shoulders, his enemy of old. His family knew it only too well.

  “You’re a Changeling, I’m sure of it,” his mother used to remark when he was younger, the im
plication being, why can’t you be like Edward? His younger brother was warm and sunny where he, the eldest son, was stormy and dark. They knew to tread warily around him until the storm had passed.

  Perhaps it was the thought of a morning helping Edward work on their father’s accounts. He loved Edward and enjoyed his company, as he did all his family, but hours poring over Webster’s Wagon’s books, however healthy they were, filled him with gloom. Likewise the hours of pen scratching as a legal clerk. All he really wanted to do was sit in the ale houses and ordinaries with the actors from the Men from Blackfriars, Manager Henslowe, and his fellow scribblers such as Dekker and Myddleton. It was this that filled Webster Senior with gloom.

  But he had an inkling that there was a deeper, more hidden frustration. His writing skills were far below where he wanted them to be, and likewise his standing as a playwright. He could add his name to the others on the title page for the odd couplet, for sparking ideas, but working on his own was a struggle – slow and weary work to squeeze out a few lines. Even more hidden was that he had no belief yet in what he was doing. He hadn’t found what he wanted to say.

  Turning left under the archway into the yard he nearly collided with Rufus and Queen, his father’s oldest dray horses.

  “Whoa there, Master John, watch out. I’ve to be on my way as fast as I can.” The horses pulled his father’s oldest flatbed wagon and were being driven by the oldest driver, Sam.

  Frowning, John stood his ground. “Where can you be off to in such a hurry, Sam?”

  “Dead body. Found drownded in the Fleet Ditch. Sergeant wants it moving and we were the nearest but only this old wagon was left in the yard this morning.”

  “Dead bodies are always being dragged out of that foul sewer. You only have to breathe the contagion filled air over it to fall in. No one usually cares about those bodies – vagrants who’ve been camping out by St Paul’s and other sinks and stews usually. What’s different about this one?”

  “It’s a woman, a woman of title, so I heard.”

  John’s mood began to lighten at this distraction. “Then what’s holding you – let’s go.” He swung himself up beside the old man who picked up the reins and the horses moved out into the narrow street. John heard the rattle of a casement being opened above.

  “I thought you were coming to help me, John!”

  He looked up and saw his brother leaning out, grinning. His ruff was neat and white, the crown of his hat smooth and rounded, his fair hair tamed and straight. John tugged at his stained and untidy ruff and pushed a hand through his unruly black hair.

  “Later, brother, later. This intrigues me. Besides, I trust you to count our father’s gold!”

  “More fodder for your hack writing friends, you mean. Trust you to be cheered at the thought of viewing some poor bloated corpse.” Both young men grinned and waved to each other. Edward withdrew and closed the window, and John settled beside Sam as he forced his way through the throng and jostle of the narrow streets where vendor and hawker rubbed shoulders with high born and cleric alike and they were carried along by the din of a thousand voices, the clang of metalworkers, the trundling of barrows over cobbles. Soon St Paul’s tower rose majestic behind them, its environs haunted by whores and beggars, alongside publisher’s row and its fluttering pamphlets, and reminding John of the story of Jesus and the moneylenders in the temple.

  What a city London was. Not far away King James and his courtiers plotted and connived in the corridors of power at the Palace and in the Houses of Parliament, safe from Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators only last November. And beyond lay who knew what secrets were carried in the lives of the multitude of this city. From glittering palaces to the steamiest stews, like the contrast between the sweet River Thames with its gardens running down to iris-clad banks, and the stench of Fleet Ditch. Not an original thought, he knew, but none the less true for all that.

  And it was not, as Edward thought, that he relished looking at corpses. They did hold a fascination for him, it was true. The great mystery, the final tearing of the soul from the body and the transformation from the physical to the spiritual. But also, he longed for action, to be caught up in the pulse of this great city to be part of its lifeblood – that too lifted him out of himself and his dark thoughts.

  A small knot of men and one ancient crone standing close to the gluey mud and liquid that passed for water marked their journey’s end. Sam ceased his tuneless whistling and manoeuvred the wagon so that its rear end was to the Fleet.

  “At last, you’ve taken your time.” John recognized Sergeant Lightbody from the City of London watch, who managed to be dour and pompous at the same time. He was more pleased to see his second in command, Constable Jeremiah Smith, a young man whom John had met many times during his legal work at Middle Temple.

  While Sam soothed the old horses, and the Sergeant commanded his men over the disposition of the body, John greeted Jeremiah, who was looking paler than usual.

  “This is a terrible business, John. The messenger came to our gaol just after midday and we have been here for nearly two hours. It took us a long time to bring the body out, she’d become entangled with some branches down there . . .”

  “How was the corpse discovered?”

  “That old woman there.” Jeremiah pointed. The old crone was bent double with rheumatism, and her clothing was tatters and rags, but her eyes were bright with cunning and darted among those present.

  “No doubt waiting to see if she’ll receive a reward for her labours,” John remarked cynically. “D’you think she had anything to do with it?”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “Not strong enough. She was scavenging in these foul liquids, as she does every day, to see what might have been dropped here one way or another. She caught sight of some handsome threaded cloth and used her stick to try and pull it out, thinking to boil it clean and then sell it. After a while she caught sight of a hand, then some hair, and she gave a boy a coin to come and fetch us.”

  “I was right then, she still hopes to get something for her day’s work. She wasn’t going to leave the corpse unguarded for some other person to take her prize.” As if she heard his words, the old woman looked his way and John felt the chill of her cold eyes. “Sam said the body is a woman of noble birth.”

  “She wore just one piece of jewellery, most exquisite I was told, and her skin and hands are fine and soft.”

  The body, wrapped in a sheet, was being lifted onto the cart. The waterlogged clothes made it heavy and awkward to lift and the sheet slipped, exposing her face and upper garments.

  “As you can see,” Jeremiah went on sadly, as her swelling belly was now obvious, “she was expecting a child.”

  “I wonder how this accident befell her,” John said, stepping closer, thinking of her last moments as death closed in on her. What had been her last thoughts, for her child? For its father?

  “’Twas no accident,” Jeremiah said. “That’s why there’s such a turnout of the watch. We found a cord around her throat, pulled so tight it cuts into the flesh. The Sergeant told me, I could not look myself.”

  John shuddered, moving closer to the wagon. “A terrible crime.” He felt the shrouds of his earlier mood return. The day seemed darker for her violent death. The wind blew more icily, the faces of those around him took on a more sinister aspect. He took an involuntary step forward as they were closing the tailgate and the movement of the cart made her head loll to one side and her face was completely visible to him.

  He was later told he cried out. He did remember being consumed by murderous rage. He knew her. “Meg, little Margaret, who has done this to you?”

  Arms held him back or he’d have gathered her up and cut the cord from her neck, touched her eyelids with kisses. Choking, he struggled to break free, and then the rage left him. His mind began to whirl with questions. “Pregnant? By whom? When did she marry – we’ve heard nothing of this. I – don’t understand,” he gasped. “Who is her husband and where is he?” A
t the same time he pulled back the sheet further and another part of him registered that her clothes were, for one of her birth, cheaply made and she wore no jewels, and her hair was loose and unkempt making her look like a serving wench. “What has happened here?”

  Sergeant Lightbody positioned his solid bulk square in front of John, forcing him away from the wagon so that it could leave. “You knew this woman, Master Webster? Rather too well, it would seem from your outburst. When was the last time you saw her – this morning perhaps?”

  “Last year, in the summer, long before the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Jeremiah can vouch for that because he –”

  Jeremiah was retching into the Fleet, adding to its reek, but he managed to nod. “I did not recog–recognize her before,” he said through chattering teeth. “I tried not to look at her.”

  “She is – or was – the sister of Earl Derwent’s nephew, the one who is due to inherit if the Earl dies without issue. Richard is his name, and he studied with us at the Inns. He brought her to view our masques and she was beautiful then, innocent and lively. I partnered her in the dancing. What dreadful turn has her life taken?”

  The Sergeant’s severe expression did not relax. “A turn for the worse. And now we know her identity we can begin to establish the events that led to this. As soon as you give me directions to this young man’s lodgings, we can begin.”

  John did so, then added, “I heard she had gone into the country to stay with an elderly aunt. September it must have been.”

  Beside them Jeremiah coughed, his eyes watering. They turned to him. “I do know what course her life took,” he said miserably. “Richard revealed it to me but I had to swear not to tell anyone on pain of death because of the shame she had brought his family. Her aunt lived in Buckinghamshire, near Uxbridge, and there a lowly yeoman, who worked in the gardens of a great house there, took her fancy. Margaret turned her back on her home and family and married this common man in secret. Her family have disowned her. That’s all Richard told me – he’d drunk a great deal of Rhenish wine.”