The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  Francis said, “Joabin, I’m sorry. Your letter to Ann received no reply because she was already dead.” He went on gently, “I examined her body carefully. Your child was conceived around harvest-time.”

  Lady Eliza hissed: “Monster’s spawn.”

  “Be silent, my love.” Sir John struggled. I pricked him with the point.

  “When we knew God had blessed us,” Joabin admitted. “I begged her hand in marriage. She said yes, gladly. She begged her father’s permission but dared not tell him of the child. Even so Sir John said no time and again. He damned me. Damned us both, damned even his own daughter’s happiness, for we could never be happy apart. What else could we do, but meet in secret?”

  “Three months, perhaps four,” Francis said. “Ann knew it would show soon. Matters came to a head. She confronted her father at Christ’s-Mass, perhaps while the guests were blind with feasting downstairs, up in this very room where it was quiet. Both of them hot with wine – I see Sir John prefers brandy – she told him of the child. She told him that whatever his threats and forbiddings, she was determined to marry Joabin the Jew and bear their child honourably and openly, in wedlock.”

  “You repeat this unspeakable slur on my daughter at your peril,” Sir John said steadily. “I’ll sue you for every penny that hasn’t been taken from you already, you disgusting old sodomite. You and your prancing catamite, your Ganymede – d’you think people don’t know about you, you filthy homosexual?”

  Francis ignored him. “You saw the time for words was past. Women cannot be argued with once their minds are set; their love turns to scorn. You know you’d lost your daughter. When word came out that she was pregnant by a Christ-killer, your social standing and your career would be finished. You lost your mind. I suppose you lashed out. Ann ran from the house, ran towards the only safety she knew.”

  “She didn’t know I was in London,” Joabin whispered. “There was no safety in the village. My father would have handed her back. Jews can’t afford argument with Gentiles.”

  “You know this story of yours is impossible,” smiled Sir John at Sir Francis, like a man who wishes his smiling teeth could bite. “It’s February, and if matters had proceeded at Christ’s-Mass as you say, the body would be rotten by now.”

  “Nevertheless,” Francis said, “having made an hypothesis, I am obliged to test it. Major est vis instantiae negativae, the laws of nature cannot be verified, but they can be falsified. So can the laws of human nature, perhaps; a flaw makes the diamond shine, and so it is with the mind. Let us see by experiment. If anything I say is disproved, I must eliminate it from my hypothesis.” I kept the dagger pricking Sir John’s chin.

  “’Tis best done downstairs,” Francis said. “The innocent will be exonerated, the guilty given every chance to disprove their guilt, and I my chance to prove them worthy of the hangman.”

  The fire unlit; stone cold in the room. The melting body, under a coverlet, laid on the table. The vicar prayed, the watchman scratched his whiskers with his stick. Jack, too, had been sent for, terrified. Bart stared at some painting rather than acknowledge that terrible shape under the coverlet, the drip of icewater from her petticoats. Cambalaine held Joabin and Quinzy, then Francis shepherded Sir John and Lady Eliza into the room, and bade me stay by the chest as arranged.

  “Excellent,” Francis said, as though welcoming us to some party-gathering. “Thank you, vicar. I see we’re all here. Do sit, Lady Eliza.” He swept away the coverlet and we endured poor Ann’s frightful distorted stare, the shovel’s work.

  “The body’s fresh after six weeks,” I said, as he’d asked me to.

  “It is a law of nature,” Francis said just a little bit pompously, “a scientific fact that can be repeated by experiment, that below the freezing point of water, corruption of the flesh does not occur.” The vicar looked doubtful. Francis claimed, “I have myself proved this by stuffing the carcass of a chicken with snow. The experiment can be repeated any number of times without exception, and applies to all flesh whether chicken or human. Quod erat demonstrandum,” he beamed.

  “But it rained on Christ’s-Mass,” Joabin said. “At least, in London.”

  “Turned to snow about nine of the evening,” Cambalaine said. “I’d looked out thinking I heard someone, and saw it fell heavy.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Ann had already run from the house after the argument in the library. The sound you heard was the murderer returning.”

  “This is fatuous,” Sir John said. “Even if your hypothesis were correct, are you saying I pursued her? No one saw me. You’re a clever fool, my lord. After Ann rushed off pell-mell I sat by the open door of my library, collecting my feelings. Anyone could have seen me there.”

  “But did not.”

  He shrugged. “I know not.”

  “Ann tried to hide in the outhouse, then probably heard your front door slam, and ran when she saw her pursuer had a lamp – several are kept by the door. Enraged by her escape, guessing her destination to be the Jews, the murderer snatched up a shovel.”

  “I’d never mean to hurt my daughter. I know of no lamp.”

  Francis turned to me. I opened the chest where he’d bade me conceal various items, and pulled out the lamp.

  “This lamp,” Francis said. “Splashed with mud. And here, the smear where it was dropped.” I showed them. “Replaced among the others as if nothing had happened.” He went on, “Ann caught her hair in the gorse by Long Ditch.” He held up the pallid forearm, scratched. “Brambles; she jumped the ditch into Two-Acre Field. This morning we followed her footprints and those of her pursuer across the mud, and found her shoe.” I held up her red shoe. “Only one. Yet she ran on with both feet bare, her toes clearly imprinted. What size, good Toby?”

  “Eight and eight-tenths inches,” I said. “I measured them.”

  Francis took the foot-rule and held it to the body’s foot. “Eight and eight-tenths inches. Not the same size as the prints left by her pursuer. Ann was weary from the chase, the rain was heavy, she discarded her festive dress to run faster. She ran into Old Wood. There, deep in the wood, she was finally caught and beaten with a frenzy of shovel blows; the shovel dropped by the murderer in horror, or remorse, or satisfaction at a job well done. By then rain turned to snow. The murderer returned to the house, leaving no further prints in the mud to show their return, but only in the overlying snow.”

  “Now gone,” Sir John said. “Your evidence is melted.”

  “Not all,” Francis said equably. “In the deep woodland shadows this morning, some remained. Complete with prints. Not all near the body, indeed none were. Toby, what size were they?”

  “Eleven inches and a quarter.”

  “Allow me, Sir John.” Francis held the rule to Sir John’s boot. “Eleven and a quarter.”

  Sir John tried to brazen it out. “Coincidence.”

  “Hundreds of them,” Francis said. “Toby found one half a mile from the body. Because when, calmly, you went early next morning to hide evidence of the crime and bury the body, you couldn’t find it. Everything was smooth white snow. Trailing footprints as you were, you couldn’t search too obviously or too long lest questions were asked; but you turned up one red shoe in the field.”

  I held up a red shoe. “From Ann’s bedroom, cleaned as though nothing happened. Only one. Doubtless Sir John intended adding the other when melting snow revealed it.”

  “But the snow didn’t melt,” Francis said bleakly. “Not all through January, not until now, when we found the shoe this morning not he. And the footprints ran from the house preserved in mud. What of her dress?” He pretended thought. “Red shoes, a difficult match with any colour but red . . . a red dress, I’d say.”

  “A lovely choice.” I lifted a heavy red velvet dress I’d taken from her wardrobe. “Washed.” Then I turned the hem inside-out. “Mudstains.”

  “Oh,” Sir John said.

  “Oh,” Francis agreed
, patiently.

  “Everything you say is true,” confessed Sir John. “I couldn’t find her body.” He broke down. “I couldn’t find where my dear daughter lay.”

  “A confession!” said the watchman. “Sir John Tyrambel, I arrest you –”

  “Father, no!” Bart cried. “My lord, he’s a good man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  Francis pointed at the body. “Note she wears mistletoe in her hair, a pagan symbol permitted only on Christ’s-Mass Day and no other. ’Tis the clinching proof she died on that day.” We stared at her bare chestnut locks.

  “What mistletoe?” I asked, primed.

  Francis plucked a sprig of crumpled mistletoe from Sir John’s pocket, chestnut hairs still wound around the stalk. “He took it as he stroked her hair this morning. He’s had all this time to think, worry, plot and plan how to cover his tracks, if you’ll pardon the expression. He had to hide the mistletoe linking Ann’s death with Christ’s-Mass, when Joabin had a perfect alibi. He invented ill health for Ann, a convalescence with Aunt Salomana. He planned to shift the murder onto poor Joabin, when the body was found apparently freshly murdered, as last night. A Jew living among Jews, and half the town owing them money, wouldn’t get a jury finding him innocent. When the innocent hang, the guilty go free. So, an atrocious crime in every respect, Sir John. A murder not only of your daughter, but of a mother and her unborn child, and an attempt to arrange the judicial murder of that child’s innocent Jewish father.

  “But,” he said, “you did not commit it.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I killed her!” cried Sir John. “I killed her.”

  Francis held up the foot-rule. “I forgot to mention that the pursuer’s tracks across the mud – made before the snow fell – were not eleven inches and a quarter, but nine inches exactly.” He handed the rule to me. “Bart, if you please.”

  I measured Bart’s feet. “Ten and two-tenths.” I measured Jack’s foot, only one-tenth more.

  Francis said, “And now Lady Eliza.”

  I knelt. “I don’t think this will be necessary,” she said.

  “My love, say nothing!” urged Sir John.

  I grabbed her foot and held it to the rule. “Nine inches dead,” I said.

  She stood proudly. “I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to kill his monster.” She pointed quivering fingers at Joabin. “His monstrous Jew-child that she carried within her. Yes, I knew.” Before I could stop her she leapt, beating Joabin with her fists in a sudden hysteria, beating the air even as I dragged her off, so my mind’s eye saw all too clearly the frenzy with which she’d beaten her daughter to death.

  “The only monster here is you and your crime, Lady Eliza.” Then Francis pointed at Sir John. “And you, for covering up. You’ll both swing.” He turned to me with a grim smile. “I rest my hypothesis.”

  Our carriage swayed towards London. “Sir John had a head of oak,” Francis nodded, “but Lady Eliza’s brain was cold sharp ice.” On his lap lay the large, heavy, mysterious paper bag he’d insisted on bringing with him. Naturally I felt rejected.

  “Eavesdropping’s a sin,” he mused, his cheeks flushed, always a sign of strong-felt passion with him. “She should never have listened by the open library door and overheard her daughter’s confession. She should never have hated Jews, there was no reason for it. And Sir John should never have loved such a wife enough to hang with her.”

  “Your passion does you credit,” I complimented him, hoping some would come my way. “There’s a fine colour in your cheeks.”

  “Passion, Ganymede? I’ve more credit than passion.” He rubbed his hands. “A hundred pounds at thirty per cent, thanks to Joabin! What a bargain.” But still he stared from the window.

  “What do you search for?” I asked at last, baffled.

  “Ah, there it is!” His knock stopped the driver by a deep gully where snow survived. Rummaging in the bag he withdrew a plucked, drawn chicken. “You remember, dearest Ganymede, my case rested on frozen meat remaining fresh. I deceived Sir John. I have never in fact tested that hypothesis.” He leapt down and commenced busily stuffing the chicken with snow. “A flaw I must remedy. In the service of justice I’ve been guilty, it seems, of falsification!”

  THE RESTLESS DEAD

  MARTIN EDWARDS

  James I died in 1625 and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Charles. Whilst we have now technically moved beyond the Jacobean period we are still firmly in the same world and beliefs.

  The following story is based on a real case, that of Arthur and Mary Norcott, which may be found in the Newgate Calendar for 1629. You can find an account of it on the internet at http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng11.htm though Martin Edwards has adapted it for his own purposes. It answers the original query that I had that they allowed exhumations this long ago.

  Martin Edwards (b. 1955) is a solicitor in Liverpool, and the author of the Harry Devlin series of novels which began with All the Lonely People (1991). He has also compiled several anthologies including one of historical mysteries, Past Crimes (1998).

  What if he is not dead?

  George Dakin shivered. By way of compensation for the cold of the night-time graveyard, his imagination was overheating. A twelvemonth of studying dusty legal tomes had not sapped his yearning for romance and mystery; nor had his principal’s strictures that the business of the man of law was logic, not lurid speculation. Their nocturnal work was grim and distasteful, but he could not resist a shudder of morbid pleasure. This was his first exhumation.

  An east wind howled through the trees. The sea coast was no more than five furlongs distant and George could taste salt in the air. Few places on earth, he would be bound, were as bleak as his native Northumberland in February. But he, like the others gathered around the hole in the ground, was too engrossed to quail at the bite of the wintry gusts. The onlookers huddled closer together as the sexton knocked a clod of earth from his shovel. The soil smelled damp. The candle held by the churchwarden cast a flickering light and George saw the vicar’s fleshy jowls wobbling with ill-concealed excitement as he gazed down into the grave. Crouched next to the parson was William Crozier, the coroner and George’s principal. Crozier was as lean as the man of God was stout. His nose was quivering; he might have been a bloodhound on a scent.

  The candles wavered and George glimpsed a blind cherub guarding a small family vault beneath a gnarled oak. Henry Stokoe’s last resting place was marked by a simple stone bearing his name, the dates of his birth and death and the words requiescat in pacem. An ordinary grave – until the arrival of the coroner’s jury’s at dead of night, to witness the disinterring of his corpse.

  One of the jurors whispered to his neighbour. “Watch for movement!” A tall man waved his wooden stick. “This is nonsense!” he said to the young fellow at his side.

  Yet although he shared John Laidlaw’s sturdy scepticism, George knew that many folk believed in the legend that, while flesh remains, a body is still capable of walking. The tell-tale signs of the restless dead are visible on exhumation. The best insurance against becoming such an unhappy creature is to lead a blameless life ending in a good death. Henry Stokoe was a Godfearing man, a staunch churchgoer. Yet his life had been marred by tragedy; his wife had died in childbirth and his own passing had scarcely been peaceful. No, not even the parson, accomplished at making light of any unpleasantness, could describe Henry’s as a good death.

  Wood splintered. The sexton was panting. George clenched his fists and swallowed hard. He wanted to look, despite knowing that what he would see when the coffin was opened would make his knees shake and his stomach churn.

  George glanced towards Henry’s sister, standing a yard away from John Laidlaw. Agnes Stokoe was a woman of appealing aspect, but throughout the course of the inquest her distress had been palpable. More than once she had shed a tear. George was glad of the darkness, not wanting to behold her misery. Behind her was the trembling figure of Mary, the dead man’s daugh
ter. She was a pretty dark-haired girl, no more than fifteen years of age. Her lovely features reminded George of Agnes, although the round fullness of her cheeks was at odds with her slender frame. She had fainted prior to being called to give her testimony, compelling Crozier to adjourn the proceedings. Thankfully, she was soon revived and gave her evidence in a faltering tone. George’s heart went out to her on this bitter night, when her father’s body was being snatched from its resting place.

  The coffin lid began to crack. George held his breath.

  Mary retched loudly and someone in the crowd hissed in agony.

  “No!”

  And then the girl’s aunt let out a scream that rent the night asunder.

  The jury had previously viewed the body during the course of the inquest. At that point, few questions arose and they were inclined to give up a verdict of felo de se. It was a logical conclusion, for according to the depositions of the deceased’s sister and daughter, no likely alternative presented itself. Henry’s body had been discovered by Agnes when she came to rouse him early one February morning. Widowed a few months before Henry lost his own wife, she had come to live with her brother, to look after the child while he carried on his trade. The work of a baker begins at crack of dawn and Henry was invariably out of bed long before Agnes. When she did not hear him moving around in his room, preparing for the day’s endeavours, anxiety seized her and she went to his room to enquire whether he was ailing. What she found, she told the hushed court, she would never forget.

  Henry was lying on the bed with his throat cut. A knife from the kitchen was lying on the floor. There was a great deal of blood.

  Could it have been murder? Both examinants, the aunt and the daughter, insisted that no intruder could have entered the house without their knowledge. The baker slept in the largest room in the house, which occupied the whole of the top storey. It was reached by a creaking staircase that ran past the tiny chambers where Mary and Agnes slept. The door to the street had been locked. It was inconceivable, they asseverated, that any intruder could have entered the building, ascended two winding flights of stairs, murdered Stokoe, and then retraced his footsteps, without disturbing anyone else in the house. Agnes and Mary were light sleepers – as Henry had been – but neither of them had heard a sound.