When she saw her husband next, he looked at her searchingly – almost insultingly. He seemed to know by instinct that she had come from reading that letter. He was about to speak to her, when Crisp entered to beg of her to come to see his wife – to take leave of her for ever. The doctor had assured him he said, through his sobs, that she could not last another day.
She hastened away with him, thereby evading the explanation with her husband which she felt was inevitable. She did not stay long by the side of the dying woman.
The poor creature was now unconscious except at rare intervals, and Caroline perceived that the doctor’s prediction would be realized: she would not live for many hours.
On her way back to her lodgings she came face to face with Burt. The hour was dusk and the lane leading off Holborn was narrow. She would have avoided him if she could, but it was clear to her that he had been lying in wait for her. He admitted as much.
He caught her hand, saying in a passionate whisper:
“My life, my soul, I saw you go forth, and I looked for you to return sooner. You got my letter? Ah, my Caroline, words are too feeble to express what is in my heart. You love me – I can swear that you love me.”
He had put an arm about her, and, although she struggled, he was drawing her to him. She cried out, and, making a great effort, freed herself. She stood before him with outstretched hands, breathing quickly from the force of her struggle.
“Wretch – scoundrel – murderer!” she cried. “How durst you talk of loving me? How durst you talk of my loving you – whom I loathe, not love? And now – now – at this moment when I come from the death-bed of one of your victims.”
“You are a mad woman!” he cried. “A mad woman! What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are the murderer of poor Henrietta Crisp as surely as if you had steeped your hands in her blood,” she said. “And you would murder me just as surely, were I to trust you for one hour. Move back, sir – let me pass.”
He did not move. It seemed to her that he was overcome by surprise. Had he never failed before, she wondered.
“Let me pass,” she cried again.
“Yes,” he said in a low voice. “Yes, I shall let you pass. But – what is’t that you have said – murder – I – a murderer? You have said it. You have said that I would murder you were you to trust me.” Then he put his face close to hers and she saw the malignant expression that it wore as he whispered:
“You will be compelled to trust me once, and you have spoke your own doom.”
“Liar and villain!” she cried. “I will never trust you – never! You know it – you know that I will never cease to loathe you.”
He gave a laugh, then a mocking bow, as he stood to one side, and she walked past holding her head high.
Burt watched her until she had disappeared. Then he cursed through his set teeth, and struck the palm of his left hand with his right fist. He had played the villain so often on the stage that the technique of the part came as second nature to him.
“Curse her!” he muttered after the fashion of the stage villain. “Curse her! but she has spoke her doom; I’ll take care that her words come true.”
He gave another laugh, and a savage oath tripped up its heels, so to speak. Then he walked on, and James Hughes came out of the doorway where he had been hiding, and restored to its sheath the long knife that he held bare in his right hand.
He looked after the other man, thinking:
“What doth he mean? What doth he mean?”
All the rest of the night that question remained in his mind:
“What doth he mean? What doth he mean?”
It was not until the tragedy of “Othello,” which was produced the next afternoon, was approaching its close, that the answer to that question seemed to come to him. He was at the back of the stage, and from this standpoint he had watched the effect of his wife’s representation of Desdemona, upon the people in the playhouse. He heard the tumult of applause that greeted the first appearance of a woman in the character of the gentle lady, and he saw that Burt was surpassing all his previous efforts in the part of the Moor. Then suddenly the answer to his question flashed upon him.
He had moved to one side to allow the scene-shifters to put the rude bed for the last scene in its place. The sight of the bed and its pillows suggested the answer. He staggered against the wall, whispering:
“My God – my God!”
In a moment he had regained his self-possession, and had slipped across the stage and hidden himself behind the flowing curtains of Desdemona’s bed. The scene-shifters had gone to another part of the stage, and by accommodating himself to the heavy folds of the drapery, he knew that he should be as invisible to any one on the stage as he should be to the audience in the theatre.
A moment after he had concealed himself, his wife came down the stage and took her place on the bed. Then the curtain was raised, and after a breathless moment for the high-strung playgoers, the low voice of Othello was heard repeating the sublime passage:
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars.
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die.
Put out the light, and then put out the light.
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister.
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have plucked the rose
I cannot give it vital growth again
It needs must wither.
What words they were! thought the man who was in hiding. What sublime words!
And then he drew his knife from its sheath as Othello bent for a moment over Desdemona.
Would he kiss her?
If Burt had kissed her, her husband would have put his knife back into its sheath, feeling that the wrong answer to his previous question had been suggested to him.
He saw that Burt avoided kissing her; and then her husband felt with his forefinger the point of the knife.
He heard nothing of the words that followed – the brief dialogue that followed the awaking of Desdemona – it seemed long to him. He waited until the frenzied Othello had raised the pillow in both hands and brought it down – it was no simulated expression of murder that was in his eyes – the actress saw it and shrieked out “Murder!” sending a thrill through the house, and then the pillow fell full upon her face stifling her second cry.
“No, there will be no murder,” whispered her husband swaying the curtain, so that when Burt raised his eyes – a look of startled fear had taken the place of the murderous glance – they saw that knife raised over him ready to pierce his throat.
With a cry of dread his hands loosed upon the pillow with which he was crushing the life out of the woman on the bed, not in pretence, but in deadly earnest. He fell upon his knees trembling with fear, and then came the loud knocking of Emelia.
“You have saved yourself, you hound!” said Hughes in his ear. “If you had kept it on her face for another instant you would have been a dead man.”
“My love – my husband – it was you who saved me!” sobbed Caroline in the arms of her husband a quarter of an hour later, when the playgoers had shouted themselves hoarse at the close of the drama. “He forced himself upon me – he swore to murder me when I repulsed him.”
“I heard him then, but only half-an-hour ago I knew what he meant,” said her husband. “Ah, my dear wife, do you fancy I doubted you for a moment? Nay, dear one, I only wished you to realize to the full what ’twas to be the innocent wife of a jealous man.”
“I did realize it,” she said slowly, after a long pause.
They supped that night with Sir
Edmondbury Godfrey, and returned home shortly after nine. Then James Hughes went to a neighbour of his who was a baiter of horses, and borrowed from him a well-knotted postillion’s whip. He went to Burt’s lodgings. Lights were in the windows. He knocked at the door, and pushed past the woman who admitted him.
“Mr Burt – I must see him,” he said. “Which room is he in?”
The woman pointed to a door. He opened it. The room was full of people. They stood around a table on which a dead body was laid. A man moved aside and disclosed to him the face of the corpse – the face of Richard Burt.
“Lord have mercy upon us!” said Hughes. “How did this happen?”
“Run through the vitals on his way from the playhouse,” whispered a watchman.
He had not reached his own door before he was met by Crisp.
“She died at five o’clock, and he died before St Giles’ clock had chimed six,” said he.
Hughes kept his eyes fixed upon him and nodded twice.
“Ah, you think that I am a murderer,” cried the man.
“No – no,” said Hughes solemnly. “He was the murderer. You are the sword of a just God.”
THE DUMB BELL
KATE ELLIS
We are still in the post-Cromwellian struggle to return to some form of normality in this most unusual story. Kate Ellis (b. 1953 – the first New Year’s baby in Liverpool that year) is the author of the Wesley Peterson archaeological mysteries that began with The Merchant’s House (1998) and which link past events with present-day crimes.
My jowls sagged, as did my belly, and my looking-glass mocked me whenever I examined my image. Once I was strong. I fought with the King against Cromwell’s army at Marston Moor and then at Naseby before the cause was lost. But that was five and twenty years since and the body turns fat and weak with age.
I was in much need of exercise, for a man with a young and comely wife must do his best to regain the strength of his youth if she is not to seek satisfaction elsewhere. Experience has taught me that women are weak vessels, never to be trusted. And the example set by our new King of late has caused piety and propriety to count for nought.
Mindful of this, I resolved to take up some suitable pastime to exercise my body and reinvigorate my mind. Bell ringing being considered a suitable recreation for a gentleman, I gave orders that a curious contraption – such as I observed at Lord Westham’s house at Burton – should be constructed at Mereton Hall. I had great hopes that my new dumb bell – for that is what it is commonly called – would endow me with new vigour. It was many months since I rang a bell at the church of Saint Giles, and then the effort left me weak and short of breath. But if I accustomed my body once more to the exertion, I hoped that I would, in the future, feel able to perform without disgrace.
My manservant, Cooke, supervised the labourers from my estate who constructed my dumb bell. The contrivance was placed in the attic above an unused chamber – left empty and unfurnished since my first wife, Mary, died there – which some of the ignorant servants, in their silly superstition, refuse to enter.
The contraption consists of two upright posts, joined by an iron cross bar, rather resembling the form of a gallows. Around this bar is a wooden cylinder with two iron rods passed through it and at the ends of the rods there are weights of lead. A rope is wound around the cylinder and passed through the floor of the attic to dangle into the room below. One tug causes this rope to be drawn up with considerable force and wound back and forth around the cylinder, thus imitating the action of a church bell as it swings upon its wheel. Such instruments are, increasingly of late, used by gentlemen of fashion who desire to strengthen their bodies and I had high hopes of it.
Once the labourers had completed their task, I was impatient to try out this new plaything. I asked Cooke to accompany me for I have a great affection for the young man who has been in my service only since Candlemas. He is tall and well favoured with fair curls and the bluest of eyes. When I look at him I am reminded a little of myself in the days of my youth when I was strong of arm and spirit and fought valiantly for my King against his enemies in Parliament. The days before my first wife, Mary, betrayed me and was punished for her indiscretions.
I took off my coat and, dressed only in shirt and breeches, I caught hold of the rope attached to my dumb bell. I gave a wary tug and the rope shot upwards with great force, and when it descended I caught it in the middle, still clinging to the tail end with my left hand. I pulled thus for three minutes until my heart began to race and beads of perspiration soaked my brow.
Cooke stood near to the window watching me, and when I was finished I turned, hoping that I would not see a smile of mockery on his soft lips. But I saw nothing in his expression but pity. And perhaps that is worse.
I wiped my brow before donning my coat and leaving the chamber but I saw Cooke shiver. Perhaps it had been cold in that place but my exertions had made me oblivious to the chill. I have heard the servants say that Mary’s spirit walks there. But I shall not believe it. Her soul is in hell, paying for her sins on earth.
And now it seems I must endure a second misfortune, for I have observed my wife, Annabella, talking with a young man near the gate to the kitchen garden. A well-favoured young man of around her own age. I thought Annabella meek and loyal when I took her for my wife. But all women are stained with the sins of Eve.
The name of the man in question is James Vilton and he is staying with Sir William at the Manor House in Paleby, a mile from here. It is well known that he has come from the King’s court in London – a fact that impresses the ladies, especially those like Annabella whose lives have been spent in the countryside. His coat and breeches are bright and trimmed with ribbons, as is the mode at court, and he wears a full wig of luxuriant, dark curls, aping the fashion set by His Majesty. It is said that the court of this second Charles is full of vice and is a haven for libertines, for our new King lacks sorely his sainted father’s inclination to marital fidelity and, with his return, no trace remains of Master Oliver Cromwell’s taste for restraint and piety. It is from this den of lust and depravity that Master Vilton has descended upon our community like a strutting peacock. And it is my wife – my lovely young ewe lamb – who appears to have taken his eye.
I practise at my dumb bell twice each day, morning and night. My wife, Annabella has not enquired about it nor has she asked to see it. She seems much preoccupied and Cooke told me that he saw her walking with her maid, Ursula – a plain, stupid girl with a round, moon face who once served my late wife with dumb devotion – towards the Manor House at Paleby.
I wondered then if I should set Cooke to follow her. He seems keen for the task – his loyalty being to his master like any good manservant – but I do not wish to act hastily. At my request he questioned Ursula discreetly but she told him nothing. Probably the girl is too foolish and unobservant to have noticed anything amiss.
On Sunday myself and my household attended church as usual and I saw that the popinjay Vilton had discarded his wig and beribboned coat to catch hold of a rope and was ringing the second bell with great skill. I resolved to invite him to try my dumb bell, thinking he would believe the invitation to be made in the spirit of friendship and suspect nothing of my true motive.
I know that I must make no move without proof of my wife’s perfidy. And yet I begin to feel such jealousy, such suspicion, that I cannot rest. I think of all I have heard of the King’s court, of the mire from which the creature, Vilton, has emerged. Of the whores – high born as well as low – and the licentiousness that has infected a people once repressed by the fear of God and Master Cromwell’s joyless rule. The seduction of Annabella would be nothing to Vilton and my hatred and anger increases daily.
As my heart aches so do my shoulders from my unaccustomed exercise on the dumb bell. I have asked Cooke to rub my flesh to ease the discomfort. He has most gentle hands, almost like a woman’s.
I cannot rest. I have to know if Annabella is unfaithful. The thought eats away
at my heart like a worm eats the flesh of the dead. It is common knowledge that Vilton frequents the alehouse in the village and I plan to go there and speak with him. I must know the truth of the matter. And it is certain that Annabella will confess nothing.
I went last night to the Blue Boar but I did not venture inside. Instead I looked into the window, pressing my nose against the windows like some outcast or vagrant to look with longing at the fire lit scene within.
I saw Vilton in the midst of a group of men, some of them his fellow bell ringers – and they seemed to hang on his every word as he regaled them with stories, no doubt of his exploits at King Charles’s debauched court. There were occasions when I was a young man when I would enjoy the bodies of girls, whores and virgins alike, with the desperate lust of any man who might die the next day in bloody battle. I used the services of the harlots who followed the King’s army around the countryside and I did foolish things which I think of now with regret. And yet I never seduced another man’s wife. I was never as sinful as this vile Vilton. Does not the sixth commandment forbid adultery?
I watched him there, laughing with his fellows, a cockerel amongst the dull village birds, without a care for the husband he makes a cuckold, and anger and bitter envy rose within me like an overwhelming flood. When he departed, I followed him a little way behind, like a robber with a pair of pistols primed ready, and I was sorely tempted to strike him there and then in the dark of the lane leading to the Manor.
Yet some nagging voice within me urged caution. I told myself that the man might be innocent of any wrongdoing. Perhaps my first wife Mary’s infidelities with my son’s tutor have unhinged my judgement. Perhaps I am seeing sin where none exists. I have to be sure.
I have resolved to set Cooke to spy upon my wife. It is the only way I will obtain my proof. Then I shall strike.
Cooke assured me that he has seen nothing untoward between Vilton and my wife. But by his manner, I am certain that he lied. Perhaps he fears that I would be unable to control my fury if what I suspect is true.
The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits Page 40