The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  “Then we will arrest you in that name, though we know full well that you are Count Konigsmark. Your countrymen will be shocked to learn that one of the leading figures in their kingdom is party to a brutal murder.” He snapped his fingers. “Take him.”

  The two officers grabbed hold of the man. He was outraged.

  “Is this the way you treat innocent people in England?” he protested. “You have made a terrible mistake.”

  “It was you who made the mistake,” said Christopher, indicating the letter. “You should not have sent word to Captain Vrats that you were leaving Gravesend on a Swedish ship this morning. We found this in his cabin when we arrested him. I’ve ridden through the night to catch up with you, Count Konigsmark.”

  “I committed no crime.”

  “You paid others to do it for you and that is just as bad. And if you are as innocent as you pretend, why are you sneaking away in disguise with a false passport?”

  Konigsmark was trapped. He was hopelessly outnumbered and was, in any case, unarmed. There was no point in further denial.

  “Tell these men to unhand me,” he said, peremptorily, “I demand the right to be treated with respect.”

  “You did not treat Thomas Thynne with respect.”

  “Mr Thynne was a fool.”

  “Yet it was he whom Lady Ogle married and not you.” Christopher saw the flash of anger in the other man’s eyes. “I know that you courted her as well for a time. Was that why you had Mr Thynne ambushed in Westminster? Were you racked with envy?”

  “I would never envy such a man. He was beneath contempt.”

  “From what I hear, he did not have too high a regard for you either.” Konigsmark scowled. “Is that what provoked your ire? Were you upset by slighting remarks that Mr Thynne made about you?”

  “He should have remembered who I am,” growled the other.

  “Save your breath for the trial,” advised Christopher, slipping the letter back into his pocket. “Captain Vrats is languishing in prison with two other villains. You will soon join them.”

  The officers tried to move him away. Konigsmark held his ground.

  “I am a member of the Swedish aristocracy,” he said with dignity, “and I insist on the privileges due to my rank.”

  “Of course,” said Christopher with a deferential smile. “I’ll make absolutely sure that you are hanged first.”

  In fact, Count Konigsmark did not hang at all. Captain Vrats, Lieutenant Stern and Borosky were found guilty of murder and were hanged in the street where the crime occurred. At the Old Bailey trial, Konigsmark was charged with being an accessory but he was acquitted. Captain Vrats went to his death with remarkable equanimity. His body was then embalmed by a new method devised by William Russell, an undertaker. When he was shipped back to Germany fifteen days after execution, the body of Captain Vrats was in an exceptional state of preservation.

  THE PHILADELPHIA SLAUGHTERMAN

  IAN MORSON

  Just as with New York, the site that became Philadelphia was originally a Dutch trading post established in 1623. However the real birth of Philadelphia was in 1681 when Charles II granted a charter to William Penn. The town’s name means “city of brotherly love”, but unfortunately by the start of the twenty-first century Philadelphia topped the list in the number of violent crimes amongst American cities. Ian Morson follows that back to how it might have all begun. Morson (b. 1947) is the author of the William Falconer series set in thirteenth-century Oxford which began with Falconer’s Crusade (1994).

  1

  After the death of Peter Rokesby – the fourth brutal murder in a week in Philadelphia in the sixth year of the city – the Middle Colonies of the Americas were in turmoil. Pennsylvania’s famed enlightened tolerance had flown out of the window, banished by each honest citizen’s fear and suspicion of virtually everyone else in the city of Philadelphia. Questions were being asked about any Papists who lived nearby. Or odd fellows like Dutchmen. Or them redskin savages downriver. Or that black slave that lived in the old Hendricksen shack down by the docks, pretending to be civilized. He was surely reckoned capable of the most primitive of savagery. And truly, the murders had been uncivilized and savage according to all reports.

  For himself, John Adams kept his own counsel, and the shack door closed. What else could a black-skinned, former indentured servant from the Bermudas do? Most people thought he was an African slave who had escaped the plantations in the West India colonies. And, as such, he had been made welcome in the Quaker province of Pennsylvania. Quakers were, after all, firmly anti-slavery. The truth of the matter was that Adams had been born in England, albeit of an African slave father, and had been a free man until sentenced to be hanged for a petty theft he had not actually committed. With his sentence humanely commuted, he was shipped as a convict to the Bermudas, where he laboured in the sugar plantations along with other black men who did not understand he was an Englishman, and whose strange tongues he did not know. When his chance came to escape on a ship named Stockton, he had taken it. The ship had eventually docked on the east coast of the American colonies, at a shore called Coaquanock. Deciding it was best to hide in full sight, John had settled in Philadelphia, the growing new capital of Pennsylvania, nestled between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. The frontier-minded English Quakers had approved of his willingness to work, welcoming him into their industrious and self-sufficient community.

  Or so he had thought. Now, with four men dead, anyone who was different was falling under suspicion – and John Adams was patently different, even though he dressed in the same simple knee-breeches and rough shirt as his neighbours, and favoured the tall-crowned and wide-brimmed black felt hat everyone wore to keep the sun off their faces. But the problem was his face was already dark, betraying the colouring of his father, and not his fair-skinned English mother. Though his neighbours’ faces turned dark in the sun, they would never match the hue of John Adams’s features. It was those features that faced James Bunce when he went to see Adams at his shack.

  Bunce, the keeper of William Penn’s Great Law in Philadelphia, knocked loudly at the open door. At first, John welcomed him in his usual friendly manner. The day was humid, and Adams had hurried home to cool off, before finishing the stacking of Bowater’s produce ready for shipping. Giving Bunce no more than a glance, he pulled off his shirt and splashed cold water over his face.

  “Come in, James Bunce. The door is open, and you are always welcome. You know that.”

  He scrubbed wearily at his face with a work-callused hand, feeling the stubble that had sprouted on his chin since the morning. Doubtless, when he had last drawn the knife-blade over his chin, he would have had no greater cares than ensuring the transport to the docks of Simon Bowater’s hemp and flax. True, he must have been as uneasy as anyone about the deaths that had occurred recently. But he wouldn’t have feared for himself. Until now, when he was to learn of Rokesby’s death, and the suspicions that were falling on him.

  Bunce stood in the doorway, unsure how to proceed. The ensuing silence made John cease his ablutions, and pay more attention to his visitor. Bunce had never been so uncomfortable before, and now felt positively shifty. He couldn’t bear to look John in the eye, and stood in the doorway, turning the brim of his tall hat nervously in his big fists. As his feet shifted on the elderly timber of the porch, it creaked uneasily. When Bunce spoke at last, it was with a crack in his voice.

  “John, I must ask you where you were this morning.”

  John Adams suddenly sensed the strange awkwardness that had come between them – a barrier that had never existed before. What he did not immediately fathom was the cause for it to be thrown up.

  “Why must you ask that of me, James Bunce?”

  Of course, in one sense, he knew the answer. Bunce was his friend, but he also acted locally for the Government of Pennsylvania as law-keeper. He was clearly at Adams’s door in that capacity. What Adams didn’t know was why him, and why now? Bunce gave a low groan.<
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  “Don’t make this any more difficult than it is, John. There has been another murder, and I must execute my duties as best I can. Besides, I am answerable to a higher authority.”

  “I thought the only higher authority here was the Lord our God.” As soon as he said the words, Adams realized how bitter, how sanctimonious they sounded, and wished he could retract them. But they were said, and he could only hope that they would not irreparably damage his friendship with Bunce. Adams had too few real friends in the community to be pushing one of them away. For the moment, the words chilled the air between the two men, and Bunce chose to respond with coldness and formality.

  “You well know to whom I am referring.”

  Adams did know. Friend Edward Wilson wielded a heavy hand of authority over Quaker Philadelphia. And his attitude sometimes set him at odds with the mood of careless generosity and shrewd self-help that characterized his fellow settlers in the Province. But his piety was never in doubt, nor his scrupulous attention to the application of the Great Law established by the Founder, William Penn. John Adams, however, found him a sour-faced, and pettifogging individual. Perforce in such a self-sufficient community, they had met on several occasions, neither man taking to the other. So it should have come as no surprise that John Adams should be offered up by Wilson as a suspect in a case of murder. But still Bunce was a little ashamed he had not immediately defended him to Edward Wilson, refusing even to consider him. Maybe their friendship wouldn’t survive this. “Another murder, you said. Who is the victim this time?”

  “Peter Rokesby, the butcher, who trades down First Street.”

  Adams was saddened by this news. Rokesby had been a good man, and maybe of all the Quakers in the city had been the most outspoken against slavery. Pennsylvania could ill spare such a man.

  “How did he die?”

  Without quite knowing why, Bunce suddenly clammed up, staring hard at his one-time friend. He was an outsider, and a black man, after all.

  “Just say to me, John, where you were since last night.”

  “So it’s from last night, now, that I must account for myself. Not just this morning.”

  The lawman lowered his gaze, but stood his ground. This was unpleasant, but it had to be done. The brim of his hat suffered under the increasingly sweaty ministrations of his palms. Adams sighed, and pulled his shirt back over his head, scrubbing the coarse cotton against his wet torso to dry himself.

  “As you know full well, James Bunce, I have no one to share my house and bed. Last night or any night. So you must take my word that when I had finished storing Simon Bowater’s crops yesterday, I returned home. I cooked some corn-meal up and ate alone, read from the Bible by the last nubbin-end of my only candle, and retired to my bed when it failed not long after sunset. The passage I was reading, by the way, was from the First Letter of John – the Recall to Fundamentals. The call to love one another, as love is from God.”

  It was Bunce’s turn to sigh now. This time with impatience. His friend was testing him, knowing full well that he was conversant with the passage in question. He was stung to retort in kind.

  “Aye. And in the same letter, John asks who is the liar. Who but he that denies that Jesus is Christ.”

  Adams grinned briefly, having at least succeeded in riling Bunce, but then carried on with the detailing of his recent activities.

  “This morning, after a particularly good night’s sleep, I arose at dawn. I confess that I awoke with a murderous feeling.”

  Bunce raised a bushy eyebrow, spying a trap and not willing to be drawn again. Adams continued.

  “Yes. As I do every morning at dawn, I desired the demise of Friend Wilson’s cockerel, and an end to its tuneless crowing.”

  In spite of himself, Bunce smiled. He too would have liked to stuff the bird in a pot and broil it for several hours. The gravity of the situation, however, stifled any amusement, and he waved a hand indicating Adams should carry on.

  “After rising, shaving, and offering a small prayer to God, I ate the rest of the cold corn-meal bread from yesterday, and repaired to Friend Bowater’s sheds once more. Where I spent the day until now.”

  “Did anyone see you on any of these occasions?”

  Adams felt a little sick in his stomach suddenly. It had come home to him that this was no longer a game, and that he was in very real danger. If his words were not deemed good enough, then he could be a suspect in this murder. And the three that had preceded it.

  2

  Adams racked his brains to recall if he had seen or spoken with anyone yesterday or that morning. If James Bunce – a friend – truly suspected him, then Adams was in trouble. The last time he had said anything to his employer – Simon Bowater – was early yesterday, when the elderly man had stumped his way to the quayside, leaning heavily on his stick. Bowater had been one of Penn’s original settlers seven years earlier, and had been a widower past his prime then. But still a man determined to make a life for himself and his son in the New World. However, the work of breaking the land and making a home had not been kind to him. And he had all but given up, when a bitter argument had separated him from his only son, Oliver, who had disappeared into the wilderness on some mad fancy. But he had taken a grip on himself, and had turned merchant for others’ crops.

  Soon after his own arrival, John Adams had become his right-hand man at Philadelphia’s bustling docks. Bowater still liked to see what his business was doing, though, and made it his habit to find his employee between breakfast and noon-time each day. And each day he brought him a joke learned from his collection of chap-books. Adams always laughed politely at the old jokes. Partly because Bowater had taught the adult Adams, along with his own young son and a native, how to read using the books. But chiefly because the old man was lonely and needed companionship. He quickly told Bunce all this.

  “And you saw him today too?”

  Bunce’s question threw Adams into confusion. He suddenly realized he hadn’t seen his employer today. He had worked hard at recording and storing the incoming produce in Bowater’s warehouse, and had not noted his employer’s absence. What is more, Bowater had seemed distracted yesterday, not offering a joke, but merely scrutinizing Adams’s hand-written records, and hurrying away. Maybe he had been taken ill.

  “No, now you mention it, I did not see him this day. I hope he is not unwell.”

  Bunce grunted, not to be deterred from his task.

  “No, it is probably the return of his son that has distracted him from his labours.”

  “His son has returned?”

  “Yes, did you not know? Ellen, my wife, saw Simon yesterday, and he mentioned it. And talking of yesterday, you spoke to no one else then?”

  “I believe I passed the time of day with Peter Booth. And I waved at Ellen, as she passed the end of Market Street. On her way to you with some ale and a pie, I would guess.”

  James Bunce’s wife, Ellen, was a cheerful, if plain woman who always had a pleasant word for anyone she encountered. It was she who had been the first to welcome the travel-weary Adams into their community. She fussed overmuch over her husband’s lack of regular eating habits. Bunce reddened at the introduction of his own wife into the list of witnesses. Especially the reference to her propensity for bringing him provender, when he was on serious business. He set that witness aside to check on later, and pressed on.

  “And this morning? Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts this morning?”

  Adams wanted to ask when Rokesby had been killed, so that he might have been able to set Bunce’s mind at rest. But he thought he couldn’t ask the question without appearing to be a guilty man seeking a false alibi. The trouble was, his shack was down by the docks, and beyond the edge of the city’s environs, which effectively hid it from view. When he had moved into it, he had seen this as an advantage. Privacy was a welcome relief after the communal sheds of the slave plantations on the West India islands. Now, it clearly presented him with a problem. From getting up and makin
g his way to Bowater’s warehouse, that itself stood down by the water’s edge, he would hardly have been observed. Save only for a brief sighting on the riverbank of a man he only knew by the name of Cartaret. He was a stand-offish man, and aristocratic too – an unusual combination in Pennsylvania – and he lived somewhere upstream of the town. He certainly would never have deigned to pass the time of day with a black ex-convict, so Adams knew little about him. Still he told Bunce about him, adding however that he didn’t suppose the man had seen him.

  “Oh, Sir Thomas, you mean. No, I don’t imagine he would have noticed you.”

  The implied insult in Bunce’s reply shocked Adams, and indeed Bunce himself was embarrassed by it. He blushed, and stumbled on.

  “Anyone else?”

  There had been the Dutchman, Jan de Ruiter, whom Adams had seen hurrying along the dockside that bounded the eastern edge of the expanding Philadelphia. He had not concerned himself with what de Ruiter was doing at the time. It had been none of his business. But in the new circumstances, what he recalled of the Dutchman’s manner and behaviour suddenly struck him as odd. Unlike Carteret, De Ruiter was on friendly enough terms with him, and would have recognized him even though he had been some distance away. His black visage was hardly commonplace in Philadelphia. But the Dutchman had ignored his raised hand, and disappeared into the maze of shacks and warehouses that made up the district called Southwark. Like its English namesake, it was a ramshackle area, home for wood-yards, boat-builders, and mast-makers. The Dutchman, who normally traded upstream with the natives, had little reason to do business there. Had he a guilty secret to hide? Or had he been on a completely innocent mission that had preoccupied him? Adams hated to implicate another man without reason, but told all that he had witnessed. Bunce nodded as he filed it away in his slow-working but compendious brain. Then, when he asked if there had been anyone else, Adams had a strange feeling there had been. But it was only a fleeting memory of a shadow that might have been nothing more than that – the shadow of a tree waving in the wind. How could he implicate the breeze? So he shrugged his shoulders.