The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  “Beast?” Judge Prendergast stuttered. “Lair? What the devil are you talking about?”

  The Irishman now crossed the wardrobe to the second locked door. “With luck, this little-used portal will answer all your questions.” And he used the same tools as before to remove the door from its hinges. Beyond it, steep steps descended into a dank and dripping shaft.

  “What’s this place?” Rupert murmured as they went down, in a voice so wondering that clearly, even though he’d visited Silvercombe many times in his life, he’d never been to this part of the house before.

  “The proverbial hidden room, I’m afraid,” O’Calligan replied. “It might once have been connected to the cellars or undercroft, but it isn’t any more.”

  Ten feet down, they entered a dirty, dungeon-like area, its low roof supported by heavy brick pillars. A single torch in a wall-bracket cast only a weak, glimmering light, but it was sufficient to show a long work-table, and on top of it a variety of curious objects.

  “In here, I suspect, the vile work was both planned and executed,” the Irishman added, approaching the table. “The killer is in many ways a mindless brute. It needed a lure to bring it to its victims. This is that lure.” And he picked up a small mixing-bowl, filled with brownish, oily fluid.

  “What is it?” Rupert asked.

  O’Calligan shook his head. “Who knows? Some concoction used as part of the creature’s training.” Next, he showed them a green bottle, with a rubber valve attached. “It was sprayed onto me from this perfume-dispenser, or a similar one.” He squeezed the rubber, and moisture puffed into the air. Its odour was quite distinctive.

  “It’s the same smell,” Rupert confirmed.

  “The same, I imagine, that you’d notice if you burned one of these,” O’Calligan said, sidling along to a pile of tallow candles. “Certain candles in this house have been impregnated with the same agent. I believe one such was given to Lord and Lady Chillerton.”

  “By Jove!” the judge blurted out. “There was a curious smell in that room.”

  “It probably made itself known when the candle had burned half-way down,” O’Calligan said. “A clever device. And, just to make sure it wasn’t detected, that candle was later removed. If you remember, Cedric, it wasn’t there when we went back to the room?”

  Cedric nodded, almost despondently. “That’s right, sir, it wasn’t.”

  “Lady Lightbourne’s pomander had also been taken,” the Irishman added. “You recall I said there was something missing after she’d died? At the time we looked for jewellery, but actually it was the pomander, which Lady Foxworth herself tied to Lady Lightbourne’s wrist as a Christmas gift. You see these ingredients?” And he presented a dish containing dried, sliced oranges, bundles of herbs and what looked like a scattering of cinnamon and nutmeg. “That pomander was made up down here. Almost certainly, it too was laced with the fatal material, so that at some point the smell was given off. We didn’t notice it when we arrived up there because the window was open. The cold air had wafted it away.”

  “But if the smell had gone and the pomander been taken, how was Lady Lightbourne’s husband killed?” Rupert asked.

  O’Calligan moved to the final item on the work-table. It was a block of household notepaper, gold-trimmed. “We found fragments of paper just like this in his fire.” He glanced up at them. “An element of conjecture is perhaps required at this point. Suppose an unsigned letter was slipped under the bedroom door. Who knows what it contained . . . maybe a promise to reveal the identity of Lady Lightbourne’s murderer before the night was out. Whatever it said, suppose it intrigued Lord Lightbourne enough for him to keep it secret. Suppose it also instructed him to burn it once he’d read it.”

  “You mean the letter itself was imbued with the substance?” the judge said. He sniffed at the notepaper. “Good God, it is.”

  “The moment it burned, the smell became strongly noticeable,” O’Calligan said. “Again, it became a deadly lure.”

  “It’s ingenious,” the judge replied.

  “And quite fiendish.” O’Calligan moved to a corner, where, alongside another line of bell-ropes, some bulky object was hidden beneath a dingy sailcloth. “Because the real horror, gentlemen, lies under this.”

  When he whipped the sailcloth back, even O’Calligan wasn’t entirely sure what he would find. He’d already heard the thing, but he hadn’t seen it. And for a second he was unnerved at the prospect. He hadn’t expected, however, to find an empty cage.

  It was a filthy cage, admittedly, packed with straw and sawdust, and all manner of foul detritus, but it was empty all the same. Slowly, however, as they gazed at it, their eyes took in other things. The cage was large, for example; much larger than the average rabbit-hutch. Also, it had what looked like a gate in its rear-section, and, thanks to a rope-and-pulley system, that gate currently hung open, though it only gave access to a wire-grille passage, which vanished through a cavity in the wall, almost certainly joining with the labyrinth of priests’ tunnels.

  It seemed to take an age before the realization struck home.

  “It’s on the prowl again,” O’Calligan said slowly.

  And just as he said this, a shrill scream came echoing down through the vaults of the house, amplified by the network of passages. The men gazed at each other, chilled.

  “Hannah,” Rupert breathed. “Good God, Hannah!” And he dashed to the stairs.

  They raced up through the building, drawing their weapons as they did, and at last reached the door to Lady Foxworth’s apartments. Inevitably it was locked. This time they didn’t wait for tools, but went at it with the hilts of their swords and grips of their pistols, and at last they broke it down and burst through. The opulent living-chamber within was bare of life, but on the far side of it, another door stood open on the bedroom. They dashed through it as a group . . . and were greeted by a scene of nightmarish terror.

  The handsome mistress of the house lay twisted across her divan. Her flowing white chemise had been torn open at the front, exposing her breasts but also her milk-white throat, now ripped asunder and spouting blood. On the far side of the chamber, meanwhile, crouched in a corner as though trying to hide amid the drapes and cushions, the miscreant was still present.

  “Behold, gentlemen,” O’Calligan cried, “the assassin of Silvercombe Hall.”

  They gazed, hair prickling, upon a ghastly, misshapen creature. It was a rodent; of that there was no doubt. In fact, by its hooked front-teeth, grey matted fur and blood-dabbled whiskers, it was a rat, a buck-rat. But the size of it! Though huddled in a ball, it was over three feet long from nose to tail. Its crimson eyes were pin-points of evil, its claws horribly twisted, as though they’d many times been broken and re-formed. As it gazed back at them, it gave a hideous, hoarse squeal, a deep, guttural thing that seemed to rumble in its blood-filled guts.

  “Good God!” Judge Prendergast exclaimed. “Good God in Heaven!”

  They were, all of them, still paralysed with shock when it suddenly sprang on the offensive. This time, though, it was outnumbered. Before it had even crossed the room, either to attack or simply to bolt back through the aperture in the adjoining bath-chamber, they’d discharged their firearms. A succession of explosive roars boomed through the house; the room was suddenly swimming in gunpowder-smoke.

  And the rat-thing lay dead.

  Killed instantly. Torn apart by a great storm of shot.

  Slowly, still astounded, Judge Prendergast stumbled forwards. “What in the name of Heaven . . . is this some demon from the pit?”

  “Not at all,” O’Calligan said. “It is – or was – as real as you or I. One of those many famous exotic pets brought back from the Indies. Or a descendant of one. Either way, it was beaten, mistreated, brutalized to the point where it would kill on command.”

  “And still you blame my sister?” came Rupert Foxworth’s disbelieving voice, suddenly thick with grief. He turned to face them from the divan, his eyes swollen with t
ears. “You have the nerve to blame Hannah, though she also lies dead by this monstrosity’s teeth?”

  For a moment, O’Calligan was confounded. Fleetingly, in the shock of the moment, the factor of Lady Foxworth’s death had eluded him. But if she wasn’t the one, who . . .?

  With a loud click, a firing-pin was drawn back.

  As one, the men turned. To find Cedric in the doorway, a massive blunderbuss in his hands, which he trained on them unwaveringly. “No foolish moves, my lords,” he said gloomily.

  There was a moment of stupefaction, then O’Calligan gave a long, low sigh of understanding. “Of course. The loyal, lifelong servant. Who loved Lady Foxworth from when she was knee-high, and raised her almost as his own.”

  “Him?” said Rupert incredulously, pointing at the saturnine underling.

  “Who else?” O’Calligan replied. “Who else would be party to the inner secrets of this house? To your sister’s private affairs?”

  “I advised her against it,” Cedric said mournfully. “All her life, I advised her. To walk the thorny paths of political intrigue is foolish, I said. Enjoy the comforts of home, be content as lady of the manor. But no . . . the older she grew, the more her ambition to glorify the Foxworth name soared. Especially when King James came to the throne, and all doors seemed to close on her. She became more determined than ever. She was still comely, she said. She knew she could gain from it . . .”

  “You killed my sister, you wretch!” Rupert shrieked.

  Cedric remained calm, however, if deeply sad. “Once news came that James would flee, the careful work of seducing him was for nothing. In fact, as has been astutely recognized, it backfired badly. My lady thought she’d head to France. Maybe rejoin with His Catholic Majesty there. But with Master Rupert back home again, she’d have had to leave everything . . . Silvercombe Hall, the family plate. In short, she’d have gone there a pauper. And would King James want her then, when he himself was so shriven of wealth?” The retainer shook his aged head. “It’s bad enough even for women who succeed in wielding their charms as political weapons. Look at the vilification heaped on Countess Castlemaine after the death of Charles. But if they don’t succeed . . . they become guttersnipes, drab-tails. Well, I loved her too much to let that happen.”

  “You loved her, yet you planned a fate for her like this?” Judge Prendergast said, indicating the ravaged body.

  Cedric shook his head: “It wouldn’t have been like this, but you gentlemen forced my hand. I thought to weave a web of deceit, to eliminate a number of prominent folk . . . and in a baffling, bewildering way that no man would fathom. All along of course, the real target would be Master Rupert, the agent of our misfortunes.”

  Rupert looked aghast. “What’s that?”

  “You heard me, my lord,” Cedric said, his tone turning sour. “You and your cronies, not seeing the way the wind was blowing when King James came to the throne. Making war on him like it was a game in the nursery. And when it’s all over, rushing off to exile, leaving your sister to pick up the pieces. Little wonder she did the things she did. She needed to, just to survive.”

  “But, but . . .” Rupert seemed lost for words.

  Cedric continued: “But you were to die here because you had to, not because you deserved it. As I say, I sought to hide your murder amongst a number of others. And once you were dead, Silvercombe Hall and all its trimmings would belong exclusively to my lady. She could then sell it off, and live abroad in safety and comfort. Unfortunately, because of this fellow here, O’Calligan, the plan failed.”

  Cedric now turned to face the Irishman. “You’ve always performed your office well, captain. You treated my lady with respect and courtesy but, the further you progressed in your investigations, the more apparent it became that she, herself, might take the blame for my scheming. As you said, she had reasons – unlikely reasons, but reasons nevertheless – to kill all of her guests. Your discoveries tonight were the final straw.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “It was an easer decision to end it for her than it should have been. Her life as she knew it was finished anyway. Better to make her a victim rather than a perpetrator, I thought. Better to spare her the shame of the block and eternal infamy.”

  “Are you a madman?” Rupert breathed. “You condemned my sister to death rather than face a trial that might very well have acquitted her! And a torturous death at that!”

  “She was unconscious,” the servant replied. “She’d have felt nothing.”

  “We heard her scream . . .”

  “A fleeting thing, while she was deep in sleep.” Cedric seemed utterly convinced of this, or perhaps he wasn’t allowing himself to consider otherwise. “When I attended to her earlier, I didn’t actually come up here to check that she hadn’t taken a sleeping-draught, but to make sure that she had. And then I doused her bed-curtains in the carrion-effluent that I used to train the Sumatran rat. Compared to the others, it would be painless for her.”

  “They’ll put you on the gibbet alive for this,” Judge Prendergast said.

  “Maybe, but you won’t decide that, my lord. Now gentlemen, if you’ll all stand together.”

  Of the three men, O’Calligan and the judge were beside each other, but Rupert was a good three feet away, close to his sister’s bedside divan. O’Calligan saw at once what the plan was. “Don’t!” he shouted. “Nobody move. He only has a single blast in that blunderbuss. If we stay apart, he can’t kill us all.”

  “One step ahead of me again, Captain O’Calligan,” Cedric said. “As you wish.”

  And with a sudden move, he grabbed the nearest candelabra and flung it at the bed-curtain, which went up in a roaring sheet of flame. More by instinct than decision, Rupert leaped away from it . . . and found himself next to the judge and the Irishman.

  O’Calligan shouted, but it was too late. Cedric already had the blunderbuss at his shoulder. His finger was on the trigger, and then . . . he was grabbed from behind.

  It was Van Brooner.

  The Dutchman was still dazed, however, his face battered and bloody, and Cedric, though old, was wiry and strong; he slammed an elbow back, catching Van Brooner in the broken rib, severely winding him, dropping him to the floor. Then he raised the blunderbuss again, but in that split-second of distraction there was a blur of twirling steel, and, with an ugly thunk, something embedded itself in the servant’s throat.

  The eyes bulged in his dour face, and the firearm slipped from his fingers.

  For a second he tottered there, looking down in disbelief at the ornate hilt of the Moorish dagger quivering under his chin. Then his knees buckled and he toppled forwards.

  There was a moment of heavy breathing, before O’Calligan and Rupert turned and tore down the burning hangings, hurriedly stamping them out. Judge Prendergast, meanwhile, continued to stare at Cedric’s body and the weapon that had slain him. “A life of clandestine warfare,” he finally remarked. “Indeed it has served you well, my Irish friend.”

  The following morning, the cloud-cover had cleared, and a winter’s sun shone coldly from a blue but glacial sky. The wastes of Exmoor lay silent under a glistening mantel of pristine snow. O’Calligan and Judge Prendergast stood out on the porch, coated and booted and awaiting the help that Rupert, having ridden for Minehead at first light, would hopefully soon bring.

  “I should have realized straight away, once we found the bell-pulls in the under-stair wardrobe,” O’Calligan said with self-reproach. “We dismissed Cedric as a suspect because we saw him outside the drawing-room shortly after hearing Lady Lightbourne’s bell. Once I knew the bell-pulls were much closer to hand, I should have reconsidered him.”

  “One thing that puzzles me about him,” the judge replied, “is that it’s only been known for three months or so that the Prince of Orange intended to invade. How could someone like Cedric have planned everything so meticulously in so short a time? How did he train the animal, for example, or build its bolt-holes?”

  O’Calligan considered; the s
ame thing had been troubling him. “Canny men like Cedric see events coming from way off,” he eventually concluded. “One wouldn’t have had to be a genius to realize that King James wasn’t going to last on the English throne. Likewise, one wouldn’t have needed a calculating mind to understand what that would mean. Even so,” and his brow furrowed, “it makes me wonder if Lady Foxworth was more involved than Cedric has admitted.”

  “Oh come now, O’Calligan,” the judge snorted, but the Irishman shook his head.

  “Cedric said it himself. She walked the thorny paths, indulged in Machiavellian games. Maybe this plan to kill her brother was hers after all, a failsafe just in case James was overthrown . . . and the loyal servant only opted to include her in the roll-call of death once I’d escaped the creature and it became apparent the game was up?”

  The judge pondered this. “Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure,” he finally said.

  “No,” O’Calligan agreed. “In that respect, villainous old Cedric was quite successful.”

  ENDNOTES

  1 The Duke of Buckingham, Charles’ favourite, had rushed England into war with France in 1627. Only after the duke’s assassination in August 1628 was it possible for peace terms to be discussed. The Treaty of Suza was finally signed in April 1629.

  2 The Thirty Years War, 1618–46

  Table of Contents

  Copyright and Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION: GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND PLOT

  THE KING’S FIRST ACHIEVEMENT

  THE DUKE OF YORK

  THE TOWER’S MAN

  A DISOBEDIENT DAUGHTER

  MURDER UNAUTHORIZED

  ICE SAILOR

  SATAN IN THE STAR CHAMBER

  GREEN TARTS

  “O, POISONOUS WEED!”

  A DEAD MAN’S WISH

  PERFECT ALIBI

  THE RESTLESS DEAD

  A TASTE FOR DUCKING