A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  After closing, Nick and John sat on in the tavern while Maggie, the tavern’s owner, explained who the men were and why they had been strong-arming her. Distant cousins of her deceased husband, they were demanding she sell the tavern to them for a pittance. They had been harassing her for months, and there was nothing she or her twelve-year-old son, Henry, could do.

  “Tell you what,” Nick said. “I’ll buy the place at full price, and you run it.” He had been looking for a home base and already had his eye on Bankside for its wharves and jetties, its constantly shifting population, and the fact that people didn’t ask too many questions. A much better place to meet with informants and receive letters from abroad than in the more settled neighborhoods of the city, where families had known one another for generations and everyone’s business was an open topic of conversation.

  Maggie looked doubtful and glanced at John, who nodded. “Do it,” he said. “Nick won’t cheat you—I promise you that.”

  “We’ll do it legally,” Nick said. “That way you’ll be protected. I’ll sell it back to you for a token price when Henry comes of age.”

  “Why would you do this?” Maggie asked. “You don’t know me.”

  Nick glanced at John, who was looking at Maggie with a silly grin on his face. Henry was looking at John as if he were the Second Coming.

  “No,” Nick said, “but I know John.”

  “We’ll think about it,” she said, taking Henry’s hand.

  In the end, Maggie decided that Nick’s plan was the only way to prevent her husband’s relatives from taking the tavern. A few weeks after the fight, a lawyer from the Inns of Court across the river showed up, a thin, dyspeptic man in a dusty, rust-colored doublet, claiming a woman couldn’t inherit property in her own right unless there was no other male relation, however distant, and said he had been retained by her husband’s family to sue her in the courts. When she retorted that Henry was his father’s heir, the lawyer told her the cousins also contested the legitimacy of Henry’s birth, claiming he was not his father’s true son and citing her well-known sluttishness. He had witnesses to swear as much, he said. Maggie had flown into a rage and all but thrown the man into the street herself. Later, John found her weeping in a back room. That same night Maggie sold the tavern to Nick, signing her name with an X witnessed by John and a priest from St. Mary Overie. A few months later, she and John were married. Jane, named for John’s mother, was born a year later.

  * * *

  “How am I supposed to take a delivery of ale?” Maggie asked, shifting Jane on her hip and glaring at Nick. He had just informed her that he was kidnapping John for an indefinite period. “You know I can’t lift those casks myself.”

  “Get Henry to do it,” he replied. “It’ll at least get him out of bed.” Henry was Maggie’s fourteen-year-old son, John’s stepson, much given to bunking off when any work was to be done.

  “Bone idle” was how his mother less charitably put it.

  Nick sympathized with the lad. He remembered how he had been at that age, feet too big for the rest of his body, with a stomach perpetually on fire with ravenous hunger, a face marred by pimples, and a desperate and guilty urge to tumble any woman who crossed his path, irrespective of her age or looks. Sex, food, and sleep were his Holy Trinity—in that order. Henry spent most evenings sitting moodily in the corner of the tavern, scribbling on a piece of parchment and ogling the tavern’s few female customers, mostly old bawds who were finding business a bit thin on the ground and needed the johns to be more than a little drunk to even consider a quick shag. Gunpowder wouldn’t rouse him in the morning. The only effective wake-up call, one that made his eyes fly open in panic, was the sound of his mother yelling his name. He and Bess, the parrot, got on famously, in part because, as he had confided to Nick one night after sneaking too many tankards of ale, he found her less intimidating than his mother, and he was compiling a list of the bird’s astonishing command of invective. Nick suspected this was a cover for writing soppy poetry, but didn’t let on. Hector regarded Henry with the same tolerant affection he would an endearing but imperfectly trained puppy.

  * * *

  Nick and John spent two largely fruitless days camped out in the room made available to them in the palace. The first evening they spent drinking with the Royal Guard, questioning them about the night Cecily died and whether anyone had seen anything. No luck.

  The second day, slightly the worse for wear, Nick continued interviewing those who habitually attended morning chapel, as well as those who had been present in chapel the morning Cecily’s body was found. He couldn’t rule out the fact that, in addition to passing the note to Cecily the day before, the murderer had wanted to be present when the body was found in order to gloat at the horrified reaction of the court. Meanwhile John rounded up all the men’s knives and examined them. Most of them were of plain design, and of those that were jeweled, not one had lost a stone, let alone a topaz. Nick’s efforts were also a bust. All he discovered was that the majority of those present, if not directly involved with court duties like the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, pageboys, choir, and clergy, were the worst of the court toadies eager to impress Elizabeth with their early morning piety. Nick doubted she was so easily taken in, but suspected she would make a pretense of being so just to see their sleep-raddled faces and stifled yawns. The only thing of interest he did find out was that Sir Christopher Stokes, in accordance with what his aunt had said, had indeed been called to the Custom House the night that Cecily was killed, but the man Nick had talked to, a Master Summers, told him that Sir Christopher arrived around nine and left again an hour or so later, after the shipment of glass had been located. That left him plenty of time to get to Whitehall by midnight. According to Codpiece, who had supplied him with a list of all those he remembered being there, Sir Christopher was in chapel both the morning of Cecily’s death and the day her body was found.

  “Never misses,” Richard told Nick.

  “Religious, is he?”

  “Nah. Just can’t pass up the chance to lick the countess’s arse,” Richard sneered. “Has to keep his aunt sweet because she keeps threatening to leave everything to the Queen when she pops her clogs. She’s fabulously rich, with houses and land all over the place.”

  That’s why she treats him like dirt and he takes it, Nick thought. It seemed Sir Christopher’s only act of rebellion was his refusal to give up his dog.

  * * *

  Nick and John sat sprawled in front of the fire. One of the pageboys was taking Hector for a walk in the grounds; Nick hoped the poor lad was not being dragged headlong through too many hedges and midden heaps.

  Nick was thinking it through. Why had Sir Christopher lied about the time? The only reason could be that he was eager to remove himself from the frame for Cecily’s murder. A stupid lie that automatically moved him to the top of Nick’s suspect list. Nick knew Sir Christopher had been in the chapel on both mornings: he had glimpsed him there himself when he examined Cecily’s body—the yellows Sir Christopher favored proclaimed his presence as effectively as the sun breaking through the clouds on an overcast day. Thanks to Codpiece, Nick also knew that Sir Christopher had been in the chapel the day before, when someone had slipped Cecily the note.

  So far everything pointed to Sir Christopher’s guilt, but Nick could not get over the trivial nature of the lie. Admittedly, Sir Christopher was timid by nature and browbeaten by the countess, but that did not make him stupid. Judging by the opulence of his house, he was a highly successful businessman, and that meant he must be well able to track imports and exports, broker sales, sign customs dockets, pay his taxes, and organize a complex delivery schedule—all the myriad details his occupation demanded. In Nick’s experience, most detection work consisted of unraveling small lies, making sense of odd discrepancies in people’s routines, and interpreting behaviors that seemed out of character, but he had come to realize that most of them meant nothing more than that human nature was a changeable and contrad
ictory beast. Sometimes people lied for the hell of it or simply out of habit or even from an overabundance of imagination, embellishing what would otherwise be dull stuff. Whatever the reason, Nick was determined to get to the bottom of it. He had sent for Sir Christopher.

  “You’re in for a treat,” he told John.

  “Can’t wait.”

  * * *

  Sir Christopher arrived wafting clouds of cloying cologne, the lace ruff encircling his throat so wide it made him look like John the Baptist after Salome had gotten her wish.

  “Come in,” Nick said.

  Gingerly lowering himself into the chair deliberately positioned in the middle of the room facing Nick, as if he were the accused and Nick his judge, Sir Christopher fussed with his doublet, arranging the folds just so. John was pacing behind his chair, a technique they had perfected, designed to keep the interviewee unsettled.

  “What’s this about?” Sir Christopher asked, craning to look at John, frowning slightly. Nick could tell he was trying to figure out the relationship between them, whether John was a servant or perhaps a poor relation. The plainness of John’s clothes seemed to suggest the latter, but then again, Nick himself was also dressed plainly, especially for an earl’s son, certainly in comparison to the dandy before him. Sir Christopher was bound to be confused, and that was fine by Nick.

  Nick sat sphinxlike. Silence, he found, was an invaluable tool in questioning. It made people uncomfortable, and they invariably blurted out things they had no intention of saying just to fill the void. He watched as Sir Christopher tried to wait him out, fidgeting in his seat, picking nonexistent fluff off his hose before finally bursting out with “You may have been misinformed yesterday.”

  Nick remained silent.

  “I was called to the Custom House a mite earlier than I said.”

  Only three hours earlier, thought Nick.

  Sir Christopher looked first at Nick, then at John, hoping, perhaps, for some expression of understanding. Receiving only blank stares, he went on: “Er, yes, well. I now recall that the boy from the docks came for me at nine.”

  “And when did you leave the Custom House?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t really remember,” Sir Christopher said, squirming in his chair. “Certainly it was late.”

  “The exact time, if you please,” Nick said.

  “Ten thirty,” he admitted.

  “Good,” Nick said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And where did you go after you left the docks?”

  “I came here.”

  “To the palace?” John exclaimed, shooting Nick a look. “At that time of night?”

  “My aunt had sent a message during the afternoon that she wanted to see me. I was going to go earlier, but then I got called to the docks.” Sir Christopher gave them the kind of smile one man gives another when the vagaries of women are the topic of conversation. “You’ve seen my aunt,” he said. “She brooks no contradiction. It’s more than my life’s worth to go against her in anything.”

  More than your inheritance is worth, you mean, Nick thought.

  “What time did you arrive, and how long were you with your aunt?” Nick asked.

  Sir Christopher gazed out the window as if he were trying to remember, but Nick got the impression that he had his answer ready. “It must have been eleven or so,” he said. “Yes, eleven. And I was with my aunt until well past midnight. I have a room in the palace, you know,” he added smugly, as if that were an impressive sign of his prestige. Nick suspected it was a squalid little cupboard tucked behind some stairs.

  “So your aunt can vouch you were with her?” said John.

  “Oh yes,” Sir Christopher replied. “She always tells the truth.”

  “I’m surprised the countess keeps such late hours,” Nick said.

  “She takes her position very seriously,” her nephew boasted. “She’s up at all hours in case the Queen should need anything in the night.”

  Fetching mulled wine and simnel cake from the kitchens for the royal midnight snack was the job of the more junior ladies-in-waiting, Nick was sure. But he could imagine the bossy countess supervising every tiny detail: making sure the wine was hot, but not too hot—it wouldn’t do to scald the royal mouth—the cake fresh and free of weevils, the fur rug tucked just so about the bony royal knees. In some ways, Nick could see that her nephew took after her; it was obvious in the way he was willing to go out to the docks on a cold December night. Neither aunt nor nephew seemed able or willing to delegate.

  Nick went over the timeline in his head: Sir Christopher left the Custom House at ten thirty (verified by Master Summers); he maintained he arrived at Whitehall by eleven and was with the countess through midnight (which the countess would verify, Nick had no doubt). Cecily’s body could not tell them precisely what time she met her death, but the note could: midnight or shortly thereafter. So Sir Christopher was in the clear. Nick owned that he was disappointed. There was something about Sir Christopher that made his flesh crawl, and arresting him would have given the Carew family a quick resolution. It would have afforded them at least some comfort to know that their daughter’s killer had been caught.

  The fact remained, however, that Sir Christopher had initially lied about the time he was at the Custom House, and Nick couldn’t figure out why. To hide his bafflement, he decided to engage Sir Christopher in aimless chat and see if he could get a better handle on the man. Sometimes people let things slip when their guard was down.

  “How did you get to Whitehall?” Nick asked.

  “Wherry,” Sir Christopher replied.

  That was the nearest form of transport from the Custom House, Nick knew. He mentally constructed a map of London in his head: the Custom House and Legal Quays were situated on the river east of London Bridge, between Billingsgate fish market and the Tower. That particular stretch of river was deep enough for merchant ships to dock and consequently was dotted with quays specializing in imported goods, each quay dedicated to a particular commodity: Old Wool Quay for wools and felts; Sabbes Quay for pitch, tar, and soap; Gibson’s for lead and tin, mostly shipped from Cornish mines; Somers for Flemish merchants. The quays bristled with cranes, the docks swarming with stevedores and traders day and night, endlessly feeding the voracious maw of London with imported goods.

  “A bit dangerous in the dark, wouldn’t you say?” John put in. “Shooting the bridge is risky enough in daylight. And the tide was coming in, if I recall.”

  Sir Christopher looked startled, as if he had assumed John would hold his tongue when his betters were speaking. “I’m not afraid of shooting the bridge,” he said, picking a piece of fluff off his jerkin and dropping it fastidiously to the floor. “Even at night.”

  Nick glanced at John.

  Once past the bridge, rowing upstream on the western side of the bridge was relatively safe if the tide was coming in, as it pushed the boat well beyond the danger of the bridge’s arches. When the tide was going out, rowing upstream was impossible, so strong was the surge in the opposite direction toward the Wash; a boat would be inexorably drawn toward the arches, no matter how fast or powerfully the ferryman rowed. Coming from the Custom House east of the bridge, Stokes’ boat would have had to pass under the bridge in the same direction the tide was flowing. Shooting the bridge was something only a boatman who had been working on the river all his life, who knew its moods and ways more intimately than he did a lover’s, would attempt, and even then scores of boats capsized each year, their passengers found floating white-faced and bloated as far downstream as Greenwich, a look of grotesque surprise on their drowned faces. “You’re a braver man than me,” Nick said.

  Sir Christopher looked smug. This habitual expression was getting on Nick’s nerves, and he had to resist the urge to throw the simpering fop out the window.

  “Did you know Cecily well?” he asked suddenly.

  The change in subject startled Sir Christopher. “Er, no,” he said. “I didn’t.” When Nick looked skeptical, he added: “I k
new her, of course, but not well. Not well at all.”

  “But well enough to ask her to dance at the Accession Day Ball,” Nick said. He had watched as Sir Christopher had sidled up to Cecily and whispered in her ear. The girl had shrunk away, looking embarrassed. She had desperately looked around for her friend Mary, but Mary had been flirting with someone else, a handsome, fair-haired young man called Sir Hugh. Cecily had been too inexperienced to know how to refuse Sir Christopher’s request, so Nick watched as, forcing a smile to her lips, she reluctantly gave him her hand and allowed him to lead her into the dance. As soon as it was over, Nick saw her duck into the crush on the sidelines and disappear, leaving Sir Christopher standing awkwardly alone, looking crestfallen.

  Perhaps remembering how he had been abandoned by Cecily after only the first dance, two spots of color appeared on Sir Christopher’s cheeks. “I took pity on her,” he said. “It was her first dance, and she was shy. She needed someone to break her in.”

  Sir Christopher’s choice of words revolted Nick; as if Cecily was a fractious filly who needed to be tamed. And trust Sir Christopher to make himself out to be the knight in shining armor galloping to the rescue of the fair maiden in distress. In reality, it was Sir Christopher who had been the awkward one, skulking on the sidelines and ogling the women in their low-cut dresses. Cecily would have quickly learned how to comport herself more confidently in social situations; Sir Christopher never would.

  “Did you want to sleep with her?” Nick asked. All during the dance, Sir Christopher had stared at Cecily with a hunger that, judging by the way she held her body as far away from him as she could, the girl felt but did not understand. Cecily had mostly kept her eyes on the floor, praying, Nick was certain, for the dance to end.

  The spots of color on Sir Christopher’s cheeks deepened from pink to crimson. “Certainly not,” he sputtered indignantly. “That would have been”—he searched for a word—“unseemly!”