A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  She wept inconsolably, babbling torrents of words into the front of his damp shirt. Nick could make no sense of what she said but was certain it was a confession, a vomiting out of her hatred and jealousy and hurt, a cleansing of the poison that had infected her for so long. At last she fell silent.

  “Stay here awhile,” Nick said, releasing her gently. “There’s a guard on the door, so you’ll be quite safe.”

  She nodded, face averted, mortified to have stripped herself bare in front of a stranger.

  Nick handed her a handkerchief, gave her a final pat on the shoulder, and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  * * *

  After collecting Hector from Codpiece, who, he discovered, had made friends with the dog by feeding him what looked like the Queen’s mid-morning snack of bread and cheese, he returned to his room to find a guard lounging against the wall, picking his teeth with a dirty fingernail and looking bored. A young man was sitting in a chair, slumped over, his head in his hands. Nick nodded at the door and the guard left. The young man did not stir, did not even seem aware that anyone else was in the room.

  “Sir Hugh,” Nick said, approaching him.

  For the first time the youth looked up. “Is it true Mary is dead?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh God!” he moaned, dropping his head into his hands again, retreating back into either shock or self-pity, like a hermit to his cave. Alternatively, he could just be a very good actor.

  Nick felt a surge of anger. His lover was lying on a cold slab in the crypt, battered to death, and Hugh was concerned only about himself. What he had briefly glimpsed of Sir Hugh’s face had shown him a pointed chin; a weak mouth; and delicate, almost pretty, features. A shock of corn-colored hair lay over his forehead and curled over his collar. He was dressed in the latest fashion, his peapod doublet barely covered the tops of his thighs, revealing long, muscular legs sheathed in tights. A dandy, Nick thought. Fancies himself a ladies’ man. Nick remembered watching Hugh at the Accession Day Ball, how the lad had swaggered in front of the ladies, bowed a little too low, laughed a little too loudly. No wonder Mary had been able to lead him a merry dance. Despite appearances—and Nick had not seen any blood on his clothes—Nick knew he could be looking at a killer, knew that beneath the self-pity and vanity could reside a soul capable of monstrous evil.

  Nick pulled up a chair, scraping it noisily over the floorboards, and placed it with a bang in front of the youth. When he sat down, he was so close that their knees were touching. Sir Hugh’s head shot up, and Nick saw fear in his eyes, but whether it was from Nick’s haggard appearance from lack of sleep and the whiteness of his scar highlighted by the dark stubble on his chin, or from guilt, he didn’t know. He supposed he looked pretty disreputable, sinister even. Perhaps Hugh thought Nick was the Royal Torturer. All to the good, Nick thought. He wanted the lad in fear for his life. And poor besotted Alice was mistaken in thinking him an innocent—the sensuality of his mouth and general air of spoiled indolence belied that. If Hugh could leave bruises on the neck of his lover, God only knew what he was capable of doing to a wife he grew tired of.

  “How long had you been fucking Mary?” Nick said. Sick at heart at what he had just witnessed in the cellar and determined to come at the truth, he made his words deliberately coarse, an echo of Alice’s own description of Hugh’s behavior. He knew the answer, of course—since Accession Day—but he wanted to see Hugh’s reaction. He wasn’t disappointed. The lad almost leapt out of his chair with terror, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for an escape. Hector was sitting by the door, his usual spot during interviews, to discourage the foolhardy from thinking they could leave before his master was done with them.

  “And don’t bother lying to me,” Nick warned.

  “I … she …” The boy swallowed. “Since November seventeenth.”

  “And last night?”

  Nick thought the boy was going to pass out, so pale had his face become, his eyes all but rolling back in his skull.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he croaked. “You must believe me.”

  “But you met her last night.” Nick did not make this a question. The boy looked away and did not answer. But he did not deny it either. Nick folded his arms, content to let the silence draw out.

  Then, just as Hugh was off his guard: “Catch,” Nick said, tossing him the topaz he had found at the site of Cecily’s murder. The boy instinctively caught it, looked down in amazement as if it had magically appeared in his palm, then up again at Nick, his expression puzzled.

  “Is this yours?” Nick said, holding up the handkerchief he had found on the floor of the chapel. Hugh just looked at it.

  “I’ll take that for a no. Had a cold recently?”

  “Hasn’t everyone?” Then, seeing the look in Nick’s eyes, “No.”

  Next Nick handed him the note he had found in Mary’s bed, watching Hugh’s reaction carefully. The boy covered his mouth as if he were about to vomit. “I’ve never seen this before,” he said, returning the scrap of paper with a trembling hand.

  Nick stood up abruptly and, taking Hugh by the arm, roughly hauled him out of his chair. The lad came unresisting, a dead weight stumbling on his feet. Nick pulled him over to a table by the window and pointed to an inkwell, quill, and sheets of parchment.

  Nick unrolled the parchment on the table, weighting it down. He dipped the quill in ink and handed it to Hugh. “Write,” he commanded.

  “Write what?”

  “Your name.”

  Hugh took the pen with his right hand. It was trembling so much he blotted his first attempt.

  “Again,” Nick said. In the end, he had the lad write his name half a dozen times. “Now write your name again with your left hand,” Nick said. When he had tossed the stone to Hugh, the boy had instinctively caught it with his left hand.

  This time there was a faint smudge over the letter H on the upward strokes in exactly the same place as the ones in the note. Nick placed the note and the parchment side by side.

  “Identical,” he said. He took out the note that Cecily had received and compared it to Hugh’s handwriting. Again, there were similarities, but they weren’t conclusive enough to say for sure. Certainly there were no smudge marks where the hand holding the quill had passed over the letters. As evidence that Hugh had written both notes, it was weak. “Sit,” Nick said, pointing back to the chair in the middle of the room.

  Hugh shambled over and sat down heavily, looking at Nick with dull eyes, as if he had resigned himself to arrest, torture, a brief stint in prison, and the hideous death of being hung, drawn and quartered.

  “Better confess,” Nick said. “It will go easier for you.” The lad put up no resistance, answering in a flat monotone. Yes, he had been seeing Mary since Accession Day; yes, he had sent the note to meet at two at the sundial in the Privy Garden.

  “Bit cold to do it outside, wasn’t it?” Nick said.

  “We usually just met up there and then went to a storeroom near the kitchens.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow.

  “I share a room with two other lads,” Hugh explained. “No privacy.” That made sense; rooms were at a premium in the teeming palace, so only the very highest courtiers were given the luxury of a room to themselves. Someone as low on the pecking order as Hugh would be forced to share.

  “Romantic.”

  “But not last night,” Hugh said. “She didn’t want to. Said she was off to the cellar to filch some wine and then she was going back to bed.” If the lad was telling the truth, then that explained why Mary had been in the cellar, and if stealing from the kitchens was a habit, then someone else could have known her movements. Hugh would have known that instead of entering the palace off the Stone Gallery—the quickest way back to her room—she would have turned left toward The Court and entered by the door near the wine cellar and the kitchens.

  “So you argued with her,” Nick said, “followed her back to the pal
ace, saw her go down the steps into the cellar, and killed her.”

  “No!” The boy clasped his hands in supplication. “You must believe me. She was very much alive when she left.”

  “What happened to her cloak?”

  Hugh’s eyes flicked away and then back again. “She dropped it,” he mumbled.

  “And ran back across the garden in her shift?” Nick said. “On a freezing night?” He shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, Hugh. A three-year-old child wouldn’t believe you. Only a woman who was in fear for her life would run away nearly naked, leaving her nice, warm cloak behind.”

  When the boy didn’t answer, Nick shrugged. “Guard,” he called. The man stuck his head in the door. “Take Sir Hugh to the Tower.” Nick began to get up, as if he couldn’t bear to waste any more time on the boy.

  “No,” Hugh cried, suddenly coming to life. “Please.”

  Nick sat down again.

  “We had a fight,” Hugh admitted. “She told me she had found someone else. We argued.”

  “Is that where you got those scratches?” Nick said, pointing to the base of Hugh’s neck near his collarbone. He had not spotted them at first because Hugh’s starched collar had covered them, but the more agitated Hugh had become, the more he had pulled at the material around his neck. Now the scratches were on full display—two red welts running down the side of his neck. Hugh fingered them uneasily.

  “I was angry. When she tried to leave, I grabbed at her and that’s when she gave me these,” he said. “I only succeeded in ripping off her cloak. She ran in without it.”

  Nick remembered what Rivkah had told him about the bruises on Mary’s neck. “You’re lying,” he said. “You took her by the neck and shook her. Somehow she twisted away, and you ripped off her cloak, tearing her shift and leaving scratch marks.” He leaned forward until his face was inches from Hugh’s. “I’ve seen Mary’s body,” he said. “Your handiwork is all over her.”

  The boy began to weep. “All right. I did take her by the neck. It’s as you say. I was angry.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Wouldn’t you be? She had just told me she was seeing someone else. Said I was a boy, that she had found herself a real man.” This last was said as if Nick, being a man himself, would agree that this slur on Hugh’s virility justified his violence. Faced with his own inadequacy as a lover, Hugh comforted himself that all women were faithless whores.

  “The way you were faithless to Alice, you mean?”

  Hugh reared back as if Nick had struck him.

  Nick sat looking at him. He didn’t like the boy, but he had to admit that what Hugh had told him was plausible. But he also knew that the best lies were always based on a grain of truth. What better cover for murder than to admit to a part, but not the whole? Nick could easily see the sequence of events: a violent argument ensuing after Mary told Hugh she had tired of him; Hugh grabbing her by the neck—as he admitted; Mary twisting out of his grip, getting away; the cloak falling; Hugh pursuing Mary in a rage and seeing her disappear down the cellar steps; Hugh following and murdering her.

  “What about Cecily?” Nick asked.

  Hugh looked confused. “What about her?” Then comprehension dawned. “You think I killed her too?” He began to laugh, rocking back and forth on his chair, the sound manic, verging on hysteria. Again the guard stuck his head through the door, but Nick waved him away.

  “Why not?” Hugh cried, flinging his arms wide as if to include the whole palace, the whole of London. “The more the merrier. You’ve obviously made up your mind that I killed Mary. Why not Cecily too?”

  “Did Mary mention the name of her new lover?”

  Startled at this abrupt change of subject, Hugh calmed. He considered the question and shook his head.

  “About a week ago,” Hugh said. “Mary started acting differently. Seemed distracted when we were …” He glanced at Nick, clearly embarrassed, though whether from delicacy or wounded vanity, Nick couldn’t tell. “You know …”

  “Making the beast with two backs?”

  Hugh nodded, color flooding his face. “I began to suspect she was losing interest.” He said this sadly. Clearly wounded vanity rather than a broken heart like Alice’s. Nick gritted his teeth to prevent himself from pounding Hugh to a pulp.

  “Then I saw her talking to someone in a corridor.”

  “Who?” Nick said.

  Hugh shook his head. “I couldn’t see. She was leaning against the wall near a staircase, her face turned up like he was standing on one of the steps above her. I never saw him.”

  “Him?” Nick said. “I thought you couldn’t see who it was?”

  “Think I don’t know how she was when she was flirting?” he said, his face twisting in a sneer. “Coming onto him, thrusting her tits in his face. Giving him a good old look.” Hugh’s obvious fury at being discarded was easily a motive for murder, Nick thought. And he could be lying about the man he claimed he saw Mary talking to as a way of throwing suspicion off himself. Nick would have to try and find this other man. As for Hugh: Although Matty hadn’t seen who was in the chapel talking to Cecily, she had heard him. There was a slim chance she would recognize Hugh’s voice. If she did, then Nick was looking at the killer. Chilled at the prospect that two young girls might have lost their lives over nothing more than thwarted adolescent lust, Nick summoned the guard and instructed him to accompany Hugh to the Tower. At this, the boy’s legs seemed to give way, and the guard had to hold him up. Hugh began to weep again.

  “You will not be harmed,” Nick said, not unkindly. Then, hardening his voice: “Unless, of course, you are guilty.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Palace of Whitehall

  Nick left the room intending to head straight to the Privy Garden, where he was certain the guards had now discovered Mary’s cloak. The witnesses being held in the Guard House would have to wait. They had already been kicking their heels for hours and would, no doubt, be none too pleased considering most had been on their way to market when the body was found. The markets had been open at least that long, and they would have missed the early morning housewives intent on getting the freshest produce. He felt guilty about keeping them waiting, knowing their livelihood depended on selling what little they could grow, especially meager in the winter months. He hoped no children would go hungry this night because of him.

  On his way out the main doors, he bumped into John. Rivkah had gone straight to The Black Sheep, John explained, and told him what had happened. He was carrying a burlap sack with a change of clothes for Nick.

  “Rivkah said you needed them,” he told him. “Said you could do with a wash and a shave as well. So I brought your razor.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said, relieved to see his friend and to have a clean shirt, although it didn’t please him that Rivkah had noticed his stench.

  Nick quickly filled John in on Mary’s murder and what he had found out by talking to the ladies-in-waiting, Alice, and Hugh.

  “So you think the lad did in Mary?” John asked. “The Lady Cecily too?”

  “I can see him killing Mary, but I just can’t picture him killing Cecily. The murders are too different.”

  “But if Mary was laid out the same way as Cecily, then he must have,” John said.

  “Except that most of the court saw Cecily laid out on the altar,” Nick replied. “And Hugh was present that day.”

  John looked appalled. “You mean there are two murderers?”

  Nick gave him a tired smile. “It’s possible.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, his mind dull from lack of food. “Ah, John, I don’t know. This whole case is more tangled than a basketful of eels. What if Hugh is telling the truth?”

  “He’s lying,” John said. “I’ll take Hector and search his rooms for the stiletto, talk to his roommates about his whereabouts the night Lady Cecily was killed.”

  “Look for blood on his clothes,” Nick said. “Whoever moved Mary in order
to pose her would have gotten blood on them and then changed.”

  John nodded. “After that, I’ll see if Matty can identify Hugh’s voice as the man she heard talking to Cecily in the chapel. If she does, he’s cooked.”

  “I’m not holding my breath on that,” Nick said. “Remember, she only heard whispers.” He then reminded John that he had ordered Hugh to be taken to the Tower. If he hurried, he might be able to catch them before they left the Guard House. Both John and Nick knew how slovenly the palace guards were; there was a chance Hugh would be sitting in a room while his escorts finished a pot of ale and a game of dice.

  John clicked his tongue at Hector, and they headed toward the kitchens, the place where Matty was most likely to sleep during the day. Nick hadn’t seen her among the servants clustered at the door of the cellar earlier.

  Grateful that his friend could take some of the burden of the investigation off him, Nick carried on to the Privy Garden. Laid down by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn after he took over the palace from Cardinal Wolsey—King Harry was an insatiable grabber of prime real estate—it was only a short distance from the royal apartments. Intended as the Queen’s private pleasure garden, it was here that Elizabeth would walk with her ladies, perhaps listening for the laughter of her mother from happier times before her failure to produce a male heir soured Henry’s devotion. Mary would be very familiar with this place and, even in darkness, would have felt safe meeting her lover here.

  Nick was met at the entrance to the gardens by the captain of the Guard, a bearded, thickset man in his forties who was good at his job but continually hampered by the gormless farm boys who had come to London to make their fortunes, and then signed up to keep from starving. After a bout of drinking in The Black Sheep one night—he was a great frequenter of the Bear Garden close by—he had described himself to Nick as more of a nursemaid than a soldier.

  “Bleeding babies missing their mummies,” he opined. “Or their favorite goat.”

  Today he was stone-cold sober and all business. “You were right,” he said. “We found the cloak lying near the sundial.” He indicated a gravel path that led into the garden, at the end of which was a tall stone plinth with a sundial mounted on top. In the middle of the dial was a large brass gnomon, or shadow-caster—the triangle on Hugh’s diagram that Nick had recognized the moment he saw it.