A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  A midnight-blue cloak lay beside the plinth, muddied as if trampled during a scuffle. Nick examined it where it lay, noting that the chain fastening the cloak was broken, and the hood ripped where Hugh had said he grabbed at Mary.

  Nick paced the area, picturing it in his head. Here, at the sundial, they had fought, and she had lost her cloak. The gravel near the base was scuffed as if by several feet—the gardeners raked the gravel every day, even in winter, so Nick knew the marks were recent—and a patch of grass near the path bore the distinct impression of a man’s boot heel. Nick noticed a tiny spot of blood on the edge of the stone base that was surmounted by the brass shadow-caster, probably transferred by Hugh’s fingers after he had scratched Mary. Perhaps Mary had pushed him in her attempt to get free and he had stumbled, instinctively putting his hand out for support.

  Hugh’s demeanor during the interview, his shocked disbelief when he had described the argument, made it clear that Hugh had not expected Mary to resist, a common mistake of serial philanderers who could not believe that any woman could reject their advances. Their contempt for women caused them to assume each woman was identical, much as one cow in a field was the same as another. From what Nick had seen of Hugh, he was certainly vain enough to have been enraged when Mary told him it was over between them. So far the evidence he was seeing at the scene corresponded with Hugh’s account, although he was probably lying about the rest. His claim that he had simply let Mary go after the fight was hardly believable; it seemed obvious to Nick that Hugh, still wounded by Mary’s rejection and enraged by her defiance, would have pursued her. Finding her in the cellar with her back to him, the mallet lying conveniently to hand, the opportunity for revenge must have been simply too great.

  But Nick was still troubled. Though Hugh was certainly vain and self-centered, Nick wondered if the man possessed the kind of overweening arrogance that treated the world as if it were populated by dead things, not living human beings. Once, in Portugal, he had come across a shark thrashing on a beach, cast up by a storm. When he squatted beside it to take a closer look, its eyes regarded him wholly without fear, but with the single-minded hunger of a born predator. Even in its death throes, it longed to tear and rend him, reduce him to gobbets of flesh and bone and gristle. Such eyes he had seen in killers—a blank opacity, a kind of weary boredom—confirming his theory that it was a fatal lack of imagination that ultimately delivered the murderer to the executioner, not Nick’s own skill. By contrast, Hugh’s eyes had been filled with fear and, when he was taken away by the guard, despair. Nick could picture the spoiled youth lashing out in anger, but a stiletto through the heart was an entirely different kind of evil. Unless, of course, the posing of the body was an attempt to shift the blame onto Cecily’s murderer, a dangerous gambit as that would not necessarily remove all suspicion from Hugh.

  “I’d like you to set a guard on the garden. I want no sightseers trampling the ground or overzealous gardeners neatening things up.”

  “Already done,” the captain said.

  Convinced that the cloak and the spot of blood were all there was to find, Nick did not bother to order a wider search. Everything he had seen in the garden so far tallied with Hugh’s story. Even now John would be searching the boy’s room. If he found nothing to link Hugh to Mary’s death—no bloody clothes—and if no one saw Hugh enter or leave the cellar, then the case against him would be purely circumstantial. But Nick knew that prisoners were condemned on flimsier evidence every day. A swift trial and execution would do much to calm the court and the populace at large. Hugh’s fate was virtually sealed, especially if he could also be condemned for Cecily’s murder. For this, Matty’s testimony would be crucial. In the meantime, Nick wanted to continue his investigation, at least into Cecily’s murder. To do this, he must keep his unease about Hugh’s guilt to himself, even from the Queen. When it came out he had done so, he would be in very hot water indeed, but this was a risk he was willing to take. As much as he disliked Hugh, his conscience would not allow an innocent man to mount the scaffold for a crime he had not committed.

  “Nobody is to leave the palace,” Nick said to the captain. “I don’t care how high and mighty they are. And I want the palace searched; that means rooms, cupboards, under beds, chests, personal belongings—you name it. If anyone complains, tell them it’s by order of the Queen. You are looking for a stiletto with a small yellow stone missing from the pommel.”

  The captain grinned and started bawling orders to his men, clearly cheered by the prospect of humiliating some of the higher-ups who treated him and his men as if they were hired thugs. Nick could imagine the guards’ glee as they rifled through chests and rummaged in saddlebags, no doubt pocketing a few coins that would be spent on ale that night. The irate occupants of the rooms would already be waiting for him in the Great Hall.

  Nick picked up Mary’s cloak and walked back to the palace the way he believed Mary had gone, eerily retracing her steps past the cellar where she had died not many hours before.

  * * *

  Expecting to hear a hubbub of outraged voices as he approached the Great Hall—after all, it had been a very long time since most of the illustrious men present had been in the schoolroom—Nick was astonished to walk into complete silence. At first he thought it was out of respect for Mary, but the real reason soon became apparent. The Queen was sitting on a throne on a raised dais at the far end of the room, staring stonily at her subjects, the rings on her right hand drumming on the arm of the chair, a look of barely contained fury on her face. That she felt betrayed, Nick had no doubt. Through the deaths of two of her ladies-in-waiting, the killer was striking at Elizabeth and her court. He had not told her that he had arrested Hugh so, for Elizabeth, the killer could be any one of them standing before her, his face schooled into an expression of meekness and mock horror. Behind a mask of grief, he could be laughing at them all. That the Queen had been venting her suspicions and outrage on her subjects prior to Nick’s arrival, he had little doubt. The room was thick with fear, and there was not a man present who did not see the shadow of the ax-man in his monarch’s flinty gaze. Even the venerable Baron Burghley, above suspicion by virtue of his advanced age, if not his long devotion to the Queen, was looking at the ground, his face gray with apprehension. Sir Francis Walsingham, chief spymaster, was looking as dour as ever, but Nick thought he caught a flicker of approval in his eyes when he glanced Nick’s way. Cecil gave him a look that was as inscrutable as always. The guards lining the walls and positioned at the doors made it plain that Elizabeth meant business. On this occasion, the “off with his head” joke that courtiers used to describe Elizabeth in certain moods was not amusing in the slightest.

  Nick approached the throne. “Majesty,” he said, bowing. Now, Nick knew, was the moment to inform the Queen he had a possible suspect, but he kept silent. If there was even the slightest chance that Cecily’s murderer was still at large—despite the almost unbelievable coincidence that both men were left-handed—he had to go through with it.

  “Get on with it, man,” the Queen said, flicking her hand to indicate a trestle table on which were laid parchment, ink, and quills.

  Codpiece was perched on the edge of the dais at his mistress’s feet. Even he looked unusually somber. The countess, standing stiffly to the right of the Queen, shot Nick a poisonous look. Despite her shock at the murders, he suspected that what had really disturbed her was the sudden overturning of all the social and court protocols she held so dear. The spectacle of the cream of England’s aristocracy lining up at the table like so many commoners queuing for tickets at The Theatre in Shoreditch must have made her nearly apoplectic.

  He turned to face the crowd. “Lords, gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you all for coming.” As if they had a choice, he thought, but to suggest they had come voluntarily was a salve to their wounded pride. Nick would need their relative good will if he were to make headway in his investigation, even though, as soon as they heard about the arrest of Hugh, th
ey would clamor that the case was solved, that Nick had humiliated them for nothing. He asked them all to write their names on a piece of parchment with the hand they naturally favored—he stressed that—and a sentence of their choosing directly beneath.

  “How about ‘Long live the Queen’?” Codpiece suggested.

  Nick swung around, irritated. So much for his attempt to smooth ruffled feathers. The Fool raised an eyebrow, and Nick realized that his suggestion was actually rather clever: the phrase might provoke a sneer or a look of irony, which Nick might catch. He gave Richard a small nod of appreciation.

  “Fitting,” the Queen said. “I’m sure you correctly anticipate the sentiments of my loyal subjects, Fool.” There was a flurry of insincere agreement as those present noted her worrying emphasis on the word loyal. “Proceed,” she commanded.

  Nick watched as, one by one, each man dipped a nib in ink, signed his name, and wrote “Long live the Queen.” The phrase did not provoke anything out of the ordinary. Out of fifty-five, three men were left-handed, with only the handwriting of Sir Thomas Brighton even remotely similar to the handwriting on the first note to Cecily. Nick tapped each of them on the shoulder and asked them to remain behind, noting that while they looked uneasy, they did not seem unduly worried. In itself, this meant nothing. The killer moved freely among the court during the day, smiling, laughing at jokes, playing “hail fellow, well met” with impunity. He was bound to be a consummate actor.

  Nick was also checking for blood as the men came forward. Once he saw a dark stain on the front of a doublet, but when he took the man aside to ask him about it, he was told huffily that it was wine accidentally spilt the night before. To Sir Digby’s mortification, Nick sniffed it to confirm it was indeed what he said it was. Its fruity aroma was unmistakable. “You can go,” he told him.

  “Much obliged, I’m sure,” that gentleman said with heavy irony, and then he nervously glanced over his shoulder to see if the Queen had heard.

  When all had signed, Nick told them they could go, but not before informing them that their rooms were even now being searched, and they were in no way to interfere. He didn’t need to add that it was by express order of the Queen.

  “No one is to leave the palace,” the Queen added.

  It was a significant sign of the Queen’s authority and the glacial effect of her displeasure that the men did not even speak once they had filed out of the Great Hall, but hurried off, heads down, no doubt glad to have them still resting on their shoulders.

  * * *

  Nick quickly ascertained that two out of the three left-handed men had alibis. He sent them off under guard until these could be checked, then turned his attention to Sir Thomas Brighton. The Queen had been sitting silently, but now she stirred.

  “Step forward, Sir Thomas. You say you have no explanation for your whereabouts last night?”

  For the first time, Sir Thomas looked discomforted. “I do have an alibi, Your Majesty,” he replied, “but alas, I am sworn to secrecy.”

  The Queen’s face hardened. “Come, come, Sir Thomas. No one has any secrets from their monarch.” Her voice was deceptively gentle.

  “Nevertheless, Your Majesty, I took an oath.”

  “You also took an oath to me,” the Queen said. Something in her tone made two of the guards step forward. Although he kept his eyes firmly on his Queen, Sir Thomas had seen their movement. His face set. Either he was a very brave man or he was stupid beyond belief, Nick thought.

  “Even so,” Sir Thomas replied.

  Stupid, then.

  About his brother Robert’s age, Thomas Brighton was of stocky build and dressed fashionably in a tight-fitting doublet of dove gray with moderately padded shoulders, tapering to a peapod point low over the belly; short gray and black striped breeches; and white hose that revealed legs that were a touch bandy; but he was no court dandy. Instead of a plate-size ruff, like Nick he favored only a moderate collar with a plain cambric shirt beneath the doublet. Taciturn and serious, he was reputed to be a man of great courage, commanding cavalry in the Netherlands under the Queen’s favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who spoke highly of him. He was also said to be stubborn, and judging from the set of his jaw as he stood before the Queen, Nick thought the rumors true. An admirable quality in a soldier, disastrous in a courtier. Recently returned to court and in reward for his bravery, he had been granted permission to marry a distant cousin of the Queen’s, the former Lady Wakefield, a rich widow and older than him by ten years. Court rumor said they didn’t get on. Hardly likely to admit to being unfaithful to the Queen’s relative, however distant, he was just the sort of mulish, honorable fool to go to the block before revealing the name of a lover. Irritated at Elizabeth’s obtuseness at not realizing this, Nick nevertheless held his tongue.

  “I insist,” the Queen said, her eyes glittering dangerously.

  Sir Thomas looked at the floor.

  “Do you not owe fealty to me and to me alone?”

  Say yes, man! Nick prayed silently.

  “Majesty,” Sir Thomas said, bowing stiffly, “my sword is yours to command, but my conscience is my own.”

  Nick winced. It didn’t do to throw the Queen’s own words back in her face. On her accession to the throne, she had famously declared that she didn’t intend to make windows into men’s souls, signaling that, unlike her sister Bloody Mary, she would not persecute those of the old or reformed religion as long as their actions were not treasonable. Given the many Catholic plots to assassinate her, Nick suspected she had long regretted that statement. Sir Thomas was just the sort of man, Nick thought, to confuse matters of the soul with matters of the heart. Either way, he had just put his head into the Tudor lion’s mouth, for not only had he reminded the Queen of her famous promise, he had also struck at her even more infamous vanity.

  Elizabeth delighted in flirting with her male courtiers, choreographing an elaborate dance of mock courtship that, it was tacitly agreed, could never, ever be consummated. Only once had a man been so deluded by his own charms to think his wooing of the Queen was real and not illusion. Her childhood friend, Robert Dudley, had foolishly thought she might marry him. It was widely rumored—with much tittering and smirking—that he had got down on his knees in the middle of St. James’s Park—a rather soggy stage for his romantic drama seeing as most of the park was unclaimed marshland—when he and the Queen had been out hunting with falcons. Here, with stagnant water creeping unpleasantly into his hose, he had popped the question. Her answer had been to wheel her horse about, snatch up the reins of his mount, and gallop off, leaving him to slog back to the palace on foot—a miserable three miles, with his prize falcon, Jezebel, flapping fractiously on his wrist. It was said that he arrived soaking wet and covered in foul-smelling mud, only to learn he had been banished from court until his ardor cooled.

  As Elizabeth aged, the game of courtship had grown grotesque; her suitors were often young enough to be her sons. Nevertheless, a man who dared imply the Queen was not his heart’s desire and goddess of his dreams was either an honest man or a suicidal one. Nick suspected Sir Thomas was both. He watched him carefully. There was something about his brooding silence, the way he kept his eyes carefully shuttered, the curious lack of expression on his face that made Nick think he could be looking at a killer.

  Elizabeth snapped her fingers, and the guards, who had been inching ever closer, stepped forward and drew to attention. “Convey Sir Thomas to the Tower. Let us see if a few nights’ rumination will reveal to him his proper fealty.”

  “Majesty,” Nick pleaded as Sir Thomas was led away under guard. As he had done with Hugh, he would rather have interviewed Sir Thomas in his own room. If he had judged the man correctly, Sir Thomas would immediately clam up in a prison cell; he would regard his silence as a trial of courage. Immediately, Nick knew he had made a mistake. Vanity had ever been Elizabeth’s gravest fault, and in this instance, it had clearly overruled her razor-sharp mind. Her harsh and peremptory treat
ment of Sir Thomas had not exhausted her ire at his unintended snub. Nick had visited the Tower often enough to interview prisoners to know that even a day cloistered within their damp, rat-infested walls was sufficient to instill terror if not consumption. Nick fervently hoped he wasn’t the next recipient of Her Majesty’s displeasure.

  “One week,” Elizabeth said. She held up a be-ringed finger. “You have one week. The mayor tells me that Londoners are blaming the Jews. In some parts the bailiffs have had to break up mobs. The moneylenders have all gone into hiding; merchants have shut up shop. It’s bad for business, Nick,” Elizabeth said grimly. “What’s worse, it’s bad for my reputation.”

  Pretty bad for the Jews too, Nick thought.

  “I want this murderer caught before the Christmas festivities,” Elizabeth said, staring hard at him.

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Then Elizabeth stood and swept off the dais, with the countess following in her wake like a squat tugboat nosing behind a gorgeous barge.

  The Fool jumped down from his perch on the dais. “Well, that went tits up.”

  “It could have gone better,” Nick admitted. “I notice you didn’t put your oar in.”

  “I’m not a fool.”

  “Very funny,” Nick said sourly. No doubt he’d soon be spending Christmas sharing a cell with Sir Thomas, bored senseless by endless anecdotes about the difficulty of watering horses in a country as flat as a dinner plate and below sea level. After he checked in with John, he’d better get himself to the Tower and interview the man, see if he couldn’t winkle out an alibi or, alternatively, put him in the frame for murder. At this point, with time running out before the Queen’s impossible deadline, the prospect of framing someone for the crime was beginning to look tempting. And there was something about Sir Thomas that made Nick suspicious, something odd about his guardedness, as if he had something dangerous to hide, something for which he was willing to risk his freedom and perhaps his very life.