A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  “Sit,” Nick told Hector.

  The maid giggled and half-heartedly resumed sweeping the steps of the house next door.

  Once Nick was ensconced in the cook’s domain at the back of the house and he had encouraged her to take a load off by sitting opposite him at the kitchen table, her stiffness and habitual guardedness with her superiors began to diminish. The air of cozy informality was heightened by a roaring fire and the fact that Nick, after courteously asking permission, liberally helped himself to a plate of freshly baked scones. Mistress Plunkett, as he had learned, was like cooks the world over—she loved to see the fruit of her labor consumed with gusto.

  “You managed to get the fire going, I see,” Nick said.

  “Boy next door brought in the wood,” the cook replied. “Here.” She pushed a jar of blackcurrant jam toward him. “Try some of this. Put it up last summer.”

  Nick slathered it on and tasted it. “Delicious,” he complimented her. “Better than my mother’s.”

  The cook beamed. “The secret’s in the lemon juice,” she said. “Can’t always get lemons, but Sir Christopher got some from a Swiss merchant he knows.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell my mother.” He eyed the last scone.

  “Go on, then,” the cook said, pushing the plate toward him. “Ain’t no one else here to eat them.”

  “I couldn’t help overhearing that Perkin seems to have run off,” Nick said seizing the opening she had unwittingly given him.

  “Seems like,” she said.

  “Did he take anything?”

  Her eyes darted to the kitchen door, then returned to Nick. “Not exactly.” She played with some crumbs on the table, moving them into a little pile. She was clearly debating whether or not to tell him something. Nick waited. He didn’t want to jeopardize her trust by pressing her, by revealing he was here to pry into the life of the household and not just pass a pleasant morning in gossip.

  At last she sighed, heaved herself to her feet, and walked over to the kitchen door. Opening it, she pointed to a white object lying by the side of the kitchen path. It was Sir Christopher’s dog.

  “I found him this morning in his basket. At first I thought he were asleep, but he usually barks and runs around when I come in, so I went to check. Dead as a doornail.”

  Nick squatted by the side of the dog and felt it. Already beginning to stiffen and freeze in the cold, its neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, its eyes partially open as if watching him, its liver-colored lips drawn back over tiny needle-sharp teeth. Even in death it looked as if its last thought on earth had been to bite.

  “The neck’s broken,” he said. They left the pathetic little bundle and returned to the kitchen table.

  “I reckon Perkin killed him and scarpered because of what the master would do when he got back,” the cook said. “Thought the world of that dog, he did. I kept it so he could bury it proper.”

  It made sense. Not only would Perkin have feared a beating, but he would have also feared being taken up by the bailiff and thrown into prison. Bred specially as companions for rich and idle women, lapdogs were expensive things to own, a sign of status and wealth. If Sir Christopher had pressed charges, and Nick thought he was vindictive enough to do so, Perkin could hang or, at the very least, be fined and publically whipped. No wonder the lad had done a bunk.

  “Did Perkin take anything?” Nick asked again.

  “Steal, you mean?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Not that I can see,” she said.

  “Was he unhappy here?”

  “He hated that dog,” she said, nodding at the door.

  Nick recalled the tear in Perkin’s hose that had been clumsily sewn up. Ankle height. Perkin and the dog had been mortal enemies. The dog’s death might even have been an accident; under all that fur Nick had felt how small and brittle its bones were, more like a rabbit’s than a dog’s. Nick could see Perkin grabbing the dog to stop it biting him, accidentally squeezing too hard, and breaking its neck. Then he had panicked and done a runner. But if so, then Nick thought it odd that Perkin had not helped himself to something before leaving. If he was going to be pursued by a vengeful master for having killed his dog—theft in the eyes of the law—he might as well be taken up for palming a few coins or a silver candlestick. Not only would he need money to fund his escape, but it was a case of “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

  Mistress Plunkett didn’t seem to have realized this and was still ruminating on the dog. “Horrible little beast. Still,” she said, “I didn’t want it dead. There’ll be hell to pay when the master returns.”

  When questioned, she confirmed what Nick already knew, that Sir Christopher had left for the south coast the day before yesterday. Nothing unusual about that, she said. He was always going to Dover to check on his merchandise.

  “Sometimes, he even goes to them foreign places across the sea,” she added. From her expression, Nick could tell that she didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave Merry Olde England.

  When asked about Sir Christopher, Mistress Plunkett was more than forthcoming. As usual, servants knew far more about their employers’ business than any of their so-called betters dreamed. She told him that Sir Christopher was the only son of a “right evil bastard,” if the countess was to be believed. Against the wishes of her family, the countess’s younger sister had married a country squire—miles beneath her station, the cook informed him with withering disapproval, as if she too was of aristocratic stock and horrified at such a sin against the social order. An early death in childbed had done little to rehabilitate the sister in her family’s eyes, but the countess, childless and widowed, had taken an interest in the boy.

  “Sir Christopher was raised by his father,” she said. “Mad as a hatter, he were, if her ladyship can be credited.”

  “In what way?” Nick asked.

  “About God and such,” Mistress Plunkett replied, waving a hand as if to dispel the fog of theology. “Dunno the ins and outs, but the father beat the boy black and blue, that I do know. Claimed the mother were unfaithful and the boy were a cuckoo in the nest. Called the lad a ‘limb of Satan.’ ” She frowned. “Strange thing, though. Apparently the lad worshipped his dad, hated his mother. Seems like us women always get the blame, don’t it?”

  Nick couldn’t deny it: Cecily and Mary had been treated like so much rubbish. And it was clear that Hugh considered Mary a whore as a way of justifying his act. He refilled Mistress Plunkett’s beaker with ale, and she took a deep draft before resuming her account. After the father’s death—“keeled over in mid-rant,” she said with great satisfaction. “Apoplexy. Serve him right, I say. Off his bleeding rocker, he were, pardon me French”—the countess had taken in the boy.

  “Sir Christopher’s her heir, I assume,” Nick said, remembering what Codpiece had told him about the countess threatening to leave everything to the Crown.

  “That’s right. Brought him to London when she became chief lady-in-waiting to the Queen, God bless her. Bought him this house, set him up in business. Dotes on him,” the cook said, “although she can be right sharp when she feels like it. Couldn’t stand his dog for one thing, nor the clothes he wears. Must be because he were never allowed to wear nothing but rags when he were a tyke.”

  “When did you last see Perkin?”

  “Both him and that rat dog were in the kitchen. Perkin was supposed to be plucking chickens. Made a right mess.” Nick had already spotted a few droplets of blood on the corner of the large dresser that held crockery.

  “So you don’t live on the premises?”

  Mistress Plunkett gave him a look as if he’d gone daft. “Live over in Shoe Lane. Me hubby’s head turnkey at the Fleet, like his dad and granddad afore him,” she said proudly. “I come in everyday to cook and mop the floors.”

  “Surely there’s a maid and housekeeper to see to the cleaning?” Nick said, catching her tone of grievance at the mention of the floors.

  Mistress Plunkett s
niffed. “You would think so,” she said, “in a place as grand as this, but His Nibs’s too mean to employ a full staff. Just me and Perkin, if you can believe that. Only me now. Dunno how I’m going to manage.”

  For the first time, her air of solid competence faltered, and Nick saw a tired, middle-aged woman trying, like the rest of working London, to make ends meet. Perhaps she had managed to save a little money to see her and her husband into old age? Perhaps not. Infirmity and old age were terrifying prospects for most. Without grown children to take care of them, the elderly were often reduced to penury. Nick had noticed the joints of Mistress Plunkett’s hands were swollen, her fingers twisted—a crippling malady common in female domestics who spent their lives immersing their hands in cold water. He could imagine that kneading out dough was painful for her now. How long until she was unable to work? He couldn’t imagine Sir Christopher pensioning her off with a generous stipend.

  It was an odd state of affairs to have only a half-grown boy and a cook running a household such as Sir Christopher’s. Mistress Plunkett said her master was parsimonious, but maybe he had money problems. The import business was particularly fickle, depending as it did on the elements, and ships making it safely to port. Many a merchant had gone bankrupt after his ship was lost at sea.

  Nick stood up. The cook started to rise, but Nick waved her down. “I can see myself out.” He bowed. “Thank you, Mistress Plunkett. You’ve been most helpful. And your scones are the best I’ve ever tasted. I’ll be sure to pass on your tip for the jam to my mother.”

  The cook beamed.

  “Let me know if Perkin shows up,” Nick said. “I’m at Whitehall until Christmas.”

  “Right-o.”

  Hector was still sitting obediently on the front step when Nick pulled the front door to. Nick took the scone he had secreted in his jerkin and tossed it to the dog, who caught it in midair and gulped it down whole.

  “Come on,” Nick said. “Next stop, the Tower.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Tower of London

  Nick approached the Tower from Thames Street after stopping off at the apothecary’s on Candlewick to see if the apprentice, Wat, was around. He wasn’t. Master Hogg told him the boy was off delivering cold remedies to sick customers, and he couldn’t be sure when he’d be back.

  “Knowing him,” he said sourly, “he’s in a tavern somewhere, swilling ale and ogling strumpets.”

  Nick wished he were so lucky. He thought longingly of The Black Sheep and hot spiced wine. It seemed an age since he’d been home. After days of bitter, glittering cold, the sky had turned leaden while he had been sitting in Mistress Plunkett’s kitchen, gray clouds rolling in from the east, massing overhead. There was a coppery taste to the air, a sure harbinger of snow, accompanied by a damp chill that was slowly seeping into his bones. The pedestrian traffic had thinned as people wisely hurried home after their morning errands.

  A jubilant din of church bells greeted Nick as he left the shop and stepped back onto the street. Midday. A throwback to medieval times, when bells reminded the faithful of the liturgy of the hours, they now served as Londoners’ timepieces, telling them when to rise, when to eat, when to sleep. And in the event of fire, an ever-present specter in a predominantly timber-built city, where houses stood cheek by jowl, when to rush out into the streets with buckets of water or sand. This great discordant music with its myriad chimes of high and low, long and short, flat and true, was the voice of London. Nick loved it with a passion.

  * * *

  He came to the region by the western side of the outer curtain of the Tower wall, known as Petty Wales. Turning right toward the river, he entered the Tower by the Bulwark Gate and walked up a path that bisected a small garden where the Keeper planted herbs and summer vegetables. Sometimes the sound of the Keeper’s children could be heard coming from this garden. Nick had always thought that if he had been a prisoner here, the sound of innocent laughter floating through the bars of his cell would have tormented him more than the rack, serving as a cruel reminder of the sweetness of the life he was about to forfeit. Surprisingly, prisoners had told him that the sound had been a comfort to them, a pledge that after the flash of the headsman’s ax lay a paradise where such voices would forever ring.

  Now the garden was bedded down for the winter, its beds covered in straw. The raspberry canes tied up against the inner wall were a sickly bundle of sticks, and even the evergreen rosemary looked blackened and frost-burned. In summer, Nick had always thought this a strangely domestic welcome for visitors to a place as sinister as the Tower. Now its barrenness looked the part, a fitting antechamber to the dank echoing walls within.

  He left the garden by the Lion Gate and walked down a short corridor, past the Lion Tower set into the southwestern tip of the wall. Hector growled at the pungent scent of the lions, the fur along his neck and back standing on end.

  In truth, the lions were mangy brutes who were too old and too long in captivity to be fearsome. They mostly sat around looking bored, lazily tracking gawkers and occasionally washing their faces with plate-sized paws, looking for all the world like extremely large tabby cats. The Tower guards had names for them—Blossom, Alf, Harry—and when a fourth, Cedrick, died of old age in the autumn, it was said the guards—the hard cases who put the screws to prisoners—had wept like babies and had had a whip-round for a proper funeral.

  A left turn took him to Middle Gate Tower, where a guard admitted him to yet another stone-walled walkway that led across Wet Ditch, the deep, marshy hollow dug between the inner and outer walls, to yet another tower—the Byward Tower Gate. Traitors’ Gate lay farther to the east, abutting the river, roughly in the center of the south wall. The mossy stones of the tunnel led to the steps of the tower, and the dank drip of water was the last sound of freedom for many a royal and highborn prisoner. Once through the Cross Walls and Gates—the numerous tunnels bisecting the curtain walls of the Outer and Inner Wards—Nick emerged inside the Bailey of the Tower, the heart of the castle complex. He had to admire the ingenuity of the defense system of the Tower, with its many gates and its intricate system of passages and walkways, its double walls, moat, and ditch. In all its long history, the castle had never been stormed, but had stood impregnable for half a thousand years, deliberately built to face west toward the Anglo-Saxon city as a vaunting reminder of the Conqueror’s prowess in arms and his determination to rule with an iron fist. Rising to the north was Tower Hill, where public executions were held. Inside the Bailey on Tower Green was the site of the block and scaffold where private executions were held if civic unrest and mob violence were feared—Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard being the most famous prisoners to be beheaded there in recent memory. William the Conqueror’s palace, the White Tower, stood in the center of this formidable ring of stone. Now woefully fallen into disrepair, with several towers uninhabitable, and hopelessly outdated as a royal palace, last used by the Queen the night before her coronation nearly thirty years before, the Tower remained a place of brute power, a reminder of the almost limitless scope of the sovereign, the conqueror over the conquered. The Queen’s precipitate order to have Sir Thomas imprisoned there illustrated the point, and given the recent murders of her ladies-in-waiting, Parliament, that supposed curb on royal hegemony, was unlikely to protest.

  After inquiring at the Lieutenant’s Lodgings hard by Bloody Tower Gate, where river prisoners were brought before being taken to their cells, he was told Sir Thomas was being “housed” in Beauchamp Tower, set in the middle of the western side of the inner wall. Nick blinked at the word as if the Lieutenant were mine host of a particularly luxurious inn on the London road.

  Sir John Avery was a tall man of thin, stooping build, who looked more like a schoolmaster than a jailer; it was easy to overlook the hard, shrewd eyes in his pale, scholarly looking face. But the Queen had a reputation for picking her subordinates well. Sir John might have been soft-spoken and courteous, but he did not shrink from doing whate
ver was required. Nick had seen him watch a prisoner being tortured with an impassive face and pose questions between screams with the utmost civility, never failing to use honorifics such as, “my lord” or “sir.” Nick had no quibble with him. He had had dealings with Sir John before and found him reliable and honest. For one thing, he took no bribes, an almost unheard of rectitude in a servant of the Crown especially in view of the staggering wealth of many of the Tower’s inmates. For another, he oversaw the Yeoman Warders, or Beefeaters as they were called (for their weekly ration of beef gratis from the Crown), with an eagle eye for corruption and bullying. It was said he’d had one of his men locked in a dungeon for a week, on bread and water, after he had caught him stealing food from one of the prisoners.

  Nick asked to see Sir Thomas’s belongings, taken from him as a matter of procedure. They would be returned to him if he were lucky enough to walk out of the Tower, or given to his family as part of his effects if he was unlucky enough to be executed. As expected, there was no stiletto, nor was there any item, jewelry or otherwise, inlaid with topaz. In fact, there was no jewelry of any kind, quite unusual for courtiers, who usually loved to adorn themselves with earrings, chains, and rings. There wasn’t even a handkerchief. Only a scrap of paper caught Nick’s attention; it had been torn off a larger sheet, and the ink had smudged, as if the paper had been frequently handled and had become greasy with use. Nick made out random numbers in two neat columns. It looked like a fragment of a ledger.

  The ink had bled at the edges of the numerals so that they ran into one another, making them even harder to decipher. Nick pocketed it.

  He followed one of the Beefeaters past the Queen’s House to the left of the Bloody Tower and across the Inner Bailey to Beauchamp.

  The guard turned a key in the lock of a studded oak door with an iron sally port set at head height in the middle. “Here you go. I’ll be outside. Just knock when you’re done.”

  * * *

  Sir Thomas’s highborn status, his bulging purse, and the fact that he hadn’t actually been convicted of any crime other than pissing off his sovereign, had secured him a swanky room. Perfectly circular and comprised of the entire circumference of the tower, it featured a stone fireplace with a crackling fire and a bed with a thick mattress and a sheepskin coverlet to keep off the chill. A desk and chair stood under a barred window that looked down on the Inner Bailey; another window looked west over the city. Both windows had heavy wooden shutters—glass being thought too much of a temptation for the condemned before the headsman got his chance—thus forcing the occupant of the room to choose between warmth and light: Sir Thomas had chosen the latter. He stood with his back to Nick, looking out at the city spread before him.