A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  His friend looked up from going through the contents of a chest.

  “Arm yourself.”

  At that moment, Sir Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs. He was red in the face and panting as if he had run all the way from the river. “We need to find Sir Christopher,” he said. “He’s involved in the tax fiddle. I just arrested Summers, who confessed before I’d even laid a hand on him. Apparently, the reason why Sir Christopher has to go down to the docks to personally supervise the unloading of a shipment is so that he and Summers could fiddle the dockets. I also found out that Sir Christopher’s been stirring up trouble at the docks about the Jews. Seems it was he who told the sailors where to find your friends.”

  Nick grunted. Now it made sense why he had harbored suspicions about Sir Christopher all along, although he had put it down to his intense dislike of the man. Nick was certain that Matty would identify Sir Christopher’s voice as the man’s voice she had overheard in the chapel.

  “We have another problem,” Nick said, pushing past Sir Thomas and descending the stairs, heading for the kitchen. “Take Wat and get a deployment of guards from the palace. Bring them back here.”

  “What’s going on?” Sir Thomas asked, running down the stairs behind him.

  “No time,” Nick said. “Just do it.”

  Looking uneasy, but without saying another word, Sir Thomas left the house, followed by Wat. Nick suspected that this was the most exciting day of the lad’s life. It could have been the most exciting day of Perkin’s life too except that Nick suspected that he’d somehow found out about Cecily and had had to die. Nick could not yet account for the time that had elapsed between Cecily’s and Perkin’s deaths, but speculated that the servant could have been blackmailing the killer—Perkin was certainly bright and cocky enough to have thought he could get away with it. The fact that Sir Christopher said he had been in Dover did not signify; he could easily have lied and remained in London, staying perhaps at one of its myriad inns, only coming to the house after dark. Nick believed that the dog had been strangled to prevent its yapping from alerting the neighbors to Perkin’s murder. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense.

  Ordering Hector to guard the front door, Nick barreled into the kitchen. Mistress Plunkett was cutting into a pie at the table. He glanced around for the girl, but there was no sign of her.

  Mistress Plunkett nodded at the pantry door. “She’s in there,” she said. “Sir Christopher came to ask when his dinner would be ready, and she started screaming the place down. Then she hid.” She gave a sad smile. “Reckon she’s had her fill of men, seen things no child should ever see.”

  Nick believed the girl had witnessed Sir Christopher dumping Perkin’s body. Yet another thing Nick had royally ballsed up. St. Paul’s Cross was equidistant between Sir Christopher’s house and the Fleet River. Anyone coming from Cheapside to the Fleet would have been noticed so late at night, especially if they were carrying something heavy or even wheeling a small handcart. Even if the girl had been invisible, curled up in a dark doorway, her terrified reaction at seeing him and Mistress Plunkett’s explanation of where the girl had come from put them both in grave danger. Confronted by the accusing eyes of the girl, he had fled. This was now the endgame because the killer now had nothing left to lose.

  “I need you to take the girl and go to your husband at the Fleet Prison,” Nick said.

  Mistress Plunkett’s brow furrowed. “The master’ll be wanting his dinner.”

  Nick shook his head. “Sir Christopher left. There’s no time to explain,” Nick said, seeing a look of puzzlement, then alarm, on her face “I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

  Mistress Plunkett looked at Nick for what seemed like a long time. Nick was desperate to get them off the premises, but he didn’t want to frighten her or the girl.

  At last, Mistress Plunkett nodded. “Reckon I can,” she said. She went over to the pantry and gently opened the door. Nick saw the girl crouched in the farthest corner, wedged between a barrel of flour and the wall.

  “Come on, love,” the cook said. “This nice gent’s going to take us someplace safe.” She held out her hand to the girl, and after a moment, the girl took it and allowed herself to be drawn out into the kitchen.

  Nick grabbed a piece of pie off the table and, crouching down, handed it to her. “Mind if I carry you?” he asked.

  The girl solemnly regarded the pie, then looked up at the cook. Mistress Plunkett gave her an encouraging nod.

  “Has he gone?” the girl asked, the first words Nick had heard her utter.

  “He’s gone,” Nick replied, his heart twisting at the terror and misery of her short life, her utter friendlessness. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  “All right,” the child said in a small voice as she held her sticklike arms out to him.

  “Brave girl,” he said, lifting her and resting his cheek briefly on her matted hair. “Brave little girl.”

  She looked at him with great serious eyes. Then she put her head on his shoulder, arms clasped tightly around his neck, almost strangling him. Once they had left the house, Nick fretted at Mistress Plunkett’s slowness. Even now, the killer might be getting away. It was all Nick could do to force himself to maintain a moderate pace.

  “What’s this about?” Mistress Plunkett asked.

  “Have you seen the countess recently?” Nick asked, ignoring her question.

  Puffing and panting at his side, the cook shook her head. “She usually stays at her manor in Convent Garden when her nevvy’s away.”

  Nick stopped in the middle of crossing a road. “I thought she owned the Cheapside house?”

  “That belongs to Sir Christopher,” Mistress Plunkett said. She gave him an appalled look and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said. “To think I’ve been living in the same house as a killer all this time.”

  “Watch yourself,” a carter shouted.

  Nick put a hand under the cook’s elbow and moved her out of the middle of the street. “Tell me where the manor is,” he ordered, deliberately brusque in order to snap her out of her panic. He could not afford to have a hysterical woman and a vulnerable child on his hands right now.

  After dropping Mistress Plunkett and the girl off at the Fleet, Nick began to run, Hector loping by his side. He had told Master Plunkett to send a message to Sir Christopher’s house so that when Sir Thomas arrived with the guards, he would know to go to the countess’s house on Cockspur Street.

  “By order of the Queen,” Nick shouted back over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 19

  Cockspur Street

  Fortunately, Convent Garden was a little closer to the Fleet than to Whitehall, situated as it was north of the Strand and Charing Cross. But the area was huge and abutted an even bigger space—St. James’s Park. Without the address the cook had given him—Cockspur Street was the road that divided Convent Garden to the east and the park to the west—Nick would have had to cover acres of land, some of it densely wooded. An impossible task, even with the help of Hector.

  He found the countess’s manor set in a garden so large it was like a small park, the huge oaks and elms surrounding the house black against a pewter sky. Winded from his run, Nick leaned against a tree for a moment until his breathing slowed to normal, then followed the driveway to a large graveled forecourt. Rooks cawed at him from the trees. A single horse, still saddled, stood quietly nosing at the grass through the snow. It lifted its head, stepping nervously when it saw the dog, but when Hector ignored it, it lowered its head again and went on cropping.

  The manor was ancient, a huge rambling two-story structure of whitewashed timber and plaster. Like parts of Binsey House, it probably dated back to the time of Edward Longshanks. A deep covered porch at the front led to a vast oak door, black with age and the grime from generations of hands. The door stood ajar. Quietly removing his sword from the scabbard on his hip and slipping his cloak off his shoulders for greater eas
e of movement, Nick pushed it and entered. Immediately, Hector’s hackles rose along his back, and he gave a low, rumbling growl.

  Putting his finger to his lips for silence, Nick made the signal for “seek.” Immediately, the dog moved to the bottom of the staircase and alerted.

  Stepping as quietly as he could on the polished oak floorboards, Nick mounted the stairs to a wide upper gallery with doors leading off it. Hearing raised voices, he stopped and, keeping to the wall, inched forward toward the room and chanced a quick glance inside.

  Sir Christopher and the countess were standing on either side of a wide fireplace, facing each other. Nick ducked back out of sight, but not before he had seen a knife in Sir Christopher’s hand.

  “The girl recognized me,” Sir Christopher was saying.

  “What girl? Make sense, man.”

  “A beggar girl. The one who always sits on the steps of St. Paul’s Cross. Somehow Holt found her and brought her to the house. When I walked into the kitchen, she recognized me and started jabbering, said she’d seen me, knew what I’d done.”

  “You’re a fool,” the countess spat. “A puling, lily-livered fool. I curse the day I ever took you in.”

  “And you’re an evil old witch!” Sir Christopher shouted back. “My father was right about you. He hated you and so do I. So did my mother.”

  “How dare you?” the countess said. “My sister loved me. It was your father she hated. He made her life a misery with his rants and his jealousy. Drove her to an early grave.”

  “Shut your filthy mouth about my father.”

  Nick chanced another look. Sir Christopher was advancing toward the countess, blade raised in his left hand. She seemed unaware of the danger.

  “I gave you a home and property and a place at court. I treated you as if you were my own son. And this is how you repay me?”

  Sir Christopher tugged his forelock in a sneering parody of a servant doing obeisance to his master. “I thank you for your money and property, Aunt, but the price is too high. Putting up with your unreasonable commands, your absurd whims. ‘Yes, Aunt, no Aunt, three bags bloody full, Aunt.’ ”

  Nick flinched at Sir Christopher’s quote from the nursery rhyme “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” It was the tune Rivkah had hummed and the reason why he had changed the name of his tavern. It reminded him that it had been Sir Christopher who had set the mob on Eli and Rivkah.

  “As for your loyalty to that Tudor whore …” Sir Christopher said.

  The countess’s eyes flashed. Maligning her sister was bad enough, but attacking the Queen herself was not to be borne. Nick tightened his grip on his sword and prayed the countess would not do something stupid.

  She did. No sooner were the words out of her nephew’s mouth than she took a step forward and delivered an open-palmed crack to his cheek.

  “Traitor!” she bellowed. “Ungrateful, misbegotten wretch!”

  It was so fast, Sir Christopher did not see the blow coming, and delivered with the full force of the countess’s considerable bulk behind it, it rocked him back on his heels. “You fat bitch,” he screamed, raising the dagger.

  Nick was through the door in a flash, sword raised. The countess’s eyes widened and Sir Christopher whirled around, grabbing the countess as he did so and holding the dagger to her throat.

  “Drop your weapon,” Nick commanded.

  “You don’t understand.” The hand that held the knife was shaking. A trickle of blood ran down the countess’s neck, and she gave a low moan.

  “I do, you know,” Nick said, keeping his voice calm. “I understand everything. I understand why you did what you did.”

  Sir Christopher had spotted Hector and didn’t seem to have heard. “Call off your brute,” he implored.

  Hector was circling Sir Christopher and the countess, his lips peeled back in a snarl.

  “Down,” Nick ordered. Immediately the dog sank into a crouch.

  “Talking of dogs,” Nick said, “it was a pity about yours.”

  For the first time, something human flickered in Sir Christopher’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said in a low voice.

  “Always the coward,” the countess sneered.

  Sir Christopher’s arm tightened about her throat.

  “When Perkin was killed,” Nick said, “the dog wouldn’t stop barking. Am I right?”

  Sir Christopher nodded.

  Nick recalled the spots of blood on the dresser in the kitchen. Not made from plucking chickens as Mistress Plunkett had thought, but from a stab wound, much like the drop of blood left in the pew where Cecily was killed. “Must have been a nuisance having to get rid of the body,” Nick said. “Perkin’s, I mean.” He inched a fraction closer as he was speaking. “Couldn’t have it cluttering up the kitchen for Mistress Plunkett to find.”

  “He was heavy,” Sir Christopher said. “Surprisingly so, considering how thin he was.”

  Nick inched a little closer. “Thin because you were too mean to pay him enough.”

  Despite the knife to her throat, the countess nodded. “Blood tells,” she said, addressing Nick. “His father was common as muck.”

  At the mention of his father, Sir Christopher’s hand holding the dagger jerked and a fresh trail of blood snaked down his aunt’s neck. “I said, shut up about my father, you bitch.” Nick kept his eyes on Sir Christopher’s knife hand. It had begun to tremble violently.

  Another step. He was only two feet away from Sir Christopher now. The countess was watching him. Nick silently willed her not to move.

  “Give me the knife,” Nick repeated, holding out his hand. “Killing your aunt is not going to help you.”

  “I’m already lost,” Sir Christopher whispered. “He will never forgive me.”

  “Who?” Nick asked.

  Sir Christopher jerked his chin toward the ceiling.

  “You mean, the Big Man upstairs?”

  At the word “up” Hector sprang, Nick lunging forward at the same time. Dropping his sword, he grabbed the hand holding the dagger with both hands, preventing Sir Christopher from pushing it home. The dog fastened his jaws around Sir Christopher’s leg and hung on. Sir Christopher staggered but remained upright. Nick was surprised at how strong he was. They struggled for control of the knife, their faces only inches apart, the countess’s bulk in between them, hampering Nick’s movements. When Nick looked in Sir Christopher’s eyes, he saw nothing. No fear, no triumph, no pain, no hope. The strain of fighting Nick for the knife was beginning to show. A bead of sweat rolled down from Sir Christopher’s hairline. Perhaps the countess felt this momentary weakness, for it was in that instant that she jabbed her elbow into her nephew’s stomach. His grip on her loosened, and she tore herself free. Nick bent at the knees and, using all his strength, came up and forward, bringing Sir Christopher down and landing on top of him, both hands still locked around the other man’s wrist. Hector immediately transferred his grip to Sir Christopher’s throat. Nick banged Sir Christopher’s hand down hard on the edge of the fireplace, and the dagger came free, skittering across the floor.

  “I recommend you don’t move a muscle,” Nick said. He stood, dusting down his clothes. He felt contaminated and suddenly immensely weary.

  “Guard,” he told Hector. The dog was slow to obey, and Nick didn’t blame him one bit. He made a mental note to reward Hector with the largest bone he could find. Nick had trained him to go into a crouch at the command of “down.” The word “up” was the signal to attack. Simple, really. But it was amazing how many villains mistakenly thought a crouching dog was a quiescent dog.

  Sir Christopher lay rigid, almost catatonic with shock, unaware that Nick had no intention of allowing Hector to rip his throat out. Nick wanted him alive.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the countess pick up the knife. The look she gave her nephew was one of pure hatred.

  “You are a monster,” she said to him. “I see that now. I thought I could save you from the taint of your blood, rais
e you from your low birth. I was wrong. Now you will die for your crimes.” She spat on him. “I curse you as I cursed your father.”

  “Countess,” Nick said.

  She looked at him and drew herself up. A small part of Nick could not help but be awed at her self-control. “I commend you, young man,” she said. “You have caught the fiend who butchered those young girls, who took the life of his own servant, even his own dog. Rest assured, I shall inform the Queen of your bravery.”

  “Give me the knife, Countess.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sir Christopher raise his arm, and Nick half-turned toward him; seizing her chance, the countess threw herself toward her nephew, dagger upraised. Nick tackled her in mid-strike. Snarling, she turned, the blade grazing his shoulder as he twisted away. Clamping one hand around her wrist, he spun her toward him and punched her in the face with the other, sending her staggering back toward the fireplace. A loud crack as the back of her head struck the mantel, and she sank to the floor, unconscious.

  A horse whinnied outside and there was the sound of hooves. Stepping over the prone form of the countess, Nick looked through the casement window and saw a troop of horsemen riding into the forecourt below. At the head of the troop was the captain of the Palace Guard, with John and Sir Thomas directly behind, followed by four soldiers. Nick opened the window.

  “Up here,” he called.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Tower of London

  Nick entered the Tower and, accompanied by a guard and one of Cecil’s secretaries, made his way once again to the Bell Tower.

  “This is the one,” the guard said, halting at a heavy oak door banded with iron with a sally port set in the center. Two stools had been placed in readiness beside the door for Nick and the scribe. Normally, the prisoner would have been brought to another room to be interrogated, a room designed to give more comfort and light to the interrogators rather than the prisoner. But the Queen had forbidden this: the last glimpse of daylight the prisoner would ever see, she averred, was to be from the scaffold, a cruel taste of the dawn before the fall of the ax sent the soul spinning into everlasting night.