The First Murder

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Before I could protest, he rose creakily from his post, and wove his way through the piles of books that rose like accretions of sea-eroded rocks by the shore. He disappeared for a quarter of an hour in the back of the shop, and I was all for grabbing the manuscript and running. But finally he returned, even more dust-covered than he had been when he left. In his hand he held an old book, poorly bound with gold blocking on it that had faded over the years. But it was still possible to read it. It was called The Play of Adam. He thrust the printed book at me.

  ‘“Here it is. I knew we had a copy somewhere.”

  ‘Though I didn’t want it, I saw that I was not going to leave without the book he had found for me. So after some dickering we agreed a price that included both the printed text, and the manuscript. And it was a rare bargain, I can tell you.’

  Bromhead finally sat back with a smug look on his round face. Malinferno took his chance, and opened the book at last. Thinking he was going to see the crabbed hand of some Jacobean writer, he was filled with curiosity about the contents. What he saw astonished him, and he turned the crackling pages with great care. Finally, he dared to speak.

  ‘It’s a medieval manuscript, isn’t it?’

  Bromhead nodded eagerly. ‘In a very educated hand. It is not illuminated, but must be the— Take care, you idiot!’

  His cry of anguish was not due to Malinferno’s handling of the book, but for the careless waiter who had finally brought Malinferno’s meal. The man dumped the chops and boiled potatoes in gravy heavily on the table, spattering the brown, greasy concoction in which the chops swam perilously close to the precious manuscript. He grunted an apology and would have compounded his error by wiping the surface of the manuscript with his dirty apron. But Bromhead managed to stay his hand, and he retreated grumbling about gentlemen treating the eating-house as if it were a library. While Malinferno tucked into his meal, Bromhead explained his plans for The Play of Adam.

  ‘I am seeking a theatre that might put on the plays included in this manuscript. It must be hundreds of years since they have last been performed. I have a little money available to me, though I shall need a rich sponsor too. I am to talk to Will Mossop, the manager of the Royal Coburg, this very day.’

  Malinferno, who until this point had not paid much attention to what his friend had said, suddenly perked up. If Bromhead was prepared to pay to mount this play, maybe he would take on Doll in one of the parts. It did not need to be a major role, simply enough to assuage her desire to be an actress. Frankly, he thought she would not stick at it once she discovered how hard and repetitive the work was. He just needed to ensure she got the madcap scheme out of her system.

  He swallowed a rather gristly piece of pork chop and, once recovered from the coughing fit it induced, enquired of Bromhead how far he had progressed in selecting a cast. The little man swayed on his seat, shaking his overlarge dome in such a way that Malinferno thought he might topple from his perch.

  ‘I have not yet settled on the theatre, let alone thought of actors. That is why I am seeing Mossop. Anyway, I would leave the choice of actors to the theatre manager.’

  Malinferno grimaced. It would not be so easy to persuade an experienced theatrical person to go along with choosing Doll. On the other hand, the money man should carry some weight, so it was as well to keep in with Bromhead.

  The Egyptological expert pushed his empty plate to one side, scrutinised the first page of the manuscript, and read the opening words out loud.

  ‘“I am gracious and great God without beginning.

  I am maker unmade; all might is in me.

  I am life and way, unto weal winning.

  I am foremost and first; as I bid, shall it be.”’

  They were obviously the words of God, so that wouldn’t be a part for Doll Pocket. He wondered if there was some small part for her to play. And as he turned the heavy, stiff pages he saw it. The next play was ‘The Fall of Man’, and he read aloud the dialogue down to the seductive words spoken by Eve to Adam as she offered him the apple.

  ‘“Bite on boldly, for it is true;

  We shall be gods, and know everything!”’

  He looked at Bromhead with a winning smile on his face.

  ‘I know just the actress for the role of Eve.’

  The very person he had in mind was at that moment not thinking at all of her career as an actress. Doll had become engrossed in the puzzle of the Egyptian hieroglyphs that had so exercised Malinferno’s brain. She had read his notebook, where he had recorded the discoveries of Thomas Young concerning the name Ptolemy. It had astonished Doll to learn from Malinferno that this ruler of Egypt wasn’t really Egyptian, but Greek. And his name, according to Young, appeared on the Rosetta Stone at least three times. The mathematician had even tentatively identified some of the symbols as spelling out Ptolemy’s name sound by sound. And as Ptolemy had wed Berenice, Young assumed the next cartouche was her name, and identified some other sounds. But Young and many others still considered the signs and symbols on obelisks and papyruses as representing ideas not words. It was only the foreign Greek names that were different. So Doll spent the morning comparing Young’s translated sounds with the cartouches in Joe’s papyrus texts. The most promising name was frustratingly close to completion, and yet so far away. She looked at the word she had scribbled down in Joe’s notebook inserting dashes for the letters Young could not supply.

  -OLE I P KE—KE

  It was not very promising, but it had fired her imagination. She could see another possibility if only the bird symbol was not the ‘ke’ sound from the end of Berenice. Just as she began to try other sequences of symbols, she heard the creak of the stairs up to the first-floor rooms that Joe rented from Mrs Stanhope. She knew his gait, and the way he took two steps at a time when he was excited. She pushed the pen and ink aside, and turned round in the chair that was one of only two in the sparsely furnished parlour. The door burst open, and Malinferno entered with a look of the deepest pleasure on his face.

  ‘Doll. I have some news for you.’

  She grinned, patting the papyruses on the table. ‘And I for you. I think I have made a breakthrough with the hieroglyphs . . . ’

  She stopped in her tracks when she saw the dark look that came over his face at her news. She realised she had made a mistake by telling him she had potentially solved in a few hours a problem that had had him stumped for weeks, if not months. She changed tack, rising from the chair, and crossing the room towards him.

  ‘But it’s probably all wrong. Tell me what your news is.’

  Malinferno, crushed by what Doll had said, looked cautiously at her. ‘You’re sure you want to know?’

  She hugged him close to her ample bosom, and squeaked in the most mindless way she could muster, ‘Ooooh, yes, kind sir. What treats do you have in store for me?’

  He couldn’t help himself, and a smile cracked his downcast features.

  ‘I may have a part for you in a play.’

  Doll Pocket gasped. Despite the distractions of her Egyptian studies, this was news indeed.

  ‘Really?’ Her voice, normally low and seductive, went up a pitch in genuinely uncontrolled excitement. She looked hard into Joe’s eyes, however. ‘You’re not teasing me, are you? Only I wouldn’t forgive you if you were.’

  ‘Would I do that? No, Bromhead has found an old copy of some Biblical plays, and fancies to put them on in the West End.’

  Doll gasped. The matter of the plays didn’t sound alluring, but the idea of performing in the shadow of Drury Lane or Covent Garden certainly was.

  ‘When can we talk to him about it? Which theatre has he booked?’

  Malinferno saw he had run a little ahead of himself in his desires to cheer up Doll. She had pulled away from his embrace, and had grabbed the empty ewer on the sideboard. She was all for fetching some fresh water, and reviving herself with a wash and some perfume preparatory to meeting Bromhead in his new guise of impresario. But before she could dash out
the door to get some water from Mrs Stanhope, Malinferno put a restraining hand on her arm.

  ‘Hold on, Doll. He hasn’t quite got there yet. He has only just found this medieval manuscript of something called The Play of Adam. It’s all Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, and the Flood and such. But he hasn’t sold his idea to anyone yet.’

  Doll’s shoulders slumped. ‘I knew it was too much to hope for. Damn it, Joe, I was looking forward to it already. I could be the first woman, Eve.’

  It was of course the very thought that Malinferno had had over breakfast, and which he had mooted with Bromhead. And the idea of Doll Pocket as the naked seductress still aroused him in a familiar way.

  ‘It will happen, Doll. Only just not yet.’

  His companion did not look convinced, and Malinferno wished he hadn’t mentioned Augustus’ idea. He rested his backside on the table edge, and the papyrus rustled beneath him. It gave him an idea of how to raise Doll from her sudden depression.

  ‘Now, how about we follow your suggestion, and go to the British Museum, and take a look at exhibit EA24.’

  Doll smiled, and immediately reached for her favourite headgear, an oriental turban in lavish brocaded material of the sort also favoured by Queen Caroline.

  Montagu House was quite crowded, especially in the Egyptian Gallery, where everyone was hurrying to the far end of the room. As Malinferno and Doll Pocket approached the back of the tightly packed mob, they could see what all the fuss was about. Set between two tall windows in order to give it the best light stood the massive bust that was known as Young Memnon. One of Malinferno’s countrymen, Giovanni Belzoni, had engineered its shipment from Egypt to London. There the Royal Corps of Sappers and Miners had used a huge block-and-tackle system set in an A-frame to hoist the head onto the plinth on which it now stood. It had been a Herculean task, and the bust was only recently cleared of its encumbrances of thick ropes and struts. It was now a glorious sight, despite the hole drilled in its right shoulder by the Frenchman Drovetti for the insertion of dynamite. It had been his idea to blast the colossus to pieces in order to reduce its mass for shipment. Belzoni, a hydraulic engineer and circus strongman, had managed the task without such drastic action being taken. It was now the latest wonder for the Egyptian-obsessed gentry to marvel at.

  Doll and Joe, however, gave it only a cursory glance. There were no hieroglyphs on the bust, and so it was not a curiosity to hold their attention for long. They carried on down the gallery, lingering only to cast their eyes over the obsidian monolith that was Nectanebo’s sarcophagus. It too was covered in hieroglyphs, and so merited passing attention. But EA24 was their goal.

  The battered block of stone was almost black in colour. However, Malinferno had been told by his friend Thomas Elder, who worked at the BM, that it was so because someone had covered it with boot polish in order to make the whitened inscriptions stand out better. At the bottom of the stone, with only the right corner lost, was a text in Greek. Above it was a band of writing in an unknown script. Then above that stood the fragmentary section of Egyptian hieroglyphs. And in the midst of the puzzling symbols, there was the cartouche Malinferno and Doll had been trying to decipher. They were alone before the mysterious object, and stood in silence, examining its surface. Malinferno felt as if he were communing directly with the ancient scholar who had carved the stone. The man’s lips were making the shape of words, but no sound was issuing forth. So he simply could not understand what the scribe was attempting to say to him. Meanwhile, Doll had leaned closer to the stone and her eyes moved from side to side along the Greek text. Malinferno could see that her lips, too, were moving silently. Puzzled by his companion’s actions, he went to speak. But Doll held up her hand to stop him, and she carried on scanning the lines of Greek text.

  After a while, she still ignored Malinferno’s obvious signs of boredom, and turned her attention to the hieroglyphs at the top. So he ambled away to look at some more of the artefacts that had been taken from the French at the turn of the century. When the French in Egypt had surrendered to the English in 1801, one of the spoils of war had been a large collection of items gathered by French savants. The stone EA24 had been one, and Nectanebo’s sarcophagus another. Malinferno drifted over to further spoils in the form of a row of lion-headed statues of the goddess Sekhmet. Then he heard a bitter voice ringing out down the long gallery.

  ‘Look, Étienne. Yet more of the English plunder like that taken from us twenty years ago.’

  Surprised by the familiar voice, Malinferno looked towards its source. Standing at the back of the mêlée that still clung around Young Memnon, he saw a figure he recognised. It was of an old man dressed in an antiquated form of court garb that had gone out of fashion years ago. And atop the fellow’s head was a powdered, white wig only affected by footmen these days. He was leaning heavily on a cane, and favouring his left leg which, though sporting a well-shaped calf, Malinferno knew to be wooden. Thomas Chippendale the Younger would have been proud of its shape. Indeed, he may well have turned it in his workshop.

  Jean-Claude Casteix was one of those savants who had collected Egyptian artefacts for Napoleon Bonaparte, only to see them stolen by the British. Swallowing his pride, Casteix and some of his colleagues had followed them to London. The French general Menou had been scornful of the scientists’ behaviour, suggesting they could be ‘stuffed for the purpose’ of the voyage, along with their trinkets. Casteix reviled the English, and hated his exile, but had preferred to stay with the goods he had accumulated in Egypt. Now he stood sneering at the latest English outrage: the huge statue of Young Memnon stolen by Belzoni from under the very nose of the French Consul-General, Bernadino Drovetti.

  His remark, intended to carry through the Egyptian Gallery, and overheard by Malinferno, was addressed to his companion, an elegant and, in contrast to Casteix, fashionably attired young man. Casteix’s disdainful gaze turned Malinferno’s way, and fell on him just as Doll called out to him.

  ‘Joe, I’ve just worked out something interesting.’

  Malinferno tried to ignore Casteix, whom he had once consulted to learn more about Egyptology, only to be regaled with a tale concerning the loss of the Frenchman’s left leg to the snapping bite of a crocodile in the Nile waters. He hurried back to Doll Pocket, but could hear the stomping thud of Casteix’s wooden leg approaching up the gallery.

  ‘What’s that, Doll?’

  Doll’s eyes were bright. ‘I’ve just calculated that there are some four hundred and eighty Greek words on the stone.’

  Malinferno knew better than to question Doll’s figure, even though he knew she could not have had time to count every word. But she was fearfully adept with mathematical calculations. So he confined himself to querying the import of this revelation.

  ‘And what use is that in deciphering the words on the stone?’

  ‘Indeed, young lady, what can be the import of such irrelevant knowledge?’

  The second enquiry, disdainful in its tone, came from the breathless Jean-Claude Casteix, who had now joined them before EA24. The other man, fitter apparently, for his breathing hardly increased at all, stood at his friend’s shoulder, his head cocked on one side like an alert hound.

  Doll Pocket smiled enigmatically. ‘It is meaningless. Unless you compare it with the number of hieroglyphs on the stone. By my reckoning, there are one thousand four hundred and ten of those.’

  Casteix’s companion looked puzzled, and, pointing with his silver-topped cane, spoke up in a distinct and, to Doll’s ears, engaging French accent. ‘Madame, what have all these numbers to do with decipherment?’

  Casteix hurriedly interposed an explanation of the other man’s interest, introducing him with a flourish of his hand. ‘Monsieur Étienne Quatremain, here, is, like Champollion, a student of hieroglyphs.’

  Quatremain waved away his friend’s flattering description. ‘I am no more than an amateur filled with curiosity. Not to be compared with Champollion, the future translator of hieroglyphs.�
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  Doll looked askance at Malinferno, who contained his disbelief over Quatremain’s claim for his countryman. He merely raised his eyes to the ornate ceiling over their heads. The preening Frenchman meanwhile continued in his charming tones.

  ‘But you have still not explained, Madame, your obsession with the numbers.’

  Doll smiled sweetly, and fluttered her eyelids at the young Frenchman. Malinferno could see all the signs of Doll being in one of her moods when she pretended to be dim-witted to fool someone. Such a deception usually ended in the discomfiture of the other party. Surprisingly, though, she did not spring the trap on Quatremain this time. Instead she giggled inanely.

  ‘I’m sure there is some meaning in them, sir. But for the moment I cannot see it.’

  Casteix snorted, his opinion of womankind confirmed.

  ‘Come, Étienne, let us seek more stimulating company elsewhere.’

  His sweeping gesture was somewhat spoiled by his hand almost knocking his antique wig off his head. He clutched at it and, leaving it a little askew, stomped off down the gallery, scattering the idle gawpers in front of Young Memnon. His young companion bowed elegantly, his cane held to one side, and turned to follow. But not before he cast a wink in the direction of Doll. Malinferno wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a simpering smile of pleasure fleetingly play across her features. And it did not seem feigned to his jealous eye. With a proprietorial gesture, he took her arm.

  ‘What was all that about numbers of words on the stone?’

  ‘Don’t you see? It’s obvious.’

  He always got vexed when Doll made it clear that he was slow in reaching what for her was an obvious conclusion. He might have walked away and sulked for the rest of the day, except he desperately wanted to know what she had concluded.

  ‘No, I don’t see. And I don’t understand why, if it is so obvious, you didn’t tell Casteix and what’shisname.’