Master Drew dropped the penny into the man's hand and instructed the boatmen to stand ready to transport the count back to Somerset House. The mortuary was not far away and, as soon as the count had confirmed that the body of the young man was, indeed, his missing secretary, the Chevalier Stefano Jardiniero, he was despatched with one of the guards back to the boat with assurances that his murderer would soon be found.
With the officer and the other guard in attendance, Master Drew made his way directly to Winchester Palace and went straightway to the gatekeeper, who was the same man who had been on duty earlier.
"Who was on watch here last night between dusk and midnight?” he demanded without preamble.
The man looked nervously from the constable, whom he knew, to the liveried soldiers behind him.
"Why, old Martin, Master Drew."
"And where shall I find old Martin?” snapped the constable.
"About this time o’ day, he'll be in the Bear Pit Tavern."
It was a short walk to the tavern, which was on the quayside, and old Martin was soon pointed out.
Master Drew seated himself opposite the elderly man.
"Last evening you were the watch at the entrance to Winchester Palace.” It was a statement and not a question.
Martin looked at him with rheumy eyes.
"I cannot deny it."
"A young foreign gentleman called there?"
"He did, good Master. That he did. He asked me if the Gardiner House on Stony Street still stood."
"And you told him?"
"I told him that all the houses belonged to the diocese of Winchester and which did he mean? He was trying to explain when Master Burton came by and took him aside to explain. They were in deep conversation for a while and then the foreign gentleman . . . well, he went off looking quite content."
"You saw no more of him?"
"None."
"And who is this Master Burton?"
"Why, he be manservant to Sir Gilbert Scrivener."
Master Drew sat back with a curious smile on his face.
Within fifteen minutes he was standing before the desk of the secretary to His Grace, the Bishop of Winchester, with the officer of the Lord Chancellor's guard at the door. Sir Gilbert was frowning in annoyance.
"I have much business to do, Master Constable. I trust this will not take too long and I only condescend to spare the time as you now say you come on the Lord Chancellor's business."
Master Drew returned the man's gaze steadily, refusing to be intimidated by the man or his office.
"I would tell you a brief story first, about one of the Bishops of Winchester. He fortunately died in the time of Queen Mary and so did not have to account for the Protestant souls he cast into the flames to cure them of what he deemed heresy. He was a wealthy and influential man and owned many houses here when he occupied this very palace. One particular building he used in which to interrogate and torture heretics. You know the one; the one that was burnt down last night.
"It seems he gathered some wealth, a chest of coins, that, if Mary lost her throne and the Protestant faction came in, would help him escape to Spain and ease his exile. In the end, Mary outlived him, but members of his family had already fled to Spain. Before his death, he seems to have written instructions to his family in Spain as to where they could find that chest of coins. But war between Spain and England prevented any member of the family seeking it . . . until now, nearly twenty years later when, it so happened, one of his family was appointed as secretary to the Spanish ambassadors who are now in this country to make a treaty of peace ending the war."
Sir Gilbert looked stony-faced.
"Are you coming to a point, Master Constable?"
"Last night this scion of the Gardiner family, now known as Chevalier Jardinero y Barbastro, came in search of the Gardiner house wherein the box was buried. He made the mistake of being too free in his enquiries."
"Are you saying that someone decided to kill him out of vengeance when they knew he was the relative of Bishop Gardiner?"
Master Drew shook his head.
"Not for such a lofty motive as vengeance was he killed but merely of theft. He was followed and watched and when he dug up the box of coins, they attacked and bound him so that he could hardly breathe and left him to the tender mercy of the fire that they had set. They hoped the conflagration would destroy the evidence of their evil. They had a coach waiting and set off with the box. That much was seen."
Sir Gilbert raised an eye, quickly searching the constable's features.
"And were they thus identified?"
"When the young man came here asking directions, he was told the way by Master Burton,” Master Drew went on, avoiding the question.
"Master Burton? My manservant?"
"Where is Master Burton?"
Sir Gilbert frowned.
"He set out this morning in my coach with some papers for Winchester itself."
"And with the chest of money?"
"If he is involved in such a business, have no fear. I will question the rogue and he shall be punished. You may leave it in my hands."
Master Drew smiled and shook his head.
"Not in your hands, I am afraid, Sir Gilbert. Master Burton had an accomplice."
"And do you name him?” Sir Gilbert's jaw tightened.
"You were that accomplice."
"You cannot prove it."
"Perhaps not. But you revealed yourself earlier when I was asking you about the ownership of the house and spoke of the body found there. I had not mentioned anything about the body or the possibility of its Spanish identification—yet you said to me that the burning of a house and murder of a foreigner was not to be wondered at in this city. How would you know that the body found was that of a foreigner unless you shared Master Burton's secret?"
Sir Gilbert's eyes narrowed.
"You are clever, Master Drew, and with the tongue of a serpent. But when all is said and done, I am an Englishman with good connections, and the young man was a foreigner and a Spaniard at that."
"The war is over, Sir Gilbert, or will be when this treaty is signed."
"My answer will be that I was retrieving what is rightfully the property of the Bishops of Winchester from theft by a foreigner. I shall say that he tried to make away with this treasure and Master Burton and I prevented him and reclaimed it for its true owner."
Master Drew paused and nodded thoughtfully.
"It is, perhaps, a good defence. But there is one aspect that may not sit well on such a plea; that is, the Chevalier Stefano Jardinero y Barbastro was a member of the delegation currently negotiating the treaty. True, he was but a secretary within the delegation, and there are arguments to be made on both sides whether the treasure to which he had been directed was his family property or whether the subsequent Bishops of Winchester had a right to it. And, of course, we will have to ascertain whether Master Burton has gone directly with the chest to the Bishop of Winchester or whether he may have cause to rest with it awhile in your own manor at Winchester Town. And, even when these arguments are all set in place, it will come down to a simple fact of politic. How badly do the Lord Chancellor and His Majesty desire this treaty ending the twenty years of war with Spain? The Spanish ambassadors may seek to be compensated for the murder of one of their number before agreement can be reached."
It was at the end of August of that year of 1604 that the treaty of peace and perpetual alliance between England and Spain was finally signed in Somerset House. Two weeks before the agreement, a certain Master Burton was taken from Newgate in a tumbrel to Tyburn Tree and hanged. A year later, a prisoner in The Clink caught typhoid, in spite of the payments he had been able to give the jailer to secure good quarters during his incarceration. He was dead within three days. It was gossip in the prison that he had once been a man of some status and influence and had even dwelt in the grand palace of the Bishop of Winchester, adjacent to the prison.
Copyright © 2011 by Peter Tremayne
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Fiction: A DROWNING AT SNOW'S CUT by Art Taylor
Art Taylor is a book critic and assistant professor of English at George Mason University. His short fiction has appeared in the North American Review and various regional journals and newspapers, among them the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer's “Sunday Reader” section. His story “A Voice From the Past,” from the August 2009 EQMM, made the list of Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009 in the Best American Mystery Stories 2009 anthology.
Even though I'd driven down from Northern Virginia late the night before, my father still insisted on getting to the marina just after daybreak on Friday.
"The water is smoother early in the morning,” he explained. “We'll get an early start—a full day to enjoy.” Emphasis on the word full. After nearly forty years, I catch the nuances.
But he was right, at least partly so. As I lugged my overnight bag and a cooler of drinks and sandwiches, I saw the serenity in the morning haze: boats moored in their slips, seagulls hopping along the dock, a sway of marsh grass, the Bogue Sound like a sheet of glass. A couple of the marina's workers were prepping for the day, but even their voices and movements seemed soft and easy—the calm before the storm when a clamor of boaters rushed in for gas and supplies and help with the lines.
Dad came up beside me. “Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Sure,” I said, but the word turned into a yawn before I could catch it.
Dad stiffened, the lines around his eyes growing tighter.
"I hope you'll like the new boat at least,” he said curtly and walked down the dock. A duffel and a camera bag hung from his shoulder. He squeezed hard on the new lengths of rope he carried, the veins popping up on that hand. On the other side, he carried a worn leather satchel with his thick Waterway Guide and a couple of John D. MacDonald novels. I'd already gotten on his bad side about those, too. When he told me he'd been rereading some of the old Travis McGees, I reminded him not to get his expectations up. Our own little boat trip wouldn't have the action or the women.
But even as I'd said it, I'd heard Mom's voice in my head: Don't start anything with him. And my own conscience nagging me: You're all he has now. Remember that.
Then Dad turned down a small side dock, and I saw the boat for the first time. “Wow,” I said, not just pretending. It was a knockout, thirty feet or more, dark blue along the hull, the deck a bright white, and teak trim running the length of the topsides. The lines were sleek. The fiberglass gleamed. I Dream of Doris was written in script along the stern.
"It's a Back Cove,” Dad said. “Yanmar engine, three hundred eighty horses. A couple of years old. Used, but I like it.” He sounded like the salesman he'd been—manufacturing equipment in his case, big companies, big contracts, but still the same patter: the history of the company behind the boat, a legacy of quality, a friend who'd had a similar model. Then his voice faltered just slightly. “After your mother,” he began, and then stopped. He seemed to be scanning that fiberglass and that teak as if he were seeing it for the first time himself. “I needed something to . . . to look forward to, something to be excited about,” he said, and then reddened slightly, embarrassed by his own words.
"Well, this sure is something to be excited about,” I said. Stay upbeat, Mom might've cautioned me, but I hadn't needed that nudging. For a few seconds, I simply forgot that long history of bickering and harsher arguments and all those more recent phone calls—tense, brittle conversations with nothing to talk about except the weather and what each of us had eaten that night for dinner and then the weather again. Then those few seconds passed.
"A boat like this makes you wish you were making more than a reporter's salary, huh?” he said, coming to himself once more. “Get one of your own?” He laughed, the smile edged.
"Good to be back, Dad,” I said with my own edge, remembering again all the times he'd encouraged me to get a real job. No profit in newspapers, he'd told me before. Profit is important. Or asking, Is there room for advancement at that paper of yours? I hadn't mentioned yet about the cutbacks, of course, about my being laid off. Maybe it would've been easier just to tell him and get it over with. But it was the principle of the thing. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
I started to step on, then held back. “Permission to come aboard?"
"Want me to get a picture?” he asked, fumbling in his camera bag—another new toy, a little digital point-and-shoot. But I didn't wait.
"Nah,” I said. I tossed my bag on deck.
"Don't forget that when you step on board, you use your right foot first,” he said. “And be sure that you've got a firm grip.” And so the lessons continued. “Do you remember how to tie a bowline?” he asked as I stored gear in the cabin, nowhere near a rope. “How about a square knot? A cleat hitch? We'll get the lines out later and run through them again.” And then later, “Red, right, returning from sea or . . . when else?” He seemed to be hoping I'd get the answers wrong so he could set me right.
"If I flunk the test, can I go home?” I finally asked. He looked hurt, but at least he stopped.
By the time we eased the boat out of the slip, some of the morning haze had burned off, but the day was still gray and the sky overcast. Clouds seemed to be gathering and settling.
* * * *
The waterway was mostly quiet. Late May, a weekday—the season had barely started. Dad had taken the helm to guide the boat through the tight, shallow channel that led away from the marina, but once we were on the waterway, he offered me the wheel: “Get it up on a plane, son. It'll do almost twenty-four knots if you push it, but I think it's better to keep it around twenty-two hundred rpms. Above that, it burns too much fuel too fast."
I leveled it out about 2600 rpms, cutting the water at a fast clip. I could see him eyeing the tachometer, but to his credit, he didn't say a word—still sore, maybe. He did take a picture this time: his son at the helm. I wondered what my expression betrayed.
Talk to him, my mother would have said. That's all he wants. Someone to talk to.
"Smooth,” I said to him, above the roar of the wind.
He nodded, started to speak, and then didn't.
Each of us left it at that.
We were heading south—Morehead City to Southport, a single night docked at a marina there, and then back the next afternoon. A short trip because I needed to get back to work, I'd told him. And that was half true if you counted e-mailing resumes to newspapers that weren't hiring or scanning the Internet for possibilities on some unseen horizon. Long empty days, little in the way of prospects. It had already been two weeks since I was laid off. A short trip with anyone else might've done me good, but I already felt the need to rush through this one, rush back.
The markers flew past, red and green alternating. The Intracoastal Waterway thinned and broadened. Along some sections, houses with grassy yards stood on the edge of water, wooden docks jutting out toward us, boats tied up and bobbing lightly in the current or else hoisted up on simple lifts. Other stretches of our trip were just sand and marsh and those windswept oaks, and an occasional sailboat or power yacht. Lone fishermen stood along the shore here and there. Elsewhere a couple of guys tossed lines out from a small skiff. We passed the quaint old fishing village at Swansboro and then the old Hatteras Yacht plant, and then cruised through the training grounds at Camp Lejeune, the signs warning boaters not to anchor, not to come ashore. Dad snapped photos of all of it, each landmark, each little patch of scenery.
Every time we'd slow for the No Wake Zones near marinas or at any of the numerous bridges that dotted the channel, Dad asked if I wanted a Coke or a pack of nabs or tried to strike up a little patch of conversation. But trouble lurked around the edge of each question.
"Working on a big story these days?” he asked.
"Same old, same old. You know how it is."
Later he tried again: “Everything I read says that the newspaper business is on the downswing these days. You oka
y?"
"Holding my own,” I told him—one of his own old phrases, tossed back his way.
As soon as each No Wake Zone ended, I pushed the throttle ahead quickly, drowned out any potential for those questions to go much further, and drowned out the memories of old fights and new failures.
* * * *
We anchored for an early lunch along Snow's Cut, a thin canal that leads the ICW west toward the Cape Fear River. The canal was thin, barely a hundred feet wide, with just a few slivers of beach and a couple of stretches of tall cliffs. Dad brought out some sandwiches—chicken salad. There was a small dinette just behind the cockpit but we sat down on a couple of chairs on the lower back deck, enjoying the sun. Not far from us, a pair of fishermen sat glumly on a small boat, their lines hanging slack in the water. On our other side, a cruiser had stopped for lunch—a man, a woman, and a couple of small kids. “Who wants hot dogs?” said the woman. A chorus of yeses followed.
"Sandwich okay?” Dad asked.
I nodded, chewed.
"Your mother's recipe,” he said. “I knew it was one of your favorites, so I dug it out. Tried my best to do it like she would've, but . . ."
I hardly remembered that it had once been a favorite, and would never have recognized it as hers. But he'd surprised me, and I was moved again by the way his thought trailed off and that faraway look.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I wish she was here with us,” I told him. “She would've loved to be out here."
Dad came back from wherever he was. “Well, not here, maybe,” he laughed. “You know how she was about boats."
"Oh, she could hold her own,” I said, dropping my hand off his shoulder. I remembered her at the bow as we shoved off from the dock, or taking the wheel while Dad checked the charts, or the two of us laughing as we dodged the seaspray when Dad cut across the wake of a larger boat. “She was a pro."
"She was a good sport,” Dad corrected. “But she never cared for it, even from the beginning.” Something sparked in his eyes. “Did I ever tell you about the first time we went out on a boat? We were just dating then—a couple of teenagers on a little Boston Whaler we'd rented. I loved it. Man, I was in seventh heaven. There was a little bit of choppiness on the water, but I just gunned the engine and cut right through it. On top of the world. And then I turned and saw your mother clutching the rails and her feet pressed hard against the hull. She was almost green—seasick right out in the middle of the channel—and she begged me to take her back to the marina. And I did, of course, and after that, I swore to her that I'd never make her go out again, not another time, not ever."
EQMM, May 2011 Page 9