An Honourable Murderer (36 page)

When I got back to Mrs Buckle's house in Thames Street, it was with an idea in mind.

The widow was waiting for me. I might have expected to be questioned about my whereabouts on the previous night. I might have thought she was going to describe how she'd seen, once again, her husband's spectre. But she had a smile on her face and, quite unbidden, she put her arms about me.

“Oh, Nicholas,” she said.

“Oh, Mrs Buckle,” I said after a time.

“A most extraordinary thing has occurred,” she said. “You could never guess –”

“Have you found something?”

“Why, yes. How did you know?”

I kissed her again for answer. I did not want to spoil her enjoyment in her story, although I had a pretty good idea of what she'd found.

Soon she came out with the story. Preparing to move house, since there was no possibility of deferring this any longer, she had started to sort out the few articles of furniture and other items which she and Lizzie had brought from the St Thomas's parsonage. She'd not been in the mood to do this when they shifted houses shortly after her husband's death. Only now could she decide what should be kept and what might be sold, since she and her daughter had to look to the future and consider all conceivable means of raising money. She'd even contemplated getting rid of the pieces which had been in her husband's family for generations. In particular, the chest which stood in her bedroom.

Opening the chest and examining its contents properly for the first time since the Reverend Buckle's death, she rummaged through some potentially saleable items such as a lace cloth, a silver salter wrapped up in a piece of rag (and which must have been secreted there for safekeeping), and a brooch which she rather thought had belonged to her mother-in-law.

“Then, Nicholas, I felt the strangest sensation. It was as if – as if Hugh was standing behind me and guiding me, telling me to look further, not to be satisfied with what I'd discovered so far but to look further. I got out all the contents of the chest and had them spread across the floor. Still I felt my husband urging me to look further and not to give up. I came to the bottom of the chest and it was bare and empty. I sat back and could not think what to do next. Then, Nicholas, I observed that there was a fair distance between the bottom of the chest inside and where it stood on its base on the floor. I rapped on the wood inside and it sounded hollow. I did not know what to do next but Hugh told me to go to the kitchen and get a roasting-jack. In short I used it to prise up the boards at the bottom of the chest and there I found – what do you think I found? – a hoard of money! Gold coins and more gold coins, and more still. I could not finish counting them but was overcome with amazement.”

I thought of those words of Horatio about the reasons why ghosts walk. They come back for vengeance, they come back because they are restless, but they also come back for the most mundane of reasons. They've left money behind. This was a generous ghost though. The Reverend Buckle wanted the money not for himself – what can a clergyman be wanting with cash in heaven (or in the other place, or in the one that stands between)? – wanted it not for himself but so that his wife should have it.

“Why, Nicholas, you do not seem surprised,” said Mrs Buckle.

“I am not altogether surprised but I am delighted for you – and for Lizzie,” I said.

“What should we do with it, the money?”

“Why, it is yours, Mrs Buckle. Yours and your daughter's. It must have belonged to your husband or to his family maybe. I am sure that his spirit was directing you to find it. Perhaps that is the reason you have, ah, seen him so often. That money is yours now by law and by any other right.”

“I suppose so.”

“There is no supposing about it. Besides, finders keepers, you know.”

“We can afford to move now.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Where should we go?”

“To the country?”

“Lizzie says she likes the town, even south of the river. But I think that would be a little rough for her.”

“Rough for both of you, Mrs Buckle.”

“Nicholas, you may move with us, if you like. Grace is coming with us. I could not leave her behind.”

“You have a kind heart, Mrs Buckle. But I do not think I can move with you.”

“You do not need to feel . . .”

She was going to say something like “coy”, I think, but was too coy to express herself.

“It's not that,” I said. “I do not think I can house with you – or Lizzie – in the future wherever you're living, in town or country.”

“Oh.”

“It is nothing to do with you, Mrs Buckle. I shall always have the fondest memories.”

She brightened at this and said, “And I. But, do you know, Nicholas, so many coins. I couldn't count them all.”

“I don't think you should mention this to anyone else, the gold coins.”

“You are the first person I've told.”

“Not Lizzie?”

“She is out today,” she said.

“Oh yes, out again. Well, please say nothing. Keep the money well hidden. There may be more honesty on this side of the Thames than in Southwark but there are villains and deceivers everywhere. People are not what they seem.”

I decided to visit the Mitre brothel for a final time. Before that I dropped in on the Goat & Monkey – for a touch of Dutch courage maybe, considering what I intended to do next – and in that disreputable tavern I had the bad fortune to encounter that disreputable couple Tony and Charity Thoroughgood again. I did not wait to be nudged over, and pointed to and whispered about. Instead I walked straight up to them and told them flat out that I knew they'd been responsible for attacking me on the Thames bank not so long ago, by the Pure Waterman tavern. I'd recognized Charity's voice, I said, and furthermore I had a respectable witness who was willing to give evidence (I did not mention that the respectable witness, John Ratchett, was dead). They could count themselves lucky I'd not brought an action of battery against them. But I would do it if they made trouble for me in future. In fact, I would do it if I ever saw them hanging about the Globe playhouse again.

“What do yew mean?” said Charity. “What are yew talking about?”

It had been a long shot. But Tony looked discomfited and I read the guilt in his face. He was not a violent man by nature. I guessed that his wife had put him up to the attack in revenge for my frustrating their attempt to rob the Buckles, mother and daughter. I remembered the screeching, “Kick 'im. Kick 'im!”

I walked away from the pair, feeling very superior that I had not resorted to force. I suspected they'd be up to their old tricks again soon but what I'd said might give them pause. Considering everything else which had occurred recently, Tony and Charity's trickery looked fairly trivial. Coneycatchers were as much a part of Southwark life as the cursing ferry-men and the wardens in the bear-pits and the whores in the stews. And talking of whores, talking of stews, I had one final thing to do. From the Goat & Monkey ale-house to the Mitre brothel was only a couple of minutes' walk.

Once there I asked for my favourite girl, the French one called Blanche. It was fortunate that she was unoccupied, although if she hadn't been I would have waited until she was. I made my way to her crib. The room was as dark as usual, with the single wax candle burning by the side of her bed and the sand-glass timer next to it. On the wall were her trophies, the crucifix and psalter, the necklace and pomander. I wondered what she'd done with the handkerchief which belonged originally to Lady Jane Blake.

“Oh, Nicholaas . . . it izz you,” she said. “Wot do you want,
mon chéri
?”

“You,” I said.

For answer she threw back the sheet which covered her. She was naked. The first thing I noticed, almost the first thing, was that little mole on the upper slope of her right breast. I hesitated.

“Aren't you going to start that?” I said, gesturing towards the sand-glass. “Usually you turn it over before we begin.”

“Not ziss time.”

I joined her in her bed and for the next half an hour or so we were happily occupied. She said little, and the little she did say was mostly incomprehensible French mumbles. I said little too, just English mumbles. Nevertheless we understood each other well enough, Blanche and I.

When we were done, and she lay in my arms, I said, “You will not need to do this any longer.”

“Do ziss? I do not understand what you mean.”

“I mean that you won't have to work here in the Mitre now that your mother has discovered money. You know about that? The money that was in your father's chest, the one that is in her bedroom.”

Blanche stiffened in my arms but otherwise didn't move. I gave her credit for that. In her position I don't think I would have had that self-command. What I said did not come as a shock. Perhaps she'd been expecting it. When she spoke again it was without a trace of a French accent but in perfect English.

“How long have you known, Nicholas?”

“I think I prefer ‘Nicholaas'. Broken English sounds more seductive.”

“How long have you known then,
Nicholaas
?” said Elizabeth Buckle, the daughter to my landlady and secret labourer in the Mitre brothel.

“That pomander hanging up on the wall over there, it was the one that that couple tried to steal off you in the spring outside the playhouse. I thought it looked familiar. The last time I was here I noticed it and then almost immediately afterwards I saw Tony and Charity Thoroughgood in the Goat & Monkey, and it made me think . . . although I didn't recognize the connection at once . . . made me think of you, them, the pomander. It's a fine item, with nice engraving. No wonder Charity tried to snaffle it.”

“There are plenty of ornaments like that to be stolen. Many duplicates.”

“Yes, granted. But when I put the pomander together with one or two other . . . notions . . .”

“Notions,
Nicholaas
?”

“The fact that you were almost never at home in Thames Street and that whenever I did see you you skittered away like a frightened deer. You hardly ever looked at me.”

“Oh, that must have been galling for you, Nicholas, not to be looked at.”

Ignoring her, I said, “I remember when we first met not far from here you hid yourself under a great hat. And then there was that time a few weeks ago when your mother was being troubled by one of her nightmares. You were grasping her arm, trying to get her to go back to bed.”

“I remember.”

“There must have been some echo in the gesture, the way you were holding her, coaxing her, that reminded me of you, I mean of Blanche of the Mitre. I wasn't aware of it at the time. But it was you.”

“
Oui, c'est moi.
”

“Why turn French, Elizabeth? Or are you Lizzie?”

“I am Lizzie to my mother. Here I am Blanche,
mon chéri
. You said just now that it was more seductive to be spoken to in broken English. Other men find it so too. They will pay extra for the privilege of being had in French. And since I wanted to get as far away as possible from my real background I made up a new one for myself. No longer the parson's daughter but the strange girl from Bordeaux. That way I don't have to explain myself. I hardly have to say anything. Is that so odd?”

“Odd enough,” I said.

“Though you're a parson's son,
Nicholaas
. If there's anyone who ought to understand . . .”

“Tell me why.”

“Why another name? I could hardly work here under my own name.”

“That's not what I mean. Why do
this
work in the Mitre, the place whose name you pretended not to understand the meaning of, the dirty secret meaning.”

“Ze mitre . . . eet ees anozzer zing too?” She laughed but somehow her laughter had lost its innocence and appeal for me. Then she said, “Why work here when I should be doing something salubrious, something respectable?”

“Yes.”

The conversation was echoing the one I'd had with Sir Philip Blake. What was the reason for that nobleman taking on the role of a simple craftsman? The thrill of deception, he'd answered, more or less.

“Excitement and curiosity and money,” said Blanche-Elizabeth promptly, as though the answer was lying ready. “Money especially.”

“You have money now. Your mother has found money in your father's chest.”

“So you say.”

She did not seem unduly surprised at the discovery.

“Well then?”

“It's not only the money and our need for it. My mother has sheltered me all her life. I wanted to see whether the world was as dangerous as she said it was.”

“And is it?”

“Sometimes it is, I have learnt. Now that I've answered your questions,
Nicholaas
, you must answer one of mine. Have you been – familiar with my mother?”

Whatever question I'd been expecting it wasn't that one. I did not know how to answer her.

“From your silence, I think so,” she said. “I zink so.”

“Her secret is safe with me,” I said, “just as yours is safe with me. I shall not tell on one woman to the other.”

She glanced across at the sand-glass. I took the hint and climbed out of her bed and started dressing, glancing at her from time to time. Now that I knew it for a fact, the similarity between her and her mother was detectable. Not precisely in their features but in a way of moving an arm or turning the head.

“Will you visit me again?”

“No,” I said.

“Never?”

“If I do come to the Mitre again I shall not ask for Blanche.”

“Then Blanche will not charge you this time,” she said.

“So you are going to carry on with – all this?” I said.

“That depends.”

“But there is no longer any need. Your mother has money. It's true. She found it in the chest in her room. It must have been your father's.”