Crimson Rose (28 page)

‘Well,’ Bancroft said, disappointed, ‘I didn’t think it could possibly be that easy.’

‘May I?’ Marlowe got up and went over to the desk and looked more closely at the drawer. ‘Does it look rather shallow to you?’ he asked the tobacco importer.

‘A false bottom!’ Bancroft said. ‘Simon’s father, my Uncle Reynold, had a desk with a false drawer. I’ll wager this one is the same. There is a knob at the back.’ He reached in, running his fingers along the wood. ‘There is a knob at the back,’ he repeated, then sat back, defeated. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a knob at the back, Master Marlowe. It’s clearly just a very badly made drawer.’

Marlowe set him gently aside. ‘I think we are just being a little too clever, Master Bancroft,’ he said and took the sharp little knife from the drawer. Then, leaning down, he felt under the bottom and there was a soft twang as he cut a string. A small book fell to the ground, face down. It was bound in soft leather and was smaller than the palm of a man’s hand.

‘How did you know it was there?’ Bancroft asked, amazed.

Marlowe shrugged. He could hardly tell the man of the things he had done, the things he had seen since he turned twenty. The priest holes where the Jesuits crouched in their silent terror, not daring to breathe; the secret places where men hid their darkest thoughts. ‘The drawer didn’t close properly. It seemed to catch halfway. It was the string, stretched between the sides, which was snagging on the runner. You’d have found it eventually.’ He smiled encouragingly and, picking up the little book, handed it to him. ‘Come on, you’re the money man. We’ve already agreed that.’

Bancroft picked up the flint from the desk top and lit another candle. Drawing it closer, he opened the book, flicking through it to find the last page with writing on. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the date. ‘The tenth of March; the last day we saw him alive.’

Marlowe looked over the man’s shoulder and examined the page. It was ruled downwards to create columns. In the left-hand column was the date. The page was almost full and it had seven dates on it, each one with several entries. The second column was wider and had the same three letters in it – KTJ. Bancroft pointed. ‘What does this mean? Someone’s initials?’

‘Let’s just try and get the general flavour first, Master Bancroft,’ Marlowe said, ‘before we go into details. All of the figures in the third column are the same look. Twenty, followed by the letter “l”.’

‘Twenty pounds,’ Bancroft said, automatically. ‘Simon always wrote sums like that when it was monies of account.’

‘Meaning?’

Bancroft blew out his cheeks in a huge sigh. ‘Money isn’t always money, Master Marlowe. Sometimes, it is money as you have it in your purse, angels, groats, perhaps the odd ryal still knocking around. Monies of account is …’ He glanced up into Marlowe’s face, which had assumed the bland politeness of someone who was drifting away from the conversation in hand, no matter how important it might be. Bancroft decided to shorten his lecture. ‘Monies of account are amounts that you don’t actually own, or at least not for long enough for it to matter. In other words, if someone paid you an angel they owed you and you immediately paid it to me, in payment of another debt, that would be monies of account. Do you see?’

‘I do believe I do,’ Marlowe said happily. ‘So that third column stands for money that passes through Simon’s hands, no matter how briefly.’

‘Correct!’ Bancroft said cheerfully. ‘Or near enough. Now,’ he drew his finger along the line, ‘there are no more entries on that line. But look above, to the date preceding it, and you will see that there are more entries. And so it goes,’ he flicked back the pages, ‘right to the beginning of the book. So, looking at the entry above, in the fourth column, but one line down, is the same entry, twenty pounds, in Simon’s manner, with a little tiny … what is that? Is it a letter “h”, do you think? Then, in the fifth and final column, a number two. Note, there is no “l”. I think this is money that Simon received.’ He looked back a page. ‘Look, at the bottom, the totals only represent the twos, not the twenties.’ He tapped his teeth with a forefinger. ‘This looks like … It’s on the tip of my tongue.’

‘May I?’ Marlowe said, holding his hand out. Bancroft handed over the book, with some reluctance. The page before the last was the same in every particular, except that it was full and at the bottom, two boxes were ruled. In the right-hand one was the figure 20, which didn’t take long to work out was the total of all of the twos. In the other box, was the number 502. He flicked back further. The larger figure was clearly a cumulative one, he could see. ‘What kind of profit do you make a year?’ he asked Bancroft.

‘In general, or from tobacco?’ Bancroft asked. ‘The success of your plays has had a very gratifying effect on my income.’

‘From tobacco, just for the moment.’

‘Umm …’ Bancroft cast up his eyes and seemed to be working something out in his head. ‘Approximately six hundred pounds. Give or take.’

‘So, here,’ Marlowe pointed, ‘is that profit again. Give or take.’

Bancroft craned round to see. ‘Yes. So it seems.’

Marlowe looked at the first date in the book. ‘This goes back longer than a year,’ he said, ‘but even so. A nice little extra, I think you’d agree.’

‘May I?’ Bancroft held out his hand for the book. ‘I
know
what these figures mean, I’m sure of it. My father made sure I knew all about how to keep accounts, before he died. His old bookkeeper knew all there was to know and he … Oh, my head is like a sieve sometimes.’ He bent his head, shaking it slowly and making little tutting noises. For his part, Marlowe was in a similar quandary about the initials. They must mean something – or someone. Suddenly, his heart was in his mouth. Bancroft had leapt up from his seat and was hugging Marlowe round the chest and bouncing them both up and down. He felt the flimsy floor shake with his gambolling and down below a parcel of tobacco for Lyme Regis ended up with a good layer of wood dust in the mixture.

‘I am an idiot, indeed I am, Master Marlowe.’

Marlowe knew that, and not just because he couldn’t remember what rows of figures reminded him of.

‘Double stoccado, that’s what it is.’

‘Double …?’

‘Stoccado, yes. It’s a moneylender’s scam, so that there is interest paid many, many times any legal limit. It’s very simple, really.’ His face clouded and he stopped hugging Marlowe, to the playwright’s relief. He had now been hugged by both of the surviving Bancrofts and it was two too many. ‘I am distressed that Simon should stoop to it, even so,’ he said, sadly.

‘You’ll have to excuse my ignorance, Master Bancroft. Explain as to a child.’ Marlowe could only sympathize when he knew what the man was talking about.

‘It doesn’t need simplification, Master Marlowe. It is simplicity itself. I will tell it as though it involves the two of us, then it will be easier to follow. If I may?’

Marlowe nodded assent.

‘Well, let’s say you need to borrow … let’s say fifty pounds, quickly. You are well-to-do but with few liquid assets. You come to me and ask to borrow the sum. I say that I can’t lend you such an amount as a pure loan, the laws of Usury being what they are, but I can sell you something in my possession, which is worth the sum in question. You give me your promissory note for fifty pounds, signed and witnessed, often by a servant of the house. I know a friend who will buy the item from you for fifty pounds, forty five at the very least. You are happy to do that – all you want is the money. So, we go to my friend’s house with the item …’

Marlowe clicked his fingers. ‘Let’s call it a Knights’ Templar jug, shall we?’ he said, quietly.

Bancroft smiled in spite of himself. ‘Master Marlowe, you must make everything a tale, I see. Very well, we go to my friend’s house with this jug and he looks at it carefully, then says he can buy it, will buy it with pleasure, but the price is only forty pounds, perhaps, or thirty or even less if I am greedy. He gives you the money, usually after an argument because it is much less than you need, after all. At a later date, or even that same day, I go to see my friend and give him back his forty, or thirty or whatever the sum was, plus a commission. Looking back through this book, it looks like ten per cent. I also retrieve my jug, or whatever the item in question may be. Do you see?’

‘But …’ Marlowe was working it out, and failing. ‘You are down twenty-two pounds … aren’t you?’

‘In the short term. But I have your promissory note for far more. And if you don’t pay me I can do one of two things. I can sell the note for a little less than its face value to someone less scrupulous than myself, who will use strong-arm tactics to get the money. Or I take you to court and take, if necessary, all you have.’

A light went on behind Marlowe’s eyes. ‘I
see
! So you have charged me interest of—’

Bancroft broke in. ‘Anything up to fifty per cent for as little as a week or a month. Taken over the year, that is thousands of percent. Totally illegal, of course, but effective and in use every day, somewhere in London and doubtless everywhere men need to borrow money.’

Marlowe was so busy tying up loose ends, he could hardly form the words to take his leave of Bancroft, but, taking the book, he half ran, half fell down the stairs. He needed to talk this through with someone who would understand it, before he forgot how it worked. He would have to find Nicholas Faunt.

I
f Nicholas Faunt had an address, Marlowe didn’t know it. He was one of those men who was just suddenly there, sitting in a Cambridge inn or dancing, masked, at a country house. He could be the man praying beside you in church, riding through a tangled wood with his hawk as you hunted. And he could be the man on the other end of a knife that was sticking in your ribs.

But one thing was certain; Nicholas Faunt was never far from Francis Walsingham. Marlowe had found him last at Barn Elms because Faunt had sent for him. What was it Faunt had said? ‘You’ll have the full backing of the Department, of course.’ Well, Marlowe would put that to the test. Walsingham
was
the Department. He could be at Placentia or Nonsuch or Whitehall or Hampton Court, wherever the Queen commanded ‘her moor’ to attend her. On the other hand, he could be at his house at Seething Lane, hard by the Tower.

The end of March was not kind to Francis Walsingham. His old trouble came back with the crisis over the Queen of Scots and now the Spanish business, and his stomach felt as though he was permanently locked into Skeffington’s Gyves, his nose touching his knees.

He looked straight enough to Nicholas Faunt that day, but Faunt had always believed that Walsingham would live forever and minor ailments he could overlook.

‘Any news of twenty-two?’ He took Walsingham’s proffered glass, checking the Burgundy for its clarity and any traces of sediment. He trusted Walsingham with his life, except when it came to accepting a drink from the man. The Spymaster looked up at him from his crabbed position behind the huge desk, the eyes heavy, the black beard flecked with grey.

‘You don’t have to use code here, Nicholas,’ the man said quietly. ‘I have personally had removed the ears these walls once owned. We are alone.’

After the tranquillity of Barn Elms, where the river lapped and the curlews called, Seething Lane was chaotic. In the hall and passageways below, clerks of every hue bustled backwards and forwards, whatever the hour, laden with maps, documents, ciphers, letters, assiduously oiling the cogs that kept the machinery of government turning. Even so, Walsingham was right. Up here, under the heavy eaves, there was a reassuring stillness. Out of the window, through which the last light of evening crept, the Tower stood square and imposing. Whoever wanted to get to the Queen’s Spymaster would have to get past the Queen’s arsenal first.

‘Very well.’ Faunt sipped his wine. ‘What news of Francis Drake?’

‘When Drake has accomplished something,’ Walsingham sighed, leaning back against his chair, ‘I am sure I will be the last to know. He’s promised to, as he puts it, singe the King of Spain’s beard.’

‘Has he, by God?’ Faunt laughed.

‘If he does,’ the old Puritan said with a solemn face, ‘it will be by God, yes.’

Faunt shifted a little. He was less than happy when Walsingham came over all religious. Such men were dangerous. ‘I actually came to talk to you,’ he said, ‘about Blackfriars.’

‘The safe house in Water Lane?’ Walsingham dipped his quill back into the inkwell.

‘Safe no longer, I fear,’ Faunt said. ‘It’s been compromised. We’ll have to move on.’

Walsingham nodded. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I wondered about Marlowe’s place,’ Faunt suggested. ‘Hog Lane. Norton Folgate. It’s in the Liberties, rather less busy, shall we say, than Blackfriars.’

The Spymaster knew that Faunt had a point. ‘What will Marlowe think of it?’ he asked.

‘Marlowe might not mind,’ a voice said behind them. ‘But you should know that the house in Hog Lane is simply lousy with mice.’ The two men turned to look at their visitor. Walsingham was out of his seat. Faunt had a dagger in his hand. ‘Sir Francis, Master Faunt,’ Marlowe said, sketching a bow. ‘I am pleased to have found you so quickly. I thought I might have had to scour London and beyond.’

‘How did you get in?’ Walsingham wanted to know. ‘It’s not possible.’

‘Isn’t that why you employ me?’ Marlowe asked. ‘To do the impossible?’

‘It’s not like you to be looking for us, Master Marlowe,’ Walsingham said with a small smile, acknowledging a point well made. ‘The boot is usually very much on the other foot.’

‘I need to speak to Master Faunt,’ Marlowe said, watching the man slip his dagger away with the same ease with which he had drawn it. ‘If you will excuse me, Sir Francis. It is in connection with something we have spoken of before.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Walsingham said, with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘The death of Eleanor Merchant. We were discussing that when you arrived.’

Faunt shot him a look, but needn’t have worried. Walsingham was too wily a fox to let anything out of the bag before its time.

‘Her death, yes, of course,’ Marlowe said, perching on a hard chair between the two men, but leaning forward as though anxious to be away. ‘But also of two others – two others we know of, that is – and the link between them.’