Murder by Misrule: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 1) (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

"My brain feels like it's been emptied by a giant bilge pump." Tom pressed his hands against his head and groaned.

Stephen crossed his eyes and staggered toward him. "Do I know you, good fellow? I fear my wits are gone."

They gaped at each other, goggle-eyed, tongues lolling.

Ben frowned at them. "I found it extremely stimulating. What a mind! Although I thought I had a better grasp of novel disseisin. I've got to read more, that's all there is to it." He looked about him anxiously, as if searching for a law book in the graveled yard.

"You did better than me," Trumpet said. "I sounded like a perfect idiot. I'd start off well enough, but then he'd tangle me up in contingencies and I'd hear myself babbling nonsense."

"He doesn't like your uncle," Tom said. "Did you notice? His nose would twitch every time you mentioned him. That's why he was so hard on you."

"I'm hungry," Ben announced. "I feel like I've run a mile at full gallop. Shall we try our luck in the buttery?"

"After," Tom said. "We don't want to examine Mr. Smythson's corpus on a full stomach."

Ben made a sour face. "True."

Bacon had subjected them to a grueling impromptu examination. Having exhausted their knowledge of the law, he had abruptly changed tack. "Now I'm going to set you a practicum." Then he'd bounced off to fetch the key to the vestry.

The lads were to help him discover who killed Mr. Smythson. Their first step was to examine the body, which had been delivered early that morning from Whitehall. Bacon had made it seem like a murder investigation was a normal part of their studies, but Tom could tell by the startled expression on Ben's face that it was quite out of the ordinary.

Bacon jogged down the steps of the hall bearing a large iron key. "Gentlemen." He walked quickly past them, clearly expecting them to follow.

Tom couldn't make up his mind about Francis Bacon. He had drilled them mercilessly for the better part of an hour, yet Tom had gotten not a whiff of malice nor a whisper of contempt when they flubbed an answer. He simply wanted to know what they knew and had extracted the information with maximum efficiency.

Bacon unlocked the door to the vestry. This was little more than a storeroom, barely ten feet wide, containing one old cupboard and a single chest. Nothing more was needed nowadays since they'd done away with the egregious trappings of popery. It smelled of dust and pennyroyal with something less aromatic underneath.

The center of the room was occupied by the body of Mr. Smythson, laid upon a trestle table and covered with a fresh white sheet. The lads ranged themselves around the table with Bacon standing at the head.

"He looks bigger than he did standing up." Ben spoke in a loud whisper.

"I was going to say smaller," Trumpet whispered back. "Or rather, shorter from end to end, but rounder in the middle."

"That's what I meant."

"It's an odd effect, isn't it?" Bacon spoke at a normal volume. "Something to do with perspective."

Trumpet gestured at the sheet covering Smythson's face. "Shall we . . ."

"Yes," Bacon said. "Please proceed, Mr. Trumpington."

Trumpet drew in a breath, took hold of a corner of the sheet, and flipped it back, exposing the body to the waist. The lads gasped in unison. Tom had expected more stink. The room was cold, though; cold enough to see his breath. Cold enough to stave off rot.

The lads fell silent, waiting, while Bacon stood gazing at Smythson's waxy face. His mouth was twisted with disgust, but his hazel eyes were dark with sorrow.

"He was my tutor too," he said finally. "Did you know that?"

They shook their heads.

"Only seven years ago." He smiled sadly. "Seems like a lifetime."

Another long pause. Then he shook himself slightly and drew a long breath. He looked at the lads again with his customary brightness of eye. "We owe him a debt, all of us here. Let us do our job well and bring his murderer to justice."

Tom and Ben murmured, "Amen." It seemed appropriate.

"What do we observe?" Bacon asked.

Tom, as usual, answered first. "He looks dead."

Stephen snorted.

"I believe his status has been fully established," Bacon said, with a quirk of his lips.

Tom said, "I mean, he doesn't look as if he were sleeping, like people say. He looks cold. Lifeless."

"He looks murdered," Trumpet said. "He must have been stabbed a dozen times. Look at all the wounds."

He reached a hand out as if to touch one of the pale red slashes on Smythson's chest.

"Don't touch him!" Stephen cried.

"Why not? I didn't kill him." Trumpet screwed his eyes shut and set his hand flat on the body. He peeked with one eye, as if half-afraid the wounds might start to flow with fresh blood in accordance with the ancient superstition.
Murder will out
, the crones intoned. The corpse will bleed afresh under the hands of the murderer.

"Well, that's one suspect eliminated," Bacon said dryly. Turning to Ben, he asked, "Mr. Whitt, would you care to present?"

Ben folded his hands behind his back and began a circuit of the body. Like any good lawyer, he thought best while pacing. "First, we must ascertain how the victim met his end."

"Um." Tom raised his hand. "I believe he was stabbed repeatedly. This is suggested by the multiple knife wounds visible upon his torso."

"But," Ben said, "was stabbing in fact the cause of death? He might have been stabbed and then strangled so that his death was actually caused by the strangling."

"That's true," Trumpet said. He gestured formally, using both open hands, toward the neck. "But there are no marks on his neck. Hence, no strangling."

"Why are there so many wounds?" Tom asked. "And look, some of them are barely pricks, while others are deep and bruised all around. Like the killer drove in the knife right up to the hilt."

"Captain Ralegh said the murderer was a cutpurse," Stephen said.

"No," Trumpet said. "That was Lord Cumberland. Captain Ralegh said, 'Perhaps.'"

"Sir Walter disputes the official story?" Bacon frowned. "I hadn't heard that."

The lads shrugged at him. Tom thought one "perhaps" was slender evidence of dispute, but then, he wasn't a lawyer yet. "Why would a cutpurse stab a man so many times? If all I want is your purse, why wouldn't I just cut the strings and run away? Look here." He walked around the table and sidled up behind Stephen. "You be the victim."

Stephen gazed up at the rough-beamed ceiling, whistling tunelessly, pretending to be an easy mark.

"Here's my knife," Tom said, drawing his own from its sheath on his belt. "All I have to do is whisk your robes aside and slice." He demonstrated. "Ouch." He'd pricked his finger. He resheathed his knife and sucked on the wound.

"I believe real cutpurses wear horn covers on their thumbs," Ben said. He had a weakness for lurid ballads and broadsheets — the bloodier, the better — and knew many odd facts about the ways of the underworld.

"That's a useful item." Bacon smiled at him. Ben blushed — just a flash, but Tom noticed.
Oh, ho! Sits the wind in that quarter?

"Maybe Smythson's thief didn't have one," Stephen said. "Maybe Smythson caught him in the act and grabbed his hand, like this." He grabbed Tom's knife hand.

"But then how can I stab you?" Tom said.

"Maybe he grabbed the other hand," Trumpet said. "He was frightened; he might easily have made a mistake."

Stephen switched to the other hand.

"Now I want to escape," Tom said, "but you won't let go of me."

"I'm going to take you to the constable," Stephen said, dropping his voice to Smythson's register.

"No, no!" Tom cried. He raised his knife hand and pretended to stab at Stephen. Stephen twisted his head from side to side, pretending to be in agony. Then they both stopped and stared at each other.

"Why don't I let go and run away?" Stephen said.

"Then I could run away too," Tom said. "Why do I stand and stab you, over and over?"

They turned to stare at Bacon, who smiled grimly. "That does appear to be the central question."

"He was muddy," Ben said. "Remember? His robes were all twisted, like he'd struggled lying on his back. That's why he couldn't run away. The thief knocked him down."

"But why didn't
I
run?" Tom said. "I mean the thief. He had the purse. He could disappear into Westminster before Mr. Smythson got to his feet."

They all fell silent, thinking.

"You hate me," Stephen said abruptly.

"No, I don't." Tom was nonplussed. "I get irritated sometimes and I didn't much like the way your family treated me, but—"

Stephen's lips disappeared into a thin line. "I meant
the thief
hated Mr. Smythson."

"Ay, me." Tom clapped a hand to his cheek and frowned a mock apology.

"Who could hate him?" Trumpet asked. "He was only a stodgy old lawyer."

Bacon said, "He wasn't always old. And he was a skilled and learned barrister. Suppose some man who lost a vital case due to Smythson's counsel harbored a deep grudge against him. Finding him alone in that deserted lane, his anger might have broken loose like a sudden storm."

"What about the purse, then?" Tom asked. "The strings were cut. A purse was stolen."

"Two purses, according to the coroner's report," Bacon said.

"I remember," Ben said. "Captain Ralegh found two sets of cut strings."

"Why would he have two purses?" Trumpet asked. "Most men carry only one, don't they? They tuck their other oddments into their pockets."

"One for himself and one for a payment, perhaps?" Tom said. "He might have been on his way to his tailor's."

"On Queen's Day?" Trumpet scoffed.

"We can imagine many reasons." Bacon's tone was as chilly as the air in the little room.

Tom felt squelched. He tried another tack. "He would have been bloody, the thief. He must have been well splattered. Wouldn't someone have noticed?"

Trumpet shook his head. "If his clothes were dark, he could turn his cloak inside out and hold it tight around him until he got home. If no one bumped right up against him . . ."

"He'd still have a bloody doublet to dispose of," Tom said. "Or have washed. Some laundress somewhere knows who our man is, I'll wager."

Bacon looked at him sharply, as though Tom had given him an idea. Whatever it was, he kept it to himself.

"If we had any notion of who the man was, we might be able to find her." Ben shrugged. "But we can hardly question every laundress in Middlesex." He gestured at the sheet. He and Trumpet each took a corner and drew it up over Smythson's face once more. "I fear we'll never know."

Tom wondered what else was in that coroner's report. He also wondered why Bacon had been so quick to squash his payment idea. He had a niggling sense their tutor was holding something back.

CHAPTER 7

"This is it," Tom said, pointing up at a window on the first floor of a four-story house.

"No, it isn't," Trumpet said. "The house on the other side was more of a pinkish color. I remember because it made such a striking background to Captain Ralegh's silver and white costume."

"I remember that too," Stephen said.

The lads were rambling through the maze of lanes south of Whitehall on their way home from Westminster Hall, where they'd been observing the proceedings of the Court of Common Pleas. They were looking for the spot where Tobias Smythson had been murdered,
as per
Bacon's instructions. He had told them to return to the scene to elicit all available evidence, whether material, in the form of objects on the ground, or testimonial, in the form of statements from witnesses. Tom was hoping for one particular witness.

"I should think I would remember the place where I first saw my one true love," Tom said. "It was an important moment for me after all."

Stephen and Trumpet snickered. Tom felt affronted, as a gentleman should when the sincerity of his ardor is doubted. Although in fairness, he had similarly sworn his undying love only a month ago, after chancing to sit beside Lady Elizabeth Throckmorton at the theater. He'd written three sonnets to her beauty and dreamt about her for a fortnight.

This was different; he couldn't explain how. He hadn't been able to think of anything but his angel for the whole past week. It had nearly affected his appetite. He'd spent every idle moment planning what he'd say to her when he found her. Today was the day: he could feel it in his bones. He was so sure that he'd stuck an ostrich plume in his best hat in spite of his friends' jeers and Gray's rules about finery. Otherwise, he and the lads wore leather jerkins and everyday slops since they were going on from here direct to their dancing lesson.

Ben walked ahead, studying the ground. He paused every few steps to shift a bit of mud with the toe of his boot. He stopped a dozen yards down the lane and raised his hands, gesturing as if establishing the position of invisible figures. He called back, "This is it!" They trotted down the lane to where he stood.

Tom looked up. "This window looks the same as the other one."

Ben nodded. "These houses were probably built at the same time by the same builder. But that house —" he turned to point across the lane "— is pink. And there's this." He pointed his toe at a clump of mud. "I'm fairly certain that's blood. The worst of it must have been removed."

"Ugh," Tom said. "Poor Mr. Smythson."

"God rest him," the others intoned.

Stephen said, "What are we supposed to be looking at?" He'd been carping and whining throughout their search. Tom wished he would go on ahead, if he didn't want to help. Who was stopping him?

"Whatever is unusual, I suppose," Ben said.

They turned in slow circles. Tom tried to observe with his full perceptive capacity, as Bacon had instructed them, but saw nothing more than walls and windows and sanded earth. The whole area around Whitehall had been swept clean for Queen's Day and there hadn't been time for fresh rubbish to pile up.

"I hope we can find the knife," Trumpet said.

"Surely the thief would have kept it," Stephen said.

"We don't know that it was a thief," Ben said. "My impression is that Mr. Bacon thinks it wasn't."

"He's holding something back," Tom said. "I'm sure of it." He shot a meaningful glance at Ben, who only shrugged.

"Why doesn't he tell us what he wants us to find?" Stephen said. "Why be so cursed mysterious?"

"To prevent our results from being contaminated by
a priori
assumptions." Ben had been thoroughly seduced by Bacon's novel approach to natural philosophy. At least, he claimed it was the philosophy.

"We should look for witnesses," Tom said. "My angel might have seen something."

"She may well have," Ben said, "but she doesn't seem to be at home today."

The window where she had stood was shuttered.

"She could be inside," Tom said. "It's nippy; she wouldn't want the window open. She could be standing there, combing her golden tresses, right on the other side of that wall." He gazed up at the window, raising his arms before him as if in supplication.

"Here it comes," Stephen warned.

Tom lifted his voice in song. He would call his angel to him with poetry and music. He chose the song they'd learned last week from their Italian master, which happened to be apt.

"From heaven an angel upon radiant wings,

New lighted on that shore so fresh and fair . . ."

The other lads joined in. They had an Italian lesson that afternoon; they might as well practice. They made a balanced quartet. Tom and Stephen had the best voices and were both tenors, although Stephen's range was slightly greater. Trumpet's normal voice was mediocre but he could produce a surprisingly sweet falsetto. Ben had a round and fruity basso.

They sang clearly, lightening the dreary morning, enjoying the effect of their voices echoing against the plaster walls.

"To which, so doom'd, my faithful footstep clings:

Alone and friendless, when she found me there,

Of gold and silk a finely-woven net,

Where lay my path, 'mid seeming flowers she set:

Thus was I caught, and, for such sweet light shone

From out her eyes, I soon forgot to moan."

They came to the end of the song. The window before them remained shut. But someone behind them clapped loudly. They turned to see a wrinkled crone leaning out of a window on the first floor of the pink house.

"Beeyootiful!" She grinned toothlessly down at them. "But why're ye singing to an empty window, good sirs, when ye've got me?"

Tom bowed, which brought on a raucous cackle.

Ben muttered indistinctly, trying not to move his lips, "We may have another witness."

Trumpet called up to her, "We're looking for a woman who was here last week, Goodwife. In the window across from yours. A young woman with blond hair?"

"Oh,
her
!" The crone's mouth turned down in a frightful grimace, making her look so like a gargoyle that Tom flinched. "She's not there now. They're at court, this hour."

Tom's heart leapt: his angel was noble if she was at court. Then it sank again: she was beyond his reach. He sighed. He would have to love her from afar. More romantic, if less satisfying.

Ben spoke up. "Were you here last week, Goodwife, when the lawyer was killed?"

"Nor was I, curse the luck! The most exciting thing to happen 'neath this window in all my years and it happens right when I'm having my mug o' ale!"

"Do you normally sit at this window, then?" Ben asked.

"
Normally?
I allus sits here, sir, if that's what you mean. I was only out for a quarter of an hour. Half, might be. Never longer."

Ben smiled up at her, nodding, speaking to the others out of the corner of his mouth. "We need to interview her. She may have seen the killer earlier." The words came out in a sort of squashed creak.

"Why're ye talking so queer?" She craned her withered neck to see them better.

The boys closed ranks, smiling up at her.

"What did you say?" Trumpet spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

Stephen, a gifted mimic, repeated Ben's words in the same suppressed squeak. "We need to interview her."

"Just ask her," Tom urged, poking Ben in the side.

The crone watched their byplay with sharp attention. "You gentlemen is as good as a mummery show. Sing me another o' them songs."

"If you'll let us come up, we will," Ben said.

"Come ahead, fine sirs." She flapped her hand. "I always welcome tasty young gentlemen into my chamber." She burst into a torrent of cackling, rocking back and forth, clutching the oak frame of the window. Tom hesitated briefly; they might be safer questioning her from the street.

The lads found an alley that led them onto King Street. They realized that they were retracing the route they'd taken on the fatal day and kept their eyes skinned for bits of material evidence. Nothing presented itself. Bacon had suggested footprints, but both lane and alley had been thoroughly trampled by three horses and a curious mob.

They counted houses back to the one the old woman occupied and entered a doorway under a sign that read
The Janus Face
. Inside, they were dazzled by an array of silks and taffetas and sarcenets in a rainbow of hues. Gowns and doublets of all kinds hung about the room.

The lads were so amazed by the finery that it was several moments before they noticed a short man of middle years standing before them with a crabbed look on his round face. "If you're from the Middle Temple," he said, eyes raking their student robes, "your costumes aren't ready. I told you December fifteenth and not one day earlier."

"We're from Gray's," Trumpet said.

"Gray's won't be done till day before Christmas Eve. Every year, you expect a miracle, putting in your orders at the last minute. Well, you'll not get one this year neither. You can't get quality workmanship at a moment's notice."

"We're not here for costumes," Ben said.

"What costumes?" Stephen asked. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed at a turban in gleaming purple silk topped with a spray of white plumes. Stephen drew in a delighted breath. They exchanged excited grins. This would be their first Christmas in London, and they meant to enjoy every minute of it. Feasts, plays, gaming, masques, music; dancing, dancing, and more dancing. They had been practicing their leaps for
la volta
for weeks.

Tom winced as Ben trod heavily upon his foot. "We'd like to speak with someone upstairs," Ben said. "A woman at the window?"

The costumer groaned. "My grandmother, you mean. She's been flirting with you, hasn't she? I pray you, good sirs, kindly ignore her."

"We'd like to visit her, Tailor," Ben said. "Only for a moment. We're investigating a murder that was committed here last week."

"Oh, the murder! I heard all about it, that evening when I got home. I was at the pageant, you see, in the tents doing the last minute fittings, so I missed all the excitement."

"Your grandmother may have been a witness," Ben started, but the costumer was shaking his head vigorously.

"Forgive me, sir, but that she wasn't. She was having her mug of ale. She takes it at the same time every day. She didn't see a thing. She's been moaning about it ever since."

"She might have seen someone in the lane a few minutes before or after," Trumpet said.

"Or she might know who was at the window across the way," Tom put in.

The costumer rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose she might. She'd only have been away a few minutes. She knows better than to linger gossiping over her mug at this season." He regarded his worktable, heaped high with fancy stuffs, and sighed the heartfelt sigh of a man who would earn a year's wages in two months of heroic labor. "It's only going to get worse between now and Twelfth Night."

He directed the lads to the stairs at the back of the house. "I can tell you this, young masters. If she says she saw something, that something was there. There's nothing wrong with her
eyes
."

They mounted the narrow stairs in a single file.

"I don't like the way he said that last bit," Tom said. "The way he emphasized her
eyes
."

"Like there might be something wrong with the rest of her," Ben said.

Trumpet half turned on the first landing. "Like her wits, do you think?"

"A witless witness," Stephen said.

"Oh, that's good," Tom said. "That's really good."

"Witless witness?" Stephen hummed a rhythm under his breath. "How about this:

The morning sun shall bear me witness,

Thy something beauty strikes me witless."

"Sparkling," Trumpet suggested. "Thy sparkling beauty. To go with morning sun."

"Too shallow," Ben said. "A sparkling beauty would be superficial only. The loved one should have depth of character as well."

They reached a square landing that allowed access to two chambers. Ben knocked on the door to the rear one.

It opened immediately. Tom had to look straight down to greet the tiny woman before him. She grinned up at them, displaying her nearly toothless gums. "Here are my pretty gentlemen," she crooned. "Welcome to my forest."

Tom crossed the threshold into a dream. The crone's chamber seemed indeed to be more forest than house. Row upon row of leaves sewn of gossamer and silk hung on wire-strung racks that covered all four walls, saving only the window and the door. The leaves, in every hue of green and yellow and brown, rustled as they shifted in the breeze from the open window.

"How do they rustle?" Tom asked in wonder. "They sound so real."