Dee shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That’s the only bit I saw.’
Marlowe’s eyes were wide. ‘Professor Johns attacked Mistress Steane?’ he asked, agog.
‘No,’ Manwood said. ‘No, that’s not how it was.’
‘Mistress Steane attacked Professor Johns?’
‘No, not that either. It turns out that she swooned from the heat, and the excitement I suppose, and in trying to stop her falling, Johns had grabbed a handful of her dress and it tore. She grabbed some of his robe and it did the same. She didn’t accuse him of anything, but it was quite a shock to see Steane in such a temper. I always thought he was the mildest of men.’
‘I’ve certainly never seen that side of him,’ Marlowe said, ‘although I can’t say I know him well. I have usually only seen him conducting services at King’s and there isn’t that much scope for temper at evensong.’
‘It rather broke the party up,’ Manwood said. ‘Francis Hynde has gone off somewhere with a bottle or two, Steane and his good lady have taken themselves off to bed. In the event, Ursula apparently didn’t give her bride’s maids her garters as is the custom and I don’t suppose for a moment anybody wanted Steane’s codpiece. The guests have all gone home, those within a reasonable distance, anyway. Falconer, Thirling and Goad are still having a lie-down although I should think they will be stirring soon. John gave them a tincture.’
‘Just a spot,’ Dee said. ‘They will indeed be waking shortly. Johns stayed with them, so that they had someone other than the driver with them on the way home. I’m not sure about Norgate? Do you know where he went, Roger?’
‘He went earlier, I think,’ Manwood said. ‘I started to lose track, at the finish.’
Marlowe blew out his cheeks and looked from one to the other. ‘I’m not sure I can match that,’ he said. ‘All of my news is older than this, of course, and as such doesn’t have the dramatic attack.’
Dee blinked. ‘Kit, have you fallen among players or something?’
Marlowe blushed and looked down. ‘No, no. A little poetry, that’s more my métier.’
Dee looked dubious, but motioned him to continue. When would people realize that it was pointless to dissemble with Dr John Dee, the Queen’s Magus. He knew everything; especially through the clear glass of hindsight.
‘I’ve taken it as read that Ralph and Henry were poisoned,’ Marlowe said. ‘Henry was working on Ralph’s journal when he died . . . although I’m not sure that that is pertinent, because we all knew that Tom was supposed to be doing it. We managed to piece together the conundrum that Henry was working on – it was Greek, in a mirror, and not very good Greek at that.’
‘What did it say?’ Manwood leaned forward, a dripping spoon of custard halfway to his mouth.
‘Well, we can’t be sure that the translation is completely right, mostly because it doesn’t make sense, but it seemed to say “opposite the Dark Entry”. We have thought of what is opposite the Dark Entry, but it is just a couple of tombs and that makes no sense.’
There was a pause, then Manwood gave a shout of laughter.
‘Is that a joke?’ Dee asked, looking at the Men of Kent.
Marlowe bit his lip and then, smiling an embarrassed smile, told Dee about his childhood gaffe.
Dee looked at Manwood and they nodded at each other.
‘After you,’ Dee said, magnanimously. He had tired of Manwood’s reminiscences over the last week, but the man’s memory had come up trumps this time.
‘Perhaps the tombs don’t make sense, but does this?’ Manwood asked. ‘Kit, you thought that the couple in the Dark Entry were fighting, but in fact they were fornicating. So, might Ralph have seen a couple who he
thought
were fornicating, but who he realized were actually fighting?’ He sat back, and waited for the reaction.
‘The woman in the river!’ Marlowe said, suddenly.
‘Fludd’s case?’ Dee checked.
‘Yes. Even Edward Winterton thinks there is something suspicious about her death, but instructed a verdict of “found drowned” to protect the family.’
‘Where would Ralph have seen it, though? It could have been anywhere,’ Manwood said.
Marlowe clicked his fingers. ‘I was on the Backs this afternoon and I saw what I thought was a pile of clothes, but it was a college servant. It was in the cloister along the side of the King’s meadow, leading from the gate to the Chapel.’
‘That doesn’t narrow things down at all,’ Dee complained. ‘I know in my day that was a short cut for every Tom, Dick and Harry.’
‘True,’ Marlowe said. ‘So in that case, Ralph possibly told the wrong person what he had seen. And that person is the one who killed him.’
The silence was palpable. The men could hear the pinging of the candle sconces as the hot wax ran over the metal. They could hear the birds shifting in their nests in the chimney. They could hear their own hearts beating.
‘Oh God’s teeth!’ Marlowe suddenly shouted and Manwood almost died of shock. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Roger,’ Marlowe said, contrite. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. Henry asked one of the Fellows to help him with the translation when he took it over from Tom.’
‘Who?’ Manwood and Dee shouted together.
Marlowe sat back in his chair and sighed. ‘The same man I found in my ransacked room one night, waiting for me. The man who had been kind; too kind, perhaps.’ The answer was in sight but it gave him no pleasure. ‘Michael Johns,’ he said.
FIFTEEN
Ambrose Falconer sat in the carriage and couldn’t remember when he had felt more ill than this. His trouble was very long-standing and an unexpected fit of it had robbed him of the post of organist at Canterbury Cathedral, many years before. His general malaise had not been helped by the fall into the carp pond; as he had sunk below the murky surface, he thought he saw his whole life flash before him and could certainly feel the nibble of fishy lips on his cheek before two of Francis Hynde’s gardeners had fished him back to the world, coughing and spluttering. They had manhandled him into one of the second best guest bedrooms and that strange, slightly singed little man in grey had come to see him. For some reason that he still couldn’t fathom, Ambrose Falconer had told him every symptom of his trouble and the man had told him to drink the contents of a small package dissolved in wine and then, dried and dressed in one of Francis Hynde’s second best guest robes, he had fallen into a sleep like death. But now he was awake and dressed again in his own clothes, which were still very slightly damp about the seams and the dreams that had come to him in his long sleep still lingered at the corners of his eyes. He groaned and sat patiently, waiting for what would happen to him next.
Richard Thirling sat in the carriage next to Ambrose Falconer and couldn’t remember when he had felt more ill than this. He often had attacks of whatever it was that made his leg give way, which was sometimes accompanied by singing in the ears; he had always attributed that to years as a choirmaster. But this afternoon, at the wedding breakfast, he had suddenly been spectacularly sick all over the second cousin twice removed of the bride. He had been removed with not too much ceremony by two of Francis Hynde’s grooms, who had taken him, up the back stairs, to a second best guest bedroom, where he had been stripped of his clothes and put to bed. Just as he was drifting off into a troubled sleep, he would jerk awake as his muscles spasmed and arched his back. Then he would shiver as though with ague and drift off, until the whole sorry business would start again. There was a bucket strategically placed at his bedside, but he usually missed his mark, with a muttered apology to the empty room. His memory was unclear after the first visitation of whatever this pestilence was; one minute he was talking to the wedding party, the next he was in bed. Then, he thought he could remember, a strange grey man had materialized and had made him vomit some more. There was talk of oysters and wine, but he had to say no; he really wasn’t feeling all that well.
Professor Goad sat in the carriage and couldn’t remember when he had felt more ill than this. He had absolutely no memory of the whole sorry day and just closed his eyes and hoped to die.
Michael Johns stood talking to the groom who would be driving them home. He was trying to persuade the man to let him ride up on the outside bench, where the groaning and the belching and the general stench would be less noticeable, but the man was adamant. It just wasn’t done in Sir Francis Hynde’s employ that gentlemen rode with grooms up front. He would have to travel with the other . . . gentlemen – the pause was small but telling – in the carriage. Sighing, Johns turned away from the man. Surely there must be an alternative to getting into that noisome box and holding his breath the whole way to Cambridge.
Marlowe, Manwood and Dee reluctantly left some food, just a little, on the trestle in the inn and prepared to leave. The landlord was so ecstatic and lost in his cloud of cuckoo-dreams of having at last broached the world of quality clientele that it was not for some time that he realized that no one had paid.
They left Marlowe’s horse behind, as Manwood and Dee had their own way of getting back into the park. A path wound through a small shrubbery between the church and the inn, which came out at the back of the stable yard. Manwood and Dee did have the grace to admit that it was possibly easier to use in daylight than it was in the dark, but eventually they were walking on cobbles and no longer had to pause every few yards to disentangle themselves from the clutch of brambles. As they walked, swearing under their breath every now and again as a mistimed branch whizzed back from the grip of the man in front, they made plans. Marlowe and Manwood were dagger men, at bottom. Subtleties suggested by Dee were, in the final analysis, too slow and not foolproof. The murderer – Marlowe still had trouble naming him as Johns, even in the teeth of the evidence – had killed at least three times to their knowledge and could easily be planning to kill again. Dee favoured a more oblique approach. He had, after all, tinctures by the dozen, incantations galore, which could bring the soul of a man to its knees and make him tell the truth though it condemned him to eternal damnation.
Manwood hadn’t liked the light in Dee’s eye, the way he rubbed his hands together. It smacked of heresy, necromancy and the rest; a good dagger-point at the throat would achieve all that and more and no risk to anyone’s eternal soul except that of the murderer.
They were still discussing it, although an eavesdropper may have chosen to call it arguing, when they stumbled on to the cobbles of the stable yard. There were no carriages to be seen and even the grooms seemed to have gone to bed.
‘Where was their carriage?’ Marlowe asked, urgently.
‘Here,’ said Manwood, spreading his arms.
‘I should have given them a bigger dose,’ Dee said. ‘But with Falconer, I had to be careful. It could have killed him in his condition. And of course, Thirling . . .’
The other two waited. Finally, Manwood could bear it no longer. ‘Yes? Thirling? What about Thirling?’
‘Thirling might have been poisoned,’ Dee said slowly. ‘I assumed it was the oysters or the wine.’
‘Poison has to be given to the person somehow,’ Marlowe said. ‘With Ralph and Henry, we couldn’t tell when or how they had been given it. But I know that Dr Thirling had not eaten for hours before we got to Madingley, so he must have been given a dose there.’
‘But why didn’t it kill him?’ Manwood asked.
‘Because,’ Dee said, ‘tincture of digitabulum takes varying times to kill – and because I gave him tartar emetic when I went to see him after he was taken ill. It got the poison out of his system when only a little had been absorbed.’
‘So who gave it to him?’ Marlowe wanted to know.
Manwood was confused. ‘Haven’t we decided it was Johns?’ he asked.
‘Was Johns near Thirling when he ate or drank?’ Dee asked. ‘I can’t remember, but I don’t think he was. He had already gone off with the bride, I
think
. And he couldn’t have just put the poison in some food because if he had we would have a house half full of the dead and dying.’ Dee wished he had a showstone which would clarify the past in the way that it clarified the future.
Marlowe was almost hopping with frustration. He had missed a vital clue because he had had other clues to find. Why had neither of these stupid men . . . ?
‘Shhhh!’ whispered Manwood, peering through the shrubbery. ‘There’s someone creeping out of the side door of the house. Whoever it is is making for the stables.’
‘Can you see who it is?’ breathed Marlowe, who had his back to the building and was loath to attract attention to himself by turning round.
‘No. He’s going into the tack room. It’s probably just a manservant on some assignation with a scullery maid. Shhhh . . . No, he’s coming out again . . .’
‘Turn your head away,’ Marlowe said. ‘The moonlight reflecting in your eyes will give us all away.’
Dee looked at the scholar with new eyes. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he whispered. ‘I believe you have done this sort of thing before.’
Marlowe lifted a shoulder in recognition and bent his head towards Manwood’s shoulder, whispering, ‘What’s he doing now? Can you see who it is?’
‘He’s saddling a horse,’ whispered Manwood. ‘I still can’t see who it is . . . he’s keeping to the shadows. Where is he going?’
‘To get Thirling,’ Dee whispered back. He risked a glance out of the corner of his eye. ‘It could be Johns, I suppose. It’s hard to tell in this light. He needs to finish off Thirling; to stop him telling what he knows.’
The sensible Justice of the Peace rose up inside Roger Manwood. ‘Aren’t we perhaps getting a little overexcited?’ he asked quietly. ‘There may be a perfectly simple explanation.’ He wondered what would happen if people at home in Canterbury heard of him skulking around stable yards at dead of night and accusing reputable members of Cambridge colleges of murder.
Marlowe pulled the two men aside into the shadows. ‘Sir Roger, there is no simple explanation. Creeping about and saddling horses by moonlight is not normal behaviour. Murder has been done three times. We couldn’t stop them happening, but this fourth one we
can
prevent. My horse is ready for me down at the inn. If I run now, I can be on its back and waiting to follow before this man passes that way. It is hard for one man to saddle a horse, and if it is Michael Johns he isn’t used to it.’