The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (32 page)

Pilbeam adjusted his robes and his cap. Beside him Martin tugged at his collar. Pilbeam jabbed the lad with his elbow and hissed, “Stand up straight, you lumpish ratsbane . . . ”

“Quiet, you fly-bitten foot-licker,” Lord Robert ordered.

Heralds threw open the doors. Her Majesty the Queen strode into the chamber, a vision in brocade, lace, and jewels. But her garments seemed like so many rags beside the glorious sunrise glow of her fair skin and her russet hair.

Lord Robert went gracefully down upon one knee, his upturned face filled with the adoration of a papist for a saint. Pilbeam dropped like a sack of grain, jerking Martin down as he went. The lad almost fumbled the pillow he carried, but his quick grab prevented the witching-doll from falling off the pillow and onto the floor.

The Queen's amber eyes crinkled at the corners, but her scarlet lips did not smile. “Robin, you roguish folly-fallen lewdster,” she said to Lord Robert, her voice melodious but not lacking an edge. “Why have you pleaded to wait upon us this morning?”

“My agent, Dr. Pilbeam, who is apprenticed to your favorite, Dr. Dee, has discovered the truth behind my wife's unfortunate death.”

Robert did not say “untimely death,” Pilbeam noted. Then her Majesty turned her eyes upon him, and his thoughts melted like a wax candle in their heat.

“Dr. Pilbeam,” she said. “Explain.”

He spoke to the broad planks of the floor, repeating the lines he had rehearsed before his lordship: Cumnor Place, the maidservant overcome by her guilt, the death-spell quickened by the doll, and behind it all the clumsy but devious hands of Prestall and Cosyn. No revenant figured in the tale, and certainly no magic circle in St. Mary's, Oxford.

On cue, Martin extended the pillow. Lord Robert offered it to the Queen. With a crook of her forefinger, she summoned a lady-in-waiting, who carried both pillow and doll away. “Burn it,” Elizabeth directed. And to her other attendants, “Leave us.” With a double thud the doors shut.

Her Majesty flicked her pomander, bathing the men and the boy with the odor of violets and roses, as though she were a bishop dispensing the holy water of absolution. “You may stand.”

Lord Robert rose as elegantly as he had knelt. With an undignified stagger, Pilbeam followed. Martin lurched into his side and Pilbeam batted him away.

“Where are these evildoers now?” asked the Queen.

“The maidservant is in Oxford gaol, your Majesty,” Robert replied, “and the malicious cozeners in the Tower.”

“And yet it seems as though this maid was merely foolish, not wicked, ill-used by men who tempted her with gold. You must surely have asked yourself, Robin, who in turn tempted these men.”

“Someone who wished to destroy your trust in me, your Majesty. To drive me from your presence. My enemy, and yours as well.”

“Do you think so? What do you think, Dr. Pilbeam?”

What he truly thought, Pilbeam dared not say. That perhaps Amy's death was caused by someone who intended to play the Queen's friend. Someone who wished Amy Robsart's death to deliver Lord Robert Dudley to Elizabeth's marriage bed, so that there she might engender heirs.

Whilst some found Robert's bloodline tainted, his father and grandfather both executed as traitors, still the Queen could do much worse in choosing her consort. One could say of Robert what was said of the Queen herself upon her accession, that he was of no mingled or Spanish blood but was born English here in England. Even if he was proud as a Spaniard . . . .

Pilbeam looked into the Queen's eyes, jewels faceted with a canny intelligence.
Spain,
he thought. The deadly enemy of Elizabeth and protestant England. The Spanish were infamous for their subtle plots.

“B-b-begging your pardon, your Majesty,” he stammered, “but I think his lordship is correct in one regard. His wife was murdered by your enemies. But they did not intend to drive him from your presence, not at all.”

Robert's glance at Pilbeam was not encouraging. Martin took a step back. But Pilbeam barely noticed, spellbound as he was by the Queen. “Ambassador Feria, who was lately recalled to Spain. Did he not frequently comment to his master, King Philip, on your, ah, attachment to Lord Robert?”

Elizabeth nodded, one corner of her mouth tightening. She did not insult Pilbeam by pretending there had been no gossip about her attachment, just as she would not pretend she had no spies in the ambassador's household. “He had the impudence to write six months ago that Lady Robert had a malady in one of her breasts and that I was only waiting for her to die to marry.”

His lordship winced but had the wisdom to keep his own counsel.

“Yes, your Majesty,” said Pilbeam. “But how did Feria not only know of Lady Robert's illness but of its exact nature, long before the disease began to manifest itself? Her own housekeeper says she began to suffer only a few days before she died. Did Feria himself set two cozeners known for their, er, mutable loyalties to inflict such a condition upon her?”

“Feria was recently withdrawn and replaced by Bishop de Quadra,” murmured the Queen. “Perhaps he overstepped himself with his plot. Or perhaps he retired to Spain in triumph at its—no, not at its conclusion. For it has yet to be concluded.”

Lord Robert could contain himself no longer. “But your Majesty, this hasty-witted pillock speaks nonsense, why should Philip of Spain . . . ”

“ . . . wish for me to marry you? He intended no compliment to you, I am sure of that.” Elizabeth smiled, a smile more fierce than humorous, and for just a moment Pilbeam was reminded of her father, King Henry.

Robert's handsome face lit with the answer to the puzzle. “If your Majesty marries an Englishman, she could not ally herself with a foreign power such as France against Spain.”

True enough,
thought Pilbeam. But more importantly, if Elizabeth married Robert then she would give weight to the rumors of murder, and might even be considered his accomplice in that crime. She had reigned for only two years, her rule was far from secure. Marrying Lord Robert might give the discontented among her subjects more ammunition for their misbegotten cause, and further Philip's plots.

Whilst Robert chose to ignore those facts, Pilbeam would wager everything he owned that her Majesty did not. His lordship's ambition might have outpaced his love for his wife. His love for Elizabeth had certainly done so. No, Robert Dudley had not killed his wife. Not intentionally.

The Queen stroked his cheek, the coronation ring upon her finger glinting against his beard. “The problem, sweet Robin, is that I am already married to a husband, namely, the Kingdom of England.”

Robert had no choice but to acknowledge that. He bowed.

“Have the maidservant released,” Elizabeth commanded. “Allow the cozeners to go free. Let the matter rest, and in time it will die for lack of nourishment. And then Philip and his toadies will not only be deprived of their conclusion, they will always wonder how much we knew of their plotting, and how we knew it.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” said Lord Robert. “May I then return to court?”

“In the course of time.” She dropped her hand from his cheek.

He would never have his conclusion, either
, thought Pilbeam. Elizabeth would like everyone to be in love with her, but she would never be in love with anyone enough to marry him. For then she would have to bow her head to her husband's will, and that she would never do.

Pilbeam backed away. For once he did not collide with Martin, who, he saw with a glance from the corner of his eye, was several paces away and sidling crab-wise toward the door.

Again the Queen turned the full force of her eyes upon Pilbeam, stopping him in his steps. “Dr. Pilbeam, we hear that the ghost of Lady Robert Dudley has been seen walking in Cumnor Park.”

“Ah, ah . . . .” Pilbeam felt rather than saw Martin's shudder of terror. But they would never have discovered the truth without the revenant. No, he would not condemn Martin, not when his carelessness had proved a blessing in disguise.

Lord Robert's gaze burned the side of his face, a warning that matters of necromancy were much better left hidden. “Her ghost?” he demanded. “Walking in Cumnor Park?”

Pilbeam said, “Er—ah—m any tales tell of ghosts rising from their graves, your Majesty, compelled by matters left unconcluded at death. Perhaps Lady Robert is seeking justice, perhaps bewailing her fate. In the course time, some compassionate clergyman will see her at last to rest.”
Not I,
he added firmly to himself.

Elizabeth's smile glinted with wry humor. “Is that how it is?”

She would not insult Pilbeam by pretending that she had no spies in Oxfordshire as well, and that very little failed to reach her ears and eyes. And yet the matter of the revenant, too, she would let die for lack of nourishment. She was not only fair in appearance, but also in her expectations. He made her a bow that was more of a genuflection.

She made an airy wave of her hand. “You may go now, all of you. And Dr. Pilbeam, Lord Robert will be giving you the purse that dangles at his belt, in repayment of his debt to you.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” His lordship backed reluctantly away.

What an interesting study in alchemy
, thought Pilbeam,
that with the Queen the base metal of his lordship's manner was transmuted to gold.
“Your Majesty. My Lord.” Pilbeam reversed himself across the floor and out the door, which Martin contrived to open behind his back. Lord Robert followed close upon their heels, his boots stepping as lightly and briskly as the hooves of a thoroughbred.

A few moments later Pilbeam stood in the street, an inspiringly heavy purse in his hand, allowing himself a sigh of relief—ah, the free air was sweet, all was well that ended well . . . . Martin stepped into a puddle, splashing the rank brew of rainwater and sewage onto the hem of Pilbeam's robe.

Pilbeam availed himself yet again of Martin's convenient handle. “You rank pottle-deep measle! You rude-growing toad!” he exclaimed, and guided the lad down the street toward the warmth and peace of home.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS

I spent the first week in the shantytown near the Thirty-first Street Bridge, nestled in Slaughter's Run. The Run was a non-sequitur in the city, a sooty, barren gully just northeast of downtown. For local merchants it was a festering eyesore—particularly the ramshackle Hoovervilles clustered here and there, mostly near the several bridges that allowed civilization passage over this sunken stretch of wilderness.

For men—and women—down on their luck, as so many were in these hard times, the Run was a godsend. Smack dab in the middle of the city, here were wide open spaces where you could hunt wild game—pigeons, squirrels, wild dogs, and the delicacy of the day: Hoover hog, also known as jackrabbit.

In the Thirty-first Street Jungle, a world of corrugated metal and tar paper and tin cans, I met “former” every-things: college professor, stock broker, haberdasher, and lots of steel mill workers, laid off in this “goddamn Depression.” I don't know that I ever heard the latter word without the former attached.

Saddest to me were the families—particularly the women who were alone, their husbands having hopped the rails leaving them to raise a passel of dirty-faced, tattered kids. A ragamuffin-laden woman, even an attractive one, was unlikely to find a mate in this packing-crate purgatory.

Since Thursday of last week I'd been wandering the streets near the Central Market, where hobos haunted the rubbish bins. The weather was pleasant enough: a cool late April with occasional showers and lots of sunshine. I hadn't shaved the whole time; I wore a denim work shirt, brown raggedy cotton trousers, and shoes with holes in the soles covered by cardboard insteps. My “home” was a discarded packing crate in an alley off Freemont Avenue, behind a warehouse, in the heart of the city's skid row district.

When I talked the chief into letting me take this undercover assignment, he'd suggested I take my .38 Police Special along. I said no. All I'd need was a few personal items, in my canvas kit bag. I never went anywhere without my kit bag.

“It's a good idea,” the chief had said. He was a heavyset, bald, grizzled man who spoke around an ever-present stogie, frozen permanently in the left corner of his mouth. “As just another hobo, you can gain some trust . . . we can't get this riff-raff to cooperate, when we haul 'em in on rousts. But they might talk to another bum.”

“That's the theory,” I said, nodding.

Of course, if I told the chief my
real
theory, he'd have fitted me for a suit that buttoned up the back—you know the kind: where you can't scratch yourself because your arms are strapped in?

It had been three weeks since the last body had been found. The total was at eleven—always men, dismembered “with surgical precision,” whose limbs turned up here and there, washed up on a riverbank, floating in a sewage drainage pool, wrapped in newspaper in an alley, scattered in the weeds of the Run itself. Several heads were missing. So was damn near every drop of blood from each victim's jigsaw-puzzle corpse.

Because the butcher's prey was the faceless, homeless rabble washed up on the shores of this Depression, it took a long time for the city to give a damn. But the Slaughter Run Butcher was approaching an even dozen now, and that was enough to interest not just the police, but the press and the public.

The mission at Fourth and Freemont was always crowded—unlike a lot of soup kitchens, they didn't require you to pay for your supper by sitting through a hell-and-damnation sermon. In fact, I never saw anybody seated in the pews of the little chapel room off the dining hall, although occasionally you saw somebody sleeping it off in there; the minister was a mousy guy with white hair and a thin black mustache. He didn't seem to do much beside mill around, touching bums on the shoulder, saying, “Bless you my son.”

The person who really seemed to be in charge was this dark-haired society dame—Rebecca Radclau. If the gossip columns were correct, Miss Radclau was funding the Fourth Street Mission. Though schooled in America, she was said to be of European blood—her late father was royalty, a count it was rumored—and the family fortune was made in munitions.

Or so the society sob sisters said. They also followed the moviestar lovely Miss Radclau to various social functions—balls, ballet, theater, opera, particularly fund-raisers for the local Relief Association. She was the queen of local night life, on the weekends.

But on weeknights, this socially conscious socialite spent her time dressed in a gray nurse's-type uniform with a white apron, her long black hair up in a bun, standing behind the table ladling bowls of soup for the unfortunate faceless men who paraded before her.

Even in the dowdy, matronly attire, she was a knockout. The soup was good—tomato and rice, delicately spiced—but her slender, topheavy shape, and her delicate, catlike features, were the draw. Men would hold out their soup bowls and stare at her pale face, hypnotized by its beauty, and grin like schoolboys when she bestowed her thin red smile like a blessing.

“I'd like a piece of
that,”
the guy in front of me in line said. He was rail thin with a white stubbly beard and rheumy eyes.

“She seems friendly enough,” I said. “Why not give it a try?”

“She don't fraternize,” the guy behind me said. He was short, skinny, and bright-eyed, with a full beard.

“Bull,” the first guy said, “shit.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I seen her and Harry Toomis get in her fancy limo out back . . . it comes and picks her up, you know, midnight on the dot, every night, uniformed driver and the works.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyway, I seen the night Harry Toomis got in the limo with her, and she was hanging on 'em like a cheap suit of clothes.”

The other guy's expression turned puzzled in the maze of his beard. “Say—whatever
happened
to Harry? I ain't seen him in weeks!”

Somebody behind him said, “I heard he hopped the rails, over to Philly. Steel mills out there are hiring again, word is.”

We were close to the food table, where I picked up a generous hunk of bread and took an empty wooden bowl; soon I was handing it toward the dark-haired vision in white apron and gray dress, and she smiled like a madonna as she filled it.

“You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was low, warm; no accent.

“I feel I've known you forever.”

She looked at me hard; her almond-shaped eyes were a deep brown that approached black—it was as if she had only pupils, no irises.

“You seem familiar to me as well,” she said melodically.

“Hey, come on!” the guy behind me said. “Other people want to eat, too, ya know!”

Others joined in. “Yeah! This goddamn Depression'll be over before we get fed!” I smiled at her and shrugged, and she smiled warmly and shrugged, too, and I moved on.

I sat at a bench at one of the long tables and sipped my soup. When I was finished, I waited until the food line had been shut down for the evening, then found my way back to her.

“Need some help in the kitchen?” I asked, helping her with one handle of the big metal soup basin.

“We have some volunteers already,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow night?”

“Any night you like,” I said, and tried to layer it with as much meaning as possible.

Then I touched her hand as it gripped the basin; hers was cool, mine was hot.

“I wasn't always a tramp,” I said. “I was somebody you might have danced with, at a cotillion. Maybe we did dance. Under the stars one night? Maybe that's where I know you from.”

“Please . . . ” she began. Her brow was knit. Confusion? Embarrassment?

Interest?

“I'm sorry to be so forward,” I said. “It's just . . . I haven't seen a woman so beautiful, so cultured, in a very long time. Forgive me.”

And I silently helped her into the kitchen with the basin, turned, and went out of the mission.

The night sky was brilliant with stars; a full moon cast an ivory glow upon skid row, giving it an unreal beauty. An arty photograph, or perhaps a watercolor or an oil in a gallery, might have captured this landscape of abstract beauty and abject poverty. Rebecca Radclau might have admired such a work of art, on her social travels.

From around a corner, I watched as her dark-windowed limousine arrived at midnight, pulling into the alleyway where an impossibly tall, improbably burly chauffeur stepped out and opened the door for her. She was still wearing the dowdy gray uniform of her missionary duties. A sister of mercy.

She was alone.

She slipped into the back of the limo, her uniformed gorilla of a driver shut her inside, and they backed out into the street and glided away into the ivory-washed night.

Perhaps I'd misjudged her.

Or perhaps tonight she just wasn't thirsty . . .

For the next two nights I worked in the kitchen, washing the wooden soup bowls the first night, drying them the next—and there were a lot of goddamn bowls to wash and dry. She would move through the small, steamy kitchen as if floating, attending to the next night's menu with the portly little man who was the cook for the mission, and in her employ.

Rumor had it he'd been the chef at a top local hotel that had gone under in '29. Certainly the delicately seasoned soups we'd been eating indicated a finer hand than you might expect at a skid-row soup kitchen.

I would catch her eye, if possible. She would hesitate, our gazes would lock, and I would smile, just a little. She remained impassive. I didn't want to push it: I didn't repeat my soliloquy of the first night, nor did I add to it, or present a variation, either. I tried to talk to her with my eyes. That was a language I felt sure she was easily fluent in.

The next night, as I went through the soup line, she said, “We won't need you in the kitchen tonight,” rather coldly I thought, and I went to one of the long tables, sat, sipped my soup, thinking.
Damn! I screwed up. Came on too strong. She needed to think she was selecting me.

And just as this thought had passed, I felt a hand on my shoulder: hers.

I looked up and she was barely smiling; her catlike eyes sparkled.

“How was your soup?”

I turned sideways and she loomed over me. “Dandy,” I said. “I never see
you
trying any. Don't you like the company?”

“I never eat . . . soup.”

“It's pretty good, you know. Rich enough even for your blood, I'd think. Want to sit down?”

“No. No. I never fraternize.”

“I've heard that.”

“I just wanted to thank you for your help.” And she smiled in a tight, businesslike way. Others were watching us, and when she extended her slender fingers toward me, and I took them, we seemed to be shaking hands in an equally businesslike way.

Nobody but me noticed the tiny slip of paper she'd passed me.

And I didn't look at it until I was outside, ducked into my alley home.

Midnight,
it said.

Written in a flowing, lush hand. No further instructions. No signature.

But I knew where to be.

She stepped out of the back door of the alley, looking glamorous despite the dowdy uniform being damp with sweat and steam, black tendrils drifting down into her face from the pile of pinned-up hair. The whites of her eyes were large as she took in the alley, looking for me, I supposed. She seemed perplexed.

When the limousine glided into the alley next to the mission, and the tall burly chauffeur got out to let her in, I stepped from the recess of a doorway, kit bag in hand, and said “You did mean midnight, tonight?”

She jumped as if I'd said “boo.”

She touched her generous chest. “You startled me! When I didn't see you, I thought you'd misunderstood . . . or just stood me up.”

I went to her; took her hand and bent from the waist and kissed her hand, saying archly, “Stand up a lovely lady like yourself? Pshaw.”