The Twelfth Night Murder (4 page)

The constable blinked some, and for the first time since she’d known him he seemed unsure of his words. “Well, Mistress Thornton, my sensibilities were quite shaken when I saw what I never expected to see in my lifetime. I cannot compass the meaning of it, and can only hope he belongs to another troupe of actors. For either he’s an actor, or else he’s a . . . well . . .”

She sighed. “A sodomite? Is he wearing a woman’s frock, then?”

Pepper nodded.

Suzanne gazed at him for a moment, wondering how a man executing his office could be so tender about that subject. Unseemly as it was, it couldn’t possibly be something he’d never encountered before. Pepper was lazy and avoided work, but Suzanne had always assumed he was capable of accomplishing that work. Now she doubted it. Finally she said, “Well, Constable, I assure you there are hundreds of men in London who enjoy wearing dresses, and a surprising few of them are actors. Particularly our Christian, who would not be found dead in one, literally or otherwise, except onstage where it is understood he is playing a role that does not necessarily reflect his own personality. So I assure you your corpse is not one of ours. We are missing nobody today. Is that information all you came for?”

Pepper drew a deep, thoughtful breath as he struggled with the decision of what to say next. He said, “I wonder, Mistress Thornton, whether you would care to come look at this corpse?”

“Look at it? What for?”

“You see, the poor fellow did not drown, nor was he killed by the waterwheel. He was stabbed in the throat.”

“Murdered?”

Pepper nodded. “I’ll need far more information than I have available to me in order to find his killer.”

Suzanne weighed her next words more carefully than usual, for the first ones that came to mind were quite sharp and therefore ill-advised. She said, “Not to put too fine a point on it, Constable, but you must admit that a desire to learn the truth has never caused you so very much trouble in the past.”

“True, Mistress Thornton. Ordinarily this corpse would have been buried without much to-do and forgotten, but I’m afraid your late successes in discovering the perpetrators of such murders have created an expectation in the crown that is more than I can live up to.”

A smile tickled the corners of Suzanne’s mouth, for she knew well the cases he meant. “Indeed? The murders I’ve solved for you have got the king thinking you can solve them yourself?”

He nodded. “I’m afraid I’ve been told that I’m to find this boy’s murderer, since I appear to be the only man in all of London so very talented at this sort of deduction.”

Suzanne’s smile grew to a full-fledged grin. “Well, Constable, I imagine that puts you at a singular disadvantage regarding your office.”

“The magistrate has full confidence in me. It is a two-edged sword.”

“Misplaced as that confidence is.”

That stung Pepper, and he blinked. “I do my best.”

He didn’t, but Suzanne wasn’t going to argue that point. “The question is, will you succeed?”

“I have full confidence in you.”

“I haven’t agreed to help. What do you offer in the way of compensation?”

“The knowledge that justice is done?” His tone was hopeful, and betrayed his understanding that she knew justice was a fantasy and she would want more for her trouble.

“There is no such thing as justice this side of heaven.”

Pepper nodded the truth of that, and his voice took on the strident tone of one playing a trump card. “Then perhaps you would consider that I have the power to keep the assorted thieves and cutthroats attached to your troupe safe from arrest?”

Alarm skittered up her back. This was skating into a risky subject. She was ever forced to not look very closely at the character of the actors in her troupe, and tended to look the other way on most things so long as nobody stole or fought while on the premises. “You would commit malfeasance?” They both knew he did so every day, but this argument was all she had at her disposal.

He shrugged. “To a point. There may be some instances where circumstances could be interpreted in your favor.” Suzanne waited for the rest of his explanation, and then the other shoe dropped. “But remember, by the same token they might otherwise be taken as not in your favor.”

“That sounds very much like a threat.” Trepidation weakened her voice, and she coughed to clear her throat.

“Not at all. ’Tis nothing more than an arrangement of mutual respect and support. One hand washes the other, you understand. I would be predisposed to be lenient with those associated with someone I respect.”

“And need.”

“Also that.” There was no shame in him. This was a simple agreement and nothing more.

She considered his words, and understood that were she to refuse the alliance there would certainly follow a flurry of retaliatory arrests and other sorts of harassment to demonstrate his power. Pepper could bring her enterprise to a complete halt if he wished, and as self-centered as he was, he would surely make certain she would have to close her doors just to show her he could. Further, he could accomplish it in short enough time that Daniel would be powerless to thwart him. She said, “Very well. I promise nothing, but show me the corpse. Where is it?”

Pepper’s relief was palpable, and a wide, small-toothed smile spread across his face. “Excellent! Come with me!” He waved her along to accompany him, and turned toward the front entrance, which still stood ajar.

“This way, Constable.” Suzanne gestured toward the rear of the theatre. “You might be aware there’s a back entrance to this building. You don’t need to shove that enormous entrance door back and forth by yourself.”

Pepper looked at the huge audience entrance. “I see.” Suzanne gestured for him to follow her, and they went out the back.

The walk wasn’t far, from the Globe to the Tooley Stairs just downstream from the bridge. Suzanne had supposed he would take her to a medical or funereal establishment, but it turned out Pepper had not moved the body at all. At the bottom of the stairs near the water’s edge lay a mound of muddy blue fabric and stained white lace, surrounded by a cluster of onlookers. Halfway down the stairs Suzanne faltered and came to a halt as she realized what she saw. “Oh,” she said.

Pepper stopped a couple of steps farther on, and turned to look up at her. To speak he had to raise his voice over the roar of current rushing through the stone piers that held up the bridge, its roadway, and the tall buildings lining either side of it. “What is it, Mistress Thornton? Do you know him?”

She shook her head and slowly resumed the trek down the steps. Pepper preceded her, glancing back at each step to watch her face. “No, but I saw him last night. He was selling himself at the Goat and Boar.”

Pepper reached the bottom of the steps. He paled at her words. “Selling himself? As a girl? Openly?”

She nodded as she carefully circled the waterlogged corpse. It wouldn’t do to slip off the side and fall into the rushing water below. The words of the astrologer yesterday echoed in the back of her mind as she spoke to Pepper. “As openly as any girl. He was quite a convincing one, and fooled nearly everyone. It was almost impossible to tell he was a boy.”

The corpse lay in an undignified heap, knees splayed and one arm laid over his face as if he were ashamed to be seen. The blonde wig had gone missing, revealing a tangled mass of shoulder-length, nearly black hair. The dress had been rent down the front, and his shift as well, exposing his utterly flat boy’s breast. The bones beneath his skin stood out, with so little flesh he seemed nearly skeleton-like. A long, black slit marred his white, almost bluish throat, and other, smaller stab wounds dotted his chest. Many more wounds than it would have taken to kill him. “This is how he was deposited after being pulled from the water?”

“Not intentionally, you understand,” said Pepper. “The corpse is still stiff.” He shoved one bent knee with his shoe to demonstrate. The entire body shifted as if carved from a single block of wood. “This is how he lay in the water. Facing downward.”

The boy’s face wasn’t nearly so beautiful this morning as it had been the night before, all the life in it having fled. His rosy cheeks and lips, painted on, were still red, but they were now damaged and indistinct with smudged and smeared color. Eye blacking ran down his face like gray harlequin tears. His pale, nearly translucent skin had a porcelain quality, like a perfectly wrought statue of such fine skill this boy’s face might grace the gallery of even the king. A portrait of grief.

The face was no longer graced by the joyful animation she’d seen the night before. The dimples were gone forever. At the Goat and Boar, this boy had possessed a lively expression and an easy smile. He’d been enjoying himself, happy to be in conversation with Daniel, and eager to give him a good time. Perhaps even to have had a good time himself. But now the boy’s face was reduced to only its features. Pleasing enough in themselves taken individually, but tragically lacking any spark of life or happiness. The painted red lips no longer pursed, but were slack and slightly agape. The dull and sunken eyes saw nothing, filled with river water that resembled tears about to fall. He looked as if he might draw a breath and emit a sob.

Then she saw there was something in his mouth. Something white showed between his front teeth. She stepped closer to look, but there was no telling what was inside there.

“Constable,” she said, and pointed. “Be so good as to remove whatever is in his mouth.”

Pepper took a step backward, as if resisting a shove toward a distasteful task. “I beg your pardon?”

“There’s something in the boy’s mouth. Take it out so we can tell what it is.”

“Touch him, you mean?” Pepper’s hand retreated into his cloak, lest it somehow be forced to do Suzanne’s bidding.

Suzanne wasn’t about to touch the body herself. Though she didn’t particularly fear her own death, she was terrified of the ghosts of those who had gone before her. Touching a dead body was sure to bring bad luck at least, if not a true haunting of a disturbed spirit. And she knew this boy’s spirit was a strong one. “Of course, touch him. Take that white object from his mouth. Surely you don’t expect me to do it.”

A woman standing nearby heaved a great, impatient sigh, reached over, and dug her fingers between the boy’s teeth. She yanked out something soft and white that had some blue bits and black spots of blood. When she saw what it was, even she dropped the thing and stepped back, wiping her hand on her skirt.

The object now lying on the boy’s chest was a severed willie.

“O
h!” Suzanne turned away, as did nearly everyone watching. She pressed a palm to her mouth, and gasped for breath as tears of shock and grief stung her eyes. “Oh, that poor boy!”

When she could look again, she saw how small it was. Shriveled and bluish white, there wasn’t very much to it at all. It hardly even looked like what it was, but nothing more than a pale, purplish knob on a bit of wrinkled skin.

“Do you suppose it’s his?” asked Pepper. He reached down and with two dainty fingers lifted the hem of the blue dress. Suzanne looked just long enough to glimpse the red-black patch between the boy’s legs where the appendage should have been. She turned away, and Pepper dropped the skirt.

Those watching were silent for a long moment, shocked. Suzanne drew deep breaths to hold down her gorge. Then she straightened and smoothed her cloak to regain her dignity, and put her mind back on the proper course to learn this boy’s killer. She asked Pepper, “Where, exactly, was he found?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know yet whether it matters, and can’t assess the importance of it until I know. Where was he?”

Pepper pointed upstream to the waterwheel slowly turning in the current by the southern bank. This one turned a stone in a mill directly above. The wheel at the northern bank drove a water pump.

Suzanne looked at where the water rushed between the stone piers set in the river on starlings, shoved the wheel, then eddied and surged onward toward the open river. The space was close enough to catch many bits of flotsam in the water. Most of it stayed for a while, then eventually was dislodged or rotted away and carried off down the river to the sea. Branches from well upriver were caught and clung to each other, and in turn caught other items such as discarded rags, broken furniture, and anything else that would float. She said, “The boy was lodged amongst all that rubbish along the bank?”

Pepper nodded.

Suzanne looked down at the body again, then her gaze took in the gawkers standing around. “Who discovered him?”

The onlookers glanced around at each other, and a woman stepped forward. “’Twas myself, my lady.” She curtsied, and that felt strange to Suzanne. Most people could tell her rank, and she was certainly no lady.

But she maintained her dignity and said, “My name is Mistress Thornton. What is yours?”

The woman was now able to look her in the face and said, “My name be Weaver, mistress.” She was rail thin and ragged enough for a street dweller. Though her face and hands had been washed recently, the dirt began at her wrists and disappeared into the sleeves of her filthy dress. At one time this dress had been a fine gown, but by the cut of it Suzanne could tell that had been decades before. Now the thing was reduced to a threadbare and baggy drape that had faded to a dull pinkish from what might have once been rich crimson. Raw, hemless edges at neck and wrists suggested lace had been removed from the dress and sold. Probably long before it came into the Weaver woman’s hands.

She said, “I were down here a-washin’, and I seen this here boy all shoved up under the bridge. They’s lots of things that gets hung up down here, and at first I thought it were only a dress someone had lost or thrown in. That’s an awfully pretty dress, sez me, and I thought I could get it and keep it or sell it. But when I seen its owner was still a-wearin’ it, I hurried straightaway to find the authorities.” She nodded in the direction of the constable.

Suzanne nodded. “Who brought the boy from the water?”

Two men behind the constable raised their hands. One of them, with an oar in his hand, said, “When this woman came screaming bloody murder up to the church, St. Olave over here”—he nodded toward the spot just downstream from the stairs, where the tops of graveyard monuments could be seen in the churchyard—“we got our boat and went for a look-see. He were dead, all right. Couldn’t hardly get him over the side, as stiff as he were. His legs was all awkward-like, and that dress all filled with water. We nearly tipped over the boat and drowned ourselves in the current.”

“When you pulled him from the water, did you tear the front of his dress? Be honest. I don’t care whether you did; I only need to know what happened to the boy.”

The boatman shook his head. “No, the dress was like that when we turned him over.” He hurried to add, as if he thought he would be accused of the murder, “And the cut in his throat as well. That were there before we got here.”

Suzanne nodded. “I am sure you didn’t cut a dead boy’s throat.”

The boatman and his partner seemed relieved to be off that particular hook.

Mistress Weaver said, “Do you think he’ll be needing that there dress anymore?”

Suzanne was inclined to tell her she was out of luck, and saw Pepper was about to say something ugly to that effect, so she said quickly to cut him short, “Wait a week, then come to the constable’s office and perhaps the dress can be yours. A reward for your diligence in summoning the constable so quickly.”

The boatman said, “And how about us, for pulling the body out of the water as we did?”

Disgust rose. Suzanne replied, “You’ve a use for a torn dress? Or the shift? Perhaps we should save the willie for you?”

He fell silent, embarrassed.

Pepper said, “I thank you for your assistance, good man. You’ve done your duty as a Christian toward this unfortunate child.”

The boatmen both nodded, but nevertheless were plainly disappointed.

Suzanne addressed the others standing around. “Did anyone here see anything else? Did anyone see the boy when he was alive?” She knew there was a public room full of men and whores who had seen him alive the night before, including herself. She was going to have to get names from Young Dent and search down anyone who might know something. The crowd here on the quay knew nothing, and shook their heads. These were all more or less honest day dwellers, who rose with the sun and did their sleeping at night. It was the night folk who might have witnessed this murder, and they were the ones who would be the most reluctant to provide information even if they had it.

She gazed at the bridge starlings once more, and the water rushing between them, and in her mind’s eye saw how the body had floated between them on the current. Perhaps it had gone beneath the waterwheel to be shot out the other side and caught in an eddy by the bank. The body might have fallen from the bridge. She looked upriver, at the stone banks of Bank Side that disappeared around a bend to the west. The body could have come from anywhere along there, or could have entered the water from any of the four stairs between it and the bridge. The victim may even have been killed on the other side of the river, a bank dotted with wharves, but she felt it unlikely. Had he entered the water from the north bank, the current would most likely have also deposited him on that side. Since the boy had been seen in Southwark that night, she felt strongly he must have entered the water there. That, at least, defined the area she was most likely to find witnesses. She would be able to concentrate her questioning on this section of Southwark, and wouldn’t have to go far afield unless she found nothing here.

“Well, Constable,” she said, “I suppose we need to find a wagon in which to transport this poor fellow.”

Pepper looked at the stairs leading upward to the alley that came to the river from Tooley Street, and sighed.

Later that day, once a wagon had been found to move the murdered boy and the body carried up the stairs by the boatmen, Suzanne and Constable Pepper were able to make a leisurely examination in the back room of a hospital. There several oaken tables stood about, bearing two other unfortunates who had died in the area that day. Each was covered with a stained and worn linen bedsheet, and they made Suzanne take frequent glances from the corner of one eye, lest one of them move. The littlest one, who was either a dwarf or a child, looked as if it must be breathing. How could a child not be breathing? It was too terrible to contemplate, so her eyes insisted they saw the tiny chest rise and fall.

A box filled with assorted medical tools sat on the table where the murdered boy lay. Pepper investigated the contents, and began laying out little knives, a thing that looked like a pair of tongs, a small hammer, an extremely sharp chisel . . . and some other things she couldn’t even guess at.

The heavy, carved door at one end of the room stuttered open in its ill-fitting frame and in came Marcus White, the coroner. The man was tall, skeletally thin, and he walked with a long, lurching stride that quickly ate the space between the door and the table where Pepper and Suzanne stood. He dressed more richly than was appropriate for his station, and he barely glanced at the two living persons in the room. His attention was riveted on the boy, whose legs still splayed indecently and whose arm lay over his forehead. Out of the water and nearly dried, he almost appeared as if he were even at that moment under attack, and struggling to save himself.

White took one of the victim’s knees in hand and tried to straighten it, but the corpse was still as stiff as when it had been found. He grunted, then tried an arm with the same results. He said, with utter certainty, “He’s not been dead more than half a day or so.”

Suzanne said, “I saw him alive yesterday evening.”

White looked at her as if just discovering she was in the room. “Do tell. You knew him?”

“I only saw him last night. It was before midnight, but he was stiff like this when he was found this morning.”

“Then certainly he was murdered near midnight or within one or two hours of it, which is what I said.” His voice carried an edge of insult, as if she’d questioned his expertise.

She opened her mouth to explain she’d only meant to affirm what he’d said, but thought better of saying anything more on it. Instead she said, “Was the dress torn before or after the stabbing?”

The coroner gazed at the dress front, and picked at it to assess the stains on it. He lifted and arranged the blue fabric and its lace, and laid it against the boy’s pale chest. “The stabbing came after the tearing, I think. There are knife marks in the dress, but none of them align with these wounds when the dress is put back together. See?” He lifted the torn bodice to show that the holes were not over the wounds. “The dress front was hanging over here instead.” He demonstrated how the fabric was dangling to the side, and the two holes matched perfectly with the one stab wound low in the chest. “The cloth was folded back onto itself, when this wound was made.”

Suzanne now imagined a struggle in which the dress was torn then a knife came into use. The sequence didn’t make much sense, so she knew she was missing something. She would have to think hard on it.

White took hold of the front of the dress and yanked to tear it off, but Suzanne held out a hand to stop him. “Wait. Can we keep this as whole as possible?”

The coroner gave her a puzzled look. She noted he was not generous with words, and answered his unasked question. “Not for me. It’s been years since I would be seen wearing a torn dress taken from a dead boy. However, you’re going to throw it away, aren’t you? It’s of no use to you. I’ve promised it to someone.”

“Ah.” He nodded, and began pulling the dress from the corpse without tearing it. The procedure took a bit longer, particularly with the joints still stiff, but when the garment was off Suzanne gathered it into a bundle and set it aside for the Weaver woman.

The boy, seen naked, seemed even younger than she’d thought at first. The male bits still attached were very small and entirely hairless. The chest was also hairless, but the most telling was that he had no hair under his arms. “Not yet at sexual maturity,” said White, as if musing to himself.

“Not ever,” murmured Suzanne.

The coroner picked up the tiny knob of flesh that had been in the child’s mouth, and peered closely at it. Then he set it next to the spot from whence it had come, making certain the thing belonged there. It fit. Then he looked at it again.

“Cut, not bitten. Sharp knife.”

Suzanne shuddered at the thought of biting such a thing entirely off. There had been times in her dark past when she’d wanted to do that to a client who had hurt or angered her, but she’d never done it and couldn’t imagine doing it to a boy this age. She said, “Can you tell whether he was already dead when it happened?”

The coroner threw her an appalled look, horrified she could think of such a thing. She said, “If I’m to reconstruct what happened in order to learn who did this, I must know everything that happened and in what order. Then I might know why it was done, which will give me a better chance at knowing who did it.”

White leaned over the body to peer at the wounded crotch and said, “He was dead. No stray cuts that would have been inevitable in a struggle.”

“Could he have been tied up?”

White looked the body over, then replied, “No. There are no marks from a rope of any kind.” He walked around the table to have a look at the boy’s hands, which were still frozen at head height. “No cuts here. The removal of his appendage was neat and tidy, and accomplished with a leisure of time. Surely he must have been dead, or at least insensate.”