Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

“An apple-squire fighting with a customer over the price of a woman,” Red James said in a tired voice. “Of no interest to us.” He began to shuffle the cards.

“Nay, sir, that is not so. One of them — the older, and the man most disadvantaged — was a peer of the realm. Robert Murtaugh.”

“Sir Murtaugh, friend to the lord mayor and in the duke’s favor!” Alarmed, the constable rose to his feet.

“The very same, sir,” the lackey said breathlessly. “I come to thee in haste to raise hue and cry.”

“Bailiffs!” the constable cried and girded himself with his sword and dagger. “Bailiffs, come forth at once!”

Two men stumbled into the room from quarters next to the den, their senses muddled by the difficult marriage of this morning’s sleep and last night’s wine.

“Violence is afoot upon Temple wharf. We go forthwith.”

Red James picked up a long pike, his weapon of choice.

The men hurried out into the cool morning and turned south toward the Thames, over which smoke and mist hung thick as fleece on a lamb. In five minutes they were at the porch overlooking Temple wharf, where, as the lackey had assured, a dreadful contest was under way.

A young man was fighting vigorously with Sir Murtaugh. The peer fought well but he was dressed in the pompous and cumbersome clothing then fashionable at Court — a Turkish theme, replete with gilt robe and feathered turban — and, because of the restrictive garments, was losing ground to the young cutthroat. Just as the ruffian drew back to strike a blow at the knight, the constable shouted, “Cease all combat at once! Put down thy weapons!”

But what might have ended in peace turned to unexpected sorrow as Sir Murtaugh, startled by the constable’s shout, lowered his parrying arm and looked up toward the voice.

The attacker continued his lunge and the blade struck the poor knight in the chest. The blow did not pierce his doublet but Sir Murtaugh was knocked back against the rail. The wood gave way and the man fell to the rocks forty feet below. A multitude of swans fled from the disturbance as his body rolled down the embankment and into the water, where it sank beneath the grim surface.

“Arrest him!” cried the constable, and the three bailiffs proceeded to the startled ruffian, whom Red James struck with a cudgel before he could flee. The murderer fell senseless at their feet.

The bailiffs then climbed down a ladder and proceeded to the water’s edge. But of Sir Murtaugh, no trace was visible.

“Murder committed this day! And in my jurisdiction,” said the constable with a grim face, though in truth he was already reveling in the promise of the reward and celebrity that his expeditious capture of this villain would bring.

The Crown’s head prosecutor, Jonathan Bolt, an arthritic, bald man of forty, was given the duty of bringing Charles Cooper to justice for the murder of Robert Murtaugh.

Sitting in his drafty office near Whitehall palace, ten of the clock the day after Murtaugh’s body was fished from the Thames, Bolt reflected that the crime of murdering an ass like Murtaugh was hardly worth the trouble to pursue. But the nobility desperately needed villains like Murtaugh to save them from their own foolishness and profligacy, so Bolt had been advised to make an example of the vintner Charles Cooper.

However, the prosecutor had also been warned to make certain that he proceed with the case in such a way that Murtaugh’s incriminating business affairs not be aired in public. So it was decided that Cooper be tried not in Sessions Court but in the Star Chamber, the private court of justice dating back to His Highness Henry VIII.

The Star Chamber did not have the authority to sentence a man to die. Still, Bolt reflected, an appropriate punishment would be meted out. Upon rendering a verdict of guilt against the cutthroat, the members of the Star Chamber bench would surely order that Cooper’s ears be hacked off, that he be branded with a hot iron and then transported — banished — probably to the Americas, where he would live as a ruined beggar all his life. His family would forfeit whatever estate he had and be turned out into the street.

The unstated lesson would be clear: Do not trouble those who are the de facto protectors of the nobility.

Having interviewed the constable and the witness in the cases — a lackey named Henry Rawlings — Bolt now left his office and proceeded to Westminster, the halls of government.

In an anteroom hidden away in the gizzard of the building, a half dozen lawyers and their clients awaited their turn to go before the bench, but Cooper’s case had been placed top on the docket and Jonathan Bolt walked past the others and entered the Star Chamber itself.

The dim room, near the Privy Council, was much smaller and less decorous than its notorious reputation imputed. Quite plain, it boasted only candles for light, a likeness of Her Majesty and, upon the ceiling, the painted celestial objects that bestowed upon the room its unjudicial name.

Inside, Bolt observed the prisoner in the dock. Charles Cooper was pale and a bandage covered his temple. Two large sergeants at arms stood behind the prisoner. The public was not allowed into Star Chamber proceedings but the lords, in their leniency, had allowed Margaret Cooper, the prisoner’s wife, to be in attendance. A handsome woman otherwise, Bolt observed, her face was as white as her husband’s and her eyes red from tears.

At the table for the defense was a man Bolt recognized as a clever lawyer from the Inns of Court and another man in his late thirties, about whom there was something slightly familiar. He was lean, with a balding pate and lengthy brown hair, and dressed in shirt and breeches and short buskin boots. A character witness, perhaps. Bolt knew that, based on the facts of this case, Cooper could not avoid guilt altogether; rather, the defense would concentrate on mitigating the sentence. Bolt’s chief challenge would be to make sure such a tactic was not successful.

Bolt took his place beside his own witnesses — the constable and the lackey, who sat nervously, hands clasped before them.

A door opened and five men, robed and wigged, entered, the members of the Star Chamber bench, which consisted of several members of the Queen’s Privy Council — today, they numbered three — and two judges from the Queen’s Bench, a court of law. The men sat and ordered the papers in front of them.

Bolt was pleased. He knew each of these men and, judging from the look in their eyes, believed that they had in all likelihood already found in the Crown’s favor. He wondered how many of them had benefitted from Murtaugh’s skills in vanquishing debts. All, perhaps.

The high chancellor, a member of the Privy Council, read from a piece of paper. “This special court of equity, being convened under authority of Her Royal Highness Elizabeth Regina, is now in session. All ye with business before this court come forward and state thy cause. God save the queen.” He then fixed his eyes on the prisoner in the dock and continued in a grave voice, “The Crown charges thee, Charles Cooper, with murder in the death of Sir Robert Murtaugh, a knight and peer of the realm, whom thou did without provocation or excuse most grievously assault and cause to die on fifteen June in the forty-second year of the reign of our sovereign, Her Majesty the queen. The Crown’s inquisitor will set forth the case to the chancellors of equity and judges of law here assembled.”

“May it please this noble assemblage,” offered Bolt, “we have here a case of most clear delineation, which shall take but little of thy time. The vintner named Charles Cooper did, before witnesses, assault and murder Sir Robert Murtaugh on Temple wharf for reasons of undiscerned enmity. We have witnesses to this violent and unprovoked event.”