Edward Marston - The Laughing Hangman

‘Why?’

‘The villains multiply before my eyes. First, I thought our killer and our dagger-thrower were one man. Then you separate them. Now you split the hangman into two as well to give us three in all. By tomorrow, it will have grown to four and so on until we are searching for a whole band of them!’

‘I am lost,’ admitted Firethorn. ‘What is happening?’

‘Confusion, Lawrence!’

‘Do we have any idea at all who murdered Jonas?’

‘Yes,’ said Elias with irony. ‘Nick pulls a new suspect out of the air every minute. Each one a possible killer. We’ll get them all to sign a petition, then pick out the name that pleases us most and designate him as Laughing Hangman.’

‘Mompesson!’ muttered Nicholas.

‘My God! He’s added another suspect to the list.’

‘Andrew Mompesson.’

Nicholas remembered where he had seen the name before.

The miracle had happened at last. After a lifetime’s fruitless search, Edmund Hoode finally found his way into the Garden of Eden and discovered Paradise. Cecily Gilbourne was a most alluring Eve, soft and supple, at once virginal and seasoned in all the arts of love. She was a true symbol of womanhood. Hoode’s ardour matched her eager demands, his desire soared with her passion. Hearts, minds and bodies met in faultless rhyme. Their destinies mingled.

It was several minutes before he regained his breath. He used the back of his arm to wipe the perspiration from his brow, then gazed up at the ceiling. The Garden of Eden, he now learned, was a bedchamber at the Unicorn. When he turned his head, he saw that his gorgeous and compliant Eve had freckles on her shoulder. She, too, was glistening with joy.

What thrilled him most was the ease with which it had all happened. A rose. A promise. A tryst. Consummation. There had been no intervening pauses and no sudden obstacles. No inconvenient appearances by returning husbands. Everything proceeded with a graceful inevitability. It was an experience he had always coveted but never come within sight of before. In Hoode’s lexicon, romance was a synonym for anguish. Cecily Gilbourne offered him a far more satisfactory definition.

Her voice rose up softly from the pillow beside him.

‘Edmund?’

‘My love?’

‘Are you still awake?’

‘Yes, Cecily.’

‘Are you still happy?’

‘Delirious.’

‘Are you still mine ?’

‘Completely.’

She pulled him gently on top of her and kissed him.

‘Take me, Edmund.’

‘ Again ?’

‘Again.’

He kicked open the gate with his naked foot and went into the Garden of Eden, not, as before, with halting gait and wide-eyed wonder but with a proprietary swagger. Edmund Hoode had found his true spiritual home.

***

The silence seemed interminable. Anne Hendrik was petrified. She stood there unable to move, unable to call out for her servant and incapable of defending herself in any way. The menacing figure of Ambrose Robinson loomed over her. She felt like one of the dumb animals whom he routinely slaughtered.

Cold fury coursed through the butcher. The veins on his forehead stood out like whipcord as he fought to contain his violent instincts. When he took a step towards her, Anne was so convinced that he was about to strike her that she shut her eyes and braced herself against the blow. It never came. Instead, she heard a quiet snivelling noise. When she dared to lift her lids again, she saw that Robinson was now sitting on a chair with his head in his hands.

Her fear slowly shaded into cautious sympathy.

‘What ails you?’ she asked.

‘All is lost,’ he murmured between sobs of remorse.

‘Lost?’

‘My son, my dearest friend, my hopes of happiness. All gone for ever.’ He looked up with a tearful face. ‘It was my only chance, Anne. I did it out of love.’

‘Love?’

‘The loan, those letters…’

‘You are not making much sense, Ambrose.’

‘It was wrong of me,’ he said, lurching to his feet. ‘I should not have deceived you so. You deserved better of me. I will get out of your life for ever and leave you in peace.’

Wiping his tears away, he lumbered towards the door.

‘Stay!’ she said, curiosity roused. ‘Do not run away with the truth untold. What is going on, Ambrose?’

He stopped to face her and gave a hopeless shrug.

‘You were right, Anne.’

‘Philip did not send those letters?’

‘No,’ he confessed, ‘but they are exactly the letters that he would have sent, had he the time and opportunity to write. I know my own son. Philip is in torment at Blackfriars. Those letters only said what he feels.’

‘Did you write them yourself?’

‘With these clumsy hands?’ he said, spreading his huge palms. ‘They are more used to holding an axe than a pen. No, Anne. I only wrote those letters in my own mind. A scrivener put them on paper at my direction.’

She was baffled. ‘ Why ?’

‘To reassure me. To tell myself that my son really did love me and want to come home to me. When I’d read those letters enough times, I truly began to believe that Philip had indeed sent them.’ His chin sank to his chest again. ‘And there was another reason, Anne.’

‘I see it only too clearly.’

‘It was a mistake.’

‘You used those letters to ensnare me ,’ she said angrily. ‘To work on my feelings and draw me closer. And through me, you brought Nick Bracewell in to help.’

‘You spoke so highly of him. Of how resourceful he was and what a persuasive advocate he would be. That was why I was so keen and willing to meet Nick.’

‘And to deceive him with those false letters!’

‘They are not false. Philip might have written them.’

‘But he did not, Ambrose. You beguiled us!’

‘How else could I secure your help?’

‘By being honest with me.’

‘Honesty would have put you straight to flight.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because of the person I am,’ he said, beating his chest with a fist. ‘Look at me. A big, ugly, shambling butcher. What hope had I of winning you with honesty? When you thought I lent that money out of friendship, you took it gladly. Had I told you I gave it because I cared, because I loved, because I wanted you as mine, you would have spurned it.’ A pleading note reappeared. ‘What I did was dishonest but from honest motives. I worship my son and so I inveigled you and Nick Bracewell into working for his release. Because I dote on you-and this is my worst offence-I used Philip as a means to get close to you. To make you think and feel like a mother to him. I was trying to court you, Anne.’

‘There was a worse offence yet,’ she said vehemently.

‘That is not so.’

‘I see it now and shudder at what I see. You dangled your own son in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey. That was disgusting enough. To mislead Philip as well was despicable.’

‘I did not mislead him.’

‘Yes you did,’ she accused. ‘We were not the only dupes. He had his share of false letters. You wrote to him to tell him that he would come back to a happy home with a second mother. You used me to tempt Philip back.’

‘No!’

‘It was the one thing that might bring him home.’

‘You don’t know Philip.’

‘I know him well enough to understand why he likes it in the Chapel Royal. He has escaped from his father. No wonder he enjoys it so at the Blackfriars Theatre.’

‘I want him home !’ shouted Robinson.

Anne walked to the front door and opened it wide.

‘Do not expect me to help you, sir,’ she said crisply. ‘There lies your way. Do not let me detain you. I’ll be no man’s false hope to wave in front of an unwitting child. Farewell, Ambrose. You are no longer welcome here!’