Paul Doherty - The Assassin's riddle

‘Well, well.’ Lesures came forward, ticking the names off on his fingers. ‘Myself and the clerks, Sir Lionel Havant, yourself, Sir John, Brother Athelstan and Mistress Chapler.’

‘And anyone else?’

‘Oh, the occasional servant. They would come in with messages or bring fresh parchment and quills.’

‘But it’s interesting, isn’t it,’ the coroner continued, ‘that the poison was put in at the same time as this cryptic message arrives, about the second being the centre of woe and the principal mover of horror.’ Cranston glanced at the clerks. ‘I thought you liked puzzles and riddles. Do any of you know what it means?’

They shook their heads.

‘Let me continue,’ Cranston said. ‘Whoever put the poison in knew what time you drank the mead. He also arranged for the message to be delivered at the same time: that reduces the number somewhat, doesn’t it?’ He leaned forward.

‘What are you saying?’ Alcest snapped.

‘What I am saying, young man, is this. When Ollerton died, I was in my garden, Athelstan and Mistress Chapler were in Southwark. Havant was probably at the Savoy Palace — that takes care of the principal visitors here. In my view, Ollerton’s assassin works in the Chancery of the Green Wax and could very well be in this room.’

A chorus of hoarse denials greeted his words. Cranston clapped his hands for silence.

‘I am a man of law. I show where the evidence lies. Now I could ask for you to be searched: not everyone carries a small bag of poison around with them.’

‘Pshaw!’ Napham made a contemptuous gesture with his hand and walked to the door as if to leave.

‘Do so,’ Cranston shouted, ‘and I’ll have you arrested, sir! My bailiff’s in the street outside.’

Napham returned.

‘Anyone could have come in here!’ Alcest cried.

‘Anyone?’ Cranston asked. ‘You were here when Ollerton died and any one of you could have visited that tavern and killed Peslep.’

‘But what about Chapler?’ Alcest declared defiantly. ‘Sir John, we can prove that we were carousing in a chamber at the Dancing Pig when our companion died.’

‘Did you like him?’ Cranston asked abruptly.

‘Who?’

‘Chapler. Did you like him? You called him your companion.’

‘He wasn’t one of us,’ Alcest retorted. ‘Ask Master Tibault here. Chapler kept to himself. When the office closed on Saturday morning before the Angelus, he would leave for his beloved sister in Epping.’

‘Was Peslep a rich man?’ Cranston asked.

‘He came of good family.’

Cranston closed his eyes; he felt so tired. He would have loved to question these young men but there was nothing more he could say. No real evidence to work on. The coroner walked to the door.

‘Have the body sheeted,’ he ordered. He thought of the Holy Lamb and then recalled Alcest’s words about the Dancing Pig. He turned, hand on the latch. ‘Master Alcest, the night Chapler died. You left the Chancery of the Green Wax and went straight to the Dancing Pig?’

‘Yes, we did.’

‘And you were in a chamber all by yourselves?’

‘Well, with the rest.’

‘And some young ladies? Where were they from?’

Alcest rubbed his mouth.

‘Come on!’ Sir John barked. ‘You hired a group of whores, didn’t you? Young courtesans. Who was the mistress of this troupe?’

‘Nell Broadsheet.’

Cranston grinned. ‘By, sir, you pay well. Broadsheet’s girls are the comeliest and most expensive in London. They keep a house, do they not, near Greyfriars, just past Newgate?’

The young man nodded.

‘Good, then I think I’ll pay her a visit.’

Cranston walked out into the street where Flaxwith leaned against a wall, his ugly dog beside him.

‘Keep that bloody thing away from me!’ Cranston growled. ‘Now, Henry, I’m going to give you a treat. We are going to visit Mistress Broadsheet’s establishment. You know it well?’

The bailiff’s face coloured and he shuffled his feet; even Samson seemed to hang his head a little lower.

‘Henry, Henry!’ Cranston chucked the bailiff under his chin with his finger. ‘Don’t say you’ve been dipping your quill in Dame Broadsheet’s inkhorn?’

‘A man gets lonely, Sir John,’ Flaxwith murmured.

‘You have a wife,’ Cranston replied. ‘The beloved Ursula.’

Sheer terror now replaced the confusion in Flaxwith’s face. Cranston recalled Mistress Ursula, a woman built like a donjon, eyes of steel and a tongue like a lash.

‘Oh, Sir John, it’s our secret, isn’t it? The Lady Ursula…’ Flaxwith leaned down and patted Samson, who was cowering even more on hearing Mistress Flaxwith’s name.

‘Yes?’ Cranston asked sweetly.

‘The Lady Ursula,’ Flaxwith swallowed hard, ‘does not like the pleasures of the flesh.’

Cranston recalled his own merry trysts with his lady wife; he patted the man sympathetically on the shoulder.

‘Well, let’s visit Dame Broadsheet. Let’s see what she has to say about our young clerks.’

‘I was supposed to do that,’ Flaxwith grumbled as they walked along.

‘Well, Henry,’ Cranston nudged him playfully, ‘I am going to make sure you leave with me. Oh, by the way, I still want you to find out about Master Drayton’s two clerks, Stablegate and Flinstead. Just where did they spend the night their master was murdered? You’ll enjoy visiting taverns,’ the coroner continued, ‘and so will Samson.’

The mastiff turned its head, lips curled in a soft growl. Cranston smiled tactfully and they continued up Holborn past Cock Lane, still sealed off by royal archers, through the old city wall into Newgate. All the butchers’ stalls had been cleared away but the smell of blood and offal made Samson excited. He pranced around, straining at this morsel or that. Cranston caught a cutpurse who was following two old ladies down to St Mary Le Bow where the bells were clanging for Compline, the beacon light already lit in the belfry. Cranston grabbed the weasel-faced knave by the collar, gave him a whack on the ear and sent him about his business.

‘Do you know, Henry.’ Cranston stopped before the dark, forbidding mass of Newgate prison where people thronged, waiting to pay a visit to their friends inside. ‘If my treatise on the governance of this city was accepted by the Regent, I’d have torches lit along every highway.’

He pointed to the scaffold where the corpses of four felons, hanged earlier in the day, were now being given a coat of tar and pitch. They would then be placed in iron gibbets before being taken out and hanged as a warning at the crossroads leading into London. The two executioners were whistling, happy in their work. Now and again flicking spots of tar at the orange-haired whores who clustered there, the hangmen were impervious to the misery of the dead men’s friends and relatives who patiently waited to see where their beloved ones would be gibbeted.

‘You were going to say, Sir John?’ Flaxwith asked.

‘I’d have all that removed,’ Cranston growled. ‘Come on!’

Dame Broadsheet’s establishment stood in a small, quiet alleyway: a three-storeyed mansion in its own grounds, the bottom floor was an alehouse with a bush strung up over the door. The upper storeys were what Dame Broadsheet called her ‘chapel of repose’, where clients could meet the sweetest professional doxies in London. Flaxwith tied Samson up outside and told him to be a good boy. The dog, his jaws full of offal he had picked up, whimpered back.

The taproom was quiet and very pleasant, the ceiling high, the rushes on the floor clean and supple. The tables were ringed with proper stools, not overturned kegs. Vats and beer barrels stood neatly at one end; hams and bags of onions hung from the rafters and baskets of flowers were placed on window ledges. By the sweet tang from the buttery, Cranston knew Dame Broadsheet’s French cook was busy. He smacked his lips, patted his stomach but kept within the shadows of the doorway, revelling in the sights and sounds. Flaxwith, behind him, kept his hand on his dagger. Dame Broadsheet’s establishment was well known as a retreat for the highwaymen and footpads of the city: Sir John would not be a welcome guest.