Paul Doherty - The Gallows Murders

I glanced across where Pelleter and Miranda were sitting on a crumbling doorstep, leisurely eating the provisions they had brought.

'Master, what is the use? You heard the verderer. Sakker is dead and I am hungry!'

Benjamin plucked at my sleeve. 'I don't think Robert Sakker's dead,' he replied, then cautiously climbed the battered wooden staircase.

I groaned and reluctantly followed. The second floor was positively dangerous, with gaps and sagging timbers. Benjamin went into the chambers on either side. I still did not know what he was looking for. As our search continued, the shadows grew longer and that old hunting lodge creaked and groaned. A tingle of fear ran up my spine. After all, this was an ancient house. God knows what terrible things the Sakker gang had done here. Were their ghosts peering at us from a corner? Did their shades follow us, ghoul-like, from room to room?

(I see my little chaplain snigger. Oh, sitting at the centre of a maze in the glorious sunlight, the little curmudgeon can titter and giggle. Nevertheless, I have seen him tremble down at the edge of the marshes when the sun sets and the darkness creeps in from the forest! And yes, before he asks, I have seen ghosts. I have been along the great gallery at Hampton Court, just near the royal chapel where Catherine Howard, the Great Beast's fifth wife, ran screaming and shrieking, begging her base, syphilitic husband to spare her the headsman's axe. I have sat in a window-seat on the anniversary of her death. I have heard her terrible ghostly scream and the patter of high-heeled shoes which stops abruptly, just before the chapel door. Oh, I have seen ghosts! More than I like to recount. Indeed, my stories gave Will Shakespeare the idea of Brutus seeing Caesar's shade before the battle at Philippi.)

Now in that old hunting lodge I felt the ghosts throng round me. I was about to leave my master to his searches when I heard his triumphant cry. I found him in a small chamber, crouched beside a battered fireplace. 'Look, Roger!'

He held up two huge pots, put these on the floor and pointed to the hearth piled high with burnt rags and grey dust. I picked up a stick and sifted amongst the remains in the hearth.

'They're clothes,' I declared. 'Someone has burnt clothing here.' 'And look at this, Roger.'

Benjamin thrust one of the cracked bowls into my hand. The inside was stained black with a little liquid still in the bottom, like a piece of slime from a pool. I dabbed at it with my finger and sniffed.

'It's paint,' I declared, rubbing it between my fingers. I sniffed again. Though rather odourless.' 'Look at my hair, Roger!' 'Master,' I replied, 'are you witless?'

Benjamin grinned and pointed to his temple. The hair was usually a premature grey: now it was as black as night.

'It's dye,' he explained. 'Robert Sakker came here. I suspect Sakker killed a man in Maidstone and left evidence to make others think it was he who had been slain, then he came here. Perhaps to collect booty Master Pelleter and his bailiffs failed to unearth. He also changed his clothes and dyed his auburn hair dark.'

'Of course!' I breathed. 'And the cunning bastard had probably grown a beard and moustache to cover that scar on his chin.' I sat down, my back to the wall, desperately trying to recall all whom I had met in the Tower. 'Allardyce!' I exclaimed. 'Philip Allardyce, the clerk to the stores. Don't you remember, Master? Tall, deep-voiced, black-haired, with a luxuriant moustache and beard; that's the description we were given.'

'But he's dead,' Benjamin explained. 'Others saw him ill with the plague. The old woman felt for the life pulse in his throat. The bailiff who examined the corpse in the death-cart pronounced him dead as a stone.'

I recalled old Ragusa screeching at me earlier in the day: her numb, vein-streaked hands pressing into mine.

'Ragusa's an old mad crone,' I replied slowly. ‘I’d wager if she felt my pulse or yours she'd pronounce us dead. I have suffered the sweating sickness, Master; it would be easy for a cunning man to simulate it. Sweat, fever, retching and choking. Allardyce wasn't tended by a physician, but by a mad old crone who doesn't want to be turned out because she is inept at what she does.' ‘But the bailiff on the death-cart?’ Benjamin asked.

What happens if it was not Allardyce's corpse taken out? If he'd been alive, the soldiers would have suspected as much when they dragged the corpse down to the Lion Gate.'

'So you are saying that Allardyce was really Sakker? He gains employment in the Tower, simulates the sweating sickness and pretends to die?' Benjamin nodded. ‘I can accept that. Few people would go near him. Moreover, once the body was sheeted, no one would care. But who could smuggle a corpse into the Tower as a substitute?' Why not ask one of our hangmen?' I replied. 'Aren't they responsible for the corpses of their victims?' Benjamin agreed.

'And so, Master.' I continued, staring at the pot of black dye. 'Sakker is in the Tower, pretending to be Allardyce. I suspect the real Allardyce was the man our villain killed in Maidstone. Later, before the sweating sickness really takes hold in the city, Sakker slips out of the Tower. He is now free to deliver letters to Westminster, or post proclamations at St Paul's and St Mary's, Cheapside. He can lay a trail of gunpowder and seize that gold the King is now so furious at losing. Because we are not looking for him, he can wander the city at his will, baiting and taunting us. When he wishes, now under a new disguise, he slips back into the Tower to kill Horehound and Wormwood as he did Hellbane and Undershaft.' 'But who is his accomplice?' Benjamin asked.

'Ah, Master, there's the rub.' I put the pot down on the floor. 'How do we know he has one? What happens if he is the sole villain?'

'But how can he re-enter the Tower if he's a soldier or member of the garrison?' Benjamin asked. ‘People would remember a stranger. He must have an accomplice.'

I sat and thought for a while, closing my eyes as I remembered the Tower as I had seen it: the soldiers, their women, the children, the officers, old Ragusa, the hangmen.

'Don't forget, Roger, the day we returned to the Tower from St Paul's, everyone had been locked in and could account for their movements when old Horehound was crushed to death in the basement of the Beauchamp Tower. Everyone except-'

'Except the hangmen!' I cried. They had all been drinking that afternoon and gone their separate ways. One of them must be Sakker's accomplice.'

Benjamin wiped his fingers and sat back, rocking on his heels. 'If so, how does Sakker communicate with him?' He chewed his Up. 'And who told Sakker when the real Allardyce was travelling to London so he could be ambushed in Maidstone? One of the officers or hangmen? Any of them could easily find out when the real Allardyce was to be at the Tower-'

'Or there again, Master,' I interrupted, 'once Sakker knew Allardyce was to leave Dover Castle, he'd simply wait there and follow him to Maidstone.'

Benjamin nodded. 'Roger, the web begins to unravel.' He kicked the cracked bowl with his foot and clapped his hands. 'I was sure Sakker was at the root of it all. Our visit here was worth while.'

We hastened downstairs and told the under-sheriff what we had found. He became excited as us and vowed that a swift return to the city was essential. 'If Sakker knows that we are now hunting him and have some idea about his disguise, perhaps we can tighten the net around him,' he exclaimed.

Miranda clapped her hands, eyes shining with delight. She leaned on tiptoe and kissed Benjamin on both cheeks. He blushed and stammered, pointing to me. Of course, I received no kiss; nothing but her brilliant smile.

In the end we did not reach London that day. The sky became overcast; one of those summer black storms swept over the flat Kent countryside. We were forced to take shelter in one of the many great taverns which line the pilgrims' way. We ate and drank well. For a while we forgot Sakker whilst Benjamin regaled the Pelleters with stories of our earlier exploits at the manor outside Ipswich. Even a blind man could have realised that Benjamin and Miranda had fallen deeply in love. They only had eyes for each other, and it was not a friendship which Master Pelleter opposed. Oh, Benjamin was a gentleman. He bade her a gallant goodnight, but only after spending hours with her in the corner of a taproom chattering and whispering. I sat like a ghost at a banquet, engaging Miranda's father in desultory conversation about the city and the effects of the sweating sickness. I did not sleep that night. Instead I tossed and turned on my pallet-bed, not because of the fleas which infested the blankets or the rats which came out to nose at my boots: all I could do was gaze at Benjamin sleeping in his bed like a child, lost in golden dreams about a woman I loved but who barely recognised my existence. Only then did I realise why people murder! How the red fury can cloud the mind, kill the soul, and turn one's being into a single thrust of a dagger. Of all the men I have ever known, Benjamin is the only one I have loved; yet, that night, the thought of murder crossed my mind!