The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

Nick thought that the play was probably by Christopher Dole, and not the elusive Henry Ashe. It was Dole he should be calling on. But if the printer knew where he lived, he was not going to reveal it. This might have been connected to the fact that Nick refused to buy him another drink. However, he did add, as Nick was leaving The Ram, ‘And, if you catch up with him, tell that bastard – Christopher Dole, I mean – tell him that he owes me money.’

Nick thought that next he ought to visit Alan Dole. He would surely be familiar with his brother’s whereabouts. Reflecting that he was having to go a long way round the town to carry out this task on behalf of Shakespeare, and warmed only a little by the thought of WS’s friendship, Nick duly called at Dole’s bookshop. At first the bookseller was reluctant to talk about his brother, but then he suddenly grew angry and made mention of Christopher’s ‘foolish crimes’. When Alan Dole calmed down, he was able to identify the street and house where Christopher lodged.

‘The landlady is Mrs Atkins. Christopher occupies a meagre top-floor chamber and that is all he is entitled to,’ said Alan. ‘If you see him, ask him why he didn’t return yesterday with the… the thing he promised to bring. He’ll know what I’m talking about. And when he does return, I want a word with him, more than a word.’

So now, in the early afternoon and with the feel of snow in the air once again, Nick stood outside the house he’d been directed to. A young man opened the door to his knock. His close-set eyes scanned Nick without approval.

‘I am looking for Christopher Dole, I believe he lodges here.’

‘The world is beating a path to his door,’ said the young man. ‘You are the third visitor since this time yesterday.’

He stood aside to let the caller in, although in a grudging sort of way so that Nick had to squeeze past him. He pointed a finger upwards and said, ‘Go as far as you can go.’

Nick groped his way up a dark staircase, which narrowed and grew more rickety as he reached the top of the house. Once there, he paused and listened. The house was silent and any street sounds were muffled by the snow outside. Suddenly Nick was reluctant to proceed with this. Yet he had his mission. He tapped on what, since it was the only door on this floor, must be the entrance to Dole’s room.

No response. He rapped more loudly. Nothing. He reached out and twisted the handle, not expecting to get anywhere. But the room was not locked. His sense of unease grew stronger. Nick would have turned and gone back down the stairs but for the thought that he might find some evidence inside that Christopher Dole was the author of The English Brothers .

He pushed the door right open. It was a small room, even smaller than Revill’s own lodgings. In the gloom he could make out the shape of a bed, a desk beneath the small window, a stool against the wall and a chest in the corner immediately to his left. Perhaps Nick looked at these things to avoid looking at what was in front of his nose.

Directly before him, so close that it was almost touching the door, was a body. Swaying very slightly in the draught from the open door, it hung from a belt or girdle looped round a beam in the low ceiling. The head was almost crammed up against the beam, and the feet pointed downwards so that they dangled a few inches above the floor. Not much of a distance perhaps, but even those few inches had been enough to ensure Christopher Dole choked to death.

It appeared the playwright had taken his own life. It looked like that. Yet he had not, Nick thought. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason – he was too shaken, too confused at this moment – but Dole had not killed himself. This was a murder.

Nick took a couple of steps back from the body so that he was standing just outside the entrance to Dole’s room. He twisted round as he heard footsteps rapidly mounting the stairs. His first thought was that it was the murderer returning to see that the business was complete, or to retrieve something he’d left behind, or to take care of an inconvenient witness…

Nick fumbled in his clothing. He sometimes carried a small dagger, even though it was against the law for a man of his rank to do so. Yet today he had nothing with him, no means apart from his hands of defending himself. He could have retreated into Dole’s room, where the dead body, framed by the doorway, dangled from its makeshift noose. But he did not. Instead he shrank against the wall to one side of the tiny area between the top of the stairs and Dole’s door. He readied himself to lash out with his arms and feet.

A shape, the head and shoulders only, emerged at the top of the stairs. It paused for an instant as though to take in the scene before it. Nick couldn’t see who it was but he could hear breathing. Then the man made a kind of leap up the last couple of steps and whirled about as he reached the top. He was carrying something, a stick most likely. He struck out with it and, by chance, the blow caught Nick in the guts. He gasped in pain and doubled up on the floor.

He had no chance to defend himself properly. All he could do was to curl up and wrap his arms about his head for protection as the man rained down blows on him. From somewhere in the distance, among the blows and the attacker’s grunts and his own involuntary cries, he heard a voice, a woman’s voice. This seemed to go on for many minutes, although it was probably less than a single one. Then came the woman’s voice, nearer at hand, saying: ‘Stop, I tell you, stop!’

And, mercifully, the blows faltered and then ceased.

‘There now, Mr Revill,’ said the woman. ‘That should ease your discomfort.’

Nick Revill winced as she applied the tincture to his face and bare arms and shoulders, which had borne the brunt of the blows. Nick was sitting, dressed only in his hose, on the bed in the woman’s chamber. She was perched on a stool facing him, dabbing at the weals and bruises with a tincture which, she said, was a mixture of plantain and arnica. Sara Atkins was the landlady of the house where Christopher Dole had lived and died. She was the mother of Stephen, the young man with the close-set eyes. In the aftermath of the attack Nick had forgotten his false identity and announced that he was Nick Revill of the King’s Men. Sara Atkins was contrite, not because he was a player with a famous company but because she was a good-hearted woman. And perhaps because she felt guilt over her son’s behaviour.

For it was Stephen Atkins who had attacked Nick. His story was that, after directing Revill to Christopher Dole’s room on the top floor, he suddenly grew anxious that the visitor might be some sort of thief or ne’er-do-well. Without consulting his mother, and arming himself with a stave, he ran up the stairs, pausing at the top when he glimpsed the suspended body of the playwright through the open door. He could not see much more, since the only illumination came through the little window in Dole’s room. Stephen’s instinctive reaction was that the recent arrival at the house must have done this thing. At least that’s what he claimed. To protect himself he went on the attack, winding Nick with a lucky stroke and then continuing to rain down blows on the player until Mrs Atkins appeared and commanded him to stop. This was the explanation he gave to his mother even as Nick was being helped to his feet.

Sara Atkins was more clear-headed than her son. She asked Nick for his name. She asked what he was doing in her house. (‘Visiting Christopher Dole. I’m a player as he is – as he was.’) Then she turned to her son and questioned how long had elapsed between the visitor’s arrival and Stephen’s rush up the stairs. When she heard that it was no more than a couple of minutes, she said that there would hardly have been time for their visitor – ‘What is your name again, sir? Ah yes, Nicholas Revill’ – hardly time for him to have disposed of their unfortunate lodger. After making sure that Nick could stand unaided, she went towards the body, which was hanging in the deep gloom of the room and put out a gentle hand, almost stroking the dead man’s face. Then she pointed out that her lodger had grown cold, and so must have been gone for some time.