The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

‘Poor Christopher. This is a dreadful thing,’ said Mrs Atkins, shaking her head and closing the door of the little upper room. She was quite composed, considering what had happened. Nick was ushered by her into her chamber on the floor below.

Stephen didn’t comment on the corpse or apologise for his actions but continued to look at Revill as though the player might still be a thief or even a murderer. Mrs Atkins told him to go and fetch the headborough to report Dole’s death. The snow was falling again and it was almost completely dark outside.

‘A dreadful thing,’ the landlady repeated after she’d finished with her application of ointments. She was referring to Christopher Dole, not Nick’s injuries. ‘A terrible crime.’

‘Why do you say crime, Mrs Atkins?’ said Nick, carefully drawing on his shirt again.

‘Self-slaughter is a crime,’ said the landlady. ‘A crime against God. What are you doing, Mr Revill? Stay here.’

Nick was pushing himself off the bed while Mrs Atkins attempted to keep him there with a hand on his shoulder. She was quite an attractive woman, small, with a firm jaw and wisps of black hair poking from under her cap. Attractive enough that Nick had been conscious of sitting facing her while dressed only in his hose. Attractive enough that he shrugged off his hurts in a manly way rather than making much of them.

‘I must look at the body again.’

‘Why?’

‘You say that Mr Dole killed himself and I admit it looks like that, but I will show you that it cannot be.’

Nick picked up one of the candlesticks that stood by the entrance to the bedchamber and clambered up the stairs once more, Sara Atkins behind him. The blows that Stephen administered were beginning to smart. Nick felt angry with the landlady’s son even if, on the face of things, his suspicions might have been partly justified. At the top, he again opened the door of Christopher’s room. By the light of the candle, he had his first clear sight of the playwright’s swollen face, his head canted to one side against the beam, his tongue protruding from his mouth as the home-made noose bit into his neck. It occurred to Nick that he had not seen Christopher Dole alive. Now he would never have the chance to ask him whether he really was the author of The English Brothers .

Aware of Mrs Atkins close behind him, he raised the candle and glanced rapidly about the room to see if he’d missed anything on his first look round. But every surface was bare, apart from the top of the desk where stood the stubs of two burned-out candles and a pile of half a dozen books. He took the top one. A scrap of paper tucked inside it fluttered to the floor. Nick bent and picked up the paper. There was a scrawled line of writing on it. He couldn’t read the words in the poor light but they didn’t appear to be in English. Hurriedly, he stuffed the paper inside his shirt.

Then he examined the book. It was a copy of The English Brothers , identical to the one Nick was carrying. Not proof exactly, but a sign that Dole was the author. Nick remembered that the dead man’s brother, Alan, was expecting some item to be returned to him. What was it? It couldn’t be the disputed play, since the bookseller already had a copy. He opened the dead man’s chest but there appeared to be nothing inside apart from a heap of undershirts. There was no sign of anything of value in the room.

‘How long did he lodge with you?’ asked Nick. The landlady was at his shoulder.

‘He was with me several years. He was no trouble.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Yesterday. Or perhaps it was the day before. I cannot recall. He kept irregular hours and he kept to himself.’

‘Did he have many visitors?’

‘I do not believe so.’

‘Your son said that I was the third person to call on him in the space of a day.’

‘Did he?’

‘Mr Dole did not kill himself, Mrs Atkins. Look. To raise himself even those few inches above the floor in order to put his head in the noose he would have to be standing on something.’

‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully.

‘The only way he could have hanged himself was to stand on a piece of furniture and then kick it away as he hung from the ceiling, but he did not do that. See.’

Nick spoke urgently. Once again, he raised the candle and shifted it from side to side so that its beams filled every quarter of the tiny chamber. Mrs Atkins was an intelligent woman. Surely she could see the situation for herself. Each of the few items in the room was several feet away from the hanging man, and each was neatly placed against a wall. Even the stool, which would normally have been by the desk, was against the wall facing the door. There was no way in which the man on the rope, who would have been struggling involuntarily for his breath even if he had chosen to do away with himself, could have ensured that whatever he balanced on (stool, chest) was tidied away after use.

‘Perhaps he stood on the bed and somehow swung himself across,’ said Mrs Atkins, who was reluctant to give up the idea that her lodger was responsible for his own death.

Christopher Dole had slept on a simple truckle bed, the sort without posts or a canopy, but equipped with wheels so that it might be pushed into some corner for a servant’s temporary use. It was a melancholy sight, a reminder of Dole’s lowly position in the world. Yes, it was possible he might have somehow used the bed as a makeshift scaffold. But there were no marks or indentations on the threadbare blanket, which was stretched tight across the thin mattress. No one could have stood on it without leaving a trace of his feet, as Nick showed with another sweep of the candlelight.

There were only two possibilities.

Either Christopher Dole, using the chest or stool to position himself under the ceiling beam, had taken his own life and then someone had come in to put the furniture back afterwards…

… or he had been murdered.

Any further conversation with Sara Atkins was prevented by the return of her son in the company of the local head-borough or constable. Both men tramped up the stairs with flakes of snow melting on their hats and capes. The constable, whose name was Daggett, and Stephen came crowding into the top-floor room, which was not large enough to hold five (including the dead man). Daggett seemed not to be as slow-witted as many London constables, or at least the ones that Nick had previously encountered. He greeted Mrs Atkins by name. He didn’t ask Nick who he was. Perhaps he assumed that the player was a lodger in the house. He gestured that the others should leave the room while he examined the body.

After a brief time, and tugging at an ear-lobe as if to signify thought, Daggett came out onto the equally crammed space at the top of the stairs.

‘This is a clear case of self-slaughter,’ he said, echoing Mrs Atkins’ words.

Nick saw that the general opinion was against him. There was no point in airing his suspicions of murder. Now the constable observed the fresh bruises on his face. His gaze flickered between Nick and the body hanging in the room behind him.

‘I fell in the snow,’ said Nick. ‘Fell flat on my face.’

Everyone appeared satisfied with this explanation. Leaving Stephen and Daggett to take down the body, Nick and Mrs Atkins returned downstairs, this time to a ground-floor parlour, where a fire was burning. The landlady seemed relieved, perhaps because the story of Dole’s killing himself was becoming the accepted version – so much more convenient than a murder – or perhaps because Nick explained away the harms her son had caused him.

She gave Nick some aqua vitae, saying that her husband had always used it as a restorative. From the wistful way she said it, Nick guessed she must be a widow. She took a nip herself, and then another one. The fiery liquid warmed Nick and took away some of the hurt from his injuries. Mrs Atkins talked about Christopher Dole, for whom she seemed to have a bit of a soft spot. Nick found himself agreeing to tell Alan Dole of his brother’s death. Then he found himself thinking that perhaps Christopher had somehow brought about his own demise. After all, if that was the conclusion everyone else was coming to…