Alms for Oblivion (18 page)

Sitting by myself in the Goat & Monkey that evening, I continued to puzzle over Dick’s words. He’d made everyone feel apprehensive, or rather had heightened the unease which
already existed. And without giving us anything specific to look out for. Did he really consider that Tom Gally – the ‘playhouse moth’, even if beetle would have been a more apt
description – had taken a hand in the deaths of Peter Agate and Richard Milford? If so, it wasn’t surprising that Burbage had spoken cautiously. A mere whisper of such a suspicion could
lead to charges of slander. If Gally’s aim was to disturb the well-being of the Chamberlain’s Company, then he’d certainly succeeded. Possibly, by upsetting us, he had benefited
Henslowe and the Admiral’s Men too, although it was a bit simple-minded to consider that the fortunes of the two theatre companies were like a pair of buckets in a well: that is, if one was
up the other must be down. It was more the case that, when the sun shone for one company, then it shone to a degree for all. And the same was true in the rain. Nevertheless, Tom Gally might be
operating on his own. Pricked on by a petty spirit of rivalry, he might be one of those men who take pleasure in small, underhand victories. But to resort to murder . . .? There’s a world of
difference between stirring up a handful of apprentices to be rude to a couple of foreigners and stabbing men in cold blood in the lobbies of their lodgings.

I remembered that I’d glimpsed Gally and that superannuated old player Chesser conversing together in the Devil Tavern after our performance of
Troilus and Cressida
. Or at least I
thought I’d seen them. But so befuddled was I during the evening that I could hardly distinguish between the real and the imagined. Anyway, what did it signify if they had been there?

Simply this, perhaps. That they had been on the scene (if my memory was accurate). And if they were on the scene, then they had a part to play in the story. It was like a drama. Characters
don’t just wander on, they all have function and purpose . . .

So what was Chesser’s part in all of this? He hated the playhouse and feared it as a nest of devils, even if he couldn’t keep himself away from the players’ haunts. He appeared
to be engaged on a lone mission to ‘save’ young men like Peter Agate from being infected by the play-sickness. Chesser was not the absurd figure I’d first taken him for. But if he
was no longer the clown that didn’t mean that he was necessarily the villain. Would he go so far as to kill a man in order to preserve that man’s immortal soul from damnation? Perhaps.
There are individuals, plenty of them good men, who would consider the sacrifice of the body a small price to pay for the salvation of the soul. I remembered the fierce eye, the iron grip on my arm
in Paul’s Yard, as he told me to avoid the fate of my friend.

This was only speculation, impure speculation. None of it really got me any closer to the mystery of who’d been responsible for Peter’s and Richard’s deaths, their foul
murders.

Murder most foul . . . I mused . . . murder most foul, strange and unnatural, as in the best it is. As WS describes it in
Hamlet
.

Best, worst, foulest.

And then this word ‘foul’ set off a train of ideas in my head.

The early draught of a play is called the ‘foul papers’, because of its blotchy and disorganized state. Richard Milford had trusted me enough to want me to read
The World’s
Diseas’d
in this early form, since he valued my opinion. Despite the compliment, I didn’t much like the play. When the subject had been raised in the private box at the Globe where
I had met Richard’s rustic patrons, Lady Vinny Venner had seized on the phrase ‘foul papers’. “Is it horrid?” she’d said hopefully. “Is it
dirty?”

Neither she nor her brother had then read the play, although it was already at the printer’s. I wondered whether in the interim one or both had bent themselves to the task of reading it,
even if Lord Bumpkin claimed to have better things to attend to. But if and when they came to open up the book – and on the assumption that they’d get past Richard’s flowery
dedication – what would they find? A lurid tale of lopped limbs, lust and double-dealing, a tale in which an incestuous sister, named Virginia, ultimately dies in the arms of her bloodstained
brother Vindice. Would it not strike even a couple as slow-witted as this pair that their own poet-playwright had made an unfortunate choice of name for his lascivious heroine? Would they laugh it
off or treat it as a mortal insult? Wouldn’t it appear as though Richard Milford – clever, citified Richard – was laughing up his sleeve at his rustic benefactors? Which was
exactly what he was doing, with his ‘subtle messages’.

There was an even more serious implication in all of this. Had Richard been hinting that young Lord and Lady Venner were actually incestuously attached? Perhaps he was. I didn’t know them
well, and didn’t want to know them at all, but Robbie and Vinnie did appear to be close as brother and sister. Unnaturally close? Perhaps. Or maybe it was merely that they were both cut from
the same coarse cloth.

Like the imputation that Tom Gally might have stooped to murder, this imputation of incest would be a dangerous slander if it got abroad. And get abroad it certainly would when
The
World’s Diseas’d
was published and – even if it was never intended for open sale – distributed among the Venners’ private circle. If Richard Milford had lived he
might well have been looking about for a fresh patron. And if he’d lived he might well have found it hard to land another patron, considering his propensity to stab the patron in the back,
using his pen rather than a dagger. If he’d lived . . .

Brother and sister had been the last people to see Richard alive, apart from the murderer. The Bumpkins had left the Milfords at the door of the couple’s lodgings in Thames Street around
one o’clock in the morning. What if . . . if the noble lord and lady, outraged by the contents of the play, by the way Richard had poked fun at them, by the slanderous implications of a name
. . . what if the lord and lady had waited for a few minutes so as to give the young couple time to prepare for bed, then returned to the front door, rapped loudly and, when Richard opened up,
fallen on him? It didn’t have to be both of them, of course. It ought to be the man (those powerful, meaty hands; the little porcine eyes). It was a man’s job. On the other hand, I
could visualize Virginia Venner wielding a dagger as readily as any tragic heroine. She possessed enough of her brother’s fleshy strength.

I cast my mind back to the previous night.

So much had happened in twenty-four hours, and I had not been in my right mind for most of that time! I tried to remember the attitude of Richard Milford in the Middle Temple hall, his posture,
his expressions, while he was standing between his patrons. He’d looked at me and I’d registered defensiveness, even hostility in his glance. He knew that I couldn’t take Robbie
and his sister seriously. But perhaps Richard’s guarded look had nothing to do with me and was rather a response to an accusation, a verbal attack from his patrons. Had
they
suddenly
understood that they were being held up to ridicule in
The World’s Diseas’d
? Had
he
suddenly understood that they weren’t as stupid and thick-skinned as he’d
imagined? That you cannot accept patronage and then snigger at your patron behind his back? Certainly the Venners had looked red, redder than usual. From anger? From heat and drink?

There were far too many ‘maybes’ and ‘perhapses’ in this account, too much iffing speculation. At least, the Bumpkins would be questioned by the coroner because they were
the witnesses who’d left Richard and his wife shortly before the former’s death. But I didn’t believe that the brother and sister would be as hard pressed as I had been by Alan
Talbot, who’d almost assumed my guilt over Peter Agate’s murder. The Venners were coarse sprigs of the nobility but they remained noble. Once a lordling always a lordling. In the
absence of any firm evidence linking them to Richard’s demise, a certain deference would be paid to them. They’d be taken at their word.

What did link this pair to Richard Milford was their patronage and his grateful, if hypocritical, acceptance of it. He had dedicated his poetic
Garland
to R.V. THE ONLY BEGETTER and also
The World’s Diseas’d
. The play, at present with Nicholson the bookseller, might hold more clues which could be somehow communicated to the authorities. I’d read the piece,
but with an impatient, critical eye, and without any suspicion at the time that the playwright might have drawn his characters from life. Now I needed to examine more carefully a tragic piece which
had turned out, tragically, to be Richard’s last work. The problem was getting hold of a copy of
The World’s Diseas’d
, since they were doubtless intended for private
distribution only – if that was still going to happen after the demise of the author. The most I could do was to call by on Benjamin Nicholson tomorrow and request him to show me the play. I
could claim, quite truthfully, to be a friend of Richard, someone concerned for his legacy as a writer. And I really should go and see Nicholson anyway about that debt, perhaps give him something
on account.

So, while sitting solitary in a dim corner of the Goat & Monkey – although all the corners of the Goat & Monkey were dim – I pursued my thoughts. Mere speculation, at the
moment. But an advantage of private speculation is that you don’t have to justify it to anyone.

It was the mystery of Peter Agate’s death which affected me more deeply than Richard’s. Not only because I was implicated in his murder and was still waiting for Coroner
Talbot’s decision (
His blood was on you .
. .
I may recall you later
), but because Peter’s arrival in London lay partly at my door. Like me, the squire’s son had
come to find his fortune in the capital. And when he’d had doubts soon afterwards about whether a player’s life was really for him I’d encouraged him to stay on. Would that he had
returned home to our village, to his father and sisters! He’d still be alive and his blood – literally and metaphorically – would not have been on my hands. If I was to exonerate
myself and obtain justice for my dead friend, then it was my duty to search out his killer. Even if I might find myself as his next victim.

And despite the snugness of the dim ale-house corner a chill spread over me, because I suddenly saw the whole affair in a different light. I breathed deep and attempted to think slow.

Like everyone else, I’d supposed that the person the murderer of Peter had intended to get rid of was Peter himself. But my friend was killed in the lobby of my lodgings in the uncertain
light of a foggy afternoon. We were about the same height, the same age, Peter and I.

You can see where I’m headed. Nevertheless I tried not to jump to conclusions (as you’ve perhaps just done) but to take the matter one step at a time. You can understand my
reluctance to jump to conclusions.

One question was whether the murderer had followed his victim back to Dead Man’s Place – or whether Peter was, like Richard Milford, already inside the house and had been summoned by
a rap at the door.

In my mind, I put myself in the murderer’s shoes. They are a surprisingly comfortable fit.

I follow my friend through the fog, trailing his tall dark shape down the street. I wait until he nears the front door in Dead Man’s Place and then put on speed to enter just behind him.
He feels the brush of wind as a second person comes into the lobby. Peter turns round. He must turn round since he is due to receive his wounds in the front. Before that happens he opens his mouth
in doubt or surprise. He says something like “Who are . . .?” or “What do you . . .?” but I cannot hear clearly for the blood pounding in my ears. And then I plunge the
knife into Peter’s chest. I am shocked by the resistance the blade meets. I have never done this before. But I am a strong young man. He is a strong young man too and, even though he has been
given a fatal wound, he will not die straightaway. He begins to flail about, to strike out at his assailant. He batters me with his arms, and I am compelled to strike at him several times over.
Probably unawares, I make noises. Grunts, shouts. He also makes noises as he breathes his last. Then – finally! – he falls back against the door and I can see that this man will never
rise again even though he is still bubbling and breathing and bleeding.

It is time for me to leave before company comes. I force back the front door against the weight of his falling frame and flee into the street. The fog is thick. I run through the streets. When I
have got a little way off, I realize that I am still holding the murderer’s knife. Do I throw it into one of the ditches that criss-cross this part of Southwark or even into the mighty river
itself? I can sense rather than hear the slurp of water within a few yards of where I’m standing while my breath adds thicker plumes to the white air. Why discard a serviceable knife though?
There is no one here to see me. What is thrown away can be retrieved and used against me, however deep it’s buried. And the knife might come in handy once more. So instead of throwing it away,
I tuck it inside my clothing. I notice that there is blood on my ungloved hands. On my face too probably. And on my clothing, though I’m wearing something dark which seems to have already
absorbed the stains. I didn’t deliberately choose those dark clothes this morning. It must have been providence that I put them on.

Never mind all that. Hands can be washed. Clothes can be burnt. Consciences can be ignored.

I breathe deeply, surprised at how winded I am. This killing is a tiring business. And then, I return to . . . where do I return to? . . . to wherever it is that I have come from.

Another scene comes into my mind, different in its details but the same in essence. I am still wearing the murderer’s shoes and they don’t pinch me at all. In this scene, I go boldly
up to the front door in Dead Man’s Place, rap loudly and wait. If the landlord answers I have some excuse at hand. But the landlord doesn’t answer. Instead it is the man I am looking
for. A tall dark shape opens the door and says something like “Yes . . .?” or “What do you . . .?” but I can’t hear clearly because of the blood which is already
pounding in my ears and therefore, knowing my target, I plunge the knife into this man’s chest. He staggers back into the dimly lit lobby. I spring inside after him. And the rest you
know.