‘This is not pleasant, Bruno, particularly as you knew the girl. But I want to know what you make of this murder. I am sorry to ask this of you,’ he adds, in a gentler voice. I nod silently and he reaches out for the torch from Burghley.
We step into what looks like a storeroom, perhaps twelve feet across and twenty feet long, empty except for a stack of wooden crates against the wall and an unmoving figure laid out upon the stone floor, ghostly in a white dress. Walsingham moves forward and crouches beside the body, holding up the torch so that its wavering flames illuminate the pitiful end of Abigail Morley.
The bodice of her dress has been roughly torn down the middle and ripped apart to expose her torso. From her left breast a dagger protrudes, plunged into her flesh almost down to its handle. Straight into her heart, I think; I have a disturbing sensation that I have been here before, that I have already seen this image, as if I had lived through it once in the recent past. As I draw closer and kneel on the floor, I realise that the body and the flagstones around it are soaking wet, matted strands of her red hair spread around her head. Walsingham brings the torch nearer and motions silently for me to look again at her breast. On the right side, opposite the dagger, a mark has been crudely carved into her pale skin: an upright cross with a tail curving to the right, like a lower case ‘h’: the astrological symbol for Saturn. I breathe out carefully, trying to slow the hammering in my chest. In an awful moment of clarity, I understand why the Earl of Leicester spoke of Doctor Dee and something more than coincidence. I have not seen this image before, but I have heard it described, before the event. Abigail has been killed almost exactly according to Dee’s description of Ned Kelley’s latest vision in the stone.
Finally I force myself to look at Abigail’s face. Bleached and tinted orange in the torchlight, I am amazed at how serene she looks for someone who has so recently met a violent death. This in itself strikes me as odd; during my years on the road I saw the corpses of men stabbed with blades and there was no such placid expression, rather a twisting of the features, their death throes written into their final expression.
I gesture for Walsingham to hold the torch up to her face; he does so, both of us kneeling now in the water that has slopped around the body, pooling in the worn dips of the old stones. Abigail’s unseeing eyes are fixed on nothing, but the whites are bloodshot, the left one entirely red. There is bruising around the mouth and nose, but no marks on the neck as there were with Cecily Ashe.
‘She was in the water?’ I ask, my voice coming out as barely a whisper.
‘Tied by the hands to one of the mooring rings at the dock here. One of the kitchen girls found her when she noticed the door to this room had been left open. She says she saw the loading-bay doors open and then something white floating in the water, like a ghost.’ He grimaces.
‘She was meant to be found, then. But from her face she didn’t drown,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘I think she was smothered, then stabbed very precisely after she stopped moving. He must have been waiting and taken her by surprise when she appeared -‘ I break off. When she appeared expecting to meet me.
Walsingham rises stiffly to his feet.
‘He came in here, I think.’ He holds up the torch and I see that on the opposite wall from the door where we entered is a wide set of double doors with a heavy bolt across them. Walsingham beckons to me, then hands me the torch and draws back the bolt, opening the right half of the doors, which swings inwards. I see that they open directly into the arched tunnel running under the building, with two wide stone steps leading to the water. The tunnel is the width of a small barge and its arched roof perhaps ten feet high, clearly built to allow boats carrying supplies to be brought directly from the river to the palace kitchens where they can be unloaded into this room. As the end of the tunnel is blocked by the metal grille, it would be impossible to gain access to the palace except through these double doors.
‘This door was open when she was found,’ Walsingham says. ‘So I surmise he came in by boat, the same way he escaped, and she must have opened the door for him herself.’ He rests a hand on the door frame and peers out over the black water softly slapping against the steps in the little channel. ‘She was floating here, right by the dock.’ He points to the water just beneath the step. ‘You’re right - this was meant as another display. If he had not tied the body up she might have sunk or drifted out of the tunnel into the river - he intended for her to be found quickly. Perhaps even while the concert was in progress.’
‘Again the mark of the prophecy - Saturn this time. He wants to leave no doubt that these deaths are connected. And this dagger -‘ I pause again, looking up at Walsingham as another memory surfaces. ‘The doll! Cecily Ashe was found holding a doll with red wool for hair that we assumed was intended as an image of Queen Elizabeth. It was pierced in the heart with a needle.’
‘I remember it well.’ He rubs the back of his hand across his chin. ‘Made like a witch’s poppet. Her Majesty was deeply disturbed by it. And now he has taken to using human dolls. But the intent remains the same, do you not think - to mimic the death of the queen?’
‘As heralded by the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn,’ I muse.
‘I recall Her Majesty pointing out this girl to me once when her ladies were gathered in the Presence Chamber,’ Burghley offers from the doorway. ‘She asked me if I did not think the girl the very likeness of herself in her youth. The comparison amused her. And indeed, when you looked closely, it seemed there was a distinct resemblance, though it was just the red hair, I suppose. Poor child.’
‘And yet …’ I shake my head as I shift my position by the body; my knees are growing numb from the wet stone. As I continue to stare at Abigail’s marble face, I realise that my attention has grown analytical, my reasoning mind has taken over from the emotion I felt at her death a moment earlier. ‘Something is not right here.’
‘You certainly have a gift for understatement, Doctor Bruno,’ Burghley says drily.
‘I mean to say - my theory must be wrong. Now that I look closely, the facts do not support it.’
Walsingham gives an unexpected bark of mirthless laughter. ‘It is a rare man who can admit that, Bruno. Most of my acquaintance strain always to bend the facts to their theories. Explain yourself.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. I had believed that Cecily Ashe was killed because she had been part of a conspiracy to murder the queen and she had perhaps changed her mind, or somehow become a threat to that plot and the other people involved. And now Abigail, who was suspected of knowing her friend’s secrets, and who may well have been seen talking to me, is also dead. But then, why, in both cases, leave the bodies where they will be found, within the court, and displayed so as to point explicitly to the queen’s death at the hands of Catholic assassins? If the very purpose of killing these girls was to silence them, to protect the conspirators …’
‘Perhaps the purpose was to punish them publicly,’ Walsingham says sagely. ‘If the killer knew or suspected it was too late to keep them silent, he may have chosen to make an example of them instead, for their betrayal.’
‘And jeopardise his own plot in doing so?’
‘Perhaps there is more than one plot,’ Burghley suggests.
‘God’s blood, William, there are a hundred plots, perhaps a thousand!’ Walsingham exclaims, pressing the palm of his hand to his forehead and beginning to pace again in the confined space between the open loading bay and Abigail’s body. ‘Most of them at the level of that sorry fellow picked up on the road from York, waving his pistols and ranting. But when we have a bottle of poison almost in the queen’s own bedchamber, brought there by a girl who owns a ring bearing the impresa of Mary Stuart, and Howards lurking about the French embassy talking of an invasion force, I think we may safely assume we are dealing with one extremely serious conspiracy to regicide and war.’
‘Then I ask again - why call attention to a plot to kill the queen if these deaths are to safeguard one?’
‘I don’t know, Bruno - to sow fear and confusion? To lead us in one direction while they attack from another? In any case, I thought you had made it your business to solve this without anyone’s help.’ The quiet anger in his voice is unmistakable. He makes a gesture of exasperation with both hands, waving the flaming torch alarmingly; its guttering light briefly illuminates a glint of something at Abigail’s neck. I reach forward to touch it and instinctively my outstretched fingers shrink from the chill of her skin; again I recall how close she stood to me under the Holbein Gate, the warmth and solidity of her flesh that time I clutched at her arm when we first spoke in the queen’s privy apartments at Richmond. All that eager life, pinched out as easily as a candle. I set my face firm and reach out a second time, willing myself not to recoil; from her cold flesh my fingers hook out a sturdy gold chain fastened at her throat. Its pendant has slipped round behind her head and become tangled in her hair; impatiently I fumble to free it, a few strands of red-gold hair coming away in my hand with the chain. Attached to it is a lozenge-shaped locket, also carved in gold.
‘Look at this.’ I hold it out to Walsingham, as if to make amends.
He turns it over in his fingers, looking at me expectantly.
‘I never saw her wear this before,’ I add.
‘She may have saved her best jewels for court occasions. You open it.’ Walsingham holds the light steady; even Burghley draws closer to see. The catch is delicate and my fingers clumsy; Burghley starts to hop from foot to foot, puffing through pursed lips.
‘We should not stay too much longer - the concert will be almost over.’
Walsingham ignores him and bends closer, so that the heat from the torch almost scorches my face. I work my fingernails into the clasp and at last it springs open. The right half of the locket reveals an enamelled painting, seemingly undamaged by its recent immersion. It shows a red phoenix, its head turned to the left and its wings outstretched, in a nest of flames. Inside the left half, two initials are finely engraved, a capital M entwined with a snaking S. I pass it to Walsingham; even with the play of shadows on his face, I see him blanch.
‘What is it, Francis?’ There is a new note of anxiety in Burghley’s voice.
Walsingham clenches the locket in his fist.
‘Mary Stuart. Always Mary Stuart. So this girl was also part of the plot. By Christ, have they recruited the whole of the queen’s household?’
‘The locket was not Abigail’s,’ I say, hearing my knees click as I finally stand, shaking out the stiffness in my legs.
‘How do you know?’
I tell them about Abigail’s oddly furtive manner at the Holbein Gate. ‘She mentioned a locket when she first told me about Cecily’s secret suitor and his gifts, but there was no locket in the bag of love-tokens she passed to me. My guess is that she decided at the last moment to keep it for herself. That’s why she seemed guilty.’
Walsingham considers this for a moment.
‘Perhaps she was foolish enough to wear it about court before today,’ he says. ‘If our killer - or at least, the one who hires the killer - is indeed a courtier, he may have seen it around her neck and recognised it as the locket he gave to Cecily.’
‘In any case, my lord Burghley is right,’ I say, glancing at the Lord Treasurer. ‘There is more than one man behind these murders. Whoever stopped the boy Jem in the yard could not have got back out to the river and rowed up the kitchen channel in time to meet Abigail. I’d bet he delivered the false message from me, then walked calmly back to the hall while someone else waited out on the river with a boat. And I’d wager anything that at the moment she was killed, the man in the shadows was applauding the choir in full view of the queen and the whole court.’
Walsingham sighs as he pulls the door of the loading bay shut and secures it with the bolt. The smell of the river recedes a little.
‘I need proof, Bruno. Suspicions are no good when they touch people as powerful as those we have in mind here. A ring, a locket - Her Majesty will not move against her cousin for such trinkets, and in any case, Mary Stuart will only say they were stolen by those who wish her harm. It seems certain that whoever is directing these murders is a familiar face at court. And he is clever. He may still be plotting to attack the queen by another means. Who
was
Cecily Ashe’s lover?’ He grips my shoulder and gives it a little shake, his face close to mine.
Burghley coughs discreetly.
‘I think we really must return. The concert will be almost over, and the French ambassador’s party will be wondering at Doctor Bruno’s absence. Francis - you return with Bruno to the hall. I will endeavour to see that those servants and guards who know of this terrible business are kept at a distance until the guests have all departed. Let the rumourmongers wait until tomorrow, at least, before their tongues run riot.’ He sucks in his cheeks, and motions for us to leave first.
Walsingham and I pass through the kitchen yard, now almost entirely blanketed in darkness, and back to the passageway by which we had come.
‘He is following you, Bruno, this killer,’ he says in a low voice, over his shoulder. ‘He knew that kitchen boy had been to Salisbury Court.’
‘Unless he was at Salisbury Court already.’
‘That nest of vipers. That is where the proof is to be found, I have no doubt of it. Keep your eyes sharp as a falcon’s, Bruno - only you can lay your hands on the evidence that will condemn one or all of them for treachery. But be careful. He must know you are hunting him. And if you come across anything else - however trivial it may seem - bring it straight to me, by any means you can. Understood?’
‘Yes, your honour.’ I lower my head, chastened.
He stops walking, turning to face me so abruptly that I bump into him. ‘There is something else I must ask you, Bruno.’ He glances around and lowers his voice yet further. ‘Have you ever heard John Dee speak of visions? Glimpses of the future granted him by angels, that sort of thing?’