The Dirty Duck (3 page)

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Sun-madness relieved by a drink of Old Peculier, Melrose waited—not without trepidation—for Harvey Schoenberg to sort it all out. The Ishi sat on a chair near Harvey, making a third at their party. The front of the case had been lifted to display a small screen and a keyboard. There were a couple of slots for some disks, and on the green screen pulsed a tiny white square. The Ishi's heartbeat, apparently. It throbbed so rapidly there that Melrose was sure it and Harvey were both raring to go.

“Who Killed Marlowe?”
said Harvey Schoenberg.

“Well, no one is quite certain what hap—”

But Harvey was shaking his head so hard his bow tie bobbed, and he adjusted it. “No, no. That's the name of my book:
Who Killed Marlowe?”

“Really?” Melrose cleared his throat.

“Now,”—Harvey leaned over his folded arms across the small table so that his nose was not all that far from Melrose's own—“tell me what you know about Kit Marlowe.”

Melrose thought for a moment. “Kit, that is, Christopher,”—Melrose hadn't quite Harvey's genius for nestling up to strangers—“Marlowe died in a tavern brawl, as I remember, drinking in a pub in Southwark—”

“Deptford.”

“Ah, yes, Deptford—when there was some sort of disagreement and Marlowe was stabbed by accident. Well, something like that,” ended Melrose, seeing a sort of piratical smile on Schoenberg's face.

“Go on.”

Melrose shrugged. “With what? That's all I know.”

“I mean about the rest of his life. The plays and so forth.”

“I was under the impression you weren't interested in the literary aspect.”

“I'm not, not like the eggheads who keep fooling around with the bard's stuff, trying to show that guys like Bacon wrote Shakespeare. But Marlowe's relationship with Shakespeare, now
that's
something else.”

“I don't think Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were all that friendly. Marlowe's reputation was pretty well established when Shakespeare came along. He'd already got
Tamburlaine
and
Doctor Faustus
on the boards and was thought to be perhaps the best playwright in England. Then there was something about his politics. Marlowe was an agent, a sort of spy . . .”

As Melrose's recitation continued, Harvey sat there nodding away energetically, like the teacher waiting for the idiot-student to complete his rote-learning so the tutor could jump in and correct it.

“Tamburlaine
was written while Marlowe was still a student at Cambridge, or at least part of it was. Amazing piece of writing for someone that young. Then there was
Doctor Faustus—”

“ ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,' ” said Harvey, rather sadly.

“That's right.” Melrose warmed to him a little. “How'm I doing?”

“Great. You really know a lot. You a professor, or something?”

“I do occasionally turn my hand at lecturing at one of the universities. Nothing much.” Melrose drained his glass of beer and poured the remaining dregs from the bottle. He was feeling a bit dizzy, whether from the Old Peculier—which was strong stuff—or from Harvey Schoenberg—even stronger stuff—he didn't know.

“Literature, right?”

“French poetry. But getting back to Marlowe—”

Leaning closer, his voice low and level, Harvey said: “The Earl of Southampton. What do you know about him?”

Had Melrose been standing in a rained-on doorway with his coat collar turned up he couldn't have felt more like he was passing along secret information. “Southampton? Wasn't he Shakespeare's patron? A patron of the arts?”

“Correct. Young, rich, handsome. Pretty boy Southampton.”

“Really, now. You're not suggesting Shakespeare's sexual life was suspect. I think that's rot.”

Harvey seemed surprised. “You read the sonnets?”

“Yes. That doesn't show anything but affection, loyalty—”

“You could've fooled me.” He leaned over the Ishi computer and did some of the fastest fingerwork Melrose had ever seen. The tiny white square jumped around and words scrolled up on the screen.

Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse—

He seemed to think this was indisputable evidence. “If the shoe fits . . . But that's not the point. Hell, I don't care what these guys did in bed. Of course, we all know Marlowe was a little Nellie—”

“We do?”

“Sure. What the hell do you think all that Walsingham business was about? Oh, I know
one
of the theories says that Kit got stabbed in a brawl over some dame of ‘ill-repute' and died from it. Then there was some other big deal about Marlowe whooping it up on a pleasure-boat and getting in a fight and going overboard.” Harvey snorted, thereby sending both theories to their watery grave. “Listen, don't you believe it. It was Tom Walsingham who was Marlowe's real
friend.”
Harvey winked and adjusted the awful bow-tie.
“Hero and Leander's
dedicated to him.” Harvey shoved his glass aside and leaned toward Melrose as if the two of them were running spies. “The Walsingham family had plenty of dough and plenty of influence. It was Tommy-boy that recruited Kit as a mole—”

Melrose cleared his throat. “What century are we in, Mr. Schoenberg?”

“Harve—and got him sent off to Spain and planted in an abbey to find out what the Catholics were up to. You know. Mary, Queen of Scots. That bunch.” Harvey sat back, drank his beer.

“I've heard of her, yes.”

Harvey sat forward.
“Well?
No wonder Kit nearly wigged out when they tossed him in the slammer. Tom Walsingham had influence, for God's sakes. He could have prevented all that. So what's he do? Lets Kit take the rap . . .” Harvey waved his hand in disgust. “Like the CIA or M-5. ‘But if you're caught, Double-O-Seven, we don't know you,' et cetera.”

In spite of himself, Melrose persisted: “We're talking about a time of extraordinary political and religious conflict. You couldn't go round espousing the seemingly heretical ideas of a Faustus and in your personal life go round spying on the Catholics in Spain without getting into trouble—”

Harvey Schoenberg made a dismissive gesture. “Big deal. And on top of that there was the plague. Bad news, a plague.” Harvey inspected his nails
as if looking for telling signs. “I know all of that. But, see, that's where everybody got off on the wrong foot about Marlowe's death. The ones who don't think he was killed by accident—
accident!
—you ever hear of someone getting a sword in his eye by accident?” Harvey shook his head at the sort of scholarship which could attempt to birth a lion and bring forth a gnat. “So that's out. Where the mistake was, was that the ones who knew Kit was murdered thought those guys who met him in the tavern in Deptford killed him for political reasons; that they were afraid if Kit was taken in he'd spill his guts about Walsingham and Raleigh and the whole schmeer.”

Melrose had been picking the label from his bottle of beer throughout this discourse, an unpleasant habit which he had, up until now, never stooped to. “I take it you think otherwise?”

Once again, Harvey leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “Listen, for four hundred years people have been trying to prove what happened in that tavern in Deptford. The only witnesses, too bad, were the principals, right?—there was this Poley, Skeres, Frizer. And Marlowe, but he was dead, poor bastard—”

“One of the greatest, if not
the
greatest loss to English literature we've ever known.” Melrose, who seldom pontificated, felt a need to. Actually, he felt rather drunk. A defense, no doubt, against the hounds of total unreason. “Twenty-nine, he was—”

Literary loss cut no ice with Harvey Schoenberg. He had bigger fish to fry. “Yeah, he died. But that's life. The point is, most people seem to think this Skeres and Frizer were like hit men for Walsingham and it was, like I said, political. Well, you know what I say to that?”

“I can't imagine.”

“Bullshit.” Schoenberg sat back, looking smug, arm draped over back of chair.

“Really?” Melrose was almost afraid to ask, but felt his resistance had been pretty much worn down to the ground. “What happened, then? Who do you think was responsible?”

Harvey Schoenberg flashed that smile at him, piratical, conspiratorial, like a man with a knife between his teeth. “You won't tell anyone my theory?” And again he tapped the computer. “I got it all in here, all the evidence.”

“Tell anyone? I guarantee they could put me on the rack and I wouldn't breathe a word of it.”

“Shakespeare,” said Harvey Schoenberg, happily drinking off the dregs of his pint.

M
elrose stared at him. But Harvey Schoenberg seemed not at all distraught that he had just come to the most imbecile conclusion in literary history.

“Are you really trying to tell me that you think William Shakespeare was responsible for the death of Christopher Marlowe?”

Harvey's gray eyes glittered like shards from a broken mirror. He smiled. He nodded. He offered Melrose a cigarette from a pack of Salems.

“You're talking about the greatest writer who ever lived.”

“What's that got to do with the price of eggs?” Harvey leaned across and lit Melrose's cigarette. “I mean, temperamentally speaking, you know what writers and painters and so forth are like. Unstable. Geniuses are probably the nuttiest of all.”

“Shakespeare was
not
‘nutty.' ” Melrose coughed on the smoke of the minty-tasting cigarette. “Indeed, from what we know of him, Shakespeare was an extremely sensible, level-headed businessman.” Why was he arguing with this American and his crazy theories? The legacy of too many talks with Agatha, perhaps?

Harvey hitched one foot up on his chair, leaned his chin on his knee. “Point is, what do we
really
know about any of these guys back then? Hell, they didn't even spell their own
names
the same way twice.” He dribbled ash on the floor. “Marloe, Marley, Marlowe, even Marlin—I must've counted seven, eight different spellings—how the hell can we tell what they signed or wrote or what?”

“For what motive? What earthly motive would Shakespeare have for doing away with Marlowe?”

Harvey leaned back over the table and said, “Mel, haven't you been listening? The Earl of Southampton, that's why.”

“But the Earl of Southampton was
Shakespeare's
patron! Not Marlowe's. That wouldn't—”

Harvey sighed, as if he were tired of repeating a lesson that should have been learned long ago. Once again, he turned to the computer, punched the keys and said, “If you don't think there was enough jealousy going there to sink a battleship, then you're nuts. You said you read the sonnets. Well, just look at this.”

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;

But now my gracious numbers are decay'd,

And my sick Muse doth give another place.

I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument

Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent

He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word

From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

And found it in thy cheek: he can afford

No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.

“Can you feature it? ‘Give another place, et cetera.' Look at that language and don't tell me Shakespeare couldn't have stuck a dagger in Marlowe's eye. Though I'm not saying, of course, Shakespeare did his own dirty work. He sent Nick Skeres and Frizer—”

“They were
Walsingham's
men, for God's sakes, not Shakespeare's!”

“Well, Billy-boy knew them; I mean all of these guys knew each other.”

“What proof do you have—?”

But Harvey was too busy punching keys and running the little white square around to pay any attention to Melrose's weak-kneed questions. “That last poem doesn't cut ice with you, just look at this one again.”

Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

“What do you think of that? Look at that ‘struck me dead.' To tell the truth I wouldn't be a bit surprised Will Shakespeare didn't want to get to Kit Marlowe before Kit got to him. Wonder what
inhearse
means,” he added, idly.

Now the man apparently was entertaining the idea that Christopher Marlowe was murdered because Shakespeare was afraid Marlowe might murder Shakespeare. Melrose felt he ought to fight a duel or something. Just lay his glove across Schoenberg's face and give him choice of weapons.

“And then there's that sonnet that looks like a suicide threat—want me to scroll up to that—?”

“No thank you. Please don't scroll anywhere. I find that I am late to an important appointment—”

“Gee, not even time for another drink?”

“Not unless it's hemlock, Mr. Schoenberg.” Remembering he was a gentleman, Melrose forced a wintry smile.

“Harve. Hey, that's rich. I really got you going, didn't I? . . . Well, it doesn't surprise me. I mean, the world probably isn't ready for heavy stuff like this. But, believe me, I got all the evidence in this little beauty.” He patted the Ishikabi computer. As Melrose gathered up his walking stick, Harvey Schoenberg said, “You going to see
Hamlet?”