Richard Thirling sat in the carriage next to Ambrose Falconer and couldn’t remember when he had felt more ill than this. He often had attacks of whatever it was that made his leg give way, which was sometimes accompanied by singing in the ears; he had always attributed that to years as a choirmaster. But this afternoon, at the wedding breakfast, he had suddenly been spectacularly sick all over the second cousin twice removed of the bride. He had been removed with not too much ceremony by two of Francis Hynde’s grooms, who had taken him, up the back stairs, to a second best guest bedroom, where he had been stripped of his clothes and put to bed. Just as he was drifting off into a troubled sleep, he would jerk awake as his muscles spasmed and arched his back. Then he would shiver as though with ague and drift off, until the whole sorry business would start again. There was a bucket strategically placed at his bedside, but he usually missed his mark, with a muttered apology to the empty room. His memory was unclear after the first visitation of whatever this pestilence was; one minute he was talking to the wedding party, the next he was in bed. Then, he thought he could remember, a strange grey man had materialized and had made him vomit some more. There was talk of oysters and wine, but he had to say no; he really wasn’t feeling all that well.
Professor Goad sat in the carriage and couldn’t remember when he had felt more ill than this. He had absolutely no memory of the whole sorry day and just closed his eyes and hoped to die.
Michael Johns stood talking to the groom who would be driving them home. He was trying to persuade the man to let him ride up on the outside bench, where the groaning and the belching and the general stench would be less noticeable, but the man was adamant. It just wasn’t done in Sir Francis Hynde’s employ that gentlemen rode with grooms up front. He would have to travel with the other . . . gentlemen – the pause was small but telling – in the carriage. Sighing, Johns turned away from the man. Surely there must be an alternative to getting into that noisome box and holding his breath the whole way to Cambridge.
Marlowe, Manwood and Dee reluctantly left some food, just a little, on the trestle in the inn and prepared to leave. The landlord was so ecstatic and lost in his cloud of cuckoo-dreams of having at last broached the world of quality clientele that it was not for some time that he realized that no one had paid.
They left Marlowe’s horse behind, as Manwood and Dee had their own way of getting back into the park. A path wound through a small shrubbery between the church and the inn, which came out at the back of the stable yard. Manwood and Dee did have the grace to admit that it was possibly easier to use in daylight than it was in the dark, but eventually they were walking on cobbles and no longer had to pause every few yards to disentangle themselves from the clutch of brambles. As they walked, swearing under their breath every now and again as a mistimed branch whizzed back from the grip of the man in front, they made plans. Marlowe and Manwood were dagger men, at bottom. Subtleties suggested by Dee were, in the final analysis, too slow and not foolproof. The murderer – Marlowe still had trouble naming him as Johns, even in the teeth of the evidence – had killed at least three times to their knowledge and could easily be planning to kill again. Dee favoured a more oblique approach. He had, after all, tinctures by the dozen, incantations galore, which could bring the soul of a man to its knees and make him tell the truth though it condemned him to eternal damnation.
Manwood hadn’t liked the light in Dee’s eye, the way he rubbed his hands together. It smacked of heresy, necromancy and the rest; a good dagger-point at the throat would achieve all that and more and no risk to anyone’s eternal soul except that of the murderer.
They were still discussing it, although an eavesdropper may have chosen to call it arguing, when they stumbled on to the cobbles of the stable yard. There were no carriages to be seen and even the grooms seemed to have gone to bed.
‘Where was their carriage?’ Marlowe asked, urgently.
‘Here,’ said Manwood, spreading his arms.
‘I should have given them a bigger dose,’ Dee said. ‘But with Falconer, I had to be careful. It could have killed him in his condition. And of course, Thirling . . .’
The other two waited. Finally, Manwood could bear it no longer. ‘Yes? Thirling? What about Thirling?’
‘Thirling might have been poisoned,’ Dee said slowly. ‘I assumed it was the oysters or the wine.’
‘Poison has to be given to the person somehow,’ Marlowe said. ‘With Ralph and Henry, we couldn’t tell when or how they had been given it. But I know that Dr Thirling had not eaten for hours before we got to Madingley, so he must have been given a dose there.’
‘But why didn’t it kill him?’ Manwood asked.
‘Because,’ Dee said, ‘tincture of digitabulum takes varying times to kill – and because I gave him tartar emetic when I went to see him after he was taken ill. It got the poison out of his system when only a little had been absorbed.’
‘So who gave it to him?’ Marlowe wanted to know.
Manwood was confused. ‘Haven’t we decided it was Johns?’ he asked.
‘Was Johns near Thirling when he ate or drank?’ Dee asked. ‘I can’t remember, but I don’t think he was. He had already gone off with the bride, I think. And he couldn’t have just put the poison in some food because if he had we would have a house half full of the dead and dying.’ Dee wished he had a showstone which would clarify the past in the way that it clarified the future.
Marlowe was almost hopping with frustration. He had missed a vital clue because he had had other clues to find. Why had neither of these stupid men . . . ?
‘Shhhh!’ whispered Manwood, peering through the shrubbery. ‘There’s someone creeping out of the side door of the house. Whoever it is is making for the stables.’
‘Can you see who it is?’ breathed Marlowe, who had his back to the building and was loath to attract attention to himself by turning round.
‘No. He’s going into the tack room. It’s probably just a manservant on some assignation with a scullery maid. Shhhh . . . No, he’s coming out again . . .’
‘Turn your head away,’ Marlowe said. ‘The moonlight reflecting in your eyes will give us all away.’
Dee looked at the scholar with new eyes. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he whispered. ‘I believe you have done this sort of thing before.’
Marlowe lifted a shoulder in recognition and bent his head towards Manwood’s shoulder, whispering, ‘What’s he doing now? Can you see who it is?’
‘He’s saddling a horse,’ whispered Manwood. ‘I still can’t see who it is . . . he’s keeping to the shadows. Where is he going?’
‘To get Thirling,’ Dee whispered back. He risked a glance out of the corner of his eye. ‘It could be Johns, I suppose. It’s hard to tell in this light. He needs to finish off Thirling; to stop him telling what he knows.’
The sensible Justice of the Peace rose up inside Roger Manwood. ‘Aren’t we perhaps getting a little overexcited?’ he asked quietly. ‘There may be a perfectly simple explanation.’ He wondered what would happen if people at home in Canterbury heard of him skulking around stable yards at dead of night and accusing reputable members of Cambridge colleges of murder.
Marlowe pulled the two men aside into the shadows. ‘Sir Roger, there is no simple explanation. Creeping about and saddling horses by moonlight is not normal behaviour. Murder has been done three times. We couldn’t stop them happening, but this fourth one we can prevent. My horse is ready for me down at the inn. If I run now, I can be on its back and waiting to follow before this man passes that way. It is hard for one man to saddle a horse, and if it is Michael Johns he isn’t used to it.’
‘If?’ Dee said.
‘Yes. If. That will leave me time.’ The older men started to complain, to argue that they should just stop the man and see what he was up to.