‘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…
There was a bustle in the lobby outside. It was constable Daggett departing. Mrs Atkins went out to see him off. Nick stayed sitting by the warmth of the parlour fire.
Gazing into the coals, he asked himself: who would want to kill a poor, out-of-fashion playwright?
Then Nick recalled that Christopher Dole had managed to incur the hatred or anger of several persons: the printer, George Bruton, who called Dole a bastard and said he owed him money; his own brother, who claimed that Christopher had committed ‘foolish crimes’, and who had uttered some threatening words against him. True, these individuals talked about Dole as if he were still alive, when it was evident he had died earlier. But this could just be clever talk, meant to hide their own guilt.
And then, to add to the list, there was William Shakespeare. As well as WS, there were probably others unknown to Nick with reason to dislike Dole. For an impoverished and neglected playwright, he certainly seemed to have a talent for making enemies.
Nick retrieved the fragment of paper he’d picked up from Dole’s floor. By the better light of the parlour, he was able to read the words. They were not English, but Latin. There were only four of them, and they were easy to understand. What he read caused a chill to come over him, for all the heat from the fire.
The door to the parlour opened. Nick turned his gaze from the slumbering fire but his expectation of seeing Sara Atkins again was disappointed when Stephen entered the room alone. The landlady’s son glanced briefly at Nick before pouring himself a good measure of the aqua vitae, which he swallowed in a single gulp. It crossed Nick’s mind that he too might be a suspect for Dole’s killing. Without saying a word, Stephen made to go out the door.
‘A moment… Stephen,’ said Nick. ‘Where is the body now?’
‘Cut down and laid out upstairs.’
‘I have a couple of questions for you, and I think you owe me some answers, after…’ He indicated the bruises on his face.
Stephen shrugged and leaned his lanky frame against the panel-work by the door.
‘You told me that two other people came to see Christopher Dole recently.’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘There was a gentleman who called yesterday afternoon. I knew Mr Dole was absent but I directed the visitor to go upstairs to Dole’s room since the day was turning nasty, and he was insistent on seeing our lodger. From his voice and manner, he was obviously an individual of refinement, not someone to be turned away into the cold.’
‘So this gentleman waited for Christopher to return?’
‘I encountered Dole when I was on my way out, and told him he had a caller, so they must have met upstairs.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I cannot tell you. His clothes were good but he was wearing a hat with a wide brim and it threw most of his face into shadow.’
‘He didn’t give his name, I suppose?’
‘You suppose wrong. He did give his name.’
Nick waited and said nothing. He let the silence stretch out. He looked at the fire. Eventually the landlady’s son gave way: ‘He said he was called Henry Ashe.’