The Dirty Duck Part 2

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 princ.i.p.als, right?-there was this Poley, Skeres, Frizer. And Marlowe, but he was dead, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d-"

"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."

"Bulls.h.i.+t." 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.

3.

Melrose 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? h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l 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 battles.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.d'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 inhea.r.s.e, 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 inhea.r.s.e 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 Is.h.i.+kabi computer. As Melrose gathered up his walking stick, Harvey Schoenberg said, "You going to see Hamlet?"

Melrose was almost afraid to answer. "I expect so." He and Jury had tickets in the stalls.

"Man, I wouldn't miss it. There's all sorts of evidence . . . it's a revenge tragedy, you know."

"Really?"

"They're all the same. Now Kyd-Tom Kyd, I mean-was a good friend of Marlowe's; but all I can say is, with friends like that-who needs enemies?" Schoenberg waved him back. "Come on, sit down a minute, I want to show you something."

With a sort of dreadful fascination, as if he had been hypnotized by the snake's eye of the computer. Melrose sat down again.

Harvey punched the keys around, saying, "Can you feature it? Kyd saying all this stuff against Marlowe?"

". . . amongst those waste and idle papers (which I carde not for) & which vnaskt I did deliuer up, were founde some fragmentes of a disputation toching that opinion affirmed by Marlowe to be his, and shufled with some of myne (unknown to me) by some occasion of our wrythinge in one chamber twoe yeares synce. . . . That I shold loue or be familer frend, with one so irreligious, were verie rare . . . he was intemperate & of a cruel hart . . . an athiest . . ."

"Of course, we have to remember Kyd was being tortured into giving evidence against Marlowe-"

Melrose, quite familiar by now with torture, rose. "It's been most enlightening, Mr. Schoenberg."

"Harve. Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy-"

"I know," said Melrose icily.

Harvey Schoenberg sighed. "Like I said, read one, you've read 'em all. Those revenge tragedies are all alike."

Melrose had to argue, despite himself. "I would certainly not cla.s.s Hamlet in the general category of revenge-"

He was not to be permitted to complete his thought, apparently.

"Why? Same old stuff. Trouble is, Hamlet wanted revenge on Claudius and went around killing all the wrong people before he finally got around to the right one."

Melrose had to admit it was a refres.h.i.+ngly simple way to look at Hamlet.

4.

Detective Superintendent Richard Jury was not kidding himself.

He knew that stopping here to visit his old friend Sam Lasko had merely been an excuse to spend a few days in Stratford, so that he could appear, as if by some strange coincidence, on Jenny Kennington's doorstep.

He sat with his feet up on Detective Sergeant Lasko's cluttered desk, scanning the Stratford telephone directory. He was trying to look awfully casual about the search for the number; he was certain the lady in the corner-Lasko's secretary-had eyes like lasers beneath those heavy brows and hornrimmed gla.s.ses with which she could burn straight through the telephone book to the page of K's he was scouring, and then smile meanly and go tell the world. Jury tried to empty his mind. Probably, she was a mind-reader too.

He found the entry Kennington, J., and picked up a pencil and wrote it into his notebook. And then, telling himself he was really only looking for the best route to London, he got up and looked at the blow-up of a map of Stratford. She lived in the old part of Stratford- "Can I help you find something, Superintendent?"

The voice hit him between the shoulder blades. Quickly, he turned. Was she laughing, secretly? "What? No. No, I was just looking up the route to London."

"What's the matter," she asked, "with the one you came on?" She zapped her page from the typewriter, and smiled her psychic's smile.

He started to mumble something about construction and road workers but decided she would find out later that he was lying, so he said nothing. But she was rolling another sheet into the typewriter, as if the question had been an idle one anyway.

Sap, he thought, not of her but of himself. Jury leaned back in Lasko's chair, and wondered what it was in his nature that kept him impervious to the siren song of some truly seductive women, but made him take a dive for another sort- All of this water imagery was transporting him to the banks of the Avon, where his imagination rid Stratford of all its tourists and replaced them with Jenny, walking there alone. The iridescent blues and greens of the ducks bobbed sleepily in the reeds and rushes; the swans slid by in the cool, companionable stream. His mind snapped pictures: ducks, swans, Jenny Kennington. Then it moved forward to September. September would be even better. Sunlight filtering through the trees, a skin of golden light on the water. October. Better yet. Cold enough that she would start rubbing her arms and need someone to warm her up. . . .

Ducks bobbed and swans floated up there behind the scrim of the station ceiling and Jury thought of a way to put all of this magic-act into operation. Why not invite her to dinner with him and Melrose Plant at the Black Swan tonight? And the theatre afterward? For her, safety in numbers. Plant wouldn't mind, certainly, although he hadn't met her when he'd been in Littlebourne last year- Hold it, mate. Melrose Plant must be one of the most eligible men in the whole of the British Isles. He had intelligence, looks, character, warmth. Whether Jury had enough of those himself, he didn't know. But he knew d.a.m.ned well he didn't have the rest of it, like money. Melrose Plant was filthy rich. And t.i.tles. Though Plant had given them up, his t.i.tles trailed after him like the wake of a s.h.i.+p. The Earl of Caverness. Lord Ardry. Twelfth Viscount in the Ardry-Plant line- Lady Kennington and Lord Ardry . . .

Forget dinner at the Black Swan.

This is ridiculous! You're a policeman! He surged out of Lasko's chair.

"I am?"

To Jury's everlasting mortification he found he had spoken aloud. He was saved from replying by the blessed and sudden appearance of Detective Sergeant Lasko, who at that moment came through the door.

"Trouble over at the Hilton," he said, tossing a cap which failed to meet with an old coatrack. Lasko had a ba.s.set-hound sort of face, eyes and folds of skin beneath them pulled down by weights of sadness. His temperament matched his looks. He moved slowly, as if constricted by his blanket of gloom.

"Trouble?" asked Jury, happy for anything which would pull the typist's eyes from him.

"Man named Farraday says his son's gone missing."

"What's he think happened?"

Lasko shrugged. "Last time they saw him was at breakfast Monday. He said he was going over to Shakespeare's birthplace. In Henley Street."

"Monday? This is Wednesday. They don't seem in much of a hurry to find him."

Shaking his head, Lasko hitched himself up on the edge of his desk. "The reason they didn't report it was apparently this kid-he's nine-has a way of wandering off. That is, he's independent, I take it, and I also take it from some of the things the sister said-one of the sisters, that is-"

"Hold on, Sammy, you're losing me in the thicket of these relations."

"Okay. There's the father, James Farraday-" Lasko retrieved a small notebook from his rear pocket and leafed through it. "James, the father; there's a stepmother, Amelia-something, funny name; a sister, Penelope; another sister, no, stepsister with another funny name-I don't think I wrote it down right-Bunny Belle? Bunny Belle is the woman's daughter by another marriage and I wouldn't mind disappearing with her from Monday to Wednesday, let me tell you; or, to tell the truth, Amelia's not half bad-"

Given his own recent reflections, Jury's patience was not even dented. He was a patient man, in any event. He waited for Lasko to stop looking sourly at his own secretary for not having some of Bunny Belle's qualifications.

"They're an American family?"

"Who the h.e.l.l else stays at the Stratford-b.l.o.o.d.y-Hilton except auto conventions? Inside, you'd think you were in New York. You ever been to New York, Jury?"

Lasko had been going on about the States ever since Jury had arrived that morning. It was a love-hate relations.h.i.+p. Lasko was dying to go to Miami and the Florida Keys. But he hated some of the bra.s.sy Americans he'd run into. Jury said no, he'd never been to the States, and Lasko stuck a toothpick in his mouth and went on. It danced as he talked.

"Like I said, this boy-name's James Carlton Farraday-likes to go off on his own. When they were in Amsterdam, he wandered off for hours-"

"Hours isn't two days. What were they doing in Amsterdam?"

"Tour. They're with one of these tour groups. In Paris he was gone for over twenty-four hours. Local police found him asleep in a church pew. Weird kid, right?" Lasko shrugged. "The girl, Penny, implied that he wasn't all that keen on his family."

"You mean she thinks maybe he's run away? That would be b.l.o.o.d.y silly in a foreign country."

"The kid's independent, like I said. Or they said."

"Well, what leads do you have?"

"None." Lasko looked gloomy, then looked hopefully at Jury. "I just thought maybe you-"

Jury shook his head, but smiled as he said, "Uh-uh, Sammy. I just came down here for a visit. This is your patch, not mine."

"But this guy Farraday is over at the Hilton raving away about Scotland Yard. I told him we could handle it, that it wasn't Scotland Yard's sort of thing, and that only made him madder. He's American, Richard. He's going to dance right into the b.l.o.o.d.y emba.s.sy and he's stinking rich and has a lot of influence, so he says." His tone growing steadily more wheedling, Lasko said, "Look, if it was a murder, I bet you'd do it." And then he looked around the office, at the tables and chairs and secretary as if he might just scare up a dead body somewhere for Jury.

"It's not a murder, though, is it? And your Chief Constable's not asking for help from us-"