The Killing
of
Hamlet
by Ann Morven
A Sheil B. Wright whodunit in which
murder stalks an English village.
© copyright Ann
Morven
ann.morven@optusnet.com.au
Smashwords
Edition 2009, ISBN 978-1-4523-0960-6
First published 2009 by
Darling Newspaper
Press
http://www.booktaste.com
danpress@optusnet.com.au
PO
box 176, Kalamunda, Western Australia 6926.
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
My offence is rank! It smells to Heaven. - HAMLET
THE first murder was before an audience, in a picture-postcard English village, ten miles from the roar of the M1, on a temperate summer’s day, the kind that nudged Shakespeare to lyrical bliss.
Perhaps more lovely than this day, yet not more temperate, the Queen of Scotland stood nervous in battle helmet and breastplate. A tall blonde, she gleamed in the afternoon sun but muffed her opening monologue. Her shrill quaver stumbled through hesitant silences, loudly whispered prompts, and shouted suggestions by merry playgoers. And she the conqueror of England, Hamlet's bride-to-be. The acting was so woeful I resolved to slip away after singing my ballads during the first interval.
Thunder
and lightning. Enter three witches bearing a crowned corpse.
FIRST
WITCH: Let magic spells now crown his
head. Hamlet shall rise up from the dead.
SECOND
WITCH (dropping his legs): Sweet Prince,
welcome to thy grave awakening.
The audience groaned. They hear better puns on telly any night, yet I suspect Wiley Wil scribbled this gag early in his script to keep the peasants in good cheer. I do this myself sometimes, by using a fun ditty to melt straight faces and ease the tension of an opening night.
THIRD
WITCH (stirs smoking cauldron): Bubble and boil, for Hamlet toil.
Three times rewarded he.
FIRST WITCH: One is snowdrop. SECOND
WITCH: Two is thistle. THIRD WITCH:
Three the rose for thee.
HAMLET (sitting up): What riddle is this?
Th'arithmetic of memory has me dunced. Ambition now just o'erleaps
just revenge, the one cries justice, t'other just is. I live again,
exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and
danger dare.
An offstage bugle blares. The Queen of Scotland jerks palm to ear while raising her trident with the other hand: "Hark, my captains are victorious."
THE WITCHES CHORUS: Hail Hamlet, King of Denmark. Hail Hamlet, King of Scotland. Hail Hamlet, King of England. Hail snowdrop, thistle and rose.
Enough, I'm thinking. My agent had booked me as “Sheil B. Wright, balladeer”, to entertain these yokels in the heart of England but Shakespeare leaves me brain-dead. Even this allegedly genuine sequel to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark failed to interest. Anyway, I had to pee.
I left my tearoom lookout above the market square, and threaded my bulk through the busy, close-grouped tables. A large turnout had been drawn to the play’s first performance – first, that is, for four hundred years. Townies and farmfolk from afar had descended on the village to watch the newfound masterpiece performed by local amateurs.
My upstairs window gave a perfect view, like a theatre's side balcony, and preferable to the front seats down below where sat the dignitaries. As I squeezed past patrons towards the tearoom’s exit, Hamlet was still boldly declaiming.
Do I yet live? Does a second birth barb my senses, for no such sting accompanied sweet death? Begone you hags, revenge is sweeter when aid is absent.
Clumsily, hastily, I bumped from the table maze to the stair landing, black rafters overhead, the Ladies Toilet blessedly near, just a couple of steps down. Drat! Engaged! I scowled at the little red word on the lock. Someone was in there, yet I could not wait.
Noticing a Gents’ on the other side of the landing, I sneaked in there quickly, locked the door and occupied the single pan. Blessed relief. My eyes closed as I sat there humming the germ of a song to be developed, the title already settled: Whenya gotta go yagotta.
The Shakespeare drama, unearthed locally, was star event of the Maggots Wallop bilberry festival, and I was classified as “supporting artiste”. My repertoire of olde-english folk songs, with harp and zither, had been arranged by my Sydney agent.
With less speed than my entry, I emerged from the cubicle to be met by a roar. The dull theatrical voices had accelerated to an ear-piercing din, coming from the open door of the Ladies Toilet. Now vacated, its emptiness revealed a window gaping immediately above the players. Strange, I thought, that a battle scene should come so early.
I strode across to the window and looked down. The horror was too realistic.
Hamlet lay flat, his back pressing the boards, his brow pierced by an arrow. Right between the eyes, and the blood still washing his face. The screams I heard were coming not from the actors but the audience.
On stage, the hags clutched each other. Two warriors stood like shocked statues, while the Queen of Scotland, agonised by this real drama, had found accusing confidence. She was pointing up at my window.
I must have appeared there, heavily framed, a split second after everybody lifted their eyes, tracing the Queen’s pointed forefinger. What they saw was me.
2
O, for a horse with wings! -CYMBELINE
I JERKED back, heart in fast tempo, trying not to accept what I had seen. Nothing would draw me to the window again, but by inclining my head to one side I could make out a brutish man.
His modern tweeds showed he did not belong to the Bard of Avon’s Hamlet sequel. He had pounced from the wings or from the audience. He hovered over the victim like a crow pecking roadkill. Any producer casting for a villain would rate him first choice. He had the glower of a bulldog and a flat hairless skull that reflected a tiara of sunlight. He held a mobile to one ear while his other massive hand signalled to someone beyond the crowd.
The Queen of Scotland was still oggling my toilet window, and so were many others. Time to get out of here. I turned for the door and bumped into a hulk in police blue.
"Gotcha! Don't move." Since he was blocking the exit and gripping my hair with an unfriendly mitt that threatened unorthodox scalping, I had no option. I froze, then I squealed.
"You're tearing my hair."
"Get over there. Into that corner. Say nowt.” His words came slow and heavy, like boots on a regular beat. More speedily, his bruising fingers snapped on handcuffs. The digits that released my ruined thirty-quid perm snatched a talkie to his bully lips. "Guv? I nailed the villain. She was near away, but I nabbed 'er. Fat bird, fortyish, looks vicious but I can handle ’er.”
“Mishandle more like,” I said, viciously, but his concentration was on the handheld link to seniority, his puffy eyes narrowing, then bulging towards the window. "Weapon, guv?" They swivelled back to me. "Where's your crossbow?"
Stupid question. Why would anyone expect a singer to have a crossbow? A crossbow fires a bolt, a rather short arrow. Now it dawned. That arrow in Hamlet's head had seemed smaller than one might expect, and the gruesome thing had shown no feathers attached.
"I don't have a crossbow," I told the scowling cop.
"What's that then?" His lips and bulbous nose jerked my attention to one corner. I had noticed the metal object earlier but paid it no attention. Now I focused on it. "A curtain rod?"s
He gave me a pitying glare. "It has got an 'andle.”
"Some kind of spear? Left by one of the actors?"
"There's no sharp end what I can see."
Now he mentioned it, I couldn’t see one either. Furthermore, the handle he referred to looked like it should be on a pistol, and there was also a trigger guard. In fact, on close scrutiny the item resembled a pistol with a grooved rod along the top of its barrel stretching about four feet. I had seen something similar in Australia when doing a gig at Bondi Beach.
Some blokes in wetsuits had squelched to a beachside bar shouting for cold beers, and a couple of them carried these metal rods with the pistol grip. "I think it might be a speargun," I told the village bobby.
He grinned. "Whatever ’tis, your dabs will be all over it. Nice." He flourished a soiled handkerchief, draped it over his palm and seized the metal shaft. We marched out, plod and prisoner, only to be ambushed by the little greyhead with skinny wrists who earlier had served my cup of tea. The granny smile she had worn then was now gone without trace, replaced by a gritty challenge as she squared her small shoulders.
“Here, you! Hoi, where are you taking my customer?” Her pink frock of scattered white daisies was protected by an apron of white plastic that bore the stains of a busy day, just as her plump face and cherryripe cheeks bore the wrinkles of life. A silver hairbun and fluffy slippers enhanced this badge of character. After all, homely was the ambience at Gran’s Teas.
Soft and cuddly but never frail, she blinked urgently through thick-lensed spectacles, and her pale, kitchen palms went high in a posture that said to the policeman, Stop!
“Outa me way, Gran. I’m taking her quick-smart to the nick.”
“But she hasn’t paid.”
“She’s just done for Mister Holler.”
“Oh dear,” said Gran and stood aside. This sweet-faced oldie, I’ll tell you now, could be a holy terror, a fact I learned when involved with her on the murder trail. Behind those granny eyes she is shrewd and intuitive and possibly still recalls, as I do, our mutual fascination for village intrigues. Subdued on this occasion by the news regarding Mister Holler, she watched Bullycop push me to the stairs as I shouted back, “I’ll pay later, I promise.”
Outside, in the crowded market square, more coppers were herding people away from the stage. This was already being designated a no-go crime scene by chequered tapes.
"It wasn't me," I protested to my captor. "Listen, I saw a bloke. Up there on the stage, probably making sure of a clean kill.”
“Tell that to the murder judge.”
“No, no, please! You do not understand. I saw this brute, right on the stage. Bald head, bulldog mug. You’ll catch him if you’re quick.”
He grunted. “I already been quick, and caught you red-handed. Weapon an’ all.”
Villagers following us were growling in agreement. "Lynch the bitch!" somebody snarled. “String her up.”
"Not before trial," growled the bobby. “Get back, you lot. She’ll get what’s comin’ to ’er soon enough.” He did a scything skip at their legs with the speargun. His fingerprints would now be all over it.
Did England still have capital punishment? Surely not. Dread doubt surmounted my dread alarm. Could this village of ancient custom also cherish its own barbaric laws?
“I am innocent,” I yelled at the mob.
Face bright in anticipation, one crone promised, “We’ll pelt you in the stocks anyway.” I had noticed, at first arrival, this ancient apparatus on the village green. Now the avenging rabble began to bay in unison, “Stocks, stocks, stocks.”
THE police station was my refuge. Coated in trendy glass and concrete, it stood officiously at a corner of the cobbled square, contrasting its aged neighbours. It was diagonally opposite Gran’s Teas and that infamous toilet window.
My situation, fearful enough, was also devastating to self-esteem. I had come to this foreign land to entertain the Poms, part of a cultural exchange through the Australian Arts Council. Oh the shame, the trauma, to be accused of murder. When you're nudging 40, overweight on the scales and overdrawn at the bank, that's a nasty shortcut down the showbiz gutter.
Bullycop shooed me like a prize goose. Inside, a uniformed brunette at the counter lifted sad eyes to me before I was whisked without pause to a door with black letters: Superintendent T.E.K. Squint. Strange name, but there you are.
My captor rapped twice, somehow imbuing this with the deference due to rank, and prodded me in with the speargun. Eyes downcast, cheeks hot, shoulders slumped, I heard a weary grumble. "Okay, let's have your name."
On the desktop, hairy hands like plump spiders had been about to dig a fork into a pie. They hovered, suspended from massive wrists that strained the cuffs of a brown tweed suit. My eyes climbed, up tight sleeves to brick-stack shoulders, squat neck and . . . I gasped and gaped. Returning my gaze was the evil dogface. Those hirsute fingers had held a mobile and had signalled an accomplice while I watched from the window.
3
Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner. - KING HENRY VI
“COPPED her fleeing the scene, guv,” grinned the bobby. “An’ she claims some nasty git did it an’ then jumped on the stage to make sure. Dead sure, heh-heh. Bald head, ugly mug, an’ a ginger Hitler mo.” This last detail I had never volunteered, but Squint’s ginger moustache jiggled to accompany a dangerous glower, “Thank you, Constable Bully, go get me a cuppa.”
It did not escape me that the constable’s name fitted his behaviour. English names often reflect a family characteristic down the generations, and Bully’s attitude shouted an accumulation of ancestral nasties. Squint, on the other hand, was not squinting at me. His gaze was level and open. I noticed he had dogbrown eyes, yet nothing like soft spaniel, more the bull-terrier kind. He had the body of a wrestler but the voice of a scholar, as if physical power made a loud voice unnecessary. He directed it softly at me while the eyes flared hostility. "Now then, your name."
"Sheil B. Wright."
"Possibly, but give me your name."
"That's it, that is my name." Feeling guilty about it was ridiculous, and no family traits had been involved in its selection. "As on my passport. I’m Sheil Wright, the middle initial B stands for bugger-all."
A frown rippled up and over the Super’s bald skull, the mock tiara that had gleamed when I saw him commanding the death scene. "Your parents named you that? Bugger-all?" Now his soft country burr held a trace of mockery, perhaps contempt, yet never compassion. The dog eyes waited.
"No, the B stands for nothing," I clarified. "They christened me Shirley, then I changed it for a business reason. Needed something unusual. I'm an entertainer. On exchange from Downunder. Sheil B Wright, she’ll be right, get it? A common Australian phrase. I was brought here to sing at your bilberry festival. I wish I hadn't come. “
“Best pie in the world,” he said as if mention of the festival reminded him of the feast on his desk blotter. “Devised in the Middle Ages, right here in Maggots Wallop. We grow England’s healthiest, tastiest bilberries.” He stabbed with the fork, spurting purple juice. "Why were you at that window? Tell me."
Watching the oozing face of the pie, I recalled Hamlet’s deathmask, and needed to vomit. Determined this wouldn't happen, I pushed my wrist against tight lips and held my breath.
Bad enough the possibility of being hanged, without the added shame of spewing over the Super's pie. In such situations, one acts promptly and without much thought. Stepping to a hatstand near to the desk, I raised my manacled hands and grabbed a deep black bowler.
“What are you doing?” growled Mister Squint. “Put my hat back.”
I had it beneath my chin, ready for emergency. Heavily I blew out, tensed midriff muscles as if to seek a high note, and, thankfully, the nausea passed. Gently, like handling a large emu egg, I placed the bowler on his desk. “I am sorry, couldn’t help it, thought I was going to chunder.”
Maybe he had never heard that word before, and hopefully did not know its meaning, for he ignored my little drama to demand again. “The window. What were you doing there?”
I sang my torrent of excuses. He listened and munched, contented and composed, a man who had found Life’s supreme pleasure. The tea arrived in a large mug of bobby blue. None for me. "Take off the bracelets," he ordered. Bully did so with surly and undisguised reluctance.
Superintendent Squint’s own strong fingers were thrusting his fork at pie entrails. “And when did you arrive? Where had you been staying?" Past tense. He wiped crumbs from his mo and slurped tea while I heard his last question with new distress. It suggested I might henceforth be accommodated in the nick.
"The Hotel Endswell," I said. "Ophelia suite at the rear. I booked-in early afternoon and went straight to the play. I never met those people before. My gig was arranged by my agent. Look, I do not even know who was murdered. I mean, apart from his being Hamlet. What possible motive could I have? I’m new to your country. Total stranger.”
“The victim was Guido Holler, owner of our county newspaper.”
“A man of influence then.”
“A man of many enemies.” He pushed the empty plate aside, burped gently, and pulled a keyboard to replace it on his red-spattered blotter. Peck, peck, peck went his fat fingers. As electronic beeps echoed from beneath the desk, he reached down for a printed sheet and passed it to me. "Here is your statement. Please read it through before signing."
“But you didn’t take notes.”
“Voice activated.” He waved to a row of pin-lights on the wall behind him. “Technology. Our magic weapon. If only more crims realised that. Oh sorry, Miz Bugger-all Wright, I meant to say people, more people. We fully respect your rights as a suspect.”
“Innocent until your computer says otherwise?”
“Something like that. Ah, here is some extra science.” A policewoman had entered to take my fingerprints and to gently swab my mouth with cottonwool on a lolly stick. “To harvest your DNA,” she explained sweetly.
Afterwards they did my face map, iris image and voice graph. As if this wasn’t enough to impress me with forensic science, Superintendent Squint insisted with a twitch of hairy lip, “Let me show you how smart we are. What is your car registration?”
I gave the number and his fingertips tapped before he peered at a nearby screen. “Not stolen. Ford Fiesta manual, hired at Heathrow Airport this a.m. and you paid a deposit of ₤100 by Visa card held in your name, expiry date November 2020.”
“I am flabbergasted.” I meant it, but he was still showing off his rozzer artillery.
“Your home place of residence is Useless Valley in the southwest of Western Australia, where you occupy a cottage on a smallholding of 20 acres owned by your parents. You are unmarried, age 39, weight 96 kilos. Your private medical record confirms you fit apart from a benign mole your doctor zapped from your left breast two years ago. Currently your bank account is overdrawn by 63 dollars and sevcen cents. Careerwise, your biggest success was five years ago, with a song that reached No. 16 on the Tamworth country charts, entitled Fancy, our Clancy’s a Nancy. There’s more, we now have you tight and secure in our records. Just so you understand that you cannot escape. We could quickly apprehend you anywhere in the world.”
Reaching below the desk, he withdrew a huge plastic bangle that was tinted blue and tossed it to me. “We are going to lock this on. It fits round your ankle and tells us where you are at all times. Either ankle will do. Suit yourself. Once locked, only my thumbprint can release it. Now, after I configure it into the works, Miz Buggerall Wright, you may go. But do not leave the district.”
“You’re letting me go?” It was a silly question when he had just demonstrated how thoroughly I was trapped in his data web.
“Like I said, technology. That anklet allows us to shadow you everywhere by means of a computer chip, and we can find you in a flash. The old days of plodding and guessing are long gone. Modern detection uses the ultimate digital wizardry.”
“So I am not actually under arrest?”
“Not yet. You are a person of interest, helping with inquiries. The lab might find evidence on the speargun but pending some incriminating outcome you can return to your hotel.”
Noting my amazement, he mouthed that word again, “Technology,” wiggled his thumb at me, his cuff-locking thumb with the techno-magic whorls, and pointed to one of the monitor screens as he stabbed his keyboard. I saw the stage, the actors, and the toilet window above them, dark and empty. Hamlet was addressing the audience, although there was no sound. Arms gestured, twisting this way and that to accompany Hamlet’s mouth, while the other actors kept changing position, brandishing swords, shields, a flag and, among the witches, a thorny wand.
Movement at the window showed a dark figure, hunched as if aiming a rifle, which I guessed would be the speargun, then Hamlet staggered backwards showering blood. His golden crown rolled bloodily across the stage. I saw the Queen of Scotland, her back to the window, snatch at her ear and then examine her palm as if for a stain. Then she twisted towards the window, her trident like a blackboard pointer, and there was I, peering out for all to behold.
“We have cameras covering every part of the village,” boasted Squint. “Some are thermomotion, some are permanents, and we also have movie scanners of course. That may sound an extreme routine for a population of less than five thousand, but Maggots Wallop is at the forefront of forensic methodology.” His fingers played another silent tune on the keys. “Some of it is still experimental, but the gadgets we trial usually find their way into national acceptance. We test, England follows.” As he spoke, he conducted instant replays of the murder, over and over, and from at least three different cameras.
Mesmerised, I was seeing what had caused the screams that drew me to the toilet window. The force that felled the actor seemed to come invisibly. Faster than the eye and no telling where it came from, although that shadowy figure holding the speargun suggested the obvious. One moment Hamlet was basking in a wordy soliloquy, the next he was hurtling flat beneath a crimson cloud. The witches were grouped in their rags, the warriors converging on the Queen, the stage a confusion of costumed performers. And me up there presiding over the carnage.
"With all your cameras," I said, "you should be able to spot the killer taking the speargun into the Ladies Toilet."
"It is true that a speargun would be easily spotted,” he agreed, “being rare in Maggots Wallop. We are a hundred miles from the coast. No local person that we know of owns one, and our digital surveillance has failed to show one. But actors were wandering about with all sorts of weapons preparing for the play. Spears, longswords, pikes. Among that lot a speargun might avoid camera and even public notice. Or it could have been disguised. Naturally, we cannot operate the cameras on private property, and certainly not in the Ladies Toilet."
“That's a shame." My quip was half serious. "It would have cleared me."
He nodded without humour. "No doubt. However, the forensic evidence can do that, or prove your guilt, when the lab sends me its report. I do accept one thing in your favour. If you killed Guido Holler, it is unlikely you would be silly enough to stick your head out the window.” Then his lips wriggled, doubtless from unfamiliarity, into what I took to be a smile, and I knew he was going to say something less in my favour.
"Expert computer analysis will sift the camera images from all the different angles. There is a chance you'll show up carrying a speargun. And as for motive, we have a million data banks to sort that out, here and in Australia, your land of origin. Just remember, you cannot get away from us with that monitor attached to your ankle. So good day, Miz Sheila Buggerall Wright.”
4
The world is still deceived with ornament. - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
FOR my safety from the mob, “just in case”, a policewoman escorted me to my hotel. We again crossed the market square, now almost deserted. Forensic officials remained bunched and debating on the stage, acting out their own respective roles in the Shakespeare tragedy that had become horrible reality. And yes, over on the village green, not far from a tall, stiff maypole, I recognised the stocks. Did they also have a gallows?
Noting my stare, the WPC giggled. “We are steeped in history here.”
“Not your boss. He’s into gigabyte mumbojumbo.” I had told him I was impressed, and yet I was not wholly convinced that hi-tech gadgetry could sniff out a murderer. My belief , both then and now, is that things more human net a criminal. The guilty give themselves away by their expressions, their phobias, their cravings.
I refrained from suggesting this to my escort. She was a police professional, and England was reputed to have the best. Whereas I was just a warbler from the place where they used to send their convicts. My electronic ankle-cuff enforced this thought. Although light for a ball-and-chain, it weighed a mountain on my mind. Ever aware of it, my gait was awkward, my shame evident for all to see in each footstep.
Not far from the village centre, the Endswell's stone frontage was time-stained, yet young compared to others in the streetscape. Its neighbours were built of black-braced Tudor, yellowstone Cromwellian or, if one looked at the square-topped churchtower on a distant slope of green, even hallowed Norman. There was not much road traffic, so little in fact that one could hear birds twittering close by and the distant sneer of a crow.
At my escort’s request, I collected my passport from the hotel safe and swapped it for a receipt. She reminded me about Squint’s edict not to leave the district without permission, but I barely heard. My ears had detected a beckoning balm from the Tea Room off the lobby, and my legs needed no prompting. I was emotionally drained and hungry, having skimped on lunch at a seedy motorway nosher, and on top of this neglect lay jetlag and the stress of driving on unfamiliar roads from Heathrow.
The act of stepping into this dim, dignified decor of a bygone era soothed my jarred ego. Here, surviving against Superintendent Squint’s Digital Age, were elegant antimacassars and tasselled cushions on crack-leather armchairs. I guessed the faded carpet to be the Edwardian original, the clue being occasional acrylic patches where Management had responded to the most frequent footfalls.
The wallpaper, doubtless strident in its youth, now blended with the floral frocks and bluerinse hairdos of the tea imbibers. These relaxed in gossip and they were not all hotel guests, a conclusion I made after spying the Lady of the Manor, who was enviably slim in her mid-fifies. She was holding court surrounded by her chums.
I recognised her from the printed programme someone had given me at the play. In that photo, her copper hair in a pageboy crop was not unlike a medieval helmet. I had also seen her standing tall at the microphone to welcome all. Not only was she honourable patron of The Bilberry Festival, but also the owner of the lost and now found Shakespeare play.
In the centre of the room, on a long table, was a tall-tiered cakestand of filigreed silver, its pastries a tribute to the chef. The English best know how to make teatime memorable. Standing beside the cake castle, a silver urn steamed happily over ready cups and saucers, sugar, milk and side-plates, all conveniently arrayed for guests to help themselves. It was late in the session, therefore the creamy edibles were near total depletion, yet my eager eye had targeted my choice from afar.
That éclair, a delicacy usually forbidden by weighty conscience, would be my reward for the day’s suffering. I decided this with no inner debate whatever, while waiting for the urn’s small tap to fill my cup. My gaze noted the cream bursting from a delicate skin of pastry while along six inches of caramel topping were three vanilla stars, each offering the crunchy purple glory of a fresh fat bilberry. Eyes down to add milk to my tea, and stoically ignoring the sugar, I turned to claim my prize, only to find it gone.
Now skipping away, the quick-handed cake scavenger returned to the room’s noisiest circle. It was Lady Bentwing in person, her coppery nape flashing at my dismay like a pennant in triumphant withdrawal. Applying a sort of droit de seigneur, she had appropriated the choicest offering of the cakestand. This recepticle, I noted, was now down to a final option of shortbread fingers or gingernuts.
I found an empty table and nibbled, and sulked, and felt the seed of a song . . .
There’s more to
life than a cream eclair
But it’s high high high on my list.
This composition made number nine at Tamworth Country Week many months later - Fate plays strange games. I was concentrating on lyrics, perhaps glaring at her, and thus my radar ears heard everything she said, which was disconcerting.
She was not gossiping about the murder, as one might expect, but speculating on the monetary value of the newly discovered Shakespeare play. "A tatty old first Hamlet sold at Christie's for two million pounds sterling," she informed her confidantes in a braying voice while pressing the filched eclair under her manicured forefingers. "And that was only a third-edition copy published in 1611. So what must my sequel be worth, particularly since it is penned in Shakespeare's very own hand?"
“Let’s hope so anyway.” A mousie little woman, swathed in pearls, clapped her hands. "But Beryl, how exciting! Your dear young professer is a marvel. And so handsome, too."
"Apart from his insolent grin," said a second companion, who had a quarrelsome face. "However, there is no point anybody guessing at value until the manuscript has been proven genuine."
"What do you mean?" snapped Lady Bentwing. She agitated the unbitten, and now vertical, eclair like a wand, and it flopped. "He came upon it in my family archives, at Bentwing Castle. How can there possibly be any doubt."
"No doubt at all," supported Mousie. "Your family’s standing is beyond question. Art patrons since the time of the Conquest, isn’t it?"
The aristocratic patron of literature was scraping caramel from the ruined éclair with a disapproving fingernail. “I do wish Anton would not persist in this over-icing. Bilberries on plain sponge would be more to my taste. Look at this. Only a total glutton could stomach so much cream filling.” She pinched off a soft morsel of pastry and, without even tasting it, crumbled it on her plate.
"And yet." The belligerent one was persistent. "Who can speak for your sweet and creamy professor? How trustworthy is he? Frankly, Beryl dear, it would not surprise me if he wrote the blessed thing himself."
"My dear Agatha, how can you suggest such nonsense?"
"My first husband was like that. Sweet as roses and always smiling, then he ran off with the gardener's daughter. Never trust a smiler I say."
"I am sure Professor Paige can be trusted," cheeped Mousie, but Agatha held firm opinions. "If you ask me, he smiles too much. One never can tell with a smiler, you take my word.”
Her ladyship Beryl Bentwing gave a loud sniff and pulled apart the wasted eclair to final rubble and rejection. “The experts are checking. The parchment paper of course, and the ink, even the vocabulary. The professor may grin like a fool but he well knows the scope of validation. Pitted against modern technology, these things cannot be faked nowadays.”
But they could, I knew they could. Not only old manuscripts, but paintings, furniture, pottery and other forged antiques often got a mention in the newspapers. There was always someone trying the shortcut to wealth. How many were never found out? My eavesdropping was raising doubts about the man who had promised me “a new Shakespeare folk song”. Professor Paige, when I had emailed him from Australia, assured me the unpublished Shakespeare play contained a particularly good song. He had offered to give me a copy of it, and his generosity would boost my career. Yet now, this crony of Lady Bentwing, this grim Agatha, was hinting at fraud.
Glum was my mood therefore. The day’s initial bustle and euphoria had been blighted by murder, my anticipation of a folk gem tainted by suspicion, and my respect for English teatime sorely diminished. Wearily, I made for the stairs, just as Lady Bentwing’s critical stare spotted me.
"Heavens! Those stupid police have let her out,” she exclaimed. “Lord help us.”
I hastened to my room.
5
How hard it is for women to keep counsel. - JULIUS CAESAR
I DID not like that snooper on my ankle, riding every step I took, persistent and daunting. Again I felt its hostile force, fully equal to a giant disfiguring boil, a mental shackle to strengthen the physical one. Deeply troubled, I stretched on the double bed and closed my eyes to a devilish throbbing. In a half doze, when the long summer twilight was pressing outside the windows and the room had absorbed sunless shadows, I became aware of a new torment.
Tap, tap . . . tap, tap. The interruption to my sweet oblivion could not be denied. Fingers pressed to eyelids failed to still the tapping sound, and soon I realised it was coming from the door. The person out there, chose not to bang too loudly. Tap, tap . . . tap, tap. Groaning myself upright and alert, I called out. "Who's there?"
"Let me in.” A girlish voice.
"Who is it?"
"Let me in." Tap, tap . . . tap, tap. The speaker sounded vaguely familiar.
I opened the door to a face that was also familiar, but this too I could not identify, until the tall young woman in jeans and a pink jumper announced, "I'm the Queen of Scotland, from the play." Glancing behind, she pushed past and sat on my bed. She spoke with a slow and gentle Highlands lilt that I had not detected behind her nervous singsong on stage as Hamlet's co-star.
"My name is Fiona Macleod. I saw you at the window." She paused to let me take this in. “I pointed at you.”
In my mind, the scene vividly replayed. The corpse, the blood, the fatal shaft, and this actress aiming a regal finger at me in accusation.
"And yet you have come to my room? After indicating I was the woman who killed Hamlet?"
"I know you are not guilty of that.”
“Then why, for goodness sake, did you point me out?”
“I did not point at you." She paused as if assembling her words in the smoothest order. She was a pretty lass with smooth skin and the palest complexion, yet her eyes held a peculiar wistfulness. "I pointed at the open window overlooking the stage, then you appeared there. The bolt." Another pause, then: "The bolt, it seemed to come from there. It whizzed past my ear.” Her voice lowered to a near whisper. “An inch or two, that is all. It could have struck me instead of Guido Holler.”
“Could it have been meant for you?”
“No. The killer has expert aim, and I know beyond doubt who it was."
I stared. Unlike her stumbling lines on stage, these words were spoken with conviction. Her whole being, not just her voice, was soft and yet insistent. Her strange eyes regarded me as if peering through a Scottish mist.
"Have you told the police?"
Impatiently she shook her head. "I am here, Miz Wright, to beg your help, because I think you are a good person."
Her pleasant vocals suggested heather and faery lochs, while her unwavering gaze spoke of distant places, the northernmost untamed nooks that dot the British Isles. I decided she must be fey, as the Scots call it, meaning she was one of those rare beings who are in touch with the pixies and suchlike creatures of the ghost world. Her beauty was extraordinary, apart from jug ears, which at last appearance had been hidden beneath a war helmet. Otherwise she fully merited her standing as Miss Maggots Wallop, and as their May Queen and their Summer Queen to boot. Her titles had been listed in the Hamlet programme, extolling her suitability for the role of Scotland’s queen.
Her request for help, delivered so suddenly, took me by surprise. "In what way? What possible way is there for me to help you? I'm a stranger here, just arrived from Australia."
Quietly, so that I had to attend each word even though I sat beside her, she explained, "You can help bring Guido’s murderer to justice. And thereby, you will also clear your own name."
"Oh I'm not worried about that," I assured her with more emphasis than truth. "Superintendent Squint’s cameras have more or less cleared me. He also told me that Guido Holler had many enemies.”
“And countless friends and admirers. His weekly, The Crusader, is read throughout four counties.”
Where were the jitters so obvious on stage and again outside my door? This determined young lass, preaching on my bed, now displayed supernatural control, as if prodded from within by woodland elves.
"If you believe in justice,” she was exhorting me, “you can apply your special talent here. You would not be in any danger, I’m sure. Well, almost sure. Provided you are careful. The important thing is to catch poor Guido’s killer."
"Then you must tell the police, not me."
Her look dismissed this as a silly idea, and her tongue continued dripping persuasion from Fairyland. "Your skills of detection are needed here. You have a special ability."
"Yes, as a singer of folk ballads. I'm no crimebuster."
She pulled a newspaper from under her woolly pullover. "This says different.”
The page was already folded to a County Crusader article two weeks earlier. Written by the now-dead editor, Guido Holler, it reported my booking for the bilberry festival and included the ridiculous biography my agent keeps sending out. This lists my most wellknown songs but also the embarrassing incidental that Sheil B Wright "has a knack" of catching killers.
This particular puff for the Poms mentioned how I nabbed The Butcher of St Brigid's Hospital. It also claimed I solved the puzzle of an exploding haggis that demolished a party of exiled Scots in the midst of Auld Lang Syne. It praised my unmasking of The Bullring Avenger, and reported how I proved an Aborigine held legal claim to the throne of England until he got bumped off. Sadly, these are things I have difficulty denying. I mean, I did help winkle out a few villains, but it was not through forensic skill. I just bumbled along, drawn by my instinct for human frailty. The same instinct inspires my folksongs.
I handed back the damning curriculum vitae. "Sorry, there is nothing I can do, I am a visitor to your country. Believe me, Fiona, the police will welcome your statement." I could easily imagine Superintendent Squint summoning all his gadgetry at the prospect of a named suspect. "Who was it anyway?"
"I have already told them,” said Fiona, blinking baby eyes. "That ugly boss cop just laughed. Terrible man, he showed me the door. Yet I know she did it.”
"She? Who?”
"Lady Bentwing, that is who.”
“You are saying she killed the newspaper editor?”
Fiona nodded solemnly. “The poor man was blocking her housing scheme over the river, preventing access. She will go broke without it. Now that Guido is dead, however, the strip of land controlling the ford will revert to Bentwing Castle.”
“But why?” It occurred to me that, for a dumb blonde, Fiona knew a lot about other people’s business. “How do you know all this?”
She shrugged. “Charlie said so.”
“Who is Charlie?”
“He is my fiancé. He works at the newspaper. Guido Holler had an ancient title deed displayed on the wall of his office. Charlie says it gives Guido the land until Guido’s death. Regaining that land means Lady Bentwing can proceed with her housing estate and avoid bankruptcy. That is perfectly clear.”
I fancied Fiona had been reading too many far-fetched murder novels, and yet there was no denying the slaying of Guido Holler. “Is Lady Bentwing that desperate for finance?”
“Near bankrupt, for three generations. The English aristocracy, you know, swims in an ocean of debt.” Her disapproval, easy to detect, suggested this ocean did not extend north of the border. “Mister Holler’s death has saved her housing scheme.” She gave me another shy glance. “What is more, her ladyship is an expert archer.”
“But Hamlet copped a bolt from a speargun.”
“She has the eye. She is the county crackshot."
“But the police dismissed your claim?”
“Superintendent Squint is related to her. Together they run this village. Lady Bentwing owns it, of course, being Lady of the Manor. She collects rent from everybody.”
“And yet you say she’s hard up?”
“Charlie says she borrowed too much. Now the banks have been threatening her. Without selling homes on her planned estate, she will be ruined.” She looked at me like a little girl divulging a secret. “Charlie knows all this. Mister Holler was his boss. Mister Holler used to find things out. Mister Holler was good at that. They call it investigative reporting.”
I gripped Fiona’s elbows, firm and definite, and gave her a tiny shake. "Write all this out and go back to the police. Ask for PC Bully. He doesn't seem to like the Super, he'll do something, he’s keen on promotion I’m sure. Once it is in the system, justice will prevail.”
This brought a big sob. "That horrible Constable Bully shoved me out the door. He was laughing louder than his boss. Nothing will make them investigate. Bentwing is her ladyship’s married name. Her maiden name is Squint. She is the superintendent’s sister."
6
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed. - SONNETS, 121
The
County Crusader
EDITER SLAIN
A
REAL murder disrupted the Shakespeare Premier yesterday when the man
playing Hamlitt was shot dead, by a barbed shaft.
Mr Guido Holler,
49, editor of this newspaper and wellknown amature acter, died
instantly on stage.
The crime ocurred before an openair audience
of 400 in the markit square of Maggots Wallop. The killer escaped
after shooting the arrow from an upstairs window near the stage. Some
witnasses said the wepon could have been a crossbow.
County police
state their investigation is following several leads and they
anticipat an early arest.
Superintendunt Squint commented: "We
have strong evdence which is now under process of furensic nalsis."
He declined to specafy details.
Lady Bentwing, the festival
patron, told our reporter: "This is a tragic blow but
nevertheless, in the finest traditions of English theater, The Show
Must Go On. We need another Hamlitt, that’s all. Citing her request
as a tribute to the diseased, she has asked the Drama Club to find a
sutable stand-in so that the historic performance may be attempted
again next week.
This was to be the first performance of a sequel
by Shakespeare to his wellknown masterpeece Hamlitt, Prince of
Denmark. Entitled Hamlitt, King of Scotland, the manuscrip in the
Bard's own handwriting was recently discovered at Bentwing Castle. It
has sparked enormus interest in academic and litarery circles
worldwide.
The victim of the outrage will be greatly missed
throughout the comunity, where he was promanent in local activities
and nomanated as the Labor Party candadate at the next elections.
An
eye witness, Mr Greg ("Curly") Fogarty of Frenchmans Farm,
said he saw everything. "The arrow hit Mr Holler in the heart as
he was saying his lines. It come from behind a chiminey. We all
thought it was in the scrip, at first. My missus yelled out and I
knew then this was bloody not the play at all."
Mrs Germaine
Orwell of Kingsflight Lane said she saw the fatal shaft pass through
the victim's throat, not his heart. "It was sticking out
something awful."
Several other spectaters volunteered
statements, which police will pass to the County Coroner when the
hearing ocurs. This is not expected before next week.
Mr Holler
was unmarried and had no known relatives. Funeral details have yet to
be anounced.
THE front page bearing this report also carried a thick black border and a three-column photograph of Guido Holler, just his head and shoulders, distinguished late editor, allegedly sadly mourned. To me, the face with deepset lurking eyes appeared seedy and cunning. While staff would undoubtedly miss their boss, one way or another, I was hearing gleeful whispers rather than murmurs of sorrow on the morning after the murder. I was sitting at a table in the Endswell's public bar, reading the news and sipping a fruity cappuccino. It was their bilberry flavoured pick-me-up and I was gulping it down.
Mr Holler's spectacular passing was the main topic as the regulars greeted the barman. The hotel's Tea Room had yet to open for the day, so here I sat amid the Civil War bric-a-brac that Management ordained appropriate for prompting a thirst. Oliver Cromwell himself frowned from a far wall and there was a cavalier, too, laughing as if he had just guzzled, on the house, a pint of the best.
What I came to realise through perked ears was that, although he was the crusading journo of four counties, Guido Holler had made a furious horde of enemies. His newspaper, which I now sat scanning, was more castigating than fearlessly exposing. Rude slanders and vituperative reporting flared amid the bad spelling and misprints on every page.
The local government council, the school, the hospital, the volunteer firemen, the parents association, the farmers union, the ‘busines’ chamber and the Maggots Wallop cricket eleven all received hot broadsides in this single issue. Its contents seemed to have been moulded by a Star Chamber prosecutor bristling with retribution yet spurning actual evidence.
Had Fiona not already told me who killed the editor, I would have found in these columns a list of conflicting motives. Even a parson might be driven to homicidal venom by such snipes as, "The Reverend asked churchgoers last Sunday to give more folding money in order to expedite repairs to the manse roof. If coins are now unwelcome, what chance the widow and her mite at Heaven's door?"
That one came in a spiteful collection headed GUIDO'S WALLOPS. I could see how hostile clouds would build each week, the thunderstorm of bruised feelings ripe to burst upon this petulant commentator’s head.
And now the Mistress of the Manor, crackshot with winged blades, had felled the public tormentor, or so I had been lectured. Hesitant on stage, Fiona had become convincing and persuasive during our one-on-one conversation, despite her naïve link to fairy dells. This was why I now sought courage from a coffee cup to do what I had agreed.
I was going to snoop. Was I motivated by a passion for justice and decency? No. My morning-after confession to myself was that I took up Fiona's plea because of, simply, vengeful ego. The constabulary of Maggots Wallop had torn my hair and bruised my wrists and my dignity, and so I was going to level the scales. A prickling from my offended scalp applauded the decision.
7
Lechery,
lechery. Still, wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion
-
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
THE ENGLISH: A northern race with peculiar traits. My mental dictionary has them classified as eccentric, law-abiding and inclined to queue. Half the county was in the car parade on my tail as I drove out of the village.
Originally, the English Queue was a survival tactic like herding, useful against predators or in wartime, but the persistence of this habit irritates on a quiet country road. This land’s rural byways meander somewhat, so the snaking bitumen was directing my Heathrow rental, and the motorcade, by unavoidable diversions, towards that annoying, arrogant, aristocratic, éclair-swiping woman.
Maggots Crag, where I intended to investigate Lady Bentwing, had seemed close when spied from the hotel. Had I been a crow it would have been. However, the route digressed for crops of barley, skirted purple fields of bilberry and avoided murky clumps of forest. Mud-dunged farmyards flung lingering stinks of horse, pig and cow.
Through this bucolic heritage I buzzed ahead of the pursuers until, rounding a sharp corner, I had to brake smartly for a slow-towed caravan. Where do they come from? To where do they crawl? It is one of the mysteries of this ancient domain. Today, however, I guessed the answer. Like me and everybody, the vehicle ahead was bound for Maggots Crag.
At journey’s end, I saw that others had preceded our bumper chain up a leafy hill and were parked around a local version of Stonehenge. The view from this circle of monoliths lay like a crumpled quilt, forever England to the horizon. Lady Bentwing stood on a central mound, the ancient tomb of a Viking named Maggot. The weathered columns leaned to each other as if discussing the weird rituals now occurring.
Men, women and children wore a motley of tracksuits or shorts, vests, halter-tops, sunglasses and hats, although these two latter items seemed unnecessary in the willing yet tepid English sunshine. Lady Bentwing wore a feathered Robin Hood hat and green tights and she brandished a sturdy longbow to welcome young and old. I had come to watch her for signs of remorse, anticipating that her overnight guilt would have replaced the triumph of the kill and her imperious rantings to sycophants in the hotel's tea lounge.
Barely an hour after the murder, I had observed her seizing and demolishing the last cream goody, and chatting to her social minions without apparent qualms, yet conscience should have kicked in by now. I studied her features for traces of it. Sometimes, facial muscles betray a remorse all their own, with no prompting from the guilty.
In these modern times of cosmetics and miracle makeovers, no woman need be ugly, yet her ladyship was disadvantaged through inheriting the same face as her brother, minus the Hitler mo. Her disfigured earlobes, caused by the drag of massive earrings, accentuated the canine look. Although thin of torso, her tights revealed the thick thighs of a weightlifter, and she looked more a man than a ladyship. A broad belt at her waist supported a tight-stocked quiver. Astride the warrior-king’s heap, she maintained a stiff upper lip, regarding the throng, her vassals. They all carried longbows.
“Take your places,” she bellowed loud and long, stretching the syllables across the hilltop. Not a whiff of regret could I sense in her call, no hint of after-the-dirty-deed doubt. She was eager, fresh and in command.
The crowd pushed to the crag’s steepest edge. Far across the bilberry fields, I spied another army and the fleur-de-lis pennants of France. Horsemen and foot soldiers spread wide on the fields, some dressed in colourful rags, but all made of straw.
“Aim!” screeched her ladyship, and hundreds of bowstrings sighed.
“Steady now. In unison, here we go, hurrah for Saint Crispin and Saint George. Fire!” Her own shaft from the mound led a speeding cloud of steel which darkened the sky before raining on the enemy. The straw figures disintegrated.
Lady Bentwing yodelled her delight. “Follow, follow,” she ordered. “Go, go, go.” A trumpet pierced the excited cries of the mob, sending everybody leaping down the slopes, crunching wild bilberry bushes and charging on across the field towards the fallen hordes.
A flash of light at my ear disrupted my attention. There had been a photographer taking pictures of the crowd and now his lens had captured Lady Bentwing in regal pose amid the ancient stones. A slogan on his T-shirt identified “Charlie, County Crusader”.
He was handsome, with black locks to the shoulder and long eyelashes, the kind poets praise in a woman. He was not effeminate, though, His apologetic face was more like a naughty boy, and as he came closer, holding his camera high and harmless, I noted the muscled forearm and the sturdy stride.
He grinned. “Sorry if I startled you. Gotta snap fast or the shot’s gone.” He was staring at the shackle on my ankle but politely made no mention of it.
“While you were shooting pictures," I said, "everyone else was shooting arrows.”
“Not me, naw, not arrows. I got the eye but never learned longbow. Just cameras. The shoot-n-charge makes a good spread for the local rag. Every year.”
The Bilberry Shower, I had read in a pamphlet at the pub, commemorated Agincourt, the battle where archers from Maggots Wallop had conquered France for King Henry V on St Crispin's Day, 1415. Allegedly the district’s bilberries gave this population the keenest eyesight in all England. Although awesomely outnumbered, their rapid volleys on that fateful day, glorified in the history books, had demolished the flower of French knighthood.
Lady Bentwing, attracted by the flash of Charlie's camera, was glaring at us, while a large crow, perched on a megalith, went caw-caw as if on her behalf.
“Morning, your ladyship,” Charlie called. “Good turnout, ain't it?"
The doughty matron scrunched her bulldog cheeks at me and selected an arrow. When fitted to the bow it pointed at my heart. Her gloved fingers tensed the string. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. Her dense eyebrows continued doing their jig while the crow continued to make its carping cry.
Charlie regarded the bird, giving me an aside mutter from the side of his mouth. “Sounds like poor Guido, caar-caar-caar. Sorry, mustn’t talk ill of the dead.” He did not look sorry at all and I started to think about this, because the late Guido Holler had been his boss and one might expect less flippant remark on his passing.
My conjecturing ceased in an instant, pinned by her ladyship’s probing stare behind her arrow. "Well?" she challenged, and I urgently remembered her hostile question. “I came to watch the Shower,” I babbled. “It is a grand tourist attraction to be proud of."
“We never have tourists,” she snapped.
The crow had fluttered to the other side of the stone circle, from where it continued its ugly bleating. Without warning, Lady Bentwing’s shaft soared between me and the photographer and burst the bird’s head. “Get your gear, Charlie,” she called to him, smooth as a sharpened sword.
“Time for my lesson,” Charlie told me. Not even a glance towards the headless crow. “Cheerio then.”
He strode to a paint-faded hatchback and lifted its rear door. I was still struggling with the vision of blood and feathers, the erupting crow that had been so casually removed from its irritating commentary. Her ladyship, having callously shot it into oblivion, was now descending from Maggot the Viking's mound and stood waiting for Charlie.
He had deposited his camera in the car and taken out a longbow which he was bending effortlessly in order to attach the cord. Her ladyship waved an arrow and he walked towards her with the longbow. As he passed me, he grunted another, and less friendly, cheerio.
I watched him take the arrow from Lady Bentwing, nock the feathered end and stretch his muscled forearm. Anxiously I looked for another crow but he seemed to be aiming for a sapling at the edge of the cliff.
“Not like that, Charlie, widen your stride,” sang his tutor, She pressed herself behind him, reaching between his legs to reposition his thighs with more familiarity than I would have thought necessary. Charlie’s smile expanded.
“Well, guess I’ll be going,” I said and was unheard.
Charlie was squirming backwards against the woman old enough to be his mother. Not my business, but I felt a tinge of disgust and recalled the young, and now surely betrayed, Fiona whose fiancé was Charlie from The Crusader. It was of course possible that there were two young men bearing that name at the newspaper office, but my intuition dismissed the notion. It seemed clear to me now why and how Charlie was able to know so much about Lady Bentwing’s private finances, even if these managed to evade the newspaper’s published scandals. I wondered if Fiona had ever wondered this same thought herself.
The longbow wobbled as Charlie took a step back into Lady Bentwing’s embrace. Their giggles bounced around the ancient circle of stones and then the tight twosome tripped over a prickly bilberry bush and disappeared. The last thing I saw of them as I slammed shut my car door was the pupil's arrow, released into a random arc that sped high and targetless.
Later, from Gran, I learned why Lady Bentwing lacked a husband with whom to roll in the bilberry bushes.
“It was an accident five years ago,” she related solemnly. “A terrible accident.”
A foolish accident too, as many are. It happened at Maggots Crag on the day of the Bilberry Shower. Lord Bentwing, forgetting to adjust his wristwatch one hour forwards at the beginning of English summertime, had been making a late inspection of the French strawmen. His wife, who wept to police that she was unaware of his presence among the enemy, signalled the release of the villagers’ arrows. His lordship had been caught beneath them, death by a thousand blades, a victim of Agincourt some 600 years after the battle.