The Gallows Murders

on. On that fine August day, with the sun beaming down, I had no knowledge of the Tower's future. Believe me, if I had, I would have turned and run like a whippet for the nearest gate.
    Now, across the green, facing the Norman tower, are the royal apartments, housed in a long, ramshackle building, three storeys high, with a red slated roof, cornices, buttresses and jutting bay windows. A manor house, with black timber and white plaster walls on a red brick foundation. These were the royal quarters where the King's officers lodged.
    We went through a bustling entrance and up a broad, sweeping staircase. A guard at the top took our names. He told us to wait on a bench in a small recess, marched down the gallery and knocked at the door. I heard a bell ring, and the guard beckoned at us to approach. We entered a chamber where three men were hurriedly seating themselves around a long, polished table which ran down the centre of the room. They rose as we entered. The man at the top introduced himself as Sir Edward Kemble: fussy, grey-haired, grey-eyed, grey-faced. He was dressed richly in a dark-blue gown lined with dyed black lambswool: however, the jerkin beneath was rather soiled, and the shirt collar which peeped out above looked as if it had missed wash-day. Kemble was one of those worried officials, narrow-eyed from peering over manuscripts. He had an unhealthy pallor and hands which could never stay still. He introduced the gentleman on his right as Master Francis Vetch, his lieutenant or deputy, a bright-faced young man with close-cropped black hair, wide-spaced blue eyes and a pleasant smiling mouth. Vetch was dressed soberly in a dark yellow gown which fell just below the knee. A warbelt was strapped round his middle, but he'd left his sword and dagger lying on a stool just within the door. The man on Kemble's left was Reginald Spurge: a frightened squirrel of a man, with nostrils like a horse, ever sniffing the wind, little darting eyes, and a tongue which reminded me of a cat's, pink and pointed, ever licking dry lips. Like Vetch and Sir Edward, he was clean-shaven. (The King had yet to grow his beard. Of course, what the King did, everyone hurriedly followed suit.)
    Spurge was dressed like a dandy, a Court fop, with his tightly waisted jerkin puffed out at the shoulders and clasped round his waist by a narrow jewelled belt. He sported a codpiece a stallion would have been proud of, and tight hose which gave his legs a womanly look. Both Vetch and Spurge murmured their greetings as Kemble chattered on, drowning everyone else.
    'I didn't know you were coming. I didn't know you were coming,' he protested. His hands beat the air like a trapped bird. 'Dr Agrippa, Master Benjamin -' Kemble dismissed me with one flick of his eyes – 'if ‘I’d known you were coming, I would have prepared something to eat and drink.'
    At last Benjamin was able to placate him, saying we had already eaten and drunk our fill. Only then did Kemble usher us to chairs on either side of the table. He sat down wearily himself, mopping his face with a dirty napkin. He glanced sideways at his companions.
    'Master Spurge is our surveyor,' he explained, leaning forward. 'He and Vetch are the principal officers of the garrison.'
    Benjamin, sitting next to me, pressed the toe of his boot gently on my foot: I was beginning to snigger at this fussy little man's antics.
    What Sir Edward means,' Francis Vetch spoke up, fighting hard to stifle his own smile at the constable's antics, 'is that Reginald and I, together with himself, are probably the only men in the Tower who could forge a letter claiming to be Edward V and dispatch it to the King.' 'Why on earth do you say that?' Benjamin asked.
    Vetch laced his fingers together. 'Master Daunbey,' he replied slowly, 'I have heard of your reputation: you are no fool. I'd be grateful if you would reciprocate the courtesy. Everyone in this room knows a letter was drawn up, sealed, and dispatched from the Tower to the King. Moreover, the first letter was delivered here.' He scratched the tip of his pointed nose. 'Sir Edward Kemble opened the letter in my presence. I had to use smelling salts to bring him out of his faint. I then sent for Reginald and organised the letter's dispatch to Windsor.' He cocked his head to one side. ‘You are here, Master Daunbey, about the letter?' Benjamin smiled.
    'Good,' Spurge declared in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. There can be no more pretence, can there?'
    'Excuse