The Gallows Murders

a window-seat on the anniversary of her death. I have heard her terrible ghostly scream and the patter of high-heeled shoes which stops abruptly, just before the chapel door. Oh, I have seen ghosts! More than I like to recount. Indeed, my stories gave Will Shakespeare the idea of Brutus seeing Caesar's shade before the battle at Philippi.)
    Now in that old hunting lodge I felt the ghosts throng round me. I was about to leave my master to his searches when I heard his triumphant cry. I found him in a small chamber, crouched beside a battered fireplace. 'Look, Roger!'
    He held up two huge pots, put these on the floor and pointed to the hearth piled high with burnt rags and grey dust. I picked up a stick and sifted amongst the remains in the hearth.
    'They're clothes,' I declared. 'Someone has burnt clothing here.' 'And look at this, Roger.'
    Benjamin thrust one of the cracked bowls into my hand. The inside was stained black with a little liquid still in the bottom, like a piece of slime from a pool. I dabbed at it with my finger and sniffed.
    'It's paint,' I declared, rubbing it between my fingers. I sniffed again. Though rather odourless.' 'Look at my hair, Roger!' 'Master,' I replied, 'are you witless?'
    Benjamin grinned and pointed to his temple. The hair was usually a premature grey: now it was as black as night.
    'It's dye,' he explained. 'Robert Sakker came here. I suspect Sakker killed a man in Maidstone and left evidence to make others think it was he who had been slain, then he came here. Perhaps to collect booty Master Pelleter and his bailiffs failed to unearth. He also changed his clothes and dyed his auburn hair dark.'
    'Of course!' I breathed. 'And the cunning bastard had probably grown a beard and moustache to cover that scar on his chin.' I sat down, my back to the wall, desperately trying to recall all whom I had met in the Tower. 'Allardyce!' I exclaimed. 'Philip Allardyce, the clerk to the stores. Don't you remember, Master? Tall, deep-voiced, black-haired, with a luxuriant moustache and beard; that's the description we were given.'
    'But he's dead,' Benjamin explained. 'Others saw him ill with the plague. The old woman felt for the life pulse in his throat. The bailiff who examined the corpse in the death-cart pronounced him dead as a stone.'
    I recalled old Ragusa screeching at me earlier in the day: her numb, vein-streaked hands pressing into mine.
    'Ragusa's an old mad crone,' I replied slowly. ‘I’d wager if she felt my pulse or yours she'd pronounce us dead. I have suffered the sweating sickness, Master; it would be easy for a cunning man to simulate it. Sweat, fever, retching and choking. Allardyce wasn't tended by a physician, but by a mad old crone who doesn't want to be turned out because she is inept at what she does.' ‘But the bailiff on the death-cart?’ Benjamin asked.
    What happens if it was not Allardyce's corpse taken out? If he'd been alive, the soldiers would have suspected as much when they dragged the corpse down to the Lion Gate.'
    'So you are saying that Allardyce was really Sakker? He gains employment in the Tower, simulates the sweating sickness and pretends to die?' Benjamin nodded. ‘I can accept that. Few people would go near him. Moreover, once the body was sheeted, no one would care. But who could smuggle a corpse into the Tower as a substitute?' Why not ask one of our hangmen?' I replied. 'Aren't they responsible for the corpses of their victims?' Benjamin agreed.
    'And so, Master.' I continued, staring at the pot of black dye. 'Sakker is in the Tower, pretending to be Allardyce. I suspect the real Allardyce was the man our villain killed in Maidstone. Later, before the sweating sickness really takes hold in the city, Sakker slips out of the Tower. He is now free to deliver letters to Westminster, or post proclamations at St Paul's and St Mary's, Cheapside. He can lay a trail of gunpowder and seize that gold the King is now so furious at losing. Because we are not looking for him, he can wander the city at his will, baiting and taunting us. When he wishes, now under a new disguise, he slips back into the Tower to kill Horehound and Wormwood as he did Hellbane and Undershaft.' 'But who is his accomplice?' Benjamin asked.
    'Ah, Master, there's the rub.' I put the pot down on the floor. 'How do we know he has one? What happens if he is the sole villain?'
    'But how can he re-enter the Tower if he's a soldier or member of the garrison?' Benjamin asked. ‘People would