The Gallows Murders by Paul Doherty Page A

pits.' He shook his head. 'But that was at the beginning of July.'
    'Once Allardyce died,' Kemble explained, ‘I sent a letter to the King saying that I would seal the garrison in. He agreed, so the Tower was locked.'
    'Oh,' Spurge tapped the table excitedly, 'and there's the Guild of Hangmen.'
    'Ah yes.' Kemble wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He smacked his lips and gestured at Vetch to serve some wine. 'Ah yes, the Guild of Hangmen.'
They stay in the Tower?' Benjamin inquired.
    They are also the torturers,' Kemble explained. "They are paid from the garrison accounts. There's John Mallow, he's their principal, and his five apprentices: Snakeroot, Horehound, Toadflax, Wormwood and, until recently, Hellbane.' He shrugged. They were all bachelors or widowers. They would have to stay.'
    'But Andrew Undershaft?' I asked. 'He was found burnt to death in a cage in Smithfield Market.'
    'He was different,' Vetch replied. 'Undershaft was a married man. He had his own house in the street of the Crutched Friars on the corner of Poor Jewry. We did not know about his death until the Tower was opened.'
'Hellbane?' Benjamin asked. 'How was he killed?'
    'Once the Tower was opened,' Kemble explained, 'everyone was free to come and go as they wished, provided they were not drawn for duty for the day.'
    'Let us see.' Agrippa, who had been sitting slouched in his chair, his black-brimmed hat over his eyes, abruptly sat up. He took his hat off, placing it on the stool beside him. 'Let us put things in order, Sir Edward. When did Allardyce the clerk in the store die?'
    ‘Well’ Kemble replied. 'He fell ill on the eighth but died on the tenth when his body was removed. Late in the afternoon, two of the guards took it down to the death-cart waiting near the Lion Gate.'
    Agrippa nodded. 'And on the thirteenth of July you sealed the Tower?'
    That is correct.'
    'A month passed and nothing untoward happened?'
    'No,' Kemble replied. ‘We now know that on the sixteenth of July, Undershaft's corpse was found in Smithfield Market.'
    ‘Yes, yes.' Agrippa pressed a third finger. 'And on the twenty-ninth of July the first blackmailing letter was written, sealed and delivered?'
Kemble and his two companions nodded.
    Agrippa continued. It demanded that a thousand pounds in gold be left within the door of St Paul's on the feast of St Dominic?'
'So it said,' Spurge squeaked.
    Agrippa closed his eyes. 'Now, if the gold was to be delivered on that date, the villain expected to collect it. Yes?'
Again the heads nodded.
    'Where were you all on the eighth of August, on the feast of St Dominic?' Agrippa asked quietly.
    'In the Tower,' Sir Edward Kemble retorted quickly. 'My good doctor, the Tower gates were not opened until the twentieth of August. The same day a herald from the city claimed the contagion was dying and the infection had passed.'
    'So you were not in the city?' Benjamin asked. 'Either on the day when the gold was supposed to be left, or on the eleventh, the feast of St Clare, when this spurious Edward V had two proclamations issued: one pinned to the door of Westminster Abbey, the other to that of St Mary Le Bow in Cheapside.'
    'And nor was anyone else,' Vetch explained. ‘Nobody in the Tower garrison was allowed out until two days ago. God bless the King, but he cannot point the finger of accusation at us.'
    I turned and glanced at Benjamin; I gathered from the troubled look in his eyes that we had entered a veritable maze of puzzles.
    The blackmailing letter to the King might have been written and delivered by someone in the Tower,' he declared. 'Indeed, all the evidence points to that being the truth. Yet the gold was to be delivered and those two proclamations were posted when everyone was virtually incarcerated in the Tower' Benjamin shook his head then turned back to Kemble. 'But it is possible, Sir Edward, that this villainy is the work of two, rather than one person. One in the Tower and one outside.'
'But how would they