An Honourable Murderer by Philip Gooden Page B

them to my presence, then paused. The woman was Lady Jane Blake. The man had his back to me but there was something familiar about him.
    The light was dim in the passageway outside the practice room and there was a great tapestry hanging from the wall next to me. I’ve always had a hankering to eavesdrop from behind a tapestry or arras. (It’s what Polonius does with fatal results to himself in WS’s
Hamlet
.) I stepped into the shadow of the arras but without concealing myself properly behind it. I wasn’t so much an eavesdropper as a passer-by. Then I listened. There was the rustle of paper.
    â€œAnd the seat,” said the voice of Lady Blake. There was that suppressed laughter in her tone. “You are sure about the seat?”
    â€œAbsolutely, my lady,” said the other.
    I recognized his voice. Had listened to him lately. Who was he?
    â€œBut will it hold up under the weight?”
    â€œIt will hold up. We wouldn’t want anyone falling off the device accidentally, would we?” said the man.
    The man and woman almost giggled in a manner that seemed to me, loitering in the folds of the arras, somehow improper. As if they were children sniggering over adult matters. I risked a peep around the edge of the hanging. Heads together, the couple were examining a sheet of paper. I recognized the man now.
    â€œThen this will come down,” said Lady Jane, stabbing a plump forefinger at the sheet.
    â€œOh, it’ll come down all right,” said Jonathan Snell. “It will all come down.”
    Jonathan Snell, the engine-man who was designing machines and effects for Jonson’s
Masque of Peace
. The gentleman who’d been invited to guess my weight in the courtyard. Now he was demonstrating something to Jane Blake, with the same confident style in which he’d shown off the diagram of the
deus ex machina
chair. He was surely talking about a device of his own making, but what was it?
    My impression that there was an underhand aspect to this meeting was strengthened by the way in which the two of them – the noble lady and the engineer with the long thumb – responded when one of the household footmen glided by. Luckily this yellow-liveried gent came from a different direction to the place at which I was standing. The Blake footmen were very silent and this, combined with their glassy stares and golden costumes, gave them the indifferent quality of fish in a big pond. This particular fish was almost on Lady Blake and Master Snell before they spotted him. When they did, the couple seemed to spring apart and Snell hastily folded up the sheet of paper. The footman glided on, far too well-bred to observe the behaviour of his betters. If he noticed me while I was loitering he gave no sign of it. After a moment Lady Blake returned to the practice room, and shortly afterwards Snell followed her inside. I had the distinct impression that they didn’t want to be seen entering together.
    Putting on my best just-wandering-around air, I stepped out from the shelter of the arras and went back to the masque rehearsal. There wasn’t much for me to do since I had my lines as Ignorance off pat – no great feat considering there were so few of them – and Ben Jonson’s energies were largely directed at polishing the performances of the nonprofessional players. Lady Jane Blake disposed herself as Plenty, clutching a jug instead of a cornucopia to her ample chest. Sir Philip hummed and cleared his throat and just about got through his few verses as Truth, although he could not resist slipping in a ‘very good’ from time to time. Maria More was a graceful handmaid to Plenty, while Bill Inman billowed about as the Ocean. Giles Cass was playing Suspicion – he had asked Jonson for the part, I gathered.
    Jonathan Snell sat at a desk to one side of the room, sketching and scribbling on sheets of paper and from time to time coming across to consult Jonson. I