An Honourable Murderer by Philip Gooden

light was bad. You cannot be certain of what you saw. A flapping curtain perhaps . . .”
    She’d put down her fork altogether, was not even making the pretence of eating. I wanted to put my hand across the table and touch her for reassurance but I did not move.
    â€œI am sure. It was him.”
    â€œYou didn’t see his face?”
    â€œNo. What difference would that make?”
    Because you could have told whether he was happy or sad from his expression
, I wanted to say. But ghosts are unhappy by definition, aren’t they? Especially the ghost of a husband who has been snatched away by the plague. If they come back, it must be because they are looking for something. Or if not something, then somebody.
    â€œWhat difference?” repeated Mrs Buckle.
    â€œNo difference probably, I don’t know,” I said. “Try not to think of it, Mrs Buckle. Tell me about something else.”
    And I started on my supper once more. I thought it was best not to humour her belief that she was seeing her dead husband. Perhaps I didn’t want it to be true, either. She had seen her husband several times before, as a ghost, that is.
    â€œStill bad news,” she said. “You know that Lizzie and I are here on sufferance.”
    She gestured vaguely at the room, meaning to take in the entire house.
    â€œBut you pay rent. Anyway the landlord is your late husband’s cousin, I think you said.”
    â€œHe is a cousin to Hugh, yes. And we do not pay much rent. In truth, Nicholas, the money you give us goes quite a long way towards meeting his demands. But now . . . now he is asking for more, much more.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œHe says things have changed since the pestilence last year. Enough time has gone by, and property is starting to get expensive again. He can rent more profitably to others. Of course we could stay if we could afford it.”
    She sounded defeated rather than distressed. I wanted to help her. I would have helped her if I’d been able to but what can a player on a shilling and threepence a day do? Nevertheless my heart went out to her and this time I did stretch my hand across the table and rest it on hers. She allowed my hand to stay there for quite a time before slipping hers out from underneath.
    â€œI nearly forgot, you had a visitor earlier today,” said Mrs Buckle.
    â€œI did. Who was it?”
    â€œHe didn’t give his name. Just asked whether Nicholas Revill the player lived here.”
    I paused with the knife halfway to my mouth.
    â€œHe didn’t say why he wanted me?”
    â€œNo. He didn’t seem inclined to say much.”
    â€œBut he knew I lived here.”
    â€œIs it a secret?”
    Now it was my turn to feel a little uneasy although I couldn’t have accounted for the feeling.
    â€œWhat did he look like?”
    â€œOrdinary.”
    â€œWearing a red doublet?”
    â€œWhy yes, I think he was. A red doublet. So you have seen him after all?”
    â€œNo – I – it’s just that I think I know who he might be.”
    But I had no idea who he was, of course, except that it must be the figure I’d glimpsed behind me in Thames Street.

O heavy ignorance!
    B en Jonson had organized a rehearsal of his
Masque of Peace
for the next morning at the house of Sir Philip Blake. Several of the performers would be there (although not the Queen, I assumed). I set off from Mrs Buckle’s lodgings and made my way down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street. A heat-haze was already forming, turning figures in the distance into insubstantial shapes, mere ghosts. I thought of what my landlady had told me about glimpsing her late husband as he climbed the stairs. It was the third or fourth time she’d told me of such a sighting. The detail of watching the hem of his coat, the back of his head, gave a curious truthfulness to the story. But I didn’t know whether to believe her. She would not lie – but anyone