Free The Point of Death by Peter Tonkin

- was one of Capo Ferro's most closely guarded secrets. Up until now, Tom had remained quietly confident that he was the only man in England who could perform the mystery at such an elevated level. Now, as the conversation around him began to gather, taking a course which it was all too easy to predict, Tom was increasingly, uneasily, aware that they were going to ask him to go out in search of this man. To find him, to find out what he was doing and to find out why he had done it to Julius Morton.
    The murderous stranger was, perhaps, the one man in England who could kill Tom in fair combat - and he was, therefore, the man Tom should be most eager to avoid. And yet, as the afternoon wore on and the thunder gathered over the thatched roof of the Rose, bringing with it the sort of weather best suited to the kind of deliberations going on within, he felt a boundless excitement gathering in his breast.
    'We want no authorities brought in on this,' emphasised Master Henslowe again. 'For two years and more we have been at starvation's door and now that the Plague has relented, I'll be damned before I let Fortune play us foul. Or any more foul, given the evil turn the whore gave us in the death of Lord Strange. City, Court and Bishop's Bailiff, all would close us down. And you all heard Master Doorkeeper – it was a big house and not a dry eye. As long as the play runs, our fortunes are on the mend and it will run for ten days more at the least - two houses a day after this, before we approach My Lord Chamberlain to seek preferment to the Queen.'
    'We will need to approach my Lord Strange's executors in any case,' said Ned Alleyn. 'We work under his protection still, in theory. If we also work outside the law, those looking after his affairs will need to be alerted, if not warned.'
    'A dangerous move, surely?' suggested Master Hemminge, the steady churchwarden. 'Like as not, they'll warn Sir William Danby himself and close us anyway. It is the lawful thing to do.'
    'Perhaps,' said Henslowe a little shortly, unused to the frank discussion the Burbages allowed in their company - preferring to limit discussion to that between himself and his son-in-law and leading man Ned Alleyn.
    'On the other hand,' added Will, 'a coded warning in the right ear might allow continued protection of our poor enterprise here should anything go wrong in the near future.'
    'And a good deal could go wrong,' continued Tom. When he paused to order his thoughts, even Master Henslowe sat silently, not a little awed by what the Master of Logic had achieved in the case so far. 'For a start, we have Julius Morton. We have him but we cannot keep him long. What shall we do with him? Dump him in the Fleet River and let him wash away with the rest of the sewerage? Smuggle him over the river and leave him near his lodgings, another corpse in the nearest dark alley?'
    'There are dark alleys enough up in Holborn, I suppose, well without London Wall, but we cannot risk it. He cannot go anywhere he might be found,' said Henslowe at once. 'All the world knows he played with us today. If he is found dead tonight then the Bishop's Bailiff will be at our door tomorrow. Though in God's truth he lived convenient enough to the Fleet River, nearer there than Southampton House.'
    'That's your neck of the woods, Will,' said Dick Burbage. 'My Lord of Southampton's your patron. Perhaps he was funding Morton too.'
    'I never saw him at Southampton House nor down in the country,' said Will dismissively. 'Half the bright young men in London live along High Holborn, for it's close to the Inns of Court for preferment and the mercury baths for the pox.'
    'Danby, or Rackmaster Topcliffe, or the Bishop's Bailiff,' said Ned Alleyn, bringing them back to the matter in hand. 'Depending on whose jurisdiction the guts are washed up in.'
    'Then we must put him where he will never be found - or hide him until our investigation is complete,' said Tom.
    'And our run is finished and our future's