The almshouses which feature in both “Heretical Murder” and “Lowly Death” were founded in 1424 as part of the Charity of Sir Richard Wittington. This is the same “Dick Wittington” of nursery tales and Roald Dahl’s poem “Dick Whittington and His Cat”.

Whatever the reality of the cat and of the bells of London bidding him return, the historical Whittington was indeed “thrice Lord Mayor of London town” and died an extremely wealthy man, leaving provision in his will for the endowing of a library in London and these almshouses connected to a college of priests at St. Michael Paternoster church, all of which was duly done by his executors.  Much disappeared in the next century, courtesy of the Tudors, and the church burned in the Great Fire of the century after that but was rebuilt on the same site and is still there; and although Whittington’s library is gone, his almshouses still exist. Here’s an engraving of them from 1850:

Another from 1827:

And a last from 1880:

In 1966, the charity rebuilt the almshouses, moving from Highgate to East Grinstead. They now provide 56 homes for elderly ladies and a few married couples. Although no longer in the center of London, they still serve their original purpose after almost 600 years.

– Margaret

“Lowly Death” has been released for the Kindle and Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

A CUNNING AND CLEVER GREED…

Come down the Paternoster Passage, cross the church’s yard, and knock on the doors of Master Whittington’s Almshouse. Master Pecock, a man of the cloth and the greatest detective of 15th century London, will answer your call.

Just as he answers Dick Colop’s call. The mother of young Colop’s friend has slipped, fallen, and died. But something doesn’t feel right about it. There’s a strange uneasiness creeping at the back of Colop’s mind.

And then there was the matter of the candle.

It was in the kitchen. A burned down stub of a candle. It had rolled under a table. And left a thick splattering of wax on the floor a foot or so away.

That was enough. Master Pecock was on the scent. The scent of lies. The scent of wrongs. The scent of murder.

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“Lowly Death” is the third tale of Bishop Pecock, coming after “Heretical Murder” and after “The Simple Logic of It”. It was first published in Murder Most Catholic, edited by Ralph McInerny. Master Pecock has advanced in his priestly career and is now head of the well-endowed Whittington Almshouses in London.  Rather than the tendrils of national crime, here he deals with a domestic matter.

The plot came – as so many of my plots do – from an actual medieval situation.  I will often be innocently reading some scholarly study or else the documents themselves, when something catches at the criminally-inclined corner of my mind and I suddenly ask, “Yes, but what if…” and away I’ll be, the twisty mind of a mystery writer turning what – in the document – was a perfectly straightforward business matter into a full-blooded (and usually bloody) convolution of human relationships and situations. And when I look back from the finished story to the innocent document that started at all, I’ll often be surprised at how far the transmutation of imagination has taken the original few facts.

One small but continually niggling thing stays with me from this story: The editor’s note at the beginning of the anthology.  There Mr. McInerny stated that, although the story “uses medieval setting for color, it remains a thoroughly modern deductive mystery”. In fact, the methods of deduction used in the story are perfectly medieval, drawn directly from the methods of deduction outlined by Master Pecock himself in his own works of circa 1450, wherein he urged people to seek truth through the use of reason and demonstrated how to do it, very much in the way he uses logic and reason in this story.

– Margaret

“Heretical Murder” has been released for the Kindle and Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

BETWEEN DUTY AND BLOOD…

Questionable matters? Strange deaths? Mysteries most foul? The cleverest man in 15th century England lives at Master Whittington’s Almshouse! Turn right off College Hill Street, go through the narrow Paternoster Passage, and knock on the third door on the left.

Dick Colop, student and scrivener, knows those directions well. They take him to the quiet study of Sire Pecock, priest of the Church and scholar of both man and book. A man has been cut down in the busy streets of London. The sheriff thinks it nothing more than a tavern brawl, but Colop knows that he never made it through the door.

A terrible accident or something worse? Sire Pecock will follow the dark and murderous ways of heresy to find the truth of sin.

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“Heretical Murder” was originally written for the Mammoth Book of More Historical Whodunits. (Which was published as the Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits in England; which is not to be confused with the previous volume of the exact same name which contained a completely different set of stories including “The Witch’s Tale”.  I take no responsibility for the vague ways of publishers.)

I don’t remember why the allowed word-count for this story was so high, but I took full advantage of it to write a story that roamed through the streets of London, keeping company with one of my favorite people from the 1400s – the scholar and churchman Reynold Pecock (otherwise called “Reginald” by modern scholars).

He had crossed my path more than once in my years of research and reading but never caught my interest until I attended a session at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and heard two scholars – Stephen E. Lahey and Brent Moberley — discussing Bishop (as he became) Pecock.  Talking with them afterwards, I confessed that, rather than a legitimate scholar, I wrote medieval murder mysteries.  After what I read as a startled pause, they both declared with delight that Bishop Pecock would make a great detective.

Somewhat taken aback by the idea but intrigued by what they had been saying about him, I set to taking a longer, deeper look at Reynold Pecock, even going so far as to read some of his religious treatises in Middle English.  I found him a delightful, interesting, complex man and knew I had to use him in a story or – better yet — stories.
This particular one is chronologically the first of the three short stories in which he figures and finds him early in his career in London after a long while as a scholar and teacher at the University of Oxford.

The uprising that is a background to this story is historical, and it may be worthwhile to note that although the use of the word “pamphlet” forty years before the introduction of printing to England may jar with some readers, it is not an anachronism.  It is the actual word used in a contemporary chronicle regarding Lollard activities in London at this time.  More than that, the copying of books was indeed a commercial enterprise in London at the time, and a family named Colop was prominent in it.

– Margaret