The Burgundian’s Tale
- Автор: Sedley Kate
- Серия: Roger the Chapman #14
- Год: 2013
- Язык: английский
- Год: Severn House Publishers Ltd.
- ISBN: 978-1-4483-0102-7
- Жанр: Исторические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Burgundian’s Tale». Краткое содержание книги:
Things aren’t going too well at home for Roger the Chapman and his wife, Adela.
Their fourth child has died only days after being born and Roger fails to conceal his feelings of relief at having one less mouth to feed. Adela naturally resents his attitude and their bitter arguments become increasingly commonplace. Roger decides that to maintain harmony at home the best thing he can do is take up his pack and cudgel and once again leave Bristol to trade his goods in the surrounding countryside.
Almost as soon as he makes this decision, he receives a message from King Edward IV’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, summoning him to London to assist in the investigation into the murder of Fulk Quantrell, the son of one of the ladies-in-waiting to Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, who is on a triumphant return visit to London. It seems Roger has no choice but to return to the dirty, crowded streets of London, where he soon meets a surprising number of people – royalty, servants and workers alike – who all have a motive for murder.
I withdrew my head and examined the inside of the door through which I had entered. There was a bolt – quite a substantial one – near the top and, when tested, I found it ran easily and noiselessly in the wards. But whether or not Judith used it to secure her bedchamber as often as was prudent I had no means of knowing. A similar inspection of the bolt on the inside of the main door of the room showed this to be stiff with disuse. She plainly felt herself to be under no sort of threat from inside the house itself.
I gave a final glance around before deciding that I had tried my luck far enough for one day, and descended the stair to find a worried Bertram peering anxiously upward, praying for my speedy return.
‘I thought someone was coming just now,’ he chided me.
We completed the length of the passage and, before letting ourselves out into the garden, I also examined the inside of this door for locks and bolts. There were two of the latter, bigger than those in Mistress St Clair’s bedchamber and both kept well oiled. The lock, too, was substantial, situated just beneath the latch, but the key, large and extremely visible, hung on a hook alongside the door where everyone could reach it without difficulty. Anyone leaving the house on the night of the murder had only to ensure that this door and the two in Judith St Clair’s bedchamber were unlocked and unbolted to be able to go and come back at will.
The rain had stopped at last. The ground squelched under our feet as Bertram and I crossed the soaked and pallid grass. A wood pigeon rustled through the branches of a tree, and although it was only mid-morning, the light was poor, cloaking the garden in shadow. We walked down the gently sloping central path to the little landing stage on the Thames. Gulls, chasing the herring boats upstream to Westminster, wheeled and called overhead with their sharp, staccato cries, and a kingfisher, disturbed by their commotion, flew up from its nest in the bank, a flash of iridescent green and blue. Brown-fingered seaweed slapped the shore, and the river itself, London’s great highway, gleamed like polished metal under a watery shaft of sunlight that suddenly pierced the overhanging clouds.
The garden itself was planted largely for pleasure. If there was a bed of herbs and simples for the cooking pot, or one for home-made physic and medicines, I did not notice it at the time. Nor were any vegetables grown that I could see. This was a household sufficiently well-to-do to buy the best and freshest produce from the local tradesmen who daily trundled into London from their smallholdings in the Paddington fields, watered as they were by their crystal-clear springs and running brooks. The grass on either side of the path was starred with periwinkles and daisies and dotted with rose bushes, some of which were already in flower; the red of the Rosa gallica and the white of the Rosa alba, and the pink and white of the sweet-smelling Damascus rose. There were also lilies and gillyflowers, and, near the river’s edge, a willow tree, stooping to trail its branches close to the water.
Bertram was unimpressed; he was not a natural admirer of God’s creation, and a chill spring breeze, blowing in off the Thames, soon had him urging me back towards the house and the warmth of its kitchen. As we retraced our steps along the path, I glanced up at the windows of the next-door house, now to my left, just in time to glimpse a face hurriedly withdrawn into the shadows. I stopped, staring enquiringly, but it did not reappear. Its owner I guessed to be that Martin Threadgold mentioned to me yesterday by Mistress Graygoss; the older brother of Judith St Clair’s second husband and Alcina’s uncle. Unless, of course, it was one of his servants.
‘He doesn’t keep but the one servant,’ the housekeeper snorted disgustedly when I mentioned the sighting to her. ‘A maid-of-all-work you might call her, although, myself, I’d term her a lazy slattern. But fortunately most of the rooms are shut up, so she’s not a lot to do. Martin Threadgold’s generally held to be a miser. Now, do you and the lad come to table. And one of you’ – she rounded on two young girls who were busily pulling pots and pans off the fire – ‘go and call William in to his victuals.’
These were obviously the young maids referred to by Godfrey St Clair, one small and undernourished, the other a well set-up piece who looked as if she could eat a man a day for breakfast. But, as is so often the case, appearances were deceptive: she was the shy, retiring one who merely toyed with her food and left half of it on her plate, while the skinny girl had wolfed her way through two bowlfuls of an excellent mutton stew before William Morgan finally deigned to obey the housekeeper’s summons. He slouched in some twenty minutes later, sat down, offering no explanation for his tardiness, and banged the table with his spoon until the bigger of the two maids had filled his bowl with stew.
I was at last able to take a good look at the Welshman, and saw that he was indeed only about my own age, somewhere in his late twenties. (I was still some four months short of my twenty-eighth birthday.) William’s swarthy skin, blue eyes, dark hair and long, thin mouth were features which, as I remarked before, could have comprised a pleasant whole if it had not been for his sullen expression and seemingly perpetual scowl. He said nothing, but I could feel his hostility as he regarded me across the kitchen table. I pushed aside my own bowl, leaned forward and gave him back scowl for scowl. I was about to make his even fiercer.
‘Was it you, Master Morgan, who attacked me in Needlers Lane last night and warned me to mind my own business?’
The housekeeper’s head jerked up at that and she spilled some of her food as she looked from me to her fellow servant. I thought I heard her breathe, ‘You fool!’ but I couldn’t be certain.
‘Why would I want to attack you?’ the Welshman growled; but he bent closer over his plate and refused to meet my eyes. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘You must have heard of me, both from Dame Judith and from Mistress Graygoss here,’ I said, glancing at the housekeeper as I did so. Her expression confirmed my guess.
William shrugged. ‘Perhaps I did – what of it? It’s no business of mine what arrangements Duke Richard wants to make to solve this murder. Besides, how did I know what you look like? This morning was the first time we’d met.’
‘You may have been looking out of a window when I spoke with Mistress Graygoss yesterday. Or she may have given you a description of me.’
He shovelled another spoonful of mutton stew into his mouth, which he wiped on the back of his hand. ‘I was home all yesterday evening,’ he said thickly.
‘You didn’t go into the city to see the festivities in honour of the Duchess Margaret, then?’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘Why should I? Seen enough of them during the day.’
‘So my attacker wasn’t you?’
‘Told you, I was home.’
I didn’t believe him, but there was no point in arguing about something I was unable to prove. I changed the subject. ‘What was your opinion of Fulk Quantrell?’
Another spoonful of stew was shovelled out of sight and swallowed before he answered. ‘Not my place, is it now, to form o-pin-i-ons’ – he gave ironic weight to every syllable – ‘about my betters?’
I turned to the housekeeper. ‘Did you have an opinion, Mistress Graygoss?’
She was busy stacking dirty dishes into piles and did not look up from her task. ‘Fulk was a nice enough young fellow,’ she replied in a colourless tone.
‘Oooh! He was lovely,’ the smaller of the two girls protested. ‘Ever so kind. Talked to me a lot, he did.’
‘What about?’
‘Oh … Just things. My family, where I lived.’ She giggled and blushed. ‘Once he kissed me.’