The Burgundian’s Tale

Which was true, as far as it went, but there is old and then there is old; and if Martin Threadgold had been much past his middle fifties, I would have owned myself greatly mistaken. And he had died in his sleep, apparently. Now that really did surprise me; and when I had paid, and paid handsomely, two passing and fairly honest-looking youths to return my horse to Reynold Makepeace’s stables, I followed Mistress Pettigrew and the rest of the party into Master Threadgold’s house. I was not invited, but no one seemed to object to my presence.

Godfrey and Judith St Clair took charge, as, I supposed, the representatives of the absent Alcina, the dead man’s next of kin.

‘Now, stop snivelling and let us see your master,’ Judith instructed the housekeeper, quietly but firmly. She was not, I guessed, a woman who had much time for the self-indulgence of grief. Whatever life threw at her, she absorbed the shock and just got on with living, expecting others to do the same and ignoring the fact that not everyone is capable of such stoical behaviour.

Paulina Graygoss gave her fellow servant an encouraging pat on the back.

‘Come now, Felice,’ she urged gently, ‘show us where Master Threadgold is.’

He was in the little room at the top of the ‘secret’ stair leading up from the inglenook of the empty fireplace, slumped in his armchair. A folio, bound in moth-eaten red velvet and with broken laces, had fallen from his hand to the bare flagstones, although, oddly enough, the reading-stand had been folded down on its rusty hinges to perform its other function as a table. A tattered brocade cushion was stuffed awkwardly behind his head.

It only took a swift glance to convince us that Martin Threadgold was indeed dead. The cold and pallid skin, the slack jaw, the thread of saliva glistening on his chin and, above all else, the stillness of the body twisted at an awkward angle, left no room for doubt; and at the sight of her master, Mistress Pettigrew renewed her lamentations.

‘Paulina, take her downstairs and give her some wine if you can find any,’ Judith St Clair recommended. There was an edge to her voice that suggested she might be more rattled by her neighbour’s and former brother-in-law’s death than she was prepared to admit. ‘Now,’ she continued when the two women had disappeared, ‘Godfrey, you and Lionel, if he will be so kind, had better carry poor Martin to his bedchamber and lay him on his bed. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Tomorrow will be time enough for us – and, of course, Alcina – to make arrangements for his burial. I’ll wait up for her tonight until she returns from wherever it is she’s gone, and break the news. An unhappy occasion for her, but not, I fancy, one that she will find unduly distressing.’

‘Did anyone visit Master Threadgold this evening?’ I asked, butting my way into the conversation as I recalled the sight of William Morgan walking up the alleyway between the gardens.

They all turned to stare at me in faint surprise, as though I was something nasty that had just hopped out of the woodwork.

Again, it was Judith who answered. ‘You’d have to put that question to Mistress Pettigrew, Master Chapman. Neither Godfrey nor I keep account of our neighbours’ movements.’

And while I was prepared to accept that this was probably true of herself and her husband, I was extremely sceptical of the Jolliffes’ exaggerated nods of agreement – well, of Lydia’s, at any rate. I remembered her peering down from the side window of her house at me and Mistress Pettigrew.

But something else had attracted my attention: two small damp circles on the surface of the reading-stand table, as though a bottle and beaker had stood there at some time during the evening. But they weren’t there now. I wondered what had happened to them.

Godfrey St Clair and Lionel Broderer were attempting to lift the body, but the former was struggling somewhat. Dead men weigh more heavily than you think, as the term ‘dead weight’ implies. I stepped forward and gently elbowed him out of the way, seizing Master Threadgold under the armpits and signalling to Lionel to take hold of his legs.

Judith St Clair gestured to us to wait, disappearing and returning after a minute or two accompanied by the housekeeper.

‘Show these gentlemen to your master’s bedchamber, Felice,’ she instructed. ‘Then you and Paulina can lay out the corpse.’

This procedure not only entailed the lighting of candles and wall torches, as it was by now growing dark, but also a good deal of swearing on my part as I backed down that narrow stair to the great hall, through the door leading into the bowels of the house and then up another flight of steps to a chamber at the front of the building, overlooking the Strand. This was as Spartan as everywhere else seemed to be, with nothing but a bed and a chest and a chamber-pot not yet emptied from the previous night.

The rich aroma appeared to offend Lionel Broderer’s sensitive nose, for he grimaced, dropped his end of our burden and hastily departed. From beneath the bed, Mistress Pettigrew retrieved a stump of a candle in a candle holder, lit it from the one she held in her hand and placed it on a narrow ledge that ran around the bed head, to the imminent danger of bed curtains as thin as cobwebs. She started crying again and muttering about her ‘poor, dear master’, so I let her get on with it, bending forward to take a closer look at the dead man’s face. Now that I had time to examine it more carefully, I noticed suffused patches of discolouration under the eyes and along the jawline. There were others, too, all suggesting to me that Martin Threadgold might have been suffocated. I remembered the cushion, pushed so awkwardly behind his head.