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.
In spite of the warmth of the morning, the house felt icily cold as if, indeed, the Angel of Death had enfolded it in his wings. I was startled; I was not generally given to such flights of fancy, and I gave myself a mental shake. I was growing morbid with my advancing years, and that would never do.
Once again, Mistress Pettigrew made as though to snatch the cloak from me, but I prevented her. ‘Where did you find it?’ she whispered.
‘More to the point,’ I retorted, ‘where did you last see it?’
She shivered. ‘The master took it upstairs with him, yesterday, to put across his knees while he slept. But when I found him, it wasn’t there. I didn’t think about it at the time, I was too upset; but later, last night, I got to wondering where it had gone.’
‘Something else that had vanished, like the flask and the beaker,’ I suggested.
The housekeeper still evinced no overt interest in the two latter items, but I saw her eyes flicker. She repeated her question about the cloak. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘I can’t tell you that just at the moment.’ I clasped one of her small, cold hands in mine and said earnestly, ‘It’s very important that you say nothing to anyone else about this at present. Can you keep a secret?’
She stared up at me, her rheumy eyes suddenly wide with suspicion. ‘Does the master’s death have anything to do with the murder of that nephew of Mistress St Clair?’
‘Why do you ask me that?’
‘Because …’ She hesitated, considering her words, then added in a rush, ‘Because I wondered if the master’s death was natural. There was something about his face, some discolouration, that didn’t seem normal to me.’
‘You mean, you think Master Threadgold was murdered, like Fulk Quantrell?’ Bertram demanded, nudging me excitedly in the ribs.
‘I … I don’t know.’ The housekeeper looked frightened, fearful that she was letting her tongue run away with her. ‘It’s just that … well, there was something else that occurred to me … during the night.’
‘What was that?’ I asked gently. She was plainly wishing she hadn’t spoken, but, unlike me, felt impelled to voice her suspicions.
‘Go on,’ I urged. ‘You can rely on Master Serifaber’s and my discretion.’ I looked sternly at Bertram as I spoke, and after a moment he gave a reluctant nod.
Mistress Pettigrew bit on her thumbnail with small, pointed teeth, rather like a rat’s, but after a while she forced herself to continue.
‘When I brought Mistress Alcina the beaker for the wine, she asked me if I’d like to have a cup before she took it upstairs to her uncle. She said the flask was overfull.’
‘And did you?’ I prompted.
She nodded. ‘I thought … I thought it tasted a little odd. And then, very soon afterwards, I fell asleep. And I seem to have slept extremely soundly for quite a long time.’
Fourteen
‘Are you saying you think the wine was drugged?’ Bertram demanded eagerly, his brown eyes sparkling with the excitement of the chase.
The housekeeper eyed him with growing unease, obviously regretting her moment of indiscretion and wishing she hadn’t confided in us. But of course, it was what she had meant, or at any rate meant to imply. She said nothing and looked anxiously at me.
‘Hold hard a minute, Bertram,’ I began, but my protest was ignored. The lad was pursuing his own train of thought.
‘And if Master Threadgold had been drugged, it would have made it easy for someone to smother him. Roger!’ He turned triumphantly to me. ‘Didn’t you mention a cushion stuffed behind the dead man’s head? You know – when you were telling me about your viewing of the body?’
I cursed my too-ready tongue, which was prone to describe what I saw in detail. I was beginning to realize that Bertram was a sharp lad with a retentive memory and not the casual young layabout I had originally thought him.
‘There was a cushion,’ I admitted cautiously.
‘There you are, then! So all we have to decide is who murdered Master Threadgold. It must have been his niece, Alcina. Don’t you see?’ He was well away by now. ‘She must have murdered Fulk when she realized he wasn’t going to marry her, and somehow her uncle found out the truth. So she had to get rid of him, as well. She brought him the drugged wine, waited until he fell asleep, then suffocated him with the cushion. The case is solved!’
He beamed at me with the ridiculous self-confidence of the young. I could recognize myself nine years earlier, in those heady days when I was convinced that any man past the age of thirty must almost certainly be impotent, and that any person on the other side of forty was heading rapidly downhill towards senility and the grave. Ah, youth!
‘If you imagine I haven’t already thought of all this,’ I admonished Bertram, belligerent at being made to feel old before my time, ‘you’re much mistaken. But unlike you, my lad, I intend to ask a few questions before leaping to conclusions.’
I again addressed the housekeeper. ‘Mistress Pettigrew, are you certain that you didn’t see or hear Mistress Alcina leave the house after visiting her uncle?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I told you last night I didn’t set eyes on her after giving her the beaker to take up to the master with the wine.’
‘There you are!’ Bertram exclaimed.
‘I’m not anywhere,’ I snapped. ‘Mistress Pettigrew also told me last night that neither the street nor garden door was locked while she was asleep. Anyone could have entered the house during that time. And as yet we have no proof that the wine brought by Mistress Alcina was drugged. (It was, after all, a gift from Judith St Clair.) We only have Mistress Pettigrew’s unconfirmed suspicion that it might have been.’ Personally, I considered the housekeeper’s suspicion tantamount to a certainty, but I wasn’t prepared to say so at this juncture. ‘Mistress Pettigrew,’ I went on, ‘what arrangements are being made for Master Threadgold’s burial?’
She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Not my affair. I’ll be leaving here soon.’ She dabbed her eyes with a corner of her none-too-clean apron. ‘It’s up to Mistress Alcina now. The master’d no other kith or kin that I know of. And she’ll not want for guidance while she has Mistress St Clair to help her.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the house next door. ‘They’ll be in directly, I reckon, after they’ve been to consult with the priest at St Dunstan’s. And there’ll be others poking their noses in, you can be sure of that.’ The housekeeper sniffed disparagingly.
I glanced towards the windows. The clarity of light piercing the shutters and the muted noise reaching us from the Strand indicated that it was still comparatively early. With luck – and for the moment I had a feeling that the luck was running my way – it might be another hour, perhaps a little longer, before the efficient Judith St Clair arrived to take charge.
‘Mistress Pettigrew,’ I wheedled, ‘will you give your permission for my assistant and myself to look around the house? Naturally, we shan’t disturb your master’s body.’
She hesitated for a moment before recollecting that she was no longer in a position to give or refuse permission. This was not her home any more. I suspected that Paulina Graygoss might have given her fellow servant a hint of what to expect last night, while they were laying out the corpse.
‘If you want to,’ she said indifferently and pattered away, presumably to the kitchen, leaving Bertram and me standing amid the dust and dead flies and mouse droppings of the musty-smelling great hall.
‘I don’t understand,’ my companion protested. ‘If we suspect Master Threadgold’s death might have been murder, why are we pretending not to know? Why aren’t we reporting it to the Sheriff’s officers? Or to Master Plummer? Or to someone in authority?’