Veil of Lies

by Jeri Westerson

  “Why were we locked in this room?” the man demanded.

  “My apologies,” said Philippa, employing her best cultivated speech, though it riffled along the edge of hysteria. “It was Nicholas’s custom to lock the doors. He insisted on it.”

  The man’s face reddened, set to erupt. Crispin decided to intrude and nodded to Adam as he entered.

  The servant licked his lips and announced, “Crispin Guest—the…Tracker.”

  They all turned toward him. The first man in green approached Crispin and eyed his threadbare clothes. “‘Tracker’? What by God is that?”

  “I explore crimes. The murder of your brother, for instance.”

  “Are you the sheriff, then?”

  “No, but I often work with him.”

  “This is all nonsense!” cried the man. “Not so much as a messenger was sent to us about Nicholas! We had to hear about it from common talk. And this wife of his. This is the first we’ve heard of that!”

  “Talk travels quicker than any messenger,” said Crispin, but he absorbed the brother’s other words with curiosity.

  The man huffed and muttered under his breath, fingering the tiny gold monstrance hanging from a chain around his neck.

  “Please, Lionel,” said the woman. She glided toward him and slipped her arm in his. The nap of her scarlet velvet gown did not shine like Crispin remembered from similar fabrics he used to call his own, but it was trimmed richly in fur. But not fox. Squirrel perhaps? “You’re frightening the girl,” she went on. The woman’s face was long and pinched and looked as if she were sniffing something unpleasant. “Let our dear sister-in-law speak. She has such a delightful accent. I myself am curious as to when exactly they were married.”

  Philippa paled and pressed her lips together. Without missing a beat, she spoke in the most refined accent she could muster, pronouncing her words with assiduous accuracy. “We have been married for three years. This is the first I heard that Nicholas had brothers.”

  “This is really too much!” bellowed Lionel.

  The woman’s wan smile reminded Crispin of the serpent of Eden. “Nicholas was always wont to keep to himself, husband. This is just one more example—”

  “Keep your opinions to yourself, Maude,” said the other man. Though husky, the breadth of his bright red shoulder cape made his head look small. Nose reminiscent of Lionel’s, his other features, including his coloring, were more like Nicholas’s. His face, not as broad as the other brother, angled down to a cleft chin covered with the shadow of a latent beard.

  “I beg your pardon, dear Clarence,” said his sister-in-law. She swept her skirt aside to walk deliberately in front of him.

  The beefy Clarence lifted his nose at Maude and turned to pour himself wine from a flagon on a nearby sideboard.

  Lionel bobbed his head in emphasis. “It is like Nicholas to do exactly what he liked.”

  “Was it like him to get murdered?” said Crispin. Curious to see their reaction, Crispin wasn’t disappointed.

  “Now see here!” Lionel advanced on Crispin. “Sheriff or not, you’ve no right—”

  “He isn’t the sheriff,” reminded his brother Clarence into his wine bowl.

  Crispin gazed down his nose at Lionel, deflecting the man’s scathing look. “I am curious. Nicholas Walcote was an enigma in London. Did he always live in this house?”

  Lionel calmed and he glanced at Clarence, but it seemed Clarence was used to deferring to Lionel. “We all lived here. We were raised in this house.”

  “It was the family business, then?”

  “Yes. And when Father died we thought to continue on here, all of us. It was not to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Nicholas was impossible to work with! He insisted on his own way, his rules, his decisions.”

  “So you left.”

  “Yes. Clarence left first.”

  Crispin turned to the other brother. Clarence seemed surprised to be addressed and raised his brows. “Yes, I went to Whittlesey and started my own business there.”

  “I joined him soon after,” said Lionel.

  Clarence drank the contents of the bowl and poured more. “Yes, lucky me.”

  “So the two of you entered into business together.”

  Clarence laughed but there was no mirth in the sound. “As if I would be caught dead—”

  The others held their collective breaths. In the silence, everyone remembered the body in the solar. Clarence shrugged and took a drink. “Dear Lionel tried to take it over and I was forced to retreat to St. Neot to start on my own. Again.”

  “You’d have run it into the ground,” said Lionel.

  “Be still, old man, or you may find yourself on a bier.”

  Lionel growled, fisted his hand, and rushed his brother, but Crispin got between them and held up his hands. “Masters! This is a house in mourning!”

  Clarence shook out his shoulders. Without any show of embarrassment, he scanned the room and retreated to the sideboard to pour more wine.

  Red-faced, Lionel calmed and turned his back on his brother.

  “Why don’t we all sit down,” Crispin suggested, and brought a chair for the tight-lipped Philippa, then pulled another forward for Clarence. Lionel and Maude had their chairs and they looked at each other. As if on cue, they both sat at the same time. Crispin stood above them. “Differences there may have been,” he went on, “but this is the end of a life. Perhaps it is time to set old hurts aside.”

  “In this family,” said Maude, “old hurts are never set aside. They are simply stored for future use.”

  “This is absurd,” muttered Clarence, knocking back another drink of wine. “I want to know who killed Nick…and I want to congratulate the killer.”

  Philippa stared at him aghast.

  “No one knows who killed him,” said Crispin. “Not yet.”

  Clarence and Lionel brooded from their separate places in the room: Clarence by the sideboard and Lionel sitting by his wife and glowering at Philippa.

  Crispin turned to Lionel. “It has been a long time, I take it, since you set foot in this house.”

  “Little has changed.”

  “Quite true,” said Maude, running her finger along the imaginary dust on her chair’s arm. “And yet we have been doing all the talking. Nicholas has a wife. Apparently.” They all looked at Philippa. “We had quite given up hope of his ever acquiring one.”

  “Is that a jab at me?” said Clarence over his shoulder.

  “No, dear Clarence,” she said. “I suppose there is hope someday of your finding a wife. The world is full of God’s great miracles, after all.”

  “Tell that harridan of yours to mind her own damn business,” he said into his bowl.

  Lionel’s face flushed, but before he could bellow again, Maude interrupted. “Pay him no heed.” She waved a hand devoid of ornament. “We must find out about our dear sister.” Maude turned to her. “Phyllida—”

  “Philippa.”

  “Of course. Such a delightful name. Tell us of your family? Are they mercers?”

  Philippa glanced at Crispin with such raw desperation that his mind frantically worked on a distraction. Before he could conjure anything, Philippa blurted out what surely should have been suppressed.

  “No, we were never merchants. My family were servants. I was my master’s—I was Nicholas’s chambermaid.”

  Maude screeched like a cat hurled from a rooftop and slumped in her chair. Lionel bellowed something unintelligible, and Clarence burst out laughing. “By my Lady!” he crowed. “That’s the best Nick’s done yet! Damn me! I wish I could shake his hand!”

  “Be still, you idiot!” cried Lionel. “Someone get my wife some wine! You!” he pointed to Adam, face as white as the walls.

  The steward ran to comply and Crispin watched the room dissolve into chaos. Why did Philippa do it? Surely she must have known what turmoil such an announcement would cause. He stared at her, tried to discern her expression, but all he c
ould reckon was confusion and fear.

  Adam returned and handed Lionel a cup of wine, which he gave to his wife. She held the back of her hand to her forehead and took several sips between moans.

  “So,” said Lionel over his shoulder. “You’re only just a chambermaid.”

  Philippa’s hands closed into tight fists. They trembled at her sides. “I am Nicholas’s wife. I have been for three years!” She dropped all pretense of a cultivated accent, releasing the thickness of her speech. “It ain’t my fault I was a servant or that he didn’t tell me nought about you! He didn’t tell me a lot of things.”

  “Masters,” placated Crispin, “is this truly necessary? The man has been murdered. The culprit must be found. This is more important than rank.”

  Crispin surprised himself when the words came out of his mouth. He always believed rank was paramount. All his past experience and his long years of resentment told him so. But with a dead man rotting upstairs, the murderer free and seeking the object hidden on Crispin’s person, it was obvious, even to him, that the greater danger lay in the unknown.

  Maude propped herself up and glared at Crispin, her pinched face contracting even more. “Nothing is more important than rank,” she hissed. “There is the family name to consider. And children. Good God!” Her hands flew to her breast. “Are there any children?”

  “Sadly, no,” said Philippa, regaining something of her old self. She raised her chin. “I think this is quite enough for one day. The funeral is tomorrow. Nicholas will be buried, then you can all return to your precious estates and trouble us no more. I, for one, can’t wait!”

  “Is she tossing us out?” asked Clarence, face suddenly serious.

  Crispin repressed a smile. “It would seem so.”

  Lionel postured to his full height. “Not before I see my brother and bid him—”

  Clarence chuckled into his cup. “Good riddance? Must make sure he’s dead, after all.”

  Lionel sneered at his brother. “Be still, or you’ll find a knife in your back.”

  Crispin maneuvered next to Lionel. “How did you know Nicholas was stabbed in the back?”

  Lionel stared at Crispin with eyes bulging. Clarence gestured with his cup and splashed some of the wine on the floor between Crispin and Lionel. “Everyone knows that,” said Clarence. “We all heard about it.”

  Lionel turned his attention toward Philippa. Her bravado faded under the onslaught of his dark expression. “Where is he?” Lionel asked.

  “In the solar,” she sputtered with a look of horror. “But—”

  “Let’s go and make an end to this, then.” He stalked from the room, his shadow stretching ominously behind him. Clarence put down his bowl and sneered over his shoulder at Crispin. Maude lifted herself from her seat, and seeing no one left but Crispin and Adam to view her performance, abruptly shook herself free of it and stomped after her husband.

  Philippa ran after them up the stairs.

  Crispin shook his head in disgust and took the stairs two at a time, passing over the solar’s threshold just as Philippa took her place behind her kinsmen.

  Lionel held his nose and stood at Nicholas’s covered head. Clarence merely grimaced at the smell but Maude looked no different. “This is our farewell, Nicholas,” Lionel pronounced. “Whether you are in Heaven or Hell, well, that is between you and your Maker, for I shall not pray for you.” He grabbed the sheet and threw it back.

  Philippa held her hand to her mouth. Whether or not it was to suppress a scream, Crispin did not know.

  All the others were silent for a moment. But then Lionel looked at his wife and then his brother. As one, the three turned accusatory faces toward Philippa.

  “This is not Nicholas Walcote!” Lionel declared. “Where is my brother?”

  16

  Crispin moved forward as if in a dream. She knew. A moat of anger welled around that thought.

  He raised his voice above the angry chatter of the others. “If this man is not your brother, then who is he?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know he is not Nicholas!” Lionel trumpeted.

  “It’s been years since you’ve seen him. How can you be sure?”

  “We know our own brother!” said Clarence.

  Crispin angled toward Philippa. Her face collapsed into horrified fear. Tears ran in double streams down both cheeks and flowed to her jaw where they stayed in paralyzed drips, too afraid to drop away. “Philippa,” he said, perhaps more gently than she deserved. “Tell me.”

  Gallows fear. That’s what Crispin called the expression she wore. He saw it on many a prisoner’s face before they were led to the gallows, and then as the rope dropped over their heads; that desperate realization that it wasn’t a nightmare, that it was real and happening now.

  “I meant no harm,” she whispered. She twisted her red fingers together, and sucked the spilled tears at the edges of her mouth. “I meant no harm.”

  “Well, Sheriff. This is certainly a strange set of circumstances—”

  “He isn’t the sarding sheriff, you jackass!” cried Clarence.

  Lionel scowled at his brother.

  “But maybe he will oblige us by calling the sheriff,” said Maude. “There is a great deal that needs explanation.”

  Crispin gritted his teeth. There was nothing he could do. This situation had grown far beyond his ability to influence or control, and he wasn’t about to put his own head in a noose for her. Tautly he moved toward the passageway and spotted the steward. “Adam, you will have to send for the sheriff,” he said.

  Simon Wynchecombe met them in the parlor and scanned their faces. He frowned darkest when passing his gaze over Crispin. “Couldn’t do what I told you,” his expression seemed to say. But Crispin lost all patience with him. He desperately wanted to get Philippa alone to ask her what was on her mind, but there was no opportunity.

  The others sat in a rough half circle while Philippa stood in the center like a trapped animal. She trembled, and Crispin did not know whether he longed more to comfort her or to throttle her.

  “Well, Madam,” said the sheriff, his voice rumbling deep in his throat. “You have been living a lie, calling yourself the wife of Nicholas Walcote when in fact the man in question is not Nicholas Walcote. Several questions come to mind: Why did you two perpetrate this deception? Why was he murdered? Where is the real Nicholas Walcote, and is that unfortunate also murdered?”

  Philippa stared at the floor.

  “Madam? I asked you a question.”

  Her voice was unnaturally thin. It seared Crispin’s gut to hear such surrender. “You won’t believe me.”

  Wynchecombe smiled. The white teeth under the dark mustache reminded Crispin of the carved gargoyles projecting from the eaves of churches. He is only fulfilling his obligation. But Crispin still wanted to lash out at him. A fist to those teeth would do nicely for a start.

  “Speak, Madam,” Wynchecombe urged. “It will go better for you.”

  She wiped her face sloppily and swallowed. Her chin trembled when she opened her mouth. “When I was hired to this household five years ago, I thought he was Nicholas Walcote. We all did. What reason had we to think otherwise? Everything seemed normal. I served as a chambermaid, and I did my job well. I was a good girl. Honest and hardworking, and not a soul had a complaint against me. Nicholas took a fancy to me. He’d come across me while I was at me work, accidental at first. Then I realized he sought me out. Two years later he married me. We put up the banns and everything. We were married lawfully!”

  “That isn’t quite true,” said Wynchecombe with too much enjoyment for Crispin’s ears. “You see, you married a man under an alias. I am no man of law, but that is surely not a valid marriage.”

  She looked from one unsympathetic face to another. “But the priest was there! We made our vows—”

  “Under a name that was not his to give. But this matter is for an ecclesiastical court. Go on.”

  Philippa took a moment to absorb this news
. She ran a dry tongue over her pale lips. “A year ago he returned from traveling. On business, I thought. But something frightened him. He put locks on all the inner doors and instructed the steward to keep them locked. That was when he told me he wasn’t Nicholas Walcote.”

  Maude made a shrill sound that startled everyone. Wynchecombe stared at her with irritation. “Who did he say he was?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Then where is Nicholas Walcote?”

  Her tears flowed again and she hugged herself. “He’s dead. Nicholas said he met the real Master Walcote some years ago while traveling. He said they looked alike but that Walcote was killed.”

  “Where?”

  “In Rome. He got the idea to pretend to be him. It worked so well that he just assumed his life. He only left the house to travel abroad and so no one questioned it.”

  “What did you do once you discovered his secret?”

  “What could I do? I knew we was in trouble. I couldn’t say nought to nobody!”

  “You knew it was unlawful. Why did you not come to me?” asked the sheriff.

  “I didn’t want to think of what would happen—”

  “You didn’t want to lose your position, you mean.”

  “That’s right!” she screamed, throwing back her head and staring at each tight-lipped Walcote in the circle. “Why should I? I’d given up enough, haven’t I? Peace of mind. Me soul. Which of you would go back to being a servant? I’d a done anything to stay where I was!”

  Almost too eager, Wynchecombe asked, “Even murder?”

  She plunged her knuckle between her lips in a vain attempt to take back her words. “No, I never killed nobody. I don’t know who killed my Nicholas—”

  “Make her stop calling him that!” Maude shouted.

  Philippa tossed back her head. A braid unwound from its careful coiffure and dangled at her shoulder. “I don’t know what else to call him.”