Murder at Broadstowe Manor

by Jason Vail

  “The Golden Stag,” the innkeeper said.

  “The Golden Stag,” Stephen said. “You sent for us. Something about it not being safe to return to the Turtle.”

  “Oh, yes, I did,” Harry said. “I was wondering what it was like inside here. Not the hovel I expected.”

  “Thank you,” the innkeeper said. “We strive for quality and comfort.”

  “Your stable needs a little work,” Harry said.

  “Those who cannot afford a bed never complain about our fresh hay,” the innkeeper said.

  “You saw Squinty, I take it?” Stephen asked.

  “You don’t give a man time to collect his wits, do you,” Harry said.

  “Since you only have half the wits of a normal man, I thought you’d done so already.”

  “It’s the bump on the head. I’m still groggy. But yes, we spoke.”

  “She denied knowing about the letter and being involved in FitzHerbert’s murder?”

  “Well, that was the gist. How did you know?”

  “We spoke with one of her boys, one of those who thumped you.” Stephen jerked a thumb toward the yard. “He said the same thing.”

  “Why did I bother risking my life then? We could have just caught one and put the thumbscrews on him.”

  “Stephen prefers the dagger to the throat,” Gilbert said from the window. “And I’ve heard him mutter something about cutting out tongues.”

  “A man with no subtly, no art,” Harry muttered. “Not to mention no sense. Cut out their tongues and they can’t tell you what you want to know. I could do his job better than he, and without the bloodshed that follows him around like a bad reputation.”

  “The catching is the hard part,” Stephen said. “We needed bait.”

  “That’s what I am? Bait?”

  “And such good bait. A fellow like you can’t run away and spoil things. Although I have to confess I did not intend it to turn out so.”

  “Just my bad luck.”

  “There are people in the yard,” Gilbert said, maintaining his vigil at a crack in one of the window shutters. “Quite a few of them.”

  “What are they doing?” Stephen asked.

  “Collecting their wounded and, from the look of things, discussing what to do next,” Gilbert said. “Ah, what do you know? They’re leaving.”

  Stephen blew out the lamp and dashed to the window to see for himself. He saw the dark silhouettes of a dozen or more men as they filed out of the yard.

  “Now,” the innkeeper said, “about my money.”

  “Pay the man, Gilbert,” Stephen said, slipping out the door. “And don’t go back to the Turtle.”

  Chapter 17

  “What the —!” Gilbert sputtered.

  But Stephen did not hear the rest of Gilbert’s protest, for he was jogging across the yard to the far corner of the stable, where he had seen the dark silhouettes vanish.

  He peered around the corner. The last of Squinty’s boys was climbing over the wicker fence separating the inn’s back garden from the field, and making a mess of it from the crackling sounds and the cursing.

  Stephen gave them a moment to get ahead, then crossed the yard and eased over the fence without all the racket the men had made.

  Beyond the fence was a strip of grass high as a man’s thigh. Even in the dark Stephen could see where it had been trampled down by the passage of the men he was following. Beyond the strip of grass was a path, a white swath in the starlight, and beyond that the field itself. Nothing grew there but stubble, for it had been in corn of some type, probably rye or barley, which had been harvested.

  Stephen knelt and then lay on his stomach to silhouette the men against the sky. They were some distance ahead. He rose, and followed them. He could not see them well but he could hear them.

  This field was owned by FitzHerbert, or more properly was part of his honor and now owned by his heir, a small child too young to own anything. Stephen crept along doing his best to imitate a cat. The FitzHerbert manor house emerged from the darkness as a dark block risking above apple trees planted in the field behind it.

  Squinty’s gang pressed on through the orchard that lay to the east of the house, but when they struck the fence separating it from the field, they followed the fence.

  Stephen kept after them, expecting someone to look back and call out, but no one did.

  Shortly, they reached a road which had to be Carts Lane, and turned east. Carts Lane emptied into Frog Lane and the gang turned south. Frog Lane in turn ended at Bye Street. Stephen thought the gang would cross the road and take to the fields on the other side, but instead, they turned toward Bye Gate, which was only a hundred yards away.

  For a moment, Stephen, hanging back in the doorway of a house, thought with incredulity that Squinty’s boys just might knock on the gate and ask for admission.

  But instead, they turned onto the path that ran along the town ditch.

  About a hundred yards on, the Squinty boys crossed the ditch. Stephen slunk close and lay on this stomach behind a patch of tall grass to watch the last of them. There was water flowing in the ditch from the stream on the west side of town that had been diverted for that purpose, and Stephen knew the ditch to be at least armpit deep along its entire length. But the boys sank no farther than knee deep.

  Once they crossed the ditch, they seemed to disappear into the side of the slope on the other side.

  Stephen waited until it was quiet. He went forward on hands and knees and slid down the steep side of the ditch to the place where the others had crossed. He thrust a hand into to the water and felt around and, as he expected, there was a stone beneath the surface. He stood up and stepped onto the stone. A probing foot found another one. He stepped on that and probed for his companion, and in this careful way crossed the four feet of stream without getting wet above the knees.

  Now to figure out where the gang had gone. About three feet from the top of the far slope at the spot they seem to have disappeared, Stephen found a clump of ivy. When he felt within the ivy, his fingers detected a wicker structure supporting it. He pulled up the ivy and the wicker, and discovered that it was a door, covered in the ivy, that concealed the entrance to a tunnel.

  He heard faint voices coming from within the tunnel, and made out someone saying, “Hurry up, you bastards. I gotta pee,” and receiving the reply, “Put a clamp in it, Alfie.”

  Stephen had wondered how Squinty’s boys had got into and out of the town without having to bother the gate wardens. This was it.

  Feeling satisfied in a job well done, Stephen re-crossed the ditch.

  Stephen’s party left the Golden Stag at dawn and went up the Leominster road to the Dominican monastery. The monks had recently opened a hospital there, and let out space in the nearby barn for relatives of the sick and travelers who could not afford the inns nearer town. The accommodations were rough, consisting only of a spot of hay for a mattress that had its share of fleas and poor ale. Yet it did good business and was often full or nearly so during the summer. Fortunately, there was a shed for the overflow but occupants had to share it with pigs and goats.

  It was some way to Saint Owen’s Church from there as there was no direct route that did not take one in sight of the city wall, so Stephen rode out well before the appointed time over Gilbert’s protests that this meeting was dangerous and should be avoided. Stephen rode northeast, and then took a narrow cart track to the southeast which eventually struck the road leading out of Saint Owen’s Gate about a mile from town.

  The church occupied the center of the road about sixty yards from the city gate. The midday service had not yet begun when Stephen reached the church, and he tethered his horse to a ring on the wall of a tavern and went in. The table he took by the window offered a good view to the gate, and the window was big enough that he’d be able to leap through it, retrieve his horse, and be away if any trouble appeared, like more of Squinty’s gang or sheriff’s deputies.

  The bell rang for Sext after Step
hen had got halfway through the pitcher of ale he had ordered with his dinner of bacon, beans, and bread.

  People began leaving the shops along the street and streamed to the church for the service, which was timed to cap their dinner break so they wouldn’t lose much work time.

  “You’re not going?” the taverns proprietor asked Stephen as he prepared to leave.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  This irritated the proprietor, for he apparently expected to close up. He had to direct one of the serving girls to remain to watch over Stephen in case he intended to steal anything. Even well-dressed gentlemen were not above a little light-fingered pilfering, as any tavern and innkeeper knew well. The serving girl plopped on a stool, put her head down on the table, and went to sleep moments after the proprietor and his wife marched out the door.

  She was still asleep when the service ended and the church emptied. Stephen crossed the hall and shook the serving girl on the shoulder.

  “Time to wake up,” he said. “Service is over. They’ll be here soon.”

  She sat up and blinked. “Oh, thanks. You want anything?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Stephen returned to his bench by the window.

  Presently, Squinty Peg appeared at the city gate. She had words with the wardens in the passage. They all laughed at some joke. Then she hobbled across the bridge over the moat and approached the church, making use of her cane.

  She stopped at the church’s western and main entrance and looked around. Then she went in.

  Stephen paid his bill, belted on his sword, collected his horse, and crossed the street to the church.

  Saint Owen’s was like other churches in that it had another door, the secondary one opening onto a porch on the south side. Such doors were usually not barred, and that proved to be the case today. Stephen entered through the south door and drew his horse behind him. He left the door open.

  It was a fining offense to bring a horse into a church, but no one was there to object, as was the usual case after the end of the midday service. It was dim in the church, shafts of light streaming down from the narrow side windows, leaving rectangles of yellow sunlight on the dirt floor.

  “Well, Squinty,” Stephen said, voice echoing in the hush. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

  Squinty spun about, surprised to find him behind her. She had been watching the main door, expecting him to enter that way.

  “I’m a busy woman,” Squinty said. “I don’t have time for your nonsense.”

  “Yes, I expect you are. Queen of Grope Lane, I’ve heard you called. That is a lot of responsibility.”

  Squinty smiled, which rendered her frog-like face even more frog-like, as if she contemplated a fly that she was about to finish off. It was hard to imagine that a handsome boy like Martin had come from her.

  “You heard me called that?” Peg asked.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You run Grope Lane?”

  “I do, and many other things besides.”

  “Like the roofers?”

  “They pay me tribute so as not to get into trouble with the authorities. How do you know about them?”

  “I had a run in with a pack of them in Ludlow a while back. They were from here.”

  “Ah, yes. Ollie, that boy who died in Ludlow. I don’t let them do jobs in Hereford. Not a good idea to foul the nest, you know.”

  “And I expect you’re also involved in a little robbery yourself.”

  “I thought you had no interest in that. Though I find that hard to believe, you being a crown officer.”

  “I’m no longer a crown officer. In fact, I’m in a bit of trouble myself, and am dodging the sheriff. But you already know that.”

  “Which is why you choose this curious place for a meeting, and why you relied on your legless friend rather than coming yourself. You can’t move about the city without being spotted.” Peg chuckled. “It’s almost like you’re one of us now — on the dodge.”

  “I suppose so. For now.”

  “So what is it you’re up to? Hal said you’re after those who killed Martin and his patron.”

  “That’s right. And I thought you’d have an interest in that.”

  Peg shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck about Martin. Hanging around that rich man he got too big for his stockings, boasted that he was destined for greater things than working for the family, like a good son should.”

  “His refusal to help with the robbery the last straw for you?”

  “Yeah. It would have been rich if FitzHerbert had blamed the loss on him.” Peg laughed.

  “And you had nothing to do with their deaths?”

  “I already told your gimp boy Harry that.”

  “It was the truth?”

  “What do I have to do, cross my heart and swear before God?”

  “I won’t make you go that far. So then, who did?”

  “Did what?”

  “Who killed FitzHerbert and Martin.”

  “Don’t know. Everyone says FitzHerbert killed himself after murdering that lout of a son of mine.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  Peg was silent for a few moments. She gnawed on her lower lip. “Nah. I don’t. Not really.”

  “I don’t believe you don’t care what happened to Martin. I know you are concerned about the loss of what he brought in. Don’t you want to know what really happened?”

  Squinty shrugged. “There probably won’t be nothing I can do about it.”

  “Knowing is better than not.”

  “I don’t have much that will help.”

  “Maybe you don’t. Maybe you do. Was there anything going on in the household? Any disputes between FitzHerbert and anyone else?”

  Peg crossed her arms. “Look, if you think Martin kept me up on every little drama of the FitzHerbert household, you are much mistaken. I only saw him from time to time, when he came by to drop off my cut of his earnings. We didn’t gossip. You might want to talk to Curthose. If anyone knows the household gossip, it’s him.”

  “Curthose would not be at the honor any longer, I would imagine.”

  “You are a smart one to figure that out.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  Peg shrugged. “Curthose has a townhouse on Milk Lane near the cathedral close. Third house from the corner. You might find him there.”

  “And about the letter.”

  “What letter?”

  “You don’t know about any secret letter FitzHerbert was carrying?”

  “Martin never mentioned no letter.”

  “No one asked you to steal it for them?”

  “We never stole no letter. Are we done now? I’m an old woman, full of aches and pains. I need to get home and get off my poor feet.”

  Peg stepped toward the main entrance.

  “Wait,” Stephen said. “There’s one other thing.”

  “What would that be? You’re trying my patience.” But Peg stopped and turned to face him.

  “Where did you get that sleeping draught?”

  “The dwale? Why?”

  “I’m curious. I understand that dwale is not common.”

  “Hamblett’s. Is that definitely all?”

  “Bought it yourself?”

  “Of course not. I had one of my girls do it. I am done answering questions.”

  Peg hobbled toward the entrance with a wave.

  Chapter 18

  Stephen went back the way he had come. The clouds were low and scudding. A light rain began to fall, driven by a gusting wind that rattled the branches of the trees and stirred the grass by the road. On such a dark day, you wanted nothing more than to huddle by a fire with a blanket across your knees, safe from the wet and drafts.

  It was a day that matched his mood: dark and troubled, and increasingly desperate and devoid of hope. He felt as if he was in a house with many doors. He went around to the doors trying the latches. Most wouldn’t open. The few that did opened onto dark passages fill
ed with cobwebs, leading nowhere that he could see. He had been certain that Squinty Peg would provide him with the clue he needed to unravel the mystery of the murder, and through that the recovery of the letter. But she had been one of those corridors that led into the dark, into nowhere. If she was telling the truth. And he had the feeling that she was concealing something. He wasn’t sure what. But people like Squinty always lied. It was as if it made life more enjoyable, the fooling of people, a way of demonstrating at least to yourself your superiority over the idiots who believed the lies. But perhaps her lie wasn’t important. He didn’t know. He had no answers.

  After an hour or so, he reached the barn at the crossroads. Even the sight of Harry on a bench within the shed, his face purple with bruises but apparently recovered, did not lift his spirits. Harry’s stumps were exposed and he was massaging them with one hand; the other hand held a carving knife and a block of wood that Harry had begun to turn into someone’s face. Stephen could see the terrible scars where the barber surgeon had sewed up the stumps, mottled and ragged. He thought about his own injury, his wounded foot, and how it was nothing compared to Harry’s.

  Stephen took a seat on the bench by Harry. “What are you working on?”

  “A girl.”

  “What girl? Not another of the saint?” At one time, Harry had made small money by carving the likeness of a young woman found dead in the yard of Saint Laurence’s Church in Ludlow. She had been as beautiful in death as in life, and people Ludlow had thought her a saint.

  “Naw.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “You might.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Nothing to see right now. It’s pretty raw.” Harry slipped the carving under his shirt.

  “Doesn’t this place have ale?”

  “Not any you’ll want to drink,” Harry said, passing Stephen his cup. “Try not to choke. And don’t spill any. It’s the best they have. And cost me good money.”

  Stephen sipped from the cup. He almost spit out the ale; it was sour enough to make the tongue curl and the throat gag. He swallowed with effort.

  “Waste of time with Squinty, I see,” Harry said.