“He must have put back his hood if she recognized him.” Bell said thoughtfully. “Was he still coughing and sneezing then?”
“No.” Jean’s eyes brightened. “No, nor when I opened the door for the mistress to go in. It was quiet in the room. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. His boots weren’t right.”
“Weren’t right?” Bell urged.
“They were city boots—polished leather with thin soles. No countryman wears boots like that, specially not a servant carryin’ a message.”
“Do you remember anything else….” Bell began, and then held up his hand. “No. This is no way to go about this. Start at the beginning of the day, Jean, and tell me everything you remember that your mistress did and said.”
The man looked puzzled, but began at once. “She got up usual time. Nell can tell you that better than me, and cook will tell you what she ate. She left the house a little before Tierce, like always—”
“Yes,” Mainard put in. “That would be right. She came to the shop Saturday mornings for money for the week. I left that for her with Codi. I had to go early to Basynges to deposit the week’s earnings because I had to take Sabina to Newelyne’s house by noon.”
“She came back in a real fury. Slapped me when I opened the door and kicked me too. Then she went up to the solar. She sent for dinner just before Sext.”
“Did you bring it up?” Bell interrupted.
“No, sir. Never allowed onto the upper floor, not Hamo or me. We cleaned, tended garden, carried water and such but all down here. Nell did the cleanin’ in the solar and bedchamber. She or cook carried up the mistress’s dinner. I’m not sure which.”
Bell nodded. “I’ll speak to them later. Go on.”
“Came clown maybe near two candlemarks after Sext carryin’ the usual bundle of tally sticks—”
“Tally sticks?” Mainard echoed. “Are you sure? For what did Bertrild need tally sticks?”
The servant naturally could not answer the last question and assumed, correctly, that it was just an expression of astonishment. “Knew they was tally slicks because once she tripped on the stairs and dropped them. Wrapping came open, and they fell out all over the floor. Know what tally sticks are. Me dad had them afore we lost the farm and I got sold.”
“Do you know where she took the tally sticks?”
“No, sir.”
“Did she have them with her when she came back?”
“Yes, she did. When I said there was a messenger from her uncle in here, she…she bit her lip and went through to the kitchen. Didn’ have the bundle when she came back. Then she pointed for me to open the door, and she went through. Like I said, it was quiet until she asked this Saeger if he was eager.”
“Did you hear anything else?” Bell asked.
Jean pursed his lips, then pulled them back. “A squeak?” he said uncertainly. “I was just goin’ away to sit on the stair, but he couldn’t of killed her then because a little while later she opened the door and told me she had several errands that must be done at once. The only thing ….” Jean hesitated.
“Yes, go on. Even if you don’t think it’s important, tell me anyway.”
“It’s just…those errands, they weren’t nothing special. She sent the cook off to market for extra food, as if the messenger was going to stay, and she sent Nell off to the laundress, like more sheets and tablecloths was needed. And she sent me and Hamo all the way over to the West Chepe to buy candles, like we didn’t have a candlemaker just beyond Master Josne’s house on the corner of the East Chepe.”
“Well, it is clear enough that she wanted you all out of the house. The question is why. No, never mind that, Jean. There is no way you could know the answer to that. So you all left. And when you came back?”
“There weren’t no one here. House were empty—and not locked up neither, only the bell rope and the latchstrings they was all pushed inside. Had a time fishin’ out the one for the back door.”
“You all came back at the same time?”
“No, acourse not. Cook was back first. She was mad as fire, the fish havin’ dripped all over her basket, and Nell was there, too, when me and Hamo came. But cook and Nell couldn’t think of how to get the latchstring out, so they just sat down to wait. We saw the horse were gone, and we didn’ know how to feel about that. Mistress would be glad to save what he would have eat, but if she wanted him to stay and he wouldn’, we’d all get beaten.”
If anyone had good reason to kill Bertrild, those four servants did, but Bell did not think—if Jean was any example of what the others were—that they had sufficient spirit. And if they had, there would be time enough to question all of them more straitly. So far, Jean was talking freely and easily, and Bell did not want to dry up the source by implying suspicion.
“Did you look through the house when you got in?” he asked.
“No, sir. Thought the mistress and the messenger would be back any minute. Cook was ravin’ ‘cause she didn’ know whether to make extra for the evenin’ meal—if she made more and didn’ need it, mistress would whip her. And Nell were cryin’ ‘cause she didn’ know what kind of bed to get ready and whether it should be down here or up in the solar. She’d get whipped too for not bein’ ready. Hamo and me just sat down on the stair—me to open the door and carry whatever needed bringing in and Hamo to take the horse to the shed.” He paused and then a beatific smile lit his thin, haggard face. “But she never come, and now she never will.”
Such open delight in Bertrild’s death almost precluded Jean being a cause of it. “You did not think to send a message to Master Mainard when his wife did not return home?”
Horror filled Jean’s eyes. “Send a message without the mistress’s order? How could we know if she went somewhere with the messenger and didn’ want master to know? She’d of tortured us to death!”
“Very well,” Bell said. He had experience with mistreated servants, who would do nothing without specific directions, and he thought that for the moment he had drained Jean dry. “Send in Hamo, please.”
The second man was even more pitiful than Jean, dull and terrified. It took Bell and Mainard a little while to calm him enough to answer at all. He had been outside when the messenger came and had seen and heard nothing, but then Bell struck the right note and asked about the horse. Dull, Hamo was, but he loved horses and knew them. When he and Jean had come around the front of the house to go to the West Chepe, he had seen the horse. The messenger’s horse, he reported eagerly, glad at last to have something to tell his master, did not look as if it had come a long way, not unless the rider had travelled very slowly. Moreover, he said, the horse and the saddle were like Bell’s, and then, wringing his hands, that he didn’t know how to say it better.
“But I am not riding my destrier, or my palfrey,” Bell said to Mainard. “I rented a horse from a local stable because I did not wish to walk all the way to St. Catherine’s.”
“That’s what I saw,” Hamo whimpered, trembling.
“We believe you,” Mainard soothed. “Do not worry about it. I know you are good with horses. Was there anything else you saw that was strange?”
“Not then.” Hamo swallowed hard. “When we come back, after we waited a while for mistress, I remember that I left the wheelbarrow out, and I run out back to put it away in the shed…but it weren’t where I left it. I near to died of fright. I didn’t dare tell no one.” He began to shake with recalled terror, and tears ran down his face. “I thought maybe if I run to the master before light the next day, he’d let me say he wanted it. But when I got up to sneak out of the house, the wheelbarrow was there—”
“It was exactly where you left it?” Bell asked eagerly.
Hamo’s face wrinkled with anxiety. “Not perfect sure, maybe it was more to back of the tree. Thought maybe I just missed seein’ it last night.”
“Do you do the rushes on this floor, Hamo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything different about them today from
how they were Saturday morning?”
“Rushes get moved by walkin’,” Hamo said uncertainly. Then he frowned. “Put the rushes down Wednesday. Maybe they should be flatter in the middle? If mistress expected company after Mass on Sunday, she’d tell me to rake up the rushes on Saturday. Not yesterday though, so I didn’.”
“Anything else, Hamo? You have done very well.” The man shook his head. “Good enough. If you think of something later, tell your master. We will not blame you for having forgotten. That often happens when a man is excited. Master Mainard will be pleased by anything you recall. You can go now. And send in Nell.”
The maid had not much to tell them. She had seen and heard little of the messenger. He had been standing behind Mistress Bertrild, quite close, when she sent Nell to the laundress and bade her tell the cook to buy fish and some other things in the market, but he was in the shadow and did not speak, and Nell had been concentrating on what her mistress told her. Making any mistake or failing to carry out Mistress Bertrild’s orders exactly brought painful retribution. And, though she had carried up Mistress Bertrild’s dinner, she had seen nothing at all unusual. The mistress was examining her tally sticks, as she often did on Saturday afternoon. Mainard shook his head over this second mention of the tally sticks, but did not interrupt.
The cook, who was the only emaciated cook Bell had ever seen, had even less to say. She had received her orders from Nell and had not been near mistress or messenger. The one thing she told them that was of real interest was that part of her distress over Bertrild’s absence was that all except the small paring knives were kept locked up, and she could not clean the fish she had bought. Mainard dismissed her with an order to make a good evening meal for the whole household, while Bell stood looking down at the rushes under his feet.
When the cook had left the chamber, sobbing with joy, Bell turned to Mainard and said quickly, “I am sorry if it troubles you, but I think Mistress Bertrild was killed here, likely right in this chamber.”
“By the servants?” Mainard’s voice trembled.
“They had cause enough, but I do not think so. None of them was frightened about Mistress Bertrild’s death, and all expressed their joy in it quite openly. All except Jean are dull, but not stupid enough to do that if they thought they might be suspect.”
“No one would have believed them if they expressed grief,” Mainard remarked dryly.
“No, nor even if they expressed concern, but they could have acted indifferent, as if they did not know what would become of them. Also, I do not think any has the spirit.” He paused to smile. “And of one thing I am sure, Master Mainard, none of them would involve you in any way.”
The saddler shook his head. “None has cause to love me. There was little I could do for them. I sneaked them a little food when I could, but….” He shrugged.
Bell’s lips turned down with distaste. Servants and slaves needed lessoning and he had no quarrel with that, but slow starvation and constant punishment were beyond what he could approve.
“What little you could do must have seemed like manna from heaven to them, but that was not what I meant. They are slaves. If Mistress Bertrild was dead and you accused of it, they would be sold again, perhaps into even worse circumstances. Beside that, why in the world should they carry your wife all the way to your shop, struggle to open the back gate, and harm a man they know would be kind to them when they would need to take her no farther to dump her in the river? And, the body was not carried to your shop in a wheelbarrow. The wheel would have bit deep in the soft border when it was stopped near your back gate and I saw no sign of that, only nearly fresh horse dung.”
“Horse dung? The messenger? No, I cannot believe that a messenger from her uncle would kill Bertrild.”
“He said he was a messenger from her uncle, but there is no proof of that. Perhaps you should ask Sir Druerie about it. You must tell him of his niece’s death, after all.”
Master Mainard put a hand to his head. “Of course I must. I had forgotten. Now who can I send as messenger? Jean and Hamo are useless. I cannot spare Codi, Henry cannot manage a horse because of his hands, and the boys are too young. I suppose I could hire…wait. I know. I could—” He stopped abruptly, his brain finally having taken in what his eyes were watching. “What are you doing, Sir Bellamy?”
While Mainard was speaking, Bell had been using his feet to sweep aside the rushes in a broad swathe from near the benches toward the door. He was utterly amazed to see the planks of the floor scrubbed nearly white, but even with that bleaching of the wood he was not sure he would find anything. Even if blood had spattered when Bertrild was stabbed, the drops might have been caught solely in the rushes. Those could have been removed and, even if not, the drops might by now easily be confused with natural spotting as the rushes dried.
Nonetheless, Bell felt it was worth the small effort he was expending, and, about two-thirds of the way to the door, he was rewarded. Several dark spots appeared on the planks. Bell knelt, wet a finger, put it to the spots, smelled it, and then tasted it.
“I was looking for blood,” he said, in answer to Mainard’s question, sitting back on his heels, “and I think I have found it. I am almost certain now that your wife was killed right here, not lured out to the yard behind your shop.”
“Killed by the man who said he was a messenger? But then where was her body? The servants were all back in the house before Vespers.”
“I would suspect it was hidden in the shed, and that the wheelbarrow that disappeared had been used to move it.” He grimaced. “What a pity wheelbarrows and garden sheds are covered with stains and soil.”
Upon which words, Mainard burst out laughing. “Not Bertrild’s,” he said. “See this floor? Scrubbed white? That was what she had the servants doing every minute they were not employed in some other task. It was her favorite punishment for them. They had to remove the rushes, scrub the floor, and replace the rushes. Upstairs and down, the kitchen, the shed, the wheelbarrow, the ladders, even the privy, are all scrubbed white.”
Bell raised his brows. “Well, if the soul knows what passes here on earth and can have feelings about it, Mistress Bertrild must be feeling considerable satisfaction because having the servants scrub everything white may well help catch her murderer.”
Leaving Mainard staring after him, Bell went out through the door into the kitchen—where the servants gasped and huddled together and then slowly relaxed as he paid them no attention—and then into the garden. This was remarkably well cared for but without the smallest grace, the flowers in circumscribed clumps and the vegetables in rigid rows.
In the shed, Bell found his supposition proved right. There were spots of blood on the back of the wheelbarrow and, behind a pile of old laths, several smears that might have come from the stained cloak. So the body had been moved from the house to the shed in the wheelbarrow and then, perhaps after dark, from the shed to the horse. The gate at the back of the garden was locked, but Bell did not consider that a check to his theory. There had been no keys among the possessions piled up on the stool in St. Catherine’s Hospital, so likely the murderer had Bertrild’s keys.
As Bell returned to the house to warn Mainard about that fact, he heard voices and heavy tramping. When he came in, he saw that the coffinmaker had returned with the body from St. Catherine’s. He waited politely while Mainard sent Jean out to bring the priest back, and then told him about what he thought had happened and that Bertrild’s keys seemed to be missing.
“The house doors have bars as well as locks, and I will warn the servants to be sure the bars are set firmly,” Mainard said with only the most cursory interest. Then he frowned and asked, “Will you be going back to my shop at all today?”
“Yes. I must return my horse to the stable off Gracechurch Street.”
“Would you be so good— I do not mean to use you as a servant, but these poor souls here will have all they can do to help me make ready to receive visitors—would you be so good as to tel
l Codi and the boys to come here to Lime Street? As part of my ‘family’ they should be here as mourners.” He hesitated, biting his lip and looking uncomfortable, but then he added. “Would you also ask Sabina if she would go to Magdalene’s for the night? I do not like to think of her in the shop with no one but little Haesel.”
Feeling a little guilty about sending the whore back to the whorehouse? Bell wondered. But the man was now free to make a decent marriage, and Bell could not really blame him. A twinge of doubt went through him. Would he treat Magdalene the same way if a good marriage tempted him? The flicker of guilt he felt in himself made him keep his voice and expression bland.
“Gladly,” he said. “And if you like, I will take her to the Old Priory Guesthouse myself, as I want to speak to Magdalene.”
“Thank you very much,” Mainard said, as Bell turned away, then uttered a “tchk” and followed him. “And another imposition, if I may,” he said, opening the door. “Would you be good enough to step next door into FitzRevery’s shop and ask him if he would call on me here at Lime Street?”
“Will he not be coming to the funeral?” Bell asked, surprised.
Mainard looked down for a moment, then sighed. “Bertrild had been very offensive to him about an utter stupidity. She once came to FitzRevery’s shop and accused him of being the cause of her father’s death by introducing Gervase to the Old Priory Guesthouse and thus corrupting him. I will be grateful if FitzRevery comes to the funeral, of course, but I cannot expect it. But when you spoke of notifying Sir Druerie, I recalled that FitzRevery has a farm and storehouse for fleece at Hamble, which is not far from Swythling. In fact, one can pass right by Swythling on the way to Hamble. I can send a message to Sir Druerie by one of FitzRevery’s men.”
“A good thought, but please do not tell Sir Druerie any more than that his niece has been murdered. No details, except that you have been exonerated. You should ask, of course, what message Sir Druerie sent to your wife, saying that your servants told you of the messenger but that Mistress Bertrild was killed before she could inform you what he desired of her—or of you.”
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