A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery)

by Alys Clare

  I couldn’t bear any more. I moved over to her, taking her in my arms. She was stiff, unbending. I said, ‘Celia, I’m so very sorry. You were going through all this, and I didn’t realize. I didn’t notice anything was wrong!’

  She pulled away from me. ‘Because I didn’t let you!’ she shouted. ‘Dear God, Gabe, I have some pride! I’d insisted on marrying a vicious, drunken fool without a penny to his name, purely because he had a handsome face, good clothes and pretty manners – even though my own dear father did his best to persuade me not to! Can’t you imagine how I’d have felt, forced to crawl back, admit I’d made a frightful mistake and throw myself on Father’s mercy?’

  ‘Father wouldn’t have seen it like that and you know it!’ I flashed back. ‘We went through all this just now! He loves you very much, Celia, just as Mother does and I do, and Nathaniel too, although you’d never know it, but that doesn’t mean even he wouldn’t support you and defend you if called upon to do so. None of us would have made you suffer more than you already had done, and as for Father, he—’

  ‘But I saw it like that,’ she said very softly. She didn’t seem to have taken in anything I’d just said, beyond the first sentence. ‘I’d set a trap for myself, Gabe, all on my own, and crawling back in ignominy to Father was more than I could bear.’

  ‘But—’

  She disentangled herself – I’d grabbed hold of her again – and now, with great dignity, she walked across the room to the door of her bedchamber. ‘I don’t want to talk any more,’ she said firmly. Then she let herself out and closed the door behind her.

  I was left alone in the pretty little anteroom. I had the awful feeling that there was more – worse – to come; she hadn’t even begun to tell me about Jeromy’s violence.

  SIXTEEN

  I strode along the gallery and into my study, flinging myself into my chair with such a fury of frustrated energy that it tipped backwards and all but threw me to the floor.

  I was very afraid for my sister. What she had just told me surely increased the likelihood of some friend of Jeromy beginning to put it around that she had wanted him out of the way. And she and I hadn’t even touched upon what Judyth had revealed: dear Lord above, how that would add fuel to the flames if it were to become known.

  I had to act; had to do something, for sitting there worrying at questions to which nobody would give me answers was driving me to distraction. The surest way of making sure she wasn’t accused – or, God forbid, convicted – of a crime she hadn’t committed was to identify the real perpetrator and ensure he was brought to justice. How in God’s name was I to proceed with that quest?

  I sat there for some time, and gradually my frantic thoughts calmed. I began to feel better, and decided that to dissipate some energy I would collect Flynn and take him out into the good fresh air. Sometimes I’d found that the rhythmic act of walking put the mind into a relaxed state bordering on a trance, and then ideas that hadn’t cropped up before could make their presence felt.

  It was worth a try.

  We went out of the side gate and set off across the fields, heading east towards the higher ground. We walked – well, I walked and Flynn ran – for miles. Whether or not my mind entered a relaxed state I couldn’t say. If it did, nothing remotely useful emerged. We had gone round in a wide half-circle, coming back along the path that passes Rosewyke on its way to the river, and we were at the spot where the track branches off to the house when Flynn suddenly dashed off towards the grass beneath the oak tree on the right. Impatient to get on home, I called to him, but, unusually for him, he ignored me. I called again, shouting this time, but his only response was a brief glance at me over his shoulder and an ingratiating waggle of his stern.

  I went over to see what he had found.

  We were, as far as I could recall, at the place where Gelyan Thorn had fallen out of the tree. With an exclamation, I knelt down; I’d forgotten my resolve to feel around in the grass to see if I could locate the stone on which she had crushed her skull.

  Flynn had found it for me. It was a large, irregularly shaped piece of granite such as ploughmen regularly turn up and leave at the field margins. It was not embedded in the earth but lay on the grass, the upward-pointing corner stained with blood.

  Poor Gelyan. What evil chance, to fall in such a way that the most vulnerable part of her body landed on so damaging an object. It looked as if the theory concerning her death was the right one. I would make sure to tell Theo, although from his reaction when I’d told him of the circumstances, it appeared he’d never been in much doubt.

  So intense had been my concentration that I only now became aware of Flynn, who had abandoned the bloody stone as soon as he’d drawn my attention to it and was now nose-down in the grass some ten or twelve yards over to the left, on the strip of verge beside the track. He was giving little yelps of excitement, front paws scrabbling and sending up clods of earth and clumps of grass.

  I got up and ran over to him, taking hold of him by the scruff of the neck and firmly pulling him off. It took some doing, for he is a big dog and he was intent on whatever it was he’d found. ‘It’s all right, Flynn, I see it. Leave it now.’

  Training overcame instinct and, obedient dog that he was, he did as I commanded. The trembling in his body and the soft, anxious whining in his throat told me how hard it was to do so.

  I’d known, even as I hurried to get him away from his discovery, what it was. I’d smelt it: that ghastly, unmistakable stench of rotting flesh. In the grass beside the track lay a pair of dead rabbits, skinned, the flesh crawling with maggots and the bodies bloated to double the size.

  I sat back on my heels. I knew, then, what had happened: the knowledge came like a sudden flame in a dark room.

  These rabbits were what Gelyan had come to deliver. It was precisely the sort of offering in which she had specialized, and formed the latest – the last – in her inventive list of objects designed to repulse and disgust. She had come along as it grew dark, intending to creep up to the house when we had all retired for the night and leave her rabbits on the doorstep. She would have …

  If she had come to deposit the rabbits, what had she been doing up the tree? Had she intended to tie the rope that would have thrown me violently from my horse and leave the skinned rabbits?

  Or had the assumption that she’d been about to set that potentially lethal trap been wrong?

  My thoughts were racing now. Did she fall on that conveniently placed stone as she tumbled out of the tree? But if I was right and it hadn’t been Gelyan who had planned to tie it, why would she have been up the tree in the first place?

  She had planned to do no such thing, any more than she had been responsible for that first rope that tripped Hal and threw me. Old Josiah Thorn had chuckled when I related the list of earlier offerings, but when I got to the rope across the track he had paled and whispered, Not that – not anything like that.

  He had known what I now realized: Gelyan had been determined and full of resentment against me but she would never have done something so dangerous.

  If she hadn’t climbed the tree to tie the rope, then she hadn’t died by striking her head as she fell. If that had been the case, then there was another explanation: someone had picked up that heavy, wickedly pointed piece of stone and wielded it to stave in her skull.

  Somebody else had also come to Rosewyke that night, found her in the way and dispatched her, for the furtive Jesuit to find as she lay dying.

  Someone else whose attacks on me were escalating in violence and who, but for Gelyan’s unwitting intervention, might well have succeeded in setting up that taut rope precisely at neck height.

  Celia stood at the window in her bedroom and watched Gabriel march off up the track, the big black dog running to and fro in an ecstasy of delight, nose deep in the fascinating smells of the grass verges on either side. She wondered where he was going, how long he would be. She didn’t really care about his destination, but having him out of the house ma
de her feel as if a heavy load had been removed from her shoulders. I know he is trying to help me, she thought, and, indeed, I don’t know what I would do without him. But the strain of his presence is almost more than I can bear …

  She wandered back into the anteroom. Oh, but he’d made her so welcome! He – or more likely Sallie – had gone to so much trouble to prepare these two rooms for her, and she was grateful to the depths of her being. Sometimes, though, she longed to be anywhere but here. Longed to be anywhere that people didn’t keep looking at her and asking her questions she couldn’t answer.

  She resumed her comfortable chair beside the window and picked up her sewing. Threaded a different-coloured silk through the eye of her needle. Began to stitch. And presently, as it so often did, the steady, even stitching calmed her. Drove back – for a time, anyway – the images of horror.

  She heard footsteps on the track. The sandy, stony ground crunched. Crunch, crunch, crunch; whoever it was, they strode smartly. Then there came a resounding knock on the big oak door.

  Celia brought herself back to the present. Took a breath to steady herself – the images had broken down her defences – and stretched.

  The knocking came again, louder now.

  Where was Sallie? Why hadn’t she gone to see who it was?

  The knocking sounded again.

  Hadn’t Samuel noticed they had a visitor? But then she remembered: both Samuel and Tock had gone off to take a bull calf to the cattle market.

  Celia suppressed a sigh, pushed the needle into the silk and put down her sewing. It appeared it was up to her to see who had come calling.

  She walked along the gallery and down the stairs. It’s probably some patient, she thought. I’d better be courteous to him or her. Gabriel, she had noticed, wasn’t exactly inundated with the sick and the injured demanding his services.

  She crossed the hall and pulled open the heavy door.

  A man stood on the step. He was tall and extremely thin, the long line of him exaggerated by the dark garments: he wore a fine wool cloak in an indeterminate shade of greyish-brown, and beneath it could be seen the skirts of a black robe. His face was drawn, with hollows beneath the cheekbones. His eyes were heavily hooded, and in the shade from his soft-brimmed hat it was difficult to make out their colour. On seeing her, he swept off the hat and bowed, all in one smooth movement. ‘My apologies for disturbing you, madam,’ he said in a low voice with a marked accent. ‘I seek the doctor.’

  ‘He is not here at present,’ Celia replied. She hesitated. She was wary, for some reason she could not begin to fathom, and found that she wanted to tell this man to go away and come back later. But he’d just said he needed a doctor, and she owed Gabriel so much … She opened the door more widely and said, ‘Please, come in. I’m sure my brother won’t be long.’

  The man bowed again and said, still bent over, ‘Thank you, my lady. Most kind.’

  Where do I take him? Celia wondered wildly. Parlour? Little morning parlour? Kitchen? No, not the kitchen. She bit back a laugh. It wasn’t funny, not at all – this might well be a new patient, and a wealthy one as well, for that wool cloak was good quality, and she knew she must do her best to impress him. She led the way across the hall and into the library.

  It was a good choice, she reflected as the man gazed round, his hat in his hands. As with all the rooms in Gabriel’s lovely house, the proportions were good. Gabriel had furnished it with taste, and the furniture – table, four high-backed chairs, chests – was of fine English oak. The wide fireplace – empty now – had a granite surround and was framed by beautiful wooden panelling.

  ‘Please, be seated.’ Celia pulled out a chair. ‘May I fetch you—’

  The man made a swift, elegant gesture of refusal. As he did so, the skirt of his cloak fell away and she saw something hanging from his cord belt. It was a string of small, round wooden beads, interspersed at regular intervals with slightly larger ones. Here and there among the dull wood glittered a touch of gold.

  Noticing her eyes on the beads, the man twitched his cloak so that it covered them.

  Celia suppressed a gasp. It surely cannot be a rosary!

  She didn’t know precisely what happened to people seen carrying rosaries. She was sure, however, it wasn’t anything good.

  Maybe it was just a string of beads …

  The man said quietly, ‘I disturb you, my lady, and I cannot tell you how much I regret that.’ She risked a quick glance at his face. He looked fearful, anxious, yet she could see he was trying to disguise it. He rose, with very evident effort, to his feet, supporting himself with a hand on the table. He drew in a sharp breath, his face creasing in distress. He’s in pain too, she thought. ‘I will go, madam,’ he murmured, ‘and return another time, hoping that my luck will then be better and I shall find the doctor is—’

  She made up her mind. So what if he was carrying a rosary? So what if he was indeed what she was beginning to suspect he was? He was ill, or wounded, and he had sought out Gabriel because he desperately needed help. She couldn’t bring herself to turn him away.

  She put a hand on his shoulder – bony and hard – and gently pushed him back into the chair. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘While we wait for my brother, I will fetch you something to eat and drink.’

  ‘No, please, there is no need!’ He was half standing again, a hand raised as if in rejection of the offer.

  She smiled at him. ‘There is every need.’ You are starving, she could have added. If what she believed was true, he was probably living the life of a fugitive, friendless, homeless, and in all likelihood it was days since he had eaten. ‘Wait here,’ she added. ‘I won’t be long.’

  The kitchen was empty. She set about loading a tray – mugs, a jug for the ale – and the small noises must have reached Sallie’s little room, off the kitchen.

  Sallie was tucking strands of stray hair beneath her white cap, straightening her gown, rubbing the drowse from her eyes. ‘I’ll do that, miss!’ she said. ‘I fell asleep! I’m that sorry, I shouldn’t have done so, and now look at me, letting you do all this!’ Gently but firmly she nudged Celia out of the way. ‘What is it you want, Miss Celia?’

  Celia thought swiftly. If she told the truth, that a suffering patient was awaiting Gabriel in the library, then undoubtedly Sallie would insist on serving him herself. She took her housekeeper’s duties very seriously, Celia had observed, and disliked anyone – well, to be precise, Celia – usurping her role.

  I should not let her see him, Celia thought. I am prepared to take the risk – if risk there is – but I must not allow Sallie to do so. She thought swiftly.

  ‘Something tasty to eat and something restoring to drink, I think, please, Sallie,’ she said brightly. ‘I have a visitor! One of my friends,’ she improvised, ‘the wife of a colleague of my late husband – has come to see how I am, and—’

  Sallie paused and turned to face her, giving her a wide, happy beam. ‘Now isn’t that nice!’ she exclaimed. ‘Considerate and kind, I call it, and I shall prepare something really appetizing!’ She returned to her bustling, now at the larder, now poking up the fire and sticking in a poker to heat up. ‘Cakes and warmed spiced wine, I think – it may be the month of May, but still there’s a nip in the air.’ Celia watched her work. ‘You want it in the parlour, Miss Celia? Or the library?’

  Again Celia considered. ‘Neither, Sallie,’ she said. ‘I shall entertain my friend up in my sitting room, for undoubtedly we shall not wish to be disturbed!’ She gave a little giggle, trying to imply that she and the fictitious woman friend might be exchanging a few girlish secrets.

  Sallie nodded sagely. ‘I quite understand, miss. There’ – with a flourish, she smoothed the clean white cloth and added a couple of pretty silver goblets to the tray – ‘that’s ready now. Go on ahead, miss, and I’ll bring this.’

  Firmly Celia took the tray from her. ‘No, Sallie, don’t trouble yourself,’ she said, in the sort of tone that allowed no argument. Sallie stoo
d watching her, face expressing surprise. ‘In fact,’ Celia added, ‘why not get out in the sunshine for a while? It’s such a beautiful day.’

  Sallie nodded slowly, her expression doubtful. ‘Well, I suppose I could walk down to the village and arrange for Dorcas to come up and help me with giving the dairy a really thorough scrubbing-out, for it certainly needs it …’

  ‘Yes. I should do that.’

  Offering no explanation – why, indeed, should she? – Celia murmured her thanks and swept out of the room.

  She hurried across to the library. The man leapt to his feet. She said softly, ‘Follow me. We shall be more private elsewhere.’ Then she led the way up the stairs, along the gallery and into the anteroom to her bedchamber whose door, she was pleased to see, was shut. Her pretty sitting room, colourfully furnished and smelling faintly of roses, was welcoming, and, putting the tray down on her little work table, she drew up a couple of chairs.

  He stepped in after her and closed the door.

  The house was very quiet. I’d left Flynn out in the yard, muddy and exhausted, lapping up water as if he hadn’t seen any for a week. Not finding Sallie in the kitchen, I risked a glance into her room, but it was empty, the bed neatly made, everything in the sort of order Sallie loved. I wandered across the hall and into the parlour, going on through to the library. A chair was out of place, pulled away from the table as if someone had recently sat on it.

  Celia, it appeared, was still in her room. I went up to find her.

  I reached the top of the stairs and was about to turn in the direction of Celia’s side of the upper storey when I heard a noise. It came from the direction of my study. Had Celia gone in there looking for something? What?

  Trying to keep as quiet as possible, I tiptoed along the gallery and into my bedchamber. You can reach my study by going on along the gallery and through the small bedroom, but the door to my chamber was ajar and I thought I might be quieter approaching via the connecting door to the study.