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

by Alys Clare

  He met my eyes in a long, slow glance. ‘You do, do you?’

  ‘Yes. Will you show it to me please, Father?’

  His face lit up, and it occurred to me that I might have just made history as the first person ever to ask to view his precious, and deadly dull, collection.

  ‘It’s funny you should mention the collection,’ he said as we crossed the yard.

  ‘Why?’

  Once again he looked at me, his face puzzled now. ‘I’ll show you.’

  We went out to the furthest of the barns, the one that looked in the most imminent danger of collapse, and went inside. My father went ahead, eager to demonstrate the delights of his great mass of rusty old metal. Every type of implement was there, from plough shares and antique scythes to axes, from carving knives to swords.

  ‘And this,’ my father said, pointing to a gap between two axes where a couple of nails suggested something had once hung, ‘is where the voulge used to live.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Voulge. It’s of foreign manufacture. It was made and used by the—’

  ‘The Venetians,’ I supplied.

  I’ve had a couple of men look at it and they say it’s of foreign manufacture, Theo had told me. And, I’d thought, Nicolaus Quinlie traded with Venice. We’d surmised, the two of us, that a hired killer would use a weapon from his own land.

  We’d been wrong. The link with Venice, however, had stuck in my mind, irrelevant though I now knew it to be …

  My father frowned slightly. ‘No, not the Venetians, the French.’

  ‘The French,’ I repeated absently. It didn’t matter, not in the least, but I had to keep up the pretence of interest if this was to convince my father.

  ‘Aye, the voulge was a French weapon,’ he said eagerly, ‘comprised of a slightly curved blade attached to the side of a pole. It was the same sort of weapon, and with largely the same function, as a pike,’ he went on, warming to his theme. ‘The blade was quite broad at the base and good for hacking, but it narrowed to a point at the end for stabbing.’ He mimed the action, first lunging forward with his imaginary weapon and then swishing it viciously sideways. ‘Sometimes the blade had a hook on the back, which technically meant it was a voulge-guisarme.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ I murmured.

  My father didn’t notice the mild irony.

  ‘It was widespread during the interminable wars with France that stemmed from Henry V’s reign,’ he explained. ‘Agincourt and all those other battles, you know. Of course, similar weapons are still in use – that’s the way of it, I’ve found, that blades go on being modified, or not, as usage slowly and steadily shows what works best. Take the pike, for instance, where you’ll find that—’

  ‘And how did this voulge come to be hidden away here in your barn?’ I interrupted. My father’s lengthy discourses on the development of weapons, tools and other metal implements were well known and usually avoided where possible, and now I had far more important matters on my mind.

  He seemed to straighten up.

  ‘My mother’s great-great-grandfather Gelbert Oldreive was at Agincourt and he brought home a trophy,’ he said with pride. ‘He tore it out of the hands of a dying Frenchie who’d tried to kill him with it, only he got in first.’

  ‘And when did you notice it was missing?’

  ‘Now let me see.’ He frowned. ‘Last week, I think. Or it might have been the week before. I’m not entirely sure. I was hunting for a handle for my scythe, and I reckoned there ought to be something out here in the barn that I could use.’

  That was typical of my frugally minded father. It gave him much pleasure to fulfil a need by modifying something he already had instead of purchasing new.

  ‘Perhaps two weeks ago, then,’ I mused. It had, I reflected, been rather more than that.

  ‘Somebody’s probably borrowed it,’ my father said resignedly, ‘mentioning nobody in particular, although in heaven’s sweet name, I can’t guess for what purpose.’ He glanced in the direction of Nathaniel’s house. ‘I’m not a man to make a fuss,’ he added in a tone of utter reasonableness, ‘and, as I’ve always said, I don’t mind my children borrowing my belongings, but on two conditions: you must ask permission, and you must—’

  ‘Put them back where they belong when we’ve finished with them.’ I completed the sentence. He’d been saying it since I’d been old enough to understand speech.

  ‘Well, it’d be nice if folks listened and obeyed,’ he harrumphed. Then, once more eyeing me curiously, he said, ‘Why are you so interested? Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, for you to come here asking about my father’s old collection just when there’s a piece missing?’

  I drew a breath. I hated having to lie to him but I didn’t think I had any choice. ‘I’m very afraid to tell you, Father, but it’s possible that someone else stole your voulge; someone outside family and household.’

  ‘But why—’

  ‘It seems it was the weapon that killed Jeromy,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s hard to see how that could be, but I’ve seen the blade and it fits the description you just gave me.’

  ‘D’you want me to go with you and confirm it?’ he offered. Looking at his suddenly pale face, I guessed it wasn’t something he was eager to do.

  ‘Good of you to offer, Father, but there’s no need. I don’t think there can be much doubt.’

  He nodded. Then, after a pause, he said, ‘So this man – the one who killed both Jeromy and Nicolaus Quinlie – you think he came here, to Fernycombe, and broke into my barn, searching for a murder weapon?’

  ‘He wouldn’t really have had to break in,’ I said gently. I indicated the loose-fitting door sinking on its hinges. There was a heavy bolt, but it no longer shot home into its socket.

  ‘No, you’re right, son,’ my father agreed anxiously. ‘Oh, dear Lord, I should have done something about that door ages ago – made it secure, somehow – and now look what’s happened! My daughter’s husband dead, and killed by a weapon stolen from my own barn! This is – this is quite dreadful!’ He stared at me, horror in his eyes. ‘Can’t truthfully say I liked the man,’ he added with painful honesty, ‘but even so!’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty, Father,’ I said quickly. ‘We can’t know why the killer chose to steal a weapon, and from here of all places, and I’m quite sure he’d have used some other method of execution had he not found your barn and its contents.’ This was getting very difficult.

  But, to my intense relief, he was nodding in agreement. ‘Aye, you’re right, son. That Quinlie’s just as dead as Jeromy, and he was done for by a ruddy great stone in his mouth.’

  Nicolaus Quinlie had died from a knife thrust, in fact, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell my father that. ‘There you are, then,’ I said, patting his shoulder. ‘Put a new lock on the barn door and forget about it.’

  We turned to leave. He glanced back inside the barn and grimaced. ‘I’ll have to find something to fill that space,’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t reckon I’ll want that voulge back even if I’m offered it.’

  I stayed a while longer, sitting with my parents in the comfort of their kitchen and sharing the midday meal. It was probably the one place in the house that was much as it had been from its earliest days, and whenever I sat there I sensed the presence of the long line of my Oldreive ancestors. It was a comforting place to be, and today I needed comfort very badly.

  But I knew I couldn’t stay there.

  I rode home slowly, turning over and over in my mind what I had to do. But then I was struck all over again at the sheer impossibility of it. Surely I had to be wrong?

  But the fact remained that there was only one person who could have taken the voulge, for the fable which I had conjured up for my father was precisely that. I could see, however, why Father had swallowed it, for he could have had none of my dark and frightening suspicions and, as far as he was concerned, it was reasonable enough to postulate that Jeromy’s murderer had roamed the locality searching for
a weapon and, by a stroke of good fortune, happened across the rickety old barn at Fernycombe where there was a whole collection of potentially deadly blades.

  But could my conclusion be right?

  I remembered the child, the little tomboy who, despite the constant imprecations of her nurse and her mother to act like a little lady, resisted all suggestions, orders and outright commands. Who withstood the deterrent effect of punishment and went on her merry way, evading attempts to keep her indoors at her needlework and escaping whenever she could to explore the wide acres of her father’s land and, on rainy days, the irresistible attraction of a dozen or more barns and outhouses in various stages of dilapidation.

  Of course she would have known about Father’s collection of old weapons.

  She’d gone to stay with them, I remembered. She’d called on me on her way back to Ferrars and I’d gone to take her pack: it was a large pack, I recalled, unusually shaped. She’d stopped me with a sharp word and, observing that she’d appropriated an old pair of my boots, I’d thought with an indulgent smile that there must be others of my former possessions tucked away in that large bundle, and that she didn’t want me to know. But it hadn’t been any possession of mine she’d taken away from Fernycombe: it had been Father’s voulge.

  And then what? Had she paid one of the Ferrars servants to do the deed for her? Or – and this, I thought, was more likely – had she entered into the dark network of Quinlie employees and shady agents and found someone willing, for a price, to rid himself of a rival? The other men hadn’t liked Jeromy; that had been very plain. Knowing so much more about the whole situation than I could even have guessed at, had she also been aware of that, and used it to achieve the desired end?

  I had to find out.

  My courage failed and I did not go straight home. I rode instead to Theo’s house, where I was asked to wait in the wide hall. Looking around – for the moment I seemed to be alone – I noticed a door slowly opening. Presently the gap was wide enough to reveal a staircase, which I guessed led up to Theo’s private quarters.

  A lad of about seven or eight was staring at me. He had a bright, interested expression, his father’s clear blue eyes and a gap between his top front teeth. ‘My father inspects dead bodies,’ he whispered importantly. ‘Sometimes,’ he added, ‘there’s blood on them.’

  Another small child appeared beside him: his little sister, I surmised, for there was a strong resemblance. She was quite beautiful, although just now her face was creased in disapproval. ‘Blood’s disgusting!’ she stared firmly. ‘I don’t like it!’

  The door to the street opened suddenly and Theo’s large presence burst into the hall. ‘Carolus, back upstairs to your lessons!’ he thundered. ‘How many times do you have to be told? You’re not allowed downstairs in working hours!’

  The boy dipped his head in a meek nod and muttered, ‘Sorry, Father.’ But he glanced at me swiftly and gave me a cheeky grin; his father’s loud voice clearly hadn’t fazed him in the least. The door closed abruptly and I heard the sound of two pairs of feet scurrying away.

  Theo ushered me into his office.

  ‘My elder son Carolus,’ Theo said. It appeared he hadn’t noticed the little girl. ‘My wife wanted to christen him Charlemagne but I persuaded her that might be rather a lot to live up to, so we settled for Carolus.’

  ‘I like it,’ I remarked.

  Theo grinned. ‘The way he’s turning out, I sometimes think we’d have done better with Garrulous,’ he said. ‘Now, to business. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.’ He had, I’d noticed, the air of a hard-pressed man, his hair standing on end as if he’d been running his hands through it, the lacings of his tunic loose.

  Suddenly struck with a powerful sense of alarm, I managed to say in almost my normal voice, ‘Is something wrong?’ My heart was beating fast and apprehension was making my palms sweat.

  ‘Wrong? You might say that, yes, for a boat ferrying passengers across the river has gone down, at least two are drowned and there are accusations flying about that it was overloaded, and that it’s all the captain’s fault for squeezing another party of travellers on board because he’s too greedy to let safety and good sense prevail.’

  I managed to express some suitably sympathetic remarks. I did my utmost to spare a thought for those poor people, panicking as the boat foundered, sinking, drowning. But, God forgive me for my selfishness, the major part of my mind was rejoicing. I’d thought, when I realized Theo was so agitated, that somehow he had discovered what I suspected.

  That, even worse, he could prove it.

  But, thank God, his holy son and all the saints and angels, it was not so.

  When I was quite sure I could speak in the correct, respectful tone, I said, ‘I will leave you to your work, Theo. This is a grave matter, and requires your full attention. You don’t want me troubling you.’

  He looked up from whatever document he had been studying so intently. ‘Hm? What’s that? Sorry, doctor, I am being discourteous. What did you wish to see me about?’

  ‘Oh – it was merely to ask if there had been any further developments concerning the deaths of Jeromy Palfrey and Nicolaus Quinlie.’

  ‘Yes, indeed there have. Someone else was killed. That warehouseman over at Dartmouth.’

  ‘Pieter Sparre. Yes, Jarman Hodge came to tell me.’

  Now Theo’s attention had switched fully to me. It was interesting, I observed, to see the change in his expression. His blue eyes seemed to sharpen somehow, and I could almost sense the powerful brain working, pulling out all the relevant facts and presenting them in an accessible and readily comprehensible manner.

  You underestimated Theophilus Davey at your peril, I reflected.

  ‘You have had some more thoughts?’ The question was bland enough, but I sensed there was a lively and intense spark of sudden interest behind it.

  I would have to be careful.

  I shrugged. ‘It is hard to comprehend how Pieter Sparre’s death fits in with the rest,’ I said calmly, ‘although, if the testimony of his woman is to be credited, it must indeed fit somehow, for the same mysterious, beak-masked figure was observed.’

  Theo stood quite still, watching me.

  Was he not going to comment?

  The silence became awkward. ‘It seems increasingly likely,’ I plunged on, ‘that this is a falling-out among thieves, as it were, if we may so name Nicolaus Quinlie’s employees.’

  ‘No accusations of theft, doctor,’ Theo remarked.

  ‘No, indeed not.’ I forced a smile. ‘I used the wrong analogy. I remain convinced, however, that we are right in our belief that Quinlie, needing urgently to rid himself of the nuisance that Jeromy threatened to become, found an assassin – the beak-masked foreigner – to do the job, and that some dispute between this man and Quinlie led to Quinlie’s own murder. As to the warehouseman’ – I was thinking on my feet, not having given anywhere near enough consideration to the matter before now – ‘I can only suggest that the killer believed Sparre had seen something, or suspected something, and so must be dispatched before he could share it. Sparre was, we know, a nosy man. It was he, after all, who made that comment about them not being likely to see Jeromy over in Dartmouth again after this business.’

  Slowly Theo nodded. ‘A nosy man,’ he repeated slowly.

  I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.

  After a while, Theo said, ‘So, doctor, are we to conclude that this clever and all but invisible assassin killed three times – by three different methods, I might add – and, business concluded, has now vanished back to wherever he came from?’

  ‘Well, there have been no more killings,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable. ‘And no more sightings of him, so in all likelihood he has fled.’

  Theo gave me a very penetrating look. Or perhaps it was that my guilty conscience interpreted it that way.

  ‘No,’ he said, drawing out the word.

  ‘Many ships leave Plymouth every day, and countle
ss more from ports up and down the coast.’ Careful, I warned myself. If I pushed the point too hard, it would make him suspicious.

  I watched him intently. What did I mean, make him suspicious? He already was.

  It seemed to me I stood there for hours, but it can surely have been less than a minute. Then, with an abrupt movement, Theo raised a hand towards me, palm outwards. ‘Be on your way, doctor.’ There was a rough edge in his voice that I hadn’t heard before. ‘You’re right, I’m sure, when you imply that I’m not going to catch this killer.’ The intense blue eyes felt like knife points, but I made myself hold steady and not turn away. He waved his hand again, impatiently now. ‘Leave me, please. I have other matters to attend to.’

  It was a dismissal; a very plain one.

  I hurried out of his house and mounted my horse. I was sorry – more than I wanted to admit – for what I’d just done. I had begun to look upon Theo as a friend; a very welcome friend, a man who I liked and admired.

  I hoped very much that it would be in my power to repair the rift that had suddenly opened up between us.

  EIGHTEEN

  Then there was nothing left but to face her.

  Evening was drawing on as I got home. The sun was setting, lighting the sky in the west with stripes of vivid red and orange, and the land looked calm, peaceful and utterly beautiful. I stood for a moment before I went inside, drinking it in, letting its balm comfort me. I knew I was going to need comfort.

  Sallie was in the kitchen, and I asked her to draw up a jug of good wine. She did so, putting it on the tray with two of the prettiest glasses. ‘Going to spoil her a little, are you, Doctor Gabriel?’ She nodded, answering her own question. ‘That’s right, that’s best now, for she’s had a bad time these past weeks and the best way to put the roses in her cheeks again is to feed her, give her fine wine, let her rest and let her sleep. Oh, and give her kindness and love, of course.’ She blushed and turned away, as if embarrassed to have displayed such emotion.

  ‘I intend to give her all those things, Sallie, and perhaps the love and the kindness most of all,’ I replied gently.