by Alys Clare
Some time after they’d gone and breaking quite a long silence, Theo said, ‘There’s no reason it can’t have been Mistress Denyse who did it, for all that you clearly feel sorry for her.’
‘You’re quite right,’ I said calmly.
‘About what? That she could have done it or that you feel sorry for her?’
‘Both.’
He made a sort of hrumph! sound.
I’d told him what had happened up in Denyse’s bedchamber. What I’d observed, what she’d told me, the tentative opinions I’d formed. Was still forming. ‘She’s suffered greatly, I believe,’ I said now. ‘Beatings, imprisonment, and I’m sure there’s—’
‘Look at it from their point of view,’ Theo interrupted harshly. ‘She’s pretty much out of control, or so it appears, and they have the care of her each and every day.’ He paused, then added more reasonably, ‘People get tired, Gabe.’
I was about to protest that Denyse was clearly out of her wits and couldn’t help herself, and that her family should show more patience and compassion, but I stopped. Theo was right: I should have considered the situation from Lady Clemence’s viewpoint, and that of her elder daughter and son-in-law. She had been the wife and was now the widow of a man of wealth, a man of importance and standing; a justice of the peace, admired, looked up to. The members of his family surely weren’t to be condemned for wanting to retain a little of his glamour; for hoping to garner a little of the respect that Sir Thomas had been held in for themselves. And there was poor, unattractive Lady Clemence, sitting stiff and haughty, pathetic in her desperation to cling to her dignity and her position while her fat, ugly, mad daughter danced around giggling inappropriately, making up to men, displaying far too much of her sad, malformed body and talking about dead bodies.
So instead I said, ‘Yes, I suppose they do.’
Theo turned to me, the surprise in his face suggesting he hadn’t expected such meek agreement. Recovering swiftly, he said, ‘So, do you think she did it?’ When I didn’t immediately reply, he went on, ‘She’d have had cause, perhaps. The mother beat her, treated her unkindly, kept secrets from her, handed her over to the care of that other woman.’
‘Mary is kind to her,’ I interrupted.
‘But others are not,’ Theo replied swiftly. ‘Lady Clemence. The sister’s husband. Avery Lond. He’s not kind.’ There was a pause. ‘D’you think we ought to warn him to be careful?’
I wondered if he was joking, but a quick look at him told me he wasn’t. ‘He’s not a large man, and perhaps hasn’t a great deal of fortitude, but I think he’d be able to fend off Denyse,’ I said.
Theo and I had met Avery Lond when we’d arrived at Wrenbeare. All had been in turmoil, with Denyse’s screams shattering the night silence and the various wails, moans and sobs of the servants like some ghastly chorus in the background. Mistress Agnes had fainted and was being tended in her chamber by her maid. Her husband – thin, narrow-shouldered, bloody-handed, face as white as chalk and the smell of vomit surrounding him like a miasma – had been slumped at the foot of the stairs, barely able to speak for shivering. ‘She was just standing there,’ he kept saying. ‘She had blood on her nightgown, and her hands pressed to her mouth, and she was making these noises …’ He paused, his teeth chattering. ‘Then I saw – I saw it.’ He raised his head, wide eyes staring unseen around the hall. ‘The blood, the gaping hole in her, and, oh, sweet Jesus, the smell.’
All of us – Wrenbeare servants, Theo’s men, Theo and I – had taken a hasty step back as Avery Lond threw up again.
‘He was in deep shock earlier,’ Theo now remarked fairly. ‘Still, he knows, none better, what Denyse’s capable of, so he’ll probably—’
‘Theo, that’s a huge assumption,’ I protested. ‘As yet we have no grounds whatsoever for believing she’s any more than the unfortunate person who found the body and raised the alarm. And’ – something which I hoped was convincing had just occurred to me – ‘surely she wouldn’t have had time to hide the weapons and the heart, since Avery Lond found her screaming right over the body?’
‘She could have hidden them first and then gone back to the body and started up the racket,’ Theo replied.
I muttered, ‘Bollocks.’
He heard, I was sure of it, but, other than to give me a long, assessing look, he didn’t reply.
ELEVEN
Back at Rosewyke, the day had begun. Celia had already breakfasted and, dressed smartly, was clearly on her way out. Sallie, tutting over my filthy tunic and hose, told me robustly to get the garments off so that she could put them in to soak. ‘There’s water waiting for you in your room, Doctor, and I’ll have food ready when you come down again,’ she called out after me as I headed for the stairs.
Celia followed me up to my room, discreetly remaining in the long gallery outside the open door as I stripped to my skin and washed. ‘Do you want to tell me where you’ve been?’ she asked, in a casual tone that didn’t fool me for a moment. My sister has always had a lively curiosity and, after the events of the recent past, she is very alert to the whisper of violence.
There seemed no reason not to tell her, for the news of Lady Clemence’s death would swiftly spread through our small community. Since, in my mind at least, the murder just had to be connected in some way with the rumoured presence at or near Wrenbeare of the dead vagrant, I told her about that too.
‘Something’s most definitely amiss at the house,’ I said as I towelled my head and face dry. ‘Mistress Denyse told me everything was horrid – that was the word she herself used – and her family were anxious and troubled. And Lady Clemence and her elder daughter—’
‘That’s Agnes, married to Avery Lond, you said?’
‘Yes, that’s right. She and her mother both lied about the vagrant, which is suspicious, surely?’ I dragged on a fresh chemise and hastily donned the rest of my clean clothes, then went out to join Celia in the gallery. ‘I keep asking myself, what did the vagrant see, or take away, that the family didn’t want revealed?’
Side by side, Celia and I descended the staircase. She was frowning, clearly puzzling over the matter. ‘Maybe you should also ask yourself whether he was simply a desperate, hungry thief who broke in looking for food and was killed because, by sheer bad luck, he saw what he shouldn’t have done.’ She paused, glancing at me. ‘Or not,’ she added enigmatically.
I didn’t stop to dwell on that. ‘But he wasn’t killed, was he? I told you, I believe he died of natural causes. Starvation, the depredations of long illness.’
A flash of understanding it her eyes. ‘He was the one you thought might have had leprosy!’
‘Yes, but he didn’t. There’s no need to worry.’
She shook her head in irritation. ‘No, I know. I wasn’t worrying, I was thinking.’ She paused, then went on slowly, ‘He went twice to the house.’ She turned to me, clearly expecting this remark to mean something.
It didn’t. ‘So?’
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Come on, Gabe! I know you’ve been up half the night dealing with a brutally murdered corpse and got yourself befouled as well, but think!’ She waited, as if to give me the chance to redeem myself with some startlingly pertinent and intelligent reply, but very soon her impatience got the better of her. ‘If he’d simply been hunting for food, wouldn’t being chased away the first time have warned him off and made him go for an easier target next time?’ Before I could comment, she rushed on. ‘It’s what I was hinting at just now! If it wasn’t just bad luck that the vagrant broke into a house where there was something terribly secret that he shouldn’t have seen, then we need to think about what else it was.’
We stood at the foot of the stairs, staring at each other, and now I knew what she meant. Her eyes were sparkling and her bright, intelligent interest seemed to fizz off her. In the midst of my preoccupation with the murder and the link to the vagrant, a small thought surfaced with a cheer of joy: my sister has all but recovered.
&n
bsp; I reached out and drew her to me, hugging her tightly. ‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ I said into her smooth, fragrant hair. ‘But you say it.’
She disengaged herself and stood grinning up at me. ‘If it wasn’t just mischance that took the vagrant to the home of the Fairlights, then we have to conclude that he knew the house, or the family, or both.’ She stopped to think, then added, ‘There was something at Wrenbeare that he wanted very badly, to the extent of risking returning even after he’d alerted them to his presence, when it was far more dangerous for him because they’d be on their guard.’
We went through into the morning parlour, where Sallie had set out a gut-stretching breakfast for me to which I was pretty sure I’d do full justice. I sat down, reaching for warm bread rolls, butter and honey, and Celia, despite having already eaten, pulled out a second chair and joined in.
‘So what was it?’ I asked through a mouthful of bread and honey. ‘What was he looking for so determinedly?’
‘And did he get it?’ Celia added. ‘Was there anything in his possession or on the body?’
‘No.’ There had been that scrap of paper, but it was surely not relevant.
‘But then if someone from Wrenbeare had followed him and murdered him, they’d have taken it back, wouldn’t they?’ Celia said. ‘That was the whole reason for killing him; to stop him revealing whatever secret they were guarding!’
‘But he wasn’t killed,’ I repeated. Another thought struck me, and I voiced it. ‘I wonder if the failure to obtain whatever he wanted so badly at the house of the Fairlight family was a factor in his death? Whether it affected him so badly that he simply gave up and died?’
Celia didn’t respond. Watching her closely, I realized she probably hadn’t taken in my last suggestion; she was still totally focused elsewhere.
She looked at me in silence for a moment. Then she said, ‘Are you absolutely sure the vagrant wasn’t murdered?’
It was now about a week since the vagrant had died. His body was still in the crypt of the empty house, and the last thing I wanted to do was to return to it.
I called in on Theo first. He too had washed and changed, and he had the look of a man in a desperate hurry to be somewhere else.
‘Make it swift, Gabe,’ he greeted me. ‘I’m away back to Wrenbeare as soon as I’ve seen to this.’ He waved a hand over the papers strewn on his desk.
I outlined the main points of my conversation with Celia and as I went on, he began to nod his understanding. ‘Go on, then,’ he said before I’d finished. ‘I don’t envy you, mind, but if you’re right, we need to know. It has to be done.’
I turned to leave. ‘Take one of my men with you,’ Theo called after me. ‘You’ll have a much better light for spotting tiny details if you take the corpse upstairs into the sunshine. There’s a courtyard behind the house where you won’t be overlooked.’
I nodded. ‘Good idea.’
I didn’t take anyone with me, however. I reckoned I could carry the body alone, and I prefer to work without someone leaning over me.
The empty house was dark, forlorn and, despite the warm weather, felt more than a little damp. The smell wafted up even as I strode along the hall. I ran down the stone steps to the crypt and went to the body. I noticed something on the flagged floor beneath the trestle and, momentarily hopeful that it might be some previously overlooked object that had dropped from the corpse’s clothing, bent down to pick it up. But it was nothing of interest; merely part of a honeysuckle flower, now limp and dying, and no doubt trodden in unheeded on the sole of one of Theo’s or my boots.
Without letting the thought of what I was doing get through to my conscious mind, I picked up the body – it was indeed a light burden – and carried it up to the hall and out through the rear door into the sunny little enclosed yard. Roses and honeysuckle ran out of control over the walls, their fragrance fighting with the stench of decay.
I laid the body on the stone flags.
If there are no marks on a corpse of violence or poison, and murder is suspected, then one very likely possibility is suffocation.
Angling myself so that the full light of the early sun shone down on the dead man’s face, I peered into his mouth and nose.
And, eventually, purely because I went on looking even when at first there was nothing obvious, I saw what I’d missed on my first two examinations.
I was furious with myself.
The nostrils were difficult to investigate because of the lumpy swellings at the end of the nose, but that was no excuse. For when I drove myself to force a way in past the fleshy growth and poke up inside the left nostril, I found some very fine filaments of fluff. When I repeated the procedure with the right nostril, there they were again. They were tiny, and I’d never have spotted them in the dim light of the crypt, no matter how many lanterns I’d lit.
I looked now at the mouth. It was hard to be sure but, now that I knew what I was looking for, I thought there might be bruising on the inside of the lips, as if they’d been pressed hard against the teeth. Finally I raised the lid of the remaining eye and peered very closely at its white. There were a handful of minuscule red marks on it.
The vagrant had been smothered to death.
I straightened up and, bending down over the dead man, said softly, ‘I am very sorry. I should have made these discoveries sooner, but, now that I have done, I will do my best to uncover what happened to you.’
I went on kneeling there for a few moments, then got to my feet, picked up the body and returned it to the cool, dark crypt.
Theo had gone by the time I returned to his house.
While I very much wanted to race after him to Wrenbeare, there were other matters awaiting my attention. For one thing, I had patients to see, at least two of whom were in a state requiring my daily ministrations. For another, I needed to carve out a space amid the overwhelming demands of this day to think about the implications of what I’d just discovered.
I scribbled out a message for Theo and one of the youths in his outer office said he’d ride over presently and deliver it. Thanking him and telling him to make it sooner rather than later, I hurried away.
It was fortunate for the three patients I attended that morning that none of them was seriously in need of my full range of expertise and the best of my professional skills, because they didn’t get either. Two had been sick with high fevers but were now convalescing; the third merely needed stitches to be removed and a fresh dressing.
I had time, riding between the three households, to let my thoughts fly back to the dilemma of where to go from here. Most crucially, I decided, I needed more information, and primarily about the household at Wrenbeare, since it appeared to be at the very heart of this strange business. The prime source was, of course, the household itself. I hoped very much that Theo shared my conclusion; he was there, right now, and as coroner he had the authority to demand answers to all the questions he cared to ask. Jarman Hodge had not been around when I’d been to Theo’s office, so I was also hoping he had gone to Wrenbeare too. He’d already managed to extract a few confidences from some of the servants, and surely he too would feel the urgent need to find out more.
I’d wondered about approaching the present justice of the peace for our area. Lord Underhay, Cosmo to his friends, was a quietly intelligent, fair-minded and studious man who, so those in the know said, had studied law at Cambridge and practised in London and, later, Bristol before retiring to his own county on inheriting the estate and the title from his late father. He would surely have been able to provide information about Sir Thomas Fairlight and his family, assuming I could provide a good enough reason for demanding it. But it would, I believed, have to be an extremely good reason, for he was a man of the law, trained in reticence and diplomacy, firmly in the habit of guarding confidences with the rigidity of a suit of armour. Why on earth should he feel the need to gratify a country physician’s curiosity?
As at last I left my final patient behind me with nothing worse
to complain of than a somewhat lighter purse and the smarting of the flesh of his left buttock where I’d taken out nine stitches, I realized that there was no need to bother Lord Underhay when there was someone else I could approach, closer at hand and, or so I hoped, more likely to be amenable.
And I turned Hal’s head to the north, and rode off for Buckland.
The day had turned humid and overcast after the bright morning and there was rain on the way. I didn’t think it likely that Josiah Thorn would be out on the river bank, and so I rode instead to his house.
It took him a few moments to answer my knock at the door and, as he ushered me along the dark little passage to his room, I noticed that his hair was ruffled on one side and that his face was flushed with sleep.
‘Don’t go telling me this time that you were only closing your eyes,’ I said as we sat down either side of the hearth, I on a settle, he in his chair, ‘because I won’t believe you. And I’m very sorry for having disturbed you,’ I added.
He waved aside the apology. ‘No matter. It was high time I woke, anyway. If I sleep for too long after the midday meal, I don’t get off at night.’
After the midday meal. With a start, I realized how late it was. The remains of Josiah’s meal sat on a platter on a small table beside him, and the sight of the heel of bread next to the large chunk of golden cheese flooded my mouth with saliva. Perceptive man that he was, he noticed.
‘Eat it,’ he said with a smile. ‘Make sure you have some of that pickle. It’s excellent.’
I reached for the platter. It would actually be fairer to say I grabbed it, then fell on the food. He was right about the pickle. ‘I forgot to have dinner,’ I said lamely as soon as I could speak.
He nodded. ‘I remember how it is,’ he said kindly.
He got up and went out into the scullery, returning with a mug of ale. That, too, was excellent.
‘Thank you,’ I said when I’d finished. ‘Your generosity makes it all the harder to broach the reason for my presence, because I’m here to press you on a matter I raised last time I saw you.’