The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  It was a savage thing to say, but I felt savage. I had lost Matthew now, for ever. I was like someone who has had a poisoned limb amputated. The pain, the loss, the sense of being crippled, must still be endured. Mew turned his head away and I saw his tears seeping down on to the floor, but my heart remained hard.

  I went to the counter and found the musical box. I took it, and left the money as I had said. Meg should have her plaything.

  • • •

  Brockley’s helmet and breastplate and the sword he had started out with had been taken away and his clothes were dirty and bloodstained, but in a room upstairs he found some garments, probably Wylie’s, which fitted him. He made himself look respectable and went off to fetch Bay Star and the chestnut—which was indeed the Lockhill horse Blade—from the Antelope. I gave him money with which to pay the bill at the inn. He was back very quickly, and we were ready to set off at last.

  Our destination was Lockhill and we were taking Mew with us. He was to be brought face to face with his probable fellow conspirators Mason and Crichton. “And we’ll see if anything interesting transpires,” Rob said grimly.

  The mist was dispersing. We rode briskly, but it was an uneasy journey. For one thing, I had followed an interrupted night by another night with no sleep at all, and I was so tired that my eyes felt as though they were full of grit. Riding with bandaged hands was awkward, and light-hearted, gallant Rob, who had his ruthless side, was angry with me because I had wanted to go with Matthew, and attempted to delay the hue and cry. I found his company uncomfortable and edged Bay Star away from him, only to find myself close to Mew.

  I discovered that, after all, I pitied Mew. His horse was being led by one of Rob’s retainers, because Mew’s hands were bound to his pommel and his feet to the stirrups. His eyes seemed to be staring at some dreadful private vision. Once, in a voice still slightly hoarse, he asked what was going to happen to him, and one of Rob’s men obliged him with an answer.

  “You’ll be tried for treason, fellow. And after that . . .” Graphically, the retainer made a glugging noise, let his head flop to one side and his tongue loll out, and then, grinning, drew a forefinger slowly and evily down the length of his own stomach from ribcage to crotch. Another of the retainers laughed. Mew whimpered like a hurt child.

  I shivered, turning my head away, imagining the horrors which lay ahead for this terrified man riding so near to me. It was being borne in on me that we were riding to Lockhill not only to confront Mason and Crichton with Mew, but also, whatever happened, to bring them in for questioning. We were on our way to arrest Ann Mason’s husband.

  • • •

  In Maidenhead, the retainers bought bread and cheese and ale, and we pulled up to make a meal, but made it quick. We clattered into Lockhill village that afternoon, and Dr. Forrest rushed out to meet us, puffing with exertion. “Mrs. Blanchard! Mr. Brockley! And would this be Mr. Henderson?”

  “It would,” said Rob. “And you, sir?”

  “Dr. Forrest, sir, at your service. I did right, then, to send for you? I was in two minds what to do. Your pardon, Mistress Blanchard, but yours was a strange note to receive from a young gentlewoman.”

  “You did quite right,” said Rob. “And now there is more to do, up at Lockhill. You should know . . .”

  He explained, while Dr. Forrest listened, his round face growing more and more shocked. While Rob was talking, Dale came running from the vicarage, and Brockley trotted to meet her and lift her up behind Blade’s saddle.

  “Dale!” I said, as Brockley brought her back to us. “How are you?”

  “Oh, ma’am! I’m well enough now, but I’ve been that worried. It took me a good while to persuade Dr. Forrest! And then he only had his servant to send, on a pony. The man had to go to Maidenhead to get a fast horse from the Greyhound. I’ve fretted myself to a shadow.”

  While I was assuring Dale that she had done well and I would not forget it, Dr. Forrest begged our indulgence while he saddled his mount. He scurried off, and five minutes later he reappeared astride a placid brown mare with the bulging sides of age and idleness. We rode on, up the lane between the fields of Lockhill, towards the manor house.

  As usual, we received a noisy greeting from the mastiff, but with no immediate result. No one was about.

  “Now what?” said Rob exasperatedly, sitting in his saddle, hand on hip. “Where in the world is everyone? And what, for heaven’s sake, is that contraption up on the tower?”

  “That’s Mr. Mason’s gliding engine,” I said, awed.

  The assembly on the tower had been spectacular enough when it consisted merely of the H-shaped structure, but now a long plank, long enough to reach beyond the edges of the tower, had been laid across the central bar of the H, using it as a fulcrum. Attached to one end was a rough and ready cradle, which held Mason’s flying engine. The nose of the machine pointed into the air, and one of its vast wings extended perilously close to the sloped roof of the house. The great fantail of wood and canvas, with its fin sticking up from the centre, slanted down over the side of the tower.

  The whole cradle was fastened down with a stout rope so that the other end of the plank was high in the air, but this, too, had attachments, for two bulging sacks hung from it. They were apparently full of rocks: the sharp edges had torn holes in a couple of places and jutted through. Another sack, possibly containing meal, sat in the body of the flying engine.

  If the rope were released, I supposed, the sacks of rocks would crash down, the cradle would shoot up, and the device, swinging from upright to level at the top of the arc, would be flung into the air above the gatehouse.

  We were all still marvelling when Redman, at last, came out. He quietened the dog and Rob Henderson rode forward. Before either he or Redman could speak, however, Leonard Mason and Dr. Crichton came through the porch together, talking. They could not have heard our arrival, for at the sight of the crowd of riders, they stopped short.

  Mason saw me and strode forward, with the butler and Crichton on his heels. “What is this? Do you dare to return here, Mrs. Blanchard? With armed men? Who do you imagine you are?”

  “That’s right. The master ordered her out of Lockhill! She’s no business here!” Redman made a gesture at me as though he were trying to shoo me away. Crichton said nothing, but eyed me with dislike.

  “Mrs. Blanchard is with us!” Rob snapped. “And we have come on serious business which we can hardly discuss out here. If we could dismount and come inside . . .”

  I had said nothing, because the moment Mason and Crichton appeared, I had been dumbstruck, first with astonishment, then with hope, and then with fear that the hope might be misplaced. Had a light been shone into a dark place, or had it not? I found my voice again. “Just a moment!”

  Surprised, Rob paused. “Dr. Crichton,” I said. “Did Mr. Mason give you that blackwork doublet you’re wearing?”

  Everyone was silent, presumably amazed by the irrelevant and frivolous nature of the question, but I persisted. “Well, did he?” I demanded. “And if so, when?”

  Crichton had come quite close to me. I pointed at the doublet. “I repaired it myself. I can see my own stitchwork there. But I thought it belonged to Mr. Mason.”

  “Mrs. Blanchard,” said Rob, “what is all this about?”

  “It’s important, believe me!” I said. “I’m not out of my mind. Brockley!”

  “Madam?”

  “Last Thursday, when—er—when you said to me that you had seen Mr. Mason approaching . . . you recall the occasion?”

  “Yes, madam,” said Brockley without expression.

  “Well, did you actually recognise his face, or were you going by the doublet?”

  “By the doublet, madam. I glimpsed the cream and black. But no, I did not see Mr. Mason’s face. Mr. Mason and Dr. Crichton are alike in build, and yes, it could easily have been Dr. Crichton I saw. I realise that now.” Brockley had followed my line of thought at once. “Mr. Mason, if Dr. Crichton won’t answer
the question, I suggest that you do. It could be worth your while.”

  Mason looked at him in outrage, but Rob barked, “Well, someone give us the answer and be quick about it!”

  Mason said, “I gave it to Crichton quite lately. He badly needed some smarter clothing. Black and white are suitable for a priest. He did ask my wife to repair it—my wife, not Mrs. Blanchard. He wore it once before that, I think.”

  “And also afterwards? Last Thursday,” I said, “he had a gown on later in the day, but was he wearing that doublet during the morning? And did you, that morning, send him to your study to find something for you?”

  “Mrs. Blanchard, I dismissed you from my house. I will not be questioned by you!”

  “I assume Mrs. Blanchard has her reasons for asking. If you won’t be questioned by her, then answer me instead!” said Henderson.

  “Then the answer is yes, possibly! I often send Crichton to my study for this or that. And yes, I think he did have that doublet on last Thursday. That was the only other time he used it before today, I believe. Yes, he tore it on a nail in my workshop on Thursday and had to change, and Ann had to mend it again.”

  “Crichton!” I said to Rob Henderson. “It’s been plain enough that Crichton is probably in this, but what if, as far as Lockhill is concerned, it’s only Crichton? I did the first repair to that doublet, to help Ann. In it I found an invoice for tin and copper, made out to Mr. Mew. That’s why I went to Mew’s shop. But if Crichton had already worn the doublet—I’d been at Thamesbank: I wouldn’t have known—then he could have put the invoice there, not Mr. Mason at all.”

  Recollections were tumbling through my tired mind, and weirdly, my very exhaustion seemed somehow to have opened the way for them. We had heard Mason, as we thought, searching irritably in his study for a mislaid paper, but Mason was methodical, not given to mislaying things. Crichton was the untidy one.

  Yes, Crichton, priest by profession, employed here to say illegal masses; Crichton whose clothes were all so dusty and worn; Crichton who was underpaid by the Masons. The clues pointed to him far more than to Mason.

  And then, at last, the answer to that second puzzle which had nagged at me when I searched Mason’s study swam upwards into view. Jennet had seen Dawson listening at a door, to people talking on the other side of it. She said she didn’t know who was in there, but she had just spoken to Mr. Mason herself, to tell him that the pedlar had come. She knew, therefore, where Mr. Mason was. Whoever was on the other side of that door, it couldn’t have been Leonard.

  And it was Crichton who had bought tapestries from Bernard Paige, saying they were for his master! Both Mason and Crichton had said that they were a legacy, but what if only Crichton were the liar? What if Crichton had bought them and told the lie to Mason?

  “They know everything!” said a frightened voice from behind me. “They know it all! They broke into my basement and saw my work there!”

  Surrounded as he was by Henderson’s men, Barnabas Mew had until now been out of sight of those who had come out of the house. Now Henderson, smiling grimly, had him brought forward. Rob’s notion that confronting the inhabitants of Lockhill with Mew might bring results, was now gratifyingly justified. Leonard Mason simply stared, and Redman’s mouth dropped open, but Crichton turned the colour of tallow and began to shake.

  “Dr. Wilkins got away. So did Mr. de la Roche. And they killed Wylie,” Mew said miserably.

  “Who the devil is Mr. de la Roche?” demanded Leonard.

  “That’s the real name of Mark Lenoir,” I told him. I looked at the quaking Crichton. “The tapestries you lent to Mr. Mason to put on his dining-room walls,” I said. “Costly purchases, paid for in cash. A way of feeding counterfeit money into the economy and making a profit for yourself at the same time. That’s what you bought those tapestries for, isn’t it, Dr. Crichton?”

  “What is all this?” demanded Mason.

  Rob supplied the details. Mason listened, his brow furrowed.

  “Barnabas Mew? Making counterfeit coin in his cellar?” His astonishment was almost comical. I rejoiced, for it pointed to his innocence. Ann and the children might yet escape heartbreak. His reaction when Rob had finished was, interestingly, the same as Matthew’s.

  “It’s a ridiculous scheme! It couldn’t work unless it was on a gigantic scale! I know I’ve often said, here at my own table, that no country can survive unless its economy is sound, but between a healthy economy and one so sick that its ruler is endangered, there is a huge gap. I never heard of anything so unlikely as this! Was I—am I—under suspicion of being part of such a demented notion?” Mason asked with loathing.

  “You will be required,” Rob told him, “to accompany us to London for questioning, but if you are not guilty, you have little to fear.”

  “Not guilty?” Mason was scandalised. “I should think not! I am a good Catholic and I wish the Queen would have a change of heart and return to the true religion, but do you think I would touch a scheme like this? Good God! My wife wouldn’t let me, anyway!” Some of the retainers laughed and Mason glared at them. “And if your wives are half as honest as my Ann, you’re fortunate men! Money I always need, but I would scorn to make it in a way such as this! I trust to make money from my inventions one day. Coining, indeed!”

  “Tell me something, Mr. Mason,” I said. “Barnabas Mew originally taught music to your children, did he not? When the idea of that was first mooted, did he approach you first, or the other way about?”

  “Crichton introduced him as a friend. I think they met in a tavern in Henley. And—yes, it was Mew himself who suggested he should teach my children.” Mason was so overturned that he actually answered me without protest.

  “Well,” I said, “I believe he was originally meant to keep an eye on your household on behalf of Sir William Cecil.” Out of my memory, I dredged Cecil’s words when he first told me that something might be wrong at Lockhill: “I was never quite sure of how competent the man was whom I sent to investigate the Masons. He’s been withdrawn now.” However, the agent had not let himself be withdrawn. He had gone on visiting, and plotting with Crichton.

  “You drew suspicion on yourself last year,” I said to Mason, “when you gave some money to a charity for financing young priests. Mew was here to investigate your loyalty. I have it right, haven’t I, Mew? For reasons which I don’t understand—the chance of making money, perhaps?—you have joined in this scheme which is at least partly designed to help Mary Stuart.”

  “I didn’t do it for money. I can earn that. I’m a good craftsman.” Mew, sitting miserably on his horse with his bound hands clutching the pommel, nevertheless spoke with a weak kind of pride.

  “Then why?” said Mason. “You’re not even a Catholic!”

  “They made me do it,” said Mew, addressing Rob. “Oh, not Mr. Mason. He’s got nothing to do with any of this . . .”

  “Thank you!” said Mason.

  “. . . It was the others. They made me change sides and help them work against the Queen.”

  “They? Who?” Mason snapped.

  “Crichton,” said Mew wretchedly. “And Wilkins.”

  Rob gave a quiet order and four of this men dismounted. Their horses, well trained, stood without being held.

  “Made you?” said Rob. “Well, we haven’t questioned you yet. You may as well tell us your tale now.”

  In a near whisper, Mew answered him. “I stole an idea. It was Mr. Mason’s notion for a clockwork box that would play a tune. But Crichton found out. Mr. Mason had shown him the design. I should have foreseen it! I knew Mr. Mason used to discuss his ideas with Dr. Crichton! I found the design and I took it and I started making it, in my shop, and . . . and . . . I wasn’t well one week and didn’t come to Lockhill when I was expected—to teach music to the children. Crichton came to Windsor to find out why, and he saw what I was making. I had it in the shop, under the window, for the sake of the light.”

  “So that was it!” I said.

 
“You . . . stole . . . my . . . design?” Mason enquired.

  “It was a beautiful thing!” Suddenly Mew’s voice was clear and passionate. “You couldn’t have made it. You’re not good at making things. You could draw it but you couldn’t make it. I could! I did! I made it with gold and moonstones and took it to court once when I was taking a report to Sir William Cecil, and presented it to Her Majesty!”

  “You did what?” shouted Leonard Mason.

  “He did, I’m afraid,” I said. “I was there at the time.”

  “Crichton asked you if you’d arranged for anyone to make the music box and you said no,” Mew said to him. “Then, the next time I came to Lockhill, he told me that unless I did as he wanted, he would tell you that I’d stolen your idea. They needed me to make the coins, you see. They had to engage a craftsman, so to speak. Crichton said I’d be held up to ridicule, or perhaps taken up for some kind of theft . . .”

  “You are all mad!” Crichton tried to sound lofty. “I don’t know what anyone is talking about! I’m not involved in any plot!”

  “Forgive me if I seem slow witted,” said Leonard Mason. “I am trying to take all this in. Am I to understand that I have had four traitorous knaves at various times sleeping under my roof and dining at my table? Mew, Wilkins, Lenoir—or whatever his name is—and my children’s tutor—my God, my children’s tutor!—Dr. Crichton?”

  “It would seem so,” said Henderson dryly.

  “But I tell you, this is all a tarradiddle!” Crichton’s attempt at dignity had failed and his voice was almost a squawk. “You can’t . . . you can’t believe that pitiful creature!” He pointed at Mew. “Can’t you see that he is merely trying to pass the blame on to others, to save his own skin?”

  Dr. Forrest had been sitting on his portly brown mare, listening to all this in an amazed silence. Now, however, he spoke.

  “Disentangling truth from fiction will be a jury’s task. It really can’t be completed here in this courtyard. Should we not all get down and go inside, as Mr. Henderson has suggested? You’ll hardly set out for London today, Mr. Henderson. Most of you have been up all night and the horses must be worn out too. Mrs. Blanchard also seems to have injuries to her hands. Clearly, Mr. Mason must answer questions about the people who have frequented his house, though perhaps we need not place him under arrest . . .”