Witness of Bones

by Leonard Tourney

  After he had ordered a tankard of ale for himself, she bent forward conspiratorily and asked, “Well, what word of my man Stearforth? Will I be revenged or no?”

  “He is employed.”

  “By whom?”

  Moseby shrugged. A drawer brought the tankard and Moseby looked to Joan, as though it were her duty to pay for it. Joan paid, annoyed both at Moseby’s assumption that she would and his artful delay in telling her what she wanted to know.

  “I know where he can be found. If revenge is all you want, I can arrange that well enough.”

  “I’ll take my revenge in due time,” Joan said. “But I would know whom he serves. And where he lives.”

  “He has a room in Fleet Street. He lives with a widow named Porter. He serves someone in the City, a great person, or so my informant tells it, for they do not remember when he has had so much money about him. He pays for all, where before he pled the pauper as often as a round of drinks was served.”

  Joan sighed with exasperation. “Would this great person have a name, or does he go by that appendage?”

  Moseby laughed and plucked at his chin. “To tell the truth, Mistress, I have not come upon his name, although I have seen the two together in the Strand—Stearforth in a good suit of clothes and his companion in a better.”

  “Ajid how do you know he with whom you have seen Stearforth is his master and not some underling?”

  Moseby made a shrewd face of one whose genius has been grossly underestimated. “I cannot tell. But if this personage be an underling, then we have far mismeasured the degree of Stearforth’s success.”

  “What if you follow this man to his place of residence?” “That would take much time. I might have to linger in Paul’s churchyard for, oh, two or three days.”

  “Then linger if that’s what is required,” she said, exasperated.

  “It will cost a bit more—all the lingering you speak of.” “I am hardly surprised. In London everything costs more, doesn’t it?”

  “Well now, madam, surely that’s God’s truth, it is indeed,” said Moseby, grinning wolfishly.

  She reached into her purse and offered him a certain sum. They haggled over the price while Moseby drained the tankard and explained how difficult it was to find anyone in London, much less follow him through the streets to discover his dwelling place.

  “I’m sure you can do it, if anyone can,” she said dryly, handing him the sum he had wheedled out of her.

  She left Moseby ordering another tankard and proceeded

  on a venture she expected would produce more immediate results. She hoped that somewhere between the tavern and St. Crispin’s it would occur to her just how she was to secure Stephen Graham’s diary, now that his sister had become an enemy.

  It took her a good two hours of scouring shops and stalls to find what she wanted and when she found it all she bundled it back to the inn. Esconced in her chamber, Joan began to remake herself. She applied herself to the task with cool efficiency, changing her own good clothes for the poorer, covering her head with an old woolen scarf, and, in short, adding a score of years to her appearance by these contrivances. Then she practiced walking with a stoop, propping herself up with a cane with one hand while in the other she held a fresh loaf of bread she had bought from a baker in Cordon Street.

  By late afternoon she was at St. Crispin’s, staring up at its rather severe front and considering her chances of encountering the curate Hopwood who had seen her before and might recognize her in her disguise. But she would have to risk that possibility.

  She approached the side door and knocked. In a short time, the door was answered and she looked up to see not Hopwood, as she feared she might, but a stout, graying man who said his name was Motherwell, the sexton.

  “I’m come with a gift of thanks for Master Graham.” “He’s dead,” Motherwell said bluntly. “You’ve not heard? Murdered he was. All London knows of it.”

  Joan made an expression of dismay, and tried to control the nervousness in her voice.

  “I had not heard, sir,” she said, knowing that the sexton was hardly entitled to the honor of being addressed so but knowing too that it would flatter him. “I came to bring him this loaf—in return for a service he did for my son.”

  “And what service would that be?” asked Motherwell. “Why my son in Shrewsbury gave him his diary to pe-

  ruse—to see if anything therein were out of keeping with Holy Writ.”

  Motherwell looked confused by this explanation, and Joan went on.

  “My son would enter the church, you see, and he expressed many pious thoughts in this little book, which I brought to Master Graham, petitioning him to read therein— only to determine if there were any blasphemy in it.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Motherwell. “It’s a book, then, that your son let the parson have. Well, there are a devil’s plenty of books in his study here and all must be carted off to his sister’s house, and I must do the carting. I suppose you might step in, then. If you find it among all his, ’tis all one with me, who has thereby one less book to cart.”

  Joan entered, hardly believing in her fortune, and followed the sexton down a long hall and into a spacious well-lighted room that by its books and other furnishings had been the murdered cleric’s.

  “What manner of book was it?” asked Motherwell from behind her after she had spent a few moments perusing the books in shelves and stacked on the floor.

  “Well, it was a diary of sorts,” Joan said, without looking behind her. “It was not large, bound in brown leather. I recall.” She wished now that she had had a better description of the book from Elspeth Morgan.

  “I have much to do elsewhere in the church,” said the sexton, self-importantly. “You may look as you like and take the book with you. You can find your way out, I trust.”

  “Oh yes,” said Joan. “I surely can, and many thanks to you, sir, for your kindness. My son would be greatly grieved not to have his book back again. It is as dear to his heart as is his mother.”

  With relief, Joan heard the door shut behind her. The unpleasant-looking sexton had been as courteous as she would have wished, and yet there was in his face something that alerted her to danger. She looked at the shelves of books and the piles of books on the floor. It was clear that already Motherwell had begun his work of packing Graham’s

  possessions for removal. She wondered where to begin her search. She remembered what Elspeth had said about her brother’s writing habits. He had written in his diary each day and always kept it with him. It followed in Joan’s mind, therefore, that she was unlikely to find the book wedged between the learned tomes that crowded the shelves. Indeed, if the book was so portable it was not likely to be large, and probably without inscription on its spine.

  In one corner of the room was Graham’s desk—a flat table without drawers. A carved box sat on the top containing a variety of quills and a bottle of ink and next to this a stack of pamphlets all, Joan discovered on quick glance, dealing with various religious controversies in which Graham had been embroiled. Some had been authored by Graham himself and attacked the Church of Rome on one hand or one of the more strident opponents on the other. She also found a broadside describing the resurrection of Christopher Poole upon which Graham had scribbled derisive comments.

  She examined all the books heaped upon the floor, of which there must have been three score or more, then went to the shelves, thinking the diary might have been placed among the larger volumes, but did not find what she so earnestly sought. Then it occurred to her that a book of so personal a nature might reasonably be concealed. The question was where.

  Joan considered that the diary would need to be accessible to the minister, otherwise writing in it would be too inconvenient. That meant the diary was in this room, which meant . . .

  She remembered Elspeth’s account of her brother’s habits. He had written in his diary while lying in bed, she had said. Had he done so out of necessity, because there were no proper
writing surfaces in Elspeth’s cottage, or because he preferred to write in bed?

  The room she now stood in was the minister’s study and nothing more. But surely his sleeping chamber was nearby. She remembered seeing a staircase off to the right as she had been lead into the study. Venturing beyond the room into

  which she had been admitted by the sexton was risky, but she knew too that having entered the parsonage once, she was not likely to gain admission again.

  In the passage beyond the study she was gratified to hear all silent in the house. The sexton had said he had some work in the church proper. Well and good, Joan thought, so he stayed there. She went to the stairs.

  The upper story of the house consisted of a narrow passage off of which there were several doors, leading she supposed to bedchambers. The first of these was a sparsely furnished room of which Joan had the sense it was rather for guests than regular occupants, for there were no personal articles anywhere to be seen and the room had the musty smell of disuse. The other room was obviously that inhabited by Graham. There was a large cabinet against one wall and a poster bed against the other; a little table by the bed upon which stood a lamp and about a dozen books; and two curved-back chairs, one at the table and the other against a wall, below a wooden crucifix, the room’s only religious adornment. Heavy curtains covered a single window.

  Here the sexton was clearly yet to begin his task, for nothing seemed disturbed from what it undoubtedly was when Graham left it on the morning of his murder. Joan at once examined the books by the minister’s bedside, finding them all, where the titles were not Latin, works of religious disputation. Nor was the cabinet forthcoming in revealing the diary. There hung the minister’s garments, not his priestly robes which she knew to hang in the sacristy, but what he wore outside the church, two decent suits, several shirts and pairs of shoes. But there were no books there, nor could any exploring of the cabinet’s recesses discover any.

  Exasperated by these futile efforts and unnerved by what she now knew would appear to be a suspiciously lengthy stay in the house, not to mention the impropriety of her invasion of the dead man’s very bedchamber, she was about to go before she decided that the bed itself might be well worth her more exacting scrutiny.

  The bed was spread with a coverlet of floral design. She

  felt all along its surface looking for telltale lumps but had no success. The goose down mattress yielded gracefully beneath the pressure of her fingers. She got down on her knees to peer beneath the bed and saw nothing there but dust. She was rising again when she noticed the little drawer inset into the headboard.

  She was excited by this discovery even before opening the drawer and finding that it did indeed contain a book. It took her only a second to confirm that this was Graham’s diary. The penmanship of the pages within matched exactly what she had observed written in the margins of the broadside.

  She was inclined to begin reading from the back but decided not to press her luck in the house. She started for the door when she heard heavy footfalls in the passage. She heard masculine voices, one of which she recognized as the sexton’s. It took her a moment longer to place the other as Hopwood’s.

  She quickly went to the cabinet and concealed herself in its deepest recess behind Graham’s clothes. She closed the door again, her heart pounding so loudly that she was sure it could be heard. The door to the chamber opened. The voices, muffled before, now came through the oak panel with alarming clarity.

  “Empty,” said Motherwell.

  “You say she wanted her son’s diary?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Strange, Graham said nothing to me about it.”

  “Strange only if he told you everything he did.”

  The last voice was Motherwell’s, and the sarcasm was biting. There was a silence in which she could only imagine Hopwood’s response. Yet how could it be but disapproving, given the sexton’s insolence? But when she heard Hopwood speak again there was no reproof in his voice.

  “She was an old woman?”

  “Yes, bent over. Carried a loaf of bread in a basket. A gift for the parson, she said. I saw little of her face. But then I had no reason to look.”

  “You had never seen her before?”

  “Perhaps. Who can tell? One old woman is much like another, save she have a beard or a great goiter. This had neither.”

  “She was looking for a diary?”

  “Her son’s. Said she had brought it to Graham so he could see whether there was anything blasphemous in it.”

  “Strange that the son should care. A diary is private business, not likely to offend in that regard.”

  Hopwood’s voice trailed off. Joan knew the men were leaving, yet she held her breath. She clutched the diary in her hand. Her hand sweated.

  Hopwood followed Motherwell down the stairs, as though Motherwell were in charge. The old man was huffing and puffing again, as much as he had done when he had come up. As he descended, Hopwood thought about this diary business. Graham had kept a diary. Hopwood had once seen him writing in it. Perhaps that was why the woman had brought her son’s book to Graham. Hopwood could understand why she might have wanted it back. If not dangerous to public morals, diaries might well contain a deal of unsavory gossip at the very least, mortifying disclosures, and confessions of private vice.

  “You’re sure she didn’t say anything else—she didn’t mention the son’s name.” Hopwood said.

  “She did not.”

  “Nor her own name?”

  At the bottom of the stairs, the sexton turned with exasperation. “Master Hopwood, she told a plausible tale, I let her in Graham’s study. Would that she had carted off a hundred books to save my own back from carrying them.”

  The two men moved into the study. “And you never saw her leave?”

  “If I had seen her leave, there would have been no cause to carry ourselves upstairs.”

  Hopwood glared at Motherwell, who was seated at Graham’s desk as though it were his own, and was tempted to

  censure his unruly tongue. Yet he felt the old fear and loathing of the sexton—a man of probable vice whose tenure at the church was a burden even Graham had often complained of, perhaps candidly in his own diary.

  It was at that moment that an idea came to Hopwood that made him quite forget his fear of the sexton. It was not her son’s book that the woman sought but Graham s.

  “Cursed woman,” he said.

  Motherwell looked up quickly, lifting an eyebrow in surprise at this outburst from the usually mild-mannered Hop-wood.

  “That was Joan Stock you suffered to enter,” Hopwood said. “And Graham’s diary she was after. Fool, you might have taken her when she was here and saved the constable and his men a world of trouble. She is as thick in Graham’s murder as her husband.”

  “But this was an old woman.”

  “Trust me, Motherwell, your old woman was Stock’s wife. Come, let’s go upstairs again. If she’s not left the house I trust she’s concealed herself somewhere to avoid us. We but looked in the doors. There’s corners to examine and beds to look under.”

  The two men moved quickly to the door and upstairs, but when they came to the dead man’s bedchamber they looked under the bed and found nothing but dust and within the cabinet, only Graham’s clothes, the whiff of old wool and sweat, and a loaf of bread in a basket.

  Eleven

  Matthew had no soul for confinement, no mind made for wandering while the body encompassed by a dank cell could hardly stand upright, much less walk free. If his captors had given him some mindless work to do, that would have been something. Or light to read by, or a book to hold, even without sufficient light. But there were only the four stone walls, a stone floor, and foul, matted straw, a pail to relieve himself in, and the fearsome loneliness of being confined with a false friend.

  Buck seemed imperturbed by his own imprisonment, which had only the effect of convincing Matthew that the man was no true prisoner. Buck spent much
of his time sleeping, even during the day, propped up against the wall as though it were the softest of pillows. He ate the prison swill ravenously and told Matthew endless stories about his escapades, many of which Matthew was sure were the purest of fictions. With obvious calculation he would return from time to time to his seductive theme—how Matthew was a fool for taking the blame for a murder he did not commit when he might escape the rope by implicating his most revered employer. “Who cares not a whit for you,” Buck

  said. “Who would as soon see you hanged as his carbuncle lanced or his pox cured. You’re no benefit to him alive, but better off dead and silenced, that his own part in this villainy might not be known.”

  Matthew made no effort to defend his silence. When probed by Buck, Matthew represented it as confusion. And the truth was that he did not know what to do. Since his brief view of Richard Staunton, he had waited for further contact from Cecil. Every time the warder brought his food, he expected a note to be hid beneath the dish. Every footfall outside his cell he hoped was Staunton bringing news of his present release, for he had no hope that the great man would descend himself to come to such a vile place.

  Beneath all these tortured thoughts was the fear that Buck’s words might be true—that Cecil had abandoned him to his fate, that he would not see Joan’s sweet face again or hear her voice or his daughter’s or sing his little grandson to sleep. The thought of these losses filled his eyes with tears and he looked at where Buck sat digging for wax in his ear and wondered if he had misread the man. Perhaps Buck was no enemy, only a well-meaning friend with the very solution to his dilemma.

  But his better opinion of his cellmate passed quickly when Buck rose and began to talk again—about corruption in high places, about dishonesty among the merchants, about vile practices in the church. Buck’s strategy was all too palpable. Matthew might be abandoned by Cecil, but Buck was no friend.

  And yet, Matthew thought suddenly, even an enemy might be of use.