Meanwhile, Arch had realized his own danger. Of course, he could have run to Hamon and cut the cord, but the sight of Humfrie’s face as he relentlessly tightened his cord was enough to dissuade me from going nearer. Plainly, Arch felt the same, especially as Hamon’s movements grew slower and more strained as he succumbed. His face was growing purple, and his imminent demise lent a certain logic to Arch’s next manoeuvre. Ignoring the fate of his companion, he darted to the wicket gate and threw it open. In an instant, he was through it. I began to move to give chase, but before I could, he returned – this time flying horizontally like a bullet from a gun. I winced to see how he landed on the packed earth. I could hear the thud over Hamon’s choking. A moment later, a grim-faced Henry – or, I should say, Hal – appeared in the doorway. He looked as though he wanted to perform a clog dance on Arch’s face, but as he entered and pulled the wicket closed behind him, Arch stood again, dusting himself down, grimacing as he brushed his left side in a way that made me feel positively cheerful. With luck, I thought, he might have broken a rib or two. I have heard that they are very painful. The thought was enough to make my smile widen.
‘Oh, Arch. Have you met my friends?’ I enquired. As I was passing Hamon, who lay struggling on the ground like an upside-down beetle, I kicked him as hard as I could in the cods. A sort of strangled, hissing gasp was all the sound he could make just then, but already Humfrie was moving to him, wrapping the string neatly about his hand as he went. When he reached Hamon, whose face was now blackening, he quickly whirled his hand about the injured man’s head, unwrapping the cord from his throat. Hamon gasped, his body clenching like a fist as he drew in his first painful breath, his hands at his throat, head moving so that his chin was on his breast.
Humfrie replaced the cord in his pocket, withdrawing a lead-filled leather cosh at the same time. He paused, eyeing Hamon like a saint viewing an unrepentant sinner, and then tapped it against his head, just above the ear. Hamon stared up at Humfrie, and then his eyes crossed and rolled up to become hidden, even as his head fell backwards to the ground. He wore a rather fetching, foolish smile on his lips. He snored too, although more quietly than Sir Richard.
I walked to his friend, Humfrie at my side.
‘Arch,’ I said, ‘I don’t seem to be able to get this through to you, but I am not repaying silly amounts of money to someone who is trying to extort it from me. You decided to attempt to rob me. It won’t happen. More to the point, if you try anything like it again, you will die. I hope you understand me.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Arch sneered.
Humfrie’s hand seemed to blur, and Arch collapsed on the cobbles, wheezing like an ancient peasant climbing a hill. He was clutching his middle with both hands, head bowed.
‘I won’t say it again, Arch. I have friends who will make very short work of you. Go and find another lamb to fleece. Try pestering me again and I’ll have no option but to make your life short and painful.’
I was rather proud of my imposing tone as I said this. It made me feel sophisticated and lordly. I took Jen’s arm, walking to my back door. There, I turned.
‘Hal, please join us for wine, but before you do, would you mind throwing those two into the road, please? No need to be gentle.’
My parlour felt a warmer, cosier place when we were all seated. Hal was toying with Hamon’s dagger and snippers. I confess that I was glad to see that they were in his care, rather than Hamon’s. In my mind, I could envisage walking along a quiet alleyway in the dark and hearing those devilish blades sweeping against each other. It was a mistake, I thought, to let Hamon and Arch live, but there were as many problems with killing them there, in my yard, as there would be with any other course, as Humfrie said.
Raphe was not there – he was still at Humfrie’s home with the contents of my strongbox. I had sent him there as soon as we had recovered my purses, and once I had changed the locks to my secure room and procured a new strongbox, I would have them returned. Meanwhile, I busied myself in fetching cups and flagons of wine for my guests. Jen helped, and it was delightful to be with her in my little buttery, her hips butting into mine as we drew off wine, her delicious buttocks before me as she bent to gather linen from the box under the table – it was sorely tempting to carry her upstairs for a grappling gallop, but it would not have done. I had experienced Henry’s – Hal’s – irritation with my earlier enjoyment of her bounties, and just now he had possession of Hamon’s weapons. I didn’t like the thought of Hal with snippers any more than I liked the thought of Hamon with them.
We were through the third flagon of wine before my nerves felt fully recovered. Humfrie sat in the corner away from the fire, staring at the flames, while Hal and Jen held hands and stared at each other, occasionally answering my own questions.
‘You say you did not know your father was dead?’ Humfrie said, after I had thrown a fresh log on the fire.
Hal glanced across at him with a scowl on his face. ‘What, you think we’re murderers? You think Jen would kill her own father?’
Humfrie said nothing, but stared at Hal with a sort of wonder, as if astonished to hear such foolishness.
It was Jen who answered, ‘No. I didn’t know he was dead.’ She shook her head and lifted her chin boldly. ‘But I’m not sorry, either. He was no guardian of mine. Selling me to Peter and others when he wanted money!’
‘To whom did he sell you?’ I asked. A sudden suspicion tweaked my attention. ‘Not the new sexton, Atwood?’
‘No. I never saw him. The other one, Roger, he came to me a few times. Father liked him. I suppose he thought it was good to have a priest and a sexton on his side.’
‘Roger?’ I said. I was surprised. The man had seemed to be devoted to Dorothy, I had thought. But a man who was lusty would make do with any available wench, as I knew.
‘Yes. I liked him. He was gentle.’
‘I see.’
Except I didn’t. I had thought the man so besotted with his master’s ex-wife that no one else would suffice for him. Not that it mattered. ‘It was unfortunate that your father returned so soon.’
‘Yes. I don’t know why he came back early. Usually, he would go to the nearest tavern or alehouse when he had finished his business. More often than not, he would just go to the inn and drink till he fell asleep. Nyck always allowed him to stay there. It was easier than fighting with him. Father would get into a horrible temper when he was drunk.’
I felt a sudden interest. ‘Was there one particular person with whom he would fight more than others?’
‘He was likely to fight with anyone there,’ she said. ‘A little while ago, he tried to fight one of the boys living with Nyck.’
‘One of Dorothy’s sons, you mean?’
Yes. That was when I realised what had happened.
SEVEN
It took little time to work it all through in my mind, and the next morning, as I jogged along on the road that was growing unpleasantly familiar, I ran through the obvious facts of the case.
As I had thought in the church when I was choked by the censer, Ed had good reason to hate his father, for the hurt given to his mother and the rest of the family. He had a vicious temper, too, as his mother’s black eye had proved. Ed was not a child; he was almost as big as a man – and as strong. His mother had made up the story of seeing her husband walking ahead of her on the day she found his body, because when she found her dead husband, she realized that her son must have killed him. Ed went down to the mill and saw Peter in there. He ran over and stabbed his father to death and left him there. Ed couldn’t hope to carry his father all the way up the mill’s lane and out to the main road, not all on his own.
So he hurried back to the inn, asking for help from Nyck and Dorothy, and they went with him to bring the body up. Only the miller arrived just at the wrong time, and Ed killed him, too.
Yes, it all made sense to me. A shocking matter, for a fellow so young to be so steeped in blood, but that was the way of things. He wou
ld soon be turned off in his turn with a hempen halter. A shame, but there you were. Felons could not be tolerated.
Sir Richard was riding casually, his right leg hooked over his horse’s withers, chewing on a capon’s leg with evident satisfaction. We had called on him to join us as soon as Humfrie and I had decided to make our way back to the inn. I hadn’t told Sir Richard what I intended, but he appeared content to enjoy the morning’s ride. Sir Richard enjoyed his capon’s leg and thigh, and after tossing the bones away, he took a swig from his leather bottle, giving a sigh of contentment as he did so. I could smell the strong wine from where I was, and threw him a contemptuous glance. He smiled at me, casting a look to either side, and then turning to speak to Humfrie, who jogged along quietly behind us.
We clattered into the inn a little after noon, and the smell of pottage and fresh buns reached out on the cool air with welcoming wafts of pure enticement. I salivated at the odours, and I was filled with urgency as I threw the reins to a waiting stable-boy.
Entering the inn, I strode to the bar and rapped loudly. This early, there were only two ancients sitting in the nook near the fireplace, and they cast me the suspicious looks of elderly peasants the world over, their conversation, such as it was, instantly halting.
Nyck appeared in the doorway and rolled his eyes to see Sir Richard, Humfrie and me, as if we were little better than tax collectors. Still, he quickly recovered and nailed a welcoming smile to his face. ‘Good morrow, masters. What may I serve you?’
‘A pint of sack,’ Sir Richard said. Humfrie and I were more moderate in our demands, asking for a quart of ale each. Then we walked to the fire and took our seats at the bench by the wall, ignoring the two ancients. Soon Ed came out with Nyck, carrying two jugs brimming with ale. His master carried a wooden tray with a jug of sack and three cups. Mine was a pottery mug glazed in a revolting brown colour that made it look like a turd, but the ale was welcome, and I sank three cups in quick succession. When Ed made as if to leave, I halted him with a raised hand.
‘Master Ed,’ Sir Richard said, ‘when your father was killed, where were you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know? It was only a little more than a week ago. I’m not asking what you were doing when you were still in clouts.’
‘I don’t know.’ He had reddened, and the boy’s head stuck forward truculently.
‘We shall have to make our own assumptions, then,’ I said.
‘What does that mean?’ Nyck said.
‘That we think Ed here might well have walked down the lane to the mill, and there slain his own father,’ I said.
The result was, I confess, gratifying.
Ed’s mouth fell wide and emitted a soft groan. Nyck gave a half-hearted curse and fell back as though struck on the head, and from the doorway there came a gasp of horror. Even as I glanced in that direction, I saw Dorothy clutch at her breast and fall against the door’s frame. Nyck rushed to her, but she was already toppling, and before he could reach her, she had swooned quite away.
Sir Richard strode over and helped Nyck pick her up and carry her to the bench nearer the fire. With Nyck rubbing her face and the heat from the fire, as well as a goodly portion of Sir Richard’s sack, she started to stir, and as soon as she could take in all our faces, she clutched at her son and Nyck, and her face was, well, tragic, really. I felt bad having to put her through this.
‘No! You can’t be serious! He had nothing to do with his father’s killing!’
‘You thought he did, didn’t you, Dorothy?’ I said. ‘That was why you invented seeing your husband walking that morning. You knew that would help throw us off the right path, didn’t you? Saying you had seen him would send us off searching for the strange man who looked so alike to your husband. Did you mean to make us think that the verger here was the guilty man?’
She had the grace to look ashamed at that.
‘Yes, I realized Atwood was remarkably similar to your husband in build. And persuading us to look elsewhere stopped us looking at your son.’
‘Atwood is a foul man. When I went to church, he put his hand … where he shouldn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the murderer! My son had nothing to do with it!’
‘But you thought he did, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘No!’ she burst.
Sir Richard was watching this all the while, but then his eyes turned to Ed himself, and thence up to Nyck’s face.
The innkeeper nodded slowly. ‘There’s no point, Dorothy. I’ll tell him the truth.’
Nyck’s face was pale. He let his head fall, and when he began to speak, it was as if he was talking to the floor.
‘He came in here late at night, Miller did. I was out in the back, and he was in a fighty mood, insulting everyone, pushing them around, and then he knocked Ed down. Ed couldn’t do anything about it. Look at him – he’s only a boy, really. So I told Miller to stop it and leave the boy alone. But instead he came towards me and started shouting. I said to him, he should go. He wasn’t welcome in that state of mind. And I said to him, if he came into the bar in that kind of mood again, I’d not serve him and he’d be told he couldn’t come in anymore.’
‘What did he do?’ Sir Richard said.
‘He shouted and blustered and complained, and when I thought he was about to hit me, and I was about to run for a club or a knife, he suddenly calmed. He was sulky, but he nodded. I think the idea that he wouldn’t be allowed into the place again was enough to make him appreciate how much he liked it here. Eventually, he agreed to go home, and then I started to clear up in here and get the regulars to realize that I had a bed to go to even if they didn’t, and I was about empty when he came back again. This time even more drunk, I thought. He was rolling like a wherry in a gale, and I was about to shout at him when he started trotting forward and fell there.’ He pointed to the basket of kindling beside the fire. ‘I shouted at him, and kicked him, and it was a while before I realized he was dead.’
‘That was why the stones under the basket were wet,’ I muttered. It made sense. There had been a damp patch on the day I first arrived, and it was because the innkeeper and Dorothy had tried to clean up the blood.
‘I didn’t know what to do. In the end, all I could think of was removing his body, so I took it down to the mill—’
‘How?’ Sir Richard demanded.
‘Eh?’
‘On yer back? In a cart? How?’
‘I have a barrow, and I put him in that.’
‘Then what?’
‘I wheeled him down to the mill, and put him inside.’
Sir Richard shook his head. ‘It won’t do. In the first place, you’re lying about the barrow. You couldn’t carry a man his size down that path with all the potholes in the dark. In the second, why did you bury him? In the third, where was Peter all this while? And Jen?’
‘She must have left for—’
‘So you walked in and stabbed Peter in the back?’
‘No!’
‘What do you say you did, then?’
‘I took him into the mill and put him just inside the doorway.’
‘And then?’
‘I came back here, washed the stones where he had bled, and tried to put it all from my mind.’
Sir Richard shook his head. ‘Who helped you?’
‘I did,’ Dorothy said before Nyck could argue. ‘I heard the clatter as Miller fell down. He knocked over the cooking pot when he fell, and I thought someone was attacking Nyck, so I went down to him, and found him with the miller’s body. I thought he had killed the man at first.’
‘So you both went to the mill and delivered the miller like a sack of old grains?’ Sir Richard’s voice was calm, but he still shook his head. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘It’s the truth. We went down to the mill and left the miller in the room near the door.’
‘And someone else accommodatingly went there after you, dragged his body out and buried
it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Jen, his daughter, was there. Yet you say you didn’t see her?’
‘No.’
‘And the body of Peter was there, I suppose. Your husband.’
Dorothy glanced about her at the faces and gradually sat upright. ‘Sir, I will swear on the Gospels if you like. I had no idea he was there, but there was a foul smell about the place, like metal. I didn’t think at the time, but perhaps it was his blood?’
‘That would mean that his daughter was still there.’
I interrupted. ‘Or that she had already fled up here to fetch her man, as she told us.’
‘But she also denied knowing that her father was dead,’ Humfrie said.
‘So she had already been to find Hal, had him return to the mill with her, and removed the body of Peter,’ I mused. ‘But if that was the case, who concealed the miller, and who stabbed him?’
‘The same man, I would imagine,’ Sir Richard said. ‘He was at the mill, he killed Peter, and then made his way to the inn, where he met the miller and stabbed the fellow. When the miller made his way inside, the murderer waited outside to see what happened. Perhaps he thought the miller would survive and name his murderer? And perhaps he would have,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘No matter. When he saw that the miller was dead, and that his body was being transported to the mill, he went along, too. But for some reason he decided to conceal this second murder. Why?’
‘Because he didn’t want people to blame someone else?’ Humfrie said. ‘He could see that the second murder would implicate someone. Perhaps someone dear to him.’
‘Who could that be?’ I said. I thought they were clutching at straws, personally. This all sounded like mere guesswork. To my surprise all those present gave me a long stare. ‘What?’
Humfrie asked if he could have another ale. ‘Because, Master Jack, if anyone heard that the miller had been murdered, shortly after he had sold his daughter again, the same daughter he had been molesting and abusing for so many years, the natural guilty party, in everyone’s estimation, would be either the daughter or her new swain. Or both. So, if someone adored her – was infatuated with her, perhaps – he would try to protect her, wouldn’t he? He would bury the evidence, the body.’
The Dead Don't Wai Page 25
