16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (4 page)

Her sentiments found an echo in my own mind, but how could I tell how long this enquiry might take me?

‘I didn’t solicit the money,’ I answered quietly. ‘Nor did I expect it. Alderman Foster offered it entirely of his own accord. He’s very anxious that the mystery of this Isabella Linkinhorne’s death should be cleared up and the person responsible brought to justice.’

‘Why, do you suppose? You say he didn’t even know her or her family.’

I shrugged. ‘If he were only intending to build the almshouses on the site, perhaps he wouldn’t worry. But, as I understand it, he is reluctant to raise a chapel on ground that has been contaminated by murder. If the criminal can be brought to book and made to pay the penalty for his misdeeds, then I think the Alderman will feel that he can safely have the graveyard re-consecrated.’

My wife carefully gathered up the coins, dropping them one by one back into the purse. ‘You must do your very best, Roger.’

I suppressed a grin at her change of tune and merely replied that I always did; whereupon she put her arms around my neck, kissed me soundly, apologized and said she knew that without being told.

‘When do you intend to start? If you are going to the Gaunts’ Hospital right away …’

I shook my head. ‘Master Linkinhorne can wait. First, I need to talk to the workmen who found the body. But before even that, I shall walk over to Redcliffe and have a word with Margaret.’

‘In heaven’s name, why?’

I grinned. ‘My love, there’s precious little that’s gone on in this city for the past fifty years that either Margaret or one of her cronies doesn’t know about. I’ll own myself extremely surprised if one of them can’t tell me more about the Linkinhornes than the family even knew about themselves.’

Adela laughed. ‘You’re probably right. If my cousin or Bess Simnel or Maria Watkins have nothing to say, there’s most likely nothing to tell.’ She added, ‘Take the dog with you. He needs the exercise.’

Hercules was stretched out by the fire and I stirred him with my toe. He opened a bleary eye, farted loudly, rolled over and went back to sleep once more. My wife, however, was having none of that. She fetched the rough leather collar I had made for him and the length of rope we used as a leading string and handed them both to me with an imperious gesture. Ten minutes later, while she and the two elder children settled down with their hornbooks for an hour of lessons, I trudged up Small Street yet again, at my heels a reluctant hound who was making his displeasure plain by dragging at the rope and stopping to investigate every smell that caught his fancy. In the end, exasperated, I picked him up, tucked him under one arm and carried him the rest of the way, down High Street, across the Backs and Bristol Bridge and into Redcliffe.

I was in luck.

My former mother-in-law was not only at home, but was enlivening a dull April morning by entertaining Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins to small beer and oatcakes, the three of them sat around the table, their heads close together, emitting sudden snorts and cackles of laughter as they busily tore some poor neighbour’s character to shreds. Indeed, they were so busy gossiping that they didn’t even hear me knock, and only glanced up when the draught of my entry into the little room fluttered their caps.

‘Dear Lord,’ Maria Watkins grumbled, flashing her toothless gums, ‘look what the cat’s dragged in.’

‘Don’t you mean the dog?’ giggled Bess Simnel and promptly doubled up at her own witticism.

Margaret Walker demanded suspiciously, ‘What’s wrong? Is Adela or one of the children ill?’ With a mixture of pride and ill-usage, she added to her friends, ‘They can’t get along without me, you know.’

The other two exchanged fleeting grins and made to rise from their stools.

‘We’ll be off then,’ Goody Watkins said. ‘Come along, Bess.’

‘No, no!’ I expostulated. ‘I need all three of you. There’s nothing wrong at home, Mother-in-law. I just need some information.’ At the magic word, the two elder women resumed their seats with alacrity, fixing me with their bright, beady blue eyes. ‘It’s about the girl whose body was found in the old Magdalen nuns’ graveyard a few days ago. Isabella Linkinhorne, I’m told her name was. I’m wondering if you know anything of her, or her parents’ history. If you know anything at all, that is.’

If they knew anything! The mere suggestion that they might not was an insult that made them grow pink with indignation.

Maria Watkins gnashed her gums and declared that she’d always known that that girl would come to a bad end. She appealed to her friends. Hadn’t she always said so?

The others nodded solemnly. ‘We all did,’ Bess Simnel amended, unwilling to let one of them take credit over the other two.

‘But did you know her well?’ I asked, frowning and stooping to untie the rope from around Hercules’s collar. ‘I was told she and her parents lived in the manor of Clifton.’

‘True enough,’ Margaret admitted. ‘And she was some years younger than any of us.’

‘Four or five, at least,’ Goody Watkins agreed.

‘Oh, really, Maria!’ Bess Simnel was scathing. ‘In your case, ten or eleven, surely. Isabella would be over forty now, if she’d lived. And you can’t pretend to me that you’re a day younger than fifty-five!’

Margaret Walker intervened hurriedly. ‘Let’s just say that Isabella Linkinhorne was younger than the three of us and leave it at that. And yes, the family did live in the manor of Clifton. But that didn’t prevent us hearing about her and her wild goings-on.’

‘An only child, Alderman Foster tells me, and very spoiled,’ I said.

But mentioning the Alderman was a mistake, and they insisted I inform them of his and my involvement in the search for the murdered woman’s killer. They were, of course, thrilled. They would be first with this news throughout Redcliffe and then the city. They were immediately willing to tell me everything they knew.

Disappointingly, this varied little from what John Foster had already told me, except that they remembered Isabella visiting the city on occasions with her parents.

‘And not just with Master and Mistress Linkinhorne,’ Bess Simnel said, nodding her head and pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘I recall times when she arrived entirely on her own, without even a maid in attendance.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Maria Watkins agreed, mashing one of the oatcakes to pulp with the back of a horn spoon, then feeding her toothless mouth with the crumbs. ‘Hard-faced hussy she was, in spite of her youth.’

‘She was very beautiful, as I remember,’ objected Bess.

‘Didn’t say she wasn’t,’ her friend retorted, spluttering through a mouthful of crumbs and spitting most of them out over the table. ‘Jus’ said she was hard-faced. And so she was.’

‘You’re both right,’ Margaret said, keeping the peace. ‘Lovely to look at, but wilful with it.’

‘Men,’ Goody Watkins opined darkly. ‘They were her weakness. And her downfall, mark my words.’

‘They’re most poor women’s downfall,’ Bess Simnel agreed gloomily.

They all three nodded and glared reproachfully at me. I knew better than to try defending my reprehensible sex, and looked suitably conscience-stricken. Even Hercules raised his head and gave me an accusing stare.

‘Was there a particular man in Isabella’s life?’ I asked.

Margaret sniffed, Maria Watkins let rip with a raucous laugh and Bess Simnel looked down her nose.

‘More than one, if all the rumours were true,’ my former mother-in-law said disapprovingly. ‘The story was that one of ’em was a Bristol man.’

I was puzzled. ‘Why was it only a story?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t she ever seen with him?’

Goody Watkins guzzled some beer, then smacked her lips together. ‘She was a crafty piece, that Isabella Linkinhorne. She was never actually seen by anyone with any of her lovers. Leastways, not up close, so’s they were recognizable. And if she’d a man in Bristol, she kept him pretty dark.’

‘It sounds to me,’ I said severely, ‘as if this poor girl’s reputation was undeserved. If no one ever saw her with a man …’

‘Oh, she was seen all right!’ Margaret protested. ‘From the time she could get astride a horse …’

‘Or a fellow,’ cackled Goody Watkins, then laughed so heartily she choked on a crumb.

‘Be quiet, Maria,’ Margaret admonished her and turned back to me. ‘From the moment Isabella could sit astride a horse, she was out nearly every day, in all weathers, riding across the downs. And as she grew older, not always alone. Very often there was somebody with her, thought to be a man.’

‘And not necessarily the same one every time,’ Bess Simnel added. ‘As I recall, there were reports of two or three.’

All this while I had been helping myself, unbidden, to Margaret’s oatcakes, but now cleared my mouth to say reprovingly, ‘Isabella’s lovers were nothing but hearsay, in fact. A case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. Or, in this case, her.’

The three women exchanged indignant glances.

‘If that’s going to be your attitude,’ Margaret said, ‘you might as well leave now – and while there are still some oatcakes left for the rest of us,’ she added waspishly.

‘We know what we know,’ Bess Simnel snapped. ‘And we stand by every word of what we’ve said.’

‘Danged impudence!’ shouted Maria, banging her spoon on the table, just the way Adam did when he was angry.

I rose meekly from my stool and fastened the rope leading string around Hercules’s collar.

‘We’d better go, my lad,’ I whispered. ‘I think we’ve offended the ladies.’

We both beat a strategic retreat.

I
walked back to the bridge, pausing only for a brief chat with Burl Hodge, on his way home to dinner from the tenting fields where he worked. We had once been firm friends, but my good fortune in being left the old Herepath house by Cicely Ford had soured our relationship; and even the fact that, two years earlier, I had proved him innocent of a charge of murder and saved him from the hangman’s noose, had not been enough to assuage his envy. Nowadays, it was true, he treated me politely and no longer subjected me to the jibes and barbed comments which had, on more than one occasion in the past, nearly brought us to blows; but the old free and easy manner had been lost for good. His wife, Jenny, and his two sons, Jack and Dick, might show me the same courteous affection they had always done, but I had forced myself to accept that Burl would always begrudge me my luck.

After a minute or so, the conversation floundered, and more to keep it afloat than for any other reason, I enquired after his mate and fellow tenter, Hob Jarrett.

‘Oh, him!’ Burl shrugged dismissively. ‘He’s given up tenting. Too cold in the winter, he says, what with the wind and all them ells of wet cloth.’ Burl displayed his raw, chilblained hands with their swollen knuckles and other painful-looking joints. ‘He’s with a labouring gang now. Out all weathers just the same, but he reckons it’s warmer work than tenting.’

Acting on a sudden hunch, I asked, ‘Hob’s not by any chance one of the gang clearing the ground at the top of Steep Street?’

‘You mean what’s now Alderman Foster’s land and used to be the nuns’ graveyard? Strange you should ask. He was round at our cottage night before last telling me and Jenny and the boys about the woman’s body they’ve found there. Hob was the one who uncovered it.’

‘Ah! Do you think he’d be willing to talk to me, then?’

Burl’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your interest, Roger?’

I told him, and saw again the flash of malice before he blinked it away and smoothed out his features.

‘Friends with the Mayor-elect, are we? Of course! I forgot. Alderman Foster’s a neighbour of yours.’

I let this go. ‘Remember me to Jenny,’ was all I said.

I tugged on Hercules’s rope and walked on, stopping only once more to use the public latrine on Bristol Bridge before making my own way home to dinner.

It was yesterday’s fish stew warmed up, but with some fresh cabbage and a fistful of chopped leeks added to the boiled cod and lentils that had comprised our suitably abstemious Friday fare.

‘Sunday tomorrow. Meat,’ Adela promised me, smiling at my unhappy grimace as I swallowed the first spoonful of broth. ‘How was Margaret? Was she able to give you any information about the Linkinhornes that you hadn’t been told already?’

‘Goody Watkins and Bess Simnel were there as well,’ I said. ‘They all three remember the daughter, and all three agree that she was spoiled and wilful. “A crafty piece” was the way Maria described her. Overly fond of the men was the general opinion, although there seemed precious little direct evidence, at least as far as I could gather, to uphold the claim. Only hearsay. One of them – I forget which – reckoned Isabella had an admirer among the Bristol men. Mind you, it all happened twenty years or more ago.’

‘Twenty years! I’d have been ten.’ And Adela heaved a sigh for the lost innocence of childhood. ‘So I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ she added. ‘I don’t even recollect hearing the girl’s name … What will you do next?’

‘First, I’m going to pay a visit to the workmen who found the body. I understand they’re still clearing the ground. Afterwards, I’ll go to the Gaunts’ Hospital and speak with Jonathan Linkinhorne. He’s well into his eighties according to Alderman Foster – eighty-five I think he said – so I’m praying he’s still in possession of all his faculties. Oh, and while I’m at Steep Street I must go to the Magdalen nunnery and have a word with Sister Walburga. You don’t happen to know her, by any chance?’

Adela pursed her lips. ‘I have very little to do with the Sisters, but I fancy Walburga’s the timid, retiring one.’

I finished my stew, drained my beaker and stood up, shrugging myself into my jerkin and arming myself with my cudgel.

‘In any case, there should be no problem in identifying her,’ I remarked. ‘There are only three nuns.’ I hesitated. ‘Do – ’er – do you want me to take Hercules?’

My wife eyed the dog unfavourably, but he was sleeping – or pretending to sleep – so soundly that she hadn’t the heart to wake him.

‘You can leave him here,’ she agreed grudgingly. ‘I don’t suppose either the workmen or the sisters will welcome his disruptive presence.’

As though aware of this slur cast on his character, the dog emitted a faint growl, but his eyes remained fast shut. Probably just a touch of indigestion.