Or if someone here
had
poisoned the ginger, then best they were found out.
To the good, Joliffe saw no way any of the sisters could have come at the ginger to poison it. The guilt surely had to lie somewhere between Aylton, Geoffrey, and Idany. Or all of them together. That was the comforting thought he took with him as he crossed the yard back to the hospital after leaving Jack. To have the three of them guilty together—or just Aylton and Geoffrey—would very satisfactorily link together Aylton’s murder and the attempt on Mistress Thorncoffyn. It would all be so straightly forward if Aylton and Geoffrey had intended Mistress Thorncoffyn’s death, and then Geoffrey had seen and taken his chance to be rid of Aylton who could be nothing but a danger to him from that point on.
Except Geoffrey had apparently worked as hard as anyone to keep his grandmother alive that night. That was the fact that Joliffe kept coming up against. Geoffrey might have briefly gone out, but hardly for long enough to have chance at Aylton. Surely not long enough to feed him, drug him, and drown him.
Damn.
He inwardly grabbed his mind and shook it. He was becoming as addled as a drunken egg, he thought. He was
not
going to think about any of it any more. Not unless he could find out something new that would make it worth his while to think about it rather than circling and circling pointlessly, conjuring phantoms out of nothing.
Passing along the covered walk toward the kitchen now, he raised a hand in greeting to Sister Petronilla and Daveth sitting on the garth’s grass rolling a red-painted wooden ball back and forth between them, with Sister Petronilla gently urging Heinrich to watch the ball, see the ball, catch the ball, none of which Heinrich did, only sat swaying softly forward and back, staring into nowhere in front of him or at somewhere no one around him could see. Daveth waved to Joliffe, though, and Sister Petronilla smiled and nodded.
He came into the kitchen to find no one there but Rose, scrubbing the tabletop. Without pausing at her work, she asked, “How goes it? Are you any further with any of it?”
“Who says I’m thinking about
it
at all?” he lightly jibed.
“Anyone who knows you.”
“Then, no,” he admitted, letting his regret show. “I’m as good as flat-faced against a wall and getting nowhere.”
“Ah well.” She did not sound overly concerned. “There’s work in the scullery to keep you busy for now.”
Not finding himself ready yet to share what Jack had told him and be forced to talk about it, he went to the scullery and indeed found work there, and a bucket of warm water sitting ready, too, so he need not return to the kitchen even for that, just set straight to the washing—and to his thinking again, unable to stop himself.
It all came back to Geoffrey, didn’t it? Leaving aside how easily he could have dealt with poisoning his grandmother, was he truly as innocent of Aylton’s dealings as he claimed? If he were not, he had reason to have Aylton dead and would have had the necessary chance to kill him under guise of helping him escape, the escape being Aylton’s price for keeping silence about their mutual cheating of her. They could have been together in poisoning Mistress Thorncoffyn. Or not. If Geoffrey was indeed involved in the extortions, he had nearly as much reason as Aylton to have his grandmother dead before she found out. She was unlikely to have set the law on him as she had threatened to do to Aylton, but she surely would have made his life hell for a long while to come.
All that, however appealing it was, all fell apart, though, on the two-pronged trouble that, first, there was no proof that Geoffrey had known of Aylton’s extortions and, second, he had been trapped all that night by his grandmother’s illness. Unless Idany was lying for him. That was the other appealing possibility—that he and Idany were together in this. But that could be something impossible to prove if they held to lying for one another.
Could Geoffrey have been working with someone other than Idany—someone free to see to Aylton for him? Who? Perhaps Hewstere, as part of a plan to get Mistress Thorncoffyn into their shared control? That had possibilities, because after all Hewstere’s word that Geoffrey had been all night with his grandmother was needed as much as Idany’s. Yes. Hewstere’s cooperation was needed if either Geoffrey or Idany had seen to Aylton. So it had to be all three of them. Or none.
Joliffe rubbed at his forehead that was beginning to ache, forgetting his hands were wet and somewhat gritted with the scrubbing sand. As he paused to wipe his face dry, he admitted to himself that in trying to see all three of them guilty together he was stretching almost as far as wondering about, say, Sister Petronilla. If he was going to stretch his imaginings that far, why not consider Master Soule more closely? He was a man who kept himself to himself. Who knew what secrets he held while seeming apart and above all the common fray? And if Master Soule, why not Jack, who could be lying about not seeing Aylton that night? Of course Amice would have to join in Jack’s lie, but who knew what a woman would do for love?
Of course among the things Joliffe did not know was what possible reason either Jack or Amice would have for bothering to have Aylton dead.
Wryly, he wondered whether there was anyone else in the hospital he had yet to suspect. Someone among the patients? Such as were not bedridden. After all, they had had closest chance at Aylton that night. And why not Daveth and Heinrich, too, while he was at it? Well, not Heinrich—but Daveth? Had he been enough afraid of Aylton to want him dead?
He put a stop to all that far-stretched thinking and brought his thought around to the poisoned candied ginger. No one of the hospital had had chance to poison it. Yet to poison her here, where skilled help was so immediately to hand, argued the poisoning had to have been by someone who would not have other chance at her.
That
argued against it being Geoffrey or Idany or Aylton.
Still, Joliffe could not make it likely that Mistress Thorncoffyn’s poisoning was not linked to Aylton’s death, any more than he could make himself believe there was only chance in Aylton dying as he had. The two things simply could
not
stand separate from one another. They
had
to be linked. But how?
His certainty held that somewhere there was a missing piece whose shape he could not see, could not yet guess at or even guess whether it had to do with something he already knew but so far failed to understand, or with something not yet found out at all—something that would bring all the pieces together into a clear answer.
He found that he had been scouring a single cup until now it was almost shining, not an easy accomplishment since it was of wood. Impatiently, he sloshed it in the rinse water, set it aside, and reached for another, wishing his thoughts could be as readily set aside.
Chapter 23
H
e did not have to give the sisters the news of the coming departures. Sister Ursula, summoned to Mistress Thorncoffyn, had it from her directly and shared it with the other sisters, Rose, and Joliffe in the kitchen, causing thereby a rejoicing not much tempered by the word they were losing their physician, too. In truth, none of them seemed uneased by that at all, Sister Margaret saying, openly pleased, “We can call on Master Benedict at the other end of town if there’s need of a physician until we have another. He’ll come gladly.”
Master Osburne’s apothecary arrived late in the afternoon. Joliffe, not entirely by chance, was near to hand when Master Osburne brought him into the hospital and explained to Sister Ursula the why of Master Goldin’s being there. She took it quietly, only saying respectfully, “Whatever you deem needful, Master Osburne, surely. I can’t agree, though, that he be in the stillroom and among our medicines without Sister Letice there.”
“I’d not have it otherwise,” Master Goldin said for himself. He was of late middle years and middle build, soberly dressed as suited his work, with a not unpleasant face and mild eyes.
Sister Ursula smiled on him. “She’s there now, I think. I’ll take you. Master Osburne, will you come, too, or would you care for a cup of ale while you wait?”
“I doubt Master Goldin needs me watching over his shoulder.”
“I do not,” Master Golden confirmed.
“Then I would indeed be glad of ale, and will sit on that bench in the rear-yard, to be out of your way here in the kitchen.”
“Joliffe will bring out your ale. Master Goldin, if you’ll come this way.”
Joliffe poured a cupful of ale and followed Master Osburne out the rear door, finding him sitting on the bench there, head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. He opened them as Joliffe stopped beside him, straightened to take the cup, thanked him, and said, “You are someone from outside this place. I gather from what the sister has said that you have no intent to stay but mean to leave when you can, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then, as someone from outside, what can you say about what you see among these folk, day by day? Is there anything that rises to—” He paused, maybe seeking the best way to say what he wanted.
“Murder?” Joliffe supplied.
“Murder,” Master Osburne agreed.
“No.”
With a tilt of his head and an inquiring look, Master Osburne asked for more without giving away what that more might be.
Joliffe, trying for honesty beyond the swirl of his mostly rootless suspicions, said, “Not even of Mistress Thorncoffyn. She makes almost constant trouble for the sisters while she’s here. No one welcomes her coming. But everyone knows she’ll go away again. No one is going to kill because of an itch that’s going to go away.”
“She has been more than an itch to Sister Margaret, as I hear.”
“You’ll also hear that Sister Margaret was glad to escape her and is more than content in her life here. She has no interest in revenge on Mistress Thorncoffyn.”
“So it is said. Is it true?”
“From all I’ve seen of her at her work, yes. The skill to heal isn’t only in her head. It’s in her heart and her hands. I can’t see her ever using it to murder. It would be a betrayal of who she is.”
“What of this Sister Letice and her brother the priest? They have to be bitter against Mistress Thorncoffyn. Could he have urged his sister to use her skill with herbs to take revenge by poisoning the candied ginger? Or could she have chosen to do it on her own?”
Plainly, Master Osburne had been very thorough in his time here, and Joliffe granted, “It’s possible, but I haven’t thought of how either of them could have come at the ginger to poison it. Or how Sister Margaret could. Mistress Thorncoffyn never lets her close.”
“Sister Petronilla?”
“She has the least of anyone to do with the Thorncoffyns and no more chance at the ginger than the other sisters. Her concern is mostly the children, and she shows completely happy at that.”
“What of Sister Ursula? Since every problem with Mistress Thorncoffyn’s being here comes to her, soon or late, could she come to the point of thinking murder a way of simply easing things once and for all?”
“It would take something far greater than simply easing her life to bring her to murder, I think,” Joliffe said. “Supposing she could be brought to it at all. I don’t know that she could.”
“But if need were great enough?”
“I don’t see being rid of Mistress Thorncoffyn, even on her worst days, as need enough.” Uncomfortable with the crowner’s questioning, Joliffe gave way to a deliberate grin and added, “And even then it would be murder done in the moment, not planned as the poisoned ginger had to be. I’d say we must grant the poisoned ginger to Master Aylton. But then, who killed
him
? None of the sisters, surely. They would have no reason.”
Master Osburne did not join his smile. “No reason we yet know,” he said, his gaze fixed on Joliffe’s face.
Joliffe lost his grin, abruptly aware that he had spoken too openly, unwarily. Not like a servant being questioned. “No reason we know,” he agreed.
The crowner kept his look fixed on him. “You have thought much on all of this.”
That probe was careful, inviting him to say more. Joliffe, since his seeming of a servant was already so deeply dented, gave in and went on, “If I were to lay a wager on who had best reason to have Aylton dead, it would have to be on Geoffrey Thorncoffyn, on the likelihood they were together in thieving from Mistress Thorncoffyn. The trouble there is that he was with his grandmother all that night.” He paused, then could not help adding, hoping for something back from Master Osburne, “At least no one has said otherwise, I gather.”
“No one has,” Master Osburne agreed. “Not her woman or the sisters or Master Hewstere for such of the time he was there.”
Joliffe snatched at that. “Such of the time? He wasn’t there all the while?”
“He went home for a time to compound a medicine for her, since she would take only what came from his hands, nothing any of the sisters might have tainted here. No one is sure of the hour he went or for how long. ‘Not long’ he says. ‘Too long’ the woman Idany says. ‘I don’t know’ says Master Thorncoffyn.”
Joliffe’s mind leaped to the possibilities that opened and again forgot to curb his tongue. “The last thing Master Hewstere is likely to want is Mistress Thorncoffyn dead. She’s worth too much to him. If he had come to think the ginger was poisoned, then encountered Aylton escaping in the night, he maybe killed him in revenge for nearly ruining his chance to make his fortune with Mistress Thorncoffyn.” Joliffe’s excitement abruptly faded. More flatly, he said, “Except why take the risk and trouble of murder when simply giving Aylton over to the law would have been more than revenge enough?”
“More than that, Master Hewstere had no thought it was poison working in Mistress Thorncoffyn. He even dismissed it as a possibility when I told him what Sister Letice had learned.”
“Did you tell him how she had learned it?” Joliffe asked, instantly angry on Sister Letice’s behalf.