Masques of Gold (40 page)

“I will do whatever you want me to do, Justin, but you have a room full of men below. Halsig said most of the work was for him and the clerk, but he did tell me that you would have to speak to some of them.”

Justin groaned. “True, but I have not yet broken my fast, and you can sit with me while I do that.”

He went to the door and shouted down the stair for his servant to bring up some food. Lissa took off her cloak and added wood to the fire, which had obviously been made up earlier in the morning and had burned down more than it should. When he saw what Lissa was doing, Justin cursed Hervi, but without much heat, and put the small table from against the wall between the two chairs near the hearth. By the time he and Lissa were seated, the little maid, breathing heavily, came into the room carrying a heavy tray. Her face was bruised, one eye swollen shut, and she looked fearfully at Justin who asked, sourly, “Where is Hervi?”

“I do not know, my lord,” the woman whispered.

“You are very quick with the food,” Lissa said.

A very faint smile parted Mary's lips. She had several broken teeth, but from the condition of the others Lissa realized she was younger than she seemed and the teeth had probably been broken by ill-usage. “Halsig told me to ready it,” she said, her voice a little stronger.

“Thank you, Mary.” Lissa smiled and nodded at her, and Mary tried to curtsy and then fled.

“It is a great shame,” Lissa remarked as soon as she was sure Mary could not hear her, “that her husband cannot be hanged. She would do better with Halsig.”

Justin's lips twisted. “And so would I,” he said. “I wondered if you would think I had beaten her, from the look she gave me.”

“I know you too well for that,” Lissa said, smiling. “If she deserved a beating like that from you, she would no longer be your maid. Besides, I knew her husband should have carried up the tray. It is too heavy for her, and I doubt you like to have a woman freely in and out of your private chamber. You told me you suffered the husband for the woman's sake, but he will beat her again if you ask him why he was not here to serve you. The next time you hit him, you should hit him too hard.”

“I have been tempted,” Justin said, breaking off two pieces of the pasty and offering one to Lissa while he bit into the other. “Her cooking is excellent, and she keeps my clothing in good order, which is no easy task, considering how often I am called aside from pleasure to business and dirty my fine gowns.”

“I will give some thought to what can be done for Mary,” Lissa said, “but I cannot be sorry that her husband has made himself scarce so that Halsig was the one who greeted me. I am sure Hervi would not have known and so could not have told me that you had been to Essex. And do not scowl at me. I am not trying to tell you how to seek a murderer. I only wish to beg you, because you are
very
precious to me, not to try to bring a man like FitzWalter to justice for cracking a louse.”

Justin raised a brow. “You do not mince words as to what you thought of your father. Thank God he did not die like Flael or I would need to suspect you in earnest. It is
cui
bono
that solves most murders, you know, and you do not try to hide that you benefit greatly.”

Lissa shrugged. “I know I am not guilty of my father's death. If it will amuse you, I give you leave, with my love and goodwill, to try to discover evidence of my guilt. What I regret bitterly is that I told you the truth about Hubert de Bosco. I never would have done so if I had known he had any connection to FitzWalter. Justin, I am sick to death with worry. Will you not tell me what you were doing in Essex?”

“Not bringing FitzWalter's wrath down on my head or yours,” Justin said, laughing. “It is not very kind of you to all but tell me to my face that you think I am lack-witted and suspect me of flinging unproven accusations at one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. After all, I have my own doubts on the subject of my wits and do not need yours to make me more uneasy.”

“Justin!” Lissa cried, exasperated.

“Oh, very well.” He was still smiling. “I did go to Essex to talk to FitzWalter, but I made no accusations against him or against his man. I asked him about the business he had ordered your father to do for him in the north, but as if that were a matter much to the side of my real interest. I said my main purpose was to speak to Hubert de Bosco, who was known to be friendly with your father. I hoped, I said, that Hubert could tell me of William Bowles's other friends, of his amusements, and such matters, because you could tell me nothing except about business affairs.”

“What did FitzWalter say?”

“First he laughed and said that I was welcome to question Hubert and if I could get him to remember what had happened ten minutes ago, much the less nearly a week past, I should leave a receipt for my method. Then he asked me to repeat what I had asked at first, and when he had heard me out, he swore—and I believe it was the truth—that he had not asked your father to do any business for him in the north. He was truly surprised when I asked about that, but what troubled me was that I felt he was…relieved also, as if he expected a different question.”

“But what other question could you ask when you were talking about murder? Surely he did not expect you to ask if he had ordered the killing?”

“No. He seemed surprised, too, when I told him your father had been murdered, but I am not so sure that surprise was genuine. If he was involved, he had plenty of time to prepare his response. He is a clever man and, I suspect, has faced down more astute questioners than I. Nor was I trying to trap him. A fine case I would have been in if he had confessed to murder. What could I have done about it, with three men at Dunmow, the center of his power? And I am not sure FitzWalter is involved.”

“Neither am I,” Lissa said. “I am more inclined to believe Lord Robert than my father about the business in the north. My father would rather tell a lie than the truth, and he could easily have used FitzWalter's name so that I would ask no questions. I have no proof my father knew Lord Robert at all.”

“He did. FitzWalter told me that he knew your father through Hubert, who had brought him to Baynard's Castle, and that several times your father had asked permission to use Hubert in some private enterprise. Almost certainly that was true, and even more convincing was that FitzWalter made no objection to my speaking to Hubert, nor did he insist that I question the man in his presence. But that could be thought of in several ways. I would have expected FitzWalter to be less agreeable to furthering my investigation; and I could think of his willingness as the special desire to appear innocent that is common to the guilty. On the other hand, I had done him a favor about those cargoes, and he professes to like me, so he might be innocent and merely wish to show himself as accommodating.”

“It must be that, Justin,” Lissa agreed. “Really, there is no sign anywhere in the records of the business, even those my father kept private from me and left with his goldsmith, that my father was employed by Lord Robert. We never even bought wine from him, and he does not deal in spices, as far as I know. Whatever happened must have been a private quarrel between Hubert and my father.”

“But it does not look as if Hubert could have killed your father. He admitted freely that he was out drinking with your father—but on Tuesday night, not on Thursday. He said he could not have been with your father on Thursday because he accompanied his master to Dunmow on Wednesday and remained there from then on. FitzWalter did ride from London to Dunmow on Wednesday with his household, and Hubert was with them when they started out. That much is certain. Several men I spoke to saw him. However, they arrived very late, and I am less certain he was still with them then or that he was at Dunmow on Thursday. I asked Bosco where he was on Thursday, and he looked at me very strangely and said, after hesitating awhile, that he had been out riding. He seemed to be as stupid as a man can be and live without a keeper, but I wonder whether that was real or a pretense.”

“My father said he was a stupid lout,” Lissa put in.

Justin shrugged. “Yes, but he would be likely, from what you have told me of him, to say that spitefully about anyone slower of wit than himself. In any case, if Hubert is as stupid as he seemed, he could easily have confused Tuesday and Thursday. However, he was at Dunmow Friday morning quite early. One of the grooms saw him coming into the stable.”

“Justin,” Lisa protested, “why are you trying to twist and turn the evidence to make Hubert guilty if it is likely he was not? You are saying that he stole away from his party on Wednesday, rode back to London, concealed himself all day Thursday, killed my father, somehow got out of the locked gates of London Thursday night, and rode all night to Dunmow, where he got into a sealed keep in time to appear in the stable on Friday morning—all because you did not manage to find anyone who clearly recalled seeing him in Dunmow on Thursday?”

“That sounds unfair,” Justin admitted, “but there was something in the air around me at Dunmow. Everyone seemed open and willing to talk, but a party left the keep soon after I arrived and did not return while I was there.”

“I am sure parties come and go from so great a lord's household all the time,” Lissa said. “And surely the fact that I saw Hubert with my father several times and that the laugh I heard was deep and hoarse cannot be enough to mark him guilty. I have seen small men with deep laughs, and I never heard Hubert laugh the few times I saw him. I do not remember hearing him speak.”

“I do not suspect him on your evidence alone,” Justin assured her. “Remember, it was what I saw that called out your memory of Hubert.”

“But there is no proof it was Hubert,” Lissa pointed out. “He is not the only large man in London. My father was drunk. It is possible that while he was out drinking he picked up a companion I had never met before. I admit his purse had not been taken, but there was very little in it, so perhaps he had been robbed.”

“If that is true, I will never find the killer,” Justin said.

“I am sorry.” Lissa looked down to hide the fact that her words were not entirely true. “I know you do not like to have unanswered questions about such crimes, but that is all I can think of. I have told you everything else.”

Lissa was surprised, when her eyes passed over the table, to see the tray almost empty. She had not been aware of Justin eating and drinking while he talked, but clearly he had. Then surely enough time had passed for her to plead a need to return to her business. She did not fear parting from him now. He would come to her; she was sure of it, and she was afraid to continue talking to him. His mind was too fixed on her father's murder for her to turn it to a different subject without waking suspicion in him. And if she urged him again to accept Hubert's excuses, he was more likely to wonder why and begin a closer examination of them and of the alternative she had offered.

Lissa knew quite well that, drunk or not—and she was not as sure now that William had been so drunk—her father never picked up strangers and brought them home. Also, since he never carried more than a few pennies and a few farthings when he went out for pleasure, she knew he had not been robbed. Nonetheless, she did not want Justin to continue any line of investigation that might lead toward FitzWalter.

A notion had slipped into her head that what connected her father, Peter, Hubert, and FitzWalter was the thing Peter had seemed to pass into her father's hand at her wedding but actually withheld. If Hubert had been at the wedding as FitzWalter's man rather than her father's, the two deaths—separated by many months, but those months the time when Hubert and FitzWalter had been in France with the king—might mark FitzWalter's anger at not obtaining what was promised him. That would account for the destructive search of Peter's house too.

The whole idea was so reasonable that she was afraid it would slip out of her mouth and add to Justin's conviction that guilt lay with Hubert and his master—and that could only lead to danger, if not disaster, for Justin. Lissa needed to escape for long enough to bury her treacherous thoughts, and her inner panic intensified when she looked up and saw that Justin was staring at her.

“Perhaps Paul or Oliva could tell you some of the places my father went drinking,” she said, as if she had been racking her brains on that subject, “but he is more likely to have told Paul than Oliva. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Oliva is with us again. If you need to talk to Ebba, you will find her at Goscelin's.”

Justin raised his brows. “Paul will tell me nothing at all. He answers ‘I do not know' to every question I have asked, even questions that have nothing to do with your father's death. If he were not your journeyman, I would have stretched him a little taller on the rack to teach him a little courtesy of manner also.”

“Paul is discourteous and will not answer you!” Lissa exclaimed incredulously. “But why? Good God, he could not have—No.” She sighed. “That is foolish. Paul is not strong enough.”

“Are you sure?” Justin asked. It had flashed across his mind that Paul could have been Lissa's tool; he could have plunged that short sword into his master's body on her orders. He watched her face as he went on, “He lifts that heavy counter twice a day, and the barrels and bales. And while you lay waiting for your father to go up to bed, he had time enough to clean the blood off himself. Did he have reason to hate your father?”

Lissa was almost in tears at the idea of suspicion falling on Paul. “Justin,” she said with a sigh, “everyone who was dependent in any way on my father had a good reason to hate him. But why should Paul kill him at that particular moment? Why not any other time?” She stood up. “This is dreadful! Dreadful! I must go home. I must talk to Paul.” She pushed her chair back and looked about for her cloak, but before she remembered where he had laid it, Justin had come from his seat and seized her by the shoulders.