Shroud of Dishonour (25 page)

“I would rule out Gilbert and his wife as suspect,” Bascot replied. “The eldest brother is a dutiful man and might murder to protect one of kin, but I do not believe he would jeopardise the safety of his wife, and his holdings, to take revenge for a fate that Jacques brought on himself. And Herve, too, I think, is not culpable. Unless his professed dislike of his dead brother is a pretence—which I think a drunken man would find hard to simulate so convincingly—I do not believe he is responsible. That is not to say,” Bascot added, “that they are not protecting another member of their family who is guilty.”

“If the murderer is a woman, I do not think it can be Gilbert’s wife,” Roget said. “And if the person who attacked Terese is the same one who killed the harlots, Margaret is too short to fit the description Terese gave us.”

“And of too frail and timid a nature, I suspect,” Bascot replied in agreement. “That leaves Julia—who is tall enough and, from the way she struck her brother, of sufficient strength—and the baseborn half brother, Savaric.”

“I will ask about the town to see if anyone noticed either of them during the times the two prostitutes, and Terese, were attacked,” Roget replied, and then grimaced. “That means my knuckles will once again become bruised from knocking on doors.” Almost as the words left his mouth, his aspect brightened. “I will go first to question the perfumer, Constance, and her maid. That task, at least, will be a pleasure.”

Bascot smiled at his friend’s bewitchment with Mistress Turner. It was not often Roget took an interest in a respectable woman. He wondered if the captain, after so many years of protesting he would never take a wife, had finally succumbed to the charms of a female.

“It might also be advisable to ask Lady Nicolaa if her bailiff, or some other person on her household staff at Brattleby, can speak to the servants on the Roulan property. Servants will be less reluctant to tell another menial the truth about Gilbert’s claim that none of his family left his demesne during the times in question. They might not be so forthright with either of us.”

“A good thought,
mon ami
,” Roget replied. “I will suggest it to Sir Gerard as soon as we return to the keep.”

T
HE NEXT TWO DAYS PASSED UNEVENTFULLY.
I
N THE PRECEPTORY Bascot, having given a report of all that had passed with the Grimson party and the Roulan family to d’Arderon, joined the other men in the enclave in the regular regime of attending religious services throughout the day and taking part in daily exercise in the training ground. The tempers of all of the men were growing short. The men of the contingent were eager to be gone and found the delay frustrating, while the regular soldiers based in the Lincoln enclave grew testy from sharing the overcrowded quarters. Even the servant with the crooked back, normally cheerful, wore a scowl on his face as he cleaned the midden and strewed flea-deterring herbs on sleeping pallets.

As Bascot went about his duties, he went over and over in his mind the small amount of information that was known about the murderer. The only hints to his, or her, identity were the limited description that Terese had given and the gold cloak clasp Agnes had seen. He tried to fit them in with the suspects they had—Joan and Sven Grimson, the two seamen they employed, and Savaric and Julia Roulan. There were also the two Templar men-at-arms, Thomas and Alan. Although the description might fit all of them, it was unlikely that either Askil or Dunny would possess such a valuable item as the clasp, or Savaric who, as a baseborn relative, would not have access to the wealth of the Roulan family. With respect to the two Templars, even if they had not given up all of the valuables they possessed at the time they joined the Order, both came from impoverished backgrounds and were unlikely to have ever owned such an expensive piece of jewellery.

Bascot felt as though he were trying to reconstruct a shattered pottery jar from only half the pieces. There was something that dragged at the edge of his consciousness—a half-remembered phrase or a detail that had seemed of little importance at the time—but now would not come to the surface. Doggedly he threw himself into training the two unseasoned knights that had come from York. Once before a bout of strenuous exercise had loosened the knots that hampered his thoughts, he hoped it would happen again.

I
N THE CASTLE,
N
ICOLAA DE LA
H
AYE SENT INSTRUCTIONS TO her bailiff at Brattleby to try and find out if all of the Roulan family had, as they said, remained at Ingham over the last two weeks. Such information could not be obtained quickly. It would take time for the bailiff to approach those who lived at the Roulan manor house in such a way as to engage in casual conversation. While she waited, the castellan chafed at the delay.

Roget embarked on his rounds of knocking on doors in the town enquiring about the Roulan family. As he had told Bascot was his intention, he began with the home of the perfumer, Constance Turner. He was given a warm welcome and invited in to partake of a cup of wine and pleased to find that, this time, it was one of good Spanish red which Constance had bought for him especially. As the captain sat in a little parlour enjoying both the wine and Constance’s lovely smile, he was surprised to hear that the perfumer’s little maid, Agnes, had been perversely relieved when she heard of the attack on Terese.

“Agnes now reasons that the murderer is not aware that she saw him,” Constance told Roget with a mischievous glint in her eye, “for, she said, if he had, he would have come after her and not attacked another woman. I do not follow her logic, but am thankful that she thinks thus, for she is now willing to go about her duties as formerly and I can at last give my full attention to my work.”

Roget spent a pleasant hour in Constance’s parlour before he reluctantly left to resume his task of trying to discover whether any of the Roulan family had been seen in Lincoln. Before he left, however, he obtained a promise from the perfumer that he could come back and spend an evening in her company.

“I will cook you a meal,” Constance said with an inviting smile, “and may even get another bottle of Spanish wine to accompany it.”

“It will be my pleasure,
ma belle,
to provide the wine,” the captain replied.

When Roget left, both he and Constance were well satisfied with the arrangement.

“
G
RIMSON IS A LYING COWSON!”
C
AMVILLE GROWLED TO
B
ASCOT the following morning. “He anchored his vessel on the southern side of the estuary, just as Thorson said he might have done.”

The sheriff gestured at the message he had received the day before from the town official in Hull, which now lay unfurled on a table in Camville’s private chamber. The sheriff was pacing the room in exasperation as he spoke. Nicolaa de la Haye was also present and it was she who related the details of the message.

“Although the men on Sven’s list all confirmed he had been in contact with them on the days he stated, the Hull bailiff couldn’t find anyone who saw Grimson’s vessel in the port,” she said. “Since my husband had asked that a check be made on that detail, the bailiff sent one of his constables across to Barton to question the man that operates the ferry across the Humber. The ferryman remembered seeing Sven’s boat at anchor in the harbour and also stated that he took both Sven and his wife across to Hull, but he swears the two sailors weren’t with them. As Bailiff Thorson said, it would have been an easy matter, during the time Grimson’s boat was at Barton, for the seamen to have sailed a skiff down the Ancholme to Bishopbridge, and then walked to Lincoln and killed both of the prostitutes before returning the way they had come.”

“And despite Thorson keeping watch over the Grimson party while they are here in Lincoln,” Camville added, “it could be that one of them is responsible for the attack on the harlots’ childminder. I should have thrown them all in the castle gaol when they first came.”

Bascot considered the conclusion Camville had reached. The Templar had always felt that the Grimson faction was not telling the complete truth but, as he had said to Roget, he did not think they were lying in a direct fashion, only omitting certain facts for their own purposes. He mentally reviewed the tale that Dunny had told them and Joan Grimson’s later claim that the knight who had killed her brother was from Lincolnshire. The remarks Thorson had made about Scallion’s unsavoury reputation came to his mind and then Roget’s mention of Bishopbridge as he and Bascot had ridden up Ermine Street and approached the turnoff to the Roulan manor house. Suddenly, the Grimsons’ purpose became clear.

“I do not believe the seamen killed the prostitutes, lord,” he said to Camville, “although I think, as Thorson suggested, that they did make the journey down the Ancholme. But it was not Lincoln that was their destination.”

Camville spun around in surprise and Nicolaa raised her eyebrows in query. “Where else could they have been going?” she asked.

“Ingham,” Bascot replied.

A
N HOUR LATER SVEN AND
J
OAN
G
RIMSON AND THE TWO SEAMEN stood once again in the hall of the castle, facing Gerard Camville, Lady Nicolaa and Bascot, who were all seated on the dais. As before, Roget stood to one side in the company of Peter Thorson.

Camville let silence reign for a few moments and then he rose from his seat and came down onto the floor of the hall, coming to a stop a few paces in front of Sven, his hand on the hilt of the sword at his belt. “You have been lying to me, Grimson, and I have no patience with prevarication, or the men who practise it.”

Sven Grimson blanched. Although taller by a good hand’s span than the sheriff, Camville’s massive bulk, and his authority, seemed to tower over the boat owner.

“Lord, I have not told you an untruth, I swear,” he stuttered. “I went to Hull, just as I said, to enquire if anyone knew the name of a knight Joan’s brother had fraternised with in the town. We thought it might be that he was the one who killed Robert… .”

“And you sent the two seamen who work for you to seek him also, did you not?” Camville demanded.

Grimson shook his head in confusion. “They went with me to Hull… .” he began to protest.

“To Barton, you mean,” the sheriff barked.

“We anchored at Barton, it is true,” Sven said nervously, “but we went to Hull, as we said, to try and find out the identity of …”

“Enough,” Camville roared. “You already knew the name of the knight that killed your brother-by-marriage. It is Jacques Roulan. And you sent the two seamen to Ingham to see if he had returned home. If you do not admit the truth, I will charge you all with bearing false witness to an officer of the king.” The sheriff’s rage was palpable.

Joan Grimson laid a hand on her husband’s arm. “What you say is true, Sir Gerard. We did know that it was Jacques Roulan who killed Robert, and that was the main reason Sven and I went to Hull. But we found no one who had seen him recently and neither did Askil and Dunny when they went to Ingham.”

Camville turned his venom on the wife. “That, mistress, is because he is dead!”

Now it was Joan’s turn to step back in shock. “But he cannot be,” she said haltingly, her composure finally slipping. “Dunny saw him run away, after he had killed Robert. He was not injured in the fight between them… .”

“A man can die many ways, mistress,” Camville replied, “and it was months ago that Roulan took your brother’s life. Much can happen in such a space of time.”

Nicolaa’s cool voice interjected from where she sat on the dais. “I suggest, Master Grimson, that you and your wife now tell us exactly what you know of the night your brother died in Acre, and of your actions since you learned of it.”

And so the whole story came out. As Bascot had suspected, Dunny had, all along, been aware of the identity of the knight who had killed Robert Scallion. He had heard his employer call Jacques by name and had relayed the information to Askil who, having been a lifelong friend and companion of the boat owner, knew the Roulan brother from the days before the knight had joined the Templars and had, on one or two occasions, been present when Scallion and Jacques had shared a debauched drinking spree in the alehouses and brothels of Hull. When Askil had brought her brother’s vessel home, Joan had reasoned that if Roulan had been expelled from the Templar Order for murdering a Christian, it was probable he would have returned home to Ingham. She had insisted they make an attempt to find him.