The Prodigal Son (34 page)

Jenny Applegarth, visiting the market in Wells on a chilly summer's morning some six years previously, had been accosted by a seeming stranger, hat pulled down over his brows, cloak muffling the lower part of his face. (All right, I admit I am supplying some of these details myself, but only where they would seem to be feasible. Sometimes bare bones need fleshing out.) The stranger, when he had drawn Jenny aside into the shadows of the cathedral porch, had revealed himself to be her favourite, Anthony, down on his luck. His two-year exile from Croxcombe had left him almost destitute. He was also deeply embittered by what he saw as his unfair treatment by his parents.

Jenny, overwhelmed with delight at seeing him again, had revealed that his mother and father, together with Simon and most of the household officers, had gone on an extended visit to Sir Damien and Lady Chauntermerle at Kewstoke Hall, but that George had been forced to remain behind on account of a broken arm. To Anthony, penniless and desperate, this news must have appeared like an opportunity arranged by heaven. He had convinced Jenny that he had been shabbily used and that he was entitled to do something to put things right. If his parents were not prepared to treat him properly, according to his due, he would just have to rectify the situation for himself. And with Jenny's help, this was precisely what he intended to do.

How long it took Anthony to persuade Jenny to aid him can only be a matter of conjecture, but George, being brutally honest, thought not long. ‘He could always twist her round his little finger,' he admitted sadly.

Jenny's part was to unlock the moat gate and to leave a door into the manor open that same night. She was also to lace her husband's all-night ale with a potion of either lettuce or poppy juice – or a combination of both – taken from the medicine chest, to make sure that he slept soundly with no chance of waking up. The other servants were obviously not considered to present a threat. But that was where both conspirators were mistaken.

Anthony left his horse tethered outside the moat gate and brought with him a large sack in which to load the family silver and pewter, together with anything else of value he could lay his hands on. All was going well when the page, John Jericho, who had also been left behind by Dame Audrea because he was suffering from toothache, and therefore sleeping badly, burst on the scene.

It was easy to imagine the shock and consternation his sudden appearance would have caused, but according to Jenny's dying confession to her husband, Anthony had been only momentarily daunted. Almost without a second's hesitation, he had drawn his dagger and stabbed the page in the chest. Horrified, she had cried out and caught at his arm, trying to wrest the dagger from him. Again without the slightest compunction, Anthony, tearing himself free of her clutches, had lunged at her, also, with every intention of silencing her for good. But in his hurry, his aim had been inaccurate, and although the blow eventually proved itself mortal, it was to be several hours before Jenny actually died; long enough for George to find her on waking and for her to tell him what had really happened.

‘What became of the page?' I asked, as the steward's voice petered into silence and he sat staring into space with blank and empty eyes.

‘The page?' He blinked and shook his head as though trying to get his thoughts in order.

‘Yes, John Jericho! Dame Audrea's page! The poor lad who all this time has been wrongly accused of this dreadful crime.'

George passed his hand across his forehead. ‘Jenny thought she recalled seeing Anthony throw the body over his shoulder. She was not fully conscious at the time, you understand, but the fact that he was nowhere to be found proves her recollection must have been correct. Anthony probably reckoned that if he took young Jericho's body with him and disposed of it somewhere where it wouldn't be found, the lad would be blamed both for the robbery and the murder. As, indeed, proved to be the case, while Anthony got clean away.'

‘But you knew the truth!' It was with difficulty that I stopped myself from striking the man. One hand had already balled itself into a fist. ‘Why, in the name of justice, didn't you speak out?'

‘And what good would that have done?' the steward demanded angrily, suddenly galvanized into life and jumping to his feet. ‘What good?' he repeated. ‘It would have blackened my Jenny's name as an accomplice to robbery, and it would have tarnished the name of Bellknapp with robbery and a double murder combined. John Jericho was dead. What possible harm could it do him to be accused? A little nobody from nowhere! And I knew they'd never catch him because he wasn't alive to be caught. Even if his body was discovered somewhere, no one would ever get to the truth.'

Dame Audrea still said nothing, but her face was grey and she looked as though she might be sick.

I turned to George Applegarth once more, suddenly losing my temper, shoving him down into the chair with all my strength and standing over him, straddling his knees with my legs and lowering my head threateningly, like a bull about to charge.

‘And when Dame Audrea accused my half-brother of being her page, you continued to hold your tongue, even though you knew he couldn't possibly be John Jericho because John Jericho is dead.'

Some of the bravado drained out of the steward, but he raised his face to mine, his lower lip jutting.

‘I denied that Master Wedmore was Jericho. I refused to identify him as such in spite of the fact that it would have been easier just to say nothing and give my tacit agreement to the accusation.'

‘But Dame Audrea didn't admit of your objection. She had every intention of bribing Ned Micheldever to back her up because she was so certain that she'd found John Jericho after all these years. What did you intend to do if she had persisted in her prosecution?'

The slate-grey eyes went blank again and the adversarial gaze was lowered.

‘I should have thought of something,' he mumbled.

‘Would you at last have admitted the truth?'

He made no answer. I looked appealingly at Dame Audrea once again, willing her to say something, but although a tinge of colour had returned to her pallid cheeks, she shook her head at me as a sign that she was not yet ready to speak. I removed myself from the steward's vicinity and went back to the window-seat.

‘So, let's come to recent events,' I said. ‘Anthony's totally unexpected return last Friday finally gave you your opportunity for revenge. Your wife's murderer, who had no idea that you knew the truth, had come back to put himself in your power. It must have seemed like a gift from God.'

The steward smiled faintly. ‘Don't mock! God moves in mysterious ways, Chapman. In faraway Cambridge, an unknown man with a sister in Bristol – a sister with whom he keeps up a regular correspondence – meets Master Anthony quite by chance, recognizes the name of Bellknapp and reveals to him the contents of his father's will. Could anything be more heaven-sent than that?'

And in Bristol, about the same time, or soon afterwards, Dame Audrea had been moved to pick out a stranger, with a passing resemblance to her long-dead page, as the missing John Jericho; a stranger who would prove to be my unknown and undreamt-of half-brother, so that I would come to Croxcombe to try to prove him innocent and, in the process, reveal the truth about the killing of Jenny Applegarth. Oh yes! There was no longer any doubt in my mind that God had been dabbling a Divine Finger in this particular pie and had once more availed Himself of my unwitting services. And not only me, but this William Botoner – or William of Worcester, or whatever he called himself – as well …

But then, suddenly, memory brought me up short; something Ronan Bignell had told me. On the night of the murder, he and his friends had seen the page staggering about in Croxcombe woods being sick and generally acting as though he were drunk. Did that mean, as with Jenny Applegarth, that Anthony's aim had been faulty? That John Jericho might have survived, if only for a few hours? I tried to put myself in the murderer's shoes; to decide what I might have done with what I thought was a dead body, particularly one I didn't want found as he was to be presumed the killer. A grave in Croxcombe woods seemed to me the obvious answer, as no doubt it had done to Anthony. But he would have had nothing to dig a grave with and using bare hands would have been impossible.

Jenny Applegarth had told her husband that Anthony had had a horse tethered outside the moat gate, so, once he had made good his escape, he would have slung the body across the saddle, tied the sack of stolen goods to the pommel and walked the animal as deep into the woodlands as he could go until he or the horse or both were too tired to proceed further. On reflection, I reckoned this would not have been too far. Anthony must have been considerably shaken by the night's events, when what he had planned as a straightforward robbery had turned into the nightmare of a double killing. My guess was that he had reached Hangman's Oak and decided to abandon the page's body in the dense undergrowth that bordered the clearing. Not a very satisfactory conclusion, but it might well have been many months before the decaying corpse was found, and then only by Hamo Gough who coppiced that part of the woods to keep his fire alight for every new batch of charcoal that he made.

So, what had actually happened? John Jericho had recovered consciousness for a while, at least, when he had been seen by Ronan Bignell. What followed, I could only surmise. The page must have wandered deeper into the woods until loss of blood finally killed him. This would have delayed the discovery of his body by the charcoal burner or by anyone else; long enough at any rate for the woodland animals to have eaten away the body so that it was almost unrecognizable …

I realized that Dame Audrea was speaking to me and that I had been so engrossed in my own thoughts that I had been unaware of what she was saying.

‘I-I'm sorry,' I stammered. ‘I was miles away.'

‘So it would seem.' But the reprimand was not delivered in the dame's usual high-handed manner. Her voice was subdued, her face still drawn. ‘I was saying that I would give you a letter for delivery to the Sheriff of Bristol, completely exonerating Master John Wedmore of any wrongdoing and admitting that I was mistaken in his identity.' Judging by her pained expression, it obviously cost her a lot to admit to being mistaken in anything, but she knew she had no option in the circumstances but to do so. ‘You may also tell Humphrey Attleborough that he is free to go and that I will give him his expenses for his journey. The horse he rode is presumably the rightful property of my … of his master' – it was as though she could not bring herself even to mention Anthony's name, let alone refer to him as her son – ‘but he may keep it.' This was generous: it was a good animal and valuable.

‘And me, Mistress?' George Applegarth was still huddled in his chair. ‘What do you intend for me? I shall, of course, leave your service, that goes without saying.'

‘Nonsense!' A little colour was creeping back into the dame's face and she was beginning to regain something of her old self-confidence. ‘I've no mind to lose a good steward. Nor do I wish to have to accustom myself to a stranger's ways. I won't say you have done nothing wrong, but I understand the motive for your secrecy all these years. You wanted to protect Jenny's and the Bellknapp family's good names. So I suggest we bury the past and breathe no word of the truth to any other person. Master Chapman, I rely on your discretion!'

But this was going too far and too fast for me. Besides, her peremptory tone annoyed me.

‘I'm not sure about that,' I said. ‘Apart from the fact that Master Applegarth's silence has blackened the name of an innocent man for the past six years, and will continue to do so, there's the trivial matter of the fact that he tried to kill me. I assume it was you, Master Steward, who stuck a knife into what you thought was my back but, through a fortunate circumstance, was really my pillow?'

He nodded. ‘I can't deny it. I was growing desperate to prevent you discovering the truth.' He raised his head and looked me in the eyes for the first time since entering the solar. ‘A sort of madness possessed me.' He sighed. ‘I don't suppose you'll believe this – there's no reason why you should – but as I approached the bed, my heart had already failed me, and I was preparing to tiptoe out again when it struck me that the shape of the “body” was all wrong. Too soft, too lumpy. It was then I realized it was a pillow, so I stuck my knife in just to warn you off. Or, rather, in the hope of warning you off. If you considered your own life to be in danger, you might decide to abandon your search for the truth and leave. I should have known better.'

I wasn't certain whether he was telling the truth or not, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I nodded. I felt some sympathy with him. It was, after all, his own stupidity that, in the end, had led to his undoing.

As though reading my thoughts, George Applegarth gave a short bark of laughter.

‘For six years,' he said, ‘that silly, unnecessary lie has been waiting to trip me up. At any moment, Ned Micheldever or Sir Henry or Master Kilsby could have reasoned out the truth if one of them had ever seriously thought about it.'

‘They haven't the common sense!' Dame Audrea declared scornfully. Then her face changed and she added, as though a full understanding of the situation had only just suddenly hit her, ‘You killed Anthony.'

The steward nodded. ‘Yes. I killed him with the weapon he'd intended using on Master Bignell.'

‘Master Bignell? But why?'

‘Thomas told me he had seen a horseman near Croxcombe Manor on the night of my Jenny's murder, and that he thought there might have been something familiar about him. If he ever said that within Anthony's hearing, I suspect Anthony decided to do away with him before he had time to remember anything further. He arranged for the Bignells to remain here overnight, instead of returning to Wells as they'd intended, and persuaded Master Bignell to meet him after the rest of us had gone to bed, on the pretext of revealing something undesirable about Rose's marriage to Ned.