10 - The Goldsmith's Daughter (7 page)

Jane Shore gave a little shiver. ‘How horrible! But there were other people in the house as well as Isolda. It might have been one of them. I believe that Christopher Babcary didn’t get on well with Master Bonifant. They had had many disagreements.’

‘Do you know why?’

My hostess did not reply at once, looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Finally, after a few moment’s silence, during which the only sounds to be heard were the old dog’s wheezy snores and the crackling of the fire on the hearth, she raised her head and looked me in the eyes.

‘Master Chapman, I must be honest with you. The King doesn’t wish me to be too closely concerned in this business. Until my kinswoman’s name is cleared, he prefers that I have nothing to do with the Babcary household.’ She sighed. ‘I can understand that. He feels that he has done enough by bringing his influence to bear and preventing charges being brought against Isolda. Therefore, if I give you my cousin’s direction in West Cheap, you would earn my deepest gratitude if . . . if––’

‘If I were to confine all my enquiries to the family, and not bother you until I have reached a conclusion,’ I finished for her.

She smiled mistily at me. ‘Indeed, I feel ashamed of making this condition, but I cannot bring myself, at this difficult time, to go against His Highness’s wishes.’

‘And how will the Babcarys like me poking and prying about? Do they even know of my existence?’

‘Yes. Yes, they do, and all of them are anxious for your assistance. They want to know the truth as much as I do.’

It occurred to me that there must be one person who already knew the truth and whose welcome would be a sham: the murderer. But I said nothing. Instead, I rose, kissed the little hand that was offered me and promised Mistress Shore that I would do everything in my power to discover who had really killed Gideon Bonifant.

I
recognised the place at once. It was the house where Adela and I had seen the lazy apprentice being scolded from an upper window by his bespectacled master.

Following Mistress Shore’s directions, I had walked almost to the end of West Cheap, where, at the Church of Saint Michael at Corn, it joins Paternoster Row to the south and the Shambles to the north.

‘Look for a shop and dwelling close to the Church of Saint Vedast,’ she had instructed me. ‘A representation of two angels is painted on the plasterwork between the third-storey window and the roof. I sent to my cousin this morning to warn him of your arrival. You will be expected.’

So there I was, a pallid winter sun struggling to break through the leaden clouds, my cloak and boots splashed with mud and filth from carts driving too near the central gutter, my ears deafened by the babel of street cries – ‘Hot sheep’s feet!’ ‘Ribs of beef!’ ‘Clean rushes!’ ‘Pots and pans!’ ‘Pies and pasties!’ and dozens more. Every few yards of my journey from the Strand, hands had clutched at my sleeves and whining voices had assailed my ears, pleading for alms. Some beggars were hale and hearty, others hideously disfigured, either by nature or by the cruelties of civil punishment and war, and all excited pity. I gave what I could, but there were too many suppliants, and eventually I had been forced to ignore their importunities. I reached my journey’s end with some relief and entered the shop.

A long counter faced me as I stepped inside, and beyond this was the workroom. A youth, the same boy I had seen three evenings since, was working the bellows at a furnace built into a wall, while the same elderly man was admonishing him in an exasperated tone.

‘No, no, no, Toby! A light pressure, if you please! You want to fan the coals gently into flame, not blow great clouds of smoke out through the vent to choke the passers-by! Good God, lad, don’t you ever attend to any of the instructions that you’re given?’

Another man, not so very much older than the apprentice, was hammering out a piece of gold on an anvil, which stood on a bench in the middle of the room. As I watched, he laid down the hammer and picked up a pair of tweezers, beginning to pull and tease the hot metal into shape. Near at hand lay a chisel and a rabbit’s foot, while further along the bench were what looked like a pair of dividers, a saw, a file and a number of small earthenware dishes. An array of other tools was ranged along a shelf to my right.

It was the older man, whom I rightly guessed to be Miles Babcary, who saw me first, bustling forward in the hope of a sale, his face falling ludicrously as soon as he noted my homespun apparel.

‘Master Babcary?’ I asked, holding out my hand. ‘I’m Roger Chapman. Mistress Shore told you, I think, that I should be coming?’

I judged him to be about sixty (he later told me that he had not long celebrated his fifty-eighth birthday), a ruddy-cheeked, somewhat corpulent man with thinning grey hair in which gleams of chestnut brown could still be seen. His pale blue eyes, magnified by the spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, blinked at me, owl-like, but at my words, his kindly features brightened.

‘So she did! So she did! Walk around the counter, Master Chapman. You are more than welcome. We shall be very glad, believe me, to have this hateful business cleared up once and for all. You can have no idea what it’s like for my daughter to be whispered about behind her back.’

‘Master Babcary,’ I warned, ‘I may not be able to arrive at any firm conclusion. Or . . .’ I hesitated. The elder of the two younger men had now drawn near and was listening intently to our conversation. I continued, ‘Or I might reach the wrong conclusion as far as you’re concerned.’ I saw from Miles Babcary’s slightly puzzled expression that he did not fully understand my meaning, and I began to flounder. ‘What I mean is . . . WhatIam trying to say . . .’

The young man came to my rescue. ‘Are you suggesting, Chapman, the possibility that my cousin Isolda might really have poisoned her husband?’

Both his age and a fleeting likeness to Miles told me that he must be the nephew, named by Mistress Shore, if my memory served me aright, as Christopher Babcary. I nodded, and there was an immediate explosion of protest from his uncle.

‘No, no! I won’t have it! My dearest girl could never have done anything so terrible! Master Chapman, you are here to prove her innocence.’

‘I will if I can, sir,’ I assured him. ‘But you must have realised by now that if Mistress Bonifant isn’t guilty, then someone else is.’

Again, I encountered that bewildered stare, and again it was Christopher Babcary who interpreted my meaning.

‘What the chapman is saying, Uncle, is that if Isolda didn’t murder Gideon, then someone else in the house must be the killer; one or the other of us who was present here that day, at Mistress Perle’s birthday celebration.’

This idea, although I could see that it was not a new one to the nephew, plainly had not occurred before to Master Babcary. So absorbed had he been in trying to prove that his daughter was not a murderess that the implication of her innocence had quite escaped him. For a moment he looked as if he might burst into tears, but then pulled himself together, his face taking on a mulish expression.

‘I – I want Isolda exonerated,’ he stuttered at last. ‘She didn’t do it. I know she didn’t. She loved Gideon, whatever he might have said to the contrary. I’m sorry, Christopher, my boy, if it means that you and others fall under suspicion. But if it’s of consolation to you, I don’t believe that anyone who was present here that day is guilty, either. In fact, I’m very sure no one is.’

Christopher Babcary glanced at me, then back at Miles. ‘But it stands to reason, Uncle, that one of us must have poisoned Gideon. Besides himself, there were nine of us in the house that evening, and apart from those nine, no one else could have put the monkshood in his drink. The shop was locked and shuttered as soon as the guests had arrived.’

Miles Babcary put a hand to his forehead, growing more confused by the minute. One half of his mind could not help but acknowledge his nephew’s logic, but the other half refused to accept it. If Miles could have his way, Gideon Bonifant’s murder would prove to have been an accident or suicide; or, better still, the handiwork of a passing stranger who had mysteriously managed to gain access to the house.

I said gently, ‘Master Babcary, we cannot continue to stand here in the shop where every passing fool can gape at us through the open doorway. Can we be private? In spite of talking to Mistress Shore, I am still ignorant of many details concerning this murder.’

‘Yes, yes! Of course! But you must wait a few moments, if you please. Toby, is the gold melted yet? If so, bring it over here immediately.’

The boy lifted a pot out of the furnace with a pair of tongs and carefully transported it to the work bench, his tongue protruding from one corner of his mouth, his young body taut with concentration as he tried not to spill any of the precious liquid. Meantime, Miles Babcary had drawn towards him a thin sheet of copper on which innumerable circles were shallowly engraved; and within each circle a bird or a flower, the figure of a saint, a face or the wheel of fortune was also scored into the metal. It was plainly a mould of some sort, but what purpose was served by the final product – delicate, paper-thin, filigree golden medallions – I could not imagine.

Christopher Babcary, noting my puzzled frown, enlightened me.

‘They are sewn on women’s gowns. They make the material shimmer as my lady walks.’

‘So that’s what it was,’ I said. ‘I’m remembering how Mistress Shore’s robe glittered at the Duke of York’s wedding.’

‘As did every other lady’s gown, I should imagine,’ Christopher amended. ‘We and the rest of the goldsmiths hereabouts sold out of our entire stock of medallions during the preceding weeks.’

His uncle, meanwhile, had been filling the circular moulds with the molten gold, the surplus being caught in a narrow runnel fixed to the edge of the bench. The boy addressed as Toby began to scrape at the lumps and flakes as they hardened, gathering them up and carefully depositing them in some of the earthenware bowls.

‘Where does the gold come from?’ I asked.

‘Mostly from Hungary and Bohemia,’ Miles Babcary answered, removing his leather apron and hanging it up on a nail. ‘These days, it’s brought into the country in the shape of coins, which are thought preferable to the old-fashioned ingots . . . Well now, Master Chapman, perhaps you’d like to accompany me upstairs where we can be comfortable, and I’ll tell you all you need to know about this unfortunate affair.’

He paused long enough to issue instructions to his nephew and the boy, Toby, on what needed to be done during his absence, then led the way through an inner door to a passageway beyond. Here, to our right, a staircase spiralled upwards, while, straight ahead, lay what I supposed to be the kitchen quarters. As if to prove my assumption correct, a young girl appeared, entering from the yard at the back and carrying across her shoulders a yoke from which two buckets were suspended, some of their contents spilling on to the flags in great splashes of clear, sweet water.

‘Ah! Meg!’ Miles Babcary beckoned her forward. ‘This is Roger Chapman who will be in and out of the house and shop for a while. He may want to ask you some questions, but there’s no cause to be afraid of him. Just tell him what you know. He won’t get angry or hurt you.’

The girl unhitched the yoke from her shoulders, lowering it and the buckets to the ground before approaching us with such caution that she literally inched her way along the wall, arms outstretched, fingers splayed against the stone.

‘She’s very wary of strangers,’ Miles informed me, but not loud enough for the girl herself to hear. ‘She’s a foundling, and was, I’m afraid, mistreated at the hospital on account of her appearance. She’s also slow of speech and understanding.’ He tapped his forehead significantly. ‘You have to be patient with her.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘Meg Spendlove’s her name.’

I held out my hand and said gently, ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mistress Spendlove.’

Her only answer was a goggle-eyed stare. She was so small and thin that it was impossible to be certain of her age, and I doubted very much if even she knew how old she was. (Although Master Babcary told me afterwards that they thought her to be in her sixteenth year as, according to the nuns of the hospital, she had been abandoned, at only a few days old, in the same month that Queen Margaret had invaded in the north.) She was unprepossessing to look at, someone at sometime having broken both her nose and jaw, and the bones having knit together very badly. Because of this, her mouth hung almost permanently open, and when it was shut, she breathed in a painfully wheezing fashion. Contrary to expectation, however, there was a hint not only of intelligence but also of shrewdness in the dark brown eyes, if you took the trouble to look for it.

‘You’re a good girl,’ Miles said, patting her shoulder. ‘Try to remember what I’ve just told you concerning Master Chapman. Now, off you go and finish your work or you’ll have Mistress Bonifant on your tail, and you don’t want another scolding, do you?’

The girl shook her head and went back to pick up her pails, disappearing with them through a second door which, as I later discovered, led into the kitchen.

My host and I proceeded up the twisting stairs as far as the first-floor landing, where two doors were set in the wall, side by side. Miles pushed open the right-hand one, ushering me into what was plainly the family living-room. It was as spacious as the narrow confines of the building would allow, and was, I guessed, the largest chamber in the house. A solid oaken table stood in the middle of the rush-strewn floor, a leather-topped bench, piled with brightly coloured cushions, occupied the window embrasure, and a corner cupboard displayed not the usual collection of silver and pewter ware, but, as was only to be expected, items of gold taken from Master Babcary’s stock. A fire burned brightly on the hearth, a good supply of logs stacked close by, ready to replenish it when necessary. Two armchairs, several stools and a carved wooden chest, which stood against one wall, completed the furnishings.

‘Sit down. Sit down, Master Chapman,’ my host invited, with that repetition of speech which I was soon to learn was characteristic of him. I had hardly done so, drawing up a stool to the fire, glad to warm my cold hands at the comforting blaze, when the door opened and someone else came into the room; and before I could turn my head, Master Babcary continued, ‘Ah! Here’s my daughter.’