Roberta Gellis (13 page)

“It was exactly where you left it?” Bell asked eagerly.

Hamo’s face wrinkled with anxiety. “Not perfect sure, maybe it was more to back of the tree. Thought maybe I just missed seein’ it last night.”

“Do you do the rushes on this floor, Hamo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anything different about them today from how they were Saturday morning?”

“Rushes get moved by walkin’,” Hamo said uncertainly. Then he frowned. “Put the rushes down Wednesday. Maybe they should be flatter in the middle? If mistress expected company after Mass on Sunday, she’d tell me to rake up the rushes on Saturday. Not yesterday though, so I didn’.”

“Anything else, Hamo? You have done very well.” The man shook his head. “Good enough. If you think of something later, tell your master. We will not blame you for having forgotten. That often happens when a man is excited. Master Mainard will be pleased by anything you recall. You can go now. And send in Nell.”

The maid had not much to tell them. She had seen and heard little of the messenger. He had been standing behind Mistress Bertrild, quite close, when she sent Nell to the laundress and bade her tell the cook to buy fish and some other things in the market, but he was in the shadow and did not speak, and Nell had been concentrating on what her mistress told her. Making any mistake or failing to carry out Mistress Bertrild’s orders exactly brought painful retribution. And, though she had carried up Mistress Bertrild’s dinner, she had seen nothing at all unusual. The mistress was examining her tally sticks, as she often did on Saturday afternoon. Mainard shook his head over this second mention of the tally sticks, but did not interrupt.

The cook, who was the only emaciated cook Bell had ever seen, had even less to say. She had received her orders from Nell and had not been near mistress or messenger. The one thing she told them that was of real interest was that part of her distress over Bertrild’s absence was that all except the small paring knives were kept locked up, and she could not clean the fish she had bought. Mainard dismissed her with an order to make a good evening meal for the whole household, while Bell stood looking down at the rushes under his feet.

When the cook had left the chamber, sobbing with joy, Bell turned to Mainard and said quickly, “I am sorry if it troubles you, but I think Mistress Bertrild was killed here, likely right in this chamber.”

“By the servants?” Mainard’s voice trembled.

“They had cause enough, but I do not think so. None of them was frightened about Mistress Bertrild’s death, and all expressed their joy in it quite openly. All except Jean are dull, but not stupid enough to do that if they thought they might be suspect.”

“No one would have believed them if they expressed grief,” Mainard remarked dryly.

“No, nor even if they expressed concern, but they could have acted indifferent, as if they did not know what would become of them. Also, I do not think any has the spirit.” He paused to smile. “And of one thing I am sure, Master Mainard, none of them would involve you in any way.”

The saddler shook his head. “None has cause to love me. There was little I could do for them. I sneaked them a little food when I could, but….” He shrugged.

Bell’s lips turned down with distaste. Servants and slaves needed lessoning and he had no quarrel with that, but slow starvation and constant punishment were beyond what he could approve.

“What little you could do must have seemed like manna from heaven to them, but that was not what I meant. They are slaves. If Mistress Bertrild was dead and you accused of it, they would be sold again, perhaps into even worse circumstances. Beside that, why in the world should they carry your wife all the way to your shop, struggle to open the back gate, and harm a man they know would be kind to them when they would need to take her no farther to dump her in the river? And, the body was not carried to your shop in a wheelbarrow. The wheel would have bit deep in the soft border when it was stopped near your back gate and I saw no sign of that, only nearly fresh horse dung.”

“Horse dung? The messenger? No, I cannot believe that a messenger from her uncle would kill Bertrild.”

“He said he was a messenger from her uncle, but there is no proof of that. Perhaps you should ask Sir Druerie about it. You must tell him of his niece’s death, after all.”

Master Mainard put a hand to his head. “Of course I must. I had forgotten. Now who can I send as messenger? Jean and Hamo are useless. I cannot spare Codi, Henry cannot manage a horse because of his hands, and the boys are too young. I suppose I could hire…wait. I know. I could—” He stopped abruptly, his brain finally having taken in what his eyes were watching. “What are you doing, Sir Bellamy?”

While Mainard was speaking, Bell had been using his feet to sweep aside the rushes in a broad swathe from near the benches toward the door. He was utterly amazed to see the planks of the floor scrubbed nearly white, but even with that bleaching of the wood he was not sure he would find anything. Even if blood had spattered when Bertrild was stabbed, the drops might have been caught solely in the rushes. Those could have been removed and, even if not, the drops might by now easily be confused with natural spotting as the rushes dried.

Nonetheless, Bell felt it was worth the small effort he was expending, and, about two-thirds of the way to the door, he was rewarded. Several dark spots appeared on the planks. Bell knelt, wet a finger, put it to the spots, smelled it, and then tasted it.

“I was looking for blood,” he said, in answer to Mainard’s question, sitting back on his heels, “and I think I have found it. I am almost certain now that your wife was killed right here, not lured out to the yard behind your shop.”

“Killed by the man who said he was a messenger? But then where was her body? The servants were all back in the house before Vespers.”

“I would suspect it was hidden in the shed, and that the wheelbarrow that disappeared had been used to move it.” He grimaced. “What a pity wheelbarrows and garden sheds are covered with stains and soil.”

Upon which words, Mainard burst out laughing. “Not Bertrild’s,” he said. “See this floor? Scrubbed white? That was what she had the servants doing every minute they were not employed in some other task. It was her favorite punishment for them. They had to remove the rushes, scrub the floor, and replace the rushes. Upstairs and down, the kitchen, the shed, the wheelbarrow, the ladders, even the privy, are all scrubbed white.”

Bell raised his brows. “Well, if the soul knows what passes here on earth and can have feelings about it, Mistress Bertrild must be feeling considerable satisfaction because having the servants scrub everything white may well help catch her murderer.”

Leaving Mainard staring after him, Bell went out through the door into the kitchen—where the servants gasped and huddled together and then slowly relaxed as he paid them no attention—and then into the garden. This was remarkably well cared for but without the smallest grace, the flowers in circumscribed clumps and the vegetables in rigid rows.

In the shed, Bell found his supposition proved right. There were spots of blood on the back of the wheelbarrow and, behind a pile of old laths, several smears that might have come from the stained cloak. So the body had been moved from the house to the shed in the wheelbarrow and then, perhaps after dark, from the shed to the horse. The gate at the back of the garden was locked, but Bell did not consider that a check to his theory. There had been no keys among the possessions piled up on the stool in St. Catherine’s Hospital, so likely the murderer had Bertrild’s keys.

As Bell returned to the house to warn Mainard about that fact, he heard voices and heavy tramping. When he came in, he saw that the coffinmaker had returned with the body from St. Catherine’s. He waited politely while Mainard sent Jean out to bring the priest back, and then told him about what he thought had happened and that Bertrild’s keys seemed to be missing.

“The house doors have bars as well as locks, and I will warn the servants to be sure the bars are set firmly,” Mainard said with only the most cursory interest. Then he frowned and asked, “Will you be going back to my shop at all today?”

“Yes. I must return my horse to the stable off Gracechurch Street.”

“Would you be so good— I do not mean to use you as a servant, but these poor souls here will have all they can do to help me make ready to receive visitors—would you be so good as to tell Codi and the boys to come here to Lime Street? As part of my ‘family’ they should be here as mourners.” He hesitated, biting his lip and looking uncomfortable, but then he added. “Would you also ask Sabina if she would go to Magdalene’s for the night? I do not like to think of her in the shop with no one but little Haesel.”

Feeling a little guilty about sending the whore back to the whorehouse? Bell wondered. But the man was now free to make a decent marriage, and Bell could not really blame him. A twinge of doubt went through him. Would he treat Magdalene the same way if a good marriage tempted him? The flicker of guilt he felt in himself made him keep his voice and expression bland.

“Gladly,” he said. “And if you like, I will take her to the Old Priory Guesthouse myself, as I want to speak to Magdalene.”

“Thank you very much,” Mainard said, as Bell turned away, then uttered a “tchk” and followed him. “And another imposition, if I may,” he said, opening the door. “Would you be good enough to step next door into FitzRevery’s shop and ask him if he would call on me here at Lime Street?”

“Will he not be coming to the funeral?” Bell asked, surprised.

Mainard looked down for a moment, then sighed. “Bertrild had been very offensive to him about an utter stupidity. She once came to FitzRevery’s shop and accused him of being the cause of her father’s death by introducing Gervase to the Old Priory Guesthouse and thus corrupting him. I will be grateful if FitzRevery comes to the funeral, of course, but I cannot expect it. But when you spoke of notifying Sir Druerie, I recalled that FitzRevery has a farm and storehouse for fleece at Hamble, which is not far from Swythling. In fact, one can pass right by Swythling on the way to Hamble. I can send a message to Sir Druerie by one of FitzRevery’s men.”

“A good thought, but please do not tell Sir Druerie any more than that his niece has been murdered. No details, except that you have been exonerated. You should ask, of course, what message Sir Druerie sent to your wife, saying that your servants told you of the messenger but that Mistress Bertrild was killed before she could inform you what he desired of her—or of you.”

“Do you think he will send the same messenger back?”

“He might, and that would be convenient, but it does not matter. Your question would not imply any suspicion on your part and should cause no alarm. If Sir Druerie does not send the same messenger, I can easily ride to Swythling when I return to Winchester to question the man.”

With that, he raised a hand in farewell, and Mainard closed the door behind him.

Bell returned his hired horse with a sense of relief. The beast did not demand the same kind of attention that his destrier or even his riding palfrey did in the crowded Chepe, but it was so sluggish that he found himself expending almost as much energy in grinding his teeth with impatience. Once dismounted and walking toward Mainard’s shop, Bell wondered why he should have been impatient. He had not been in any special hurry…and then his lips turned down with a new irritation as he realized his impatience arose from his desire to come the sooner to where Magdalene might be.

Nonetheless, when the door of the shop was opened by Codi and he saw Magdalene looking at an array of leather and woodworking tools laid out on the counter, a sense of pleasure suffused him. She looked up and smiled, and he could not help feel that there was a special warmth in her expression and that it was particularly addressed to him.

“I agree with you that Bertrild was not killed in the yard,” she said. “I have been in every place a person could hide and another come upon her and kill her, and there was no sign of any disturbance or any blood. I have also examined the floor of the shop—”

Bell could not help laughing aloud. There could be no doubt now that Magdalene’s warm smile had been exclusively for him, but as a help in her investigation, unfortunately, not as a man she desired.

She raised her brows at the laughter. “Well, I admit that no real proof can be drawn from the floor, which has some thirty years of stains on it, but it is not that funny to have looked. There might have been a sticky place that smelled different from leather polish or a new-washed spot.”

“No, not funny for that reason. I thought of it myself after I left and was annoyed by my carelessness in having forgotten to look. Still, I hope you did not waste much time on it. Mistress Bertrild was not killed here at all. She was almost certainly killed in her house on Lime Street, and the murder weapon was not Codi’s knife.”

“But it must have been Codi’s knife,” Magdalene said. “Why else should the knife have been stolen on Friday?”

“Stolen on Friday?” Bell echoed. “That is impossible.”

“What do you mean, impossible? Did Master Mainard say Codi was using that knife on Saturday?”

“No, no. Wait, we are talking at cross-purposes. Let me tell you what I discovered at St. Catherine’s and by questioning Mistress Bertrild’s servants.”

He could not have had a more attentive audience. Codi all but held his breath when Bell described the wound that had killed Bertrild and cried out in protest against the idea that, no matter how much he hated the woman, he would be so insane as to stab her corpse and with his own knife. And, although she did not interrupt his story, Magdalene shook her head over the evidence that Bertrild had been struck a blow by a weapon like Sabina’s staff. She was diverted from any protest, however, when Bell suggested Bertrild had been killed by the messenger sent by her uncle.

“Why should the uncle want her dead?” she asked as soon as Bell slopped speaking. “According to Sabina, Bertrild brought nothing to the marriage except debts, so there would be no profit to him in her death. And why not kill her when she was with him? Surely in Swythling an accident could have been arranged. And why wait four months?”