Unholy Innocence (8 page)

‘Do not fret, sir. I intend only to remove the body once I have inspected it and then you should be free of the affair,’ assuming, I could have added but did not, you are not the murderer. He nodded and walked over to one of the windows over-looking the street. It was shuttered like all the rest but he peered through the slats at the four Knieler women who had resumed their semi-
circular vigil and were chanting their unintelligible burble again.

‘I suppose we can hope they will leave with the body,’ he sighed. ‘Each hour they remain the crowd grows more curious. The longer they are here the chance increases of someone doing something foolish.’

At this Moy’s wife let out a sudden sob. ‘Foolish? You say
foolish
!
Murderous
is what they will be.’

‘Rachel,’ her husband held out his hands imploringly. ‘This is not the time -’

‘No!’ she spat. ‘I will speak. Foolish you say? Foolish is to tether the lamb to the lion and expect it to live. Foolish is to remain here when all our friends have left. Foolish is to trust in the King’s protection when there is no protection for the likes of us. Foolish is to think your money will save you from these
goyim
.’ She shot me a look of contempt. I must say I was taken aback by the sudden ferocity of her attack and felt my back stiffen a little.

Moy smiled embarrassedly at me then turned back to his wife. ‘Chick, the brothers do not wish to hear this.’

But she would not be silenced. ‘No, but they will hear while hearing is possible.’ She raised her head proudly and defiantly pointed to the window. ‘Those women out there are only the beginning. Others will come and not to prattle and pray but to stone and to murder, and then all your precious money will not save you.’ She spat with contempt.

‘Wife, silence now, that is enough!’ he shouted finally losing his patience. The little girls started to cry and the boy stared at his father angrily clenching and unclenching his fists.

Rachel drew the girls towards her stroking their hair.  ‘Hush, do not cry, all will be well. Mummy is just upset that’s all,’ and she began to rock the girls in her arms.

Moy turned to me. ‘I could not leave. My business is in the town. Besides, with the King here –’

‘I can have the guard increased once we’ve gone, if that will reassure you,’ I suggested not knowing if I had the authority to fulfil such a rash offer.

Moy smiled sardonically. ‘That will simply draw more attention to us.’

I had another suggestion to make: ‘I do not wish to sound impertinent but have you thought of leaving now and going to stay with your family? Your brother-in-law in Norwich, perhaps?’

He held out his arms to indicate the many priceless artefacts in the hall, and no doubt the many others which I was sure were elsewhere in the house. ‘And just how much of this do you think would be left when we returned? Besides, I am a suspect in a murder case. Will the authorities allow me to leave now?’

Of course he was right. Even if Samson let him leave, the Sheriff of Suffolk would arrest him as soon as he left the jurisdiction of the Abbey. I was not as good at this as I thought.

‘In that case,’ I said hastily, ‘the sooner our business here is concluded the sooner we can leave you in peace.’

Moy nodded. ‘I will show you the body.’

‘There is no need,’ I said trying to save his anguish. ‘One of your servants can do it.’

He gave a wry laugh. ‘They were the first to leave – after they informed the Beadle about the body.’

‘Oh, but surely -’ I indicated the street door.

Moy nodded.  ‘We still have one loyal servant - Matilde. She is a Christian but she is devoted to the family. Her family came over from France with mine fifty years ago and they have been with us ever since. She would never leave the children. But I’m afraid she would not be much help to you – unless you can speak French. Her English is poor.’

I doubted if she spoke the French that I was familiar with and I didn’t trust my northern French enough to question her.

‘In that case, sir,’ I said, ‘I would be grateful if you could now show us the body.’

Chapter 8

THE CASKET

‘You
mean this is the body?’

I was appalled that it should have been left lying out here on the household midden like a discarded child’s doll and glared accusingly at Moy. But then I realised that was unjust. It wouldn’t have been his decision to leave the boy’s body but a directive from higher up – the Sheriff’s office perhaps, or even Earl Geoffrey himself. But at times like these it is not a matter of logic.

The flies and the smell notwithstanding, Jocelin immediately dropped to his knees next to the corpse and taking out a small crucifix began quietly to recite the prayers for the dead. The sound of his trembling but determined voice was pathos itself. I should have joined him but frankly I was too overcome with emotion to do anything but stare. I could only admire his heroism at bending so close to the pile of filth on top of which was this single broken jewel – a child’s body.

By the time he had finished I was in command of my
own emotions enough to be able to place my hands on his shoulders and raise him up. As I did so I saw that his cheeks were awash with tears.

‘Go inside the house, brother,’ I told him. ‘I will call you if I need you.’

‘Yes brother,’ he sobbed. ‘Thank you.’

In my professional career I had seen many dead bodies often in worse condition than this, but a child’s death is always the most terrible. I doubted if Jocelin had ever seen anything so ghastly and I was annoyed at myself for not foreseeing the possibility and preparing him. When he had gone I gently lifted the sheet in order to expose the body fully. As I did so there came a sudden blood-curdling cry. Startled, I looked up to see a woman’s face hovering above the fence, a face of utter misery and despair. Before I knew what was happening the woman had scaled the fence with astonishing facility and was even now laying her fists into Moy with such ferocity I was amazed he was still managing to stand. He did nothing to stop the blows other than to protect his face which was already spewing blood in every direction. And now all was confusion as the garden was suddenly filled with people shouting and wailing. Through the middle of it I heard a voice of authority I recognised:

‘Hold now! Stop that! Stop I say!’

It was the captain of the guard who had abandoned his post at the front of the house in response to the woman’s scream and had rushed through the house towards the source of the commotion. He in turn was followed by half the street. Now the captain placed his arms around the screaming woman and was holding on for all he was worth and still he was having trouble containing her seemingly super-human strength so determined was she to get at Moy. Could there be any doubt that the woman was the mother of the murdered boy?

‘Captain,’ I said urgently. ‘There is danger here of mob riot. We need more men.’

‘What would you have me do, brother?’ he scowled breathlessly. ‘Let her go?’

The situation was impossible. I got between Moy and the men in the crowd and tried to reason with them but far from calming them my efforts seemed to inflame them more. I was being pushed back steadily towards the stricken Moy who was now lying on the ground and apparently resigned to his fate. In a very few moments he was likely to be smothered to death by the numbers if not first being beaten to a pulp and possibly myself with him and I was powerless to prevent it.

And then – a true miracle. Cutting through the shouting and the cursing was a lone voice singing, incredibly, the twenty-third psalm. At first it had no effect but gradually as the singing grew closer so the passion in the crowd began to subside until all that was left was Jocelin walking slowly through the middle of the crowd holding aloft his crucifix in both hands for all to see, the image of the Christ glinting in the sunshine. He stopped before the stricken Moy and faced the mob which had now turned back into a group of ordinary men once again. One by one they went down on their knees so that by the time Jocelin got to the last lines of the psalm,
Surely goodness and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life
he was the only one still standing and his the only voice still to be heard - the only voice, that is, other than the quiet sobbing of the grief-stricken mother who was now being cradled like a child in the arms of the captain.

*

Within minutes order had been restored. The moment the captain had abandoned his station outside the house Rachel Moy had sent her son, Jacob, to run as fast as he could to the abbey to fetch back soldiers who were now dispersing the crowd. The murdered boy’s mother, at last subdued, was kneeling before the corpse of her son, oblivious to the flies and the stench and making no sound now at all. Even the tears on her face had dried to streaks. It was as blank as a sheet of parchment. Isaac Moy was sitting on a rock a discreet distance away while his wife bathed a cut above his left eye repeating over and over, ‘You see? You see?’

I went over to cast my professional eye over his injuries. They seemed less than I would have expected given the ferocity of the battering he had received, mostly bruising about the head and on the shins from the woman’s kicks. Jocelin was trying to comfort the woman but she simply ignored him, her dry-eyed gaze focussed entirely on her child’s body. I suggested to the Moys that we all went inside the house, leaving her to grieve alone. Rachel Moy pursed her lips and glared at me as though I had been responsible for the woman’s performance.

‘I will speak to her,’ I assured Moy when we were back inside. ‘Tell her there is no evidence to suggest you are her son’s murderer.’

‘No evidence,’ he smirked.

I frowned at him impatiently. ‘You must realise that until we know more you remain a suspect – the
prime
suspect.’

‘The
only
suspect,’ he corrected me. ‘I am a Jew. The boy was a Christian. I am not blind to the implications of what that means in the minds of other Christians especially in this town.’ He looked into his wife’s face. ‘We were here when they found the body of Saint Robert. That time there was no one suspect and all the Jews were blamed. Fifty-seven friends and family died. By God’s good grace - and good luck - we were among those who survived. But this time they have their suspect and I know what people will think. And it isn’t true.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Let us, then, take the correct procedure. Sir, you must indeed be a wealthy man because I noticed you have a copy of the Old Testament on your lectern in the hall.’

‘The true Bible, you mean,’ he said with a defiant smile.

I could feel Jocelin bristle next to me. I nodded curtly letting the slight pass. ‘Whatever we choose to call it, it is sacred to both our faiths. Will you therefore, Isaac ben Moy, before us and before the God of all mankind, swear you did not kill this boy?’

Ben Moy rose instantly, strode unhesitatingly over to the lectern and, shutting his eyes, he mumbled something that I took to be a Hebrew prayer of some kind. He then set his jaw, bared his right arm to the elbow, placed the palm of his hand flat upon the ornately-carved cover of the holy book and looked me steadily in the eye. His voice too, when it came, was steady and firm.

‘I swear before the God of Abraham and Moses and all the Patriarchs that I did not take the life of this boy.’ He nodded sternly at me then removed his hand from the leather-bound book. But I pushed it back down onto the leather binding and held it there firmly with my own hand.

‘And further swear that you did not know him.’

For the briefest moment I thought I felt his hand beneath mine falter, but then he said as steadily as before, ‘I so swear.’

I waited a tortuous few moments longer looking deep into his eyes and keeping his hand pressed hard down on the book that we both believed contained the very words uttered by God Almighty Himself. Behind him I could see Jocelin frowning with an intensity I had never seen before. At last I nodded. ‘Very well,’ and released his hand. He took it back and looked at it as though it were an alien object.

‘Well,’ I sighed once he had sat down again. ‘This unfortunate incident has revealed one thing in your favour. We now know how the body could have got onto your garden. Until that woman appeared I could see no way it could have got there except through the house. However, she managed it and so could the murderer. When she has recovered herself sufficiently I will go down and ask her to show me how she did it.’

‘She’s already gone,’ said Rachel coming in with some wine on a tray. ‘Left the same way she came in, over the garden wall.’

‘ ’Tis no matter,’ I said trying to cover my embarrassment. ‘I-I will interview her later. We know where she lives. In any case, I don’t want to distress her any more than I must. At least those damn Knieler women have also gone,
Dei Gratia
,’ I said looking through the window at the front of the house. ‘But I must arrange for the boy’s body to be removed as soon as possible. He has already been in the open for far too long. In this heat he must be in the ground soon.’

‘Before that it must be decided on the form of mass to be said over the body, s-surely,’ warned Jocelin coolly.

‘By “form of mass” I take it you mean his beatification,’ said Moy wryly.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘Sir, I cannot answer for how the Church will regard this child. I will do my best to provide the evidence as objectively as I can.
But evidence alone does not always counter prejudice.’

I was thinking of the other child murders and how, even though no individual culprit had ever been found, suspicion remained with the Jews with terrible consequences for them. I placed my hand on Isaac ben Moy’s shoulder and was surprised to find him trembling.
In all this I had forgotten the emotional impact it must be having on the man.

‘We need to find the identity of the killer,’ I said
to him gently. ‘Only then will your name be finally cleared.’

‘Thank you, brother. But I know there is little chance of that.’ He looked at Jocelin then said to me solemnly, ‘Brother Walter, would you come with me
please?’

My heart began to pound in my chest. Had he finally realised the hopelessness of his position and was ready to make his true confession? I could see Jocelin was expecting to come too but I held up my hand to stay him and followed Moy alone into the hallway.

He led me to an adjacent room that I took to be his office, the walls lined with shelves and filled with documents and accounts records. Closing the door firmly after us he went over to one of the shelves in the middle of which was a beautifully-carved and ornate casket. He held it reverentially and opened it. I gasped at the contents for it looked like a King’s ransom in treasure – gold and silver ingots, bracelets, brooches, rings, jewellery of every kind together with a great quantity of silver coin. Lying on top was a single document sealed with wax.

‘This is my final testament,’ he said taking out the document and turning it over in his hands for me to see. Then he replaced the document on top of the treasure, closed and locked the casket and then held it out for me to take.

I stepped back holding up both hands before me not wishing to even touch the thing. ‘Oh no, sir, that would not be right. You do not know me. I am a stranger to you. I am also charged with investigating the murder. Surely you can find someone else.’

‘There is no-one else,’ he countered urgently. ‘You heard my wife. She is right. All our friends left long ago. I cannot leave the house and there is no-one I can entrust it to. No, you must do it for me. Please. I have thought about this, believe me. If I should not survive the coming tribulation, open the document and act upon what is written there. If, however, I should survive,’ here he smiled, ‘well, you can give
it back to me together with the casket.’

‘But surely your wife is better suited for such a task,’ I implored him.

He shook his head. ‘Brother, I am a Jew. If I die all that is mine reverts to the King, not to my wife. Rachel will be destitute. My children, too. At least this way, even if you keep the bulk of the money for yourself, some of it will go to my family. I saw you downstairs and judge you to be an honourable man. I believe – I have no choice but to believe – that you will be honourable in this thing too.’

I drew myself erect. ‘Sir, you insult the dignity of the King and me by your words,’ but I could see he was at his wits’ end. ‘Master Moy, whatever you may have heard to the contrary I do believe King John to be an honourable man who will not take unfair adva
ntage of your situation - assuming matters come to that - which they very well may not.’ I beseeched him: ‘Look, I held your hand upon the Holy Book just now and I do not think you would have imperilled your soul by taking such an oath did you not believe it to be true. In which case you have nothing to fear from this investigation, certainly not my part in it. And so, you see, there is no need for any of this.’