A Midwinter Murder (An Elizabethan Murder Mystery), page 18
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because Eve was at each of the places at both times, was she not? John went out agooding upon St Thomas’s Eve, but was called to Hermitage by Lord Robert. Who’s to say he did not come home and partake of the poison in the smithy? He went out agooding again and was taken by the poison and died.’
‘Halfway up a clawed tree in the middle of nowhere,’ inserted Tom.
‘As maybe. And clean enough at that, for it was I who lowered him into the cart with my own hand. But then she washed him and laid him out, did she not? Why, then it could have passed to Eve exactly as we have passed it to these mice; and she, before the force of it took her, passed it to you, who sickened, and to those who died – as, no doubt, the cats would sicken or die if we fed these mice to them. Why could it not have gone like that? Apart from the conundrum of the tree.’
‘If you mean that Eve passed the poison on like an infection, then I agree, it could be done, for so I have warned Lady Ellen; but if you do mean that, then we must ask, Why now? Why did she not pass it on to me in the coach – while she was tending my wound? Or in any of the taverns or ordinaries we frequented on the way, in London or New Castle?’
‘She could never have passed it to you in the coach,’ said Hobbie thoughtlessly. ‘She was too busy filling your wound with unguents, potions and powders for that...’ Then Hobbie stopped speaking, as though he realized of a sudden that he had broken an important confidence.
Tom paused, his mind racing. Then, in the face of Hobbie’s continued silence, he answered his own question: ‘She would have chosen to do it now only if she knew the truth of it ... if she were passing it on apurpose. And even then, why wait?’
‘Your head is as swelled as that courtier de Vaux,’ answered Hobbie shortly. ‘Does it never occur to you that, even if she did pass it on apurpose, she might not be aiming for you – that she might have plans and stratagems that do not concern you at all? You’ve been a soldier, man: have you never seen one man struck down by a shot aimed at another?’
‘Then why was I poisoned? By accident?’
‘Why were any – except the man she meant to kill? If it was she, and she meant to kill.’
‘Why would Eve wish to kill Archie Elliot? Why would she wish to kill Father Little?’
‘Or Geordie Burn, who she now nurses? Why would anyone?’
‘Learn that, Hobbie, and I think there would be few questions left to ask and no more answers needed, like as not.’
‘If you say so, master.’
‘But this is all moonshine, is it not? For there are several things that make the whole hypothesis unlikely if not impossible. In the first place, John could not have died at the forge because Eve could never have cleared his person and raiment of the foulness of death, could never have washed his clothing, dried it, re-dressed him and carried him to the oak; never have swung him up into the branches and left him there for you to find, having left no trace but the Barguest’s claw marks.’
‘Not alone she couldn’t,’ said Hobbie, ‘but then no one could have.’
‘Secondly, what reason could she have? They were poor, but she says they were happy. He was proud and intractable, but she loved him. There may have been temptations, but she was proof against them. Why would she kill him and put up this charade, therefore?’
‘Again, why would anyone? Singly or confederated, why?’
‘Thirdly, why indeed? What good does the resurrection of the Barguest bring to whoever has brought the beast back from the mid-winter tales our grandams told us to frighten us to sleep? It did not kill John. Quod erat demonstrandum.’
‘What?’
‘As has been demonstrated. What good can they pretend?’
‘Well, however he did die, he looked as though he had died of fright,’ observed Hobbie.
‘Indeed,’ said Tom, dropping the scholarly mode. ‘And if you were suddenly saddled with a corpse that looked as though it had died of stark terror, upon what else might you blame the fear? What else is there on the border here that might stop a strong man’s heart with terror?’
‘Apart from Black Robert Douglas, the Laird of Hermitage, ye mean?’
‘We’ll talk to Lord Robert on the morrow. Let us leave him aside until then, and think, perhaps, a step further. For John’s corpse and the fear on its face has been used, has it not? It could have been hidden. Dropped in a bog-hole up on the Waste and never seen again. What has the rebirth of the Barguest gained for somebody?’
‘Well,’ said Hobbie without further thought, ‘it has stopped all visiting and wassailing. The season is more like Lent than Christmas since John’s body was brought down. Even visiting church to hear mass has ceased after darkness. Apart from that mad southern gentleman who doubtless knows no better, only the Kerrs dare venture out after dark – and only then in large companies. Everyone else bolts their doors at sunset and shivers or prays in their bed all the night. ‘Twill be the ruin of the kirk at Blackpool Gate that Father Little had such hopes for. No one will ever go there now.’
Tom fell silent then, thinking of his own visit to the kirk at Blackpool Gate, quite distracted from the matter at hand. The strains of music from the great hall echoed as they had done since soon after his departure – and the clapping and stamping told of energetic dancing too. He continued to disregard it all, so fearsome was his concentration on the dark matter in hand. He must find Janet later and take matters further with her; but in the meantime, there was the matter of the heavy golden pebble he had discovered in his boot there – and, indeed, of the golden-coloured rock he had pulled from the cave Janet had used to hide from the Barguest the night it had taken Selkie.
He opened his mouth to bring his discussion with Hobbie on to a new level, when they were interrupted. ‘Ah, Tom, here you are,’ said the Lady Ellen. She was flushed, breathless and aglow. She might even have been elevated in the volte, from the look of her. ‘They said in the servants’ hall you had come out here with Hobbie, but I could scarce...’ She fanned herself with her hand, then continued. ‘Nevertheless, I have come to tell you your sleeping quarters have been moved.’ The pink in her cheeks deepened to denote embarrassment. ‘I offer my apologies for the inconvenience, but there is no help for it. Sir Nicholas de Vaux is honoured guest and you, though honoured, are Musgrave, and family. Sir Thomas therefore says that Sir Nicholas must have the chamber you occupied so lately, and you may move down into my little herbal – the room you saw me treating Eve and Geordie Burn in. Apart from Geordie, it is private; and he’s in the deepest of slumbers. We’d another bed in there to nurse Eve, but she is well enough to move in with me. You will be warm and dry.’
In the face of her obvious embarrassment Tom could not be anything other than magnanimous; and, as she said, he was family. ‘‘Twill be my pleasure to obey the Lord of the Waste,’ he said with a bow that might have graced de Vaux, ‘and infinitely warmer and drier than my sleeping place of last night to boot. Doubly welcome, therefore.’
‘That’s strange,’ said Lady Ellen, tartly; ‘young Janet says ye were warm and snug enough, the pair of ye, last night.’
That was the end of any conversation Tom could sensibly have with Hobbie, whose eyes were suddenly wide and aglow with a dangerous combination of speculation and amusement.
Tom left the stables with no further thought except that he should cross the yard quickly, mount the stair silently and move his belongings from his late room before the music stopped; but the cat prevented him.
The cat was unremarkable – no different from any of the castle’s cats except that it was stiff and dead. It lay at the foot of the little flight of steps that mounted to the main door. It lay with its face in a puddle of milky liquid that had obviously been cast down from a window in the hall immediately above. It lay in a puddle of torchlight also cast down from the window, so it was easy to see in spite of the fact that it was of one colour with the shadows. Tom knelt beside it and stirred it with his fingertips. It was warm and stiff, as though someone had contrived the experiment he had discussed with Hobbie just now and fed it with one of the poisoned mice.
Tom had reached thus far in his thought when the window above him opened again and someone’s shadow fell on him. ‘Gardy...’ sang out a servant’s voice.
‘Hold!’ cried Tom, and the man obeyed. Springing erect, Tom looked up a few feet into the eyes of a young servant who held a washing ewer. ‘What is in that?’ demanded Tom.
‘Why, water, sir.’
‘What water, man?’
‘Water from where Lord Thomas’s guest washed his face when he was hot with dancing.’
‘As he did some moments since?’
‘As he did indeed, sir. And I threw it down as I throw this now.’
‘Very well,’ said Tom, and stood well back. Then he crossed to the well, filled up the biggest bucket and washed the whole milky mess away – the corpse of the cat along with it – down into the mud of the Gully Hole. Lost in thought, he returned to the empty stables and there, under the light he rinsed out one of the dangerous pots and shook into it the contents of the glove finger he had found on the ground close by. A grain or two of fine white powder – which turned to seeming milk in the water. This too went down the Gully Hole, to the obvious suspicion of the soldier taking up his night-time guard there.
Much later than planned and deep in thought, therefore, Tom skipped past the door into the hall and scurried silently up the stairs. He could have made much more noise than he did and still have passed unnoticed, for the consort of viols had been joined by a lute and a pipe. As he passed, ‘Lang Flat Foot of Garioch’ passed energetically if not very accurately into ‘The Dead Days’. Distracted by the dark aptness of the music and by an unexpected mental vision of Janet hurled high in the volte by de Vaux, he ran on heedlessly. Round the final corner he sped and into the little passage outside his late room. Only to freeze.
All unaware, he had caught up with the man who had supplanted him. De Vaux swung the door wide and entered Tom’s room unaware that Tom was behind him, deep in conversation with the man who had sat beside him at dinner. Over their shoulders, Tom could just see the tell-tale saddlebag lying across the bed in place of his own; and, on the settle beneath the window, a pewter bowl of fresh water where his precious letter pouch had lain.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief and would have turned away again – except that Fenwick stayed him with his first word: ‘Janet,’ said the factor. ‘A pretty filly. Hot to the hand. With all the wildness ye’d expect in a Kerr, and something more.’
‘Indeed,’ laughed de Vaux. ‘She dances as though she were all fire. I believe I’ve come near to burning my fingers. If a man had the mind to her, she’d answer well enough – in place of a hot brick to heat the sheets.’
‘Well, time will tell, no doubt, sir. And I may risk my own fingers in that particular furnace, if time or opportunity should arise; but in the meantime, the Lord of the Waste bids me tell ye…’
The door closed.
Tom was against it in an instant, his ear pressed to the wood.
‘...the girl...?’ said de Vaux, a seeming snarl in his voice.
‘‘Twas worth the risk... for Elliot, after Burn... with the club. ‘Twould reveal all...’ Fenwick’s voice came and went, sounding low but forceful. ‘And she’ll be...’
‘...not at the supper nor the dance...’ insisted de Vaux.
‘...Burn,’ explained Fenwick.
‘...take your word. But even so...’
‘...be there on the morrow...’ insisted Fenwick.
‘And in the meantime, the smithy...’ De Vaux’s voice came suddenly straight towards the door. His foot trod down on the boards immediately within. The handle turned.
Tom, thinking at fever speed, took the handle on the outer side and turned it further, pushing the door apparently by accident into de Vaux himself. ‘Oh,’ he said, foolishly, as the pair of them came face to face. ‘I thought you were dancing still.’
‘Obviously not.’
‘I came for my chattels.’
‘Gone – to wheresoever you are destined to go.’
Fenwick came up behind de Vaux’s shoulder, his bulldog face folded into a frown. ‘Lady Ellen went to find you, sirrah,’ he huffed.
Tom had been standing still, locked eye to eye with de Vaux, but his hands had been busy enough. Now he held up one black leather glove. ‘I seek the pair to this,’ he said. ‘‘Twill have fallen by the bed, as like as not.’ And in he stepped, avoiding de Vaux as though he had been a clumsy opponent on the piste.
‘There,’ he said at once and stooped, seeming to catch up a second glove from the floor. He held it for them both to see. ‘Oh,’ he said, seemingly foolish once again. For as he had stripped the thing so swiftly off his hand, so he had curled his finger and one finger of the glove itself now lay inside out within the palm, and the glove, seemingly, was lacking a finger altogether.
Tom looked up, and just for an instant he thought he saw something in Fenwick’s bloodshot, baggy eyes.
‘Now that you’re in here, Master Musgrave,’ said de Vaux, his voice like poisoned honey, ‘I must tell you I bear a message for you as well. It is from my friend and master and it is this: Interfere in any of my business again and I will see you die for it.’
‘That will be a message from Lord Robert, will it?’ asked Tom at his most urbane. ‘Douglas or Essex, ‘tis all one; but I have an answer either way. I serve the Queen and Council. My business is theirs. And should either friend or master interfere, ‘tis not my head will answer it.’
‘The voice of the Queen and Council are but far faint echoes here, Musgrave, and you know it,’ sneered de Vaux at that.
But Tom leaned forward until de Vaux stood back. ‘Their tongue may seem to be distant,’ he whispered, ‘but their teeth are very near...’
The herbal room was dark and still the half of an hour later – silent, apart from the rustle of the settling fire, whose embers cast only the deepest dull red glow, as though this were some dungeon in the foundations of hell itself; but it was snug and warm and there were lamps available to taper ends that brought Tom a little light. A little physical light, at least; mentally things remained murky still, despite all he had reasoned, seen and heard tonight. His panniers, swords and clothes lay neatly arranged on the little table where Lady Ellen made her medicines, potions and possets. Remembering Eve’s words, Tom thoughtlessly caught up the last of his washed and mended shirts. Under the bright lamplight he could see that the bloodstain was gone, and that the holes that the dagger had left were neatly darned. The cloth itself had a strong, warm smell where it had been dried over the kitchen fire, and he smiled to see a tiny slip in Lady Ellen’s perfect housewifery: the shirt tail was just a little discoloured where it had been hung too near the fire.
There came a scratching at the door. ‘Aye?’ he answered quietly, folding the shirt with a soldier’s easy expertise. As he turned from returning it to the pile on the table, there was Eve in the doorway.
‘You’ve come to see Geordie,’ said Tom, still whispering as though the man might awake. ‘Come in, come in.’
She sat, perforce, on Tom’s bed as she tended Geordie. Tom watched, silently to begin with, as she performed a simple routine to check on his vital signs and comfort the last thing at night. Her hands were brusque, almost impersonal, as though she wished every gesture to establish that the man she was tending was nothing more than a patient in her eyes.
‘So,’ said Tom, at last, able to contain the Master of Logic no longer; able to resist the chance to talk to her utterly alone no more. ‘John went off agooding in his Sabbath best as he always did on St Thomas’s Eve, and that was the last you saw of him ‘till Hobbie brought him home.’
‘That’s the truth of it.’
‘And the messenger from Hermitage who called him to Lord Robert – he came to you first?’
‘No: he must have met John upon the way; but there’s no great matter there. I was not at home through the whole day – I was called up here to help Lady Ellen; and there was nothing new there, for Lady Ellen often needs my help, especially at this season. You can see it, perhaps, as part of the price of our Yuletide entertainment, year on year; and John would have gone up to Hermitage in any case. Black Robert owed him a gooding the same as many nearby.’
‘He’d worked for Lord Robert Douglas? In what regard?’ Tom’s voice remained lightly enquiring, though he was actually surprised. He had taken against Lord Robert, firstly through Father Little’s words and then through the Black Douglas’s own threats beneath the clawed oak, and finally through his messenger de Vaux and the message he had sent.
Eve shook her head as though angry – upset, perhaps, that she could not enthuse about some special skill, some unique ability that marked out her dead beloved. ‘Smithing,’ she spat. ‘What else do blacksmiths do?’
A simple question, on the face of it, but one that echoed, resonated. What else did blacksmiths do?
‘Is the smithy locked?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Locked?’
‘I came upon a house left open in the wall, you’ll remember – but only because the owner paid his blackmail to Jock o’ the Side. I doubt either John or you would pay the blackmail. Or that you would need to, living this close to the Lord of the Waste’s protection. So, is the smithy open? ‘Tis well past the time I should have taken a look at it.’
Twenty-two: The Black Smithy
As silently as they could, they saddled two ponies and led them to the Gully Hole. The sentry there let them through, and gave them a flaming flambard to boot. As Eve explained in a whisper while they trotted down the first of the hill below the castle, all the sentries knew her and John – and their comings and goings, even at night.
The sky was black, so the flambard was welcome. Right from the start, however, its rugged flames were under common assault from the brutal wind. Still in the north, and responsible for the blinding cloud cover, the gale was howling fit to burst and gusting icily, at the very edge of bringing snow. Too cold, opined Eve; snow would come when the frost eased. Then the chill would really close in.
