His white hollowed cheeks were scratched, but that had been done by a woman’s fingers. The woman now lay at some distance, sprawled across the hearth as if set ready for the fire. Showing no obvious wound, Margery Blessop was face down in the soot, arms outstretched. Andrew immediately crossed to her side, but before bending over her he heard something behind him and turned at once; a shuffling, a catch of breath from outside though the rain distorted sound. Having no desire to speak with frightened neighbours or the local constable, he moved silently to the door. Through the thrumming, drumming lightlessness, he watched someone crouch in the puddles beside Borin’s sodden rump, her hands gently clearing his face of splattered mud and streaming water.
Andrew quickly left the doorway and stepped over to her. He knelt beside her, and put one arm firmly around her shoulders. ‘I left you warm at home,’ he said softly. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here? This is not a place for you, little one.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Tyballis looked up, bleak-eyed. ‘But I never meant to come here. I wasn’t disobeying you, I was following – though perhaps that doesn’t matter now. Will you tell me what happened?’ Her face, half-hidden within her hood, peered up. ‘Did you – did you kill him, Drew?’
He hesitated. ‘Will you wait for explanations until I get you home, my love?’
She shook her head and the raindrops spun arcs around her. ‘He was my husband, Drew.’ She was staring down at the body slumped huge by her knees. ‘Oh, I don’t mean I loved him. I won’t grieve. I think I hated him. I ran away because I never wanted to live with him again. But to see him like this. After so many years of marriage, after sharing a bed and knowing him so well. Won’t you tell me how it happened?’
Andrew sighed, taking her into his arms. ‘Would it concern you, if I had killed him, my dear?’
She shook her head again. ‘You would have had a reason – a good reason. Was it you?’ She laid the lifeless face back into the pooled rain, staring at the blood on her fingers, then looked up again at Andrew. ‘I don’t think – if it was you – you’d have been so brutal. He has been killed with such violence.’
‘Come away now,’ Andrew said, lifting her from her knees, drawing her to the side of the road where the overhang of the houses’ upper storeys offered some shelter. She laid her head against his sodden shoulder. ‘Borin was working for me,’ he told her, his hand to her cheek. ‘He had sometimes done so in the past, before I knew you. I wanted information concerning Throckmorton, and about the men who killed Davey. I sent Borin after them. That put him in danger from Marrott’s hired louts. They killed him. So, perhaps the fault was mine.’
After a long pause she looked up. Her face was wet and he could not know whether she had been crying, or if it was only the rain. She said, ‘And inside the house? Margery?’
Andrew kept his arms around her. The door to the Blessop house stood ajar as he had left it, and as she pulled away as if to go inside, he held her tightly. ‘Better not look, my sweet. Throckmorton is there, and also your mother-in-law. He is dead. She is dead or dying.’
‘Did you – was it you?’ Tyballis whispered. ‘And you don’t even want me to go into my own house? But if Margery is alive, shouldn’t I go to her?’
‘I was investigating when I heard you.’ He did not release her. ‘But I imagine she’s past help. If you’ll wait here, I shall check.’ He kissed her damp forehead, stood her back against the wall, and marched once more into the dark interior. The ashes drifted a little as he entered, and the shadows swung like chandeliers from roof to floor, stark across the bodies. Throckmorton stared blankly, and the silent lump of Margery’s corpse had not moved. Andrew knew she was dead before he rolled her over. Her face was crushed. She had no recognisable features, not eyes nor nose nor mouth, and all her hair strung grey and limp across a bloody mess. Andrew came out again into the alley, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Tyballis was waiting just outside. He took her in his arms again. ‘Both gone, my love. And now, before others come to look, I shall take you home.’ He paused a moment, then said, ‘No. I shall take you to Crosby’s.’
‘The others will be waiting,’ she said in a small voice.
‘I’ll send one of the servants with a message,’ he answered. ‘I doubt a long wet trudge would help either of us, and I need no interfering constable blocking our way. Besides, for tonight I want you safe, I want you warm and well fed, and I want you to myself.’
It was only a short walk to Bishopsgate. The rain tipped unceasingly and the light was fading as they passed the row of alms houses. Across the thickened cloud cover, twilight slid dark, but neither moon nor stars were visible. The great windows of Crosby’s were brilliantly lit in flickering candlelight, but from the windows of the low annexe, there was nothing. Andrew, his arm around Tyballis, hammered on the door. A servant came running, holding a torch.
The assistant valet, mounted on a sturdy horse from Crosby’s stables, was entrusted with a message to deliver by word of mouth to the Cobham household, and report back within the hour.
The fire was immediately built high and hot in both the bedchamber and the parlour. Their wet clothes were bundled up and given to the servants for drying and repair, and in their place Tyballis donned only a shift, a pale gossamer thing taken from the Crosby garderobe; Andrew wore a soft linen shirt over dark grey hose. After a light supper of smoked salmon and poached bream in pepper sauce was served to Lord Feayton and his lady, they sat before the fire, curled warm and quiet, flushed with fine wine, and talked.
‘Do you think me foolish,’ she asked, her head nestled against the soft linen of his shirt, ‘to care – just a little – about how Borin died? He was a cruel, selfish man but somehow – such silly sentiment – I remember the sweeter side. He was foolish too, you know, with no brains of his own. He just did what his mother told him. He might have been a nicer man if she’d been different.’
‘Tell me,’ he said softly, his fingers gentle in her hair.
‘You’re only comforting me. You can’t really want to know.’
‘Knowing has always been my business,’ he smiled. ‘I keep my own secrets safe, but interfere constantly with those of others. Delving into past and present, motive and into what makes a man himself, this has always been my interest. Indulge me then, my love.’
‘There’s so little to tell. Margery forced me to marry him, and everything changed. Though it was almost as horrid before that, with her pretending mother after my parents died, and making me her servant. I was fourteen when she told Borin to force me into bed. Of course I didn’t want to do it, so he beat me and threw me down the stairs. Margery dragged me back up, tore my clothes off and pushed him on top of me. Then she sat there and watched and shouted orders at him until Borin finished. She said that meant we were married and she was the witness. I just accepted it. I’d been taught to obey her for years and it didn’t occur to me to run away. Besides, Borin was so strong. He used to march around the house each night before bed, looking for rats. If he found one, and he usually did, he’d squeeze it in one hand until its eyes popped out and its back broke. The same hands he used to squeeze my breasts afterwards.’
Andrew wiped the damp sheen from her cheeks with the ball of his thumb. ‘Crying, my own love? For Borin? Or for yourself?’