Alice pursed her lips, carmined with a mixture of raspberry juice and white lead, which, although early in the day, was already beginning to crack.
‘I still say you’re too tall to be mistaken for anyone else in this village,’ she insisted, adding shrewdly, ‘Was Rosamund flirting with you in the alehouse last night, when you were playing Nine Men’s Morris?’
‘She was very friendly,’ I admitted, ‘but nothing more.’
‘It wouldn’t need anything more if Lambert’s now decided that Rosamund’s his property,’ Alice sniffed. ‘And I’ve no doubt she’s been encouraging him to think so, just to get her own back on Tom. She’d do anything to prevent people thinking she still cared. You and Lambert won’t be the only two she’s giving the eye to, but you’ll be by far the best looking.’
‘I’m married,’ I repeated wearily. ‘With three children.’
‘And far from home.’ Alice slewed round so that she could see me better. ‘I’m not saying Rosamund has designs on you, dear, just that, since last September, she’s been salving her wounded pride by setting her cap at any man who can still walk and has more than three teeth in his head.’
I laughed. ‘You don’t allow a man much self-delusion, do you?’
‘Will you be serious?!’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘All I’m saying is that I’d keep away from Rosamund if I were you. I told you, Lambert Miller has a nasty temper. He’s attacked people before. I like you. I don’t want to see you hurt.’
I thanked her, but abstractedly. My mind was only half on what she was saying.
After a moment, I asked, ‘You say Lambert has a reputation for being aggressive?’ Alice nodded. ‘You also say he’s set on people before?’ She inclined her head again. ‘So …’ I clicked my teeth thoughtfully. ‘In that case, I wonder where he was the evening that Eris Lilywhite disappeared.’
‘Oh, now, wait a minute!’ Alice looked alarmed. ‘Lambert was in the alehouse, along with everyone else. I was there myself. I saw him.’
‘I daresay. But he wasn’t there all night. He might well have gone out later looking for Tom Rawbone and come across Eris, instead. From something he said to me, he holds her equally responsible for what happened. Which, in a way, she was. If he was in one of his rages, he could easily have attacked her, just as he attacked me yesterday evening. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her, but found she was dead all the same.’ I rubbed my throat reminiscently. ‘He’s very strong. He almost did for me. A defenceless young girl would stand no chance.’
Alice shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, chapman. I told you I had a customer that night, who didn’t leave until late, almost midnight – which was how I knew Tom couldn’t have been here before. Well, that customer was Lambert Miller. He made the assignation before we left the Roman Sandal.’
‘What time did he arrive?’ I persisted.
Alice hunched her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. An hour, maybe an hour and a half earlier. Contrary to what you might think, Lambert isn’t the in, out, thank you and I’m off sort. He likes to take his time. And that night, of course, there was a lot to talk about before we got down to business.’
‘What kind of mood was he in?’ I asked. ‘Angry? Vindictive?’
Alice blew her nose on a corner of the counterpane, managing, at the same time, to wipe her mouth clean of most of its white lead and raspberry juice coating. The lips beneath were very pale, almost bloodless.
‘As a matter of fact, no,’ she answered. ‘Of course, he called Tom and the rest of the Rawbones all the bad names he could lay his tongue to for Rosamund’s sake. But I’d say that really he was delighted that Tom was going to marry Eris – because, of course, we didn’t know then what had gone on up at Dragonswick Farm. Lambert just saw that at last the way was clear for him to start courting Rosamund on his own account. He’d always been fond of her. More than fond.’
Hercules roused himself, staggered to his feet and placed his front paws on my knees. He had had enough of all this idle chatter. He wanted to get on.
I stroked his head. ‘In a minute, boy.’ I turned back to Alice. ‘When was it generally known that Eris had jilted Tom in favour of his father? When did news of her disappearance reach the village?’
Alice pursed her lips. A few remaining flakes of white lead dislodged themselves and crumbled.
‘I knew about Eris and old Nathaniel when Tom arrived here just after midnight. He told me all about it. And a terrible state he was in, as I mentioned to you yesterday. But I don’t suppose the rest of the village knew anything until the next morning, when Ned came down to enlist the men’s help in looking for Eris. Then they learned the whole story. Of course, Tom and I knew nothing of that until we’d dressed and breakfasted. I went as far as the mill with him, when he left here, in order to get some bread. That was when Goody Miller, Lambert’s mother, told us what was going on. Lambert wasn’t there. He was off, with the rest, searching for Eris.’
‘And Tom?’
‘He went to help, naturally.’
‘Did it strike you that he wasn’t surprised by the news that Eris had vanished?’
Alice shook her head decidedly. ‘No. I’d say he was stunned by the news. He turned so white I thought he was going to faint. Later on in the day, when they still hadn’t found her, I went to help look, as well. I’d say that Ned was more composed than his brother.’
But then, I thought, Ned Rawbone had less reason to be discomposed than Tom. He hadn’t liked Eris Lilywhite and, deep down, probably secretly hoped that they’d seen the last of her. I supposed he might have been afraid that Tom had murdered her in a fit of rage. But from the little I knew and had been told of the Rawbones, I guessed them to be quite capable of closing ranks, whatever their internal quarrels, and covering up even so dire a crime as murder.
I pulled myself up short. I was making an assumption that Tom was the killer. That, indeed, there was a killer.
I asked Alice, ‘Do you think that Eris Lilywhite ran away?’
She shook her head vigorously, so that her carroty-coloured mop of hair flew in all directions.
‘Why should she?’
‘Conscience? Guilt at the mayhem she had caused?’
Alice screeched with laughter. Hercules hurriedly lay down again, hiding his head between his paws.
‘No, dear! Not a chance! Eris’s beauty of soul never matched her beauty of face. I doubt if she knew what a twinge of conscience was. Strange, really. Gilbert Lilywhite was a sweet-natured man, for all he was a foreigner from Gloucester. And Maud, well, I’ve never known her play a dirty trick on anyone. Yet, between them, they produced a monster like Eris. No, you can take it from me, she didn’t disappear of her own free will. But who killed her, and where the body’s hidden, is a different matter. I wouldn’t care to speculate.’
It was the same answer that I got from everyone. I rose to my feet. It was time I was on my way.
Ten
I walked back along the village street, encountering one or two curious glances, and several disapproving looks from people who either knew or guessed where I had been. Others, busy about their daily business, ignored me. A few hailed me in a friendly fashion, but with that element of reserve in their greeting that reminded me I was a stranger in their midst, and therefore to be treated with caution. I smiled at them all, but did not stop until I reached the priest’s house, just beyond Saint Walburga’s Church.
The main door stood hospitably open, and I entered without knocking. I found myself once again in the hall, with the staircase to my left and three doors to my right, the first two separated by a small stone hearth, empty except for a couple of logs, gathering dust.
I raised my voice and called, ‘Sir Anselm!’
An answering shout invited me into the kitchen. This, if I remembered correctly, was the third door along. Hercules, however, had already preceded me, recalling where he had been fed and watered the previous afternoon and hoping for similar largesse today. I followed him.