‘And whoever hoisted it out again,’ said Cadfael, ‘snagged a corner of the bag on a splinter... a small tear, just enough to let through one of the smaller coins. It could be so. And Peche’s boy had found this?’
‘He was the earliest riser. He went to draw water and lit on this. He took it to his master, and was rewarded, and told not to let it out to any other ears that the locksmith possessed any such. A great value, Peche said, he set on this.’
So he well might, if it meant to him that someone there in that very household must be the thief, and could be milked of the half of his gains in return for silence. The fish were rising! Now Cadfael began gradually to comprehend all that had happened. He forgot the young man hugging his knees and stretching his amazed ears in the corner of the bench close to them. Hugh had hardly given the boy a thought, so silent and so still he was.
‘I think,’ said Cadfael, picking his way without too much haste, for there might yet be pitfalls, ‘that when he saw this he knew, or could divine with very fair certainty, which of that household must be the robber. He foresaw good pickings. What would he ask? A half-share in the booty? But it would not have made any difference had he been far more modest than that, for the one he approached had the force and the passion and the ruthlessness to act at once and waste no time on parley. Listen to me, Hugh, and remember that night. They sought Master Walter, found him stunned in his shop, and carried him up to his bed. And then someone - no one seems certain who - cried that it must be the jongleur who had done this, and sent the whole mob haring out after him, as we here witnessed. Who, then, was left there to tend the stricken man, and the old woman threatened by her fit?’
‘The women,’ said Hugh.
‘The women. Of whom the bride was left to care for the victims upstairs in their own chambers. It was Susanna who ran for the physician. Very well, so she did. But did she run for him at once, or take but a few moments to run first to the well and place what she found there in safer hiding?’
In a brief and awed silence they sat staring at each other.
‘Is it possible?’ said Hugh marvelling. ‘His daughter?’
‘Among humankind all things are possible. Consider! This locksmith had the key to the mystery put into his hands. If he had been honest he would have gone straight to Walter or to Daniel and showed it, and told what he knew. He did not, for he was not honest. He meant to gain by what he had found out. If he did not approach the one he believed guilty until the Monday, it was because he had no chance until then of doing so in private. He was as able as we to remember how all the menfolk had gone baying after Liliwin here, and to reason that it was a woman who reclaimed the treasury from the well and put it safely away until all the hue and cry should be over, and a stray lad, with luck, hanged for the deed. And who kept the keys of the house and had the best command over all its hiding-places? He chose Susanna. And on Monday his time came, when she took her basket of linen and went down through the wall to spread it out in the drying-ground. About mid-morning Baldwin Peche was last seen in his shop, and went off with some remark about the fish rising. No one saw him, living, ever again.’
Liliwin, hitherto mute in his corner, leaned forward with a soft, protesting cry: ‘You can’t mean it! She... But she was the only one, the only one who showed Rannilt some kindness. She let her come to me for her comfort... She did not truly believe that I
‘ He saw in time where he was headed, and halted with a great groan.
‘She had good reason to know that you never harmed her father’s person or stole his goods. The best! And a sound reason, also, for sending Rannilt away out of the house so that she herself, and none but she, should fetch in the washing, or have any other occasion to go down to the riverside, where she had left the extortioner dead.’
‘I cannot believe,’ whispered Liliwin, shaking, ‘that she could, even if she would, do such a thing. A woman... kill?’
‘You underrate Susanna,’ said Cadfael grimly. ‘So did all her kin. And women have killed, many a time.’
‘Granted, then, that he followed her down to the river,’ said Hugh. ‘You had better go on. Tell us what you believe happened there, and how this thing came about.’
‘I think he came down after her to the brink, showed her the coin, and demanded a share in her gains to pay for his silence. I think he, of all people, had worst underestimated her. A mere woman! He expected prevarication, lies, delay, perhaps pleading, some labour to convince her he knew what he knew and meant what he said. He had greatly mistaken her. He had not bargained for a woman who could accept danger instantly, with no outcry, make up her mind, and act, stamping out the threat as soon as it arose. I think she spoke him fair while she went on laying out the washing, and as he stood by the water’s edge with the coin in his hand she so arranged that she passed behind him with a stone in her hand, reaching to a corner of linen, and struck him down.’
‘Go on,’ said Hugh, ‘you cannot leave it there. There was more done than that.’
‘I think you already know. Whether the blow quite stunned him or not, it flung him facedown into the shallow water. I think she did not wait to give him time to recover his wits and try to rise, but went on acting instantly. Her skirt and shoes were wet! I have only just learned it. And remember the bruises on his back. I think she stepped upon him in the water, almost as he fell, and held him down until he was dead.’
Hugh sat silent. It was Liliwin who uttered a small whimper of horror at hearing it, and shook as if the night had turned cold.
‘And then considered calmly the possibility that the river might find force enough to float him away, and took steps to pin him down where he was, under the alders, under the water, until he could be conveyed away by night, to be discovered elsewhere, a drowned man. Do you recall the pitted bruise on his shoulders? There is a jagged stone fallen from the town wall, beside the pebbles there. As for the coin, it was under his body, she did not try to recover it.’
Hugh drew deep breath. ‘It could be so! But it was not she who followed her father to his shop and struck him down, for she is one person who is vouched for fully, all that time that he was gone, until she went to look for him. And then she cried out at once for help. There was no time at all when she could have struck the blow or made off with the booty. She may have removed it from the well later, she certainly did not put it there. You are arguing, I take it, that there were two who planned this between them?’
‘Two are implied. One to strike and steal and hide, the other to retrieve the goods by night and secrete them in a safer place. One to destroy the extortioner as soon as he declared himself, and the other to take away the body and dispose of it by night. Yes, surely two.’
‘Then who is the second? Certainly brother and sister who suffered from such parsimonious elders might compound together to get their hands on what was withheld from them, and certainly Daniel was abroad that night and furtive about it. And for all his tale of a married woman’s bed rings likely enough, I have still had an eye on him. Even shallow men can learn to lie.’
‘I have not forgotten Daniel. But you may, for of all men living, her brother is the least likely to have had any part in Susanna’s plans.’ Cadfael was recalling, as in a storm-flash of illumination, small, unremarkable, unremarked things, Rannilt repeating the words she had overheard, Juliana’s improbable praise of her granddaughter’s excellent housewifery, in preserving her oatmeal crock half-full past Easter, and Susanna’s bitter taunt: ‘Had you still a place prepared for me? A nunnery, perhaps?’ And then the old woman shrieked and fell down