He spoke the last word with the kind of scorn reserved by all Londoners for anywhere outside the capital, but I was used to that. My lips might have twitched, but I hid my amusement and said bracingly, ‘Well, you’re back home now.’
‘But not for long. It’ll be Scotland next,’ he added gloomily, ‘if all the rumours are true.’ Then what was plainly his natural buoyancy shone through and he gave me a blinding smile. ‘However, anything’s better than locksmithing, and you do get to see a bit of the world. And now that I’m trying — oops! sorry! — going to solve a murder with you, perhaps I’ll be noticed by the King and My Lord of Gloucester and Duchess Margaret.’ He didn’t add, ‘Things are looking up!’ but the words were implicit in his general demeanour. He was an optimist and nothing could alter that fact.
‘Then we’d better make a start,’ I suggested. ‘As we’re not far from Fleet Street, you can show me first where this Fulk Quantrell was murdered.’ I had a moment’s misgiving. ‘You do know all about this killing, I suppose? Master Plummer has explained everything to you?’
Bertram Serifaber nodded vigorously. ‘He’s told me all that he knows, yes. But it’s not very much now, is it?’
I laughed and agreed.
We left London by the Lud Gate, under the raised portcullis, past the guards whose job it was to turn back any lepers who tried to enter the city, and across the drawbridge that spanned the ditch. I had forgotten how much bigger, dirtier and noisier London was even than Bristol, the second city in the kingdom; and long before we reached our destination my head was aching from the incessant cries of the street vendors, the chiming of the bells and the effort of pushing my way through the jostling crowds. The screech and rattle of carts, many driven at breakneck speed, was the inevitable prelude to being splashed with mud and refuse from the central drain. I cursed loudly and openly wished myself at home; but at the same time, there was a vitality, a sense of urgency about life in London that I secretly found exhilarating.
I remembered Fleet Street from my previous visits to the capitaclass="underline" a road leading from the Lud Gate at one end and merging into the Strand at the other. The River Fleet ran at right angles to it, as did Shoe Lane and the Bailey, and the houses that flanked it on either side were three-storeyed dwellings of fair proportions, home to the well-to-do, but nothing like as opulent as the nobles’ mansions in the neighbouring Strand.
‘It was here,’ my companion said eagerly, darting ahead of me as we approached the turning to Faitour — or Fetter, as my London friend pronounced it — Lane. ‘Between here and Saint Dunstan’s Church. According to Master Plummer, the man had been felled with a blow to the back of his head and then finished off with several more. He’d been robbed of everything of value.’
I reflected that this was hardly surprising. A number of the faitours — or beggars, vagrants, vagabonds, scroungers, whatever you prefer to call them — after whom the lane was named, were even now skulking around in doorways, rattling their tin cups or displaying their war wounds (ha!), waiting for the largesse they felt to be their due to rain down upon their undeserving heads.
‘I assume this murder happened at night,’ I said, provoking an incredulous glance from Bertram.
‘Yes, of course! Didn’t Master Plummer tell you anything? I thought you’d know more than I do.’
‘Master Plummer has left me in your more than capable hands,’ I answered smoothly, but feeling a fool just the same. I determined to have a few well-chosen words with Timothy the next time I saw him. Nevertheless, I acknowledged that my ignorance was partly my own fault: I should have asked more questions, instead of wallowing in the ease and luxury of a journey undertaken in the company of a royal earl.
I surveyed the scene of the crime. The church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West stood maybe fifty yards or so from the entrance to Faitour Lane, at a point where there was a small dog-leg turning in the road. On the walls of at least two of the houses, and on a wall of the church itself, were cresset holders which, judging by the smoke-blackened stonework and plaster behind them, were frequently used. But I reckoned the flames of the cressets might cast more shadows than light under certain conditions, as well as being put out altogether in rain or high wind. Besides, there was plenty of protection to be had by a would-be killer in the narrow doorways of the houses, and a way of escape up Faitour Lane itself to the village of Holborn. All in all, I didn’t think a murderer would have had much difficulty in getting away unnoticed and undetected.
I wondered if the local brotherhood of beggars had been questioned as to anything any one of them might have seen or heard that night, but guessed that, even if they had, the interrogation would have yielded nothing. Communities, particularly those that live by their wits or by preying on other people, stick together. They live by a code of which the cardinal — probably the only — sin is betrayal.
I knew from Timothy that there had been an enquiry of sorts, but the Sheriff’s officers had been needed elsewhere to root out those Frenchmen thought to be lurking around every corner of every London street, just waiting to disrupt the Dowager Duchess’s visit. I had tried to persuade Timothy, during one of our convivial drinking sessions on the journey from Bristol, that such fears were probably unjustified. I pointed out that King Louis was already master of the situation on account of the seventy-five thousand crowns he paid yearly to King Edward. Surely, I argued, that was a sufficient inducement to preclude any serious English assistance to Burgundy against the French, particularly as the King had a very expensive wife and, in the Woodvilles, as rapacious a set of in-laws as any ruler in Christendom.
But Timothy had remained unconvinced. He had reminded me sharply that it was my job to discover the identity of Fulk Quantrell’s murderer while he and every other officer of the law busied themselves about the safety of the realm. In the face of such blinkered obstinacy I had given in gracefully, but I should have questioned him more closely about the crime.
So here I was with very little information to aid me in my search. I looked thoughtfully at the faitours, who either whined for alms or, when they had assessed my social standing and probable worth, gave me back stare for stare, poked out their tongues and made other obscene gestures which I am too much of a gentleman to describe. But I decided they could wait. They would still be here whenever I was ready to speak to them.
‘Very well,’ I said to my companion. ‘Now you can show me the house in the Strand where Mistress St Clair and her husband live; then we’ll retrace our footsteps back to the city, to Needlers Lane.’
At my request, we walked the whole length of the Strand as far as the Chère Reine Cross, because I wished to renew my acquaintance with this part of London-Without-the-Walls, where the tentacles of the city were creeping further and further into the countryside between the capital and Westminster. Then we walked back again.
On our right were some of the finest houses in and around London — magnificent four-storey affairs with well-tended gardens running down to their own water-steps and landing stages on the Thames. Mansions, I suppose, would not have been too strong a word for many of them. Here, the great palace of the Savoy had once stood before it was destroyed during the insurrection of the peasants almost a hundred years before.
At the Fleet Street end, however, were three smaller houses; still handsome, but modest by comparison with the rest: they lacked a storey and were narrower in width. Nevertheless, the gardens were just as pleasant, and the overall impression was of money, possibly hard-earned, but plenty of it and well spent.