Far too late.
As I tried to straighten up, suddenly, nerve-wrackingly aware of what was happening, I was heaved forward, head first through the wall into the hidden cupboard, and even before I could gather my wits about me, the door of the ‘fly trap’ swung shut. And there I was, thanks to my crass stupidity, caught in the spider’s web.
It was several minutes before I could even move. I had banged my head on the edge of the shelf as I fell, and had hit the floor at such an angle that I was completely winded. I also discovered, to my chagrin, that I was crying like one of my two young sons, but hastily attributed my tears to rage and frustration rather than pain.
At last I sat up, tenderly feeling my right ankle, which was throbbing, but found that I could move it easily enough and therefore concluded that no lasting damage had been done. Only then did I address myself to the situation I was in.
Of course, I groped for the key, which should have been hanging from the shelf behind me, in order to open the door from inside. But the hook was empty. I would have been an even bigger fool than I had already proved myself to be had I expected otherwise. Judith St Clair had removed it before I was summoned to her bedchamber. She had planned everything with the faithful William Morgan before I arrived.
After Mistress Jolliffe’s visit, she must have guessed I would come, and had probably expected me earlier. The sisterhood of women had ensured that Lydia would warn Judith that I was asking questions about Edmund and his relationship to both Brandon and Lionel. Judith could not possibly have known exactly how much I knew, nor what I had made of such information as I had, but she was not a woman who took chances. Her attempts to have Roger Jessop murdered only on account of what he might have discovered demonstrated that. So she had summoned William Morgan, her faithful henchman, and together they had laid the trap. No doubt some signal – perhaps ‘There! There! Look!’ – had been pre-arranged to bring the Welshman from his hiding place behind the door to the ‘secret’ stair.
It had been unwise to show my hand so plainly; lying there in the airless dark, I could see that now … The airless dark! I had been wondering what the murderous duo’s plans were for me, but it was suddenly blindingly obvious. They need do nothing until the lack of air in the ‘fly trap’ suffocated me; then, at night, they could carry my body down to the river and tip me in. There would be no stab wounds, as there had been with Edmund Broderer, to indicate that I had met my death other than by drowning. If Judith insisted that I had left the house after talking to her, and William confirmed that he had shown me out, who would contest it? Not Godfrey, who was doubtless lost in the sayings of Marcus Aurelius. Not Paulina Graygoss and the maids, busy in the kitchen preparing ten o’clock dinner. As for Alcina and Jocelyn, they probably had no idea that I had ever been in the house that morning; I had seen no sign of either of them. I really was caught like a fly in a trap.
Keep calm, I told myself. Breathe slowly and don’t use up too much air. Yet what was the point of that? Neither Judith nor William was likely to open the door for at least twenty-four hours, if not longer. They would make absolutely certain that I was dead before disposing of me.
My eyes were growing used to the gloom by now, and I stood up carefully to make a search of the shelf. But it revealed nothing that I had not seen during my previous visit, except for a paper folded and sealed. I turned this over once or twice, before noticing that it bore an inscription in a large, bold, confident hand. Even so, I had to squint a little to make it out, then recognized, with a painful jolt to my stomach, that it was addressed to me.
‘Roger the Chapman,’ it ran; and underneath was the message: ‘Candle and tinder-box on the floor.’
I was on my knees almost before I had finished reading, feeling with my hands over every inch of those dusty boards until I found what I was seeking. Right up against the clothes chest my fingers encountered a candle in its holder, and a tinder-box. Carefully, I lifted them on to the shelf, reflecting that in this, at least, Judith St Clair had kept her word.
I put flame to wick and watched the golden light spread and glow, illuminating the narrow space. The ‘fly trap’ suddenly seemed a less menacing place, and in my relief I failed to notice that the candle was little more than a stump which could last only a very short while. I broke the paper’s seal, flattening the thick parchment as well as I could, then held the candle close.
It didn’t take me many seconds to realize that what I was reading was Judith St Clair’s confession to the murder of her first husband, Edmund Broderer, twelve years earlier, and to that of her nephew, Fulk Quantrell. It wasted no words and offered no excuses, being short and to the point. It merely stated that she, and she alone, had killed them both, and exonerated anyone else of being involved.
I read it through two or three times, wondering why she had not adduced some sort of explanation for the killings, both of which might be thought justifiable in certain circumstances. Then it occurred to me that, if this confession was ever read by anyone but me, I should somehow or other have managed to escape from the ‘fly trap’ and could supply all the explanation needed. But if I failed to get out, and everything went according to Judith’s plan, the confession would be disposed of, along with me.
For a tantalizing moment I flirted with the idea that I might be able to free myself. What would Judith do then? Suicide? I remembered the poppy and lettuce juice potion she took for her headaches (those headaches that could be put to such good use when an alibi was needed). Taken in a sufficiently strong dose, could it kill? My guess was that it probably could.
I had a sudden heart-stopping memory of Bertram picking the inside lock of the ‘fly trap’ in the Threadgold house. With a trembling right hand, I drew my knife from my belt as, with my left, I held the candle closer to the centre of the door, where Bertram had told me the lock of these things was always located. At that moment, however, the candle guttered and gave up the ghost. Cursing fluently, I hunted around for the tinder-box and, having at last found it, attempted to relight the wick. But it was a lost endeavour: the candle had burned itself out.
I tried, half-heartedly, to use the tinder-box as a light, but it proved impossible, as the tinder was swiftly used up. I was back in the all-enveloping gloom and with eyesight that needed to adjust to the dark all over again.
‘What now?’ I asked myself.
I was sweating profusely, panic adding its toll to the heat of the cupboard. Then, with something akin to hope again lifting my spirits, I recollected Bertram, in similar circumstances next door, running his finger over the panneling until he could feel the inside lock …
Several agonizing minutes must have elapsed before I found this one – before a finger of my left hand travelled round a strip of metal so thin that I was at first unaware that I was touching it. With my heart pounding, pressing my finger to the spot, I once more drew my knife in my other hand and brought up the blade …
It was hopeless. I don’t know how long I kept trying, using every trick of lock-picking that Nicholas Fletcher had taught me, and that had never failed me before. But in the end I had to admit defeat. I was growing short of breath, my head was swimming unpleasantly and my throat was parched. Unconsciousness threatened to overtake me and I was forced to sit on the floor, my chest heaving. This was it, then. This was death, which I had faced on so many occasions in the past, but always cheated until now.
Until now! The true implication of the words hit me with all the force of a blow to the heart. I should never see Adela again. I should never see my sons and daughter again. What would they do without me? Life was not easy for widows or fatherless children. Perhaps Adela would marry for a third time, once she had recovered from my loss. A picture of Richard Manifold rose up before me. He had wanted her from the start. A sheriff’s officer, a sergeant, he would be a good provider, but somehow I could not bear the thought of him taking over my family as his own. I remembered the many times they had seemed a burden to me; my sense of freedom as I took once again to the open road and put the miles between myself and them. I remembered how often Elizabeth and Nicholas had driven me to the limits of my endurance, and how frequently Adam had inspired me with thoughts of infanticide …