‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think it’s possible.’
I walked with him to where the cobs were tethered and watched him mount.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked. ‘On your own.’
His concern suddenly made me feel old. ‘Yes, of course I will,’ I answered with asperity. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, you’ve nothing but that knife of yours with you.’ He spoke with some disdain, and not without cause, of my plain, wooden-handled meat knife. ‘If somebody came back …’
‘Why in God’s name should they?’ I snapped. ‘Your grandfather has been dead some days. My guess would be he was killed the night he disappeared. Whoever did that to him is long gone. He isn’t coming back to admire his handiwork. And now, get going! As fast as you can.’
James dug his heels into the horse’s sides and I watched as man and beast disappeared at a gallop. Then I led my own cob around the side of the house in search of the stables. These I discovered at the back, along with other outbuildings and, providentially, still boasting a good supply of straw. There was even a sack of feed, starting to go mouldy, it was true, but my hardy mount seemed to find nothing amiss with it and began to eat as soon as I put some in a manger. Satisfied that I had done my best by the animal, I retreated to the front and went back into the hall.
My candle had by now gone out and I had to grope about on the floor until I found the tinderbox where James had dropped it. On the dais was a broken-down armchair which had obviously not been considered worth taking when the Marvell family moved house. Carefully avoiding the body on the floor, I lowered my bulk into it, expecting the worst. But, rickety as it was, the thing held.
I wondered how long it would be before I could reasonably expect to see anyone. If he could keep up his initial pace, there was a good chance that James might reach Bristol within half an hour or so. But after that, who knew? People had to be roused and acquainted with the facts, arrangements had to be made and then the long climb back uphill accomplished. I feared I was in for a long, cold wait. It crossed my mind that I would have done better to have sent James to the Clifton manor house for assistance, but it was too late to consider that now. Neither of us had been thinking very clearly.
I switched my thoughts back to the mutilated corpse lying at the foot of the dais. ‘DIE’. But why, when the victim had already been killed? Moreover, something about the arrangement of the letters, all crowded on to the right-hand breast, bothered me, although for the moment I was unable to say why. In spite of myself, my eyes were drawn instinctively to that dark shape on the floor and, in the end, suppressing a natural feeling of revulsion, I picked up my candle, which I had put down beside me, and went to have another look at it.
This time, knowing what to expect, the shock was not so great and I was able to view the body with a certain amount of detachment. I couldn’t help wondering how a man who had been a soldier, and who must also have been alerted to a certain degree of personal danger by the murder of his friend, Alderman Trefusis, had allowed himself to walk into an ambush. For his murderer must have been lying in wait for him; if not inside the house, Sir George having the only key, then probably among the trees and bushes which surrounded it. What message could possibly have persuaded him to leave his home in the middle of the night and, at his age, walk the five or so miles uphill to the crest of the downs in the biting winter cold at the end of December?
It was at this point, kneeling beside the body, that I noticed something I had missed earlier in the first horror of seeing it. Sir George’s right hand was also partially mutilated with cuts and slashes across the base of the first two fingers. And when I lifted the hand to peer more closely at it, I noticed a knife lying at a little distance as though it had been dropped in a hurry. Had the perpetrator of the crime been disturbed before he had finished his ghoulish work?
For the moment, I was too tired and too distressed to pursue the idea, but I stored it away in my mind. My thoughts returned to the word ‘DIE’ carved into the knight’s right breast while I tried to fathom out why it puzzled me. Whoever killed Sir George certainly hated him with a venom that was almost akin to madness, so perhaps the mutilation was nothing more than an added expression of that hatred. Maybe it was nothing more than that.
I was by now too cold and weary to think any more about it. My brain felt numb with fatigue and horror, so I wrapped myself in my cloak, returned to the chair and waited, half waking, half drifting on a sea of sickly dreams, for James to return with the necessary reinforcements.
It was not really until the following morning, the first day of January, that I fully recovered the tone of my mind. The events of the previous afternoon and evening had passed in a sort of daze; a blur of noise, of people’s voices raised in horrified exclamations, of the clatter of feet as Richard Manifold, Sergeant Merryweather and their minions tramped in and out. And I had a vague recollection of the sheriff’s appalled face as he stared down on what had once been a man. His attempts to question James and myself met with little success: we were both too tired and still too shocked to make any sense. I remembered James saying that he had persuaded his father not to accompany the rescue party, and thinking he had been wise to do so.
Two men had come with a stretcher and the knight’s body had been tenderly lifted on to it and decently covered with a cloak. At the time, it had not occurred to me to wonder what had happened to his upper clothing, but now, in the early morning, lying in the comfort of my bed with Adela breathing quietly beside me, I was amazed to think that I had overlooked such a simple fact and that no one else had thought about it, either. Had the murderer taken it away with him, and if so, why? Or was it still lying in some dark corner of that bloodstained hall? And was it important enough for me to make another visit to the Marvell house later today? I had an uncomfortable feeling that it might be.
I rolled on to my right side and snuggled into Adela’s back. At least, when I finally returned home the previous evening, I had been spared her reproaches for my tardiness. Long before the sheriff’s sad party made its entrance through the Frome Gate, almost everyone in the city had learned of the terrible discovery made by James and myself and had turned out of doors, braving the winter cold, to see the solemn procession pass by. Adela had been one of the first to greet me as I straggled, exhausted, in its wake, and had insisted that I go straight home to bed. She would brook no refusal on my part.
‘You’re worn out, Roger. If all the rumours flying around are true, you’ve had a very nasty experience. If anyone wants to question you, they can do so tomorrow, but for now you need sleep. You’re coming back with me.’
I was too tired to argue with her, and indeed, such was the turmoil of my mind, I was glad of someone to tell me what to do. And as Small Street was so close at hand, I found myself indoors within a very short space of time. Elizabeth, with Luke clutched in her arms, and the other two were gathered together in the hall and greeted us in wide-eyed silence, aware that something terrible had happened and that I was somehow involved in it, but not quite certain how. Grumbling, they had been packed unceremoniously off to bed, Luke being further committed to his foster sister’s care. And, early as the hour was, once I had been given supper I had followed them not long after. Adela had asked no questions — obviously a sufficient amount of the murder’s gruesome details were already well enough known to make them unnecessary — and I had been tenderly assisted up to our room where, naked and unwashed, I had fallen asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.