Gervase was putting the documents away again when his wife opened the door.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ she said, pausing in the doorway.
‘No, no. Come on in, Alys.’
‘I promised that I wouldn’t get in your way while I was here.’
‘I know,’ he said, giving her a welcoming kiss and closing the door. ‘But I’ve just finished what I was doing. You could not have come at a more apposite time.
‘Good.’
‘Did you enjoy your visit to the market?’
‘Oh, yes!’
Alys laughed with girlish delight and recounted the details of her visit to the town. Her voice saddened when she talked about the hostility that she and Golde had met. It had been the one small blemish on an otherwise pleasant morning. Gervase was glad that his wife had found so much to divert her and was interested to hear about the invitation that had arrived at the castle from the lady Adelaide.
‘You’ve no objection, have you?’ she said, eager for his approval.
‘None at all, Alys.’
‘Thank you. I’m so keen to go and so is Golde.’
‘Ralph will certainly not hold her back,’ he observed.
‘That’s what Golde said.’
‘He’ll do everything in his power to make sure that she calls on the lady Adelaide. It could help us. The more we can glean about her, the better. Look and listen, Alys.’
‘I will.’
‘She occupies a unique place in our inquiries. You might say that she holds the balance between the lord Richard and the lord Mauger.’
‘It must be exciting to have two men vying for your hand.’
‘Not if they happen to be those reprobates. Besides,’ he said, slightly nettled, ‘one honest suitor is enough for any woman, surely? Wasn’t I sufficient for you, Alys? Or did you want a whole pack of wooers banging on your door?’
‘I was grateful to have one.’
‘You had several admirers.’
‘None that I cared to notice,’ she said, sweetly. ‘Apart from you, that is. If there’d been a hundred suitors hammering on my door, it would only have been opened to Gervase Bret.’
He smiled with relief. ‘Thank you, Alys.’
‘Could you ever doubt me?’
‘No, my love.’
‘As for the lord Richard, I wouldn’t look twice at such a man. I pity the lady Adelaide if she is forced to marry him. I’d be terrified of a husband who could work himself up into such a violent rage.’
‘You’re not terrified of me, are you?’
‘Only now and then,’ she teased.
He took her by the shoulders to kiss her again, then stood back to appraise her.
‘You look much better now, Alys.’
‘I’ve got my strength back after the journey.’
‘So have I,’ he said, ‘and it’s just as well because I’m going to need it. We came here to act as judges but we’re deputies of the sheriff instead. That will take all the energy we can muster.’
‘Have you any idea who the murderer might be?’
‘Not at this point. We have a short list of names but we’ve yet to put faces to them. And the lord Richard is only muddying the waters by his wild behaviour. It could be some time before we manage to solve the crimes.’
‘Is there anything that I can do to assist you?’
‘You’re doing it by visiting the lady Adelaide.’
‘What would you like me to ask her?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, quickly. ‘Leave any questions to Golde. She’s played this game before. You haven’t. Just behave as you would on any other visit to a friend. Be polite to your hostess — and take note of every word she says.’
‘I’ll try, Gervase. What will you be doing, meanwhile?’
‘Paying a call on another Norfolk lady.’
‘And who’s that?’
‘Olova.’
Roger Bigot was astounded by the news. He pressed Ralph Delchard for more detail. ‘The elephants were stolen?’
‘So it appears, my lord sheriff.’
‘From whom?’
‘The abbot of Holme.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘Judicael the Goldsmith,’ said Ralph. ‘Except that he didn’t exactly volunteer the information. I had to prise it out of him like a pearl from an oyster.’
‘If this intelligence proves to be correct,’ said Eustace Coureton, ‘it will be a pearl indeed. Who is this man, Ralph?’
‘Not one that I could ever bring myself to like.’
‘Can his word be trusted?’
‘In this instance, I believe that it can.’
The three men were in the hall at the castle. Bigot and Coureton were intrigued to hear what Ralph had learned from his visit to the goldsmith. It cast a whole new light on the disappearance of the two gold elephants.
‘No wonder that the lord Richard is so desperate to reclaim them,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s not simply a question of using them to dazzle the eyes of the lady Adelaide. He wants them back in his possession before anyone starts asking where they came from in the first place.’
Coureton chuckled. ‘And now we know. He stole them.’
‘A thief is now the victim of theft,’ said Bigot.
‘We can’t be certain of that,’ suggested Ralph, ‘and it would be very foolish of us to show our hands before the facts have been verified. It may be that the lord Richard bought them in good faith, ignorant of their origin.’
‘Where did he say that they came from?’ asked Coureton.
‘Somewhere abroad,’ said Bigot. ‘The lord Richard went to Normandy recently to visit his estates. When he came back, he had those miniature elephants with him.’
‘That doesn’t mean that they actually came from Normandy.’
‘I agree,’ said Ralph. ‘Why should anyone bother to steal them from the abbey of Holme, take them across the Channel then sell them to someone who was returning to this country? That would be perverse.’
‘Had the goldsmith actually seen those elephants?’ said Bigot.
‘No, my lord sheriff. But they’d been seen and admired by someone who had dealings with Judicael. A man who’d visited the abbey. The pieces were so unusual that he described them in detail to the goldsmith. That description tallied with the one given to you by the lord Richard.’
‘Then they have to be the same miniatures.’
‘And I’ll wager that the lord Richard stole them,’ asserted Coureton.
‘That’s only a guess,’ Ralph reminded him. ‘We’ll need proof and the best way we can get that is by moving stealthily. Whatever we do, we mustn’t alert the lord Richard to the fact that we’ve uncovered an earlier crime relating to those elephants. We can rest assured that they were taken illegally from the abbey of St Benet at Holme. No abbey would part willingly with anything so valuable.’
‘Don’t forget the spiritual aspect, my lord,’ said Bigot. ‘Each animal had a crucifix on its head. The monks of St Benet will regard them as holy treasures.’
‘What will they think when they hear that their holy treasures have been waved in front of a beautiful woman to inveigle her into a marital bed?’
‘The abbot will be mortified.’
‘He must be aware of the crime. Why hasn’t he howled at the outrage?’
‘Perhaps he’s yet to discover it,’ said Bigot. ‘If they keep their valuables locked away in a chest, the abbot may not have realised that those elephants have vanished. On the other hand, he may know the truth yet not wish to report the crime for some reason. Abbot Alfwold is a venerable man. He’s far more likely to pray for the return of his treasures than to come running to me.’
‘That fact probably weighed with the lord Richard,’ said Coureton. ‘When he stole those gold elephants, he counted on the fact that you would not even get to hear of the theft. And if the lord Ralph hadn’t been so astute,’ he added, winking at his colleague, ‘you might never have known of the crime.’
‘I’m very grateful to him.’
‘And we’re grateful to you, my lord sheriff,’ resumed Ralph. ‘You sought our help and we’re pleased to give it. This inquiry has already thrown up some fascinating detail about one of the men we came to Norwich to investigate and I’m sure that it will yield far more. None of it, I suspect, remotely flattering to the lord Richard.’