‘But now, while he’ll never be fat on account of his great height, he’s growing corpulent, he has a double chin, he’s a pensioner of King Louis of France — a fact of which the Duke of Gloucester bitterly disapproves — and, if the gossips are to be believed, he devotes more time to pleasure than the Council Chamber. And to top everything else, he seems, finally, to have turned against his brother, George of Clarence.’
‘Your Duke sounds to me a rather puritanical young man,’ Adela observed dryly, wriggling into a more upright position on the bed, her back supported by the banked up pillows. ‘Almost a prig, but not above overlooking Mistress Shore’s faults — real or imagined — when he needs to make use of her and of her influence with the King.’
I resented any criticism, however oblique, of the Duke of Gloucester.
‘He’s trying to save his other brother’s life,’ I protested vigorously. ‘Surely a compromise with his conscience is justified under such circumstances.’
‘It depends what the Duke of Clarence has done to turn the King so irrevocably against him at last.’ Adela gave her sudden, disarming smile. ‘But don’t let’s quarrel when I haven’t seen you all day, and when I’m unlikely to see much of you for as long as it takes you to resolve this mystery. What happened at the goldsmith’s? Do you have any idea as yet whether or not the daughter really committed the crime?’ She patted her stomach. ‘Tell your son and me all about it.’
‘It might be another daughter,’ I said, somewhat rattled by her insistence that the child she was carrying was a boy. ‘What I want is a girl who looks like you.’
‘It’s a boy,’ was the confident answer. ‘And Margaret agrees with me.’
‘I don’t see how you can possibly be so sure,’ I retorted, and was rewarded with what I called her ‘knowing’ expression — a slight smile of contempt for my male ignorance, accompanied by a look of pity. A shake of her head implied that it would be fruitless to continue a discussion in which I was so plainly at a disadvantage.
As I had come to realise over the years that all pregnant women, however rational in other ways, adopt this omniscient attitude towards the mysteries of childbirth, especially when addressing a man, I let the subject drop and launched into a recital of everything that had happened at Master Babcary’s shop.
‘So you see,’ I said when I had finished, ‘there are still many enquiries to make before I can offer an opinion as to Mistress Bonifant’s guilt or innocence. To begin with, apart from the family and servants, there were three other people present in the house on the night of Gideon’s death — three neighbours to whom I have not even spoken as yet.’
Adela reached over and took the bowl containing the remains of the dried peas and onions from the tray on my knees, and began scooping the vegetables into her mouth with the wooden spoon provided.
‘I can’t help it,’ she laughed, noting my raised eyebrows, ‘I’m hungry all the time. The trouble is that, although I know peas and onions will probably give me a violent colic later, I can’t resist eating them. But go on. What do you make of the story that Gideon Bonifant was spreading just before his death? The story that Isolda was unfaithful to him with her cousin, this — this-’
‘Christopher Babcary,’ I supplied. I propped my chin on my hands and stared into the heart of the small sea-coal fire where the flames burnt blue and yellow, and for whose warmth and light and comfort we had agreed to pay the landlord a small extra daily charge. ‘Why would a man spread such a story if it weren’t true, particularly as he and his wife seem to have spent five reasonably contented years together?’
Adela put the now empty bowl back on the tray and shifted her position in order to make herself more comfortable.
‘On the other hand,’ she said after a moment or two, ‘even if we accept that the story is true — and, as you say, a man doesn’t claim to have been made a cuckold without good reason — infidelity doesn’t necessarily turn a woman into a murderess.’ She chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘You say that both Isolda and her cousin deny the charge that Gideon levelled against them?’
‘Yes, but they have to, don’t they, unless they wish to brand themselves poisoners in the eyes of the world? They’d be fools to admit it.’
‘But if Mistress Bonifant did kill her husband, how did she hope to get away with it if he had already told people about her infatuation with Christopher Babcary?’
‘Because she had no idea that he’d done so. Her father confirms that he never mentioned Gideon’s accusations to Isolda. And the other people in whom her husband confided — his old master, the apothecary, and Master Napier — were hardly likely to have confronted her with the story.’
Adela rubbed her stomach and grimaced. ‘That’s true,’ she agreed. ‘But what about this cousin? Was he never suspected of being the murderer?’
‘He might have been, I suppose, in due course. But Mistress Shore seems to have implored the King for his intervention too rapidly for the Sheriff’s officers to have levelled accusations at anyone, or for any kind of investigation to have got under way. King Edward, not wishing, I imagine, for his chief leman to be implicated, even by association, in anything so sordid as murder, halted all enquiries immediately. But it’s not so easy, of course, to stop the whispering of neighbours and erstwhile friends, as it is to give orders to officials. And so here I am, once more embroiled in what, in a very roundabout way, has become the Duke of Gloucester’s concern.’
Or God’s, I added silently. For it wasn’t Duke Richard who had brought me to London at this particular time. It was the Almighty yet again, manipulating my thoughts and desires; or, at least, if not mine, then Adela’s. But I was learning at last not to feel resentful — well, not too resentful — for I had come to appreciate that I might find my day-to-day existence very humdrum without these adventures of mine.
I emerged from my brief reverie to realise that Adela was speaking, echoing something of my own uneasiness.
‘. . but you mustn’t lose sight of the fact, Roger, that somebody committed that murder, whether it was Isolda Bonifant or no. And whoever it is, is probably very frightened by your investigation and the possibility that you might discover the truth.’
‘Only “might”?’ I protested, quizzing her and laughing at her discomfiture. ‘No, no! You’re quite right, my love! It would never do for a wife to be too confident of her husband’s abilities, or she would cease to have the whip hand.’ Then, seeing that my teasing was genuinely distressing her, I plunged, without thinking, into an account of what had occurred on my way back to the inn.
But this, of course, only served to worry her even further, as I ought to have known it would.
‘Do you really believe that you were being followed?’ she demanded anxiously.
I shook my head. ‘I honestly don’t know. I could find no evidence of it, and yet-’
‘And yet?’ she queried, her voice trembling a little.
‘And yet, at the time, I was certain that I had heard or seen something suspicious. And when I remembered that connecting alleyway between Foster and Gudrun Lane, I was conscious that anyone from the Babcary household could have caught up with me without following me directly from the shop. But I might have been mistaken. There are sufficient cats and rats foraging among the rubbish to account for any number of apparently mysterious movements and noises. I mustn’t let my imagination run away with me.’