‘And what is more, Sergeant,’ Adela interrupted in a voice that chilled like ice, ‘Brother Nicodemus accompanied my husband back here and remained with us until the watch were calling four o’clock. I heard them as he left.’ I could tell that she would not soon forgive her former admirer for causing her such a fright.
The expression on Richard Manifold’s face was a joy to behold. Frustration, bewilderment and the fear of having made a fool of himself were mixed in equal proportions. He desperately wanted to dismiss our story as some sort of fabrication, but the mention of Father Prior and Brother Nicodemus was sufficient to convince him of its truth. Despatching Jack Gload to the priory was nothing more than the formal check his superiors would expect of him.
While we awaited Jack Gload’s return, I took pity on Richard and motioned him to a chair. It was on the tip of my tongue to offer him some ale, but I could tell from the look on Adela’s face that the suggestion would not be well received. She was still white with shock. Philip, too, was at his most aggressive.
I took a seat opposite the sergeant and folded my arms across my chest.
‘Perhaps if you are now convinced of my innocence, you’d be willing to answer some questions,’ I said. He grunted sullenly, but I took it for assent. ‘First, how and when was Mistress Ford murdered?’
‘During the night sometime. She was smothered.’ As the stranger had been.
‘And who accuses me of this wanton crime?’
I thought I could guess, and was therefore unsurprised when Richard grudgingly admitted, ‘Sister Jerome. The nuns had finished Vigils and she had gone outside, as is her custom — or so she claims — for a breath of fresh air before returning to her cell. She saw someone — a man — walking up Saint Michael’s Hill, but although it was moonlight, she couldn’t see his face, because he wore his hood pulled forward over his head. She says she watched the man for a moment or two, then turned to re-enter the nunnery. Before doing so, however, she glanced back, and, to her surprise, the man had vanished. She did pause to wonder where he might have gone, but, being tired, dismissed the incident from her mind.’
‘And she insists that I was this man?’
The sergeant shifted on his stool and refused to meet my eyes.
‘Not exactly. She merely said it was someone of your height and build. She didn’t accuse you directly.’
‘And you were willing to arrest Roger on such flimsy evidence?’ Adela demanded scornfully.
Richard flushed a dull red, stung by her contemptuous tone.
‘No, of course not! You don’t understand. There were other circumstances that pointed to Master Chapman’s guilt.’
‘What? Tell me what!’
‘Wait a moment, sweetheart,’ I pleaded, holding out my hand to her. ‘You’re going too fast. Let’s take it a step at a time, shall we? Sergeant, who discovered that Mistress Ford had been murdered, and when?’
‘Sister Jerome went to visit her at first light this morning. Apparently, she often does, just to make sure that her friend has survived the night unharmed. Instead, she found Mistress Ford’s dead body. Sister Jerome ran to inform the Mother Superior, and to obtain leave of absence. Then she came for me.’
My wife had kept quiet for long enough. ‘And on the strength of Sister Jerome’s suspicion that it might be Roger — not that it was, mark you, but that it might be — you came, not to question him, but to take him into custody!’ she fumed.
‘That’s what I call jumping to conclusions,’ Philip Lamprey put in, adding his mite to the already seething cauldron of anger and mistrust. ‘Cause a riot in London, that would!’
‘No!’ Richard Manifold banged his fist on the table and jumped to his feet with such violence that his accusers hastily retreated a step or two. ‘What do you take me for? An incompetent idiot who doesn’t know his job?’
He knew very well what Adela took him for: a jealous man trying his best to make her a widow once again. I could see that the knowledge angered him, that he felt himself misjudged, and for the first time in quite a while, I began to warm towards him. I motioned to my wife and Philip to be quiet.
‘Why did you come to arrest me, Sergeant?’ I asked in a gentler tone. ‘You obviously had your reasons. What motive did you think I could possibly have for killing Mistress Ford?’
Just at that moment, the cottage door opened and Jack Gload reappeared, Brother Nicodemus twittering at his heels.
‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ the latter exclaimed nervously after I had rescued him from Hercules’s eager attentions. ‘What’s all this about? What are you accusing Roger Chapman of, Sergeant? Is it true that Mistress Ford is dead? Murdered, this man tells me. Oh dearie, dearie me! I don’t know when I’ve been more shocked. How unlucky that family has been!’
Richard Manifold waited patiently until the monk had run out of breath, then sat Brother Nicodemus down on the stool he had himself just vacated and explained everything as quickly and as succinctly as he could.
Brother Nicodemus promptly confirmed my alibi with a wealth of superfluous detail that we could all have done without. ‘And what’s more, Father Prior will confirm my story,’ he concluded triumphantly. ‘Ask me any question you wish, Sergeant. You won’t catch me out!’
But Richard Manifold had no desire to catch him out. He had no doubt at all that both the monk and I were telling the truth. He just wanted to end an embarrassing situation as swiftly as possible. Besides, if I were not Cicely Ford’s murderer, who was? Instead of a case that was over almost before it had begun, he had a long, and maybe fruitless, enquiry ahead of him.
He turned and looked glumly at me, answering my question.
‘What motive, Chapman, would you have had for killing Mistress Ford? Why, the simplest and oldest in the world. Gain.’
‘Gain?’ Adela and I demanded, both together. ‘What gain?’ I added.
The sergeant eyed me askance. ‘Are you saying that you really don’t know? That Mistress Ford didn’t tell you, when she met you yesterday afternoon, as we know she did?’
‘You know a deal too much,’ I countered in growing irritation. ‘You’re talking in riddles, Richard! Tell me what?’
‘She was here, in this cottage, for over an hour yesterday afternoon,’ Adela confirmed. ‘But there was no conversation out of the ordinary that I remember. No mention of any. . any gain. What could we possibly gain from Cicely Ford?’
‘Her house,’ was the blunt reply. ‘Mistress Ford made a new will only yesterday, leaving her house in Small Street to you, Roger, when she died. And she died the same night. What was I to think? What was anyone to think? You’re extremely lucky to have such a watertight alibi.’
Adela and I stared at one another in disbelief; and I like to think that our obvious stupefaction at this news alone would have convinced any onlooker of my innocence, without any other corroborating evidence. Adela collapsed, rather than sat, on to the nearest stool, while Philip, generous soul, beamed in delight at this upturn in our fortunes. Jack Gload and Peter Littleman scowled with envy, intimating that, if they had their way, I would be indicted immediately on a charge of having good luck beyond my deserts. And I think Richard Manifold must have felt much the same way, but was too proud to show it. As for me, I couldn’t tell if grief or happiness was uppermost in the welter of emotions that fought for possession of my mind. Then I found myself appalled that I was able to experience anything like joy as a consequence of Cicely’s murder.