I took the money from my pouch. ‘One other thing,’ I said, continuing to hold it in my fist. ‘Did you happen to notice what colour of gown Mistress Alefounder was wearing?’
Edgar shook his head. ‘She still had her cloak on when she returned, because the rain hadn’t quite cleared away. But that maid of hers, I did happen to see what she was wearing. She had a cloak on, too, but it blew back in a gust of wind. Her gown was blue brocade.’
Six
‘Blue brocade?’ My voice shook a little. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. I remember thinking it was a pretty fancy gown for a maid to be wearing.’ Edgar Capgrave eyed me curiously, then shrugged. ‘Don’t know where they’d been or what they’d been up to, but they both looked like drowned rats. Their skirts were soaking wet for ten or twelve inches above the hem. Leastways, Mistress Hollyns’s was. Didn’t get a proper look at the other’s. Reckon they’d been caught proper by that storm.’
Or been wading in the river, up to their knees, trying to drown some poor sod they’d previously bludgeoned unconscious!
‘Are you absolutely certain that Mistress Alefounder’s companion was Mistress Hollyns?’ I asked all the same.
By this time, there were growing protests from both sides of the archway, where two fresh lines of traders and honest citizens waited to pay their tolls.
‘Who else could it have been?’ the gatekeeper demanded irritably. ‘Bess could have met up with her somewhere and they rode home together. Mind you, Mistress Hollyns must have left by another gate. She didn’t pass through this one on her outward journey. I’d stake my life on it.’
I believed him. Edgar Capgrave’s powers of observation seemed phenomenal. I asked about the red shoes, but he answered that he hadn’t noticed, and that, in any case, they would probably have been too wet for him to say anything with certainty about their colour. I gave him the groat, remounted the cob and rode off across the Frome Bridge, leaving him to deal with his irate customers. I had no doubt at all that he could handle them.
Once across the bridge, I rode sedately along the quayside of Saint Augustine’s Back, past the abbey, to the confluence of the Frome and Avon. There, I turned towards Rownham Passage and the ferry, skirting the steeply rising ground to the north of the city, which culminated in the high plateau of Durdham Down and Lord Cobham’s manor of Clifton.
It was another beautiful day. The sky was blue; little clouds, fragile as blown glass, danced to the tune of a following breeze; sailors and dockers were mostly stripped to the waist, bronzed and fit and enjoying the summer sunshine. But my mind was elsewhere, trying to reconcile Rowena Hollyns with the role of a ruthless killer. Instinct and a knowledge of human nature denied the possibility. But then I remembered whose daughter she was and conviction wavered.
Nevertheless, I still felt uncomfortable with the idea, although I now felt sure that she was the woman in the blue brocade gown, and so, by natural corollary, that Elizabeth Alefounder must be the woman in the brown sarcenet. As for the motive behind the whole murderous episode, now that I knew Robin Avenel might have been involved, I was certain it must have something to do with that perennial thorn in the English Government’s side, the Lancastrian faction’s last and very forlorn hope: the exiled Henry Tudor.
As Adela had reminded me, it was less than a year since Master Avenel had come under suspicion of being a Lancastrian supporter, but nothing had been proved against him. And unless I could prove some connection between him and the old ‘murder’ house at Rownham Passage, there would be no evidence of wrongdoing this time, either.
My mind reverted to Rowena Hollyns, and from her it was but a short step to thinking about Adela. It would have been an exaggeration to say that there was something amiss between us, but I couldn’t deny that there had been a certain constraint this past year, since Adam’s birth. Three months ago, Adela had ceased feeding him at the breast, and from then on had been anxious to avoid conceiving another child. Ironically, for the first time in our lives, we had a bedchamber almost to ourselves, and all the privacy any married couple with three small children could reasonably hope for.
I understood, but still resented, Adela’s lukewarm acceptance of my bedtime advances. She was much more God-fearing than I was, and therefore far more inclined to abide by the Church’s regulations. For me, as, I suspect, for many other people, there are some rules which are simply made to be broken. For instance, according to the Church, married couples should refrain from carnal pleasure on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for forty days before both Easter and Christmas, and for three days before going to Mass. I worked this out once, and it totals at least five months of enforced abstinence every year. Enough to make any red-blooded male resort to the nearest whorehouse!
Of course, wise women can always offer remedies against conception, but, frankly, most of their ideas make my hair stand on end. One we consulted advised Adela to eat bees (presumably dead ones, although we didn’t bother to enquire). Another recommended that the wife drink a pint of raw onion juice just before the act itself (on the assumption, I suppose, that no man could possibly perform at his sparkling best whilst being asphyxiated by his wife’s breath). A third tried to convince us that a foolproof method was for the woman to eat a whole cabbage as soon as she got out of bed. (Adela hates cabbage.) So there we were, left with using less traumatic, but more frustrating ways of assuring we had no more children just at present, and with a relationship every bit as loving, but not nearly as carefree as it was of yore …
I realized that my musings had brought me to Rownham Passage. I was abreast of the ‘murder’ house on its rocky promontory, overlooking the slimy grey mud that forms the Avon’s banks on both sides of the river. In the distance, I could see the ferryman plying his trade, but for the moment he was rowing towards the opposite shore. I dismounted, looped the cob’s reins around the lower branch of a stunted, wind-blasted tree and crossed the patch of coarse, dry grass to the ‘murder’ house.
I had half expected the door to be locked, but it wasn’t. As I cautiously pushed it open, I was met once again by the same strong smell of must and damp that I recalled from my first, ill-fated visit. I stood on the threshold, straining my ears for any sound that might indicate occupation, but apart from the inevitable scurrying of mice, all was silent.
I advanced a pace or two along the narrow passageway and entered the parlour. Nothing. Nobody. Yet something was different. The room was much gloomier, and the shapes of its meagre furniture loomed oddly menacing in the darkness. The shutters, previously open, were now closed, blocking out what little light had been afforded by the grimy parchment panes. Someone had been here.
I returned to the passageway. Dust lay in drifts across the floor, but there were no footprints apart from my own. There were, however, other marks which I recognized as strokes made by a broom. Someone had thought it worthwhile to erase as far as possible all traces of occupation. A sensible precaution, I thought, smiling grimly.
I went upstairs. Here, there was just one room, a little larger than the parlour below. Even so, it was cramped and, remembering the family who had once lived here — daughter, mother and tyrranical father — I found it hardly surprising that their story had ended in tragedy. The only piece of furniture was the bed and it took up most of the space. Made of oak and with carvings of angels decorating the headboard, it was, however, devoid of bedding except for a mattress, its covering of grubby, once-white linen torn in several places and goose feathers protruding in handfuls. I walked around it and peered underneath, but there was nothing to be found, not even a chamber pot.