I brushed the dust from the knees of my breeches and was conscious of a sharp pain in the back of my head. I was also feeling a little dizzy, another indication that I was not yet as fit as I pretended to be. I sat down on the bed. The room spun once or twice, then steadied. I felt a little better.
The house was beginning to get on my nerves. The knowledge of what had happened there fifty years earlier, and also ten days ago, was making me jumpy. All the same, I would make a further search of the downstairs before I left.
It was at that moment that my right hand encountered a small, hard lump in the mattress. Through the ticking, and embedded in goose feathers, it wasn’t easy to say exactly what it was, but it felt suspiciously like a ring. The pain in my head and my uneasiness both forgotten, I slewed round to examine the mattress more closely and saw that the location of the lump was about the length of a man’s forearm from a large rent in the covering. Hanging on to my prize with my right hand, I cautiously inserted my left arm into the tear until my fingers met with solid metal. A few seconds later, I was staring at a heavy gold signet ring lying in the palm of my hand.
I brushed the fleas aside and inspected my trophy. It was a man’s ring, there was no doubt about that — it would have fitted easily on any of my fingers. There was no jewel, just a richly chased band and a roundel deeply engraved with the insignia of its owner, whoever that might be. I held it up to the light, but the carving was too elaborate to decipher. I could see that there were two capital letter As entwined, but another concave motif behind them was less distinct.
I debated what to do with my find. If there was an owner of the ‘murder’ house, and there must be somewhere, did it belong to him, by right of having been discovered on his property? On the other hand, it might belong to the unseen man whose voice I had heard, in which case, should I hand it over to Richard Manifold? A third alternative was that it had been the possession of the original owner of the house, but somehow I didn’t think so. The mattress was certainly torn and filthy, but I doubted very much if it were fifty years old.
And someone had used it recently. There was a definite hollow in the middle of the mattress where a body had lain not too long since. And the man, whoever he was, must have been up here: he wasn’t in the parlour when I was first admitted — unless he had come in through the front door while I was unconscious …
My head was starting to ache again, and I was no nearer a solution as to what to do with the ring than I had been ten minutes ago. For the time being, then, I would do nothing. I would let the course of events and my instincts guide me. Whether the ring had been deliberately hidden in the mattress or accidentally lost was another question altogether. But for the moment, it was not a problem I was prepared to cope with. I dropped the ring into my pouch and went downstairs again.
I opened the shutters, letting in a shaft of sunlight that slabbed the floor with gold, and when I scuffed aside some of the dust near the door, a large dark stain was visible. Blood, I had no doubt, belonging to the Irish sea captain. A sudden vivid picture flashed into my mind of the man falling, the dagger thrust through his heart after his attack on the woman in blue brocade. Rowena? But why would she have been carrying a knife? And it must have been a beautiful stroke, clean, swift, unerring. If only the scope of my vision had been greater instead of confined to a mere few feet above the floor!
I was certain that the man whose voice I’d heard in the background had not been Robin Avenel. Firstly, according to Edgar Capgrave, Master Avenel had returned to Bristol too early for him to have been present during the attack on myself and Eamonn Malahide. Secondly, I remembered thinking that the man’s accent was slightly foreign, or, if foreign was too strong a word, then strange — not the broad, diphthong-vowelled speech of the west country. That was the way in which the woman in brown sarcenet had spoken, but try as I might, I could not recall the voice of the woman in blue brocade. She must have remained silent throughout the entire episode.
I prowled around the parlour once more, but found nothing else. I closed the shutters again before emerging into the sunshine with a feeling of relief. Then I remembered the outhouse where the horses had been stabled, but on inspection this, too, was empty except for a large besom, propped against one wall. I searched for signs of dung or wisps of hay, but there were none. I was up against a thoroughly disciplined, orderly mind, not easily panicked by unforeseen circumstances.
I unhitched the cob’s reins and glanced towards the river. The ferryman had by now accomplished his return journey and was pulling into shore. By great good fortune, no one was yet waiting to cross to the manor of Ashton-Leigh, so I led the horse forward and, remembering that I had been told his name, shouted ‘Master Tyrrwhit!’ as loudly as I could.
The Rownham Passage alehouse was as small and shabby inside as it was out, but the landlord served excellent ale. I handed a mazer to Jason Tyrrwhit, then squeezed in beside him on a dirty corner bench that accommodated two. I had chosen it deliberately as a place where we were less likely to be interrupted by one of his many friends.
The tiny room, with its sanded floor and row of barrels along one wall, was crowded to suffocation. Seafaring types of all shapes and sizes were crammed together around a long, central table or seated on rickety stools or lying prone on the ground, having drunk themselves into a stupor. The stink of the place was enough to knock a grown man senseless, and I felt the bile rise in my throat as soon as we entered. Not so my companion, who was obviously very much at home there; a frequent visitor if the general chorus of greeting from all sides was anything to judge by. A few sips of the landlord’s brew, however, were sufficient to settle my stomach, and I was able to devote my full attention to the ferryman.
‘You’re looking well,’ he observed, ‘for a man who cheated death by inches and gave his head a nasty knock into the bargain.’
‘You were the good Samaritan who rescued me, I believe. This,’ I apologized, ‘is the first chance I’ve had to come back and thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it! I’d’ve done the same for a dog.’ He slewed round on the bench to look at me. ‘But how in Hades did you manage to fall in? You were striding out along the track to Bristol last time I saw you. Mind you,’ he went on, without waiting for a reply, ‘I thought as how you’d got a touch of the sun, the way you were going on about building a bridge between the top o’ Ghyston Cliff and Ashton rocks. Sun’s addled his brain, I remember thinking.’
I let it go. There was no point in trying to explain; it would only confuse him further.
‘When you found me in the water, did you see anyone on the bank? Anyone walking or running in the direction of the old ‘murder’ house?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I was too busy rescuing you, weren’t I? You’re a big fellow. I didn’t have any passengers that crossing, and hauling you into the skiff was hard going fer a little chap like me. Specially when you was waterlogged. It was only air gettin’ in under that jerkin of yours kept you from sinking. First, I thought you was a bundle of old clothes someone had tossed in the river. That’s why I rowed over to take a look. I’ve had some decent finds from the Avon one time and another. These ’ere boots, fer example.’ He lifted a skinny leg, proudly displaying a foot encased in a brown leather ankle boot of surprisingly good quality. ‘See what I mean?’
I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that I could be mistaken for a bundle of old clothes, or grateful for the fact that I had been. In the end gratitude won.