He glanced up as I entered, but the dead-eyed look with which he greeted me altered when he saw who it was, to be replaced by a wariness and a tensing of his body that told me he was suddenly afraid.
‘What do you want, chapman?’ he demanded, his voice cracking.
I said quietly, ‘I’ve come to tell you that I know it was you who murdered Robin Avenel.’
His hands closed tightly over the fivestones. I could see sweat glisten suddenly across his forehead. But he had recovered his composure sufficiently to try a little bluster.
‘That’s ridiculous and you know it.’ He managed a convincing laugh. ‘I’d been arrested by the time the Watch found the body. And before Edgar Capgrave closed the Frome Gate and went home.’
I walked over to the table, pulled another stool from underneath it, and sat down.
‘But Robin Avenel wasn’t murdered in Jewry Lane, was he? He was killed downstairs, in the furthest one of the old synagogue cellars. I showed you the bloodstain, and you tried to convince me that it was two hundred years old, remember?’ It was my turn to laugh.
‘So? I was teasing you. There’s nothing in that to make me a murderer.’
‘You and Marianne Avenel are lovers. You admitted it to me yourself. You meet secretly in Saint Giles’s crypt, and I’ve seen the pair of you down there with my own two eyes. It’s the sort of secret that everyone knows about, or at least suspects — except, of course, the poor, cuckolded husband.’
Luke reddened, but jutted his chin defiantly. ‘All right. I was a fool to confide in you, of all people, I can see that now. But it doesn’t mean I killed Master Avenel.’
‘It gives you a very strong motive.’
He shrugged and began tossing the stones again, his confidence returning. ‘I’ve told you, I was in custody when the murder took place.’
I let that go for the minute and regarded him straitly.
‘I did wonder,’ I said, ‘why you became involved in an apprentices’ riot. You’re no longer one of them. You don’t share their grievances. And why pick on Jack Gload, a Sheriff’s man? What stupidity! Unless, that is, you were anxious to be arrested.’
‘Why would I want that?’ he sneered.
‘Because you’d killed a man, a man you were cuckolding, as quite a lot of people knew. You were sharp enough to realize that if you drew attention to yourself in some other way — in a big enough way — no one would then think to connect you with Robin Avenel’s murder. You couldn’t have known, of course, that his body would later be moved, making this deception of yours unnecessary.’
He looked up sharply at that, about to ask a question, but thought better of it. He was a clever lad. He knew better than to admit curiosity.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘This is quite amusing. My mother won’t be back for a while — she’s gone to the market — and my father’s working in the rope walk. You may have seen him as you passed. Tell me some more of this fairy tale of yours. It helps to pass the morning.’
‘Very well.’ I rested my elbows on the table and stared hard at him. He dropped the fivestones and stared back. ‘Here is what I think happened. You arranged to meet Mistress Avenel in your usual trysting place in Saint Giles’s crypt during the Midsummer Eve’s celebration. Everyone would be occupied; eating, drinking, playing games. It’s easy to get lost in a crowd. No one knows for certain where anyone else is. A simple excuse by Marianne that she wanted to use the privy and she could leave the trestle where she was sitting with her husband and Mistress Alefounder. I doubt if they even noticed her absence. They both had a lot on their minds.
‘You and she had arranged the meeting that same morning, during the herb-gathering in Redcliffe fields. I saw the pair of you, heads together, near Saint Mary’s Church. But things went wrong, didn’t they? In your eagerness, you arrived early: Marianne wasn’t there. Then you thought you heard her approaching. Only it wasn’t her, was it? It was Robin Avenel! You jumped to the conclusion that he must know all about you and Marianne, especially when he drew his knife and started shouting. He went for you, and in the ensuing struggle, you killed him, probably accidentally. Then you ran. The more you thought about it, the more you saw that you could be the chief suspect. People knew where you and Mistress Avenel met. Later, Marianne caught up with you. She’d found her husband’s body by that time and guessed what must have happened. What were you going to do? She must have been frantic. But when the apprentices’ riot broke out, you suddenly saw your chance to divert suspicion away from yourself.’
I paused, reflecting that, of course, I hadn’t been quite frank with him. Robin Avenel hadn’t gone down to Saint Giles’s crypt because he knew of Luke’s tryst with Marianne. He had gone down there to speak to Albany — maybe to inform him that he had failed yet again to arrange a sea passage for him to Brittany. But when he saw Luke, his first thought must have been that, somehow or another, his treason and the secret hiding place had both been discovered. He wouldn’t have stopped to reason things out or to reckon up the likelihood of such a discovery. He simply lost his nerve, drew his dagger and attacked Luke with the intention of killing him before he could reveal what he knew.
My companion still made no comment, but I could see his left cheek had developed a twitch. His hands were clenched.
‘And I’ll tell you why I’m sure of your guilt,’ I went on, continuing to hold his eyes with mine; a rabbit staring into the eyes of a stoat. ‘When I told you yesterday morning, in the Green Lattis, of my belief that Robin Avenel had been murdered in Saint Giles’s Church, I made no mention of the crypt, or where I’d seen the bloodstain on the floor. Yet when you insisted on my showing it to you, you didn’t hesitate, but took a candle and descended at once into the old synagogue cellars, going straight to the very spot.’ I reached across the table suddenly and gripped his wrists with my hands. ‘Now, how do explain that, if you didn’t kill him?’
Twenty-One
He sprang to his feet, wrenching himself free of my grasp.
‘You can’t prove it!’ he shouted.
‘I just have,’ I answered steadily, speaking with a confidence that I did not really feel.
He was frightened now, and frightened people do foolish things. If he had stopped, just for a moment, to think about it, he had the perfect reply to my accusation. If it were true, how had the body come to be discovered in Jewry Lane? Who had moved it? But Luke was already scared; appalled by what had happened. But, I guessed, he was more afraid that another man, an innocent man, would be found guilty of the crime and hanged for something he had not done. He had been congratulating himself on how well he had covered his tracks and diverted attention away from his friendship with Marianne Avenel, only to find that Burl Hodge had been accused in his stead. How long had he been trying to convince himself to say nothing, to let events take their course? Perhaps he had already decided to maintain his silence. But now here was I telling him that I was privy to his secret.
Maybe it tipped him into a sort of madness. Or maybe it was simply relief at being able to share his guilty knowledge with someone else. Whatever the reason, he blurted out, ‘All right! All right! Yes, I killed Robin Avenel, but, like you said, it was an accident.’ He was breathing hard as though he had been running. His eyes glittered feverishly. ‘I didn’t mean to stab him, but he started shouting at me like a man possessed. Don’t ask me what he was shouting about; nothing he said made any sense. Then he came at me with his dagger, cursing and swearing, and I could see he was serious. He meant to kill me if he could. I was yelling too by this time, frightened half out of my wits. I managed to grab him around the waist and we struggled for a while. I can’t really remember what happened next; it’s all such a muddle inside my head. I only know he suddenly stopped shouting and slumped to the ground … And when I looked …’ Luke’s voice caught on a horrified sob. ‘When I looked, his dagger was sticking out of his chest. It had pierced him right through his heart.’