I looked at the speaker. I remembered him: a lean, gingery man with a ready smile. I’d liked him when I was nursing his mother; liked the old woman, too, indomitable, bossy old soul that she was.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘She’s well, mistress, thank you,’ the man replied. ‘She’ll see us all out, I’ll wager, and nag me nigh into the ground in the process.’ There were a few chuckles. It appeared that others of the company were acquainted with the man’s mother.
Jack rapped gently on the table, and immediately had everyone’s attention. ‘Luke,’ he said, addressing the sallow-faced, older man sitting at the end of the bench. The man got up, went to the door, peered outside and then came back. ‘All clear, master.’
Jack leaned in closer to the circle of men. ‘As you may know,’ he began, ‘Sheriff Picot has ordered me to cease my involvement in these murders, and he’s put Gaspard in charge.’
‘Man’s an arrogant layabout,’ one of the men muttered.
‘Man’s an arsehole,’ said another.
‘I’m not entirely sure what the sheriff intends me to do instead,’ Jack went on, ‘since he hasn’t issued any orders and, in fact, has totally ignored me.’ A brief spasm of anger crossed his face. ‘Since I therefore have nothing else to do, I intend to pursue my own enquiries, and if anybody wishes to join in, they’d be very welcome. I must add,’ he went on before anybody could speak, ‘that such a course of action could result in a severe reprimand from the sheriff, even though I would of course make it perfectly clear that anyone who helped me was carrying out my orders, and had no knowledge of the fact that I had been removed from the investigation. If anyone prefers not to risk trouble, he may leave and there will be no repercussions. On that you have my word.’
He waited. Nobody moved. I saw a sort of joy fleetingly flare in his eyes, as if he had doubted the men’s loyalty and trust in him and had fully expected them all to get up and leave.
He was a very modest man.
He cleared his throat. ‘Very well,’ he said after a moment. ‘Let me share my thoughts with you, and we’ll decide on a course of action and work out who does what.’ He paused, took a breath and then said, ‘It seems to me that the only hope we have of finding out the killer’s identity, and of stopping him from further attacks, is to work out how he has been selecting his victims, and why they have to die. Of course,’ he added, perhaps forestalling the question I could see in the expressions of at least one of the men, ‘it may be that these are random slayings and the work of a madman, but I hope and pray that is not so. I don’t believe it is’ – he leaned forward, as if he couldn’t contain his urge to share his conviction – ‘for already common threads are emerging. Robert Powl, the first victim, brought goods of all kinds into the town, and something was stolen from the barn next to his house. Gerda, the second victim, was known to have numbered among her clients men who worked on the river, possibly for Robert Powl. Mistress Judith kept an apothecary shop, and almost certainly obtained supplies from Robert Powl’s consignments; her shop, too, may have been robbed. The fourth victim, the young priest-’ He broke off, hands spread. ‘I have no idea what could connect him with the others.’
‘We need to find out,’ Walter said. ‘We need to ask around, see where he lived, if his quarters have been searched and if anything’s missing.’
‘We should discover what sort of a person he was,’ added the ginger-haired man, ‘and what he did when he wasn’t priesting.’ There were a couple of quiet chuckles.
‘Yes, good,’ Jack said. ‘Walter and Ginger, you get on with that. Gerald’ – he turned to a fleshy, brawny man still quietly getting on with eating what remained on the table, on others’ platters as well as his own – ‘you’re a good friend of Margery’s girls.’ Gerald grunted an assent. ‘Lassair has spoken to them, but they hadn’t much to offer in the way of helpful information. I’d like you to find out, if you can, who poor little Gerda saw regularly, whether she had any favourites, if anyone ever gave her presents, if she met anyone outside of her work.’ How careful he was, I thought, not to disparage her; I wondered how many other senior lawmen – for it was becoming clear that he must be senior, both because the person Sheriff Picot had replaced him with was the sheriff’s own nephew, and also because of these men’s attitude to him – would have spoken of a dead prostitute with such kindness and respect.
Gerald grunted again. He looked at Jack, eyes raised, and Jack nodded. ‘Yes, off you go,’ he said. ‘You too, Walter and Ginger. We meet here at sunset to report our findings.’ I wondered if Gerald was slow-witted. I watched as he got up from the board, every movement careful and studied, and then flexed his huge arms. He had enormous fists and, if they weren’t weapons enough, a knife in his belt and a heavy stick that he picked up from the floor under the board. If he found the man who had killed Gerda, I didn’t think that man would last very long.
Three men remained. One, the sallow-faced Luke, was ordered to mingle with the lawmen under Picot’s command; another was dispatched to seek out friends, neighbours and associates of Mistress Judith and ask a few careful questions. The last man was a boy, really, of about fifteen. He had an open, friendly face with an intelligent, alert look, a gap where a front tooth was missing, bright blue-green eyes and a shock of pale hair. He reminded me a little of my childhood friend Sibert, back home in Aelf Fen, and I liked him at once.
‘Don’t forget me, master!’ he said cheerfully to Jack. ‘What shall I do?’
Jack looked at him, assuming a frowning, critical look which I didn’t think fooled the boy for an instant, if his broad grin was anything to go by. ‘Ah, what’s-your-name,’ Jack murmured – both the lad and I knew he was teasing – ‘yes, now I remember, Henry. You, my lad, are coming with me.’
Henry, looking as if his prayers had just been answered, leapt to his feet. Jack looked enquiringly at me, and I too stood up. ‘We three,’ Jack said solemnly, ‘are going to make our way to Mistress Judith’s storeroom, where we shall do what Lassair and I were hoping to do last night, before the young priest died, which was to search through all the shelves and, by thinking very hard and putting our heads together, try to work out which of the items that ought to be there are missing.’
TEN
Wherever Sheriff Picot’s patrols were that afternoon, they weren’t in the little passage behind Mistress Judith’s garden. Jack and I climbed over the wall in exactly the same place as we had done the night before, and I noticed Henry looking on, wide-eyed in wonder at the sight of his senior officer doing something that was, in the normal course of events, very definitely against the law.
With old Adela being cared for by relatives we knew the house would be empty. With any luck, we would be able to take our time.
We sprinted across the knot garden and slipped inside the house. Jack closed the door behind us, pausing for a few moments to listen, but all remained quiet. If anybody had heard a noise that shouldn’t be there, he or she had the good sense to shut themselves inside their own house and ignore it.
In the clear light of a sunny afternoon, the scullery and its workbench were far more readily visible than they had been by the flickering light of a candle flame. The same applied to the storeroom, and the illumination improved when Henry pushed the door right open and wedged it in place.
I stood quite still and took a long, slow look at the shelves. As before, I had the strong impression that the contents of the upper shelves had been disturbed, and the more I stared, the more it looked just as if someone had removed something, then hastily rearranged the various glass and pottery vessels to disguise the fact. Something occurred to me. I stood up on tiptoe, but it didn’t make me tall enough. I turned to voice my request, but Henry, who had been watching me closely, had anticipated my need and was already handing me a small three-legged stool. I nodded my thanks, climbed up and looked right along the top two shelves.