‘Have you ever seen Beric Gifford and Katherine Glover together?’
‘Three or four times,’ the goodwife admitted. ‘Maybe oftener. The last occasion was a couple days before the murder. I’d been picking mushrooms in the meadows and woods near Valletort Manor.’ She broke off, eyeing me askance, guessing that I knew as well as she did that it was against the law then, as it is now, to gather field mushrooms, because the death cap can so easily be slipped in among the rest; a simple way to poison someone and make it seem an accident.
I returned her gaze blandly. ‘Beric and Katherine must be very much in love,’ I prompted, ignoring the latter part of what she had just told me.
‘He certainly is with her,’ the goodwife agreed, smiling gratefully. ‘On each occasion that I saw them together, it seemed to me that he couldn’t make enough fuss of her. I reckon he dotes on her, and that’s a fact.’
‘And would you say that she is as affectionate as he is?’
My companion hesitated. After a moment’s reflection, she said, ‘Perhaps not. But then, there’s always one of every twosome who’s more loving than the other.’ The touch of bitterness in her voice suggested that she spoke from personal experience. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, though,’ she went on quickly. ‘She appears fond enough of him. But I suspect that she was even fonder of the prospect of being mistress of Valletort Manor. It was something she would never have believed possible, not in her wildest dreams. But, of course, that’s all over now.’
I suddenly recalled Stephen Sherford’s words. ‘It seemed to me that he was more in love with her than she with him.’ And now here was corroboration of his suspicions. But he had also implied, in contradiction, that Beric would tire of his betrothed before she did of him, although that, I was sure, had been mere wishful thinking. Stephen Sherford had made it plain that he did not like Katherine Glover, and I had a feeling that the goodwife, if pressed, would agree with him. If it came to that, I was uncertain whether or not my own impression of her had been favourable, but was unable to make up my mind.
‘What do you think they will do?’ I asked. ‘As you’ve just pointed out, there’s no prospect of their ever being master and mistress of Valletort Manor now.’
My companion shrugged. ‘Who can say? There’s only one thing certain: Beric Gifford’s thrown away his uncle’s fortune, his home and his safety all for the sake of a moment’s revenge, a momentary satisfaction. But he’ll live to rue it. He’s bound to. No man could let all that slip through his fingers and not go mad with regret. In time, he’ll probably grow to hate Katherine Glover, and then I wouldn’t give a fig for her life. A man who’s committed one murder won’t balk at a second.’
‘Don’t you think he might have gone abroad?’ I said. ‘Don’t you think he might be in France or Brittany?’
‘No,’ was the positive reply. ‘He’s eaten Saint John’s fern and made himself invisible.’
‘You seem very sure of that.’
The goodwife hesitated, obviously debating with herself whether or not to say more. Then she took a deep breath and, lowering her voice, confided, ‘My husband doesn’t like me to talk about the murder because it involves one of our community. One of their community,’ she amended wryly. ‘I’m not one of them, and never have been. One day, I’ll run away, back to Plymouth, and they’ll never see me again.’
‘Go on,’ I urged, when she seemed inclined to fall into a reverie of escape and freedom. ‘What is it that you were going to say?’
‘Say? Oh, yes! Well, I go for walks. Long walks, inland, picking berries and … and mushrooms,’ she added defiantly. ‘They help eke out our diet of fish, and more fish, in between Bevis Godsey’s visits. A week or so gone, near Valletort Manor, I saw Beric Gifford’s cloak hanging on the broken branch of a tree. It scared me almost witless. He could have been standing right next to me, invisible, and I shouldn’t have known so I took to my heels as fast as I could. But then, when I’d gone a little distance, curiosity got the better of me, although I can hardly believe now that I was such a fool. But I was. I crept back, scarcely able to breathe because I was so frightened, to see if he’d materialized once I was out of the way.’
‘And had he?’ I asked, carried along on the tide of her credulity.
‘No,’ she was forced to admit. ‘But his cloak had gone!’ Her eyes glistened with excitement. ‘He’d been there all right, visible or not, and taken it away with him when he left.’
‘And you’re sure that the cloak belonged to Beric Gifford?’
‘I’ve seen him wearing it. Brown velvet, lined with pale blue sarcenet. A bit shabby and rubbed around the neck, but otherwise smart enough.’
At that moment, the cottage door opened and her husband came in, his leathery features puckered in suspicion.
‘You’ve been a fair while, chapman. What’s going on? There can’t be that much that my goody’s needing.’ He eyed the woman sharply. ‘You’ve not been gossiping, I hope! I’ve told you! We keep ourselves to ourselves here. We don’t want every passing traveller knowing all our business.’
The goodwife picked up a reel of coarse thread. ‘I’ll take this,’ she said, looking at me imploringly, begging me to reveal nothing of our conversation.
I thanked her and began putting the rest of the things back into my pack.
‘We’ve been talking about London,’ I lied cheerfully. ‘I was there a few months ago and your wife wanted to know all about the latest fashions.’
The fisherman snorted in derision, but made no further comment. He was determined, however, not to leave us alone together any longer, and waited doggedly for me to quit the cottage, following me outside and closing the door behind us. I wished him good day and, as the tide had not yet receded far enough for me to walk round the headland, I scrambled up the rocky, boulder-strewn path to the top of the cliff and made my way across the promontory until I could look down into the cove on its other side.
A similar, but larger, huddle of slate-roofed cottages nestled against the rising ground at its back, and now that the sun was beginning to mount in the sky, there was greater activity amongst the fishermen and their families. This was a slightly more prosperous community than its neighbour because a little less exposed to the elements. And in one of those cottages Katherine Glover had been raised.
I hitched up my pack and started on the rocky descent to the shore.
* * *
Of the dozen or so dwellings that straggled around the cove and a little way up the hill behind it, I discovered, in the course of the next hour, that no less than seven were occupied by Glovers and their kinsfolk, all related to one another by either blood or marriage. And it was rapidly made plain to me that any mention of the murder, or the Giffords, and especially of Katherine herself, would be met with instant expulsion from whichever cottage I happened to be in. Indeed, by the time I reached the seventh one, I was met on the threshold by an angry deputation, led by a middle-aged couple, whom I guessed to be Katherine’s parents.
‘Get out! Go on! Leave us alone! We don’t want you here!’ the man said, in a voice that was all the more threatening for being quiet and restrained.
There was a muttered assent from the score of people gathered at his back, and I noticed uneasily that several of the men were brandishing some evil-looking clubs, three or four of them exactly like the one described to me by Mathilda Trenowth as being the murder weapon.
‘Be off with you!’ exclaimed the woman, whom I felt sure was Katherine’s mother; a fact that she confirmed a moment later. ‘My daughter warned us about you. She said that some nose-twitching pedlar might be around, asking questions about things that are none of his business. So we suggest that you go now, before we do something that you might live to regret.’
‘Or not live to regret,’ her husband added softly.