She made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He said it might prove to be a mare’s nest and then I’d be disappointed.’ She snorted disgustedly. ‘He’d have done better to have told me what he knew. At least I could have advised him whether it was a wild goose chase or not.’ Recollecting herself, Ursula gave a tragic moan and momentarily closed her eyes. ‘Poor sweetheart! Peter wasn’t always very practical, I’m afraid.’
‘Did he ever mention how he came by his information?’ I asked eagerly, praying for a miracle.
But none was forthcoming. ‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘Was it from your father, do you think?’
She considered this idea, wrinkling her nose. ‘My father was at Tintern himself, wasn’t he?’ Her tone was thoughtful. ‘A coincidence, do you think?’
I sighed. ‘I have to admit it isn’t likely. We were all taking refuge from the weather and the rebels. On the other hand. .’
‘Yes?’
‘It was at Master Foliot’s suggestion that we took shelter in the abbey.’
‘There you are, then!’ Her face fell. ‘No, that’s no good. Father would never have confided in Peter about anything.’
I made no comment, but glanced covertly at the alcove at the far end of the chamber. If someone were sitting there with the curtain drawn, his presence unsuspected, it would be quite easy for him to overhear any conversation in the main part of the room. Was that what had happened? For there was no getting away from the fact that Gilbert Foliot had been making enquiries of the abbot concerning the secret hiding place at the very moment that Peter Noakes was breaking into it.
Unfortunately, neither was there any doubt that the would-be thief appeared to have found nothing. For if he had, where was it?
And what was it?
‘I haven’t been much help, have I?’ Ursula’s voice recalled me to my surroundings.
She was looking pathetic again, and I saw to my shame that there were genuine tears standing in her eyes. Contrite, I raised her hand briefly to my lips. She seemed shocked, and probably was. Common pedlars didn’t make that sort of gesture.
‘You’ve been very helpful,’ I assured her. ‘I may need to talk to you again. Meantime, mention nothing to Master Foliot about our conversation or my being here.’
‘Of course not. I’m not speaking to him, anyway,’ was the taut reply.
I trembled inwardly. In ten years or so, I could foresee Elizabeth saying the self same words.
‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I only arrived home this morning and so far I’ve devoted very little time to my family.’
‘I expect you’re a lovely father,’ she said yearningly, gazing soulfully into my eyes.
I beat a hasty retreat. All the same, I was shaken and more than a little dashed. When young girls started seeing me, not as a lover, but as a surrogate father, it was high time to be thinking of leading a more settled life.
A most depressing thought!
NINE
I went home, but not before first paying a visit to Pit Hay Lane, a noisome little alleyway in the crowded neighbourhood of the castle. It was a fruitless errand of course, there being nothing to see; no patch of dried and discoloured blood to indicate whereabouts the murder of Oliver Tockney had taken place. I walked its length, glancing at the mean houses and shops on either side, then turned and walked back again.
I was about to get myself a drink of water at St Peter’s fountain when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I had been aware for several moments of a more than usually pungent smell — more pungent even than the alleyway’s normal aroma of stale urine, dead cats and dog turd — and, turning, found myself staring down into the rheumy eyes of a small man whose verminous head reached to just the middle of my breastbone.
‘I been a-watching of thee,’ he announced. ‘Not that anyone could miss such a gert lump. I reckon thee’s looking fer where that there pedlar were murdered Friday evening.’
‘How do you know it was Friday evening and not early Saturday morning?’ I asked, taking a step or two backward in order to distance myself from the stench of the man’s clothes. (Clothes? More like a bundle of very old unwashed rags.)
‘’Cos I saw him set on, that’s why. I were looking out the door of me mother’s house down there — ’ he waved a sticklike arm towards the opposite end of the lane — ‘and I seed him walking down on t’other side, coming my way. He were being followed, I seed that at once. Two gert big fellows they were and they meant mischief. I seed one of ’em twisting a rope a-’tween his hands. Thee’s for it, me old acker, I thought — and sure enough he were. Mind, he put up the devil of a struggle, kicking and clawing and squirming, but it weren’t no good. He were dead as mutton in minutes. Quicker than the hangman c’n do it, I said to meself. Then they stripped his pack from his back and were off, like greased lightning.’
‘And you made no attempt to go to this poor man’s assistance?’ I demanded furiously, and without really stopping to think.
My informant soon put me straight. ‘Me? Thee’s out thy mind! How tall dost ’ee think I am? They were gert big fellows, I tell ’ee! They’d ’ave made mincemeat out of I. I ain’t risking me life fer no stranger. I ain’t that stupid, Maister.’
I could see his point of view and apologized for being so foolish, whereupon he flashed me a toothless grin and offered to show me the exact spot where the murder had taken place. I declined — there didn’t seem any point — but asked him to confirm that the killers were indeed nothing other than two common footpads looking for an easy mark. ‘For I can’t see why they needed to kill him,’ I said. ‘Oliver Tockney wasn’t a big man. Moreover, there were two of them to his one. They could have overpowered him easily.’
My companion considered this.
‘Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him,’ he volunteered after a while. ‘Maybe one jus’ meant to hold him with the rope round his neck while t’other robbed him. But, as I told ’ee, he put up such a fight that I reckons they had no choice.’
I nodded and, taking a coin from my purse, put into the man’s greasy palm. His fist closed round it tightly and he disappeared almost at once, no doubt heading for the nearest ale-house. The alacrity with which he received the money made me wonder how true his story was. Had he really been a spectator to Oliver’s murder or had he simply made it up, loitering around the alley, waiting for some gullible fool to show an interest in the crime?
There was, unhappily, no way of knowing for certain, so there was nothing to be done. I had my drink at the fountain and went back to Small Street.
‘You’re just in time,’ said my wife, ‘to make yourself useful and put out the dishes and spoons for supper. I hope you haven’t forgotten that we have company.’
‘If you mean Dick Manifold, why don’t you say so?’ I countered bad-temperedly. ‘I don’t call him “company”. And where’s Elizabeth? It’s high time she took her share of the household chores.’
‘She’s gone to the market for me and taken Adam and Hercules with her to get them out from under my feet.’ Adela considered me thoughtfully. ‘Now, what’s happened to put you in such a bad mood?’
I told her and she was immediately all concern. ‘Roger, I’m so sorry! What a dreadful thing to have happened. And the poor man, not in the city above a day, if that! No wonder you’re upset. Sit down and have some ale. We must question Richard more closely about it, at supper.’
But Richard, spruce and shining, gobbling down his hearty portion of beef stew — beef was a rare treat in our house, and I felt highly incensed to be sharing it with Dick Manifold — was disinclined to pursue the subject. The death of a pedlar, and a stranger at that, was of small importance to him. As a man of the law, he had news of far greater substance to impart. ‘If I should happen to be called away during the course of this evening,’ he said, ‘don’t be offended.’ (I shouldn’t have been offended, not in the least.) ‘It will be on official business.’ He paused here to give the rest of us — well, Adela, then — sufficient time to look both admiring and interested before continuing, ‘All ports in the south-west have been warned to be ready to repel invasion by Henry Tudor and his troops.’