I hesitated a moment before answering. ‘There was some talk of this young man who claims to be Clement Weaver, but…’
The Sheriff’s Officer cut me short. ‘That accounts for it, then.’ In response to our raised eyebrows, he went on, ‘One of our Sergeants was called to Alderman Weaver’s house in Broad Street earlier this morning to deal with a disturbance between Mistress Burnett and two of her father’s servants, who had been ordered to remove her bodily from the premises. She was in a great sweat, my friend said, pouring out a torrent of abuse on the Alderman’s head, and calling him by names which no respectable matron should even know, let alone make use of.’
Adela gave a little snort of laughter. ‘And did they manage to remove her?’ she asked.
Richard Manifold shrugged. ‘As far as I can gather, Mistress Burnett was eventually persuaded to let one of her father’s men take her home, before she was charged with causing a public affray.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘A bad business, that. A very bad business. She’s been a good daughter to the Alderman, and for the old fool to take against her in such an unreasonable fashion is a great shame. But she’s just as pig-headed. She won’t consider for a minute that this man who says he’s her brother might be telling the truth.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘However, I didn’t come to discuss the affairs of my neighbours, but to welcome you back to Bristol, Mistress Juett. Though I must say,’ he added, ‘that that name sits uneasily on my tongue, for Adela Woodward you’ve always been to me, and always will be.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ she smiled. ‘I’m the Widow Juett now with a two-year-old son, and no doubt you’re a father yourself, Richard.’
‘I’ve never married,’ he answered simply, looking at her with a soulful expression which, for some unknown reason, deepened my irritation and made me long to knock both their heads together.
My companion, however, suddenly seemed to sense danger in the situation. ‘It was kind of you to call,’ she said hurriedly, ‘but as you can see, there is much work to be done here if I’m to make the cottage habitable by Nicholas’s bedtime.’ And suddenly recollecting her son, she looked around to see what mischief he was up to, only to discover him sitting on the floor at the back of the room, quietly playing among the rushes.
Richard Manifold, with a sigh and a thought to his own duties, took the hint and also his leave, but not before promising to return later in the day to see how she was faring. ‘For there’s still a deal to talk about,’ he added comfortably. ‘No doubt you’ll want to know what’s become of your old friends and neighbours.’
Adela could have said that her cousin had already told her all that she wished to know, but she didn’t, increasing my festering annoyance yet further. She was so calm, so self-contained, so self-possessed. It surely must be as obvious to her as it was to me that the Sheriff’s Officer was presuming on what I guessed to have been an unequal friendship in order to renew their acquaintance, and to ensure a comfortable billet for his bachelor evenings during the long winter months ahead. Why then did she not send the fool packing with a flea in his ear? Why encourage a man who, I arrogantly concluded, was not worthy of her notice?
Not, of course, that it mattered to me who Adela Juett chose as her intimates, but, I told myself, I was indignant on my mother-in-law’s behalf. Margaret had set great store by her cousin’s return, and I resented anyone who might deprive her of Adela’s wholehearted attention and company.
‘What do you wish me to do first?’ I asked when the door had finally closed behind Richard Manifold, repeating my question of half an hour earlier.
But once again the reply was delayed as Adela cried sharply, ‘Nicholas! What are you up to?’
She went across to her son and fell on her knees beside him. I followed suit, and was interested to discover that the cottage floor, when swept clear of rushes — Nicholas having busily created a space all round him — revealed stone flags, and not the beaten earth that I would have expected. But this was not all. With his strong little fingers, and at the cost of a broken fingernail or two, the child was trying to prise free one of the flags which stood proud of its fellows.
‘Nick,’ his mother scolded, ‘just look at your hands! They’re filthy. And we’ve no water as yet to wash them.’ She glanced frowningly at me. ‘I shall have to get that slab hammered down. It could be dangerous. One of us could easily trip over it.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ I agreed. ‘That’s probably how Nicholas discovered it. I’ll secure it for you before the day’s out, but first let’s see if there’s anything underneath which might have caused it to rise.’
I was able to raise the flag, which was some nine or ten inches square, with surprising ease, disclosing a shallow cavity cut into the earth in which it was bedded; a cavity about three inches deep and slightly smaller in area than the stone, which normally fitted comfortably on top of it. I put in a hand and felt all round.
‘The bottom of the hole is lined with a thick waxed cloth,’ I said. ‘Feel for yourself.’
Obediently, Adela did so. ‘A hiding place, evidently and recently disturbed. What … What do you think it was for?’
I pursed my lips. ‘Your friend, Richard Manifold, told me it was common gossip that Mistress Bracegirdle had a hoard of gold secreted somewhere in this cottage. He thinks it’s what her murderer was looking for, and hazarded the opinion that she kept it in that chest under the window. But if she did have any such hoard, this would have been a much better hiding place for it.’
Adela raised thoughtful eyes to mine. ‘And the fact that it’s now empty would suggest that whoever killed her knew exactly where to look for the money. Not a chance thief, then, but one with a fell purpose in mind. Maybe even someone she knew and to whom she had entrusted her secret.’ She nodded solemnly. ‘You were right. Imelda probably did know her killer and let him into the cottage. And after the robbery, he was in too much of a hurry to put the stone back properly.’
I replaced the flag and it fitted snugly between its fellows, removing any necessity to hammer it down. But this very snugness presented a problem of its own: how was it normally lifted?
This part of the room, furthest from the window, was gloomy, and I asked Adela to see if the cottage boasted a tinder-box and some rushlights. She discovered the former on the shelf alongside the pots and pans, together with a lamp, and when this was lit, she carried it over and set it down beside me on the floor. In its pallid glow, I could just make out a deep notch chiselled into the flagstone.
I raised the lamp and looked around the room. ‘There must be a lever somewhere which is inserted into this groove and lifts the slab. Can you see anything anywhere of that description?’
‘There’s something over there, lying among the rushes,’ Adela said. ‘I noticed it earlier and wondered what it was for.’ She got to her feet and took several paces across the room, returning with a hooked iron bar, somewhat rusty and beginning to flake along the shaft. ‘Could this be it, do you think?’
‘Yes, indeed. Well done!’ I said approvingly. I took it from her and fitted the hooked end into the groove. The flagstone lifted with very little exertion on my part and was as easily lowered into place again.
‘Should we tell the Sheriff’s Officers of our find?’ Adela asked me.
‘I think we must, although I doubt if it will alter their opinion that the murderer was a passing thief. Officers of the law can be very thick-headed sometimes,’ I added nastily.
She knew at once that it was a sneer at Richard Manifold’s expense, and looked puzzled, as well she might. I had no clear idea myself what it was that I had against the man. I rose to my feet and was about to put the lever under the bed, out of the reach of Nicholas’s questing little fingers, when I became conscious of two or three fine silk threads caught on a patch of the rusting metal. I must have exclaimed, for Adela asked excitedly, ‘What is it? What have you found?’