Alys Clare: The Tavern in the Morning

‘We’ll start with the guest chamber,’ Goody Anne announced. And led the way along the passage.

* * *

The guest chamber had, Josse was relieved to find, been cleaned. The thin rugs on the floor still showed patches of damp from their recent washing, and the cot, stripped of bedding, was covered in a haze of condensation. The leather flap over the window had been fastened back, and the cold, fresh air circulating in the room was fighting gamely with the pervasive stench of vomit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet winning.

‘We found him half on and half off the bed,’ Goody Anne said, holding her nose. ‘As if he’d lain down, then, feeling the sick rise up, leaned out over the floor to puke up.’ She muttered something else, something about folks that hadn’t the decency to find a bowl to be sick in and save other folk from the mopping up.

‘Had he been drinking hard?’ Josse asked.

Anne gave him a look. ‘They’d all been drinking hard. Always do, market day. It’s my best day.’

‘Do you think a surfeit of alcohol killed him?’

She considered. ‘I’ve heard tell of such things,’ she admitted. ‘Young feller I knew when I was — er, when I was younger, it happened to him. He got drunk, then fell heavily asleep on his back, and choked on his own vomit.’ She shook her head. ‘But that can’t be what happened to this poor soul.’

‘It can’t?’

She sighed. ‘No. Like I said, he was leaning out over the edge of the bed. The vomit ran out of his mouth, not back down his windpipe.’

The talk was becoming rather too graphic, for Josse. Especially standing in a room that reeked all too strongly of its last occupant’s demise.

‘I’ll talk to the girl who found him,’ he announced, striding for the door. ‘Come on, Mistress Anne.’

* * *

The serving maid who had discovered the corpse was a small, thin, pale-faced girl of about fourteen or fifteen. She had light brown hair tied in a knot on the nape of her neck, pale bulging eyes with light-coloured lashes, spots on her chin and lumpy hands reddened from constant contact with cold water. She had a permanent sniff, a habit of wiping the dewdrop off the end of her nose with the back of her hand, and she answered to the name of Tilly.

For some reason, Josse detected instantly, she was very disturbed by his gentle questions.

‘I can’t tell you nothing! ’ she kept crying. ‘I went in and there he was, and that’s all there is to it!’

‘You knew who he was?’ Josse asked.

‘Eh? How d’you mean?’ She looked cagey.

Josse tried another tack. ‘Were you serving in the tap room the previous evening?’

Tilly hesitated. ‘Might have been.’ Josse waited. Eventually, as if even Tilly’s limited intelligence realised there wasn’t much future in evading the truth on a point that could instantly be decided by others’ testimony, she said, ‘Yes.’

‘And you served the dead man?’

‘No,’ she said instantly. Then: ‘Yes, maybe. It’s hard to tell, when we were so busy.’

‘I’m sure,’ Josse said soothingly. ‘What I’m asking is, when you saw the dead man in the morning, did you recognise him as one of the previous evening’s customers?’

She looked at him as if he were daft. ‘Course I did! He’d stopped the night, hadn’t he?’

This was getting nowhere. Realising that he still didn’t know the dead man’s identity, Josse thanked Tilly for her help — she wouldn’t have noticed the mild irony — and sent her back to the kitchen.

He spoke to half a dozen men who had been in the tavern the night the man died before anyone could tell him the dead man’s name.

It was Peter Ely. He had been in his mid-thirties, it was guessed, and he farmed a few meagre acres in the Vale of Tonbridge, some five or six miles out of town. He was in the habit of coming to the market, where he would sell whatever produce he’d brought with him before repairing to the tavern for a drink and a bite before setting off for home.

Nobody knew whether he had family. Nobody, it become clear, knew very much about him at all.

If he was already ill, Josse mused, taking a break from questioning the clientele of the tap room and strolling around the yard, then that’s an easy answer, and I almost hope it’s the right one. Because if he wasn’t, and if, as I strongly believe, we can rule out a dish of bad food, then somebody must have killed him. Slipped poison into his food while he wasn’t looking, and murdered him.

And if that’s what happened, I’m left with the question, who? Who on earth, and for what purpose, could have wished to kill a poor, humble peasant who doesn’t seem to have had anything remarkable or memorable about him whatsoever?

He shook his head, stumped.

A thought occurred to him, prompted by a sudden rumble from his hungry stomach.

Food. The dish of food.

Was there any chance…?

Hurrying back inside the tavern, he raced to find Tilly.

* * *

‘It’s a-cause of all the pother,’ she said, indicating with a hopeless gesture the piles of food-encrusted trenchers, platters and dishes stacked in a lean-to abutting the kitchen. ‘There’s always a lot, see, after market day, and, what with getting the body out, and the clearing-up, and all the comings and goings and what-not…’ The words ended on a weary sigh, as if she didn’t have the heart to finish.

Three days after market day, and washing-up not yet done. No, Josse thought, he could quite see that wouldn’t accord with Goody Anne’s orders under normal circumstances.

‘Never mind, Tilly,’ he said encouragingly. ‘I’m quite sure nobody’s going to be cross with you.’ She turned mournful eyes on him, as if she didn’t share his confidence. ‘Anyway, as it happens, it may prove to be very helpful that the platters are still soiled.’ He ran his eyes over the mess, wondering where to begin. ‘Er, Tilly, could you try to think back and tell me what the dead man ate for his supper?’

She didn’t answer. Turning, he noticed her expression. Pale eyes wide, face even whiter and glossed with a fine sheen of sweat, she looked terrified.

‘Tilly?’ he repeated, trying to sound gentle. ‘What’s the matter?’

She shook her head, and emitted a strangled sound. He waited. Then, whispering the word as if admitting to some dread crime, she said, ‘Pie. He had chicken and vegetable pie.’

Wondering as he did so why she should make such a scene about a question which surely could not have been unexpected, Josse attacked the stack waiting for Tilly’s attention. He didn’t bother to look at any of the rough wooden trenchers from which the tavern’s customers ate their meals; there was absolutely no way he could have told which one had been used by Peter Ely. What he wanted to inspect was the considerable number of larger serving platters, on which, presumably, each dish had been cooked, and from which individual portions would have been cut.

There seemed to be dozens. Oh, Lord, he thought, overcome by the task, this is hopeless! Even given that I can detect which serving platters held pie, then what? I’m …

At the bottom of the second stack, where it had been supporting a tottering column of trenchers which Josse had one by one removed and discarded, was a big pie dish. Scraps of pastry adhered to its rim, and in its base was a congealing mass of meat, gravy and vegetables. He picked it up, looked questioningly at Tilly and, after a moment, she nodded.

He gazed into the pie dish, suddenly reluctant to take his testing to the next logical step. A roomful of vomit, a man’s dying face contorted in agony …

Firmly he took hold of a piece of onion between finger and thumb. He brought it up close to his face and stared at it. He sniffed it. Then, finally, he touched it very lightly against the inside of his lower lip.