Alys Clare - Fortune Like the Moon

‘She tells him she’s got to confess,’ he went on eagerly, ‘tells him that anything, any sort of retribution, is better than this dreadful suspense. She’s crying, getting noisy, and he fears that any minute someone will hear. “Hush!” he says. She takes no notice. “Be quiet!” he says, and grabs at her. She struggles, opens her mouth to scream, and he grasps her round the throat. Before he knows what’s happening, she’s dead. Slips out of his arms, falls on the path, her head in the water. He now has two deaths on his hands. Aghast, it’s his turn to panic. He runs away, pausing only for a quick look over his shoulder. Then he’s off, back to wherever it is he’s been using as his retreat.’

She waited to see if he was going to say any more. When he didn’t, she drew a deep breath, held it a moment, then said, ‘Plausible, yes. But what evidence have you to support it?’

‘One, the marks on her neck. The neatness of those bruises, as if he placed his hands with the same eye for a tidy pattern that he used to arrange Gunnora’s body.’ She was looking sceptical, so he hurried on. ‘Two, I found his footprints.’ He removed the piece of cloth from his wax cast, and placed it carefully on the table.

She studied it. ‘It’s the toe of a shoe,’ she observed.

‘I found it in a row of half a dozen or so, widely spaced.’

She nodded. ‘Hence your conclusion of someone running away.’

‘Aye. And-’ No. Too soon for that. He must present his facts as he had discovered them. ‘Abbess, Elvera presented herself here at Hawkenlye as an unmarried virgin, I imagine?’

The Abbess’s eyes widened, as if the question surprised her. ‘Yes, although — Yes. Why?’

‘Because she wasn’t. Well, as to her not being a virgin, I only surmise. But I know she was married. Her left hand bore a distinct indentation at the base of the third finger. Until very recently, she had worn a wedding ring.’

He had expected amazement. None came. Instead, she said slowly, ‘Married. One question answered, and, yet again, many more raised.’

‘You suspected?’

She lifted her eyes to his. ‘She was pregnant,’ she said. ‘Some three months, Sister Euphemia says. I had, naturally, been speculating on the circumstances of this conception, and why, indeed, she should choose the strange course of entering a convent, assuming she knew herself to be with child. At least, now, I know that it was her husband who fathered her child. Although that is scarcely any help when we have absolutely no idea of his identity.’

He said quietly, ‘But we have.’ And, when her eyebrows went up in enquiry, touched his wax cast.

‘How can you know?’ she murmured.

He traced the elongated point at the front of the print. ‘Not know, perhaps, but make a very likely guess. Because I have seen someone wearing shoes like this. They are common, I dare say, in fashionable circles in London, but, hereabouts, people do not dress in the court style.’

‘No,’ she acknowledged. But she was frowning, as if she did not entirely agree with him. ‘Assuming this print was made by the shoe you saw, then who do you think made it?’

‘His name is Milon d’Arcy,’ he said. ‘And I further conjecture that I also know the identity of the girl lying dead in your infirmary. I believe she was his wife. Elanor, niece to Alard of Winnowlands. Gunnora’s cousin.’

‘Oh, but this is too much!’ the Abbess cried. ‘A set of footprints — not even entire prints! — and a finger which, you claim, recently wore a wedding ring, and you present to me the identity of both murderer and victim! Sir Josse, much as I would like to believe you, I can’t!’

Then, he thought, I must make you.

How?

He said, ‘Abbess, may I have your permission to look at Elvera’s possessions? Will you come with me now to her cubicle in the dormitory?’

‘A nun has few possessions,’ Helewise said. ‘What, pray, do you hope to find?’

Two things, he could have said. But he did not. Instead he said evasively, ‘Anything that might help.’

She watched him for a long moment. Then said, ‘Very well.’

* * *

Elvera’s bed had been half-way along the dormitory. Again, the neatly folded covers, the thin hangings pushed back and secured. And, as the Abbess had said, little evidence of personal belongings.

He bent down and looked beneath the plank-like bed. Nothing, not even much dust; the nuns kept their quarters clean. He stood up, running a hand beneath the thin palliasse. Again, nothing. It was beginning to look as if she’d hidden them somewhere else, but she must have-

His hand encountered a small package. Something hard, wrapped in a square of linen.

He withdrew it, put it on the bed. Unfolded the linen. And there, glinting faintly in the morning light, was a wedding ring and a jewelled cross.

* * *

Back in Helewise’s room, they compared Elvera’s cross with Gunnora’s, and with the one that had been found by her body. The three were virtually identical, but for the fact that the rubies in both Gunnora’s own cross and the one found beside her were larger than those in Elvera’s. As was only to be expected, Josse thought, when Gunnora was Alard of Winnowland’s daughter and Elvera — Elanor — but his niece.

‘Your postulant Elvera gave you a false name and a fictitious identity,’ he said to Helewise, who was holding Elvera’s cross in her hands. ‘She was in truth Elanor, wife to Milon. Her uncle gave her a cross, as well, when he presented his daughters with theirs.’

In his head he heard the echo of Mathild’s words. He’s fond of Elanor, Sir Alard is. Well, it’s hard not to be. She’s a lively little thing. Bright, full of fun. Who, he wondered, his mind running off at a tangent, would have the sorry task of telling the dying man that, having lost both daughters, now his pretty and vivacious niece was dead, too?

Dear Lord, not me, he prayed silently. Please, of thy mercy, not me.

Helewise had put down the cross and was picking up the wedding ring, trying it on her own third finger. ‘Too small for me,’ she remarked. ‘Should we try it on the dead girl’s hand, do you think?’

‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Although I feel there is little point.’

She replaced the ring beside the three crosses, folding the linen around them once more. ‘Gunnora’s,’ she said, pointing, ‘and Elvera’s. Elanor’s, I should say. And this?’ She pointed to the one that had been left next to Gunnora.

‘It can only have belonged to her sister, Dillian,’ Josse said. ‘Although God alone knows how it ended up where it did.’

Helewise was watching him. The intent grey eyes were disconcerting. ‘God knows, yes,’ she said neutrally. ‘It is up to us to find out.’

He was trying to think, to put all these new facts racing through his brain into some sort of order. Some order that began to make sense.

After some time, he said, ‘Gunnora’s father is dying. He has two daughters, one who has entered a convent, and who, presumably, has forfeited her right to inheriting any of his undoubted wealth. Her sister, Dillian, married to the suitor chosen by Alard as eminently suitable for one of his girls, looks set to get the lot, but then she dies. She leaves no child, and her husband, it appears, is not without involvement in her death, albeit indirect. So who can Alard leave his fortune to? Gunnora is the obvious candidate — she is, now, all he has left. But what of the niece, who, so we understand, was always treated generously by her uncle? Given a cross only a little smaller than those given to his own girls?’

Warming to his theme, he leaned his hands on Helewise’s table, putting his face closer to hers. ‘What if, Abbess, this niece understood herself to be in line to inherit, only to have her young fashion-conscious husband discover, on one of his visits to check up on how near to death is his uncle-by-marriage, that the uncle is thinking of changing his will? Of reinstating the daughter who rejected him and gave herself to God? What would such a greedy and unscrupulous young man do?’