Kate Sedley - The Dance of Death

Clervaux! Of course! I should have listened more closely to Eloise.

But my brain still wasn’t functioning properly. ‘Those-those other people,’ I stammered, ‘Culpepper, the-the boatman. . you killed them, too?’ He smiled and nodded. ‘But. . why?’

John shrugged. ‘Culpepper simply on the off chance that he might know something that could put you on the track of whatever it was you were after. I didn’t really know myself back then what it was all about, but Anthony Woodville himself informed me that there was something afoot. His spy in the Duke of Gloucester’s household had alerted him.’

The man who had tried to steal my instructions and been thwarted because I had already learned them by heart. So much was beginning to fall into place.

‘But why the boatman?’

John shrugged. ‘That was simply a precaution,’ he said. ‘He had rowed my accomplice across from Southwark the previous night, and as it turned out, I was right to be cautious. For some reason or another, your suspicions had been aroused and you went after him.’

‘Your accomplice?’

‘He’s standing behind you.’

I had forgotten the man who had closed the door. I whirled round and stared disbelievingly. ‘Philip?’

‘I didn’t have any choice, Roger,’ he muttered. ‘It was do as Jack said or be hanged for murder. I’d killed a man the previous evening, in a tavern brawl. Jack recognized me as an old comrade from our soldiering days and got me away.’

‘The murder at the Rattlebones,’ I said, my head spinning. ‘I heard about it.’

‘That’s right. He hid me and arranged for me to be rowed over to Baynard’s Castle that same night.’

‘But there was a price for his help.’ It wasn’t a question.

Philip nodded. ‘I was to come to France and spy on you for him. Jack knew that we’d been friends — they know everything, these bloody spies — and of course you wouldn’t suspect me.’

‘But-but once you were across the Channel, you were free. He couldn’t get you hanged in France for a crime committed in England. Why, in God’s name, didn’t you just run away?’

‘What, in a foreign country, where I can’t make meself understood? That’s no life for a man.’ A little of his normal spirit had returned.

‘Then why, in the name of friendship, didn’t you warn me what was going on? What do you think Jeanne would have said about such a betrayal?’

Suddenly, he was shouting. ‘Don’t you mention Jeanne! Don’t ever mention her name again! It wasn’t my son she was carrying. She confessed to me just before he was born.’ His eyes flicked towards John Bradshaw and he made an effort to take himself in hand. ‘As for warning you,’ he went on more calmly, but still in a voice that shook a little, ‘Jack said that if he so much as suspected you knew the truth about him — about us — he’d slit your throat regardless, and not wait for you to show your hand about what it was you was up to.’

At any other time, in any other situation, the information about Jeanne would have rocked me back on my heels — I might even have challenged it — but something else had occurred to me. I turned to look once again at John. ‘You must have killed Oliver Cook, as well,’ I said slowly. ‘But why?’

He said abruptly, ‘We’re wasting time. But if you really want to know, and as you’re never going to tell anyone, yes, I killed him. He’d seen Philip, the day he took refuge in the kitchen to avoid being recognized by you. Sooner or later, Oliver would have had a good look at Philip and doubtless told the rest of you about the incident. And then it wouldn’t have been long, Roger, before you started to put two and two together.’ John laughed, a sound that made my blood run cold. ‘Oliver was easy meat. I didn’t even need to use the knife on him. He was totally unsuspecting. A shove, a heave and he was overboard. Mid-Channel, in that sea, he didn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, I dropped that particular knife and couldn’t find it again. Now-’

‘How did you know what Mistress Gaunt told me? About the christenings?’ As I spoke, my eyes were drawn inexorably to that still form on the floor and I could see the dark band of blood round the neck. The woman’s head was almost severed from the body. I felt my stomach heave and the vomit rose in my throat. I started to shake, but not from fear, from anger.

‘Philip followed you and was listening outside the window,’ John answered with a sneer. ‘You didn’t bother lowering your voices and the shutters are in poor condition — lots of cracks and chinks — as you’d have seen, if you’d bothered to inspect them.’ He smiled again and took a firmer grasp on his knife. ‘And now, Roger, much as I regret it, it’s your turn to meet with a fatal stabbing, and it will be my sad duty to carry the news home to Timothy Plummer and the duke. I daresay I’ll get a bollocking for not looking after you better, but then, if you will go wandering around the backstreets of a city like Paris on your own, and you an Englishman at that, you take the consequences. No need for them ever to know that you discovered the Gaunts’ whereabouts at all, or that they’re dead, too. So-’

‘How did you manage to kill them both without one of them putting up a fight?’

John sighed. ‘Does it matter? Oh well! If you must know — and, as I’ve already said, who am I to thwart the wishes of a dying man? — Philip brought me here this afternoon. The woman was still alone. We said we were friends of yours and she let us in. She suspected nothing, not right up to the moment when I slit her throat. Then we just waited for Gaunt to come home.’ He shrugged. ‘I took him unawares. It was simple.’ His expression had altered subtly. He was drooling slightly in anticipation of the kill. The scent of further bloodletting was in his nostrils, and there was a slightly manic look in his eyes. I realized with a sickening jolt that he probably was mad, but a madman who could conceal his insanity under a perfectly normal exterior. The Woodvilles must find him invaluable. He said, ‘Guard the door, Lamprey!’ and moved, swift and nimble as a cat, to get behind me.

The revelations of the past few minutes had held me paralyzed with shock. My brain, such of it as was still working, told me to get back against the wall, to use my own knife, to put up some sort of a fight to save my life, but my mind was reeling from the discovery of Philip’s treachery and his disclosure — if it were true — about Jeanne.

John Bradshaw hissed again, ‘Guard the door! Mind he doesn’t make a run for it!’

Out of the corner of one eye, I saw Philip move, but then he was shouting, ‘No! I won’t help you kill Roger! I can’t! He’s my friend. I didn’t mind spying on him, searching his baggage, but this is different.’ And the next moment he had lifted the latch, wrenching the door wide. ‘Run, Roger!’ he yelled. ‘Run!’

Something in the urgency of his tone seemed at last to penetrate my benumbed senses, jerking me into life. I fairly threw myself sideways and out into the street, but my legs were shaking, weak from fear, and before I could take more than a few staggering steps, John Bradshaw was on me, trying to grab me from behind with his left arm so that he could pull me back against him and cut my throat. Fortunately, I had my own knife out by this time and managed, with a slashing blow, to wound him in the fleshy part of his right arm. I heard him curse, but a moment later, he had kneed me in the groin, causing me to double up in pain and drop my knife. I fell to the ground and rolled over, avoiding his wicked-looking blade, but only for a second or two. He was furious now, like a wounded bull, and was stabbing indiscriminately at me, intent on finishing me off and not caring any longer how he did it.