Kate Sedley: The Goldsmith's daughter

‘Tell Master Babcary,’ I said, ‘that I shall be with him first thing tomorrow morning, and ask him to ensure that he and all his household are present. Tell him that I believe I have the answer. He’ll understand.’

The boy sped away, reporting back to me an hour or so later with Miles Babcary’s reply.

‘He says he’ll do as you ask, Master, and he’ll keep the shop closed until after your visit. But he hopes as how it’ll be worth it, because he doesn’t like losing money.’

I spent a restless night, trying not to disturb my host too much with my tossing and turning. Fortunately, Reynold was so tired from his day’s exertions that he slept like a child, barely moving on his side of the goosefeather mattress. Was I correct in the assumptions I was making? Much would depend on the testimony of Toby Maybury. If he confirmed my suspicions, all would be well. And on this thought I finally fell into an uneasy doze.

I rose with Reynold at the crack of dawn and breakfasted on dried herrings and oatmeal, standing up at one of the tables in the Voyager’s kitchen, too anxious even to sit down, as the harassed kitchen maids begged me to do, forced as they were to work around me. But eventually, I was off, making my way through the already crowded streets to West Cheap.

I need not have worried that I might be too early. Master Babcary and every member of his household were awaiting my arrival. They all laid claim to a disturbed night on account of my message, and Isolda, especially, looked pale and strained.

‘Come up to the parlour,’ Miles said without preamble, seizing me by the arm the moment I entered the shop and forcing me towards the stairs.

He had no time for the niceties of formal greetings, and the others closed in at my back to make sure that I did as I was told. In the parlour, a fire was already burning on the hearth, for it was a cold morning and there was a touch of frost in the air. I was very glad to stoop and warm my hands.

‘Now then, Chapman,’ Master Babcary said, closing the door behind him and coming forward, ‘no beating about the bush, if you please. Tell us straight out which one of us you suspect of murdering my son-in-law.’

A definite atmosphere of menace pervaded the room, and I wondered fleetingly what might have been my fate had my answer been any other than it was. But I had no need to worry. I straightened my back and turned to face them all.

‘Gideon Bonifant poisoned himself,’ I said.

For several seconds there was total silence, then Miles gave an incredulous laugh, echoed nervously by Isolda. But it was Christopher who first found his voice.

‘Are you trying to tell us that Gideon committed suicide?’ he asked in a tone of cautious relief; cautious because he could not yet permit himself to believe that I was serious.

‘Oh, no,’ I answered. ‘It was an accident. The person he intended to kill was you.’

Christopher looked dazed. ‘Me? Why me?’ he demanded. ‘Are you sure this isn’t just a farrago of nonsense, Chapman?’

‘I can’t prove anything,’ I said, ‘I can only guess at what happened from the facts at my disposal. But I think what I’m about to tell you would raise considerable doubt concerning Mistress Bonifant’s guilt in the minds of any lawyer or Sheriff’s officer. Indeed, I hope that it would convince them of her innocence. And when I leave here, I shall go straight to the Duke of Gloucester and lay my conclusions before him, which he can then pass on to Mistress Shore, thus setting him free to ask his favour of her.’

‘Oh, never mind the Duke or Cousin Shore,’ Miles Babcary interrupted impatiently. ‘For goodness sake, sit down, Roger, lad — everyone sit down! — and explain matters to us.’

I noted that within a very brief space of time I had progressed from ‘Master Chapman’ to ‘Roger, lad’, and suppressed a smile. I was no longer a potential enemy, but their possible saviour.

Obeying Miles’s instructions, we all, with the exception of Meg Spendlove, seated ourselves around the table, Meg preferring to crouch over the fire to make the most of this unaccustomed source of warmth. I glanced at the circle of eager, and now friendly, faces, reflecting that I had been right not to ask for the presence of Mistress Perle or the Napiers at this gathering. Neither Miles nor any member of his household had the least suspicion that any one, let alone all, of those three had a motive for murdering Gideon, and it was kinder to let sleeping dogs lie. It was not my place to reveal the affair between Gregory Napier and Barbara Perle, and if the latter did ever become the second Mistress Babcary, the subsequent domestic upheaval was for Miles and his daughter to sort out between them.

‘Well, Roger? Well?’

Miles was growing red in the face and looked as though he might swell up and burst if he were starved of the facts for a moment longer. I cleared my throat and began.

‘Since last Friday, I’ve been in Southampton — returning late yesterday afternoon — and first I must tell you what I discovered.’ I repeated all that Mistress Bridges had told me about Gideon, his first wife and the girl called Geraldine Proudfoot. ‘So you see,’ I concluded, ‘although there is no definite proof that Gideon poisoned Marion Sybyle, I believe it to be the truth in view of what happened here last November.’

Isolda shook her head. ‘No, no! You’re wrong, Master Chapman. You must be. I lived with Gideon for over five years. He wasn’t, I freely admit, the most loving of husbands, but, then, he didn’t marry me because he loved me, I’m quite aware of that. But I can’t and won’t think that he would ever commit murder. Besides, you said his intended victim was Kit. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does if you were accused of the murder,’ I answered. ‘It was, I believe, a very subtle plan. But we’re going too fast. We must return to when Gideon first arrived in London.

‘He came here a disappointed man. The woman he had hoped to wed, with a view to raising himself in the world, had married someone else: he had killed his wife for nothing. But then, a year later, he met you, who — who fell in love with him.’

Isolda put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands, sending me a fierce, almost contemptuous glance.

‘We might as well be honest about it, Roger. There was no love on either side. I’m a plain woman whom men have never fancied and I was desperate to be married. Gideon knew that, just as I knew that he wanted me for the position I could bestow and the inheritance that I should one day bring him as my husband. It was a marriage of convenience for us both, but that doesn’t mean to say that we were unhappy.’

There was a pause before I continued, my voice rough with pity, ‘Your husband, I suspect, was content only until he fell in love with Mistress Eleanor. When you married, she was only a mere child of twelve, but then she grew up into. . into-’

‘A beautiful young woman,’ Isolda supplied drily, ignoring her cousin’s murmur of distress.

‘Exactly,’ I hurried on. ‘But there was a difficulty. Gideon also wanted Master Babcary’s money, and the only way he could achieve that was to ensure that Mistress Eleanor became her uncle’s sole heir. So not only you, but also Master Christopher had to be removed. What better way was there than to have you arrested, tried and executed for his murder?’

‘But would anyone believe that I wanted to do away with Kit?’ Isolda demanded to a general murmur of agreement.

‘Of course not. Gideon meant to make it seem that you had intended to poison him , but had accidentally killed your cousin instead. Before that happened, however, he had to persuade Mistress Eleanor that fate had decreed that they were eventually to be man and wife. As you and she already know, he saw a way to do that after she bought a pendant in Leadenhall market and confided to him her belief in its magical powers.’ And for the sake of Miles Babcary, his nephew and apprentice who, by the blank expression on their faces, were totally bewildered, I repeated the story of the two pendants.