Kate Sedley - The Weaver's inheritance

However, my revelation, which I had saved until last, about the secret hiding place under the floor, jolted her out of her sulks and rekindled her interest.

‘What do you think Imelda used it for?’ she asked, dipping salted herring in oatmeal and beginning to fry it in a pan over the fire.

‘The obvious answer, in view of what happened to her,’ I said, ‘is money. But another question is: Did Mistress Bracegirdle make, or have made, the hiding place, or did she inherit it along with the cottage? Did a previous Priory tenant dig it out of the floor beneath the flagstones? And if so, did Imelda Bracegirdle even know that it was there?’

‘But you said the flagstone had recently been lifted,’ my mother-in-law objected, pausing in the act of turning the herrings.

‘Yes. But while it’s possible that the person who killed her might have known of the hiding place, she might not have done,’ I suggested.

Margaret immediately, and quite rightly, scouted this idea. ‘Nonsense! John Bracegirdle rented that cottage from the Priory for many, many years, long before he married Imelda Fleming. Indeed,’ she added, warming to her theme, ‘it’s more than likely that he was the one who had this safe place made. Or, rather, dug it out himself, for it’s doubtful he’d have trusted anyone else to do it and keep the secret. He had the reputation of being a miser. Whether it was deserved or not, I’ve no idea; but for whatever reason the hiding place was created, there can surely be no argument that Imelda would have known of its existence. Therefore, if she did indeed inherit money from her husband, that’s where she would have put it for safekeeping. Not,’ she went on, placing the herrings in a dish which she then handed to me, ‘that there was ever any sign of Imelda being a wealthy woman. If she had money, she must have been as great a miser as John.’

‘And there seems to be no proof for that rumour,’ I said, setting Elizabeth on the floor and beginning to eat my belated supper.

‘True. It’s all conjecture.’ My mother-in-law removed the empty pan from the heat and laid it to cool on the hearthstone. ‘Nevertheless, Imelda Bracegirdle has been murdered and this hiding place, according to you, has been disturbed. I should say that there’s only one conclusion to be drawn from those two facts.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I objected, but more for argument’s sake than from conviction. Imelda Bracegirdle must have known what the iron bar with the hooked end was for, or she would never have kept it all those years. And more than ever, I felt certain that my theory that she had known her murderer was the correct one. I could not believe that a chance thief would have known where to search for her gold; and I wondered what Richard Manifold had made of this additional information that Adela must, by now, have laid before him. And that thought, in its turn, reminded me of what he had told us concerning Alison Burnett.

My mother-in-law, however, was already in possession of the facts, having been paid a visit by Goody Watkins.

‘I should have got around to telling you eventually,’ she said, ‘when I remembered it.’

She sat down suddenly on a stool, and I thought how uncommonly pale she looked. Margaret, it was true, never had many roses in her cheeks during the winter months, but today her complexion was the colour of chalk.

‘Are you feeling ill?’ I asked her.

‘A little light in the head, that’s all,’ she answered. ‘If you’ll draw me a cup of ale from the barrel, I’ll do well enough.’ And when I had fetched it for her and she had sipped a little of it, she did indeed seem better. ‘Now,’ she went on, setting down her cup, ‘what were we talking about?’

I returned to my herrings. ‘You were saying that you already knew about the scene between Mistress Burnett and her father this morning.’

‘Ah, yes! Goody Watkins paid me a visit sometime after dinner.’ Margaret smiled faintly. ‘Presumably, by then, all her army of spies had reported back to her.’ Encouraged by my snort of laughter, she continued, ‘Someone had met Ned Stoner by the High Cross and been told that Mistress Burnett had come ranting and raving to the Alderman’s door almost before it was light, accusing her self-styled brother of attacking her husband last night by Saint Werburgh’s Church. Ned Stoner claimed she was well-nigh hysterical, and that having gained entrance to her father’s house, and the two gentlemen not being out of bed, she went rushing upstairs and set about the younger man like an avenging fury, tearing out tufts of his hair and scratching his face until it bled. The Alderman tried to intervene, but got the same treatment for his pains, and had to send one of the maids to fetch Rob Short and Ned to remove her from the house. He also sent for one of the Sheriff’s Officers to enforce the law and threaten her with causing an affray. According to Ned, she went in the end, in floods of tears and shaking all over, as though she had an ague.’

I finished my herrings and pushed my plate to one side, before starting on the oatcakes and cheese that my mother-in-law put in front of me. I recalled Richard Manifold’s words. ‘A bad business,’ I said. ‘A very bad business.’

Margaret sighed and rose wearily from her stool to put Elizabeth to bed. ‘It is that,’ she agreed. ‘Alderman Weaver looked very ill to me when I called on him this afternoon, to beg a place for Adela among his spinners. That girl of his will be the death of him if she’s not very careful.’

‘They’ll be the death of each other,’ I said. Evidently Mistress Burnett disbelieved her husband’s denial that Irwin Peto was the one who had attacked him. What a fool the man was ever to put the notion into her head. Unwisely, I spoke my thought aloud.

‘By your account, it was you who first mentioned the impostor — if indeed he is that. You told Master Burnett that you and Ned Stoner had seen him in the Lattice,’ my mother-in-law chided me.

I should have remembered that Margaret had a good memory, particularly for those details one would prefer her to forget. I changed the subject. ‘You haven’t yet said what Alderman Weaver’s response was to your request about Adela. Was he agreeable?’

‘He was graciousness itself, and asked me to tell her to present herself at the baling sheds to collect her wool as soon as she liked, and he would see that word was passed along to the overseer by this evening. We must buy a spinning wheel for her, Roger, as we promised. Tomorrow morning, you must go to the carpenter’s in Temple Street and get her the best one that he has in his shop. And I’ll go to Lewin’s Mead and give her the news. Elizabeth can go with me. She’ll like to see Nicholas again.’

She was as good as her word, and set out immediately after breakfast the following morning, although she looked so unwell that I begged her not to go. There had been yet another severe frost during the night, and now it was snowing once more.

‘Stay here in the warm with Elizabeth. I’ll visit Adela as soon as I’ve been to Temple Street,’ I added.

But my offer was spurned. ‘The fresh air will do me good,’ was her only answer.

I could do no more and completed my errand at the carpenter’s before returning home to collect my pack. I had no intention of going far beyond the city walls in such weather, but I needed to make some money, and people reluctant or unable to go out in the snow welcomed goods brought to their doorsteps. It was well past dinner-time when pangs of hunger sent me back over the bridge to Redcliffe, my mouth already watering in anticipation of one of Margaret’s winter stews.

But when I pushed open the cottage door, there was no savoury smell to greet me. Instead, I found my mother-in-law slumped down beside the bed, unconscious, while my daughter sat beside her, sobbing with fright and clutching her grandmother’s arm.