Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

My abrupt change of tone disconcerted him. ‘Wh-what do you mean? Jack’s just told you it was meant as a joke.’

‘That’s right,’ Jack Gload confirmed, while Pete Littleman nodded in agreement.

‘Really? A joke was it?’ I regarded all three with narrowed eyes and what I hoped was an air of contained menace. ‘Is that so? Well, perhaps it’s escaped your notice that I have recently taken a beating, although somehow I don’t think it has. None of you would miss a thing like that.’

‘Thought your wife had given you a good hiding,’ Pete Littleman muttered with a grin, but didn’t get the response he was obviously hoping for.

‘Be quiet!’ Richard ordered sharply, while Jack Gload took a hurried gulp of ale without even so much as a smirk distorting his ugly features.

‘How … how did it happen?’ the former enquired solicitously. ‘Who … who did it?’

‘You know very well who did it,’ I snarled, changing my tactics yet again and returning to the attack. ‘Your friend and neighbour, Sergeant, Ranald Purefoy! How much did you pay him, eh?’

The shock of the question made Richard gasp and turn white, which only infuriated me more. Did he, in his arrogance, really think me so dim-witted that I couldn’t piece together his pathetic little plot?

‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying,’ I rasped, ‘that you’ve been trying to persuade me to drop my investigation into the death of Isabella Linkinhorne. First, you sent Jack after me to Bath, on the pretext of visiting his daughter and her family, but really to convince me that it was foolish to pursue the matter.’ I gave a derisive snort to demonstrate my contempt for such a piece of folly. ‘But if he failed to do so — which the idiot was bound to do — he was instructed to detain me on the road home so that he could report back in good time for you to arrange some other, surer form of deterrent.’ I laughed. ‘Instead, all it did was to make me certain that what I was beginning to suspect was indeed the truth. That you are the man I’m looking for.’

‘What’s he mean, the man he’s looking for?’ Pete Littleman asked ponderously. He was brighter than Jack (not much, but a little). ‘You told us it was to stop him gettin’ in the way while we solved the Linkinhorne murder.’

‘And so it was. Is,’ Richard said quickly. He drew himself up, suddenly the superior officer. ‘You and Jack can leave. Now. I want to talk to Master Chapman alone. You’ve caused enough trouble with your childish pranks.’ I saw Jack Gload’s mouth open in an O of astonishment, but Richard hurried on without giving him a chance to voice his indignation. ‘Out! This minute! I shan’t tell you again. You’ll be charged with indiscipline.’

‘All right! All right! We’re going,’ Pete muttered, but his expression was mutinous. ‘Come on, Jack. I’ll buy you a drink to ease that throat of yours.’ He glared at his superior. ‘We’ll be in the Green Lattis when you’ve finished talking to the Chapman. Alone!’ And he hooked a hand under his friend’s elbow, hauling him to his feet.

When the cottage door had closed behind them, Richard sank slowly on to one of the vacated stools and waved me to another. He looked pale and dejected, but most of all angry with himself, as if he knew that he had bungled things. To my annoyance, I found myself beginning to feel sorry for him.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ I asked, after several moments of profound silence. ‘You knew Isabella Linkinhorne.’

Richard nodded. ‘But I didn’t kill her,’ he added fiercely, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Then why have you tried so hard to conceal the fact that you were acquainted with her? Even to the extent of hiring a bully like Ranald Purefoy to beat me black and blue on the insulting charge that I’d been attempting to seduce his wife. Goody Purefoy! Dear, sweet Virgin!’ My temper was getting the better of me again, and I made an effort to be calm.

Even Richard was unable to suppress a fleeting grin, but it was gone almost immediately, like a glimpse of sun through clouds.

I said, ‘You haven’t answered my question. Why did you go to such lengths to prevent me finding out you’d known Isabella Linkinhorne?’

He threw me a glance of dislike. ‘Oh, use your common sense, Chapman! I’m a man of the law. A well respected one, at that,’ he couldn’t stop himself adding, his natural arrogance reasserting itself. ‘I didn’t want to be mixed up with a murder, even one that will probably never be solved. Not even by you.’

‘Especially not if you were the murderer,’ I suggested, sitting down on one of the other two stools.

His head reared up at that, his jaw jutting angrily. He half rose to his feet.

‘What exactly do you mean to imply by that?’

‘I’m not implying anything. I’m simply stating a fact. It seems that one of Isabella’s three swains killed her. It’s just a question of discovering which one.’

Richard, instead of losing his temper as I had expected, suddenly looked discomfited.

‘Until Isabella’s body was found three and a half weeks ago and all the enquiries began, I wasn’t even aware that there had been other men in her life. I really thought I was the only one. I loved her,’ he added simply, like a lost, bewildered child, so different from his usual air of self-consequence that I felt as acutely uncomfortable as if he had suddenly decided to strip naked in front of me. ‘I had absolutely no reason to kill her or to wish her dead. You must be able to see that, surely.’ His natural conceit was beginning to take hold again.

‘But there’s only your word for that,’ I pointed out. ‘Supposing you’d found out about “Melchior” or “Caspar”-’

‘Who? What in God’s name are you babbling about?’ He was looking at me as though I had lost my mind. Not, I suppose, without good reason.

‘Robert Moresby and Ralph Mynott,’ I amended hurriedly. ‘Just two nicknames I used for them before I discovered who they really were.’ He was still eyeing me somewhat askance. ‘You must see that it was difficult not knowing what they were called.’

I realized that he had forced me on to the defensive and that, if I didn’t take care, I should lose the advantage over him. Once again, I returned to the attack.

‘As I was saying, if you had suddenly found out about the existence of one, or both, of these men, you might well have killed Isabella in a rage. Particularly as you admit that you loved her and had assumed you were the only one.’

‘Well, I didn’t,’ he answered truculently. ‘Sweet Jesu!’ His anger exploded. ‘I wouldn’t have laid a finger on her, you purblind fool! The other man, perhaps. But not Isabella. She was my sun, moon, stars! She meant everything to me. I worshipped the ground she walked on.’

‘So what happened when she suddenly disappeared? What did you think? What did you do?’

Richard subsided on to his stool again, running a hand across his forehead.

‘I didn’t know what to think,’ he said, more quietly. ‘At first, I thought that terrible old father of hers had found out about our meetings and imprisoned her in the house. I went there, only to discover from the servants that she really had vanished. Run away. It didn’t come as too much of a shock. I’d been urging her to leave home for months. A year, maybe. Almost as long as I’d known her, anyway. The only surprise was why she hadn’t run to me. But then I told myself she wouldn’t have wanted to have put me at risk from her father’s anger. I had only just been enrolled in the Sheriff’s Office and had my way to make in the world. Isabella understood that, and was protecting me. A father’s rights over his children are the greatest there are. I could have found myself in serious trouble if I had been sheltering Isabella. I convinced myself that it was merely a matter of time before she got a message to me somehow or another. Then it would have been up to me whether I left Bristol and went to her or not.’