Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

‘But you must have heard what her parents were claiming about her,’ I objected. ‘That she had run off with a man.’

Richard Manifold shrugged. ‘I knew what they were saying, of course. The whole city knew it eventually. I just didn’t believe them. I thought it was spite; lies because they wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, accept that their daughter hated them enough to run away.’

‘But,’ I insisted, ‘as the weeks, months, then years went by and you still didn’t hear from Isabella, what conclusion did you come to regarding her disappearance?’

Richard slowly shook his head. ‘Eventually, gradually, as all hope died, I decided that she must have had an accident. Her horse must have thrown her, or she’d been set upon and killed by footpads somewhere in the forests. And in the end, of course, I stopped wondering. There was nothing I could have done. And she became lost to me. A dream. Other women came along: Adela, for one. I forgot her. That’s all.’

There was silence between us. Then I asked abruptly, ‘When was the last time you saw and spoke to Isabella?’

‘The last time I …’ He broke off, looking shocked, as though I had awakened him too abruptly from a dream world to reality; as though, for a few brief seconds, he did not know where he was. ‘The last time I spoke to Isabella?’

I nodded and said, ‘Yes,’ in confirmation. I could see at once by the look in his eyes, by the slightly shifty expression that lurked at the back of them, that he remembered the occasion quite clearly, but was reluctant to divulge it, so gave him a helping hand. ‘Was it the morning of the day she disappeared?’

‘It’s … it’s difficult to recall after all this time. Twenty years seems like an aeon ago.’ He gave a nervous laugh that rang hollow. ‘I was young, I know that. A green youth in the throes of my first great passion.’

I was unimpressed by this blatant bid for my understanding and sympathy.

‘It was a March morning of rain and wind,’ I said. ‘You met her near your usual trysting place of Westbury village. She was seen talking to someone — a man, wearing a cloak with his hood pulled forward over his face.’

‘And why should you think that man was me? It seems now that there were at least two other men whom Isabella knew and was friendly with, so why should it necessarily have been me? Has someone claimed to have recognized me?’

‘I told you, whoever it was had his hood pulled well forward, concealing his features.’

‘Then why …?’

‘Because Master Robert Moresby has a witness to the fact that, on that particular morning, he was elsewhere.’

‘And the second man? Ralph Mynott, I believe he’s called. If, that is, Jack Gload has the name aright. Can he, too, claim a witness as to his whereabouts that morning?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘And if you asked me to produce evidence to exonerate him, I couldn’t. It’s just a feeling I have that he was not the man Isabella encountered on the downs that day.’

‘A feeling!’ Richard exclaimed scathingly. ‘Feelings don’t count, man, when you’re searching for the truth. If you ask me, Roger, these mysteries that you claim to have solved — if, indeed, you have solved them and it’s not just so much moonshine — have been more by luck than judgement.’

He was trying to goad me into losing my temper, and was very nearly succeeding. But I realized that the attempt was for a purpose and that to play his game was to hand him the advantage over me, so I suppressed my anger and answered coolly, ‘You, yourself, have been witness to some of my successes. And if you have never been guided by your feelings — what women would call intuition — then I shall own myself very much surprised. Moreover, if you claim otherwise, I shan’t believe you. I recollect an occasion when you would have pinned a murder on me for no better reason than you disliked me for being Adela’s husband. Fortunately, I had a witness to testify to my innocence.’

His eyes met mine for a moment, then dropped to study his hands, clasped on the table in front of him.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said quietly. He began picking at a piece of loose skin around one of his thumb nails. ‘It’s true. I’ve always resented Adela’s preference for you. Nor, I admit, have I ever understood it.’

He was, I realized, adopting another tactic: leading me away from the subject of Isabella Linkinhorne by trying to start a dispute between us over our rival merits in the eyes of my wife.

‘Nor have I ever understood it,’ I agreed, beating him at his own game. ‘It is, moreover, undeserved,’ I added with far more sincerity than he could possibly have guessed at. ‘But all this is beside the point. I still think you were the man that Isabella was seen talking to on what proved to be the last morning of her life.’

Richard bit his lip. ‘Oh, very well,’ he admitted savagely after a moment’s silence. ‘Yes, the last time I ever saw her was on a very stormy morning early in the year. It might have been March. I don’t really remember. But that it was the last morning of her life is more than I know. Or you, either, I fancy.’

‘Perhaps. But it seems to be the last occasion on which anyone saw her alive. What did you talk about? How did you come to meet her? Had you arranged to do so, or was it by chance?’

He stood up suddenly, his face contorted with fury, his stool clattering to the floor behind him, his fingers gripping the edge of the table until the skin of his knuckles seemed in danger of splitting.

‘Hell’s teeth! Who do you think you are, Roger Chapman, to come here questioning me in this fashion? Me! ’

I half expected him to order me from the cottage, and was preparing to retreat in good order. Instead, he began pacing up and down the floor, looking daggers at me, it was true, but also appearing to be debating with himself. Finally, he came back to the table, righted the stool and sat down again.

‘I didn’t kill Isabella Linkinhorne,’ he said quietly, ‘although it grieves me very much to have to say so. That anyone could think me capable of murder, least of all you, is shaming.’

‘Why?’ I demanded bluntly. ‘Whatever face you choose to present to the world, Richard, I know you’re quite capable of paying someone to beat me black and blue in order to protect yourself; capable, as I reminded you just now, of trying to arrest me for a killing I didn’t do-’

‘The evidence pointed to you,’ he defended himself, and I was forced to admit that that was true. But spite had informed the attempt. And as though in sudden acknowledgment of the fact, he raised his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I met Isabella by chance that morning. We hadn’t arranged a rendezvous, and when I saw what the weather was like, I doubted if even she would go out riding. Yet it was worth the risk. Little deterred her from taking those daily gallops across the downs. But by the time I’d reached the heights above Bristol, the wind and rain had increased twofold — threefold — to what they had been down here in the shelter of the city walls, and I had no real expectation of seeing her.’

‘But you did.’

‘Yes. I chided her for coming out in such weather, but she said she’d been unable to remain cooped up indoors.’

‘Did she say why?’

My companion shook his head. ‘She didn’t really need a reason. She was wild, was Isabella. Headstrong. It was part of her great charm, at least for me. And she hated her parents. Perhaps hated is too strong a word, but she disliked them. She found their overwhelming love oppressive. It drove her, literally, I think, a little mad. She told me once that, when she was a child, she had attacked her mother with a knife, and only her nurse’s timely intervention had prevented her from killing Mistress Linkinhorne. I longed to be able to free her by marrying her, but in those days I was in no position to support a wife.’