Kate Sedley: The Three Kings of Cologne

Jonathan Linkinhorne was certainly a sicker man than the chaplain believed him to be.

I said again, ‘I’ll fetch the Infirmarer.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing he can do. Won’t let him. Won’t take his potions. Leave me be. Just go.’

I went.

John Foster bit his lip.

‘So you really think there’s nothing we can do? No accusation we can bring?’ As I shook my head, he added sadly, ‘I had hoped for better than this.’

I felt a flare of annoyance, almost of anger — unusual in my dealings with this man.

I had waited until Monday before seeking out the Mayor, catching him early, just after breakfast, at home, too soon for him to have started the working day. I had told him everything I knew, the evidence I had for believing Isabella was killed in the Linkinhorne house, how I had come by it, and finally repeating Saturday’s conversation with Jonathan himself. But I had also advised that to pursue the accusation could do no good.

‘You should have had a witness to your talk with Master Linkinhorne,’ the Mayor said fretfully. ‘Surely you should have thought of this?’

I took a deep breath and waited until I had slowly unclenched my hands.

‘It would have done no good, Your Worship. With a witness, he wouldn’t have said anything; he wouldn’t have admitted to the truth at all.’

‘Whatever the real truth is.’ John Foster sighed, then his features, previously set in unwontedly stern and aggrieved lines, gradually relaxed. ‘Forgive me, Master Chapman. I realize you did your best and it is, as you say, all a very long time ago. Well, well! I shall say nothing of what you’ve told me. There would be no purpose in doing so. But the ground must be re-consecrated, of course.’

‘You intend to go ahead, then, with your plan to build your chapel and almshouses on that plot?’

‘Certainly.’ He looked somewhat surprised that I should ask such a question.

‘And to dedicate the chapel to the Three Kings of Cologne?’

He smiled. ‘Even that. It would have been nice, of course — ’ his tone was still faintly reproachful — ‘to have earned my peers’ approval by solving for them a mystery which has interested them more than a little. However, it was not to be, and I’m not the man to be discouraged by small setbacks. Besides,’ he added with a comical grimace, his good humour now quite restored, ‘if the building progresses at the same rate as clearing the graveyard ground has done, it might be some time yet before I need make my intentions fully known. And by then — who can tell? — our disagreements with members of the Hanseatic League may be over.’ But he spoke like a man with no confidence in such a prediction.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, preparing to take my leave of him, ‘that I was unable to fulfil all your hopes of me.’ I proffered a leather bag, the same drawstring purse he had given me a few weeks earlier, but which now jingled rather less than it had done then. ‘The rest of your money, sir. My wife is a careful housekeeper.’

He was affronted. ‘No, no, Master Chapman! I won’t take it! Of course, I won’t! You’ve earned every penny of it. If I’ve been churlish in my thanks, then please forgive me. It was reprehensible of me. You have achieved a great deal.’

I argued a little more, but soon saw that I was giving offence where none was intended, and so took my leave, walking down the street to my own home.

Adela grabbed the purse, when I explained what had happened, and put it away. As the person whose task it was to put food on the table and attend to her family’s wants, she was less scrupulous than I when it came to accepting gifts of money. And who could blame her? I was never going to make her a rich woman, not if we both lived to be a hundred.

‘You’re disgruntled,’ she said, putting her arms around me. ‘And yet you solved this mystery, as you’ve solved all the others.’

‘But not as satisfactorily,’ I argued. ‘No one’s been brought to book for the crime.’

‘It was a very long time ago,’ Adela protested, words seared into my brain. ‘Twenty years. And from all that you’ve ever told me, there have been other occasions when the guilty person has apparently gone free. But God, my love, moves in His own mysterious way. It’s not our place to question His wisdom. You’ve done all you can. That should be enough.’

But somehow, it didn’t seem enough. I was beginning to wonder if my God-given powers were deserting me; if it wasn’t time I settled down and became nothing more than a pedlar. (Richard Manifold would have said that that was all I was, in any case.) Perhaps God had no further use for me.

It was a sobering thought.