Kate Sedley - The Lammas Feast

‘But it wasn’t about his rent.’

John Overbecks gave a twisted smile. ‘Not directly, although he was proposing that he should, from then on, occupy the premises rent free. And not merely rent free, but that I should pay him to live there. Blackmail, in other words. He informed me that the young man I had seen with him that day was not merely my son, but also a Tudor agent, who had spilled out his history to Jasper as soon as Jasper had confirmed my identity. (It makes one wonder about poor Jean’s discretion as a spy, but there you are!) Moreover, my son was coming back to confront me as soon as he had finished his work in the surrounding countryside. I enquired when that would be. Wednesday, Jasper told me, so I had nearly two days to consider his proposition. If I agreed, and I’d be a fool not to, he would dispose of Jean for me on his return to the city. To my credit, I tried reasoning with him. I pointed out that now Jasper had admitted to being a Lancastrian supporter himself, I would keep quiet about that, if he would say nothing of what my son had told him and leave Jean to me. But Jasper refused. He said there was nothing to connect him to Henry Tudor, neither of us being aware that Jean’s presence in Bristol was suspected by the authorities and that counter-spies had already arrived in the city. So, I was faced with a stark choice. Either I became one of Jasper’s victims for the rest of my life, or I would be put in prison and Jane would be taken away from me for ever.’

‘But you decided there was a third choice. And took it.’

He laughed. ‘I don’t think I even paused to consider it as a choice or otherwise. It was just instinctive. Jasper had been eating his supper when I arrived. The knife was lying on the table. I had despatched so many enemy watchmen and sentries in my year as a soldier that the deed was done before I was even aware of thinking seriously about it. I picked up the knife, stepped up behind him and the next thing I knew, he had crashed face down on the table. I went home and awaited developments.’

‘And the following morning,’ I cut in, ‘you came across to make sure that Richard Manifold entertained no suspicions about you. Later, you went up to the nunnery to tell your sister-in-law what had happened. When I saw you in the Green Lattis, you informed me that one of your hucksters was ill and that you had taken the bread to the convent yourself, out of the goodness of your heart. But the huckster was Ethelreda, and you later informed me that she had never had a day’s illness in her life.’

John Overbecks hunched his shoulders as though they were aching.

‘Did I? I don’t remember. But all might have been well, even then, except that, at that point, Chapman, you started to poke your long nose into my affairs. A very grave mistake, I do assure you.’

There was menace in his tone, but my head was spinning too fast to be aware of it. My legs trembled with the effort of keeping myself upright against the wall and my very senses were beginning to swim. And all I could think of were John Overbecks’s own words as he had surveyed Jasper’s body that Tuesday morning. ‘Whoever did that, did a quick, clean and efficient job. Beautiful. Just the way we used to dispose of sentries and lookouts in France.’ How he must have laughed up his sleeve as he’d practically handed us the truth on a plate, except that Richard Manifold and I were too obtuse to see it.

‘You’d better sit down,’ the same voice said now, and the baker indicated a stool beneath one of the workbenches.

I dragged it out and carefully lowered myself on to it, waiting for the nausea and dizziness to subside. I silently cursed my folly in leaving my bed before I was fit enough to do so. But after a while, the room stopped moving and I began to feel better.

‘Your sister-in-law killed your son,’ I said. ‘She smothered him with his pillow.’

The baker inclined his head. ‘A necessity brought about, of course, by your interference. Had you let those two King’s men finish what they’d begun, no doubt Marion would have been spared the trouble.’

I stared at him stupidly. ‘This is your son we’re talking about. Your own flesh and blood.’

John Overbecks shrugged. ‘He was a stranger. I hadn’t seen him since he was a child.’ I drew a deep breath and he laughed. ‘You think I’m a monster. Perhaps I am, but compared with Jane, he meant less than nothing to me.’

‘What was your original plan?’ I asked, moved by a curiosity I found it difficult to curb. ‘Before the King’s officers and I took a hand in the game?’

‘I intended to wait for him to contact me on his return to the city, then despatch him as I’d done Jasper. If his body was ever found, in the Frome or elsewhere, I reckoned no one would bother to ask any questions. My son was a Tudor spy, God rot him. Those in authority would be glad to be rid of him. My only worry was that he might be caught before I could ensure that he never troubled me and mine again.’ The baker folded his arms across his chest and regarded me malevolently. ‘But then you poked your nose in, Chapman. Matters might have proved extremely awkward except that Mistress Ford offered to take my son into her cottage to nurse him. Marion saw her chance and insisted on helping. One of the potions she’d fetched from the nunnery was heavily laced with poppy juice. It kept Jean — my son — unconscious until she could seize her chance.’

I wiped a hand across my forehead. It came away soaking wet.

‘When did she kill him? Jack Gload and Peter Littleman swore that one or the other of them had been by the bedside all night.’

John Overbecks laughed, genuinely amused.

‘You don’t trust everything those two thickheaded nitwits tell you, do you? When Marion returned from the nunnery after Prime, Cicely Ford was asleep in the chair and both the sheriff’s men had disappeared outside to relieve themselves. She slipped the pillow from beneath Jean’s head, held it over his face until she could no longer detect any sign of life and managed to replace it before either Jack Gload or his companion reappeared. Later on, of course, neither man was prepared to risk his livelihood by admitting that they had both been absent together.’

I wondered if either of those two incompetent rogues had suspected Sister Jerome’s complicity in the crime. Probably not; a nun’s habit is a wonderful cloak for evil.

I suddenly straightened up on my stool. ‘So why,’ I spat at John Overbecks, ‘did Cicely Ford have to die? According to you, she saw and heard nothing of your son’s murder.’

For the first time, the baker flinched and lost some of his composure.

‘That. . That was the worst decision Marion and I had to make. It was one we both deeply regretted. But there again,’ he added viciously, ‘it was your fault.’ I gasped, but he ignored it. ‘She woke up just as Jack Gload came in and resumed his seat at the foot of the bed. She might have seen or heard something that could incriminate Marion — and you kept encouraging her to try to remember. She was your friend. She was often in your company. She was with you when Marion and I saw you on Saint Michael’s Hill that evening. .’

I interrupted violently, ‘The last evening of her life! The evening you visited your sister-in-law because, so you claimed, your wife had disappeared and you didn’t know where she’d gone. But that wasn’t the truth, was it?’ Enlightenment was crashing over me in waves. ‘Jane always lets you know where she’s going, according to Jenny Hodge. I’d met Mistress Ford on her way home from Back Street, where she’d been to see Master Hulin. She told me she’d met you going into the lawyer’s chambers as she came out. And that was when our garrulous and indiscreet lawman confided in an old friend the news he was bursting to tell to all the world. Cicely Ford had made a new will, leaving the old Herepath house to a common pedlar. And what vistas of imagined impropriety that bequest must have opened up!’