Paul Doherty - Murder Wears a Cowl

Corbett smiled. ‘Can you read?’

‘No, but Agnes could write. She was clever. She could read a few words and write some. She said if I kept guarding her door she would teach me one day.’

‘But you don’t know to whom the message was to be sent?’

‘I think it was to a woman?’

‘Why?’

‘Because Agnes told me to take it to the Chapter House late in the afternoon.’ The boy screwed his face up. ‘Agnes said she would know.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, Master, honestly. Please,’ the boy whined, ‘let go my wrist. You promised me a coin.’

Corbett handed it over, the boy scampered away.

‘If you are ever hungry,’ Corbett called out, watching the pathetic stick-like legs, ‘come to Corbett’s house in Bread Street. Tell the servants the master sent you.’

The boy turned, running like the wind up one of the dark runnels.

Corbett got to his feet and walked back, stopping at a small tavern near the bridge over Holborn. He went inside, ordered a jug of ale and sat beneath the room’s only window. In the far corner a group of tinkers were baiting a huge, slavering bull mastiff, enraging it by offering it meat, then pulling it away so the dog’s sharp teeth narrowly missed their darting fingers. Corbett watched their cruelty and thought about the beggar boy, Agnes’s dreadful death and the hideous awfulness of the whores in Cock Lane. Was Brother Thomas right? he reflected. Did the stinking rottenness of the city spawn some of the evil which stalked the streets? He sipped at the blackjack, trying to close his mind to the growling of the dog and the taunts of the tinkers. So, Agnes had seen something? She had hidden away in her chamber and been visited by a man dressed like a monk or priest. Was that the killer? If so, why hadn’t he struck then? Because the house was being watched? But surely Agnes would refuse to open the door? The latter was the most logical, he concluded. So why had the man gone to that house in Cock Lane? Of course, Corbett put the tankard down, Agnes had been lured to her death; the killer had probably slipped her a message, perhaps in someone else’s name, telling her to meet him in that church near Greyfriars. Corbett ran his fingers round the rim of the tankard and tried to sketch out the bare details behind the murder. Agnes had known something so she had hidden away, sending messages to someone who would help, one of the Sisters of St Martha, Lady Fitzwarren or maybe de Lacey but the boy had dropped it. He closed his eyes, what next? Somehow the killer had known that Agnes posed danger so he had visited her chamber. The message he had left had been cryptic; the poor girl, barely literate, was not skilled enough to distinguish different handwriting and the rest would be simple. Agnes would have gone to the church looking for salvation and the killer would have been waiting.

Corbett suddenly looked up at the screams and yells coming from the far corner of the tap room. He smiled to himself. Sometimes justice was done, for the bull mastiff had broken loose, seized one of his tormenter’s arms and the tap-room door was already splattered with blood. Corbett drained his blackjack and left the noisy confusion behind. He had one further call to make and followed the street up through the city limits round by the Priory of St John of Jerusalem to the other side of Smithfield. Here he asked directions from a water tippler for the whereabouts of Somerville’s House. The fellow knew it well and Corbett, keeping well away from the crowds thronging down to Smithfield, crossed Aldersgate into Barbican Street.

The Somerville House was a splendid building though its windows were now all shuttered and great folds of black lawn had been nailed to the wooden beams as a sign of mourning. A tearful maid opened the door and ushered him up to a small but opulently furnished solar on the second floor. The room reminded Corbett of how Maeve had beautified his own house in Bread Street though this chamber looked unkempt as if it hadn’t been cleaned for days. Wine stains marked the table and some of the tapestry-covered chairs. The hangings on the wall looked dusty and dishevelled whilst the fire had not been lit or the grate cleaned.

‘You wanted to see me?’

Corbett turned and stared at the young man standing in the doorway.

‘My name is Gilbert Somerville. The maid said you were Sir Hugh Corbett, King’s Emissary.’

The young man offered a limp handshake. Corbett stared at the black, dishevelled hair, the white puffy cheeks, red-rimmed eyes and slack mouth and jaw. A wine toper, Corbett concluded. A son grieving for his mother but someone who loved his claret to the exclusion of everything else.

‘I am sorry.’ The young man tugged at his fur-lined robe as he ushered Corbett to a seat. ‘I slept late. Please sit down.’ The young man scratched his stubbled cheek. ‘My mother’s funeral was yesterday,’ he murmured. ‘The house is still not clean, I. .’ his voice trailed away.

‘My condolences, Master Gilbert.’

‘ Sir Gilbert,’ the young man interrupted.

‘My condolences on your mother’s death, Sir Gilbert. But I believe you returned in the early hours of Tuesday, May twelfth, found your mother not in her chamber and organised a search?’

‘Yes. The servants found her near the scaffold at Smithfield.’

‘Before her death did your mother act, or speak, out of character?’

‘My mother hardly ever spoke to me so I left her alone.’

Corbett saw the anger and the hurt in the young man’s eyes.

‘She’s gone now,’ Corbett replied gently. ‘Why such a discord between a mother and her only son?’

‘In her eyes I was not my father.’

No, no, you’re not, Corbett thought. He had vague recollections of the elder Somerville. A tall, brisk fighting man who had given the kingdom good service in the closing years of the Welsh wars. Corbett vaguely remembered seeing him, striding through the chancery offices, or arm-in-arm with the King in some camp, or walking the corridors of a castle or palace.

‘Does the proverb “The cowl does not make the monk” mean anything to you?’

Somerville pulled a wry mouth. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Did your mother have any confidants here in her household?’

The young man looked sourly at Corbett. ‘No, she did not, she was of the old school, Master Corbett.’

‘ Sir Hugh Corbett!’

‘Touche!’ the young man replied. ‘No, Sir Hugh, my mother kept herself to herself, the only people she spoke to were the Sisters of the Order of St Martha.’

Corbett stared at the young man. ‘So, you have no idea about the who, why or how of your mother’s murder?’

‘No, I do not.’

Corbett chilled at this arrogant young man’s curt dismissal of his mother’s violent death and stared around the chamber.

‘Did your mother have any private papers?’

‘Yes, she did but I have been through them. There’s nothing there.’

‘Don’t you want vengeance for your mother’s death?’

The young man shrugged one shoulder. ‘Of course, but you are Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the King’s Secrets. I have every confidence in you, Clerk. You will find the killer. You resemble my father. You scurry about like the King’s whippet, fetching this or carrying that. The killer will be found and I shall take a flagon of wine down to the Elms to watch the bastard hang.’

Corbett rose, kicking over the stool behind him.

‘Sir Gilbert, I bid you adieu.’ He turned and walked towards the door.

‘Corbett!’

The clerk carried on walking, he reached the foot of the stairs before Somerville caught up with him.

‘Sir Hugh, please.’

Corbett turned. ‘I am sorry your mother’s dead,’ he said quietly. ‘But, Sir, I find your conduct disgraceful.’