10 - The Goldsmith's Daughter (17 page)

‘Did these nightly wanderings occur very often?’

‘With increasing regularity. To begin with, I suppose I would find him gone perhaps once in a couple of weeks. But later, it was almost every night.’

‘And he never hinted at what was worrying him?’

Isolda shook her head, avoiding my eyes.

‘But I know now, don’t I? Father has told you what Gideon was saying about me.’

‘About you and your cousin Christopher, yes!’ There was another long pause, this time while I plucked up courage to ask the necessary question. ‘Mistress Bonifant,’ I said at last, ‘
was
there any truth in your husband’s accusation?’

‘Of course not!’ Her tone almost scorched me with its furious denial. She went on, more calmly, ‘Oh, Kit likes women, but not my sort of woman. I agree that he prefers them to be older than himself but, apart from the fact that he has always looked upon me as another sister, he is only attracted by worldly and sophisticated women. They flatter him and persuade him that he, too, is worldly and sophisticated – but I suspect that they make use of him. And behind his back, they’re probably laughing at him.’

I thought she could well be correct. But there was another question, more difficult than the first, that I must now put to her.

‘Were – were there any grounds for your husband’s suspicion that . . . that he was being betrayed?’

Isolda turned once more to look at me, and her eyes widened, but whether in anger or astonishment I was unsure.

‘By me? With another man, you mean?’ And when I nodded, she burst into mocking laughter. ‘Master Chapman, are you blind? I’m a plain, some would say an ugly, woman, who had enough difficulty in finding
one
man who wanted to bed me. Where would I have found another?’

Such candour was endearing – if it were genuine.

‘You do yourself a great injustice,’ I said, repairing my earlier omission, ‘and I will repay your frankness with some of my own. You are not beautiful, not even pretty, but there are many men who would find you easy to love. So I ask you again, did Master Bonifant have any reason for his suspicions?’

Isolda drew a deep breath. Then, ‘No,’ she answered a trifle unsteadily, ‘he did not. I swear to you that whatever grounds he thought he had for suspecting me of infidelity, they were entirely false. Where they could have come from, I have not the least idea – unless some secret enemy of mine, or of his, put them into his head for his or her own wicked purpose.’

‘
D
o you know of such an enemy?’ I asked after a few moments, when Isolda’s last words had had time to sink in.

She shook her head. ‘No, although it’s not for want of thinking about it. But no particular person springs to mind. Of course, it would be foolish to presume that Gideon and I were loved, or even liked, by all our acquaintances, or even by all those who professed themselves to be our friends. Yet I’m unable to think of a single soul who would wish either of us so ill that he or she would be prepared to tell a lie that could result in so much distress and misery.’

‘Nevertheless, somebody did just that.’

She sat forward in her chair, stretching her back as though it were aching. ‘I know,’ she answered quietly. ‘That’s what I find so frightening.’

‘And your husband never mentioned this accusation to you? Did you indeed know nothing of it until after Master Bonifant’s death?’

‘Gideon never said a word to me. Had he done so, I should have been able to refute the accusation. And I hope that I should have been able to set his mind at rest.’ She shivered and held out her hands to the blaze. ‘That’s what disturbs me most, Master Chapman, that he seems to have had such belief in this tale, accepted it so readily, that he never even asked me to prove my innocence.’

I nodded sympathetically. If she were telling the truth, this omission of Gideon’s did appear odd, to say the least of it. But was she telling the truth? I had only her word for what had passed between herself and her husband. I should never now hear his side of the story.

‘What did you do that evening,’ I asked, ‘when you had changed your gown?’

‘I came downstairs, naturally, to this room, to join in the celebration.’

‘And who was here when you entered?’

‘Everyone – except Meg, of course. She was still down in the kitchen.’ Isolda ticked off the assembled company on her fingers, screwing up her eyes a little as she once more conjured up the scene in her mind. ‘My father, Mistress Perle, Gregory and Ginèvre Napier, both my cousins and, of course, Gideon. Oh yes, and our apprentice, Tobias Maybury,’ she added on a faint note of surprise. ‘I recall wondering at the time why he was present.’

‘Shouldn’t he have been?’

‘If it had been a normal mealtime, with just the family, yes. He always eats with us. But not when we entertain. Then he has his food downstairs in the kitchen, with Meg. And I remember now. . .’

‘Go on,’ I urged as her voice tailed away into silence. ‘What do you remember?’

‘Oh, it probably means nothing,’ she protested, ‘but it occurred to me that he looked . . . well, flushed, as if he were feeling guilty about something or other. It was probably my imagination, for he didn’t remain long in the room after my arrival, and he seemed perfectly himself when I saw him some fifteen minutes later, down in the kitchen. He and Meg were whispering and giggling together. At least,’ she amended, ‘Toby was giggling. Meg, come to think of it, looked rather flushed and indignant.’

‘I see. Now, according to Master Babcary, you instructed everyone where to sit.’

Isolda smiled thinly. ‘So I did, because I had laid the table and knew where I had placed each person. Yes,’ she continued, bitterly, ‘I can quite see why suspicion points so heavily in my direction.’

I was unable to reassure her. ‘Pray continue,’ I entreated. ‘What happened next?’

‘We all took our places around the table to drink Mistress Perle’s good health. Oh, but I’m forgetting. Before we did so, Father presented Barbara with her birthday gift, a leather girdle studded with sapphires and turquoises. It’s very beautiful and very costly and would, I think, have apprised us of Father’s intentions towards her, had we not known them already. Neither Gideon nor Kit, as I recall, looked as though he much approved.’

‘After which you all drank the lady’s health in the wine already poured out by you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I went down to the kitchen to help Meggie bring up the trays of food.’ Isolda took a deep breath to steady her voice. ‘As I re-entered this room, Master Napier was just coming out. He looked grey and sweating, and I thought he’d been taken ill, but I know now, of course, that he was going for the apothecary in Gudrun Lane. I didn’t realise at first what was happening, until I saw Gideon. He was standing beside his chair, struggling desperately for breath. His face was turning blue. He couldn’t speak, and his lips and throat seemed so stiff that he could neither swallow nor talk. All he could do was to make a terrible croaking sound.’ Isolda covered her face with her hands and remained like that for several seconds. When she raised her face again, however, it had been wiped clean of all emotion. ‘Meggie screamed and dropped her tray, while Gideon . . . Gideon raised his hand and pointed at me.’ She shuddered. ‘Dear Mother in Heaven! I’ll never forget his eyes. They were so full of hatred.’

By eleven o’clock, dinner had been eaten and cleared away, the men coming upstairs from the shop one at a time: first Master Babcary, followed by his nephew and, lastly, by the apprentice, Toby Maybury.

I had found it strange eating with the family and not being relegated, as I usually was, to the lowlier company of the kitchen. But as someone known to be in the employ of Mistress Shore and, even more importantly, in that of the Duke of Gloucester, I was treated as a guest rather than as a nosy, interfering pedlar – although I suspected that the Babcarys were beginning to regard me in that light.

Eleanor had reappeared at dinnertime, looking pale and wan, but with an unimpaired appetite. She ate daintily, but heartily, making short work of a plate of mutton stew and dumplings, three honey and saffron tarts and a mazer of ale. All the same, she managed to convey the impression that she had just risen from her sickbed and was treated accordingly, with much tenderness and loving affection, by her cousin, brother and uncle. In these circumstances, I felt I must delay questioning her until such time as she was showing a more robust face to the world, and consequently requested that I might be allowed to talk to Meg Spendlove.

‘Then speak to her in the kitchen,’ Isolda advised me. ‘Meg won’t be happy anywhere else. Not that I think you’ll get very much out of her, even there. She’s very wary of strangers, particularly of men.’

We were once more alone, the men having returned to the workshop and Eleanor Babcary having withdrawn again to her bedchamber, complaining of a headache.

‘I’ll do my best to overcome her prejudice,’ I said. ‘But before I go downstairs in search of her, there is one thing, Mistress Bonifant, that I have so far failed to ask both you and your father. How do you think the monkshood was obtained? Would you or any other member of the household know?’

Isolda hesitated, then answered reluctantly, ‘My father, who’s not so young as he was’ – I couldn’t help reflecting how indignantly Master Babcary would have taken issue with this statement – ‘uses an oil, made chiefly from the root of the monkshood plant, to ease his aching joints. Long hours bent over his workbench has given him rheumatic pains in his arms and back. This liniment, provided for him by Master Page of Gudrun Lane, gives him great relief when rubbed well into his shoulders and the surrounding flesh.’

‘And who performs this service for him?’

The colour crept up under her skin and then receded, leaving her very pale.

‘I do sometimes,’ was the reply. ‘At other times, it’s Kit.’

‘But everyone in the house is aware that Master Babcary uses this embrocation?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And also that it is extremely poisonous?’

She nodded. ‘Master Page made it plain both to Father and to me that it could prove fatal if swallowed, and we naturally made sure that the other members of the household were also told. And because of that warning, Father always keeps the bottle containing the liniment locked in a cupboard in his room.’

‘And where does he keep the key to this cupboard?’

Isolda bit her lip. ‘In a little wooden box in the chest at the foot of his bed. Unfortunately,’ she added, ‘everyone knows that it’s there and which cupboard it unlocks.’

‘So anyone could have taken the bottle and poured some of the contents into Master Bonifant’s wine?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s true.’

I thought about this. ‘My mother used to use a liniment made from the root of the monkshood plant,’ I said after a short silence, ‘for her rheumatics, and my recollection of it is that it had a pungent smell. Why, I wonder, did Master Bonifant not notice it as he drank?’

Isolda began to collect the dirty dishes together and stack them in a pile. After a long moment, she replied, without raising her eyes from what she was doing, ‘The oil was very potent, and Apothecary Page warned us that even a drop could prove fatal. Kit and I were to wash our hands thoroughly every time we so much as touched it, and we were never to use it if we had a cut or scratch or any kind of abrasion on our skin. So I suppose it needed only a very small amount to kill Gideon. And the wine itself had a strong bouquet.’ She gave an uncertain little laugh and finally met my gaze. ‘You see, I’m being perfectly candid with you, Master Chapman.’

Was she also being very clever? I asked myself, but was unable to make up my mind.

‘I appreciate your frankness, Mistress Bonifant,’ I replied. ‘After the – after your husband’s death, did you or Master Babcary check the bottle containing the monkshood oil to see if any of it was missing?’

‘We did, but it was impossible to tell. The bottle is of thick, smoked glass with a very tiny neck. And, as I told you, only the smallest drop would have been necessary to kill Gideon. Why do you ask?’

‘Because it occurs to me that it may not have been your father’s liniment that was used. If, for instance, the murderer was from outside this house, then the poison must have been obtained elsewhere.’

Isolda gave me a quick, sidelong glance. ‘You’re thinking of Barbara Perle and the Napiers. But what motive could one of those three possibly have had for wishing my husband dead?’

‘That I don’t know at present, but there may have been a reason. And now, if you’ll allow me to carry that tray downstairs for you, I’ll speak to Meg Spendlove.’

Isolda shook her head. ‘You’d do better to let me come with you and introduce you properly as a friend. Besides,’ she added, picking up the heavy wooden tray, loaded with its stacks of dirty dishes, as though it were a featherweight, ‘I don’t trust you with your hands full on that twisting stair. You’re more than liable to drop the lot. In domestic matters, men are clumsy creatures – or, at least, so they pretend.’

On which slightly sour note, she led the way down to the kitchen where Meg Spendlove was already scouring out the cooking pots ready for the preparation of the evening meal.

The maid’s eyes had widened with fright as soon as she saw me, and she retreated to the opposite side of the stone bench on which she was working when Isolda explained that I wished to talk to her about the murder.

‘I don’t know anything, Missus,’ she muttered. ‘I wasn’t there.’

Isolda lowered her burden on to one end of the bench and put water to heat over the fire in order to wash the dirty plates.

‘No one’s accusing you of anything, Meggie,’ she said soothingly, adding, with a significant glance in my direction, ‘Master Chapman knows that you had nothing to do with Master Bonifant’s death. He just wants to ask you a question or two. Now, sit down quietly on that stool and listen to what he has to say. Don’t be afraid. I shall be right here, beside you.’

I would far rather have spoken to Meg alone, but I had enough sense to realise that without Isolda’s comforting presence I should probably get nothing out of her at all. It was therefore the lesser of two evils, and I resigned myself to putting up with a certain amount of interference from my hostess.