13 - The Midsummer Rose (22 page)

‘Mistress Alefounder’s upset, all right, though she ain’t the sort to do a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. She don’t put on a show for other people’s benefit, nor does she give them what they expect to see. There’s been visitors a-knockin’ at the door all morning, but she’s the one who’s received ’em. Mistress Avenel’s been laid down on her bed, the chamber shutters closed, pretending she’s too afflicted even to accept condolences.’

The other two girls, their attention caught, sat back on their heels to listen. The freckle-faced one laughed.

‘Miaow! Miaow! You always did fancy that Luke Prettywood yourself, didn’t you, Jess?’

Jess coloured up to the border of her linen cap, but, to her credit, ignored the jibe.

‘You were saying? About Mistress Alefounder?’ I prompted her.

She rubbed her nose reflectively. ‘Like I told you, she’s upset all right. But … Well … I’d say she’s as much angry as tearful. Old Master Avenel come round this morning. Now he
was
in a state, and no mistake. But it didn’t stop Mistress Alefounder shouting at him. We all heard her. Couldn’t help ourselves. “The fool,” she was saying. “Picking a quarrel with that Burl Hodge! Thinking himself better than other people. I warned him no good would come of it.”’

I bit my lip. ‘You’re sure that’s what she said?’

‘Oh yes,’ the snub-nosed girl confirmed. ‘The kitchen door was open and she and old Peter Avenel were stood in the hall.’

This was bad news as far as Burl was concerned. If this were to be cited in evidence – and there was no doubt that Richard Manifold, in his slow but thorough way, would get around to questioning members of the Avenel household when he considered the time was right – it would make the case against him appear even blacker.

‘I’ll tell you something odd, though,’ Jess remarked suddenly.

I rose, rubbing my aching thighs. ‘What?’ I asked hopefully.

‘She’s coming,’ squeaked our lookout as she scuttled back to the kitchen table to resume her pastry-making.

Snub-nose and Freckle-face joined her, the first to chop herbs, the second to pound strips of meat into submission with a wooden mallet. But Jess, my informant, was made of sterner stuff.

‘Tell her I’m in the jakes,’ she hissed, pushing me backwards and resolutely shutting the kitchen door behind us.

She helped me bundle my goods into my pack, then led me round to the other side of the privy, out of sight of the kitchen.

‘What did you want to tell me?’ I urged again, as she once more appeared to hesitate.

‘Well … it’s nothing much, really. It’s just that I was the one who opened the door to Sergeant Manifold this morning. It was very early, not long past cockcrow. He told me to wake the mistress and the master’s sister and fetch ’em downstairs as he had some very bad news to tell them. Which of course I did … But then I hung about trying to hear what it was he had to say.’ Jess blinked guiltily.

‘A very natural thing to do,’ I consoled her.

‘Yes … well … that’s as maybe.’ She was nobody’s fool, this girl. ‘I followed Mistress Avenel and Mistress Alefounder downstairs and then just stood there instead of going back to the kitchen. They forgot about me, you see, but I had a clear view of both of them as the sergeant broke the news of the master’s murder …’ Jess drew a deep breath. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know Burl Hodge has been arrested, and I know your reputation in this town. I know, if the others don’t, why you’ve come snooping around here this afternoon, pretending to peddle your goods. I know what you’re up to.’ She knew altogether too much, this one. ‘So you must understand that what I’m going to say is only a feeling on my part. Nothing more.’

‘I accept that,’ I said gently. ‘But tell me all the same.’

She nodded. ‘It’s just … Well, I just had the impression that the news wasn’t as great a shock to either of them as they tried to make out. Oh, they put on a brave show,’ she added with a cynical little smile, ‘and it fooled the sergeant and Dame Dorothy, Mistress Hollyns and the rest of the servants, who all came running to see what the noise was about. Mistress was shrieking fit to waken the dead and Mistress Alefounder was white as a ghost, but …’ Jess broke off, shrugging.

‘But it didn’t fool you. Why not?’

She chewed her bottom lip, struggling to frame an answer.

‘They … They accepted what they’d been told too readily. There was … What can I say? There was no
disbelief
. Does that sound silly?’ I shook my head. She continued, ‘If someone told me something like that, they’d have to tell me two or three times before I could take it in. And there was another thing. One of them – but I can’t be certain now which of them it was – said something about blood. But I’d swear no one had mentioned then that the master had been stabbed. “Murdered”, was all the sergeant had said. But … Well … I could be wrong. He didn’t seem to pick it up. Or if he did, he didn’t seem to think it of any importance.’

No, he wouldn’t, I thought meanly. I’d never had a high opinion of Richard Manifold’s quickness of mind. (But Adela would tell me that I was prejudiced.)

Someone opened the back door and a stern voice called, ‘Jess Morgan! Get back in here this minute! I know what you’re up to! Sitting on that jakes, wasting time! You can’t fool me, my girl!’

‘Coming, Dame Dorothy!’ Jess put a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound as though she were inside the privy. A resourceful girl, I decided, who, if there was any justice in the world, should go far. Unfortunately, justice is all too often in short supply. At least, that’s been my experience.

‘Here!’ I whispered, laying a detaining hand on her arm. I delved into my pack and brought out four lengths of silk ribbon. ‘Share these with your friends.’

‘Thank you,’ she answered gruffly and turned to go, but once again I stopped her.

‘What about Mistress Hollyns?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t said anything about her. Was she upset?’

Jess laughed shortly; a small, snorting sound. ‘Not so’s you’d notice, but she’s a deep one, she is. The master took a fancy to her, I feel sure o’ that. He had a roving eye – and roving hands to match,’ she added viciously. So viciously, in fact, that I began to suspect Robin Avenel had passed Jess over for her prettier, more nubile kitchen companions.

‘Why do you believe Master Avenel fancied Mistress Hollyns?’

Jess shrugged. ‘I overheard him discussing her once with Mistress Alefounder. He referred to her as a midsummer rose. Well, there ain’t no one else in the house who’d answer that description except the mistress, and I’m sure he wasn’t talking about her, or he wouldn’t have been so angry when he saw me in the doorway and realized I must’ve overheard what he’d said. Furious, he was. I reckon he’d have turfed me out if Mistress Alefounder hadn’t told him not to be such an idiot. She had a word with me afterwards and warned me not to repeat what I’d heard the master say. I told her it was nothing to me if he fancied Mistress Hollyns, and none o’ my business. She needn’t be afeared I’d go telling tales.’

The kitchen door was again flung open and a voice screeched, ‘Jess! Come out of there at once, do you hear me?
At once!
’

‘Stay out of sight until I’m indoors,’ my companion advised me, tucking the ribbons I had given her into a pocket. She hastened round the side of the privy. ‘Sorry, Dame Dorothy. I felt a bit sick. It’s the flux. I was getting some air.’

The housekeeper hissed something in reply that I couldn’t quite catch, then the kitchen door closed behind the pair of them.

I picked up my pack and crept quietly out of the garden.

The Midsummer Rose. Those were the words Jack Hodge thought he had overheard in the Full Moon; words uttered by Timothy Plummer to his companion, the unknown Scotsman – if, that was, the landlord were correct in his assumption. And now, here was one of Robin Avenel’s kitchen maids asserting that Robin had applied the same description to Rowena Hollyns. What was I to make of it all? Of course, the ceremony of the Midsummer Rose had probably been in most people’s minds as the Midsummer Eve’s feast approached, so Robin’s use of the term might have meant no more than that. But I couldn’t believe the same explanation held good in Timothy’s case. And although I was in no position to say for certain, I would have bet my last groat that women played a very small and insignificant part in the spy’s life. If he needed one, he most likely crossed the Thames and paid for one of the Bishop of Winchester’s geese, as the whores of Southwark were generally known, on account of all the brothels in the area belonging to that reverend and godly gentleman.

I felt even more confused. And, what was worse, I was unable to see how any of the information I had so far obtained would help me to prove Burl Hodge’s innocence. But thoughts of brothels and Winchester geese had put me in mind of Silas Witherspoon. I was not that far from Gropecunt Lane. I would pay him a visit.

‘I told you! It won’t be ready for a week,’ was his greeting to me as I pushed open the door of his apothecary’s shop and went in.

‘No, no! I’ve not come about that,’ I assured him, dropping my pack on the dusty floor and leaning one elbow on the equally dusty counter.

There was a pleasanter smell in the shop today; the chilblain remedy had evidently finished its concoction and been bottled. At the moment, he was counting out pills from an earthenware jar into a small leather box.

‘Water parsnip tablets,’ he informed me in that mellifluous voice of his, so at odds with his appearance. ‘Just three a day will assuage the pain of hernia, disperse calculi in the body, get rid of freckles on women and scales on horses. Want to buy some?’

I shook my head. ‘No, thank you. I don’t have a hernia, my wife doesn’t have freckles, neither of us has the stone and we’re too poor to afford a horse.’

‘Always as well to be prepared,’ he suggested, but at my dismissive gesture, he shrugged. ‘Please yourself! So what do you want? The love manual, perhaps?’

‘I suppose you’ve heard that Robin Avenel was found murdered this morning?’ I asked him.

He countered my enquiry with one of his own. ‘How long have you lived in this city, chapman?’

‘Six years, on and off. Why?’ But I could guess what he was going to say.

‘Then you should know better than to ask such a foolish question. It’s what? Five, six hours now since the body was discovered? The news is probably being cried through the streets of Westbury and Keynsham by this time. Of course I know!’

‘In that case,’ I said, leaning a little further over the counter, ‘you can tell me the truth about the house at Rownham Passage. You can’t hurt Master Avenel now. Was he the person who rented it from you at the end of last month?’

Silas closed the lid of the pillbox, set the earthenware jar upright on the counter and regarded me thoughtfully. But he still seemed reluctant to speak.

‘Why do you want to know?’ he demanded at last.

‘The information might just save an innocent man from being tried for murder,’ I told him.

‘Ah!’ The apothecary rubbed his nose. ‘Burl Hodge. Yes. I heard he’d been arrested. You think he didn’t do it?’

‘No. I mean yes.’ I was getting confused. ‘I think he’s innocent of the charge that Sergeant Manifold’s brought against him.’

Here, I had to wait a minute or two while Master Witherspoon attended to a couple of customers; a respectable old dame in rusty black, who I recognized as living in Wine Street, and one of the brothel keepers who kept a bawdy house further along the lane. The first wanted fleabane lozenges to burn in order to rid her cottage of fleas; the other a box of dried hare droppings to use as pessaries.

When they had departed with their purchases, Silas once more gave me his attention.

‘I daresay you’re close to the mark,’ he said. ‘About Burl Hodge being innocent, I mean. Never trust a law officer to get it right more than one time out of three, that’s my motto. And a sound one! They’re always too anxious for a pat on the back. Get some poor wretch dangling from a rope’s end and they’re happy. Never mind whether he did it or not. And Burl’s a good man from what I know of him. A bit hot-headed by all accounts, but not the man to kill anyone in cold blood.’

‘So?’ I demanded impatiently. ‘
Was
Robin Avenel the person who approached you about your house at Rownham Passage?’

I really knew the answer, of course, but I wanted to hear the confirmation from the apothecary’s own lips.

He thought for moment or two longer, then nodded.

‘I can’t see what harm it would do to tell you now. My promise was to him alive, not dead. Yes, it was Robin Avenel.’

H
aving finally admitted as much, the apothecary grew quite expansive on the subject.

‘Robin called here. About the third week of May. Before his sister came to stay with him. Wanted to know if he could rent the house at Rownham Passage for a night. Beginning of June.’

‘Did he say why?’

Silas leaned closer. His breath smelled powerfully of garlic.

‘Two friends of his were coming from Worcester, on pilgrimage to Glastonbury. He couldn’t house them because Mistress Alefounder and her maid would be lodged in Broad Street by then.’

I gave a derisive snort. ‘And Bristol has no decent hostelries where they could have stayed? You didn’t believe his story?’

The apothecary laughed. ‘No, of course not. But that house has been like a millstone round my neck for years. I was hardly likely to turn down the chance of making a bit of money from it, now was I? And what he offered was generous, considering the state of the place. If you want to know what I really thought, it was that Robin was having a secret rendezvous with a woman. Someone he didn’t want either his wife or his sister to know about. He asked if there was a bed in the house. I said yes, but nothing fit for a lady.’

‘And what was his answer to that?’

‘He said there was no lady, just two men. I thought he was trying to pull the wool over my eyes, but I couldn’t say so.’

I digested this for a while.

‘So who do you think killed Master Avenel?’ Silas asked in time.

‘Footpads? Pickpockets? The streets aren’t safe anywhere nowadays. But of one thing I’m certain: it wasn’t Burl Hodge.’