16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (26 page)

‘Ah, here you are, my love,’ she said sharply, her tone belying the affectionate form of address. ‘This gentleman –’ the word had a pejorative ring to it – ‘wishes to talk to you. He says –’ again she threw scorn into her voice – ‘that he is on the business of His Worship, the Mayor of Bristol.’

I could see at once that Ralph Mynott, if he had indeed been one of Isabella’s swains, must be the one described as ‘ordinary’. Of middling height, with brown hair, now greying and going more than a little thin on top, eyes of a non-descript blue, he might have been any one of a score or so men I passed in the street every hour of every day. He must have been the same when young, without any distinguishing feature to mark him out from the crowd; not remarkably good-looking, but not necessarily displeasing either.

He blinked at me several times before saying mildly, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘I’d like to speak to you alone, Master Mynott,’ I suggested tentatively, anticipating furious opposition from the lady.

She did look daggers at both me and her husband, but to my utter amazement, when Master Mynott said in his quiet way, ‘Very well. Alice, my dear, will you please leave us,’ she flounced out of the hall without another word. I began to revise my first impression of ‘Caspar’. He might look downtrodden, but it was plain to me that his wife was a little afraid of him – which, in the circumstances, interested me very much. Was Ralph Mynott capable of violence?

Once we were alone, he motioned me to one of the chairs and himself took the other.

‘Now,’ he enquired calmly, ‘what is this all about? Suppose you start, young man, by telling me your name.’

‘Roger Chapman,’ I said, but hurried on, ‘Before I go any further, sir, did you, twenty years ago, know a young woman by the name of Isabella Linkinhorne?’

He looked shocked, blinking rapidly again. ‘Sweet Virgin!’ he murmured. ‘After all these years to be reminded of her!’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Yes, I knew her. It would be incorrect to say that I had forgotten her, but I haven’t thought about her in a very long time.’ His voice tailed off and he sat staring in front of him for several moments, lost in a reverie. Then, pulling himself together, he repeated, ‘What is this about? And whatever it is, what has it to do with the Mayor of Bristol?’ He added, ‘Isabella must be my age by now and, I should imagine, long since married.’

‘She’s dead,’ I announced baldly. ‘She has been for twenty years.’ And I proceeded to tell my story.

Master Mynott listened in silence, only twice interrupting me with a question. When at last I had finished, he said nothing for a while, sitting with his hand to his mouth, his gaze unfocused, looking at nothing in particular. Finally, he uttered the one word, ‘Murdered!’ before lapsing into silence again. I would have been ready to swear that his dismay was genuine, but as yet I didn’t dare let myself believe it.

‘Yes, murdered,’ I confirmed.

‘You’re certain?’ he asked, suddenly sitting up straighter in his chair and regarding me fixedly. ‘You’re sure the body found was Isabella’s?’

Slowly, I went over the story yet again; the evidence of the jewellery she had been wearing when she met her death; the testimony of the various people I had talked to, including Robert Moresby. ‘I think you must have been acquainted with Master Moresby,’ I added. ‘He was a friend of your sister and brother-in-law, Sir Peter and Lady Claypole.’

Ralph Mynott nodded, confirming what I had already suspected. ‘It was through Robert that I got to know Isabella. I often rode to Hambrook Manor in those days and was introduced to him by my sister. He was in fact no more than an itinerant goldsmith,’ he added somewhat dismissively, ‘whom Araminta and Peter had chosen to befriend. And then one day, on my way from Bath to Hambrook, on the downs above Bristol, I met Master Moresby out riding with this beautiful girl. He introduced her, not without some prompting from me, I might say, as Isabella Linkinhorne.’ Once again, Ralph Mynott breathed deeply. ‘I thought her quite simply the most lovely creature I had ever set eyes on.’

‘You got to know her,’ I suggested, ‘when Master Moresby wasn’t present?’

‘She told me herself that she went riding on the downs every day, and after that …’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘After that, whenever I could be spared from my father’s weaving sheds, I rode north in the hope of meeting her. There were many occasions, of course, when I was disappointed, but she was often to be found in or near Westbury, on the River Trym, where she had a cousin living.’

If Ralph Mynott’s father had been a master weaver, it explained the family’s affluence and how the daughter of the house had been able to ensnare a baronet. Bath was as famous for its cloth as its neighbour, Bristol.

‘You fell in love with Isabella?’ I asked.

He lowered his voice a little, indicating by a gesture of his hand that I should do the same.

‘Yes, I fell in love with her. She was so lovely and so unhappy, like one of the heroines in the romances that my sister used to read. I wanted to rescue her. To take care of her for the rest of her life.’

‘Did she know how you felt? Was she in love with you?’

‘I asked her to marry me. She promised to consider my offer. She told me she returned my affection, but could not leave her tyrannical old parents for the present. I tried to make her see that she couldn’t waste her life and mine waiting for them to see reason or to die. I told her that when my own father died, I would inherit the weaving sheds; that I was able to take care of her, even then, in comfort for the remainder of her days. She knew that my sister was married to Sir Peter Claypole and that I was not unconnected. But she was as good as she was beautiful; a kind, dutiful daughter, mindful of the Church’s teaching to honour her father and her mother …’

‘That her days might be long upon the earth,’ I couldn’t help interjecting ironically. ‘But they weren’t.’

Ralph Mynott smiled sadly and I saw tears start in his eyes. Either he was pretending, or, like Robert Moresby, he had never understood Isabella’s true nature. He had had the money, his rival the good looks. So what quality had ‘Balthazar’ possessed?

But that was a problem yet to be tackled. For the moment, my interest lay with Ralph Mynott.

‘When was the last time you saw Isabella, sir?’ I enquired, trying not to make it sound like an interrogation. It was plain that he had not yet grasped the significance of my visit or of my questioning.

He furrowed his brow. ‘Does it matter?’ But without waiting for my reply or trying to work it out for himself, he continued, ‘I think it must have been springtime, but early. There weren’t many flowers about as I recall. A few primroses, sweet violets, wood anemones perhaps, so it must have been March, but to the best of my recollection the weather was stormy and cold. However, I’m unable to tell you more than that.’

I pressed him harder. ‘But there must have been an occasion after which you never saw her again. Do you have no memory of when that was?’

Ralph Mynott said slowly, ‘Yes. Of course, you’re right. I remember riding that way throughout one spring and summer in the hope – in the expectation at first – of seeing Isabella, but she had simply vanished. I asked a number of people in and around Westbury if she had been seen, but the answer was always the same: no one recalled seeing her and her horse for … well, weeks to begin with, then months. Eventually I gave up looking for her.’

‘What did you think could have happened to her?’

A rush of blood suffused his sallow face. ‘My sister finally admitted to me, months afterwards, that Isabella had been planning to elope with Robert Moresby. It was a blow to my pride that she could prefer that fellow to me, so I stopped thinking about her after that.’

‘But Lady Claypole must also have told you that on the day appointed, Isabella failed to arrive at Hambrook Manor to keep her rendezvous with Master Moresby.’

My companion chewed his thumbnail, then nodded agreement.

‘True,’ he said. ‘But I could see no reason why Isabella should not have changed her mind yet again later on, and ridden to Gloucester to join him and become his wife. Indeed, the longer I thought about it, the more convinced I became that this is what had happened. There were, after all, a number of reasons why she might not have been able to reach Hambrook on the day arranged. That some violent fate might have overtaken her never so much as crossed my mind.’

I waited a moment or two before speaking again to allow him time to master what appeared to be a very natural grief. But when he seemed to have his emotions under control, I said, ‘On the morning Mistress Linkinhorne should have joined Robert Moresby at your sister’s house, she was seen talking to a man near Westbury village. His face was hidden by his hood, which was drawn well forward, concealing his features, it being an extremely wet and windy day. That – forgive me – that wasn’t yourself by any chance?’

A suspicion as to where my questioning was leading suddenly seemed to strike him and once again he coloured up, but this time with anger.

‘As I don’t know which day it was, I cannot say for certain that I was not the man. But if, Master Chapman, you are implying that I might have murdered Isabella, I must ask you to leave my house immediately.’

Ralph Mynott had risen to his feet and was now glaring down at me, his pale eyes flashing with anger. He had a temper all right; and for a man with normally so meek and mild an appearance, he could look surprisingly dangerous when roused. It did nothing to reassure me that he was telling the truth and that I could rely on his word. Moreover, I was forcibly reminded of his sister’s tipping bed at Hambrook Manor. The Mynotts were a family to be wary of, I decided. On the other hand, it didn’t mean that Ralph had murdered Isabella.

For a start, even had he done so, I had not a scrap of proof to link him with the crime, and there was always the difficulty of how he could have put the body in the grave in the nuns’ graveyard. How would he have known about it? How would he have managed to transport the body there? This didn’t mean that I was entirely convinced of his innocence, but the more I considered the facts, the more I realized that at the back of my mind, for some time past, I had been nurturing the growing conviction that, where knowledge and opportunity had been concerned, ‘Balthazar’, the man who was said to have lived in Bristol, was most likely to be the killer.

I uncoiled my length from the chair and towered over my host. Two could play at being threatening. Ralph took a step backwards, his angry expression changing to one of uneasiness. Beneath his mild exterior, he was a bully, and in my experience, bullies are easily intimidated.

‘Master Mynott,’ I said quietly, ‘are you prepared to swear to me, by Christ and all His Saints, that you did not murder Isabella Linkinhorne?’

He blinked. I supposed it was a nervous habit. But there was no other hesitation, not so much as by a second.

‘I swear,’ he said, adding, ‘I loved her. I couldn’t have harmed her.’

And on reflection, if what he had told me was the truth, Ralph Mynott had not known of Isabella’s perfidy until many months after she was dead.
If
it was the truth …

I sighed to myself. It seemed to me that there probably never would be a satisfactory answer to the question of who had killed Isabella Linkinhorne. It was too long ago. But for my own pride’s sake, I had to keep trying.

I took my leave of Master Mynott and wondered if he would tell his wife about my enquiries. I rather fancied that he wouldn’t. She didn’t look the sort who would take kindly to the tale of a long lost love. But what next? I asked myself as I shouldered my satchel and made my way across the town to the West Gate. And to that question there was only one answer. I had to find ‘Balthazar’. But how to locate him? Except that he had reddish hair and probably still lived in Bristol, I knew as little about him as I had known about Ralph Mynott.

But then, suddenly, with a flash of inspiration, I wondered if that were really true.

‘S
o here you are, Chapman,’ said a most unwelcome and slightly breathless voice behind me. ‘Off home, are you? I suppose you thought you’d given me the slip.’ The tone was reproachful.

I turned my head. Jack Gload was only a pace or two behind me.

‘I had no intention of giving you the slip,’ I retorted. ‘Why would I want to do that? I was under the impression that you were spending some days with your daughter. I left you sleeping like a baby and it would have been a shame to wake you.’

‘Well, I ain’t,’ he said. ‘Spending a few days with Cecily, that is. Children and animals, I can’t abide ’em. Besides, can’t be spared for long,’ he added importantly. ‘Too many villains in Bristol for the Sergeant to do without me, and I’m ’is right-hand man. Pete – Pete Littleman – ’e’s all right. A plodder, but ’e don’t have my brains. Leastways that’s what Sergeant Manifold says.’

I had no doubt that Dick Manifold said precisely the same thing to his other henchman. He had enough guile to keep them both happy and subordinate to his authority by playing them off against one another. But my heart sank at the prospect of Jack Gload’s company for my return journey to Bristol and, moreover, I was suspicious of his motive for accompanying me. Fortunately, he had no subtlety and asked almost at once, ‘You been to see this Ralph Mynott, then?’ He didn’t wait for my assent, but continued, ‘What did ’e have t’ say for ’imself?’

As we had reached the West Gate, I was able to postpone my answer until we had negotiated our way through against the incoming tide of traffic, exchanging some good-humoured badinage with the gatekeeper and a few bad-tempered words with a carter, who seemed to think that his load of iron ore for the city foundry entitled him to hog the entire width of the road and drive pedestrians to the wall. And by the time we were out in the open countryside, I hoped that my companion might have forgotten his question.

A forlorn hope, however.

‘So?’ Jack urged. ‘What did you find out?’ And when I did not immediately reply, he pressed again, ‘What did this Ralph Mynott ’ave to say for ’imself?’