Chains of Folly (8 page)

He found Diot and Magdalene searching through their pockets, and both turned to him as he came onto the landing.

“The door is locked,” Magdalene said. “Do you have a piece of wire in your purse or a long, thin nail?”

He did not have a nail, but he did have a very thin file that he used for removing and smoothing nicks in his sword. Wordlessly, he proffered the file to Magdalene, who just handed it to Diot. Bell sighed as she bent and probed into the lock with the file. He was not really surprised that Diot could pick a lock, and had a quick caustic thought about whether she had learned the skill to open the chastity belt her husband had no doubt tried to make her wear.

“Crude thing,” Diot muttered after a few moments, then turned the handle and opened the door.

They all paused just inside and looked around. “Whatever happened didn’t happen in here,” Magdalene said.

The chamber was not disordered and yet not neat enough to have been rearranged to hide disorder. Bell nodded agreement and Diot remarked that it looked much as it did when she had shared it with Nelda.

“She had a small strongbox, which she hid in a different place every day or two,” Diot said. “It never had much in it. The most it held was five pence, but she never seemed to be short of money. I always thought she brought her money to a goldsmith to hold for her.”

Bell grunted and began to examine the walls, but they were all solid. Diot pulled away the front board of what looked like a box bed—only it was not—built out from one wall. There was nothing in the space exposed. They went back to searching, and Magdalene eventually found the strong box at the back of the small hearth behind a false wall of thin bricks. It was locked, but Bell’s file and Diot’s skill soon had it open.

Hardly worth the effort, Diot thought. It held only two pence and two farthings…and then she swallowed bitter laughter. Now two pence and two farthings were nothing to her, but before she came to the Old Priory Guesthouse, she would have killed for it. Two pence and two farthings would have saved her—she swallowed sickly at the memory of the things she had been forced to do.

Nelda’s strong box told them nothing about why she was killed, why she was carrying a letter to Winchester from Robert of Gloucester. They continued to search carefully, upending the stools and the small table, and the bench near the wall opposite the bed, testing for hollow legs, stripping the blanket from the thin pallet that served as a mattress and examining it very carefully for hidden parchment or the shape of coins or jewelry. They found nothing, not a slip of parchment and certainly no indication that Nelda could read or write.

Then they moved into the bedchamber. This bed, which seemed to be fixed to the wall, took longer to examine. It had several pillows and the mattress was thicker, stuffed with wool and horsehair. The examination, however, produced nothing except a few six-legged pests. Again the walls kept no secrets, nor did the chest that held Nelda’s clothing.

While Bell pried at the base of the chest to see if it had a false bottom, Magdalene sat down on the stool near the empty brazier and stared around.

“Finished?” Bell asked, adding, “There’s nothing hidden in the chest.”

“No, we can’t be finished,” Magdalene replied absently, her eyes roaming restlessly around the room. “It has to be somewhere and more likely in here than in the other chamber.”

“What has to be somewhere?” Diot asked.

“Nelda’s real cache. That strong box was to convince a thief that he had found her treasure and could stop looking. But the rooms are too good, the clothing too good. I think it likely that she was a thief too, and needed someplace safe for her takings. She must have money somewhere.”

“A goldsmith, as Diot suggested?” Bell said.

“No. Diot thinks of goldsmiths, I think of goldsmiths, you think of goldsmiths, but Nelda would not put her money in a goldsmith’s care. She would not trust anyone with her life savings, with what was all she had to keep her in her later years. She would think he would steal from her and what recourse would she have—a whore’s word against that of a rich and honored goldsmith.”

“It isn’t in the walls,” Bell said.

“Or in the bed,” Diot added.

“In the bed, no. But it must be near the bed. She would want it close, where if there was fire or some other disaster in the night she could get it quickly.”

“The bed is fastened to the walls,” Bell remarked dryly.

“No, no it isn’t. Not the way you think,” Diot said, voice high with excitement. “Once I was in here talking to her…she had just got out of bed and I leaned against the footboard, and it moved. The whole bed moved. She was dressing. She didn’t notice—or maybe she did and that was why she got rid of me. It…it must slide forward…”

But pulling and pushing had no effect, until Magdalene got on the bed and kneeling up slid her hand along the headboard. Her fingers caught on a metal bulge—a latch. When that was unhooked, the bed did slide forward, exposing a small ring. Pulled, this drew out a square of plaster on a thin board and behind that was a hollow in the wall in which lay a flat, well-smithed metal box.

That lock was much harder to open, but patience was eventually rewarded, exposing several pounds worth of silver pennies. Diot watched Magdalene, but the whoremistress was clearly not interested in the coins. She lifted them out, handing them to Bell who stood beside her, until what was hidden beneath the coins was exposed.

“Ah,” she said with satisfaction, then turned to look at Bell, who had gasped.

He was staring at the most remarkable item, a large crucifix. Magdalene also stared at it, not ever having seen Christ on the cross depicted in jewelry. Bell put the pennies aside and picked up the crucifix, frowning at it.

“I cannot imagine how this came here,” he said.

“You know to whom it belongs?”

“Yes, but I…I do not believe the man who owned this would violate his vow of chastity with…with…”

“A whore?” Magdalene asked, smiling bitterly.

“A whore like that.” Bell’s voice was harsh.

“Look at this,” Diot interrupted. “Magdalene, did you not say something about Mandeville being involved in the attack on Winchester?” She fished about in the box and came up with an enameled house badge on a ribbon.

“That is certainly Mandeville’s badge,” Bell said, taking it from her hand and examining it closely. Then he looked around the chamber, grimaced, and added, “But can you see Geoffrey de Mandeville in these rooms?”

“Not Geoffrey himself,” Magdalene replied, “but one of his captains? Could it be possible that Nelda had an arrangement, as I have with William, that for a set payment each moon he can send his men to my women? And these rooms are none so bad. We are used to the Old Priory Guesthouse, but I had been in business for some time in Oxford before I came to London so I came with money to spend on the Guesthouse. And since I came by a patron’s order, I had help. Does it not seem to you that these rooms are more than what an ordinary whore could afford?”

“Well, Nelda had a patron…that I know. He was away when I first came to stay with her, and when she bade me go she said it was because her patron was returning to London.”

“Yes, you said she did not want him to meet you.”

As Magdalene spoke she had been turning over the trinkets in the box. She had put aside several valuable rings, which may have had lettering or simply a decorative border on them, and now she lifted out a handsome seal and uttered a low whistle.

“Is this what I think it is, Bell?” she asked, holding out the seal to show the device carved into it.

He took it and hissed gently between his teeth. “Beaufort…Waleran’s house…marked with a bend sinister. A bastard of the house? One that Waleran’s father old Robert did not want to acknowledge openly but did not want to ignore and abandon? Interesting. I have no idea to whom this belonged and however did he lose so precious a thing? It and a few words would identify him to the Beauforts—”

“Unless he is already known to them and thus less careful of his trinket. What odds will you wager that if Nelda serviced Mandeville or his men, Waleran would want to know what she could find out? And they are all lodged in those houses around the Tower from time to time. The men would talk to each other. Doubtless Nelda would be mentioned and knowledge of her drift back to the masters.”

“No odds,” Bell said. He shook his head and handed the seal back to Magdalene. “Pack it all up,” he ordered. “We have been here long enough. I will go back to the Guesthouse with you and take the money to the bishop. He will set his clerks to searching out whether Nelda had heirs. If she did, he will see that the money goes to them; if she did not, he will use it for charity. Keep the other things safe for me. The badge or the seal or some other trinket may be the answer to why she was killed.”

“But not to why she was placed in the bishop’s bedchamber or where she got that letter.” Diot sighed. “I did not like her, but I cannot feel she deserved to be murdered.”

Bell shrugged, his mouth a thin line. “People are murdered every day just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shook his head. “I want to look at the stairs and at the landing more carefully. Put the box back in the wall. I doubt any but Nelda knew of it, but perhaps her patron was involved in the thefts and did know.”

* * * *

Outside the apartment, Bell looked carefully at the wall near the edge of the landing. It was rough plaster over lathe and not far from the door, about the level of his waist, there were several threads caught in the plaster. They looked the same color as Nelda’s gown. Perhaps her elbow had slammed into the wall while she was being choked. He pulled the threads free and put them in his purse.

Also he noticed there were scuff marks right at the edge of the landing, roughly below where the threads had been. Bell got down on his knees to look more closely. No one ordinarily walked that close to the edge.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Bell jerked upright in response to the angry male voice. His hand touched the hilt of his poniard. “Who are you to ask?” he retorted.

“I own this house. Who are
you?”

Bell grinned. He was willing to concede that the man who owned the place had a right to ask why a stranger was examining the floor and walls. “My name is Bellamy of Itchen and I am the bishop of Winchester’s knight. The woman who lived in this house was murdered and—”

“What? Murdered? That is impossible!”

Shock wiped the anger from the man’s expression. His eyes bulged and his face whitened so much that Bell thought he would fall. Indeed, he put a hand against the wall to support himself.

“Impossible or not,” Bell said, “she was discovered on Friday, sitting in a chair in the bishop of Winchester’s bedchamber. Needless to say, the bishop wishes to know how she came there and has bidden me to discover the answer. And since you were her landlord—we know she lived in this house—I need to know who you are.”

For one moment Bell thought the man would take to his heels, but then he no doubt realized that his ownership of the house would be a public record. He pushed himself away from the wall and shook his head.

“I can hardly believe you. Nelda dead? My name is Sir Linley of Godalming, and I am in service with William of Warenne, earl of Surrey. It is true that Nelda lived in the two front rooms, but how she came to the bishop’s house…I have no idea. I suppose she was invited—

Bell made an unpleasant sound in his throat and Linley stopped speaking.

“If she was sitting in a chair in the bishop’s house—” Linley continued stubbornly, but his voice was not entirely steady “—I do not know any other way for her to be there.”

“I can tell you how she came to sit in a chair in the bishop’s house.” Bell’s voice was cold and his face so hard that Linley backed down a step. “Her body was pulled up through the window and someone carried her to the chair and forced her body into it.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Linley whispered. “I cannot believe it. She was no one.” He shrugged. “Who would bother to kill her… Are you
sure
she was murdered?”

“Her neck was broken.”

“Oh…oh, but that could have happened many ways. She could have fallen down the steps, or…”

“There were fingermarks around her neck. If she went down the stair, which I think she did, she was choked first and then dropped.”

“No!” Linley was holding onto the wall again. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “Oh, poor Nelda. Sometimes she could be irritating, but—”

He stopped speaking abruptly when the door to Nelda’s rooms opened and first Diot and then Magdalene stepped out. Linley’s eyes bulged again.

“What are you doing in Nelda’s rooms? How did you know she was dead? How did you get in?”

Magdalene looked at Bell, who nodded and said, “This is Sir Linley of Godalming. He was Nelda’s landlord.”

“Ah.”

Magdalene’s arms were crossed under her breast and her veil was draped loosely over her shoulders, pulled forward and tucked around her arms. She smiled at Linley and his face regained some of its color. His eyes drifted from her face down her body. Diot passed Magdalene and then turned sideways to pass Linley where he stood halfway up the stair. Her veil was drawn over her head and gathered by her arms around her waist and she bent forward a trifle, as if she were not sure of her footing.

As Diot passed Linley, Magdalene continued, “I suppose as landlord and patron you have a right to ask. My friend and I were trying to see whether there was a hint in Nelda’s possessions of a reason for anyone to kill the poor woman. As to how we knew she was dead, I was asked by Sir Bellamy to see if I knew her because she was dressed as a whore. I am whoremistress of the Old Priory Guesthouse.”

Linley seemed to have recovered from the pleasant bemusement of seeing Magdalene smile at him. “How the devil did you get into her rooms?” he asked sharply.

Magdalene looked at him blankly. “Through the door.”

“You couldn’t have. The door was locked.”

“Was it?” Bell asked. “How did you know? When were you here last?”

Linley turned toward him, looking affronted. “Nelda
always
locked the door.”