Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (12 page)

‘Right.’ Corbett sipped again. ‘Five years ago Sir Roger Chapeleys was hanged. Furrell went before the justices and pleaded on his behalf?’

‘I’ve told you all that.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Well,’ Sorrel pulled a face, ‘Sir Roger was in prison for a while. Sir Louis dispatched pleas to London but the King sent the order back. Sir Roger had been found guilty by a jury.’ Sorrel sipped at her own wine. ‘The poor man even offered to purge himself by trial by combat but that was refused. Sentence of death was confirmed and he was hanged.’

‘Did you attend the execution?’

‘Oh no, nor did Furrell.’

‘And when did your husband disappear?’

Sorrel narrowed her eyes. ‘About a month after Sir Roger’s execution. Furrell was a strange one. He had many faults. I wondered if he did lie with other women but, in his own way, he was loyal. As I said, we took a vow under the yew tree and he looked after me. He was kind and tender, never raising his hands to me, even in his cups. He could be garrulous, at other times he would sit and brood, barking out short statements like when he mentioned the Mummer’s Man.’ She pointed to the wall. ‘I think that’s why he liked painting. He always had a great fear, did Furrell, that his wits would wander, that the loneliness would darken his mind.’

‘And Sir Roger’s execution?’ Corbett brought her gently back to the matter in hand.

‘Ah yes.’ She shifted her hair away from her face with her wrist then held the cup against her chapped cheek. ‘After the hanging my man was not the most popular person in Melford: dark looks at the Golden Fleece, cold shoulders in the marketplace. Furrell, however, was a ferret of a man: he had his mind set on Sir Roger’s innocence. He became obsessed with it. I wish,’ she sighed, ‘I had listened more carefully to his rantings and ravings. He never changed the song he sang: Sir Roger did not attack Widow Walmer. He left her cottage peaceably, full of wine and love whilst she was alive and hearty.’

‘And?’ Corbett asked.

‘Furrell went back to the widow’s cottage. Now, you can imagine what happened after her death. The town council seized her property as tax. It’s now been sold to another so you won’t find anything interesting. Anyway, Furrell went back there. From the night of her death, the council put guards and bailiffs on her property. You know the way it is: windows and doors were sealed though that didn’t stop people rifling her hen coops and taking what livestock they could filch. There’s nothing like a funeral,’ she added wistfully, ‘to bring the greed out in people. Now Furrell made very careful enquiries.’ She pointed to the door of her own chamber. ‘Much as I boast about my crossbow and dagger, when I sleep at night I draw the bolts across. Wouldn’t you, master clerk?’

Corbett agreed.

‘Well,’ Sorrel continued eagerly, putting the cup on the floor and using her hands to illustrate what she was saying, ‘on the night she died Widow Walmer entertained Sir Roger, yes?’

Corbett nodded.

‘And when he went, what would she do? She’s drunk wine, she’s made love, she’s tired. If I were her, I would douse the fire and lamps . . .’

‘Fasten the shutters and bolt the door,’ Corbett finished the sentence for her.

‘Exactly! Especially if she was alone. Now, if someone had come to attack, ravish and slay her?’

‘They’d force the door,’ Corbett declared.

‘Furrell found this hadn’t happened. No damage to the doors or shutters. So our widow must have known her visitor.’

‘I am not a lawyer,’ Corbett replied, ‘but I would argue that perhaps Sir Roger paid a second visit. Widow Walmer would let him in.’

‘True,’ she agreed. ‘But why leave in the first place? And, if he was going to kill her, why return, why not do it earlier?’

Corbett cradled the cup in his hands. ‘Then let me act the lawyer, Mistress. For the sake of argument let’s assume that Sir Roger left and did not return. The killer comes tripping down the lane.’ He paused. ‘So what would happen? The murderer tapped on the door, Widow Walmer must have been so assured that she opened it and let her assassin in. So sure of him, she probably turned her back and that’s when he slipped the garrotte string around her throat. I have seen similar murders in London. It doesn’t take someone long to learn how to use the garrotte: it’s silent and very quick. I don’t know,’ he rubbed his face, ‘whether he first made her lose consciousness, then raped her, or just defiled her dead body. What I am sure of is that he didn’t wear a mummer’s mask. Widow Walmer would never have let such a creature into her house. So, whom would she allow in?’

‘The list is endless,’ Sorrel replied. ‘Sir Louis, Taverner Matthew, Repton the reeve, who was sweet on her. Parson Grimstone, Burghesh, Curate Bellen. Even Molkyn and Thorkle can’t be ignored.’

Corbett rocked himself backwards and forwards on the stool. Why would a widow, he wondered, open her door at the dead of night? There again, she was respectable. She had the protection of a man like Sir Roger. If her visitor was a worthy burgess or priest from Melford . . .?

‘The killer,’ he declared, ‘must have used some pretext to get into her house.’

‘That would be easy,’ Sorrel smiled. ‘Widow Walmer was full of wine and happiness. Perhaps the visitor posed as a messenger from Sir Roger?’ She caught Corbett’s sideways glance. ‘I know what you are thinking, clerk!’

‘What am I thinking, Mistress?’

‘Furrell, he was a poacher, wasn’t he? Well liked by Widow Walmer. He was near her cottage that night. Widow Walmer would see him as no threat. Furrell had squeezed the life out of many a pheasant or partridge.’

‘I am thinking that,’ Corbett agreed. ‘And you must have thought the same in the days following Sir Roger’s execution.’

‘That’s why I told Furrell to keep his mouth shut. I pointed out how people might begin to think, perhaps regret Sir Roger’s death and point the finger at him. I told him I didn’t want to hear any more about the business so he kept it to himself.’

‘Did he ever hint that he knew the truth?’

‘Sometimes. Once he mentioned Repton the reeve but, as I have said, he’d grown secretive.’

‘Did he go anywhere? Meet anyone?’

‘If he did, he didn’t tell me.’

Corbett started as he heard a sound from the hall beyond. His horse whinnied. Corbett’s hand went to the dagger in his belt.

‘Oh, you are safe,’ Sorrel reassured him. ‘I’ve sat here many a night, clerk. I can tell one sound from another. We are alone.’ She grinned impishly. ‘Apart from the ghosts.’

‘And the night Furrell disappeared. You said he left one night?’

‘Furrell had stopped talking to me. Oh, we’d discuss the weather, what he’d poached, what goods we should buy. He also avoided the Golden Fleece and drank in other taverns. He’d grown very tense and watchful. He mumbled more and more about the devil. One night he left, all cloaked and hooded.’

‘Was he armed?’

‘Like me, a dagger and a cudgel. He never returned the next morning. I wondered if he had got drunk and was sleeping it off somewhere. Or had he been caught? I went out into Melford but no one had seen him. A week passed. One night I was praying before that statue. Autumn had come early. I remember a mist sweeping through the hall. Do you know, clerk,’ her eyes filled with tears, ‘I just knew Furrell was dead and buried somewhere so I began to wander the countryside. I didn’t believe the rumours. Furrell wouldn’t run away; he wouldn’t leave me or his house.’ She blinked quickly. ‘I am not fey-witted. I don’t really believe in visions or dreams but I used to have nightmares of Furrell’s corpse lying in some shallow, muddy grave all scarred and unhallowed. I remembered what he used to say. How, when he died, he wanted his body churched and blessed; a Mass sung for his soul.’

‘Did you go to see Parson Grimstone?’

‘Yes I did. Him and Master Burghesh were very kind. The parson said he’d sing a Mass for him and refused the coin I offered. I still want to find his grave. I’ve discovered many things - that’s what I want to show you - but not Furrell.’

‘Many things?’ Corbett queried.

‘Come with me.’

Sorrel put her cup down. She took a torch from the wall, handed it to Corbett and grasped one herself. She led him back into the hall, across the courtyard and in through a small stone-fretted door.

‘Take care,’ she warned as she led him up some weather-worn steps.

Corbett followed warily. The steps were narrow, steep and slippery. They reached a stairwell. Corbett steeled his nerves against the scampering rats. At last they reached a long, narrow room very similar to the hall. The roof was gone, the plaster walls soaked by the wind and rain. Corbett could tell by the shape of the empty windows, the small platform at the far end and the recesses in the walls, that this must have been the manor chapel.

‘I want to show you something.’

A bird, disturbed by their arrival, abruptly burst from where it was nesting in the rafters and flew up into the night sky. Corbett closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He fought back the waves of weariness. He should be back at the Golden Fleece but, on their journey into Melford, Corbett had repeated to Ranulf and Chanson, time and again, how quickly they must act.

‘We must take people by surprise,’ he’d told them, ‘not give them time to concoct stories.’

‘Master clerk, are you asleep?’

Corbett opened his eyes. The torch felt heavy, he lowered it and smiled in apology.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Sorrel was now taking away bricks from the wall. Corbett joined her; he realised that a recess lay beyond. Sorrel told him to stand back and pulled out a makeshift platter.

‘Part of a doorway,’ she explained.

She threw back the dirty linen sheet. Corbett stared in disbelief at the skeleton which sprawled there. He lowered the torch. The bones were yellowing with age. The jaw sagged, the blackened teeth had crumbled, faint tufts of hair still clung to the skull. He muttered a prayer, moved the bones and glimpsed the tawdry, green-tinted bracelet lying beneath.

‘What is this?’ he murmured. ‘A former inhabitant of Beauchamp Place?’

‘No, no,’ she replied. ‘All its owners were buried in the parish graveyard. I put this here.’

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

‘Oh come, master clerk.’ Sorrel took the bracelet from his fingers. ‘You know the old law. Whoever finds the corpse falls immediately under suspicion. You know what they’d say? “Were you involved in this, Sorrel? Is this the work of your man, Furrell? Is that why he fled?”

‘They’ll say the same if they come here.’

Sorrel shook her head. ‘I’ll be sly. I’ll say I never knew the bones were here. I know nothing of them. Perhaps they belonged to a lady or maid who once lived here.’

‘So, you know it’s a woman?’

Sorrel closed her eyes. ‘Of course it’s a woman, hence the bracelet. I also found a cheap ring, the remnants of a girdle. I kept them as treasure.’

Corbett, still holding the torch, sat down on the cold damp floor.

‘But why, Sorrel? What is this skeleton doing here?’

She took the torch out of his hand and stuck it into a niche in the wall; she did the same with hers, then she made herself comfortable before him.

‘You’ll tell no one,’ she warned. ‘I won’t be troubled because of this. I am as innocent as a child.’

‘Tell me,’ Corbett insisted.

Sorrel rubbed her face in her hands. ‘Furrell was a very good poacher. He knew all the trackways and wood lore. When I used to go hunting with him, he’d always tell me to stay away from this place or that. I asked him why. That’s when he told me how Melford used to be, about the sacrifices. He tried to frighten me with stories of the dead wandering the woods.’ She laughed abruptly. ‘He just wanted me to be safe on dark nights, indoors by the fire.’

Corbett watched her curiously. Here he was in this haunted, unhallowed place, the sky visible through the beams above, the cold wind sending the flames dancing. Before him the remains of some poor woman and this widow telling eerie stories about Melford’s dark past.

‘Anyway,’ Sorrel continued, ‘I paid him no heed. I told you people talk about the murders, other women disappearing. I saw it as no business of mine.’

‘Until after Furrell disappeared?’

‘Yes. Now I reasoned that Furrell would never enter someone’s house. The night he disappeared he didn’t visit the Golden Fleece or any tavern or alehouse in or around Melford. I reasoned that if he had been killed, it must have been out in the countryside and his corpse secretly buried. I began to search.’ She bit her lip. ‘Shall we put the remains back?’

‘In a while,’ Corbett replied softly. ‘Continue your story, Mistress.’

‘I won’t be held responsible?’

‘You will not be held responsible,’ Corbett confirmed. ‘But,’ he added wryly, ‘I wish you to add flesh to the bones.’

She laughed at the macabre joke. ‘Furrell was once an outlaw. He knew all about Sherwood and the other great forests north of the Trent. He told me how outlaws, if they killed a traveller, would never take the body far but bury it near the road or trackway where they’d planned their ambush. The places Furrell told me to stay away from were always near a trackway or path. Now, you have seen Devil’s Oak and Falmer Lane. If you were a bird, master clerk, yes . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘Imagine yourself a falcon flying above the meadows and fields around Melford. Go on, close your eyes!’

Corbett did so. ‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘The day is not clear but grey and overcast.’

‘Good,’ Sorrel agreed. ‘Now, remember the fields on either side of Falmer Lane - they roll and dip, don’t they? The lanes and trackways are deep, more like trenches through the countryside. That’s what Furrell called them.’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve thought of that,’ Corbett agreed. ‘It’s a vision enhanced by the high hedgerows.’

‘That’s the work of the sheep farmers—’

Corbett opened his eyes. ‘What are you implying?’ he interrupted.