The Herring in the Library (16 page)

‘The garden wall would be easy to climb,’ I said. ‘It would seem likely that the intruder dropped the beanie here as he was going over the wall, or maybe as he was looking for
the easiest place to climb it.’

The spot was well hidden from the house, as it was from the rest of the garden. This would be a good place to slip over the wall – a good place to vanish afterwards. I had no intention of
climbing over it myself, but, placing my hands on the smooth flints that topped it and one shoe in a convenient gap lower down, I pulled myself up far enough to see what was on the other side. A
muddy footpath hugged it for twenty or thirty yards, coming from (as far as I could tell) the main road and veering away upwards and onto the downs in the other direction.

‘I’ll give you a leg up if you want,’ offered Dave from behind me.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said, dropping back down. ‘Where does that path go?’

‘Storrington, I’d say. Can’t think why anyone would go there that way, though, when there’s a perfectly good road. Unless they was poaching or something.’

‘It would take you there through the woods,’ I said. ‘You could slip away unnoticed.’

‘Who’s going to notice you on the road anyway?’ asked Dave. ‘You drive past some geezer walking along the grass verge. You don’t see his face or nothing. Or he
could leave his car in the village – round the side of Winton’s store. No point in slogging over the downs to ruddy Storrington. It’d take you the better part of an
hour.’

‘What does it matter whether he went to Storrington or to Worthing or to anywhere else?’ interrupted Annabelle. ‘The point is that we have two reliable witnesses who saw the
man, and now this evidence that he really was here. Ethelred, we should phone the police now and tell them what you have discovered. They can take over from here.’

‘Whatever you wish—’ I began to say.

‘We haven’t talked to Gillian Maggs,’ said Elsie.

‘True but—’ I said.

‘I am sure that she saw nothing,’ said Annabelle.

‘Not much effort to give her a call,’ said Elsie. ‘Probably still time to do it tonight.’

‘She goes to bed very early,’ said Annabelle.

‘We could call her early tomorrow then,’ said Elsie.

They stood facing each other. Neither appeared to be blinking.

‘I’ll ring her myself,’ said Annabelle, ‘and ask her to phone you tomorrow.’

‘So, we’ll delay going to the police?’ I asked.

‘Entirely as you wish, Ethelred,’ said Annabelle. She turned sharply on her heel and strode off towards the house.

‘There’s gratitude,’ said Elsie.

‘She must be very tired,’ I pointed out.

‘Very. Nice beanie though,’ she added, pointing to the object that I still held in my hand. ‘That would keep you warm and dry.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Elsie gave me one of her despairing looks.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Time for us to go home,’ she said.

‘Don’t you need to get back to London?’

‘Thought I might stay another day,’ she said. ‘The weather’s improving now.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

And she gave me another despairing look.

The Holy Sister

Thomas made the return journey to Muntham Court without an escort and with the bare minimum of instructions. More snow had fallen while he had been at the castle, but now
the sun shone from an ice-blue sky. His horse’s hooves crunched through the snow, following a long, snaking trail left by an earlier traveller – a traveller who hopefully knew roughly
where he was going. At Washington he asked for further directions. By late afternoon he was back at Findon.

‘My lady has gone to Chichester on urgent business,’ said a servant. ‘But we have another guest, caught in last night’s storm and happily still with us – a holy
sister, from a convent near London. She is warming herself by the fire. If you would like to join her, I will bring you some mulled wine.’

Thomas had rarely felt comfortable around holiness. To attend the occasional Mass was a necessity, but he was as happy avoiding priests as not. A nun or an abbess, or whatever she was, was
likely to be dull company for a long winter evening. Thomas had not examined the state of his soul recently, but he was fairly sure that it was in good order and
did not require maintenance
at present. Still, it would be impolite not to greet the lady in a suitably decorous manner and perhaps ask for her blessing.

She proved to be a small, rather rotund figure dressed in a pale grey habit and white wimple. Tucked into her girdle was a rosary made of green beads. Attached to the beads was a gold brooch,
consisting of a crowned letter A and some words that Thomas could not make out. So intent was she on what she was eating, she did not notice Thomas until he was a few feet away.

‘God be with you, Mother,’ he began.

The Prioress looked up. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘these honey cakes are the pilgrim’s pyjamas and no mistake. They say too many honey cakes make you fat, but with my
build you can carry a few extra pounds without it showing. Also the order makes you wear dresses that look like an old sack, so there’s no point in maintaining a size VIII figure underneath
it. Are you Master Thomas, by any chance?’

‘Yes,’ said Thomas.

‘Lady Catherine asked me to pray for you,’ she said, stuffing the last few crumbs into her mouth. ‘St Peter’s pastries! – I knew I’d forgotten to do something.
Sorry about that. Still, no harm done by the look of things.’

‘I have been locked in a dungeon and threatened with torture,’ said Thomas. ‘A prayer would have been good.’

‘Let’s say I owe you a couple of Hail Marys then,’ said the Prioress, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. ‘Now where’s that dolted daffe with the
wine?’

And Thomas was sent to look for the dolted daffe.

‘So, run that past me again,’ said the Prioress.

She and Thomas were sitting by the dying embers of the fire in Lady Muntham’s private quarters. The dregs of the pitcher of mulled wine were now only just warm.

‘As I said, my master, Geoffrey Chaucer, requested that I should take a message to Sir Edmund and a poem to his wife.’

‘Did that strike you as odd?’

‘No, I am often sent on errands of one sort or another.’

‘To Sussex in the middle of winter?’

‘Rarely, I grant you . . .’

‘Go on.’

‘I reached here yesterday morning. I found Sir Edmund about to set off hunting. I explained that I had a message for him, with the King’s seal upon it. He took it, broke the seal
and read it.’

‘Then?’

‘Then he asked me what the message meant.’

‘And?’

‘I was unable to explain. There was very little to it. Just a request to watch the coast and guard against those who would bring goods into the realm without paying the necessary
duties.’

‘Not the most urgent of messages?’

‘Arguably not.’

‘Might have waited until the spring?’

‘The collection of the correct duties on wine, spices and so on and so forth is of course of the utmost importance . . . but, yes, I would have said it could have waited until the snow
had melted.’

‘What was the exact wording of this important message?’

‘I don’t remember. Sir Edmund read it, then gave me the parchment to read myself, then I . . . then I tucked it inside my robe . . . and here it is!’ Thomas drew the folded
sheet from inside his robe, where it had sat for a day and a night and a day.

‘“The King sends greetings to his trusty servant Sir Edmund de Muntham,”’ read the Prioress, who seemed to have acquired the parchment. ‘“I require you to
watch well our coast of Sussex as you do value your life and chattels, and to bring to justice those that land wine or other goods without the payment of such taxes as are due unto our Royal
Person.” Not much there. What did you say the Sheriff thought of the letter?’

‘He thought that it must be a piece of nonsense that I had concocted.’

‘But just you and Sir Edmund read the letter?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So how did the Sheriff know what was in it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘And the poem. You wrote that yourself?’

‘No, it was Master Geoffrey Chaucer. A great poet.’

‘So you didn’t know what that said either?’

‘Yes, I read it. In fact, I tidied it up a bit as I copied it out. I can still remember the poem, if you’d like to hear it.’

‘Try me,’ said the Prioress, though not in the manner of one who expects a pleasant treat.

Master Thomas coughed and began to recite.

‘St Oswald’s oatmeal!’ exclaimed the holy sister. ‘What tedious nonsense! Some poor pathetic male whingeing about being treated badly by his mistress. He’s
probably only after one thing, and it isn’t either of her eyes. It’s enough to make you become a nun, except I am one already. You men are a bigger help to religion than you sometimes
imagine.’

‘As you know,’ said Master Thomas, ‘the convention of courtly love is that the lover can expect nothing except perhaps one brief smile that is recompense for many years of
pain and devoted service.’

‘And marriage?’

‘Well, obviously he can get married – to anybody except the lady in question, who must remain unattainable.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It doesn’t sound much fun for anyone.’

‘Not much.’

‘Hold on, here’s a thought. What if the hidden message was not in the sealed document for Sir Edmund, but in the poem?’

‘It could have been. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess it could have been an acrostic. Or maybe the message might be hidden in a few key words. The problem with that, of course,
is that I changed some of it . . . I cut a few lines that didn’t really seem necessary, for example.’

‘But Chaucer knew you had made changes?’

‘No, not really.’

‘So a coded message saying: “This is to warn you that a man is coming to kill your husband,” could have got changed during your redrafting to one saying: “This man is
coming to kill your husband.”’

‘That seems a little far-fetched.’

‘You’re right. Trying to send concealed messages in a poem is a really bad idea. Who would have wanted Sir Edmund dead?’

‘Well, the Duke of Gloucester, allegedly. And maybe the Duke of Lancaster. Possibly Simon de Burley too. The court’s a hotbed of intrigue these days.’

‘Tricky. Perhaps the more important question then is: Who set you up?’

No, the only important question now is: Can I get out of here and safely back to London?’

‘But a murder has been committed.’

‘So it would seem.’

‘And the Sheriff seems intent on a cover-up.’

‘Yes, I would have thought that was likely.’

‘In which case, the culprit may go free and some poor innocent man will be hanged.’

‘The former certainly – though not necessarily the latter. I’ll need to ask for directions to Horsham. I can pick up the London road from there.’

‘And you are planning to let him get away with it?’

‘Put simply, yes, I am planning to do just that.’

‘Call yourself a man?’

‘My wife asks me the same question from time to time. Since she implies she already knows the answer, I rarely trouble her with a response.’

The Prioress fixed Thomas with a stare. ‘Has it occurred to you that Lady Catherine may be in danger?’

‘Is she?’

‘By St Stephen’s sausages, I fear she is! So, Master Thomas, don’t you think you should do something about it?’

‘Such as?’

‘We’ll find out what is going on and bring the murderer to justice.’

‘But how?’

‘Let’s go back to the beginning. How exactly did all this start?’

I scrolled back to the opening of the chapter and reread it. The Prioress was worryingly familiar. Whoever it was, however, she was not Chaucer’s Prioress. I took down my
copy of Chaucer from the shelf. If this was Chaucer’s Prioress, then her greatest oath ought to be ‘by St Loy’ – these food-related expletives were innocent enough, but
incongruous coming from one who was (surely?) committed to frugality and abstinence. She should also ‘let no morsel from hir lippes falle’, rather than spray honey cake in all
directions. On the other hand, she definitely resembled somebody I knew.

‘I hope you’re keeping it simple,’ said Elsie. ‘No meta-fictional cleverness?’

‘Heaven forefend,’ I said.

‘And no poxy flashbacks.’

‘Maybe just the odd one,’ I said. ‘I need to know how the story starts.’

The Flower of Cities All

It was, thought Master Thomas, merely a question of whether the soot fell faster than the snow or vice versa. A snowfall overnight, when the fires were dead or smouldering,
caused the early-morning city to appear briefly as a bride – robed in virginal white, though a little frostier than a husband might wish. But, if the snow fell during the day, it was at once
mixed with bituminous smuts and was grey, even before the carts had rolled through it and the chamber pots had been emptied on top of it, and the stray dogs had pissed in whatever remained. It
wasn’t a good plan to slip in the snow in London, because a lot of what was on the ground hadn’t exactly come out of the sky.