The Saint John's Fern (28 page)

I stared at her in stupefaction. At last, ‘Are you absolutely certain,’ I asked, ‘that Beric has never worn this ornament?’

‘I’m positive,’ was the answer. ‘I recognize it. It’s Berenice’s.’

Against all reason, I found myself believing her. Why, however, when confronted with the jewel, had Mistress Trenowth identified it as belonging to Beric? Yet even as I silently asked myself the question, I recalled the way in which the housekeeper had hesitated as she looked at the brooch, and the constraint in her voice as she made her reply. But why should she lie? Why should she wish to protect her late master’s murderer? Then I remembered the Widow Cooper’s words. ‘Over fifteen years Mathilda looked after that man … and then to be left nothing in his will! It’s disgraceful and so I told her, although she pretends she doesn’t care. But, of course, she does. She’s bound to!’ And she had. Mistress Trenowth must deliberately have misled me out of resentment.

Had she guessed that the murderer might be Berenice dressed in her brother’s clothes right from the beginning? Or was I letting my imagination run away with me again? Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe Beric had been unable to find his hat that fateful morning and had borrowed his sister’s instead …

But another memory was surfacing in my mind. Robert Steward had told me that the black velvet cap he wore in bed had been given to him by Berenice soon after her brother’s disappearance. Yet the person I had seen outside the Bird of Passage Inn had been wearing just such a piece of headgear! A flat, dark cap that fitted its owner perfectly. But Beric’s cap had been for some months in the possession of the former steward. It followed, therefore – it had to – that it was not Beric whom I’d seen.

*   *   *

To this day, I cannot remember bidding farewell to Mistress Trim and her daughter. I suppose I must have done so, and also taken my cudgel from where I’d propped it against the wall, before I quit the cottage. But my next recollection is of sitting beside a stream, staring into the depths of the clear running water as it purled over its rocky bed. I can still remember the delicate, opalescent colours of the pebbles.

Gradually, my rioting thoughts began to steady, to form a pattern that was at last beginning to make some sense of the story of Beric Gifford. I recalled, as I had done once before, Mistress Trenowth telling me how happy Berenice had been when she told her great-uncle of her betrothal. ‘She was obviously very much in love,’ the housekeeper had said. But this had not been my impression when I had seen Berenice and Bartholomew Champernowne together. Indeed, my feeling had been that she rather despised him. So who was really the object of her affections?

I dipped one hand in the stream, letting the water run like satin between my fingers. An idea was forming uneasily at the back of my mind and for a while I tried to repulse it. But it would not be kept at bay, the unwelcome facts relentlessly pushing their way forward. It was Berenice, not her brother, who had taken such a fancy to Katherine Glover that she had dismissed her own maid in order to create a place for the girl, not merely in the household, but as her close companion. Beric, that young man of whom most people had something good to say, had only fallen in love with Katherine after she had gone to live at Valletort Manor. Moreover, he was spoken of as the one who was the most in love of the two. But was Katherine Glover the beloved not only of Beric, but also of Berenice?

My mind jibbed at the idea, for such a liaison was against all the teachings of the Church and punishable by death. Yet I knew that these relationships did exist between both men and women, (and had, indeed, sensed something of them whilst I was a novice at Glastonbury Abbey). The young girl with whom I had spoken yesterday, on my way to Valletort Manor, claimed to have seen Katherine Glover and Beric on the day of the murder ‘All over one another, they were, pawing each other and kissing until it made me feel sick.’ But supposing the person she had seen dressed in male clothing, with blood stains on the front of the tunic, had not been Beric, but Berenice!

A horse and rider clopped by on the path behind me, the man nodding a perfunctory greeting. I barely acknowledged it, however, for the sight of them had set up yet another train of thought in my mind. All those people who had seen Beric on the morning of the murder had mentioned that he was not entirely in control of his mount; but Simon and Ivo Fettiplace had spoken of him as the perfect horseman. ‘There’s never been the horse foaled that he couldn’t ride. Never a second’s trouble with any of them that I’ve ever seen.’ Until now, I had, like everyone else, concluded that Beric’s excited and agitated state had somehow conveyed itself to the animal, or made him less able than usual to master the creature. But might there not be a simpler explanation? If it had been Berenice riding Flavius that morning, she might well have found a little difficulty in handling him. Mistress Fettiplace gave her the credit of being a fine horsewoman, but had admitted that she was not quite as good a rider as her brother. ‘Very nearly,’ had been her reply when I had put that question to her.

And then there was the thumb ring worn by Bevis Godsey. He had lied about how it came into his possession, and when he realized that he must have given himself away by his own stupidity, he had sheered off in a hurry, before I was awake, leaving me to wonder why Beric would have given him such a valuable jewel, or what the latter might have done to earn it. But I now knew Bevis to be a kinsman of Katherine Glover, one with the same initials as Beric. Perhaps, when he had called at Valletort Manor, she had given it to him. But why? More importantly, why would Beric allow her to make such a gift? And where had he really been ever since the murder?

I withdrew my almost numbed hand from the stream and dried it on the grass before settling down to consider what might have happened on the morning that Oliver Capstick was murdered; but I soon realized that, in order to get a true picture, I must go back in time to the previous day. On that occasion, Beric, incensed beyond measure by his great-uncle’s criticism of his intended bride, and also by his attempt to coerce him into marrying Jenny Haygarth, had attacked Master Capstick in a fury of red-hot rage by trying to throttle him. But his own better nature, as much, I suspected, as Mistress Trenowth’s intervention, had prevented him from committing murder. He had told the old man to alter his will and be damned to him, and had ridden home to Valletort Manor, safe, as he thought, in the knowledge of Katherine’s affection.

So far I was reasonably sure of my ground. But what had followed? Had he discovered that Berenice and Katherine were really lovers? Had he gone searching for them, anxious to tell them what had taken place, only to find them locked in one another’s embrace? I remembered the tree-tent in the woods. Was that where they had lain together, out of the sight of prying eyes? And if my surmise proved to be correct, what would have been Beric’s reaction? Disbelief, horror, the sense of betrayal – surely he would have felt all these things? And when he had recovered from the first awful shock, when the truth had finally sunk in, would he not, in his anger and humiliation, have revealed all that he had been prepared to sacrifice for Katherine Glover, even consenting to his sister becoming their great-uncle’s sole heir? And would he not then have threatened to return at once to Plymouth, to tell Oliver Capstick the truth and to reinstate himself in his kinsman’s regard by consenting to marry Jenny Haygarth?

Or might he, in his bitter rage, have attacked the women, so that they were forced to defend themselves? Two to one, they could well have overpowered him. But then, of course, they must have begun to realize what a danger this furiously angry man was to them and their forbidden love. There was only one way to make sure of his silence, and that was to kill him! It was possible that Beric’s death had been accidental, but in the light of what must have happened next, I doubted it.

For what happened had surely been Berenice’s decision to murder her great-uncle and enter into her inheritance without delay. The next morning, therefore, early, dressed, except for the hat, in her brother’s clothes and mounted on Flavius, she had ridden to Plymouth, bludgeoned the old man to death while he slept and ridden home again. She had no hope of escaping notice but to be seen from a distance was an essential part of her plan. Beric would be blamed for Oliver’s murder while she and Katherine played the parts of horrified, but still devoted, sister and betrothed.

But why had Bartholomew Champernowne had to be killed? Was it possible that he had found out about Berenice’s love for Katherine, or was on the verge of suspecting the truth? In that case, where would this murderous course end? For the two women must stand in constant danger of discovery, the more so because Berenice took foolish and unnecessary risks, like dressing in her brother’s clothes and riding to a midnight rendezvous with Katherine at the Bird of Passage Inn.

And yet they had a sort of protection so long as it was widely believed that Beric had not fled abroad, but was eating Saint John’s fern in order to gain invisibility and stay close to his betrothed. And that, I saw with sudden clarity, was perhaps the real reason why it had been necessary to remove Bartholomew Champernowne. I had told Berenice that he had been going about the countryside trying to force witnesses to change their testimony; to say that it was not Beric whom they had seen on the day of Oliver Capstick’s murder. And if Beric was exonerated, the finger of suspicion would inevitably begin to point at the person who had benefited most from Oliver Capstick’s death: Berenice, herself.

Chapter Twenty

Even if I was right, and Beric was dead, what chance had I of proving it? His body could be buried anywhere in the acres of woodland that surrounded Valletort Manor. What hope did I have of locating the exact spot? But I had to try for Jack Golightly’s sake. I couldn’t let an innocent man go to the gallows for want of effort on my part.

I got to my feet and wandered a short way along the bank of the stream, lost in thought and unaware of the direction in which I was walking. I was only vaguely conscious that I was leaving Modbury behind me and plunging once more into the belt of trees that swathed the countryside between town and sea; and I failed to notice the all-embracing silence until it was broken by a voice, addressing me by name and returning me abruptly to my surroundings.

‘We meet again, Roger Chapman, but you’re a fair way off the main coastal track.’

It was the swineherd. ‘God’s Fingernails, but you startled me,’ I accused him breathlessly. The three pigs brushed past me, preoccupied with their never ceasing quest for food. ‘How did you find your goodwife?’ I added more calmly.

‘Fair! Fair!’ was the cheerful response. ‘She’s well enough, at all events, to get up from her sickbed and leave the house in order to catch up with the latest gossip. As a matter of fact,’ he went on, lunging with his stick after one of the pigs that showed a tendency to stray too far into the trees, ‘she’d already heard rumours of the murder. One of the local woodsmen had called at the cottage to tell her what he knew.’ He regarded me curiously. ‘Are you feeling all right? I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve said.’

‘I was remembering a dream I had about you and your pigs,’ I said slowly, ‘while I was dozing today, after my dinner. The animals were digging under a tree and … and … Yes, I can see it clearly now!’ My excitement began to mount. ‘That’s what they were doing this morning, just before we parted company, all three of them rootling around under an oak as though their lives depended upon it. And you said … Let me see … You said what vicious creatures pigs are. You said never get on the wrong side of them or they’ll attack you. They’re partial to human flesh.’

‘Well, so I might have done,’ the swineherd admitted, puzzled. ‘I don’t recollect saying anything of the sort, mind you, but if I did, it’s nothing but the truth. Nothing to get worked up about.’

‘Do you recall the whereabouts of that oak tree?’ I demanded, laying an urgent hand on his arm. ‘Think, man! Think! I know it’s a lot to ask, but—’

‘I dare say I could find it again if I had to,’ he replied, freeing himself somewhat peevishly from my grip. ‘You’re right. It is close to where we said goodbye, and that was within fifty yards or so west of the main track to the sea. But why? What’s the purpose of all this?’

‘I’m not certain yet,’ I answered. ‘It’s just that … Well, it’s just that I believe something may be buried there. Are we any distance from your cottage? Do you have a spade that I could borrow?’

‘I might.’ He paused, frowning, reluctant to retrace his steps, but consumed by the curiosity that my words had aroused in him. ‘You’ll have to keep your eye on the pigs, though, while I fetch it. And don’t let ’em stray too deep into the woods, or we’ll never see hide nor hair of them again, dratted creatures! Here,’ he added, ‘you’ll need my stick. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

He was as good as his word, returning with a stout spade after less than ten minutes, plainly relieved to see all three of his charges still within view. He handed me the implement to carry, retrieved his stick and, with words of encouragement to the animals, continued along the track that we were on, myself close at his heels.

He was obviously familiar with all the woodland paths for, within a very short space of time, and after taking a number of extremely narrow, tortuous and occasionally almost nonexistent trails, we emerged on to the main road leading from Modbury to the sea. Some thirty or so yards further on, we turned at a right angle along another track, and I recognised the spot where I had taken leave of my companion earlier in the day. We proceeded a little further in a westerly direction and then, like a small miracle, the largest of the pigs, the one my companion referred to as Jupiter, left the path and trotted off into the trees towards an ancient oak. Here, after only a few seconds, he began snuffling and digging at its base, the other two pigs lending him their assistance in a great state of excitement.

‘What is it?’ the swineherd asked uneasily. ‘What is it they’ve found?’