'When I was younger, I knew him.'
'Edwin will have no papist in this house. He even gives the girls religious books, encourages them to study the Bible. Such ideas are a little advanced for me.' She waved a hand at her son. 'Answer his questions, Edwin,' she said brusquely. 'Tell him everything. You too, girls.'
'Sabine and Avice have had enough, Mother, surely?' Edwin's voice was pleading.
'No. The girls, too.' Sir Edwin's daughters cast identical wide blue gazes at their grandmother, apparently as much under the old woman's spell as their father.
'We must have all this finished,' she continued. 'Perhaps you can imagine, Master Shardlake, the misery Ralph's death at Elizabeth's hands has brought our small family. Three weeks ago we were happy, with fine expectations. Look at us now. And Joseph taking Elizabeth's part makes matters worse. Perhaps you may imagine our feelings about him. We will not have Joseph in our house again after today.' She spoke calmly, evenly, without turning her head to her oldest son. Joseph lowered his head like a naughty child. I thought what inner courage it must have taken to defy this beldame.
'Am I right,' Sir Edwin asked, in a deep voice very like his brother's, 'that if you think Elizabeth is guilty you will cease to represent her? That those are the rules of your trade?'
'Not quite, sir,' I replied. 'If I know she is guilty, then I must and shall cease my representation.' I paused. 'May I tell you how the matter seems to me?'
'Very well.'
I went over the circumstances as I knew them: the girls hearing the scream, looking from the window, then rushing into the garden; Needler coming out and finding Ralph's body in the well. I felt sorry for the two girls having to listen to the terrible story once more. They cast their heads down again, kept their faces expressionless.
'But you see,' I concluded, 'no one actually saw Elizabeth push the boy into the well. It seems to me he might have slipped.'
'Then why does she not say so?' the old woman snapped.
'Because she knows questioning would bring the truth from her,' Edwin said with sudden fierceness. 'Of course she killed Ralph! You didn't have her in your house nine months, sir; you didn't see the viciousness she was capable of!' His mother leaned across and put a hand on his arm and he sat back, sighing angrily.
'Can you tell me more about that?' I asked. 'I only know what Joseph has told me.'
Sir Edwin shot an angry glance at his brother. 'She was malapert, disobedient and violent. Yes, sir, violent, though she was but a girl.'
'From the very start?'
'She was surly from the day she came, after my brother's funeral. We were prepared to make allowances as she'd lost everything. I was prepared to share all I had and I am not a poor man, though when I came to London I'd no more than Joseph has.' Sir Edwin's chest swelled momentarily with pride, even in the midst of his grief and anger. 'I told the girls to make her welcome, teach her the lute and virginal, take her out visiting. Much thanks they got. Tell him, Sabine.'
The older girl lifted her head and turned her doll-like eyes on me. 'She was horrible to us, sir,' she said quietly. 'She said she had more to do than tinkle on a music box.'
'We offered to take her to call on our friends,' Avice added. 'To banquets, to meet young gentlemen, but after one or two visits she said she didn't want to come again, called our friends mannered fools.'
'We did try, sir,' Sabine said earnestly.
'I know you did, girls,' their grandmother said. 'You did all you could.'
I remembered what Joseph had told me about Elizabeth's bookish interests, her love of the farm. She was clearly a girl of independent spirit, different from her cousins, who I guessed would happily limit themselves to womanly interests, aiming only for good marriages. But lack of common interests could scarcely have led to murder.
'After a while she'd barely speak to us,' Avice added sadly.
Her sister nodded. 'Yes, she took to staying in her room.'
'She had her own room?' That surprised me. In most households unmarried girls would sleep together in the maidens' chamber.
'This is a large house,' Sir Edwin said haughtily. 'I am able to provide separate rooms for all my family. In Elizabeth's case that was just as well.'
'She'd never have slept with us,' Sabine said. 'Why, soon it got so that if either of us went to ask her to join in things, she'd shout at us to go away.' She flushed. 'As time went on she started using bad words to us.'
'She lost all decorum,' Sir Edwin said. 'She was scarce like a girl at all.'
The old woman leaned forward, dominating the room again. 'More and more she seemed to hate us. At meals you couldn't get a civil word from her. In the end she said she'd take her food in her room and we let her; her presence at table spoiled our meals. When you are blind, Master Shardlake, you are more sensitive to atmospheres, and the atmosphere around Elizabeth grew dark with unreasoning hate for us. As dark as sin.'
'She hit me once,' Sabine said. 'That was in the garden. She took to sitting out on the bench on her own when the weather grew warm. One day she was sitting reading one of her books there and I went and asked her if she would like to come picking mayflowers outside the City walls. And she just picked up her book and started hitting me about the head with it, using terrible words. I ran away to the house.'
'I saw that myself,' Sir Edwin said. 'I was working in my study and I saw Elizabeth fly at my poor daughter from the window. I told Elizabeth to keep to her room for the rest of the day. I should have known then what she might do. I blame myself.' Suddenly he buried his head in his hands and his voice broke. 'My Ralph, my boykin. I saw him lying there, dead and stinking-' He sobbed, a heartbreaking sound.
The girls lowered their heads again and the old woman's jaw set hard. 'You see the horrors you raise for us, Master Shardlake.' She turned to Sir Edwin. 'Come, my son, fortitude. Tell him how Elizabeth treated Ralph.'
The mercer wiped his face with a handkerchief. He glared at Joseph, who seemed near to tears again himself, then at me. 'I thought at first she might like Ralph better than my daughters. He was another one who went his own way, bless the imp. And he did try to befriend her, he was pleased to have someone new in the house. To begin with they seemed to get on welclass="underline" she went for a couple of country walks with him, they played chess together. But then she turned against him too. One evening, about a month after she came, I remember we were in here before dinner and Ralph asked Elizabeth to play a game of chess. She agreed, though in a surly way. He was soon winning, forward boy that he was. He leaned forward and took her rook, and said, "There. I have him, that rook will peck out no more eyes from my men." And Elizabeth threw the board up in the air with a great cry of anger, sending the pieces all over the room, and landed Ralph a great clout on the head. She left him sobbing and ran to her room.'
'It was a terrible scene,' the old woman said.
'We told Ralph to keep out of her way after that,' Sir Edwin went on. 'But the boy loved the garden, as why should he not, and she often sat there.'
'They may say Elizabeth is mad,' the old woman said. 'If she won't speak, no one can be sure. But I say it was wicked jealousy, jealousy because her cousins were more accomplished than her and our household a better one than the home she'd lost.' She turned her face to me. 'I felt and heard it all, the growth of her unreasoning hatred and violence, for I stay at home while Edwin is in the City and the girls go visiting.' She paused with a sigh. 'Well, Master Shardlake, you have heard us. Do you still doubt Elizabeth threw Ralph down that well?'