Corbett pressed it into her hand, and, unsheathing his dagger, he walked away down the darkened alleyway. At the shop next to the apothecary’s he stopped and stared up at the rotting wood and crumbling plaster, before knocking on the door. A toothless old hag answered, her eyes small black buttons in a yellowing, lined face. A regular nightbird, Corbett thought, one of the old hags who rented out chambers to street-walkers, took their money and turned a blind eye to what they did. Of course, at first, the old hag knew nothing but, when coins changed hands, she suddenly remembered everything. Corbett listened to her chatter. The hag told him nothing he hadn’t already learnt from the whore but, for another coin, she showed Corbett Agnes’s chamber. There was nothing there; the dead girl’s possessions, together with every stick of furniture, had been moved and the clerk realised the old woman was just playing him like a landed fish.
Outside in the street, Corbett leaned against the wall of the house and stared around. The place was filthy. He glimpsed things in the sewer, floating on top of the greenish water, which made his stomach turn and he pinched his nose at the terrible smell from the refuse piled high against the walls. He felt sure he was being watched and glanced cautiously up the narrow alleyways which fed into Cock Lane. He walked a little way up the street, his hand against the wall of the house, pulling it away quickly as his fingers touched something warm and furry. He turned, muttering a curse at the rat which scuttled between the crevices, then walked back to the apothecary’s. Yes, he had seen it: the small shadow in one of the alleyways.
‘This is going to be an expensive morning,’ he murmured. He took another coin out of his purse and held it up. ‘I know you are there, boy!’ he called out. ‘You still watch the house don’t you? I mean no harm.’ He spoke softly, wishing to avoid the prostitutes still gathered at the mouth of Cock Lane and the hungry-eyed faces which peered down from the casement windows. ‘Come here, boy!’ Corbett urged. ‘You will be well rewarded.’
The beggar lad crept out of the alleyway. He was barefoot, his face so thin his large eyes made him look like some baby owl frightened by the light. He nervously plucked at the rough sacking which served as a cloak. He thrust his little hand forward.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The voice was reedy and Corbett recognised the professional beggar. The poor child was probably despatched on to the streets by his parents to beg for alms. Corbett crouched in the doorway of the apothecary’s shop and waved the lad forward. The boy, wary of the dangers of the street, edged cautiously near, his eyes glued on the silver piece. Corbett quickly reached out, seized the boy’s thin arm and felt a twinge of compassion. All skin and bone; how long, he thought, would this child last in the next severe winter?
‘Come on!’ he urged swiftly. ‘I mean you no harm. Look, here’s a silver piece. I’ll give you another if you tell me the truth.’
The boy sucked the knuckle of his free hand.
‘You knew Agnes, the girl who died?’
The boy nodded.
‘What was she frightened of?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did she stay in her room?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘A man came.’
‘What kind of man?’
‘A priest, a brother. He was tall and wore a cowl, but he left very quickly.’
‘And what else happened?’
‘Agnes gave me a message.’
‘What was it?’
‘Just a scrap of parchment, sir. I was to take it to Westminster.’
‘To whom?’
‘I don’t know.’ The large eyes welled with tears. ‘I did something wrong. I didn’t mean to but I was hungry. I dropped the message in a sewer and spent the money the girl gave me at a bread shop.’
Corbett smiled. ‘Can you read?’
‘No, but Agnes could write. She was clever. She could read a few words and write some. She said if I kept guarding her door she would teach me one day.’
‘But you don’t know to whom the message was to be sent?’
‘I think it was to a woman?’
‘Why?’
‘Because Agnes told me to take it to the Chapter House late in the afternoon.’ The boy screwed his face up. ‘Agnes said she would know.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, Master, honestly. Please,’ the boy whined, ‘let go my wrist. You promised me a coin.’
Corbett handed it over, the boy scampered away.
‘If you are ever hungry,’ Corbett called out, watching the pathetic stick-like legs, ‘come to Corbett’s house in Bread Street. Tell the servants the master sent you.’
The boy turned, running like the wind up one of the dark runnels.
Corbett got to his feet and walked back, stopping at a small tavern near the bridge over Holborn. He went inside, ordered a jug of ale and sat beneath the room’s only window. In the far corner a group of tinkers were baiting a huge, slavering bull mastiff, enraging it by offering it meat, then pulling it away so the dog’s sharp teeth narrowly missed their darting fingers. Corbett watched their cruelty and thought about the beggar boy, Agnes’s dreadful death and the hideous awfulness of the whores in Cock Lane. Was Brother Thomas right? he reflected. Did the stinking rottenness of the city spawn some of the evil which stalked the streets? He sipped at the blackjack, trying to close his mind to the growling of the dog and the taunts of the tinkers. So, Agnes had seen something? She had hidden away in her chamber and been visited by a man dressed like a monk or priest. Was that the killer? If so, why hadn’t he struck then? Because the house was being watched? But surely Agnes would refuse to open the door? The latter was the most logical, he concluded. So why had the man gone to that house in Cock Lane? Of course, Corbett put the tankard down, Agnes had been lured to her death; the killer had probably slipped her a message, perhaps in someone else’s name, telling her to meet him in that church near Greyfriars. Corbett ran his fingers round the rim of the tankard and tried to sketch out the bare details behind the murder. Agnes had known something so she had hidden away, sending messages to someone who would help, one of the Sisters of St Martha, Lady Fitzwarren or maybe de Lacey but the boy had dropped it. He closed his eyes, what next? Somehow the killer had known that Agnes posed danger so he had visited her chamber. The message he had left had been cryptic; the poor girl, barely literate, was not skilled enough to distinguish different handwriting and the rest would be simple. Agnes would have gone to the church looking for salvation and the killer would have been waiting.
Corbett suddenly looked up at the screams and yells coming from the far corner of the tap room. He smiled to himself. Sometimes justice was done, for the bull mastiff had broken loose, seized one of his tormenter’s arms and the tap-room door was already splattered with blood. Corbett drained his blackjack and left the noisy confusion behind. He had one further call to make and followed the street up through the city limits round by the Priory of St John of Jerusalem to the other side of Smithfield. Here he asked directions from a water tippler for the whereabouts of Somerville’s House. The fellow knew it well and Corbett, keeping well away from the crowds thronging down to Smithfield, crossed Aldersgate into Barbican Street.
The Somerville House was a splendid building though its windows were now all shuttered and great folds of black lawn had been nailed to the wooden beams as a sign of mourning. A tearful maid opened the door and ushered him up to a small but opulently furnished solar on the second floor. The room reminded Corbett of how Maeve had beautified his own house in Bread Street though this chamber looked unkempt as if it hadn’t been cleaned for days. Wine stains marked the table and some of the tapestry-covered chairs. The hangings on the wall looked dusty and dishevelled whilst the fire had not been lit or the grate cleaned.