All these thoughts and more chased one another through my head as I crossed from the Île de la Cité to the Rue Saint-Denis and then made my way through a maze of back streets in the direction of the Porte Saint-Honoré. Twice I lost my bearings in the dark, once ending up close to the Porte Montmartre and having to make my stumbling way southwards, keeping close to the walls of the overhanging houses, the soles of my boots slithering on the slimy cobbles. It had turned even colder since the morning and I wrapped my cloak well around me. Beneath it, my right hand kept a fast grip on the haft of my knife.
But nobody challenged me. Several times I glanced over my shoulder, but no one seemed to be following me. I did think once that I saw a man wearing a hat with a feather in it, but he had disappeared by the next turn in the road. I reached the Gaunts’ house without incident.
The shutters were fast closed, permitting no welcoming chink of candlelight to show. A sensible precaution, I supposed, in an area such as this, where even the rats scurried past as though afraid of their own shadows. I stepped forward and rapped on the door — only to find that it gave under my hand. It was already open. Cautiously, I pushed it wider and took a few steps inside.
‘Master Gaunt!’ I called.
There was no reply.
I tried again. ‘Mistress Gaunt! It’s me, Roger Chapman.’
The silence was deafening. Suddenly, my heart was beating faster and my palms were sweating. Every instinct screamed at me that something was wrong and to get out and away while the going was good. Then, unexpectedly, there was the scrape of a flint. Tinder flared and a candle was lit, the spurt of flame blinding me for an instant. Behind me, someone moved and slammed the door shut, imprisoning me. The candle was moved, but my eyes were still dazzled. I moved a step or two forward, stumbling over something lying on the floor. More than one thing. . As my vision cleared and adjusted to the gloom, I saw with mounting horror that they seemed to be bodies, and as two more candles were lit from the first, I yelled out in fear.
They were indeed bodies: those of Mistress Gaunt and, almost certainly, her husband. Both had had their throats cut.
‘So here you are, Roger,’ said a familiar voice, and John Bradshaw emerged into the pool of light in the centre of the room.
I stared at him, relief surging through me. ‘John! Thank God,’ I breathed. ‘But. . but how did you get here? How did you know about the Gaunts? Where to come?’ I seized him by the arm. ‘Above all, do you know who committed this. . this outrage?’
For answer, he simply smiled and held out the bloody knife he was still clutching in one hand. ‘If you don’t struggle, it’s very quick,’ he said gently. ‘My cousin Wolsey taught me how to butcher animals.’
‘Butcher?’ My brain refused to believe what he was saying. My thoughts were thick and stupid, refusing to accept the evidence of my ears and eyes.
John went on, ‘I’m sorry, Roger, to have to do this. I like you. I really do. But I can’t let you return home to my lord of Gloucester with that story of the christenings. I’m not a fool. I know it’s not proof positive, but it’s an indication that the duchess’s story might be true. Enough, at any rate, to persuade the duke that he has some claim to the throne and to depose his nephew. I can’t allow that. My loyalty is to the queen. Her mother, the old Duchess of Bedford, came from Luxembourg, and so did some of my forebears. I owe her and her sons my allegiance.’
Clervaux! Of course! I should have listened more closely to Eloise.
But my brain still wasn’t functioning properly. ‘Those-those other people,’ I stammered, ‘Culpepper, the-the boatman. . you killed them, too?’ He smiled and nodded. ‘But. . why?’
John shrugged. ‘Culpepper simply on the off chance that he might know something that could put you on the track of whatever it was you were after. I didn’t really know myself back then what it was all about, but Anthony Woodville himself informed me that there was something afoot. His spy in the Duke of Gloucester’s household had alerted him.’
The man who had tried to steal my instructions and been thwarted because I had already learned them by heart. So much was beginning to fall into place.
‘But why the boatman?’
John shrugged. ‘That was simply a precaution,’ he said. ‘He had rowed my accomplice across from Southwark the previous night, and as it turned out, I was right to be cautious. For some reason or another, your suspicions had been aroused and you went after him.’
‘Your accomplice?’
‘He’s standing behind you.’
I had forgotten the man who had closed the door. I whirled round and stared disbelievingly. ‘Philip?’
‘I didn’t have any choice, Roger,’ he muttered. ‘It was do as Jack said or be hanged for murder. I’d killed a man the previous evening, in a tavern brawl. Jack recognized me as an old comrade from our soldiering days and got me away.’
‘The murder at the Rattlebones,’ I said, my head spinning. ‘I heard about it.’
‘That’s right. He hid me and arranged for me to be rowed over to Baynard’s Castle that same night.’
‘But there was a price for his help.’ It wasn’t a question.
Philip nodded. ‘I was to come to France and spy on you for him. Jack knew that we’d been friends — they know everything, these bloody spies — and of course you wouldn’t suspect me.’
‘But-but once you were across the Channel, you were free. He couldn’t get you hanged in France for a crime committed in England. Why, in God’s name, didn’t you just run away?’
‘What, in a foreign country, where I can’t make meself understood? That’s no life for a man.’ A little of his normal spirit had returned.
‘Then why, in the name of friendship, didn’t you warn me what was going on? What do you think Jeanne would have said about such a betrayal?’
Suddenly, he was shouting. ‘Don’t you mention Jeanne! Don’t ever mention her name again! It wasn’t my son she was carrying. She confessed to me just before he was born.’ His eyes flicked towards John Bradshaw and he made an effort to take himself in hand. ‘As for warning you,’ he went on more calmly, but still in a voice that shook a little, ‘Jack said that if he so much as suspected you knew the truth about him — about us — he’d slit your throat regardless, and not wait for you to show your hand about what it was you was up to.’
At any other time, in any other situation, the information about Jeanne would have rocked me back on my heels — I might even have challenged it — but something else had occurred to me. I turned to look once again at John. ‘You must have killed Oliver Cook, as well,’ I said slowly. ‘But why?’
He said abruptly, ‘We’re wasting time. But if you really want to know, and as you’re never going to tell anyone, yes, I killed him. He’d seen Philip, the day he took refuge in the kitchen to avoid being recognized by you. Sooner or later, Oliver would have had a good look at Philip and doubtless told the rest of you about the incident. And then it wouldn’t have been long, Roger, before you started to put two and two together.’ John laughed, a sound that made my blood run cold. ‘Oliver was easy meat. I didn’t even need to use the knife on him. He was totally unsuspecting. A shove, a heave and he was overboard. Mid-Channel, in that sea, he didn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, I dropped that particular knife and couldn’t find it again. Now-’