‘In there. The master will see you, but you’re to be quick. He’s an engagement before curfew in another part of the town.’
I nodded submissively and entered the lawyer’s dining parlour where the remains of his supper stood on the long, oaken table. It was a room boasting few concessions to comfort, except for one or two faded tapestries on the walls and a single armchair. It was a room typical of its owner, and just how I had imagined the home of Oliver Cozin would be.
‘Well?’ he demanded abruptly, and without formal greeting. ‘What do you want, chapman? When did you leave Totnes?’
‘A fortnight since,’ I answered, easing my pack from my shoulders and placing it on the floor. ‘A day or so before Your Honour was due to return home to Exeter. In the meantime, I have been to London and back.’
‘London, eh?’ He raised his eyebrows, his attention quickening a little. ‘I assume that fact has some significance, or you would otherwise not have mentioned it. Therefore, enlighten me. I haven’t all night to spare.’
So I told him all that I had discovered from Ginèvre Napier, the reasoning which had led me to seek her out in the first place and the conclusions I had drawn from what I had learned. Master Cozin heard me out in complete, but attentive, silence, a frown creasing his brow as I talked, and growing deeper by the minute. When, at last, I had finished, he said nothing for a while, staring at the table and gnawing his lower lip. Finally, however, he raised his head and looked at me.
‘So!’ he said. ‘You have been able to discover Master Colet’s origins where my brother, Thomas, failed. Understandably, I suppose, when one considers the source of the information. This Mistress Napier, judging by your description of her, is the kind of woman who could be persuaded to part with secrets by a good-looking youth, where an older man would be spurned.’
Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself warmly defending Ginèvre.
‘Pardon me, sir, but I think you do the lady an injustice. Firstly, Master Thomas did not go to London himself, but sent a servant to do his business for him. Secondly, Rosamund Colet is now dead, and can no longer be hurt by her secret becoming generally known. But more than that, her two children have been murdered. No friend worth her salt would keep quiet in such circumstances, not if she thought her knowledge could perhaps aid the truth.’
‘But does it?’ The lawyer drummed his fingers irritably on the table-top, fixing me with an accusing stare. ‘I grant you may have proved that Master Colet could have murdered his stepchildren, and then disguised the fact by imitating their voices as though they were still upstairs. Furthermore, I accept your argument that neither Andrew nor Mary Skelton went down to breakfast, that neither was actually seen by either Bridget Praule or Agatha Tenter between the time they arose and the time they disappeared. But you still have not proved to my satisfaction how Master Colet was able to remove the bodies from the house.’
‘He must have done it somehow,’ I pleaded desperately. ‘Their deaths would make him even richer than he was already. And surely, sir, you must agree that he also had a sounder reason than the outlaws to kill both Martin Fletcher and Luke Hollis, before they recognized him and gave away his secret.’
‘Ye-es.’ Oliver Cozin pursed his lips. ‘Of course, you will not be aware that the outlaws were smoked out of their lair three days after the Sheriff’s arrival, and are now securely under lock and key in the county gaol here, awaiting trial. Nor will you know that amongst the crimes for which they have vigorously denied responsibility, are the murder of your mummer friends and the Skelton children.’
‘There you are then!’ I exclaimed excitedly. ‘It must have been Eudo Colet, the one person in each case who had something to gain by the murders.’
The lawyer heaved himself to his feet.
‘Then prove to me how he removed the children’s bodies from that house to the banks of the Harbourne! For he certainly had no opportunity before he left to visit my brother, and none, either, after he returned. Dead bodies weigh heavily, Master Chapman, even children’s, and from the time that Bridget found them missing, Master Colet remained, or so I understand, within sight not only of her and Agatha Tenter, but of everyone else called in to aid in the search.’
My elation died and I suddenly felt very tired. Defeat stared me in the face. Yet there had to be an answer! I could no longer believe Eudo Colet innocent of the crimes.
Somehow or another, he had had a hand in his stepchildren’s deaths. Master Cozin must have thought so too, for, to my astonishment, he came round the table, pushed me down on to a stool and poured me a cup of wine.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said. He went to the parlour door and called his housekeeper, instructing her, when she came, to fetch me some food. ‘And make the chapman a bed for the night by the kitchen fire. After that, send Tom to the livery stable and say I shall need my wagon and horses soon after breakfast tomorrow.’ When the surprised and curious housekeeper had departed to do his bidding, the lawyer turned back to me. ‘I shall come with you,’ he said, ‘back to Totnes.’ He added, as one granting an unheard-of concession, ‘You may ride with me, in my carriage.’
The painted wagon, with its seats upholstered in dark red velvet and its side-curtains of matching leather was one of the finest equipages I had seen, astonishing it should be that of a lawyer, a profession which, pleading constant poverty, normally travels, then as now, on horseback.
Both Oliver Cozin and his brother, beneath their crusty exteriors, were warmer-hearted men than Oliver, at least, cared to be thought, except, perhaps, by members of his family. I could imagine no other man of his standing giving a common pedlar a place in his carriage, nor permitting me to sit at his table in the roadside tavern where we stopped to eat dinner. He did, of course, insist that I left my pack and cudgel inside the wagon, and frowned a little over my threadbare attire, but otherwise offered no indication that I was an embarrassment to him.
During the first part of our journey, he made me repeat all that I had learned from Ginèvre Napier, nodding at some parts of the narration, shaking his head dubiously over others, but making no comment that was worth the having, other than, when at last I had finished, ‘There is still the matter of the disposal of the children’s bodies.’ After a moment’s silence, he added, ‘If we cannot prove Eudo Colet guilty of the children’s murder, I doubt we shall prove him guilty of the mummers’, for I know that the lord Sheriff like everyone else, is ill-disposed to believe the outlaws’ protestations of innocence on that head.’ He gave a barely perceptible smile. ‘No one will be anxious to accuse a seemingly honest citizen when there is a bunch of rogues at hand on whom to pin the blame.’
I began to feel almost an affection for Master Cozin, an emotion I would previously have deemed it impossible for a lawyer to excite. Most of his breed would have been very reluctant to believe ill of a man who was their client, and one, moreover, who was a source of wealth, particularly when the accusations came from so lowly a person as myself. But Oliver Cozin, I realized, was that rare thing, a lawyer who loved justice for its own sake.
After we had dined, and the sun was climbing slowly towards its zenith, the warmth increasing as midday approached, our conversation dwindled and sleep overtook us both. Master Cozin’s man, Tom, who had made it plain, to me at least, that he resented my presence in the carriage, vented his annoyance by jolting us over every bump and irregularity of the road’s surface that he could find, without laying himself open to his master’s reproaches. In spite of this, however, the lawyer and I, each in our own corner of the velvet-covered bench, began to doze. Master Cozin rather more quickly than I, for by the time I finally lapsed into unconsciousness, the carriage was filled with the sound of his gentle snoring.