‘Did I? I don’t remember. But all might have been well, even then, except that, at that point, Chapman, you started to poke your long nose into my affairs. A very grave mistake, I do assure you.’
Twenty
There was menace in his tone, but my head was spinning too fast to be aware of it. My legs trembled with the effort of keeping myself upright against the wall and my very senses were beginning to swim. And all I could think of were John Overbecks’s own words as he had surveyed Jasper’s body that Tuesday morning. ‘Whoever did that, did a quick, clean and efficient job. Beautiful. Just the way we used to dispose of sentries and lookouts in France.’ How he must have laughed up his sleeve as he’d practically handed us the truth on a plate, except that Richard Manifold and I were too obtuse to see it.
‘You’d better sit down,’ the same voice said now, and the baker indicated a stool beneath one of the workbenches.
I dragged it out and carefully lowered myself on to it, waiting for the nausea and dizziness to subside. I silently cursed my folly in leaving my bed before I was fit enough to do so. But after a while, the room stopped moving and I began to feel better.
‘Your sister-in-law killed your son,’ I said. ‘She smothered him with his pillow.’
The baker inclined his head. ‘A necessity brought about, of course, by your interference. Had you let those two King’s men finish what they’d begun, no doubt Marion would have been spared the trouble.’
I stared at him stupidly. ‘This is your son we’re talking about. Your own flesh and blood.’
John Overbecks shrugged. ‘He was a stranger. I hadn’t seen him since he was a child.’ I drew a deep breath and he laughed. ‘You think I’m a monster. Perhaps I am, but compared with Jane, he meant less than nothing to me.’
‘What was your original plan?’ I asked, moved by a curiosity I found it difficult to curb. ‘Before the King’s officers and I took a hand in the game?’
‘I intended to wait for him to contact me on his return to the city, then despatch him as I’d done Jasper. If his body was ever found, in the Frome or elsewhere, I reckoned no one would bother to ask any questions. My son was a Tudor spy, God rot him. Those in authority would be glad to be rid of him. My only worry was that he might be caught before I could ensure that he never troubled me and mine again.’ The baker folded his arms across his chest and regarded me malevolently. ‘But then you poked your nose in, Chapman. Matters might have proved extremely awkward except that Mistress Ford offered to take my son into her cottage to nurse him. Marion saw her chance and insisted on helping. One of the potions she’d fetched from the nunnery was heavily laced with poppy juice. It kept Jean — my son — unconscious until she could seize her chance.’
I wiped a hand across my forehead. It came away soaking wet.
‘When did she kill him? Jack Gload and Peter Littleman swore that one or the other of them had been by the bedside all night.’
John Overbecks laughed, genuinely amused.
‘You don’t trust everything those two thickheaded nitwits tell you, do you? When Marion returned from the nunnery after Prime, Cicely Ford was asleep in the chair and both the sheriff’s men had disappeared outside to relieve themselves. She slipped the pillow from beneath Jean’s head, held it over his face until she could no longer detect any sign of life and managed to replace it before either Jack Gload or his companion reappeared. Later on, of course, neither man was prepared to risk his livelihood by admitting that they had both been absent together.’
I wondered if either of those two incompetent rogues had suspected Sister Jerome’s complicity in the crime. Probably not; a nun’s habit is a wonderful cloak for evil.
I suddenly straightened up on my stool. ‘So why,’ I spat at John Overbecks, ‘did Cicely Ford have to die? According to you, she saw and heard nothing of your son’s murder.’
For the first time, the baker flinched and lost some of his composure.
‘That. . That was the worst decision Marion and I had to make. It was one we both deeply regretted. But there again,’ he added viciously, ‘it was your fault.’ I gasped, but he ignored it. ‘She woke up just as Jack Gload came in and resumed his seat at the foot of the bed. She might have seen or heard something that could incriminate Marion — and you kept encouraging her to try to remember. She was your friend. She was often in your company. She was with you when Marion and I saw you on Saint Michael’s Hill that evening. .’
I interrupted violently, ‘The last evening of her life! The evening you visited your sister-in-law because, so you claimed, your wife had disappeared and you didn’t know where she’d gone. But that wasn’t the truth, was it?’ Enlightenment was crashing over me in waves. ‘Jane always lets you know where she’s going, according to Jenny Hodge. I’d met Mistress Ford on her way home from Back Street, where she’d been to see Master Hulin. She told me she’d met you going into the lawyer’s chambers as she came out. And that was when our garrulous and indiscreet lawman confided in an old friend the news he was bursting to tell to all the world. Cicely Ford had made a new will, leaving the old Herepath house to a common pedlar. And what vistas of imagined impropriety that bequest must have opened up!’
John Overbecks curled his lip. ‘Not to me, Chapman. You may look like a lad about town, but the sad truth is you’re under the thumb of that wife of yours. You’re slowly being turned into a henpecked husband and father. But you’re a handsome lad, and I reckon Mistress Ford had a soft spot for you. When I heard Master Hulin’s news, I realized at once that if Marion and I were to dispose of her — and there was no doubt that she did pose something of a threat to us — here was a golden opportunity for the blame to be pinned on you. Neither of us could have foreseen that you would have so impregnable an alibi.’
I said nothing, steadying myself with both hands pressed down flat on top of the stool. I was shaking with fury, but, at that moment, I was too weak to do what I wanted to do — get my hands around John Overbecks’s fat neck and press his windpipe until all the life was choked out of him. Pictures chased one another through my head: Cicely resting at our cottage while this inhuman wretch pursued his evil plans, hurrying up to the Magdalen Nunnery to give his co-conspirator the glad tidings that their innocent victim could safely be murdered that night, a murder for which another innocent victim could be blamed. I recollected their startled faces when Cicely and I came up with them outside the nunnery. And I recalled my parting encouragement to Cicely to try to recall what she could about the morning of the stranger’s death. Perhaps if I hadn’t done so. . But no! It was stupid to blame myself. The murderous pair’s plan had already been laid and was about to be hatched.
Marion had smothered Cicely Ford in her sleep, just as she had killed Jean Overbecks, and more easily because she could pick and choose her time, in no danger from interruption. Later, she had ‘found’ the body, informed Richard Manifold of her discovery and invented the story of a man, who looked just like me, having been seen by her on Saint Michael’s Hill in the early hours of the morning. She had then advised Richard to speak to her brother-in-law regarding my involvement in Cicely Ford’s affairs — and everything was in train for my arrest.
Yet again, I thanked God fervently for Philip Lamprey and his propensity for drink and insulting behaviour. .
John Overbecks’s voice roused me from my reverie. ‘You’ve worked it all out, I see.’
‘Not quite,’ I answered. ‘Walter Godsmark. Did you murder him, or am I doing you an injustice?’
The baker smiled. ‘Oh, never let it be said that you do me an injustice, Chapman. Of course I murdered him. Well, I helped him into the Frome, and who knew better than I that he couldn’t swim? I was the fool who’d saved him from a watery grave in the Avon.’