‘Well, well!’ she said. ‘We don’t often see your like at Baynard’s Castle. And never at Berkhamsted.’ This, I knew, was the dowager duchess’s other castle, where she lived in semi-reclusive, semi-religious retirement, only coming to London for important occasions. The forward young minx continued, ‘You need speaking for, and I don’t see why little Philly here should have you all to herself. So, I shall give you my favour as if I were a grand lady and you my knight.’ And giggling and blushing in equal measure, she unpinned a sprig of leaves from the bodice of her gown and fixed it to my jerkin. Then with eyebrows coquettishly raised, she waited for my reaction.
I’m afraid I disappointed her. I was more interested in what she had given me than I was in her.
‘Birch leaves,’ I said, squinting down at them. ‘Of course! It can’t be long now until Midsummer Eve.’
‘Just over a week,’ Amphillis cut in, frowning furiously at her friend.
‘This coming Monday sennight,’ brown-eyes confirmed. She gave a delicious shiver. ‘They say that if you walk seven times clockwise round a church at midnight, sowing hempseed as you go, and then look over your left shoulder, you’ll see the person you’re going to marry.’ She cocked her head to one side and laid a hand on my arm. ‘Is it possible, sir, that you might be somewhere near a church on Midsummer Eve?’
‘He’s married,’ Amphillis said tartly, before I had time to answer. ‘And if you’re going to ask me how I know, Maria Johnson, I have a nose for these things. Master Chapman looks married. You can always tell. Men who are leg-shackled don’t behave in just the same way as men who aren’t.’
The other girl’s face fell ludicrously. ‘Are you?’ she asked, addressing me. And when I nodded, snatched back the birch leaves and pin. ‘No use giving you my favour then,’ she snapped, and returned to her table amid the jeers and laughter of the other girls.
The head seamstress, suddenly aware of behaviour getting out of hand, came hurrying across, her pleasant face creased with concern. ‘Amphillis-’ she began anxiously, but I forestalled her.
‘I’m leaving now, mistress,’ I said. And, with a smile and a quick general word of farewell, departed.
My immediate intention was to go in search of Piers until I realized that I had no idea where to find him. So, instead, I went to look for the steward to find out where I was housed. To my astonishment, I discovered it was the same costive little chamber that I had occupied the previous year before I was despatched to France: damp, chilly, high up, with the same narrow window overlooking the water-stairs. Someone had fetched my saddlebags and dumped them on the bed, and the young lad who had been deputed by the steward to be my guide, informed me that supper would be served in the servants’ hall in half an hour.
‘Never mind that,’ I said, rather to my own surprise as well as the boy’s (food being of paramount importance in any underling’s day). ‘Do you know where the murder took place last week?’ He nodded mutely, his eyes suddenly wide with alarm. ‘Good. Can you take me there?’
‘N-now?’ he gulped.
‘Yes. Now.’
He was reluctant to do so, but gave in to my bullying, and I eventually found myself back at the top of the stairs which led down to the passage where Rosina Copley had her room.
‘That one,’ the lad said, pointing to the second door along. ‘That’s where he was murdered, except. .’
‘Except?’
The boy shuddered. ‘Except it couldn’t have been by no mortal hand, could it? Stabbed in the back, he was. But the door was bolted on the inside.’ He pointed with a grubby, trembling forefinger. ‘Well, you c’n see for yourself, master. They had t’break it down.’
And suddenly I saw what I should have perceived at once had the gloom of the landing not made observation difficult. The entrance to the second room from the stairhead was nothing but an empty space, although quite a number of large splinters and shards of wood still lay around. The hinges hung jaggedly from their sockets, bearing silent witness to the force which had been necessary to get inside. The lad edged up behind me, peering over my shoulder and staring with morbid fascination.
‘They say he were lying right across the door, stiff as a poker,’ he whispered. ‘’Course, I don’t know that for certain. I didn’t see him. But it’s what they’re saying, those that did.’
‘Who found the body?’ I asked, but he didn’t know.
‘Them that broke down the door, I suppose,’ was his somewhat fatuous reply. And yet it had logic to it.
I stepped inside and glanced around, but there was nothing to see. All the tutor’s personal belongings seemed to have been removed, and what remained was simply the sparse furnishings of the cell-like chamber. There were no stains on the flagstones and the scattering of straw was none other than those which might have been expected from the trampling of many feet. Gregory Machin obviously hadn’t bled much, a fact consonant with what I had been told of a quick stiletto thrust through the back into the heart. But who could have done it? Who could have managed to enter and vacate the room, bolting the door behind him?
I glanced up. The bolt was still slammed home in its wards; a good, solid iron bolt which had evidently resisted being shaken loose when, as must certainly have happened, someone first tried to rouse the tutor by banging and shouting in order to awaken him. I walked over to the window where I opened the shutters and leant out. I was only one storey above the ground, but I could see no foothold, no projecting stones that would have made for easy climbing. Moreover, the window — even had the shutters been open, which was possible on a warm June evening — was far too narrow to permit of easy access. Tutor Machin must have been alerted to anyone trying to gain entrance by that method, and a single push would have sent the intruder sprawling on the landing-stage below.
‘Them shutters were closed,’ said the lad’s voice behind me. He had ventured in, his courage fortified by my presence, and was staring warily about him. ‘So they say,’ he added, careful to deny any personal involvement in the matter.
‘And who are “they”?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘No one in partic’lar. It’s just what everyone’s saying.’
I could see that I was unlikely to get any information worth the having, so I encouraged him to return to his duties, whatever they were, and leave me in peace.
‘Master Steward’s probably looking for you. With all these visitors thronging the castle, there must be quite a few errands to run.’ He agreed and was moving reluctantly towards the door, when I remembered Piers and stopped him. ‘Do you know where young Master Daubenay’s lodging?’
When he had finally identified Piers, the boy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘Oh, him! Should by rights be dossing down in the male dormitory, but I ain’t seen him there, leastways not yet, and he’s been here more’n a week now. Don’t know where he goes. Law unto himself, that one.’
That tallied with what I already knew of Piers, so I nodded dismissal and gave my full attention to the room. A second inspection, however, yielded no more clues than the first, nor any further inspiration as to how a man could be stabbed in the back in a chamber shuttered and bolted from the inside. I again looked closely at the window, but even had it been wide open at the time — although ‘they’, it seemed, said definitely not — I still deemed it impossible for the murderer to have entered that way.
Witches? Demons? The Black Arts? I shivered. It was possible, I supposed. We all knew that these things existed, and yet, somehow or other, I could never bring myself to a wholehearted belief in any of them. I thought of the demons who had once, according to legend, inhabited this island, but found I could give them little credence, either. Nor the giants. Nor the thirty-three Daughters of Albion. And yet, was I right? If one believed in God, should one not believe in Satan also? There was undoubtedly good and evil everywhere one looked in the world. But there again, was my definition of evil the same as the next man’s. .?