‘Thank you, Griselda.’ Jack pushed me forward. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he murmured.
The women shifted their positions and, sitting down, I was admitted into their circle. For some time they just looked at me. I was starting to find their frank and distinctly hostile eyes disconcerting when one of them – a thin, nervous-looking girl with stringy blonde hair and poor skin – leaned in close to Griselda and whispered in her ear, the sibilance of her soft words rising into a shriek.
‘Hush, Madselin,’ Griselda soothed, wrapping strong arms round the girl and hugging her close. Madselin was crying now, harsh, jerky sobs that seemed to well up from some terrified core.
Griselda turned to me. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ she said, her eyes still hard. ‘We’ll all share everything we know about Gerda, but only if first you persuade Madselin here, and these other frightened little kittens’ – she waved an arm, indicating two other youngsters huddled together in the corner – ‘that the killer isn’t the Night Wanderer come back to haunt us. He’s no monster out of the old legends, but flesh and blood just like the rest of us.’ She raised her head, her chin jutting out aggressively towards me.
It appeared that at least one of the girls had been in the marketplace earlier. I could just imagine her: rushing home, filled with a mixture of excitement and horror, breathlessly pouring out her own version of what she’d just heard to her avid audience. And now the image of a mythological devil out to get them had become fact…
No wonder old Margery had been willing for me to come and talk to her girls. It could hardly be good for business to have them all quaking in a huddle when they were meant to be on their backs for the paying customers.
‘I can only tell you what I believe to be true,’ I began, my voice sounding far more confident than I felt. ‘I’ve heard the storyteller, and he’s good, I admit. But why do you think he tells such a convincing tale?’ I glanced round the circle.
‘Because it’s all true!’ hissed a chubby young woman who had crept forward to sit at Griselda’s other side.
‘Because it’s how he makes his living,’ I corrected her. ‘He tells his stories, weaves his magic, and his accomplice goes round with the collecting cap. If the tale’s good, if it’s convincing and makes his audience laugh, cry or gasp in terror, the storyteller eats that day.’
I let that sink in. Griselda gave me an approving nod. Madselin sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her tears had stopped.
‘Do you think it was a monster what killed her?’ asked a dark, dusky-skinned woman sitting at the back.
I looked at her. ‘I don’t believe in monsters.’
‘Who was it, then?’ the dark woman persisted.
I hesitated. Would they know about Robert Powl? If not, would it matter if I told them? No, I decided.
‘For what it’s worth, this is what I think happened,’ I said. ‘There was another killing, a few days ago, when a man called-’
‘Yes, we know about him,’ Griselda interrupted.
‘The storyteller was already in the area when Robert Powl died’ – I was sure of it, for hadn’t Jack warned me after that first death not to listen to the gossip and the stories? – ‘and he leapt at the chance to increase his takings by resurrecting the old legend of the greedy merchant. Robert Powl wasn’t a merchant, but he was rich. Then Gerda was killed, a young and beautiful woman, and the storyteller instantly altered his tale subtly to emphasize the beauty and the youth of the greedy merchant’s daughter.’ I had no idea if this was true, for I had only heard the latest version of the tale, but it seemed more than likely.
‘So you’re saying the storyteller altered the tale to fit what’s happened?’ Griselda demanded. ‘To increase his takings?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded. Far from reacting with indignation, her expression suggested she approved of the storyteller’s good sense. ‘And you reckon our Gerda was killed by human hands?’
‘Yes.’
There was quite a long pause. Then Griselda began to tell me about Gerda, and presently the others joined in.
Much of what they said was probably irrelevant. Her sweet nature; her cheerfulness; her refusal to allow the life she led to alter her optimistic outlook and her affection for her fellow human beings. ‘But then she hadn’t long been here,’ added the woman who had told me this.
She wasn’t a local girl but had come to Cambridge after the deaths of both parents. The family had lived out in the country somewhere – the women were vague – and had just about made ends meet trying to farm a few strips of poor-quality land. Gerda had been the youngest child by some years, remaining at home when the older siblings had gone, and none of those siblings had been willing to take her in when she was left alone. She had made her way to the town and, as countless millions of women had done before her since the dawn of time, sold the only thing that was hers to sell. It was, I realized, a stroke of good fortune that she had come across Margery’s establishment. If you had to be a prostitute, it didn’t seem a bad place to be one.
As gently as I could, I interrupted the women’s chatter. They were eulogizing Gerda now, and I didn’t think I was going to hear anything useful. ‘Have you any idea why she went out the night before last? You say you all knew about Robert Powl’s murder, so wasn’t it strange that she should go out in the dark all by herself?’
I sensed a swift movement over to my right. Turning, I saw that Madselin had covered her mouth with her hands, perhaps to stifle a gasp of horror at the thought of Gerda venturing outside alone when there was a killer about. But there was something else, I thought; something in her eyes, some strong emotion which, in that swift impression, I didn’t think was only fear. But then she dropped her head, and the moment was gone.
‘She wasn’t the only one to risk it,’ the dusky-skinned woman said. ‘Madselin, I saw you scurrying back indoors the other night, didn’t I?’
‘No!’ The single word emerged as a horrified shriek. I turned back to her, my senses alert. But one of the other women chuckled briefly, breaking the tension. Madselin, I guessed, was being teased.
Griselda met my eyes. ‘Gerda’s not likely to have been by herself, not to start with,’ she said baldly.
I realized that my assumptions about the girls’ daily routine needed a bit of adjustment. I’d imagined they’d have taken their clients to one of the little recesses off the long passage. It appeared I was wrong.
Griselda was watching me, a faint smile on her face as if she was following my thoughts exactly. ‘Caught on, have you?’ she said. ‘The weather’s still mild, and some of the men prefer a bit more privacy.’
Gerda had been found beside the river, downstream from the quay. I knew the area, for my route home to Aelf Fen took me along the track that ran along the opposite side of the river. There were places on both banks where the road bent away from the water, where it would be possible to slip in beneath the trees that lined the river and find a spot where you would be unobserved.
‘Did the man who was with her have anything to say?’ I asked. I was finding it hard to believe that he’d have taken her out there, done what he’d gone for, paid her and left her to find her own way back.
Could it have been he who killed her?
My shock at the sudden thought must have shown in my face. Griselda leaned forward and patted my hand kindly. ‘You’re not the first to wonder if he decided to follow a spot of lovemaking with an act of violence while his blood still ran hot,’ she said. ‘Your friend the lawman grilled him for a whole morning, or so we’re told, but it seems the fellow’s guilty of nothing worse than letting Gerda walk back by herself.’
Under the circumstances, that was bad enough.