He nodded. Between us we bore Mistress Judith’s body back inside her house, and laid her down beside the hearth. Jack closed the door – very firmly – and I went to sit beside Adela, whose sobs were escalating again at the sight of her mistress’s body.
Jack came to kneel in front of her. He took both her hands and, looking straight into her eyes, said, ‘Now I need you to help me – what’s her name?’ he demanded, turning to me.
‘Adela.’
‘You can provide one last and very important service for her, Adela,’ he went on, ‘by telling me everything you can recall about what happened this evening.’
Adela’s spine straightened a little. ‘I – I can help?’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ Jack assured her. ‘You’re the only one who can.’
It was the right thing to have said, for who doesn’t like to feel important in an emergency? ‘Well, let me see,’ Adela began slowly. ‘We’d had a busy day, with a load of new supplies to sort and store, and I was a bit late with the meal, and the mistress was short with me. She had every right to be!’ she insisted, as if her mild criticism had breached some rule of correct behaviour regarding the recently dead. ‘Anyway, we’d eaten, and I’d cleared up, and I was settling for the night out in my place behind there’ – she indicated a small cubicle beside the storeroom – ‘when I heard the mistress get up and open the door.’
‘Had somebody come to call?’ Jack interrupted. ‘Did you hear a knock?’
Adela slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t believe I did,’ she said, ‘although I might have missed it. I was that tired,’ she added, ‘and I reckon I might have already been pretty nearly asleep.’
I met Jack’s eyes. ‘It’s quite likely someone did come knocking at the door,’ I said softly. ‘You may not know, but Mistress Judith sold herbs and other apothecaries’ ingredients, and although she wasn’t really a healer, people tend to visit in an emergency to ask advice, purchase supplies and make remedies up for themselves.’
Jack nodded. He had a way, I was noticing, of absorbing information without comment. Turning back to Adela, he said, ‘So your mistress opened the door. Then what happened? Did she go outside?’
Adela frowned. ‘Yes, she did. She stepped out into the square, just there’ – she pointed – ‘where the roofs overhang and make that colonnade, and I heard her… heard her…’ Her frown deepened.
‘Heard her what?’ Jack only just had his impatience under control. ‘Did she speak? Cry out?’
Adela looked up at him. Slowly she shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘She laughed.’
I waited in Mistress Judith’s house while Jack went for help, and sat with my arms round Adela as we watched a trio of Jack’s men put the body on a hurdle, cover it and bear it away. A quick inspection of Mistress Judith’s shelves provided what I needed to prepare a second, stronger sedative for Adela, and I left her warm, snug and snoring in her little cubicle. Jack set a man to watch the house for the rest of the night and then took me home.
He saw me safe inside, then hurried away, calling softly over his shoulder, ‘I’ll come back in the morning. I need to talk to you.’
I closed and bolted the door. I went down to tell Gurdyman I was back, and found him fast asleep on his cot down in the crypt. I made a warm, calming drink for myself – I kept seeing Mistress Judith’s terrible wound – and, at long last, went up the ladder to my little attic and fell into bed. As I fell asleep – I’d put a pinch of valerian in my drink and it was quick to take effect – I wondered for at least the twentieth time what on earth had made Mistress Judith laugh…
Gurdyman’s whistling woke me early in the morning. I hurried to wash and dress, then went down the ladder to join him.
‘Another death,’ he remarked as he handed me a bread roll still warm from the oven. ‘I’ve been out,’ he added, smiling, ‘and it’s all they’re talking about.’
‘I was there,’ I said quietly. ‘Oh, not when she was killed’ – his face had paled in shock – ‘but soon afterwards. Jack and I were in the inner court, and we heard her servant scream when she found the body.’
Gurdyman quickly recovered himself. ‘Same method as the other two, I understand.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was Mistress Judith?’
‘Yes.’
I’d forgotten that Gurdyman knew her, but of course he did: before I’d become his pupil, and during the times I was back home in Aelf Fen, he would have to do his purchasing of supplies for himself.
‘Jack’s coming here this morning,’ I said after a moment.
Gurdyman gave me an enigmatic smile. ‘Naturally.’ Before I could ask him what exactly he meant by that, he went on, ‘Unless either of you needs me, I’m off down to the crypt.’
‘Very well.’
He picked up another couple of bread rolls and shuffled away. His mind already caught up in whatever he was working on down in his cellar, he resumed his whistling, Mistress Judith, apparently, forgotten.
Well, I thought, trying to excuse his callousness, he didn’t know her very well.
I put more water on to heat and set out the ingredients for a stimulating, reviving drink. There were a few of the rolls left, so I organized them on a platter and took them into the courtyard. I didn’t think I’d have long to wait for Jack and I was right.
‘So,’ he said a little later, when he had put away two mugs of my drink and the rolls were no more than a memory, ‘what do we know?’
‘Three deaths in a week, two women and a man,’ I began. ‘Two wealthy, or at least relatively so, and one an impoverished orphan in a whorehouse. Two connected to the river; one because his business was river transport, the other because she lived and worked beside it. One-’
‘Mistress Judith could also be said to be connected with the river,’ Jack put in, ‘because she bought supplies which arrived by boat.’
‘So do many people,’ I replied. But then something struck me: ‘Adela said they’d had a delivery yesterday.’ A load of new supplies to sort and store.
‘Indeed she did,’ Jack mused.
‘Do you think her goods were brought in by one of Robert Powl’s boats?’ I felt a rising excitement; had we found a link between the deaths?
But Jack shook his head. ‘Robert Powl’s boats are all lined up on the quayside,’ he said. ‘I’ve just checked.’
I had already leapt up. ‘But one of them could have come in yesterday!’ I cried. ‘Who would know?’ I was reaching for my shawl, slinging my satchel over my shoulder. ‘Who’s running his affairs now?’
‘He was a widower, and childless’ – Jack had also got to his feet and was following me along the passage – ‘but he had a household of several servants and employees.’ We were out in the alley now, and I slammed the door. ‘Who, it seems,’ he said, laughing softly, ‘we’re about to go and talk to.’
From habit, I turned right outside the house, to head for the marketplace as I usually did, but Jack stopped me. ‘I think we should stay away from the square,’ he said quietly. ‘If you can show me how we can get out of this warren of little streets and into the fields to the west, between here and the river, that would be very helpful.’
I did as he asked, thinking on my feet, utilizing my sense of direction, and, more by luck than anything else, soon emerging in roughly the right place. ‘Good,’ said Jack with a smile, striding off towards the river, ‘now we’ll be able to make our way round to Robert Powl’s house without anyone seeing us.’
‘Why,’ I asked as we hurried off, ‘did you want to avoid the square and make sure nobody sees us?’ You’re a lawman, I might have added, surely you go where you like?