He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, and it sounded as if the admission was painful, ‘I’m not investigating the murders, which of course means I have no business going to Robert Powl’s house, or even, come to that, being out and about in the town, and I don’t want any of my fellow officers reporting what I’m up to.’
‘You’re not investigating the murders?’ I screeched. I could hardly believe it. ‘Why on earth not?’
He smiled wryly. ‘Because Sheriff Picot is extremely angry that I’ve allowed two of the town’s citizens to be brutally slain.’
‘Three,’ I corrected.
He turned to look at me, no longer smiling. ‘Sheriff Picot only counts the wealthy and well-known ones. He doesn’t concern himself with the deaths of prostitutes.’
I opened my mouth to shout my protest, but there was no need; Jack’s expression told me that.
‘So who is in charge now?’
‘Gaspard Picot.’
Sheriff Picot’s nephew. I knew him; I’d met him. He was a bald man, tall, slim, habitually dressed in black, and not long ago he had sent a man to kill Jack. Jack had got the better of him and left him tied up on the fringes of the ferns; clearly, he had escaped.
‘Him,’ I breathed.
‘Yes, him,’ Jack agreed.
‘So – so he’s trying to find out who’s doing the killing?’
‘He is.’
‘And he now has all your men at his disposal and you don’t?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s his uncle’s doing, of course.’
‘It is.’ Tiring finally of his monosyllabic answers, Jack added, ‘Sheriff Picot has had the brilliant idea of forcing people to stay indoors unless they have permission to go out, apparently in the belief that this will prevent any further killings, which of course it won’t since people with businesses to run and lives to get on with will find ways to circumvent the sheriff’s commands, and, since by definition the killer has no respect for the law, he’ll ignore the order, go out and about just as he pleases, and if he wishes to strike again, he will.’
‘That’s absurd,’ I said dismissively. ‘Making everyone stay in, I mean. Apart from what you just said about people disobeying, such an order means all the lawmen and deputies will be fully engaged trying to make people stay inside their houses, whereas what they should be doing is trying to find out who’s doing the killings.’
‘Succinctly put,’ said Jack, ‘and distressingly accurate.’ Then he grinned down at me. ‘Come on, let’s see what we can discover at Robert Powl’s house.’
SEVEN
We trudged on across the wet grass. The fields looked very beautiful in the soft mist that was slowly rising off the ground as the sun rose and a little heat warmed the air. There was nobody about. Maybe the townspeople, frightened and uneasy at the latest brutal murder, had been only too willing to obey the sheriff’s new dictate.
Presently the last of the buildings stretching along the south side of the river came into view. Quite a few were churches, endowed by the rich merchants, and some of them had been there for decades. In pride of place, however, closest to the water and with gently sloping grass-covered banks leading to the river, was a row of new houses. It was, I reflected as we drew closer, a beautiful place to live. We were only a short walk from the town – the Great Bridge and all the busy, noisy commerce of the quays were only about half a mile ahead – yet here it was peaceful and quiet, the area possessing that indefinable quality of aloofness that is typical of rich men’s dwellings. Jack pointed to the second-to-last house, and muttered, ‘That’s it.’
I studied Robert Powl’s house. It was timber-framed and thatched, with a solid-looking oak door and windows either side, both tightly shuttered. Set against the left-hand wall, and built in the same style as the house, was a large barn, its tall doors barred. For a widower, it seemed an unnecessarily large amount of space.
‘Why did he need that huge barn?’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if he was a merchant, needing space for his goods. Robert Powl only provided the transport for other people’s stuff.’
Jack stood staring at the barn. ‘I wondered the same thing. Perhaps he had occasionally to store cargoes until they could be collected?’
‘But surely he’d have had a warehouse down on the quayside for that? Why bring boatloads of goods out here to his house?’
‘He did have a warehouse,’ Jack said slowly. ‘We’re going there next.’
He marched up to the house and banged on the door. Quite soon, it opened a crack, to reveal the long, cadaverous, pale face of an indoor servant, well past the first flush of youth. ‘Yes?’ the man said in a faint voice.
‘Jack Chevestrier,’ Jack said. ‘From the sheriff.’ Strictly speaking, it was true.
‘Your men were here before,’ the old man said plaintively. ‘Wanted to know if he had any enemies.’ He gave a dismissive sniff. ‘Well, of course he did. Somebody tore his throat out.’
‘I realize how distressing his death must be for you and the household,’ Jack said gently. ‘I would like to come in and have a look round.’
The old man stared at him, his expression hopeless. ‘Well, you’re the law,’ he muttered, ‘so I don’t reckon I have a choice.’ He stood back, opened the door wide and beckoned us inside.
The other servants, apparently having heard the exchange, had gathered in the room into which the door opened. Three women, a man and a youth, they were huddled together, managing to appear both shocked and keenly interested in what would happen next. The room was warm from a generous fire burning in the central hearth. Archways in walls to right and left led through into further rooms. ‘Master slept through there’ – the old servant jerked his head over to the right – ‘and saw to his business affairs in there.’ He pointed to the room on the left.
Jack strode beneath the arch on the left into the space beyond, and I followed. Boards had been laid across trestles, and on them were many rolls of parchment, horns of ink, quills and a small silver-handled penknife. Several stout wooden chests, bound with iron, stood against the walls. A chair with carved back and arms had been placed exactly halfway along a large table, in front of it a wooden writing slope on which there was a piece of vellum: the very last document on which Robert Powl had worked, perhaps. All was neat and orderly.
‘Has this room been tidied up?’ Jack asked.
The old man shook his head. ‘No. This was how the master left it. He liked things tidy.’
Behind the table, hanging on the wall backing on to the barn, I noticed a heavy tapestry. Going over to have a closer look – it was a forest scene of huntsmen and a hart, beautifully done in vivid wools – I realized that it was in fact a curtain, covering a low, narrow door.
I went to stand beside Jack, who was intent on the document on the writing slope. ‘There’s a door through to the barn,’ I said, so quietly that only he would have heard.
His head jerked up and he looked round. In a swift couple of paces, he was beside the tapestry, pushing it out of the way. He raised the latch on the little door, but it didn’t open. Jack turned to the servant. ‘Is there a key?’
The old man shook his head. ‘Master always carried it on him.’
Jack began to say something, then, with a curse, broke off. He reached into the leather purse hanging on his belt and extracted a silver ring with two keys on it, one big, one smaller. He looked sheepishly at me. ‘I took these from his body myself,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have remembered.’
He fitted the larger key in the lock, turned it and the door opened. He pushed me through, following hard on my heels, then closed the door in the old servant’s face.
‘We need to do this without an audience,’ he said.
We looked round the barn. It was a big space but there wasn’t very much in it: stacks of empty wooden crates and chests, standing with their lids thrown back; a handcart whose broken shaft someone was in the process of mending; a ladder with one rung replaced, in bright new wood; a stack of something beneath a cover that proved to be bales of wool of indifferent quality. ‘Perhaps someone changed their minds and didn’t want it after all,’ I remarked, looking at the wool.