The Nightingale Gallery

'That, sir, is enough!' Sir Richard grabbed Cranston by the wrist but the coroner shook him off.

'That will do!' Cranston was annoyed now by the arrogance of these people, thinking they could push him around whenever they wished. 'I am an officer of the king, and the crown is involved. These charges may involve treason, conspiracy as well as murder!'

Sir Richard sat down again, breathing heavily. Lady Isabella linked her arm through his. She looked at him and shook her head.

'My Lady,' Athelstan said softly, 'it is best if you tell the truth. You must! Your husband lies murdered. Two others have been brutally executed. The murderer may well strike again. Sir John and I go around London playing Blind Man's Buff in this deadly game. Your husband, Lady Isabella, had secrets – that is why he was murdered. Brampton was supposed to have been the culprit but, due to chance and circumstances, we have ascertained he was innocent, and he, too, was murdered, though it was made to look like suicide. Vechey saw or heard something so he, also, was silenced. Now, Lady Isabella, on your oath to the new king, have you ever visited the apothecary called Simon Foreman?'

'No!'

Athelstan stared back.

'Did you love your husband?'

'No! He was a gentle, kind man but he did not know me, not in the carnal sense. He had his own tastes…' her voice trailed away.

'A liking for young men?' Athelstan asked.

'He was a sodomite!' Cranston barked. 'He liked young men! He lusted after them!'

Athelstan stared at him and shook his head. Lady Isabella put her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly.

'My Lady,' Athelstan pressed her, 'your husband?'

'He left me alone. I made no inquiry into what he thought or did.'

'You, Sir Richard, do you love the Lady Isabella?'

The crestfallen merchant pulled himself together.

'Yes. Yes, I do!'

'Are you lovers?'

'Yes, we are.'

'So you both had a motive?'

'For what?'

Sir Richard had lost his usual ebullience. He slouched back in the chair, his face drawn as if he realised the mortal danger they were now in.

'For murder, sir.'

The merchant shook his head. 'I may have lusted after my brother's wife,' he muttered, 'but not his life!'

'In King's Bench,' Cranston barked, 'it would not appear like that. It would appear, Sir Richard, that you lusted after your brother's wife as well as his riches; that while he was alive you committed adultery with her and, with each other, you plotted together to carry out his murder and lay the blame on Brampton.'

'In which case,' Sir Richard replied meekly, 'I must also be responsible for the deaths of Vechey and Brampton. But I have witnesses. I stayed at the banquet with my brother the entire evening. I said good night to him, and the rest of the time I was with the Lady Isabella. We shared the same bed,' he confessed.

'And the night Vechey died?' Cranston asked abruptly.

'The same. We have servants here. Workmen in the yard. They will vouch that I stayed here, doing accounts, going out to look at the carvings which were being made for the pageant for the king's coronation.'

Lady Isabella drew herself up, resting her elbows on the arms of her chair.

'If we had murdered Sir Thomas,' she asked, 'how could we enter his chamber, force poison down his throat or into his wine cup, and leave the room, locking and bolting the door from inside? That, sir, is impossible.' Her eyes turned towards Athelstan, pleading with him. 'I beg you, sir, to believe us. If we were in bed together, how could we go down, seize Brampton, take him up to that garret and hang him? No, I did not go to Whitefriars. I did not visit Simon Foreman. I did not buy poisons. I am innocent, not of sin but of my husband's death and that of others. I swear before God I had nothing to do with them.'

'You sent wine up to Brampton?' Athelstan asked.

'Yes, as a peace offering.'

'And was Brampton in his room?'

'No, I found out later that he was busy taking the cup of claret to my husband's chamber.' She wiped her eyes. 'The servant left the wine in Brampton's chamber and came down. That is all, I swear!'

Despite the tears, Athelstan still wondered if her adultery made her an assassin or perhaps an accomplice to murder. The friar felt the frustration grow within him. How had Sir Thomas been murdered? And how had Brampton been hanged? And Vechey? Athelstan dallied with the thought of tying each of the people in this house down to their exact movements during the night Sir Thomas died, as well as the following one when Vechey disappeared, but realised the futility of it. Moreover, there was no real proof linking the murderers with anyone in the house. Perhaps they had been carried out on the orders of someone else? But who? And how? Why?

Athelstan stood, walking up and down just beneath the dais, his fingers to his lips. Cranston watched him carefully. The clever friar would sift one fact from another. The coroner was quite prepared to let Athelstan use the advantage they had now gained.

'Lady Isabella, Sir Richard,' he began, 'I have no real proof to convict you. Nevertheless, we have enough evidence under the law to swear out warrants for your arrest and ask for your committal to Newgate, Marshalsea, or even the Tower.' He held up his hand. 'However, we wish for your cooperation. We want the truth. The Sons of Dives… you belong to them, don't you, Sir Richard?'

The merchant nodded.

'Everyone in this household is a member, are they not?'

'Yes,' Sir Richard replied meekly. 'Yes, we are. The church condemns usury and the loaning of money at high interest. The Guilds also condemn it. However, in every guild, in every livery company in the city, groups of merchants get together in some society. They give themselves strange names. Ours is known as the Sons of Dives. We lend money secretly to whoever needs it but charge interest much higher than the Lombards or Venetians. The money is delivered quickly. Payment is over a number of years. We choose our customers carefully: only those who can underwrite the loan, give pledges that they are good for the money they have borrowed. A petty mystery, our guild is full of such covens.'

'And the riddles? The shoemaker?'

Both Sir Richard and Lady Isabella shook their heads.

'We don't know!' they murmured in unison.

'And the scriptural quotations from Genesis and the Book of the Apocalypse, you have no clue to their meaning?'

Again a chorus of denials. Athelstan returned to the table, rolled up the piece of parchment and put away his quills and inkhorn.

'Sir John, for the moment leave matters be. Sir Richard and Lady Isabella now know that perhaps we are not as stupid or as feckless as sometimes we may appear. You may rest assured, Sir Richard, that in the end we will discover the truth and the murderer, whoever he or she may be, will hang at the Elms for all London to see!'

Cranston pursed his lips and nodded as if Athelstan had said all there was to say. They bade both the merchant and his paramour adieu.

As they left the Springall mansion and waited in Cheap- side for an ostler to bring their horses round from the stables, Athelstan sensed Cranston was furious with him but the coroner waited until they had mounted and moved away from the house before stopping and giving full vent to his fury.

'Brother Athelstan,' he said testily, 'I would remind you that / am the king's coroner and those two,' he gestured in the direction of the Springall house, 'Sir Richard and that expensive paramour of his, are guilty of murder!'

'Sir John,' Athelstan began, 'I apologise.'

'You apologise!' Cranston mimicked. He leaned forward and grasped the horn of Athelstan's saddle. 'You apologise! If you had kept your mouth shut, Friar, we might perhaps have gained the truth. But, oh no! We established that Lady Isabella went to the apothecary's. We established that she and Sir Richard are lovers, adulterers, fornicators, and in only a matter of time we could have had a confession that they were guilty of Sir Thomas's death as well as the others!'