‘What did you think?’ I enquired curiously. ‘I don’t suppose you see many people reeling around the woods drunk, at midnight.’
‘I daresay you’re right, but I don’t imagine that occurred to us at the time.’ He laughed. ‘All we thought about was not being discovered ourselves. The three of us just sloped off by another path as quietly as we could.’
‘You’re sure the page was drunk? He couldn’t have been ill or — or wounded?’
Ronan Bignell shrugged, trailing his fingers in the water of the moat. ‘We did talk it over next day, of course, when the news of the murder came out, and we decided that perhaps he might not have been drunk after all, just horrified and sickened by what he’d done. We even discussed whether or not we ought to tell anyone what we’d witnessed, but, quite honestly, what would have been the point? John Jericho had killed Jenny Applegarth and run away. Everyone knew that, and all we’d seen was him escaping. We didn’t know where he’d gone, so we couldn’t put the sheriff’s men on his track. We’d just have landed ourselves in trouble if we’d owned up to being in the woods after curfew.’
The argument was reasonable enough. John Jericho would have been well on his way by the time news of his crime reached Wells. The three lads had had nothing to gain, but everything to lose by being honest.
I stared thoughtfully at the walls of the Bishop’s palace, shimmering in the heat of the August morning. Echoes of the town from beyond Bishop Beckington’s arch were borne on a gentle breeze. I glanced up at the side of the cathedral where the painted statues of the saints glowed jewel-bright in their niches.
‘When you saw the page,’ I asked suddenly, ‘did he have anything with him?’
‘Anything with him?’ My companion was puzzled.
‘Yes. The murder, as I understand it, was incidental to the robbery. He’d made off with a considerable amount of plate as well as jewels. Therefore he must have been carrying his spoils in something. Did you see a sack or a knotted cloth lying anywhere around?’
Ronan Bignell began to laugh. ‘Do you know, in all these years that’s never occurred to me? It’s never even crossed my mind. Nor Rob’s, nor Dick’s that I know of. No, we didn’t see any sack, but unfortunately I don’t think that tells you anything except that it was darkish in the woods, in spite of it being a moonlit night, and that we were in a panic. We were only concerned that the page didn’t see us and report us to Dame Audrea. What I’m saying is that there might have been a sack, but if there was, we simply didn’t notice it.’
I could see that further questioning on that score was useless. Even if I persuaded him to introduce me to his two friends, Rob and Dick, I doubted they could tell me more. And if they did, it made no odds. There had never been any dispute about the identity of the murderer.
‘Rose hinted that you also saw someone else in the woods that night,’ I suggested hopefully.
‘No, that was the next night. We saw one of the charcoal burners, but as they tend their fires day and night, there was nothing unusual in that. Except, that is, that this one wasn’t tending his fire, but standing and surveying the ground around Hangman’s Oak as though he were looking for something.’
‘Hangman’s Oak? That was where you saw the page.’
‘But this was a day later and the page had long since disappeared, so there’s nothing in that to get excited over.’
‘Doesn’t it strike you as a coincidence?’
Ronan shook his head. ‘No. Why should it?’
There was no really satisfactory answer that I could give him. Nothing logical; it just seemed to me to be of some significance.
‘Did you recognize the man?’
‘Oh yes! It was that rogue Hamo Gough. We didn’t worry too much about him. He’s not above doing a bit of poaching himself.’
‘You say he was surveying the ground-’
‘He seemed to be. I couldn’t say for certain.’
‘All right. But was that all?’
‘What else would he be doing?’
‘He wasn’t perhaps … by any chance … digging?’
‘No. Why in heaven’s name would he have been doing that?’
I shook my head. ‘Just a foolish thought. Forget it.’
Ronan stroked his chin, regarding me thoughtfully. ‘It’s odd, though, that you should ask me that question. It’s brought back something that until this minute I’d completely forgotten. A few days afterwards, I was taking meat from our stall to the manor house kitchen and had taken a short cut through Croxcombe woods when I met Hamo Gough not far from his cottage. And now I come to think about it, he was carrying a spade over one shoulder. It obviously didn’t strike me as odd at the time, or it would have stuck in my memory. He can be a surly bastard when he chooses, and my recollection is that he didn’t even return my greeting. Then again, he does sometimes go digging for truffles.’
‘And that’s probably what he was doing,’ I agreed glumly.
There was silence between us for a moment or two while we listened abstractedly to the noises of the marketplace and I wondered idly where Rose had gone. To visit her mother and friends and tell them the great news, no doubt.
Ronan, who seemed to have gone into a reverie of his own, said suddenly, ‘I know what Rose must have been thinking of when she told you I’d seen someone else in the woods that night. The night of the murder, that is. She’s confused it with something Father saw. It was all of six years ago and it’s no wonder if things have got a bit muddled in her mind.’
‘Master Bignell also saw somebody in Croxcombe woods?’
‘Not in the woods, no! I wouldn’t have been there if I’d thought there was the smallest risk of encountering him. It was some time later, two or three days perhaps, and of course we were all still talking about Jenny Applegarth’s murder — well, I suppose it was the main topic of conversation for months — and Father suddenly recalled seeing a man on horseback in the neighbourhood of the house on the night she was killed. He — my father — had ridden over to Shepton to visit a friend and was returning home by the track that runs along the manor’s northern boundary. It was dusk and he couldn’t see the horseman at all clearly. He remembered that Master Bellknapp and Dame Audrea were away, visiting their daughter and her husband at Kewstoke Hall, and that young Simon and most of their household had gone with them. He said he thought of riding after the stranger to warn him that he wouldn’t be able to secure a bed for the night as the master and mistress were both absent, and, indeed, he turned aside from the track with that end in view. But by the time he reached the moat gate, the man and his horse had vanished. So he assumed he had mistaken the man’s intention, rode on home and thought no more of the incident until a day or so after the murder, when he suddenly wondered if what he’d seen might have some significance.’
‘Master Bignell didn’t say anything to the sheriff’s men?’
‘There seemed no point. We all knew who the murderer was and everyone was trying to find him. There were enough posses out to capture ten men — Rob and Dick and I went on two of ’em — but even so, John Jericho outsmarted us all. My own guess is that he lay low by day and travelled by night, but even so, it wouldn’t have been easy for him, not on foot with a sack to carry. But he did it. He fooled everyone and hasn’t been heard of again from that day to this. At least, that is to say, not unless this half-brother of yours turns out to be him. And if Dame Audrea thinks he is, God help him! She’s a woman who knows she’s always right.’
‘I suppose this business of Anthony Bellknapp’s return might distract her,’ I suggested hopefully.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ my companion spluttered. ‘She won’t be easily deflected from anything she undertakes. She’s perfectly capable of carrying on two or three vendettas at once.’
‘You don’t think, in the light of what your father saw that evening, that John Jericho might not have been Jenny Applegarth’s killer? You don’t think this stranger, whoever he was, could have had anything to do with it?’