So, could anyone have entered our bedchamber during the night, taken the cudgel, used it to kill Anthony and returned it without disturbing Humphrey or myself? And at that point, another idea presented itself. The longer I thought about it, the more it became an absolute certainty. The wine I had drunk before getting into bed had been drugged. It explained the drowsiness that had gripped me almost as soon as my head had touched the pillow; the nausea, headache and pain behind the eyes that had afflicted me for several hours this morning after waking; the heavy, dreamless slumber. I tried to picture again the previous night’s scene when I had joined Anthony and Humphrey after saying goodnight to the cook and the kitchen maids. The all-night tray was on the chest beneath the bedroom window. Humphrey was eating, but not drinking. My host, on the other hand, was doing both. So had he, too, been drugged? But what would have been the point of that? If he had slept as soundly as I did he would never have been lured from his bed on whatever pretext the murderer had used.
The next question seemed to be, had Humphrey drunk the wine? He had certainly been snoring away when I quit the bedchamber this morning and had looked white enough when he caught me up at the alehouse to have been suffering the effects of sickness. But that could simply have been shock: he was the person, he claimed, who had discovered Anthony’s body.
Or was he the killer? On the face of it, like me, he appeared to have no reason to do away with his master, but there might be some hidden resentment that I didn’t know about. He could well have been lying when he sang Anthony’s praises as a good and tolerant employer, his apparent desire to see the murderer brought to justice just empty protestations to throw me off the scent …
But why should I suspect Humphrey when there were so many other people at Croxcombe Manor with far more cogent reasons for wishing Anthony Bellknapp dead? The receiver, consumed with jealousy over Rose; the bailiff, dismissed from his post and robbed of his dream of marrying Dame Audrea; the chaplain, mocked and aped and made to look a fool (for even the worm will eventually turn if goaded too far); Simon, stripped of an inheritance he had thought most certainly his; the Dame herself, who had never liked her elder son and who had no influence over him as she had with her younger; all these people must surely be considered as culprits ahead of Humphrey.
But when could the all-night wine have been drugged? And what with? The latter question was more easily answered than the first. I remembered Mistress Wychbold, the housekeeper, sending one of the maids to make up a lettuce and poppy juice potion when Simon broke his arm. No doubt there was still some of the draught left, standing around in the medicine closet. But who had put it in the wine? Humphrey had fetched the all-night tray from the kitchen and could have done it on his way back to the bedchamber. But that meant that Anthony would have suffered the effects of the drug as well as myself. Dragging him from his bed, through the house and out to the water’s edge would almost certainly have created enough disturbance to rouse someone. Besides, if Anthony was unconscious already, there would have been little point in hitting him on the head before tipping him into the moat. No, it was more probable that my host had arranged an assignation with someone — in which case, might he not also have been responsible for drugging the wine?
The longer I considered the idea, the surer I became that this was what had happened. Anthony could easily have hidden a flask of the lettuce and poppy juice somewhere in the bedchamber, and, as it turned out, he had had plenty of time to put it in the all-night jug before I went to bed. But why? Because he had this nocturnal meeting and wanted to make certain that I didn’t wake up to note the length of time that he was absent? Probably. He had taken my cudgel with him for protection, which indicated a suspicion that there might be trouble. Not Mistress Micheldever then; he had not had a rendezvous with the lovely Rose. But, whoever else it was, there had been an argument, a quarrel of some kind, during which my cudgel had been wrested from Anthony’s grasp and used to club him on the back of the head …
Hercules thrust a cold, wet nose into my hand and took hold of my sleeve with his teeth, growling ominously. He was tired of waiting and wanted to get on. He had terrified every rabbit within half a mile’s radius and was now looking for fresh fields to conquer. I was half inclined to shake him off with a stern word and a kick up his nether end, but then decided he was right. I should get back to Croxcombe and discover the facts before I deluded myself any further that I knew what had happened last night.
But what to do about my cudgel? I had been given the opportunity to extricate myself from any suspected involvement in Anthony’s murder, and I should be a fool not to take it. Consequently, I stopped at the next stream I passed and washed the stained, weighted end of the stick in the running water, scrubbing it as clean as I could with a handful of grass and dry bracken. Then I disguised such faint marks as remained by plastering them well with mud scooped up from a patch of earth under the trees that had not yet dried after yesterday’s storm. It occurred to me, as I regarded my handiwork, that I had given myself one advantage over the other residents at the manor; only I and the killer knew what the murder weapon had been. I had only to keep my ears open and wait for the murderer to give himself away. And on this optimistic note, Hercules and I set out to cover the last few miles to Croxcombe.
Dame Audrea might have sent Humphrey after me to bring me back, but I couldn’t pretend that she was delighted to see me.
‘You went off in a great hurry this morning,’ she accused me as I was ushered into her private solar by George Applegarth. ‘Common courtesy would surely have dictated that you take your leave of me.’
‘Madam, I’m sorry,’ I apologized, ‘it was ill done of me, but I wanted to be on the road as early as possible and had no desire to disturb your rest. But you see that I have returned as you requested. Allow me to condole with you in this hour of your great loss.’
Her lips thinned and the blue eyes snapped angrily. ‘Don’t be sarcastic with me, Master Chapman. You know very well that my elder son’s death is nothing but a relief, both to me and to his brother.’
‘That’s honest, at least,’ I said. ‘I trust you’ll be equally frank with the sheriff’s officer when he comes. There’s no policy better than honesty.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve warned you, sirrah, I won’t stand for insubordination. If that man of Anthony’s delivered his message aright, you are perfectly well aware that I have no intention of involving the law. My son slipped, hit his head on a stone, fell in the moat and drowned.’
‘Was there a stone?’ I asked.
‘No, of course there wasn’t! Anthony was hit a stunning blow on the back of the head.’
‘What with?’ I tried to sound as nonchalant as I could.
‘How do I know what with?’ she blazed. ‘I wasn’t there.’
I noticed that she had taken the first opportunity to protest her own innocence. The trouble was, I was half inclined to believe her.
‘Lady,’ I said, ‘I won’t pretend not to know why you’ve sent for me. Because of the things I’ve told people, you think I might be able to solve this crime for you without, as you put it, involving the law. So why not leave things as they are? Give out your story of an accident, bury your son and forget that it’s a lie. If you don’t want to see the murderer punished, why do you wish to know his name?’
She got up abruptly from the window-seat where she had been sitting, and started pacing about the room, hitting her balled right fist into the open palm of her left hand.