Simon himself was sitting up, propped against the pillows. He was still very pale and his broken arm obviously continued to give him pain, a fact which might account for his unusually sour expression — sourer even than was customary for him — although I doubted this. He was not pleased to see me, and I suspected that he had been persuaded against his will by George Applegarth to give me audience. He was certainly on the defensive, as his opening remark clearly indicated.
‘I didn’t kill Anthony, so you can just go away and leave me alone. I’m master here again now, and I don’t have to answer to you or anyone.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Not even to your lady mother? I think she’d argue with that, don’t you? And I have her permission to question whomsoever I please.’
He snorted so vehemently that the flame of his bedside candle guttered in the draught, but I noted that he didn’t contradict me. Instead, his eyes suddenly narrowed and he went on the attack.
‘What about you?’ he demanded nastily. ‘How do I know — how do any of us know — that you’re not my brother’s murderer?’
‘And why would I have wanted to kill Master Bellknapp?’ I asked quietly.
He shrugged, pouting angrily. ‘How can I tell? But I consider it very odd you turning up here the very same day that Anthony reappeared after eight years’ absence.’
‘Coincidence,’ I said. Or divine interference in my affairs. But I didn’t risk saying that to Simon, lest he accuse me of blasphemy. And I was beginning to wonder myself if, in this case, it were true. I hadn’t been able to save Anthony Bellknapp from a violent death, but maybe that had not been God’s purpose.
Simon made no reply, but continued looking sulky and unconvinced. ‘I still think it’s strange,’ he flung at me defiantly.
I ignored this. ‘You, on the other hand,’ I pointed out, ‘had all the reason in the world to get rid of your brother. You made no secret of the fact that you wanted him dead from the moment of his return.’
The young man patted his broken arm. ‘How could I have killed him with this?’ he demanded truculently. ‘Try not to be a bigger fool than you look, Chapman. Although that might be hard, I agree.’
I refused to let myself be riled.
‘Your left arm,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your right. And you’re right-handed.’
But even as I spoke, I silently acknowledged the fact that his injury would have proved a major difficulty to overcome. Whoever had wrested the cudgel from Anthony Bellknapp would have had to move swiftly to retain the element of surprise and to strike before the other man realized his intention. It would have needed two hands to swing my cudgel with the necessary force, and an accuracy of aim hardly achievable with the use of only one arm. Reluctantly, I relinquished the idea of Simon as his brother’s murderer. Not that I was going to tell him that, at least not in so many words, although, if sharp enough, he might deduce it from the slight alteration in my manner.
So I abruptly changed the subject, a tactic I had often found disconcerted people and threw them off their guard.
‘Do you remember any of the details of Jenny Applegarth’s murder?’ I asked.
‘Wh-what?’ he stuttered, blinking rapidly. ‘Jenny Apple… No. I wasn’t here. A-and what’s that got to do with…?’ He tailed off, staring at me stupidly. Next moment, however, his native cunning and intelligence reasserted themselves. ‘You think there’s a link between them,’ he accused me.
By now it was dark outside, the glimpse of sky beyond the still-open shutters a faded black, against which were sketched the inkier shadows of the distant trees. An owl hooted as it swooped past the window in search of prey. The shadows in the room were lengthening, inching forward until Simon Bellknapp and I were islanded in the pool of light thrown by the solitary candle.
‘I was at Kewstoke Hall with my parents,’ my companion continued, ‘visiting my sister and brother-in-law.’
I nodded. ‘And, as I understand it, all the household officers had accompanied your father and mother with the exception of the Applegarths and Dame Audrea’s page.’
‘Yes. John Jericho. I remember him.’
‘What do you remember? Would you have thought him capable of robbery and murder?’
‘I don’t think I thought much about him at all. It must be all of six years ago. I wasn’t much more than nine. He was just another servant.’
The sneering, dismissive tone angered me, but I was determined to hold on to my temper and not give rein to it.
‘Then you can’t help me,’ I said, and turned to go. ‘I’ll wish you goodnight, Master Bellknapp, and pleasant dreams.’
‘Wait!’ His curiosity had been aroused, and now that I appeared to have abandoned the thornier subject of Anthony’s murder, he was more willing to talk. ‘It’s perfectly true, I don’t recall a lot about John Jericho — like many other people, I thought that a silly, made-up name — except that he was small and dark and was always disgustingly cheerful. I recollect that once, Mother had him quite severely beaten for some misdemeanour or another — I can’t remember what — and he just laughed when it was over, as cocky as ever.’
‘Who administered the beating? Can you remember?’
Simon shook his head. ‘But it was probably Jenny Applegarth. She’d been our nurse, Anthony’s and mine — I suppose she still was mine at the time, although Father declared I was growing too old for petticoat government — and she could always give a thrashing when she thought it was deserved.’ He spoke with a certain venom, as if he hadn’t shared his dead brother’s affection for their former nurse. ‘Mother could well have turned the page over to her for punishment.’
Here was something new to think about. ‘Would he have resented it?’ I asked.
‘I told you, he didn’t seem to. But who knows what people are feeling secretly?’ Simon settled himself more comfortably against the banked-up pillows and eased his splinted arm into a different position, although not without a wince of pain. ‘Perhaps that’s why he killed her when he got the chance. When she caught him stealing the household plate and the jewels my mother had left behind, he couldn’t resist the temptation to avenge his humiliation.’
An unplanned murder was how I had always visualized it, but until that moment, I had thought it was because the page could not risk leaving behind a witness to his guilt. Yet now I came to consider it more carefully, there never had been any doubt in anyone’s mind as to who had committed the crime: John Jericho’s flight had made that all too certain. And the killing of a woman, attempting to preserve her employers’ property, had only made matters a thousand times worse for him. A moment of uncontrolled vindictiveness, however, offered a more reasonable solution.
All the same, ‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ I said.
‘What was that?’
‘Would you have considered this John Jericho capable of robbery and murder?’
Simon curled his lip again. ‘Who isn’t, if pushed?’ I watched him realize what he had said and he began to bluster. ‘I mean … well … a low-born fellow like that, he’s probably capable of anything.’
‘You’re sure he was low-born?’
Simon spluttered a laugh. ‘Came out of nowhere, didn’t he? Wandering about the countryside, sleeping rough. Mother took one of her inexplicable fancies to him. My father, the Applegarths, everyone told her she was mad. Courting trouble, I remember Father saying. But she wouldn’t listen. She can be obstinate when she likes. And look what came of it!’
‘You argue with hindsight,’ I persisted. ‘Think back to before the murder. Would you have considered John Jericho likely to turn thief, let alone killer, before it happened?’