* * *
The little town, as I had anticipated, was in a state of ferment, news of the murder having preceded me by some considerable time. All trading and work appeared temporarily to have been suspended, with knots of people gathered on every street corner, at every cottage door and outside every ale house, discussing such unlooked-for tidings. There was about the place the air of excitement, overlaid with the half-genuine horror that such events usually provoke.
My appearance at Anne Fettiplace’s cottage was greeted with a shriek of welcome and relief by the lady herself, and a demand that I immediately tell everything I knew, so that she could pass it on to her neighbours.
‘And don’t pretend you weren’t at Valletort Manor when the murder happened!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sergeant Warren has already told us that there was a chapman present. It couldn’t have been anyone but you.’
I grabbed her arm and shook it urgently. ‘Is there talk of an arrest yet? Have you heard if the Sheriff’s officer named anyone specific in connection with Bartholomew Champernowne’s murder?’
She nodded vigorously. ‘He did. That man you mentioned — I forget what he’s called — but the one you said had a grudge against the whole family.’
‘Jack Golightly?’
‘Ay, that’s right. Sergeant Warren’s gone after him with a posse.’
‘And what will be done with Master Golightly?’ I asked. ‘If he’s unable to prove his innocence, what will happen to him? Will he be hauled off to Plymouth, or is there somewhere here, in Modbury, where he can be confined?’
But she was not attending. Her countenance had lifted into a smile as she glanced at someone behind me.
‘Here are my husband, and son, Simon. They’ll know,’ she said proudly.
It seemed that her menfolk had arrived home from Exeter as expected the previous day, and, having done a morning’s work without stopping at the appointed time for dinner, had now returned to the cottage hungry for a belated meal. They were both easy-going, good-natured men, and the older Fettiplace immediately extended an invitation to me to eat with them.
‘Mother’s told us all about you,’ the son added, shaking me warmly by the hand.
Mistress Fettiplace ushered us all indoors, saying excitedly, ‘You don’t know the half of it, my lad! Roger did sleep at Valletort Manor last night, and was still there this morning when Master Champernowne’s body was discovered. Didn’t I say, when there was mention of a pedlar being present, that it must be him?’
‘You did, Mother,’ the young man agreed, treating me to a broad wink as he seated himself at the table. ‘You’ll have to give us all the details, chapman, if you please, so that we can lord it over the rest of Modbury with our superior knowledge.’
My first impulse had been to refuse Master Fettiplace’s kind invitation to join him at table, but my gnawing hunger — for I had had no dinner, none having been offered me at Valletort Manor — combined with the savoury smell of his wife’s cooking, was too strong an inducement to accept. I should be of little use to anyone, I reasoned, with an empty stomach. So, while we ate our meat pasties and drank our ale, I recounted all that had passed during my brief sojourn with Berenice Gifford, and also made the Fettiplaces free of my own version of what I thought had really happened.
When I had finished, Master Fettiplace rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘You may well be right, chapman, in your assumptions, but you’ve precious little proof to go on as far as I can see. Why would Beric Gifford, even allowing for the fact that he’s already a murderer, want to kill Bartholomew Champernowne? He was pleased with his sister’s betrothal. Everyone in Modbury’ll tell you that. While this Jack Golightly, on the other hand, is an avowed enemy of the family, and, if I’ve got the story correctly from my goody here, bore Master Bartholomew an additional grudge for what took place at his cottage a few nights back. I dare say you’ll find yourself called on as a witness.’
‘That’s true enough,’ his son agreed, tearing a hunk from the loaf and cramming it into his mouth. He added thickly, his speech only just intelligible through the mass of bread, ‘We must pray that your friend can prove his innocence beyond all doubt, otherwise I’m afraid matters could go very ill with him.’
‘Suppose he can’t,’ I said. ‘Where will he be taken?’
‘To Exeter eventually, most likely for trial at the Winter Assize.’
‘But in the meantime?’ I urged.
Master Fettiplace, whose name I had by this time learnt was Ivo, cleared his mouth with a swig of ale before giving me an answer.
‘Plymouth would be my guess, to the lock-up underneath the Guildhall. There’s only a very small cell here, and if it should happen to be already occupied…’ He shrugged and let the sentence hang.
I chewed my lip. ‘How soon shall I be able to find out if an arrest’s been made?’
Simon Fettiplace snorted with laughter. ‘Don’t worry! You won’t have to wait very long, believe me. News fairly flies around in these parts. I always say we know what’s happening on the other side of the Tamar before the good people of Cornwall know it themselves.’
‘True enough,’ his father concurred. ‘If this friend of yours has been charged with Bartholomew Champernowne’s murder, I reckon you’ll be bound to hear of it before nightfall. But,’ he went on, ‘I don’t know what you can do about it. You won’t be able to alter things, for the reasons I gave you just now. And once that fool Guy Warren has got an idea in his head you won’t shift it easily, not unless you can offer him proof positive to the contrary.’
I glanced at Anne Fettiplace, who nodded in agreement with her husband’s words. ‘Guy’s a stubborn man,’ she added on a note of warning.
I took another pasty and bit into it, letting the juices run down my chin. ‘Then I’ll just have to prove to Sergeant Warren that he’s made a mistake,’ I said.
‘Do you really think that Beric Gifford is the killer?’ Simon Fettiplace asked me. ‘I’d have bet my life that he’d fled abroad by now. But I’m forgetting! My mother told us that you claim to have seen him at Oreston, and only a few nights since.’
I nodded. ‘Outside the Bird of Passage Inn.’
Ivo Fettiplace probed his back teeth with his tongue while considering this statement.
‘Are you absolutely certain that it was Beric Gifford you saw?’ he enquired at last.
‘If it wasn’t Beric,’ I answered with some asperity, ‘then Katherine Glover has found herself another lover in a very short space of time.’
‘How was he dressed?’ Mistress Fettiplace wanted to know.
‘It was too dark to see much, and, besides, I was looking through a narrow gap in my bedchamber shutters. He was muffled in a cloak and had one of those flat-crowned caps pulled forward over his eyes.’
‘He did have such a hat, it’s true,’ my hostess confirmed. ‘Made of black velvet. Wore it a lot, he did. In fact, come to think of it, he was rarely without it.’ She paused, staring at me. ‘Now, what have I said to make you look all whichways, like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered slowly. ‘Indeed, I’m not sure if it was something you said or that I said. Or maybe something we both said.’ There was a silence while I racked my brains, trying to discover what was bothering me. Then, ‘No, it’s no good,’ I sighed. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it.’
We all spent the next few minutes recalling as accurately as we could the more recent utterances of Mistress Fettiplace and myself, but to no avail. My memory refused to be jogged a second time, and, in the end, we were forced to abandon the attempt.