We had just left the last of the three cottages, and I was about to take my leave of my hostess yet again, when a woman came out of a dwelling on the opposite side of the alleyway and called across, ‘You’re Roger Chapman, aren’t you?’
My heart sank at the prospect of further delay, but I could hardly deny the charge with Mistress Fettiplace’s friend standing not two feet distant, in her doorway.
‘I am,’ I acknowledged.
The woman nodded. ‘I’m Eulalia Trim. And this — ’ she half turned to indicate the young woman behind her — ‘is my daughter, Constance. She was maid to Mistress Gifford before she was dismissed to make room for that Katherine Glover. Rumour has it that you were at Valletort Manor this morning when Master Champernowne’s body was discovered. She’d be interested to hear the tale.’
My reluctance vanished, and I’m ashamed to say that I muttered a rather hurried farewell to Anne Fettiplace before following the two women into their cottage. In spite of the swineherd’s conviction that the Widow Trim was more than capable of looking after herself without any help from her daughter, there was, nevertheless, an air of poverty, a hint of straitened circumstances about the interior that I had not encountered in the other dwellings I had visited that morning. And both women made it plain that they harboured an understandable grudge at Constance’s loss of a place that had provided her with food and lodging at no cost either to herself or to her widowed parent.
I decided to stir up their animosity even further to see what result it produced. ‘I heard that you begged leave from Mistress Gifford to come here to look after your mother,’ I said, addressing Constance.
‘Nonsense!’ she replied angrily. ‘Whoever told you that was either lying or has been misinformed. I was sent packing to make way for Katherine Glover! That’s the truth of it!’
‘At Beric Gifford’s insistence?’
The younger woman shook her head emphatically. ‘Oh no! He may have grown besotted with Katherine in time, but that was after she became Mistress Berenice’s maid. In any case, he would never have thrown me off the manor. He wasn’t like that. But no doubt he believed what his sister told him, as he always did.’
I frowned. ‘Why is it that everyone who knows Beric speaks well of him? This is the man who murdered his great-uncle in cold blood.’
‘Oh, he has a temper when he’s roused,’ the widow cut in. ‘But he’s very loyal and could never bear to hear any of his family or friends spoken of unjustly. He would never have let the old man belittle the woman he was in love with.’
I shrugged. ‘I can understand that and applaud him for it. I can even understand why he attacked his great-uncle in the heat of the moment when, by all accounts, Master Capstick insulted Mistress Glover and tried to force Beric into marriage with another woman. But to return the following morning, when a night’s sleep must have cooled his temper, to set out for Plymouth with the sole purpose of bludgeoning an old, defenceless man to death while he slept, that I can neither understand nor excuse.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ Constance Trim said with a defiant obstinacy. ‘Perhaps, after all, somebody else committed the murder.’
I said impatiently, ‘You know that’s foolishness. The housekeeper saw and recognized Beric. Besides — ’ I fished in my pouch and brought out the hat-brooch — ‘he dropped this on the floor of Master Capstick’s bedchamber. I found it there, amongst the rushes.’
The Widow Trim was more interested in how I had gained access to Oliver Capstick’s house than in the ornament, and was already asking eager questions to that effect when her daughter abruptly waved her into silence.
‘This doesn’t belong to Beric,’ she said. ‘He never wears a jewel in his hat. But Berenice does. This brooch is hers. She has a black velvet cap exactly like her brother’s. She used to borrow his clothes sometimes to go riding in, when she wanted to be very daring. They’re much of a size, except for their heads. His is smaller than hers. She could never wear his hats.’
I stared at her in stupefaction. At last, ‘Are you absolutely certain,’ I asked, ‘that Beric has never worn this ornament?’
‘I’m positive,’ was the answer. ‘I recognize it. It’s Berenice’s.’
Against all reason, I found myself believing her. Why, however, when confronted with the jewel, had Mistress Trenowth identified it as belonging to Beric? Yet even as I silently asked myself the question, I recalled the way in which the housekeeper had hesitated as she looked at the brooch, and the constraint in her voice as she made her reply. But why should she lie? Why should she wish to protect her late master’s murderer? Then I remembered the Widow Cooper’s words. ‘Over fifteen years Mathilda looked after that man … and then to be left nothing in his will! It’s disgraceful and so I told her, although she pretends she doesn’t care. But, of course, she does. She’s bound to!’ And she had. Mistress Trenowth must deliberately have misled me out of resentment.
Had she guessed that the murderer might be Berenice dressed in her brother’s clothes right from the beginning? Or was I letting my imagination run away with me again? Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe Beric had been unable to find his hat that fateful morning and had borrowed his sister’s instead …
But another memory was surfacing in my mind. Robert Steward had told me that the black velvet cap he wore in bed had been given to him by Berenice soon after her brother’s disappearance. Yet the person I had seen outside the Bird of Passage Inn had been wearing just such a piece of headgear! A flat, dark cap that fitted its owner perfectly. But Beric’s cap had been for some months in the possession of the former steward. It followed, therefore — it had to — that it was not Beric whom I’d seen.
* * *
To this day, I cannot remember bidding farewell to Mistress Trim and her daughter. I suppose I must have done so, and also taken my cudgel from where I’d propped it against the wall, before I quit the cottage. But my next recollection is of sitting beside a stream, staring into the depths of the clear running water as it purled over its rocky bed. I can still remember the delicate, opalescent colours of the pebbles.
Gradually, my rioting thoughts began to steady, to form a pattern that was at last beginning to make some sense of the story of Beric Gifford. I recalled, as I had done once before, Mistress Trenowth telling me how happy Berenice had been when she told her great-uncle of her betrothal. ‘She was obviously very much in love,’ the housekeeper had said. But this had not been my impression when I had seen Berenice and Bartholomew Champernowne together. Indeed, my feeling had been that she rather despised him. So who was really the object of her affections?
I dipped one hand in the stream, letting the water run like satin between my fingers. An idea was forming uneasily at the back of my mind and for a while I tried to repulse it. But it would not be kept at bay, the unwelcome facts relentlessly pushing their way forward. It was Berenice, not her brother, who had taken such a fancy to Katherine Glover that she had dismissed her own maid in order to create a place for the girl, not merely in the household, but as her close companion. Beric, that young man of whom most people had something good to say, had only fallen in love with Katherine after she had gone to live at Valletort Manor. Moreover, he was spoken of as the one who was the most in love of the two. But was Katherine Glover the beloved not only of Beric, but also of Berenice?
My mind jibbed at the idea, for such a liaison was against all the teachings of the Church and punishable by death. Yet I knew that these relationships did exist between both men and women, (and had, indeed, sensed something of them whilst I was a novice at Glastonbury Abbey). The young girl with whom I had spoken yesterday, on my way to Valletort Manor, claimed to have seen Katherine Glover and Beric on the day of the murder ‘All over one another, they were, pawing each other and kissing until it made me feel sick.’ But supposing the person she had seen dressed in male clothing, with blood stains on the front of the tunic, had not been Beric, but Berenice!