‘There is that,’ my hostess concurred, ‘but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. She was not a prepossessing girl. On the other hand,’ Emilia added with a certain amount of bitterness, ‘good looks aren’t necessarily everything. I’ve known some very odd-featured women who have not only captured husbands, but who have been the object of those husbands’ adoration.’
I guessed from this that Emilia Virgoe had never married. As a young woman she must have been very pretty, but for one reason or another had failed to ensnare a man. It had plainly galled her to see other, far less attractive females experiencing no difficulty in finding mates. Perhaps her attitude to love explained matters.
I thanked her again for her patience and time, adding, ‘You see, you have been of great help to me, after all. If I can only find this Jane Honeychurch, I might discover the names of Isabella’s beaux.’
‘I wouldn’t pin your hopes on it,’ the nurse advised me. ‘Even if you do find the woman, there’s nothing to say that Isabella ever told her anything more than she told anyone else. Where will you go now?’
‘To Westbury village, in case there is anyone still living there who can recall seeing Isabella on the day she disappeared and can add anything to what I already know.’
‘And that is?’
‘That it was a cold, wet and windy March day and both Isabella and her companion had the hoods of their cloaks pulled well forward to conceal their faces.’
The nurse smiled and said, ‘I wish you luck.’ She nobly refrained from repeating a warning about the length of time involved or from adding a rider concerning the general unreliability of people’s memories over a span of twenty days, let alone the same number of years. But she did wonder aloud, as I had wondered to myself, about the advisability of searching out the truth. ‘After so lengthy a period, does it really matter now?’
I spoke sternly, partly to appease my own conscience.
‘Where murder is involved, isn’t it everyone’s duty to bring the murderer to book if he can?’ I asked. ‘The taking of human life is surely the most heinous of all crimes.’
Emilia Virgoe laughed shortly. ‘It depends, doesn’t it, whether you are taking life for your own reasons or for those of your overlord, who commands you to do so on his behalf.’
I decided it was definitely time to go. We were getting into deep water; on the borderline of treason. I thanked my hostess yet again and left.
I had been to Westbury once before and knew it to be little more than a scatter of cottages along the River Trym and grouped around the college, which dominated the area. There had been a monastery there in Saxon times, under the control of the then Bishop of Worcester, who had brought over twelve Benedictine monks from Fleury in France. By the time of the Conquest, however, it had fallen into decay and the monks had long gone, leaving one solitary priest to carry on God’s work. Thirty years later, another Bishop of Worcester, Wulfstan, had restored the building and re-instated the brotherhood, but further on in its history it had become a college, with secular priests who went out among the people, the control of the establishment passing into the hands of a dean and canons instead of an abbot. Its most famous — or infamous — son had been the heretic, John Wycliffe, who had held a prebendary stall there sometime in the preceding century. In recent years the building had been greatly enlarged under the auspices of Bishop Carpenter and due to the patronage of Bristol’s own William Canynges, who, before his death twelve years ago, had become first a canon and then dean of the college.
But my present visit had nothing to do with this august edifice, and instead I went knocking on the doors of cottages, asking if there was anyone who remembered a March morning, twenty years previously, when a girl by the name of Isabella Linkinhorne had been seen with a male companion somewhere in the vicinity of the village.
As was only to be expected, I was treated to blank stares, often accompanied by loud guffaws and suggestions as to what I could do with myself (and my dog), or to downright rudeness and the deepest suspicion as to my motives. I began to realize that leaving my pack at home had perhaps not been such a good idea. As a pedlar, people regarded me either as a welcome visitor or a nuisance, but not as a potential thief, poking my long nose into their homes to spy out the land with a view to robbing them later. Even Hercules failed to win friends, especially after he leaped over a fence to chase an old couple’s geese into the lane through a gate that someone had carelessly left open. Needless to say I was blamed for this catastrophe, although it was none of my doing, someone else having failed to close the gate. But in the event it proved to have a satisfactory ending, for me, at least. The old couple, angry and abusive at first, were won over by my abject apologies and willingness to help capture the errant birds, who were making a determined dash for freedom. By the time the final one was penned inside the fence again, we were all three exhausted, and the dame, taking pity on me, invited me into the cottage for a drink of ale.
‘Anything, mother,’ I gasped, ‘as long as it’s not elderflower wine.’
‘Elderflower wine?’ she screeched. ‘Got enough to do what with looking after the geese, the pig, the donkey and him — ’ she jerked her head towards the old man — ‘without wasting my time making elderflower wine. Sit down, lad, sit down! And make sure that pesky dog don’t get off his leash again.’
I promised humbly to keep the pest under control and ordered Hercules to sit at my feet and keep quiet. To my surprise, he obeyed instantly, which made me suspect that the geese had frightened him a great deal more than he had scared them. The old man turned out to be the dame’s brother, not her husband as I had presumed, and they introduced themselves as Judith and Alfred Humble. An enquiry by the latter as to what I was doing in Westbury and why I was knocking on doors produced the whole story; a tale of murder which not only thrilled them to the marrow of their ancient bones, but also led to Judith Humble banging excitedly on the cottage table with her fist, crying in her piercingly shrill tones, ‘I can remember that girl! Never knew her name, but she was always around here at one time, meeting some man or another. You recollect her, Alfred. You must do! She’d hang around here, talking to you over the fence. You weren’t a bad-looking man in them days, before your hair went white and your teeth fell out.’
‘Ar,’ her brother agreed, when he’d thought the matter over. ‘It were a long time gone, though. Must be. I ain’t had all me teeth for ten year or more. But I do recall her now you bring her to mind. Young, she were. Lovely. Sit on that horse of hers, she would, and chat to me like I were a proper gentleman, not just a cottager. I often wondered what had become of her. Stopped coming all of a sudden like, and I never set eyes on her again. And now you tell me she’s dead. Murdered.’ His faded eyes slowly filled with tears.
His sister sniffed disparagingly. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m that surprised. All those different men she used to meet! I clearly remember thinking to myself, “You’re asking for trouble, my lady! Just begging for it, with your fine clothes and your airs and graces. You’ll come to a bad end, my girl!” And you see, I was right!’
‘When you say “all those different men”,’ I asked, ‘how many exactly were there?’
‘Three,’ was the prompt reply. ‘I remember as though it were yesterday. But she never met them all together, that goes without saying. They each had their appointed days, and I doubt if any one of them knew the other two existed. But she was bound to make a botch of it one day. One day, one of ’em was bound to find out he was being made a fool of, and then, I thought, you’re for it, my young mistress.’
‘Can you recall at all what the three men looked like?’ I leaned forward eagerly on my stool.
Judith Humble frowned. After a minute or two’s deep cogitation, she finally answered, ‘If memory don’t play me false, one — the one I recollect best — was tall and fair and very handsome. Too good for her, although it was obvious she didn’t think so. She thought herself better than him; but then, I could tell, she thought herself better than anybody. Mind you, to be fair, the other two weren’t nothing remarkable. I can’t really remember either of them.’