‘I’ve been informed that one might have had red hair.’
The dame sipped her ale and wiped her mouth on her apron. ‘You could be right, at that,’ she agreed.
‘And Mistress Linkinhorne always met them here? In Westbury?’
‘I can’t say that for certain, but this did seem to be her trysting place. What do you tell me her name was?’
‘Isabella Linkinhorne.’
Judith Humble nodded her head. ‘That explains it, then. For years there was the letters I and L and R and M carved into the trunk of one of the trees hereabouts, enclosed in a heart. Could have shown it to you, but the tree came down in a storm three or four years ago.’
I too drank some of my ale while I pondered on this newly acquired information.
‘So, one of the men had the initials R.M.,’ I mused.
The dame nodded. ‘It would seem so.’
Alfred Humble suddenly spoke up. He had been so quiet for the last few minutes that I had almost forgotten his existence, especially as he had left the table and gone to sit by the fire, lost, I suspected, in memories of a young and beautiful girl who had carelessly made a friend of him; memories half-forgotten, but now recalled to mind.
‘One of them three men she met lived in Bath. She told me so,’ he said.
I turned my head sharply to look at him. ‘Which one? Do you know?’
The old man shrugged. ‘She never said and I didn’t ask. Weren’t my business.’ He added softly, more to himself than to me or his sister, ‘The last time I ever recollect seeing her was on a blustery March morning, when it weren’t fit for a dog to be out. Wrapped up in that blue cloak of hers, she were. She waved at me and smiled.’
Seven
‘Did you see anyone with her?’ I asked. ‘Or was she alone?’
The old man furrowed his brow. ‘Can’t rightly recollect,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s a long time ago.’
‘Try to remember,’ I urged him. ‘It could be very important.’
Judith Humble sniffed. ‘Well, I can tell you that,’ she announced surprisingly. ‘I saw her that morning, too, when I looked out the door to yell at you — ’ she nodded at her brother — ‘to come inside and not catch your death of cold, standing there gawking, like some mazed youngling instead of a grown man in possession of his senses. And the wind and rain blowing that hard across the downs it was enough to give you an inflammation of the lungs.’ She turned to me. ‘Alfred’s always had a weak chest, ever since he were a child. Many’s the time my poor mother-’
I stemmed these reminiscences without compunction.
‘And was there anyone with Mistress Linkinhorne?’
‘Mistress Link-? Oh, yes! Her! I’d forgotten what you said her name was. Of course there was someone with her. A man. There always was.’
‘Not always,’ Alfred Humble protested. ‘Sometimes she was on her own.’
‘Not often,’ his sister snorted. ‘She played those three fools one against the other …’
Once again, I interrupted. ‘Did you get a glimpse of his face? Do you know which of the three men it was?’
Judith Humble thought a minute, but then shook her head. ‘He had his hood pulled well forward over his face against the weather.’
I sighed. This information agreed with that given me by Jonathan Linkinhorne. I asked, ‘Did anyone, to your knowledge, come here making enquiries about Isabella in the next few days?’
The old lady nodded briskly. ‘They did that. Which is why the sighting stuck in my mind, I suppose. It were a couple o’ young men, as I recall. Said they worked for her father, though no names were mentioned.’
‘Did they say why they were enquiring?’
‘Said their young lady hadn’t been home all night. Ho, ho! I thought to myself. There’s a surprise!’ The sarcasm was heavy. ‘I’d have wagered my last groat that that girl was going to cause trouble one fine day. Gone off with the man I saw, was my reckoning. And now you’ve brought it all back to mind, I guess that was the last time I ever clapped eyes on her. Not that I’d have sworn to it until this minute, but, yes, that was the last time. And now you tell us that the poor creature didn’t run away at alclass="underline" she was murdered.’
‘Probably by the man she was with that day,’ I answered sombrely. ‘A thousand pities you didn’t see his face.’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ she replied with some asperity, as though she suspected I didn’t quite believe her. ‘It wasn’t a day for lingering at the door, and I was more concerned with getting Alfred to come indoors than in discovering which gudgeon she had persuaded to keep a tryst with her in such bad weather.’
‘I believe you,’ I said placatingly. ‘And I can only thank you for all you’ve told me. You have a remarkable memory, Mistress.’
‘Always have had,’ she answered proudly. ‘My dear mother used to say to me, “Judith, if we had a silver shilling for every time you remember something aright, we’d be richer than a bishop.” Ain’t that so, Alfred?’
‘That be so, my dear,’ her brother concurred, but I could tell that he wasn’t really listening. He was lost in a dream of his own; a dream of youth and a beautiful girl who had once, long ago, smiled at him and brightened his humdrum life, if only for a moment.
I rose to my feet, picking up Hercules and apologizing once more for the incident with the geese.
‘No harm done. As it happens.’ Judith Humble could not resist the rider, nor wagging an admonitory finger at me as she spoke. She, too, got to her feet.
I recollected something.
‘This girl we’ve been talking about, this Isabella Linkinhorne, she had a cousin who lived in, or near, Westbury. A Jeanette Linkinhorne. She entered the sisterhood of the Magdalen nuns in Bristol a few weeks before Isabella disappeared. Did you by any chance know her? Or of her?’
My hostess clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘I knew the name Linkinhorne seemed familiar to me when you first mentioned it, but I couldn’t for the life of me think why. Yes, I do recall the woman, vaguely, although I never knew her well. She lived a little way out of the village, in a cottage that stands by itself at the top of the hill as you come down from the Clifton track. But I’d no idea she was kin to this Isabella. No good reason why I should. Any visit to her cottage would have been paid before the girl reached as far as here. Became a nun, did she? Well, there again, I knew her so little that, according to what you say, she’s been gone these twenty years and I haven’t even missed her. Just an echo of the name must’ve stuck in my mind.’
I thanked her yet again, took my leave of Alfred Humble, still wandering somewhere among the stars, and started the long walk home.
It was almost suppertime when, tired out and weary, I finally reached Small Street. Adela was where she was usually to be found, in the kitchen, squeezing the last of the whey from a muslin bag of curds that, with further hanging, would make a palatable cream cheese. The children were nowhere to be seen, although I could hear them upstairs, rattling around like so many peas in a pod. Hercules went straight to his water bowl, while I kissed my wife and sank thankfully on to a stool and pulled off my boots.
‘It looks like it might be a dry summer,’ I said, tossing them into a corner and stooping to rub my aching feet. ‘I noticed on the way home that the oaks are coming into bud before the ash trees.’
Adela smiled and quoted, ‘Oak before ash, we’ll only have a splash; Ash before oak, we’re in for a soak. That’s good news. You look exhausted. Supper’s nearly ready.’ She went to the pot over the fire and stirred the contents. A delicious smell of herbs scented the air. ‘Mutton,’ she added. ‘They’ve been slaughtering sheep in the Shambles today, so Margaret and I shared the price of three collops between us. Fresh meat on a Monday, my lad! You’re being spoiled, but there was more money in Mayor Foster’s purse than I at first thought.’