There was nothing to be made of it: it told me nothing that I did not already know. ‘What do you remember of the day Mistress Isabella disappeared?’ I demanded.
Jane Purefoy arched her back and rubbed her thighs, a hint that she was growing tired of this interrogation.
‘I recollect it were an awful day, wind and rain. Proper March weather. But young mistress would go out, even though Mistress Linkinhorne begged her not to. She went riding every day, across the downs, and nothing would stop her. I didn’t see her leave, but I remember her shouting for her horse to be saddled — one of the hands who worked for the master always did that — and she came upstairs to her chamber to put on her cloak. It was a dark blue one with a scarlet lining. Oh, yes, and I remember she’d snagged her stockings on a chair in the dining parlour. Real angry she was, because the only other pair she had were the red ones with the darn in the heel. Later in the day, Master let me go into Bristol to visit my foster mother. Mistress was going in to see a friend and she took me with her in the covered waggon.’
‘Did she also take you home again?’
Jane Purefoy grunted assent. ‘When we returned it were after dark and Master was in a right taking because Isabella hadn’t returned.’ There was a pregnant pause, before she added with a strange lack of emotion, ‘She never did.’
‘Why do you think Master and Mistress Linkinhorne didn’t suspect that some harm might have come to Isabella? Why did they believe that she’d simply run away with one of her swains? Men you say they refused to believe in?’
The colourless eyes regarded me with faint contempt.
‘There’s a difference between saying you don’t believe in something and really not believing it.’ Someone else had said something similar to me in the past few days. ‘They asked around for her, o’ course they did. But when it was made plain to them that young mistress had been seen with a man near Westbury village, I think they couldn’t pretend to themselves any longer that all the things people had been saying about Isabella were rumours and lies. Hit them all of a heap, it did. Master was quite ill for several weeks after, and I don’t think Mistress ever recovered. Drowned she was, a year later, and although it’s always been claimed it was an accident, I’m not so certain. I reckon she made away with herself.’
Eight
It was at this moment that the door of the cottage was flung open and one of the largest men I had ever seen thrust his bulk, not without some difficulty, through the doorway. He was as broad as he was tall and his massive presence filled the cramped space to the exclusion of all else. Even I, who was then over six feet in height (like all old people, I’ve grown shorter as I’ve grown older) and well fleshed out, felt overpowered, squashing myself up against the hovel’s further wall. He wore a greasy, blood-stained apron and smelled strongly of fish, raw meat and garlic.
‘Who’s this?’ growled the giant.
‘No need to get in a taking, Ranald,’ my hostess remonstrated. This, then, was the master of the house. Beside him Jane Purefoy looked like a midget, a wooden doll that he might snap in half with a mere flick of his fingers, but she seemed unafraid of him. Indeed, if anything, she appeared mistress of the situation. ‘Calm down, do. He ain’t after me.’
After her? After her! My self-esteem took a tumble into my boots. It took a further nosedive through the floor when Ranald Purefoy’s belligerent attitude softened a little and he grunted, ‘That’s all right, then. So long as he isn’t bothering you.’
‘He ain’t bothering me. He ain’t the law, neither. But he is asking questions about Mistress Linkinhorne on behalf of Mayor Foster. At least, so he says.’
‘It’s true,’ I confirmed hastily as the scullion rolled a suspicious eye in my direction. And once again I was forced to give an explanation of my interest, adding, ‘As a matter of fact, I was just going. I … I think your wife has told me all she knows.’ I began nervously to edge my way around this man-mountain, making for the door, when a sudden thought gave me pause. ‘Goody Purefoy,’ I added, ‘I know you said that your mistress never disclosed the names of her admirers, but, by any possible chance, do the initials R. M. mean anything to you?’
My hostess gave the question some thought before reluctantly admitting, ‘Can’t say as they does. Why d’you ask?’
I explained about the intertwined initials carved on the tree near Westbury village, but Jane Purefoy shook her head.
‘You’re certain?’ I ventured.
‘She’s said so, ain’t she?’ Ranald growled. He was obviously growing restive. ‘I didn’t sneak home to talk to a blessed stranger, did I?’ He turned to his wife. ‘Get the mattress out, woman, and let’s get on with it.’ He removed his apron and began to unbuckle his belt.
Jane gave him a seductive, if somewhat toothless grin. My mind boggled. I fled.
But I had only gone a few paces down the narrow, twisting street, when I heard the Purefoys’ door scrape open behind me and Jane’s voice call, ‘Wait a minute, Chapman!’ I swung round to find her behind me, while her husband bellowed from inside the cottage, ‘Will you hurry up, you stupid old mare!’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I jus’ remembered. I’d forgotten, but what you said jus’ now jogged my memory. One day she — Isabella, that is — was writing summat on a piece of paper. Later on, she threw it away and I picked it up. I ain’t much good at reading, but this was jus’ letters. “R.M.” she’d written three times, on three different lines, and put a query mark against each set o’ letters. Tha’s all,’ she added abruptly. ‘I gotta get back.’
I should have liked to question her further, but the maddened cries from within the hovel had by now reached fever pitch: Ranald Purefoy would be balked of his mid-morning love-making no longer. Thoughtfully, I went home to Small Street and my dinner.
‘So what now?’ Adela asked when I had finished telling her the story of my morning’s doings and the two older children had vanished about their own nefarious business (which had involved much whispering and giggling throughout dinner). Adam for once was quiet, curled up on Adela’s lap, sound asleep, thumb in mouth, replete with bread and milk and a spoonful of honey to follow. (When I say ‘spoonful’ what I mean is that he was allowed to dip his little fingers in the honey jar, then smear them all over his face in the hope that some of the honey would find its way into his mouth. Some of it actually did.)
‘I’ll have to go to Gloucester,’ I said. ‘At least I know that I’m looking for a goldsmith there, and if I can discover one whose names begin with the letters R and M …’
‘You may have found Isabella’s murderer?’ my wife enquired caustically. ‘I doubt it, Roger. I doubt it very much. Even if you manage to find him after all these years, even if he admits to having known Isabella, there’s no proof that he was the man she was seen with on that last morning of her life.’
‘I know that. But I have to try, now that I’ve taken Mayor Foster’s money. And when I return, I’ll have to go to Bath. Thank goodness Balthazar is reported as living in Bristol.’
‘Who?’ demanded Adela with such force that Adam stirred and grizzled in his sleep.
‘Who?’ she repeated more quietly.
‘Well, it’s difficult not knowing the names of these three men,’ I explained, a little sheepishly, ‘so I’ve decided to call them after the Magi. I think I told you that when Master Foster’s chapel and almshouses are eventually built, he intends to dedicate the former to the Three Kings of Cologne. The Three Wise Men. So the goldsmith has to be Melchior, who brought the Christ child gold. There’s no obvious choice for the other two, but I’ve decided that the man from Bath will be Caspar, who brought frankincense, and the man from Bristol is Balthazar, who brought myrrh.’
Adela smiled at me in the way that told me she sometimes regarded me as even younger than Adam; a look that comprised humour, approval, but, most of all, indulgence, as though I were a precocious child.