‘That’s right,’ he interrupted. ‘In red silk stockings and green garters.’ He gave a fastidious shudder which didn’t deceive me for an instant. This man, I was ready to swear, had always had a prurient interest in women, their bodies and what they wore beneath their gowns. After twenty years, that sighting of Isabella was as fresh in his memory as if it had happened yesterday.
Which was fortunate for me.
‘So you told me the other day,’ I said. ‘You also added, “With that gown!” Now why did you say that?’
‘Because she was wearing a purple gown, that’s why. Red stockings and green garters with purple! An unhappy choice of colours, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
I grimaced. ‘I don’t think it would have occurred to me. However, the lady in question probably would have agreed with you. Her former maid remembers that Isabella had snagged her stockings on a chair in the parlour and was very annoyed that the only other pair she had ready to put on were red ones. Perhaps she, like you, Master Hermit, had a nice eye for colour.’ If he sensed the sarcasm in my tone, he didn’t respond. I continued, soothing Hercules, who was beginning to get restless. ‘I also seem to recollect your saying that you saw Isabella around mid-afternoon. Are you certain that she was just setting out? At that time of day — and on such a day — could she not have been returning home?’
The hermit, who had automatically opened his mouth to refute whatever I had to say, shut it again, a suddenly arrested expression on his thin, ascetic-looking face.
‘Returning home,’ he repeated. ‘Well, now you come to mention it … Ye-es, I suppose she could have been.’
‘Which way along the village street was she riding?’ I asked, leaning forward in my urgency and squashing Hercules against my side. He let out an indignant bark. I hushed him impatiently.
The hermit furrowed his brow.
‘In the direction of the open downs or towards her father’s house?’ My heart was thumping, willing him to give me the answer I wanted.
Time seemed to stretch endlessly — a long, shining thread that might snap at any moment, once more leaving me floundering — before my companion reluctantly acknowledged, ‘Now I come to picture it again in my mind … Yes, I believe you might be right. Yes … Yes …’ There was another protracted pause, but, finally, the hermit gave a decisive nod of his head. ‘She was riding home.’
‘You’re sure of that? You’re certain?’
‘Positive.’ He regarded me with sudden respect. ‘Funny, but I’ve never given it a thought before. Not once in all these years. It just stuck in my mind that she was going for one of her madcap gallops across the downs. I should have realized, of course, that at that time of year the days were short and when I saw her it was already growing dusk. And then, as now, the downlands were a haunt for robbers and poachers and all manner of other rogues after dark.’
I let out my pent-up breath in a gasping sigh and thanked him far more profusely than the circumstances warranted. He eyed me suspiciously, trying to work out what he had said that had pleased me so much, and whether or not he had unintentionally incriminated himself.
I gave him what I trusted was a beaming, reassuring smile, once more expressed my thanks and, to his and Hercules’s relief, took my leave.
Hercules was delighted to find himself once more back in the ruined house, a happy hunting ground which he set out to re-explore, bounding up and down the shattered staircase, leaping from one dangerous tread to the other just to show me that he could. But when he realized that I was looking for something among the clumps of purple loosestrife and general vegetation, he abandoned his own games to help me search.
I had a rough recollection of where I had found the chest two weeks ago, and made my way towards an eyeless window set high in the ground floor wall. And there it was, just underneath, the lock that I had broken with my cudgel hanging drunkenly from the iron-bound lid. The dog capered around me, barking excitedly.
‘Hush!’ I ordered him.
The lid creaked in protest as I lifted it for the second time and peered inside.
The contents were exactly the same: two undershifts, a pair of brown leather shoes and a gown of moth-eaten purple wool. It must, in days long gone, have contained much more in the way of a young girl’s finery, but over the years since Isabella’s death, it had gradually been reduced to these few articles, the other things either given away or taken by housemaids who knew where the key to the chest was kept, and who considered it a crying shame to let rot garments that they could put to better use …
A sudden, unnerving thought struck me. I had made an unwarranted assumption that the chest and its contents had once belonged to Isabella. But suppose it had been the property of her mother, Amorette Linkinhorne. What then?
With hands that shook slightly, I pulled out the fur-trimmed gown and held it up to the light. It was cut on very slender lines, a young woman’s garment, not that of an elderly matron, and it was woollen — a gown for cold weather. Moreover, it was purple and the skirt had been darned as well as patched. It had to be the same dress that both the hermit and Robert Moresby had seen Isabella wearing that day; the day of her disappearance.
The sun, on its passage across the sky, suddenly shone full through the empty window, showing up a dark stain near the neck of the dress. I drew a sharp, hissing breath that caused Hercules to stop barking and look at me enquiringly, head cocked to one side. I examined the stain more closely.
It was difficult to be sure after twenty years, but there was a rusty tinge to it even now.
I felt certain it had been made by blood.
Twenty
‘You killed her,’ I said. ‘You or your wife. Isabella came home that day, soaking wet from her long gallop across the downs, hours spent in the wind and rain, so the first thing she did was to change her gown. She took off the old patched and darned purple dress she used for riding and changed it for one of green silk or velvet. After that … Well, only you, Master Linkinhorne, can tell me what happened next.’
It was the following day. I had waited until after dinner before setting out for the Gaunts’ Hospital, in order to make certain that its inmates would be up and about, and that the early morning round of the apothecary and the almoner would be over. I had spent an uneasy night, my — and Adela’s — rest periodically broken by the need to review the facts in my mind and reassure myself that my conclusion was the correct one. Adela, as always a source of comfort, did her best to convince me that, with the evidence at my disposal, I had reached the right conclusion.
‘It has to be Jonathan or Amorette Linkinhorne. But will you be able to make him admit it? Master Linkinhorne has only to deny everything, and to maintain that denial, to make matters awkward. Both the Clifton hermit and Master Moresby would have to be called on for their testimony, and I doubt if either would be prepared to swear to what they’ve told you. Not after all these years and not against a man of eighty-five summers who’s old and frail. If Mayor Foster is hoping for a plain, straightforward conviction, based on irrefutable evidence, he will be disappointed.’
I could do nothing but agree with her: Adela’s assessment of the situation chimed so exactly with my own. But my instinct was to be defensive, too. What could John Foster reasonably expect after a score of years? I had done better than anyone had a right to anticipate after such a length of time.
Adela had soothed me in the same gentle tone of voice she used to smooth away the children’s troubles. And it had occurred to me, as it had done more than once or twice before, to wonder if she saw me as the eldest and perhaps the most troublesome of those children. As ever, I put the thought from me and allowed myself to be lulled to sleep eventually in her loving arms.
We had the remainder of yesterday’s fish stew for dinner and, when I protested, my wife reminded me that, after today, the rest of Mayor Foster’s money must be returned to him.