Once again, Corbett privately wondered about the true whereabouts of Furrell the poacher.
‘I wasn’t roaming anywhere, clerk. I went to Melford to watch you arrive. I visited Deverell.’ She bit her lip.
‘I’ll come to him by and by,’ Corbett declared.
‘I then went and waited on the outskirts,’ Sorrel continued. ‘I dogged your footsteps from the moment you left the crypt and, before you ask, I never met any mysterious archer, though, I concede, Sir Louis was attacked.’
‘So you visited Deverell? You knew about the porch, the front door and the Judas squint?’
‘Yes I did.’
‘And you were there when I examined the corpse?’
‘So was half of Melford. It doesn’t make me the murderer. Are you going to say I killed Thorkle and Molkyn?’
‘It’s possible,’ Corbett replied. ‘You could have taken both men by surprise. One blow would be enough.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Sorrel protested. She got to her feet. ‘And why do you accuse me?’
‘As I said, two assassins are at work in Melford. Now we come to the attack on you today. Perhaps the Mummer’s Man resents your interference in his bloody affray and came to silence you.’
‘I can’t prove my innocence.’ Sorrel walked to the window and pulled back the shutters, eager to breathe fresh air. ‘I have never killed anyone, master clerk.’
‘Haven’t you, Sorrel? Never lifted your hand in violence?’
She stood by the window, shoulders shaking.
‘Isn’t that why you fled Norwich?’ Corbett continued remorselessly. ‘Perhaps a customer became too rough? Why all the secrecy, the change of name?’
‘Yes, in self-defence, I killed a man.’ Sorrel turned and leant against the sill. ‘He wanted to hurt me, cut at my body, watch me squeal with pain. He was drunk. In the struggle I took his knife and plunged it into his heart. I don’t know who he was or where he came from: it was in some filth-strewn alleyway. I was just a whore fumbling with a customer. I left Norwich within an hour of his death and never returned. Why, master clerk, are you going to arrest me?’
Corbett shook his head. ‘Some men bring about their own death. I am more concerned with the present.’
‘And so am I, clerk! I did not murder anyone. Oh yes, the thought crossed my mind on a number of occasions. But, take Sir Louis Tressilyian, for example. Do you really think, master clerk, I would have missed? And why should I kill Deverell, Thorkle or Molkyn?’ She walked back and stood over him. ‘I prayed for your day. I would have loved to have seen such men appear at the bar of justice and be questioned, like you are now questioning me.’
Corbett stared closely at the woman. He always prided himself on his logic and his reason but, as Maeve often advised: ‘Follow your heart, Hugh: truth has its own logic.’
‘Very well.’ Corbett grasped her hand. He folded back the fingers and examined the white linen cloth wrapped round the wound. ‘I believe you, Sorrel. So I must still ask myself, why should the Mummer’s Man — and I think it was he — come out to Beauchamp Place to murder you?’
‘And the answer?’
Corbett chewed the corner of his lip. ‘When we first met, you said you had much to say about Melford but you’d let me draw my own conclusions. Perhaps the killer realises this. Perhaps he suspects that you know more than you do and wants to silence you once and for all.’ Corbett snapped his fingers. ‘Or something else.’ Corbett got to his feet. ‘Perhaps Furrell told you something? Shared knowledge which brought about his own mysterious disappearance?’
Sorrel shook her head. ‘If I could, I’d recall it.’
‘No,’ Corbett urged. ‘I spoke to one of the other jurors. He met Molkyn in his cups. Our good miller confessed that Furrell had declared how the truth about the killer was plain as a picture. Do you know what he meant by that?’
‘Furrell said many things,’ she answered softly. ‘But not that. Or, if he did, I never heard it. I want to show you something, clerk.’
She went across and took down the piece of tapestry and described the crude map she had drawn.
‘I didn’t tell you the full truth,’ she explained. ‘But this is Melford. Here is Falmer Lane.’ She pointed to the roughly etched map. ‘Devil’s Oak. These crosses mark the places Furrell told me to stay away from.’
Corbett studied the painting. The map was very crude. He wouldn’t have understood it if she hadn’t explained each symbol. He shook his head.
‘I don’t think Furrell was talking about any map!’
He walked over to the other paintings and began to study them carefully. Sorrel joined him.
‘I can see nothing,’ Corbett shook his head, ‘nothing at all. Where else would there be paintings, Sorrel?’
‘In a church, though Furrell rarely went there. The Golden Fleece, Chapeleys’ manor, the Guildhall, Sir Louis Tressilyian?’ Sorrel spread her hands. ‘Furrell roamed all over the countryside. He even carried out errands for Sir Roger, travelling as far as Ipswich and the coastal towns.’
Corbett stared round the room.
‘And Furrell had no Book of Hours, a psalter?’
‘No.’ Sorrel laughed abruptly. ‘He knew his letters like I do but he was no scholar.’
Corbett walked to the door. ‘Let’s go back to the chapel,’ he demanded. ‘I want to re-examine that skeleton.’
Sorrel shrugged and took him across the yard. Corbett paused to see that his horse was well. By the time he’d climbed the steps, Sorrel had removed the bricks and pulled the skeleton out.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.
Corbett picked up the skull, feeling its texture.
‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘a priest, who is also a subtle physician at the great hospital of St Bartholomew in Smithfield in London. He often talks to me about the property of things.’
Corbett glimpsed the puzzlement in Sorrel’s face.
‘The way things are and how they change. The bones of this skeleton are dry, yellowing, which means it has lain in the earth probably more than five or six years.’ He tapped the skull. ‘This is thin, the flesh is gone, the bones are dry. If they’d been allowed to lie, they would have eventually crumbled to a powdery dust. Now, my good friend,’ Corbett continued, ‘has also been given special licence by the Church to examine the cadavers of men hanged on the nearby gibbet.’ Corbett picked the skull up. He walked to the window and, holding it up, looked inside. ‘When a man is hanged,’ Corbett explained, ‘if he’s lucky, the fall will break his neck. Death is instantaneous. If he’s not, he’ll slowly strangle.’
‘Like the garrotte?’
‘Yes, Sorrel, like the garrotte. Now, according to this physician, the humours in the brain break down and the skull is filled with blood like an internal wound.’ Corbett tapped the skull. ‘This fills like a swollen bruise, the fetid blood leaving a mark.’ Corbett peered closer. He glimpsed a faded russet stain.
‘And this one?’ Sorrel asked.
‘There is certainly a mark here but whether it’s blood or the effect of decomposition I don’t know.’
‘What are you trying to prove?’
‘Old Mother Crauford’s right. Melford is a place of blood. I suspect young women have been murdered here for many a year. Some bodies are found, others are hidden out in the countryside. The questions are who and how?’ He placed the skull tenderly back. ‘Now, Mistress, I have to return. You are to come with me.’
‘I’ll be safe here,’ Sorrel replied. ‘The killer will not strike again.’
‘Come with me,’ he urged.
Sorrel agreed. ‘I have friends I can stay with.’
She pulled a pair of battered saddlebags from the chest and hurriedly began to fill them. Corbett sat and, to break the silence, hummed a hymn, the ‘Ave Maria Stella’.
‘You have a fine voice.’ Sorrel dropped the saddlebags. ‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed. ‘My man, Furrell, always sang, sometimes filthy songs.’ She stood, mouth open, suddenly remembering. ‘In the weeks following Sir Roger Chapeleys’ execution, he was always singing the same words, as if he was intent on reminding himself.’