‘There’s no question of taking sides, Mother. This young man either is or is not Clement Weaver. All I should wish to do is discover the truth.’
‘I knew it,’ she moaned, pushing away her oatcake, half-eaten. ‘You do intend poking your nose in.’
‘Would you want Alison Burnett to be deprived of half her inheritance by a clever imposter?’
‘I know what I wouldn’t want,’ she retorted harshly, ‘and that’s to lose my livelihood and home. Alderman Weaver has every right to consider his affairs none of your business.’
‘He wouldn’t penalize you like that,’ I answered gently. ‘He’s not a vindictive man. He wouldn’t blame you for my sins, however much he might resent me.’
She looked almost convinced by this argument, having worked for the Alderman for many years and knowing that he held himself partly responsible for the premature deaths of her husband and young son, but there was still a lingering doubt in her mind, and I was fully aware that she would prefer me not to meddle.
I owed Margaret Walker a very great deal, and I went to bed that night half-inclined to respect her wishes; but when I awoke the following morning, I knew that, once out of the cottage, my insatiable curiosity would direct my feet straight to the Burnetts’ house in Small Street.
* * *
Small Street runs parallel to Broad Street, and its dwellings, like all the others in the city, are built of wood and plaster with roofs of stone or slate. The Burnetts’ house was no exception, and I guessed that inside it followed the same pattern as Alderman Weaver’s; hall, parlour, buttery and kitchen on the ground floor, with family bedchambers on the first and an attic for the servants on the second.
I presented myself, as I had been requested to do, between the hours of eleven and noon, and the door was opened to me by the housekeeper whose keys, dangling from her belt, informed me of her calling. She fixed me with a beady eye and seemed none too pleased at having to allow me across the threshold.
‘Good-day,’ I said, stepping briskly inside. ‘Your master and mistress are expecting me. Roger Chapman is my name.’
She made no response other than a quick jerk of the head to indicate that I should follow her. To my relief we crossed the hall, where the draughts seeped under the doors and whispered among the painted rafters, and I was shown into the parlour, an altogether warmer and cosier room. Tapestries hung on the walls and a fire of logs and sea-coal burned on the hearth, keeping at bay the chill of the January morning.
Alison Burnett, in a red velvet gown trimmed with grey squirrel, was huddled in a carved armchair, her hands spread to the flames whose light appeared almost visible through their delicate, blue-veined skin. She turned her head as I closed the door, the ghost of a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Of her husband there was, for the present at least, no sign.
‘Sit down, Master Chapman,’ she invited, nodding at a second armchair on the opposite side of the hearth.
I did as she bade me, but I felt uncomfortable at usurping what I was sure was William Burnett’s own place. I perched awkwardly on the very edge of the seat, ready to get up at once should he appear.
Alison nodded understandingly. ‘It’s all right. My husband has agreed that it might be wiser if I see you alone. He gets so angry on my behalf.’ She bit her lip and sighed. ‘Indeed, his temper has already caused too much harm.’
I relaxed a little. ‘In what way?’ I asked her.
She buried her face in her hands for a moment before looking up. ‘He has quarrelled so bitterly with my father, told him so many home truths about this evil rogue who pretends to be Clement, that my father has altered his will, cutting me out completely.’ She drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘I don’t mind owning to you, Master Chapman, that his action has destroyed my faith in human nature. Never, never did I think that he would treat me in such a fashion.’
I was astonished at this revelation, but it could explain the scene I had witnessed outside the Alderman’s house in Broad Street. To make certain I asked, ‘When did you learn of this?’
‘The day before yesterday,’ she answered, confirming my suspicions. ‘My father sent Ned Stoner round in the morning with a message, requesting that William and I wait upon him some time before supper. We were hoping that he had come to his senses at last, but it was only to tell us that in view of our hostility towards “Clement” and our attitude towards himself, he had that very afternoon made a new will, leaving everything he possessed to his “son”!’ She spat the last word so venomously that a few drops of spittle, landing on one of the logs, hissed and sputtered among the flames.
‘Do you believe him,’ I asked, ‘or do you think he just wants to frighten you and force you into accepting this man?’
Alison kneaded her hands together in her lap. ‘Oh yes, he’s done it! The lawyer was leaving just as we arrived. But he’s signed his own death warrant.’
‘Oh come!’ I protested with more confidence than I felt. ‘You mustn’t think like that. No one in his right senses would risk doing away with a benefactor who has just left him all his worldly goods. If the Alderman were to die suddenly now, the finger of suspicion would point directly at the one who stands to gain the most.’
Alison glanced scornfully at me. ‘Of course he wouldn’t do anything immediately! Even I don’t suppose the man’s that much of a fool. But my father is a very sick man: anyone can see that he hasn’t long to live. It wouldn’t need much cunning for either the wretch himself or his partner to help my father out of this life without arousing too many misgivings.’
‘When you say his partner…’ I was beginning, but she cut me short.
‘He’s bound to have one, isn’t he?’ Her tone was impatient. ‘He can’t be as well-informed as he is without having been primed by someone who knows the family. It stands to reason.’
‘Unless he really is your brother,’ I suggested tentatively, braving her wrath.
But she didn’t fly at me as I had expected. She merely said flatly and with complete conviction, ‘This man isn’t Clement.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Alison hunched her thin shoulders. ‘Clement and I grew up together: there wasn’t a great difference in our ages. We were close.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I repeat, this man is not my brother.’
In the face of such conviction I felt there was probably nothing I could say to persuade her otherwise, but I had to try in case she should be wrong.
‘Is there anything you could ask him to which only your brother would know the answer?’ I suggested. ‘A secret, perhaps, which you and Clement shared as children?’
Her lips curled. ‘I have no intention of wasting my time on the creature. As William says, I should demean myself by giving even the slightest hint that I take his claim seriously.’
It was not for me to point out that such blind prejudice had already done her and her husband a great disservice in her father’s eyes, probably costing them the remaining half of Alison’s inheritance. I also suspected that the greater intransigence they displayed, the more entrenched became the Alderman’s belief that Clement had been miraculously restored to him. The Burnetts had mismanaged a delicate situation from the start, with William goading his stubborn wife into direct opposition to her obstinate father, when a little sympathy and understanding might have given them ascendancy over the old man’s mind.
‘Are you quite sure,’ Alison asked me, ‘that you never saw Clement’s body?’
‘As certain as I’m sitting here now.’ I leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees, and stared earnestly into her face. ‘I could only guess at the fate of your brother and all the others who had disappeared from that inn, by what happened to myself. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that one of the victims couldn’t have survived. And this young man, so my mother-in-law tells me, says that a blow to his head robbed him of his memory for the next six years. I suppose that could be possible. I’m not a physician, but the Infirmarian at Glastonbury Abbey did once tell me the Greek word for such forgetfulness. I can’t recall it at the moment, but it shows that the condition exists.’