I extended a hand to Boleyn. ‘I am Serjeant Matthew Shardlake, sent to look into this matter on behalf of Master Copuldyke. My assistant, Master Overton. I think you know Goodman Lockswood.’
‘Ay,’ Boleyn replied in cultivated tones. ‘You are a serjeant-at-law? I had not expected someone so senior.’
I smiled. ‘There are those who would help you, Master Boleyn. I am not allowed to represent you in court as it is a criminal case, but I will investigate the facts further, see if new light can be thrown on the matter. Do you mind if I take the stool? My back has been troublesome of late.’
‘Have you seen my wife, my Isabella?’ Boleyn asked with sudden emotion.
‘No, but I hope to go over to Brikewell and see her tomorrow.’
‘They say she is my wife no more, the chaplain will not let her visit.’ Boleyn sighed angrily. ‘They will hang me. They don’t like my name, they don’t like my wife, my neighbour covets my lands –’
I spoke encouragingly. ‘In court, it is facts that matter, not prejudices. I would ask some questions, if I may? I have your deposition here.’ I took it from my bag.
‘If you wish.’
‘First, about your wife disappearing nine years ago. I understand she left quite suddenly, without any explanation.’
To my surprise, he laughed bitterly. ‘Yes. And yet in some ways I was not surprised.’
‘Why?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘When I married Edith Reynolds near twenty years ago, she was a beautiful young woman, buxom and with lovely blonde hair, though quiet and shy – dominated by her father, I think. I believe now she only married me to get away from him. Though I loved her then. I did.’ He fell silent again, biting his lip, then spoke softly. ‘As soon as we were married, she changed. She was reluctant even to perform the most – essential wifely duties.’ His face went red and he looked at me defiantly. ‘A man does not like to admit such things, but I am past caring. She fell pregnant at once with the twins, but then refused to have more children. And she had no attachment to the boys, right from when they were babies. I have sometimes wondered if that is why Gerald and Barnabas have turned out the brutes they have.’ A tremor of anger sounded in his voice. ‘Living with her became a very hell. She was constantly ill tempered, the servants were afraid of her, apart from her maid Grace Bone, who became her confidante for a while, but even she left in the end. And her strange habits – as I told you, my wife was a buxom woman when we met, but sometimes, for no reason, she would starve herself until she was just skin and bone. I don’t know why; she would just snap that she wasn’t hungry. I tried kindness, I tried shouting at her, but nothing made any difference. I began to fear Edith was mad.’
‘And then you met your present wife. Isabella.’
Boleyn lifted his face defiantly again. It was a mobile face, the face of an emotional man. ‘Yes, the year before Edith vanished. Isabella worked at an inn I frequented. She was everything my wife was not – kind, cheerful, friendly, young, and – she liked me. It was strange to be liked by a woman after so many years. She became my mistress. Is that so unusual, in the circumstances?’ he asked, a sudden note of anger in his voice.
Toby said, ‘Then tongues started clacking, and somebody told Edith about Isabella.’
‘Yes, Edith said nothing to me, but fell into one of her bad phases. It was not long since Gerald cut Barnabas’s face, which angered and, I think, frightened her. She stopped eating again. It was a difficult time, a very hot summer. We had almost no harvest that year, I was worried about money. You may remember, it was the year Lord Cromwell fell. I confess I was harsh with Edith, and more than once lost my temper.’ So, I thought, he did have a temper, but could it cause him to lose control to the extent of murdering Edith in that terrible way? He continued, ‘Then one day at the beginning of December she simply disappeared, taking nothing but the clothes she stood in. A hue and cry was raised, but no trace of her was ever found.’
I asked, ‘When did Isabella move in?’
Boleyn frowned, a stubborn expression appearing on his face. ‘The next year, only when it was clear Edith was gone for good. You’ll see that from my deposition, I’ve made no effort to hide it. Oh, that scandalized the fine gentry folk of Norfolk. Half of them believed I had murdered Edith and buried her somewhere; they were avoiding me anyway, saying I had no more morals than Anne Boleyn, my distant kinswoman. So I thought, to hell with them.’
‘And you have no idea where Edith was, all those nine years?’
He shook his head wearily. ‘I wish I did. Like everyone else, I thought she was dead, that she had killed herself.’
‘Did she have any connections outside Norfolk?’ I hesitated, then added, ‘In Essex, say, or Cambridgeshire, or Hertfordshire?’ Nicholas gave me a warning look. Mentioning Hertfordshire was getting a little close to Hatfield. But Boleyn only looked back at me blankly.
‘No. She was Norwich born and bred.’
‘I understand her father is a Norwich merchant.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Anger entered his voice again. ‘Gawen Reynolds is a cloth merchant, as were his father and grandfather. They built up a fortune, partly by selling worsted cloth to the Dutch, illegal though that is. A hard man. I thought I’d better not put all that in my deposition. He’s one of those who run Norwich, his wife is a Sotherton. A brutal, vicious man, high in city politics. He’s gone to ground, concerned the case will hurt his status in the city.’ Boleyn laughed. ‘He had ambitions to be Mayor of Norwich. This case will put an end to that. He would not be sorry to see me hang.’
‘I plan to see him later.’
‘I doubt he will talk to you.’
‘I can be persistent.’
Toby had begun to scratch his head, and Boleyn smiled mirthlessly. ‘I fear the bedding here is full of fleas.’
‘Master Boleyn,’ I said seriously, ‘if we are to get you acquitted, we must consider who else might have had a motive to murder your wife. A motive to set you up for the murder. And identify who might have been able to put your boots and the hammer in the stables after the attack. Is it true that you and the stable boy had the only keys?’
‘Yes.’ His face softened. ‘My horse, Midnight, is a fine steed, but temperamental. He will do anything I tell him, but is suspicious of others. I would not let the twins near him, he kicks at them on sight, and I feared he might do the same to Isabella or my workmen. He was safe only with the stable boy. But he could not have been involved.’ Boleyn gave a mirthless laugh. ‘The boy’s a wantwit, though he had a remarkable way with horses. I took him on at the start of the year, though I had some doubts; he had a reputation as an unreliable scamp, but someone told me he had a feel for horses. It was true, he was very good with Midnight, and the horse liked him. I think young Simon preferred animals to people. The twins were always baiting him. He could no more have killed my wife than flown to the moon. He always kept the keys with him, at my instruction. After the murder he handed them in and left. I think Scambler was scared, he was scared of his own shadow, that one.’
Nicholas and I exchanged a look. I said, ‘We saw a boy called Scambler in town on the way here. A skinny lad of about fifteen.’
‘That’s him.’
‘Some apprentices tripped him while he was carrying a bale of wool, making him drop it in the mud. His employer sacked him on the spot. They called him Sooty.’
Boleyn nodded. ‘He’s always careering madly around the city, always in some sort of trouble because of his scatterbrained foolishness.’
‘What happened today was not his fault,’ Nicholas said.
Boleyn shrugged. ‘Boys will be cruel. But you can forget about Scambler in connection with this.’