When it swung opened, Adam barked a surprised shout and froze. The two men with the axes searched past their steward and murmured prayers as they crossed themselves. Adam stumbled forward into the room.
A prickle started up Crispin’s spine, and when he peered in, his instincts were confirmed. Nicholas Walcote lay on his back on the floor, mouth agape, eyes dilated, with an irregular patch of red beneath him.
2
Sheriff Simon Wynchecombe stood in the center of the room and surveyed its cloth-draped walls, the cold hearth, splintered door, and finally Crispin. The sheriff narrowed his eyes. “What, by the mass, are you doing here?”
Crispin leaned against a far wall. He shrugged. “I happened to be in the parish.”
Wynchecombe sneered. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
Crispin opened his mouth to answer but then thought better of it.
Besides Wynchecombe, there was another sheriff of London, John More, but Crispin seldom saw him performing his appointed task for the king. He supposed the man used his authority elsewhere. Perhaps he favored penning writs. On the other hand, Simon Wynchecombe was often on the streets when trouble arose. Crispin suspected it had less to do with sheriffing and more to do with a step closer toward the mayor’s office.
Sheriff Wynchecombe, tall and dark-haired, cut a menacing figure. A meticulously coifed black mustache curved downward over his upper lip. A black beard neatly trimmed into two curls sprouted from his chin. He scanned Crispin with his usual irritated scorn before dismissing him.
The sheriff turned to Adam and leaned over him, pressing a finger into his chest in emphasis. Crispin chuckled to himself. He’d been in Adam’s shoes many a time, but Adam didn’t seem to be faring quite as well.
Crispin turned his attention to the quiet room and to the body of Nicholas Walcote. He’d been stabbed multiple times in the back. There was no sign of a struggle, no cast-over chairs or torn drapery. The blood had stopped running long ago. Such bodies he remembered from battlefields. These were the kind found in the morning after the corpse had lain all night. He could tell that Walcote was killed sometime the previous night by the look of the blood and the gray skin pallor.
Crispin had made a cursory inspection earlier, but Adam had prevented him from a more thorough search of the room, preferring to wait for the sheriff.
He glanced back at Wynchecombe, still pinning Adam to the wall. Smirking, Crispin wagered the servant didn’t prefer Wynchecombe’s company now.
He stepped over a spilled cup of wine to get nearer. The cup lay rim down. Wine splattered across the buffet. Or was it blood? He crouched down and squinted.
Wine.
He left the cup where it lay and crossed the room to examine the window. It was tightly barred. The dust on the sill told him that it had not been opened in some time. When he moved toward the door to examine the twisted lock, the sheriff’s man stood in his way.
Almost wide enough to fill the arch, the man’s shoulders blocked the outer gallery’s light. His flat nose looked as if someone once flattened it for him. Crispin remembered his name was William.
A commotion at the doorway turned their heads. Philippa Walcote burst into the room trailed by anxious servants, reaching for her. She put her hand to her throat and stared wild-eyed at her husband before she let out a resounding scream.
Wynchecombe motioned to Crispin, and Crispin grabbed the woman’s shoulders and dragged her from the room and out into the gallery.
“Now Mistress,” he soothed. But when she refused to stop screaming, he opened his hand and slapped her.
She drew up and clamped her lips together. A red mark formed on her pale skin.
“My apologies,” he said and released her.
She touched her cheek. Her wild eyes scrambled over Crispin’s unfamiliar face, trying to place him. When this proved futile, she took a deep breath, and with it color returned to her face. Her rounded eyes tapered to drowsy slits and she looked at Crispin anew. He returned her gaze with interest, catching the careful relaxing of her shoulders and of her thoroughly taking in the scene before her. It was with surprising calm that she turned to him.
“I don’t understand none of this. Tell me what happened,” she said. He expected her voice to be high and melodic, but heard instead something low and husky. And arousing. Her accent, too, rubbed unexpectedly coarse on his ear with dropped aitches and a certain edge to the form of her speech.
“We do not know. He was murdered. By the look of the—By the look of him, I would say it was sometime last night.”
“How do you know?”
“The blood. It does not run and—”
Her face, so stiff in its attempt at calm, crumpled behind her hand. He felt like kicking himself. “My apologies,” he said again.
She shook her head and breathed deeply. Crispin noticed she wore the same gown from the previous night, but now a tiny tear gapped the seam at her shoulder. An impatient lover, her paramour. The rip reminded him he need not be so courteous.
She looked over her shoulder at the hovering servants. “You must have work to do!” she snapped. They stopped chattering and raised their heads before moving down the gallery, looking back and whispering to one another. She closed her eyes and exhaled a tremulous sigh. Cracking her eyes opened again she turned toward Crispin. “What’s to be done?”
He admired her spirit. Or was it merely her impatience to get it over with? “Did your husband entertain any guests last night?”
“No. None that I know of.”
“You have not seen him since last night?”
“No.” Her chin trembled and she pressed her hands to her lips to stop it.
“When he did not come to bed, you did not question it?”
“He often works late with his books.”
“Or could it be that you yourself came to bed late?”
She studied him with interest. “Tell me who you are.”
He wasn’t often disarmed by a pretty face, but he found himself embarrassed by her perusal of his threadbare appearance. “My name is Crispin Guest.”
“Are you the sheriff?”
“Indeed, no. Your husband hired me.”
“Hired for what?”
He slid his jaw. “I’m called the Tracker…among other things.”
“Tracker?” Panic struck her voice. “What is lost?”
“Nothing, Mistress. I was hired for personal business.”
“Personal? Was your business discharged before…before…”
“Very nearly.”
“May I know what it is?”
He looked for a distraction in the empty gallery, but he saw only a rushlight dropping its burning embers to the floor. He decided to gauge her reaction. “I was following you, Mistress.”
She looked askance. A good performance, he thought.
“He hired you to follow me?”
“Yes.”
Her hands didn’t seem to know what to do; curl into fists, rub her skirt, claw his face. “So these ‘other things’ you do,” she said tightly, “they involve spying on innocent women?”
“Not innocent women.”
He would have been disappointed had she not slapped him, and she made certain he felt no disappointment. Crispin’s ears rang with it and his cheek burned.
“Madam,” he said sharply. “Do you deny your infidelity?”
“Aye!”
“Yet I saw you only last night with my own eyes.”
“Then your eyes deceive you.”
“How can you say—” He shook his head. “I am speechless.”
“What does it matter? My husband is dead.” Her chin trembled again, and she sucked in her pouting lower lip.
He frowned. And so are my chances of collecting my thruppence. “True. My business with you is now over.”