Feeling his cheeks warm from shame, Crispin grabbed his belt and squeezed, hooking his thumbs under the leather. It was better than punching the wall. His cheeks flamed all the more when he heard the shuffling step of Adam behind him. Damn Wynchecombe! Did he have to trample Crispin’s dignity in front of servants? How was he to ask questions of this man and expect truthful answers if he cannot garner respect?
He turned on his heel and glared at Adam, hoping by the force of his will to gain back control of the situation.
But Adam wasn’t paying him any attention. His face was as pale as the sheet he was laying over the body of his master.
Crispin relaxed his wounded pride and took a steadying breath. He studied the area again, letting his eye sweep from point to point. The only possibilities of entrance or egress were the fireplace, the window, and the locked door that now lay in splinters on the floor. The window was untouched and the chimney was too narrow. That left the door. He went to it and knelt at what remained of the latch on the doorway. He ran his hand over it, hoping to find a string or other device to pull the bolt from the other side, but found nothing. He glanced at Adam before he sauntered toward the window and tested the casement again. He tugged on it, but it did not budge.
Adam stood by, his face growing darker the more Crispin touched the objects in the room. Crispin reached above the window and examined the stone frame. “How long have you been a servant in your master’s household?” he cast over his shoulder.
Adam stared at the body and shook his head. “Five years.”
“Did you like him?”
Adam said nothing before he abruptly pivoted toward Crispin. He scowled. “What is your meaning?”
Crispin lowered his hand and stood stiffly before the window. “Nothing. What of Mistress Walcote? How long were they married?”
“Three years.”
“Did they have rows?”
“Everyone has rows.”
“Were they like ‘everyone’s’?”
Adam rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced again at the body. “I don’t know. They were loud.”
“Often?”
He shrugged. “Not too often.”
“What did they argue about?”
Adam narrowed his eyes. The servant’s long nose was turned up at the end like an afterthought. “You are not the sheriff. So why do you ask?”
“I’m a curious fellow. Crime intrigues me. I don’t like people getting away with murder. No matter who they are.”
“I don’t like your implication.”
“You are not required to like it.”
Adam postured, his fists clenched. He considered Crispin’s shabby garb again and the absence of a sword. “Well then?”
“I asked what they argued about.”
“I don’t know. But I also saw how the mistress and master are—were with each other. I never saw a more devoted wife. And she took his abuse, right enough.”
“A husband is master in his household.”
“Even a master can go too far.”
“Did he?”
Adam clenched his jaw and strode to the washbasin. He meticulously wrapped the soap cake in the towel and placed it in the bottom of the basin. “I’ll say nothing more until I talk to my mistress.” He got halfway over the threshold when he stopped. “If that will be all, I have duties to attend to.”
Before Crispin could reply, Adam headed out across the gallery.
“I’ll let myself out,” Crispin said to the empty room.
Crispin walked with head down into a wet wind that flapped his hood. The chilled air howled through the narrow passage between the two-story shops and apartments, and carried the smell of rain but could not seem to entirely wash away the acrid odor of London’s dim streets and trickling gutters.
He hunched further into his cloak with his shoulders nearly up to his ears.
Heading north, he passed St. Paul’s, its high, stone walls and spires jutting up into the weak sunshine. The bells suddenly rang out Sext and he cocked an eye back at the bell tower, little believing it was already midday. A growl in his belly reaffirmed this, and as he tread up Paternoster Row, he thought he might stop off at a pie seller on Newgate Market on his way back to the Shambles before its smells of butchering put him off his hunger entirely.
When he reached the corner where Newgate Market became the Shambles, he met a seller with a cart of roasted meat on sticks. Crispin paid his farthing and sniffed at the sour meat. Beggars can’t be choosers. He tore the chewy flesh with his teeth while he walked, trying not to think of what animal the meat might have been when alive. It wasn’t much and he finished it quickly as he approached the first butcher stalls, tossing the stick into a gutter already running with the days gore.
A house with a stone foundation and an open doorway revealed Dickon, one of the many butchers along this row. His apron was bloody and his face flushed. He was a big man, suited to the task of hauling carcasses about. “Ho, Crispin!” called the man congenially. Crispin raised his hand in answer but did not reply. The fact that he was acquaintances with butchers and tavernkeepers always put him in a sour mood, and even the friendliness of such associates could not assuage that.
He inhaled the cold, hoping that the thickness of the autumn air could stifle the smell. Not so. As he walked deeper into the Shambles, the stench of death and offal and the coppery scent of blood permeated the stones and timbers of the tightly clustered buildings leaning into the streets. Beef carcasses, stripped of their skin, hung in stalls. Farther down the row were the poulterer’s stalls. Flightless bodies of birds, their wings frozen outward to mock their captive state, hung beside the glassy-eyed corpses of rabbits and suckling pigs. Crispin ignored the cries of the merchants, the thud of cleavers cutting through bone, the clatter of chickens in stick cages. His only thoughts were of home, or what at least constituted the place he slept and ate.
The tinker shop stood wedged between a butcher and a poulterer. It was a small house. The timbers had aged to gray long ago and the daub between was colored a dull and flaking buff. The ground floor boasted one door and one window that folded down into a stall. Above that was the jutted first floor, easing meekly over the ground floor, cradling an iron kettle that hung on a rod, announcing to all and sundry that this was a tinker shop. Though the second level seemed bigger, the inside was cut in half by a wall, one side being Crispin’s entire lodgings, and the other the bedchamber of the tinker and his wife. Though it was not usual to have a tinker situated on the Shambles, it was good business sense on Master Kemp’s part. For there was profitable industry in repairing pots for melting tallow and for making hooks.
A narrow stairway led upward to Crispin’s first-floor room. The rickety stairs were the only thing separating the tinker shop from the butcher’s house beside it. And though it was always dark in the shadow of the neighboring structure, at least it was a private entrance. It was one of the reasons Crispin chose to live there. That, and the rent was cheap.
He plodded to the tinker shopfront and encountered his landlord’s plump wife, sweeping off the beaded rain from the unfolded counter. When Alice Kemp spied him withdrawing his key, she placed a pink fist into her ample hip and leaned on the broom. “Well now. If it isn’t our lodger. The one who forgets when the rent is due.”
Crispin sighed. One day Alice would be found murdered, and no one, including himself, would look too hard for the culprit. “I am aware of how late I am, Madam. Here, then.” He reached into the purse hanging from his belt and took out the last of his coins and placed them into Alice’s damp, open palm. She closed her fingers over them and popped them into her scrip.