The talk at table was at first desultory, all the women, with the exception of Adela, anxiously concerned with Oswald’s well-being. Did he approve of the new sauce for the fowls? Was that particular chair comfortable enough for him? Was he tired after his morning’s work? How had such-and-such a case gone? Had it been as difficult as he feared? These questions were succeeded by extolling his achievements, both sisters and the housekeeper vying with one another in the extravagance of her praise, all of which the recipient appeared to take as no more than his due. Such adulation was obviously commonplace, and I reflected that I had never before come across so tightly knit and so self-regarding a family. I felt sorry for Arbella and for anyone else who tried to infiltrate their ranks.
After a while, however, there inevitably came a lull in the conversation, so I took advantage of the sudden silence to demand more details concerning the deaths, illnesses and accidents that seemed to be dogging their lives.
‘Do you truly believe that someone is trying to kill you all?’ I asked, allowing a note of scepticism to creep into my voice.
No one answered for a moment or two, the sisters and Arbella looking at Oswald as though waiting for permission to speak. But when he merely shrugged, Celia said firmly, ‘Yes.’
Clemency added, ‘It certainly seems a possibility. First, our elder stepbrother was killed in a tavern brawl. A common enough occurrence you might say, but when added to a sickness that almost claimed my life, to my sister Charity’s death, to my half-brother Martin’s death and now to Sybilla’s near fatal accident, it seems too much to be mere coincidence.’
‘What was your illness, Mistress Godslove?’ I enquired, as two young kitchen maids appeared to clear the board of our dirty plates and to place dishes of nuts and raisins in the centre of the table along with a jug of dark, very sweet wine.
Clemency smiled. ‘If you are to stay and help us,’ she said, ‘you may as well address us by our Christian names or there will be confusion between my two sisters and myself. As for my sickness, it was a fever with a headache so severe that I could not bear light anywhere near my eyes, vomiting and a rash. Roderick Jeavons, who has been our physician for many years now, declared at the time that it was a form of brain fever and that I would die. Indeed, they tell me — ’ she nodded towards her brother and half-sister — ‘that I was delirious for days, and that when my mind finally cleared I was so weak, they were convinced I had not long to live. So while I was lucid, they sent for Father Berowne, our parish priest, who confessed me and administered extreme unction. But in the end, the Lord spared me and I recovered.’
‘When was this?’ I asked.
It was Celia who answered. ‘The year before last, towards Christmas.’
I looked at Clemency. ‘And at the time, did you accept the diagnosis that it was brain fever?’
She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Certainly. None of us made any connection then between our stepbrother’s death and my illness. It was only last spring when Charity died after eating mushrooms, and when, the following autumn, my half-brother, Martin, was set upon by a gang of youths near Cheapside and killed, that we began to question whether my sickness really had been brain fever or some form of poisoning; when we began to wonder if someone is taking some sort of revenge against us.’ She returned my gaze steadily. ‘You’re sceptical. I can see it in your face. You think, like Oswald — or as Oswald says he thinks — that these events, occurring one after the other, are nothing more than coincidence. But I would remind you that now Sybilla has almost been killed by a block of stone falling from the scaffolding around the Bishop’s Gate. It bruised her right shoulder very badly. An inch or two more to the left and she would undoubtedly have been crushed to death.’
There was silence while I pondered my hostess’s words. Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Adela regarding me anxiously, afraid that I was going to refuse to help her cousins. And it was on the tip of my tongue to do so. I had no wish to linger in the capital. I wanted to go home and take my family with me. I felt no interest in any of these people and had not the slightest desire to get embroiled in their affairs. It would be easy enough to convince myself that these disasters had nothing to do with one another; that they were simply isolated incidents which, although they might appear sinister when taken all together, were really unconnected. And indeed I had no need to convince myself. I was almost sure that that was the case. But it was the ‘almost’ that bothered me.
Even so, I was just about to declare my opinion in no uncertain terms when Celia said, ‘Of course, it really started, not with your sickness, Clem, but with Reynold being knifed to death in that fight in the Voyager.’
‘I did mention that,’ her half-sister excused herself.
‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘Reynold? The Voyager?’ A memory stirred. I suddenly recollected Margaret Walker mentioning the fact that Morgan Godslove’s second wife had been the Widow Makepeace, whom he had met in London. ‘Are you telling me that your stepbrother was Reynold Makepeace, the landlord of St Brendan the Voyager in Bucklersbury?’
‘Our elder stepbrother, yes.’ Clemency frowned. ‘You speak as though you knew him.’
‘We did know him,’ Adela chimed in. ‘Roger and I stayed at the Voyager, oh it must be more than five years ago now. It was before Adam was born.’
‘It was five years ago,’ I confirmed. ‘It was at the time of the little Duke of York’s marriage to Anne Mowbray and the trial of the Duke of Clarence. But I’ve stayed there since, three years back when Margaret of Burgundy was here. And I heard of Landlord Makepeace’s death when I went looking for him at the Voyager last October. I was never more shocked in my life than to learn he’d been killed. He was a fine and very kind man.’
‘He was,’ Clemency agreed, and both Oswald and Celia nodded.
‘A good man,’ the housekeeper added.
‘And now you all think that his death might not have been an accident?’
‘Yes.’ The three women spoke as one. Only Oswald said nothing, holding aloof from comment.
‘It was the first of our misfortunes,’ Clemency pointed out. ‘The start of everything.’
This changed the complexion of things as far as I was concerned. I had counted Reynold Makepeace as much a friend as an acquaintance, and had been fond of him; fond enough at least for the news of his death, when it had finally come to my ears last autumn, to have saddened me beyond all expectation. If, therefore, there was a possibility that he had been murdered rather than killed accidentally, I felt I had to ferret out the truth.
‘Are you saying, in all seriousness,’ I asked Clemency, ‘that you now believe your stepbrother’s death to have been planned? That someone paid some ruffians to set on him and kill him?’
She returned my look steadily. ‘It is precisely what happened to my half-brother last year, in Cheapside. It seemed like an attack by pickpockets, and indeed it was regarded as such by members of the Watch who brought his body home to us. The coroner, too, had no hesitation in accepting such a verdict.’
‘You didn’t, however?’
‘No.’ It was Oswald’s turn to speak and he did so with the authority of a lawyer. ‘Loath as I am to contribute to this idea of a conspiracy against our family, I have to admit that there were a couple of suspicious circumstances connected with Martin’s death. Firstly, although London’s streets are, regrettably, infested with bands of armed robbers at night, very few, if any, of these men set out deliberately to kill their victims. They might knock them unconscious, and in so doing fatally wound them, but death is not their intention. Martin, on the other hand, was stabbed simply and cleanly through the heart. Secondly, although he had a full purse of money on him and was wearing a silver chain as well as several valuable rings, only one of the rings and a little loose change in one of his pockets were taken. This was attributed by the coroner to the fact that Martin’s attackers had been disturbed. He chose to ignore the other far more significant fact of the way in which my half-brother had been murdered. A knife through the heart can be no accidental killing.’