The Saint John's fern

Chapter Three

When I felt a little better, I went to the common well on the other side of the street and drew up a bucket of water. I washed my face and hands, and had a much-needed drink, after which, cleansed and refreshed, I sat down on the rim of the well to examine my discovery in the moonlight. As I drew it from my pocket it glittered, and I saw that it was an ornament, one of those brooches that the wealthy wear pinned to the upturned brims of their hats. It was made of gold, fashioned in the shape of two entwined letters, a B and a G, enclosed in a chaplet of laurel leaves. A large pearl drop, like a single tear, was suspended from the lowest leaf. B. G. They had to be the initials of Beric Gifford. The brooch must have come loose and fallen from the murderer’s hat as he fled from the scene of his crime; and as I turned the jewel over in the palm of my hand, I saw that the clasp was indeed broken.

I restored it to my pocket and made my way back to the Cobbold’s house, gingerly lifting the door-latch and tiptoeing inside. Everything was just as I had left it. The same snores and murmurs filled the room, Robin tossed from one side of his truckle bed to the other, and Thomas, with arms outflung, sprawled across the one I had previously been sharing with him. As quietly as I could, I bolted the cottage door and once more divested myself of boots and tunic, stretching out on the rushes nearest the hearth and using my pack, as I had done so often in the past, as a pillow.

Yet in spite of bodily ease, I still could not sleep. It was difficult for me to explain my recent physical weakness. Was I growing squeamish, I asked myself, that I was unable to stand the sight of a little dried blood, or the thought of corruption and decay? But there was something about the very recollection of that house next door that made my stomach begin to churn. Whoever owned it, now that Oliver Capstick was dead, seemed indifferent to the property, or perhaps just unwilling to set foot in it after what had happened there. But to whom did it belong?

I could make further enquiries of Joanna Cobbold at breakfast, but I had a feeling that my questions would be as unwelcome in the morning as they had been the evening before. Moreover, I had no wish to give any accidental hint of my midnight trespass. Then I remembered Mistress Trenowth, who had, according to my hostess, been housekeeper to Oliver Capstick for so many years that she probably knew most of his business. If she still lived in Plymouth, or within a reasonable walking distance of the town, a visit to her might satisfy my curiosity and, with luck, enlarge my knowledge of the circumstances surrounding her employer’s death. If I could obtain her direction from Joanna Cobbold, I might be able to take my first tentative step on the road towards finding out what had really become of his murderer.

Having made this decision, I wriggled into a more comfortable position amongst the rushes, scratched myself in various places where the stalks and dried flower heads tickled, and was sound asleep within minutes.

* * *

Mistress Trenowth was a small, plump, motherly looking woman, with a pair of wide grey eyes, as clear and limpid as water. Her manner was calm and soothing, as though nothing in this life could ever ruffle her, as placid within, I conjectured, as she was without; and it was easy to see how she had managed to live in harmony with Oliver Capstick for all the years since the death of his wife.

After the murder, according to Joanna Cobbold, she had gone to stay with her sister, the Widow Cooper, in the latter’s house in the Vintry Ward, close to the Franciscan Friary. ‘And unless she’s decided to move on in the last few days, that’s where you’ll find her still,’ said my erstwhile hostess, eyeing me curiously. But she had asked no questions that might delay my departure, and had wished me God speed, relieved, I fancied, to be rid of me.

I had made my way to the Greyfriars, overlooking the harbour, and a very few enquiries had led me to the dwelling of the Widow Cooper, who, as good luck would have it, had gone shopping along the quay, a fresh catch having recently been landed by one of the fishing boats.

‘But she’ll be back soon, if you’d like to wait for her,’ said my informant.

‘No, no!’ I protested. ‘It’s you I wish to see — if, that is, you’re Mistress Trenowth.’

‘I am Mathilda Trenowth, certainly,’ she agreed. She looked me up and down. ‘But I’m not the mistress here, and you should show your wares to my sister if you wish to make a sale. She’ll know what, if anything, is needed. For myself, I’m in want of nothing just at present.’

‘No, no!’ I put in quickly. ‘You’re mistaken. I’m not selling. I’ve been staying with Mistress Cobbold and her husband overnight, and they’ve been telling me of the terrible murder of Master Capstick. There are … some questions about it that I should like to ask you — if, that is, you’ll be so kind as to give me some answers.’

‘You’re a friend of the Cobbolds?’

‘Yes,’ I said, conveniently ignoring the fact that a few hours’ chance acquaintanceship hardly entitled me to term myself their friend. ‘It was Mistress Cobbold who told me where to find you.’

‘But why do you want to question me about Master Capstick’s murder?’ Mistress Trenowth enquired, her smooth forehead creased in a puzzled frown. ‘There’s no doubt, I can assure you, as to his killer.’

‘So I understand. But if you’ll agree to let me in,’ I said, ‘I’ll explain.’

She hesitated and, for a moment, I thought that she was going to refuse. But after studying me closely, she evidently decided that I was to be trusted and held the door wide enough to allow me over the threshold.

The house, although small, was two-storeyed and well furnished, arguing a modest degree of prosperity. The late Master Cooper had obviously left his widow comfortably off. I noted that the parlour into which I was shown by Mistress Trenowth faced out over the harbour, the warmth of the day having led to the opening of both the inner and outer shutters. There were two good carved armchairs, corner shelves on which were displayed some fine pieces of silver and pewter, a table, and a window-seat piled high with brightly embroidered cushions. Mistress Trenowth, not without some display of lingering doubt, invited me to be seated in one of the chairs and, taking the other, waited expectantly, her plump hands folded quietly in her lap. But her eyes were wary, and she was tense, on the alert for possible trouble.

Under that appraising stare, I found it a little difficult to begin, but decided in the end that it was easier to confess the truth than to prevaricate. I told her exactly how I had come to be in Bilbury Street, and of the circumstances under which I had met Peter Threadgold, his daughter and son-in-law. I also told her of my past successes in bringing to book villains who had, until then, gone undetected and unpunished. Whether or not she believed all my claims, I had no idea, but in any case it made no difference. Once I had her trust, and she was convinced that she had not been hoodwinked into letting me into the house under false pretences, Mistress Trenowth was only too eager to talk about the murder and the inability of the Sheriff’s men to trace Beric Gifford.

‘It’s scandalous, that’s what it is!’ she exclaimed in a soft, gentle voice that nevertheless managed to convey condemnation and outrage in equal measure. ‘Beric has to be on Valletort Manor somewhere, and yet the Sheriff’s officers declare they are unable to find him. What arrant nonsense! They’re letting him and his sister make fools of them.’

‘You don’t believe, then,’ I asked, ‘this theory that the boy’s eaten of Saint John’s fern?’

Mistress Trenowth shivered. ‘Perhaps he has done,’ she admitted at last, hastily crossing herself to ward off evil. ‘But it wouldn’t make him invisible all the time. Nor would Beric want to be permanently invisible, now would he? Would you? Would anyone? Besides,’ her natural common sense prodded into her adding, ‘I know they say that St John’s fern has the power to make people disappear, but in all my life, I’ve never met anyone who actually knew of a case of someone becoming invisible. I’m not saying, mind you, that it can’t happen, or hasn’t happened. There are strange and wonderful goings-on in this world that no one can explain, not even the Church.’

‘But you feel,’ I prompted, after a pause during which Mistress Trenowth seemed to have become lost in reverie, ‘that the reports of invisibility due to eating the fern are always second-hand?’

She nodded. ‘Or even third- or fourth-hand. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ I leant forward, my hands on my knees. ‘But surely, having committed this terrible crime, Beric Gifford would have taken the earliest opportunity to escape. Once the initial search for him had proved fruitless, and he had managed to evade the Sheriff’s officers for a day, maybe even a week or two, and once the scent had gone cold and enthusiasm for the hunt had begun to wane, then he must have slipped away under cover of darkness. He’d be a fool not to. Every day he spends in the vicinity of his home, he’s in mortal danger of being seen, arrested and hanged. He must be miles and miles distant by now.’

Mistress Trenowth gave a decided shake of her head. ‘Oh no! There’s no way Beric would have left the manor while she’s still there. And she is still there. I know, because I’ve another sister who lives in Modbury, and she told me so.’

I frowned. ‘Who are you talking about? Are you referring to Master Gifford’s sister?’

‘No, no! Although he and Berenice are close, and always have been. No, I was meaning Katherine Glover. She’s the reason Beric and Master Capstick had that terrible falling-out the day before he killed his uncle.’

I drew a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid, Mistress Trenowth, that if I’m to understand this story, you’ll have to give me all the details of your master and his family, their past history and the events leading up to the murder. It would save me asking a lot of questions, which can only be a trial to both of us. Would you be agreeable?’

She thought for a moment, then graciously inclined her head. ‘There isn’t, in any case, a great deal to tell,’ she said, ‘but such as there is, you’re welcome to know. Particularly,’ she added, her eyes filling with tears, ‘if it can help you bring Beric Gifford to justice.’

* * *

Oliver Capstick, Mistress Trenowth told me, had been the younger of two sons of a Plymouth vintner, owner of a flourishing business, importing wine from both Bordeaux and La Rochelle; wine that had subsequently been transshipped to Calais and the North Sea ports, as well as being supplied to London and the eastern counties. Those had been dangerous, but heady days, when dozens of vessels had sailed in convoy in order to beat off attacks from the Breton pirates, and when England had been the French vineyard owners’ most valued customer. All that had changed now, of course, but then there had been great fortunes to be made in the wine trade, and Jonathan Capstick had become a very wealthy man.

The elder son, Henry, had followed in his father’s footsteps, but the younger, Oliver, had elected to go into hake fishing, and had bought himself three boats with money left to him by his mother.

‘As a foreigner to these parts,’ Mistress Trenowth condescended to inform me, ‘I must tell you that hake is in very plentiful supply in these waters.’ And she nodded towards the open window through which could be seen the sparkle of sunlight on the golden-blue haze of the sea. ‘Master Capstick once told me that the greater part of every catch is sent to Gascony, where it seems they have a partiality for hake when it’s dried and salted. Mind you, it’s very popular in this country, too. In fact, there’s nothing I like better, myself, than a nice bit of hake on a Friday.’

‘In short,’ I said, ‘hake fishing is a very profitable business.’

‘It certainly made Master Capstick wealthy,’ she conceded before resuming her story.

The Capstick brothers had, in due course, married, but between them, had managed to produce only one offspring, Henry’s daughter, Veronica. Both couples had been fond of children, and so she had become the darling not only of her parents, but also of her uncle and aunt. And it had been the greatest desire of Oliver’s heart, far greater than that of his brother’s, that Veronica should marry well.

‘Judging by what Master Capstick let drop,’ Mistress Trenowth confided, settling down for a comfortable gossip, ‘and from what I’ve been able to gather from other people who knew them, Henry Capstick wished his daughter to marry for money and didn’t much care about pedigree. But Oliver had different ideas and wanted his niece to be a lady; so when Cornelius Gifford came courting Veronica, he was all for the match and wouldn’t hear a word against it.’ The Giffords, it appeared, were related by blood to the Champernownes, who had been lords of Modbury and its environs since the beginning of the previous century. ‘But the trouble was,’ my companion continued, ‘that this particular branch of the Gifford family were poor relations and as far as Henry Capstick was concerned, Cornelius’s noble connections didn’t make up for his lack of fortune.’

But Oliver had put pressure on his niece to agree to Cornelius’s proposal of marriage by promising to double whatever her father gave her by way of a dowry if she did so. Otherwise, not a penny piece would she ever get from him, then or in the future. The combined bribe and threat had proved too difficult to withstand, and as her mother was also urging her to marry Cornelius, Veronica had duly accept his offer. ‘But of course,’ Mistress Trenowth added with a shrug, ‘you don’t need me to tell you the outcome.’

‘Cornelius frittered away all his wife’s dowry,’ I hazarded, ‘and was left just as penniless as before.’

She pursed her lips and nodded. ‘The bulk of it he lost gambling and the rest went on impractical, grandiose schemes for enlarging Valletort Manor.’

In the end, there had been nothing left, but by that time Veronica had died giving birth to Beric, three years to the day after marrying Cornelius. The elder child, Berenice, had been borne within the first twelve months.

‘What happened next?’ I asked.

According to Mistress Trenowth, neither Henry nor Oliver Capstick had been prepared to throw good money after bad, and Oliver had blamed himself bitterly for having insisted on the marriage in the first place. But there were other factors, also, why the brothers declined to assist Cornelius. First, when Berenice was three and Beric one, their Aunt Capstick had died, leaving her husband to mourn her passing by becoming almost a recluse. Secondly, the wine trade was not what it had been, and Henry Capstick’s business had begun to fail. Consequently, when he died in the autumn of 1468, within three months of the death of his own wife, his fortune had been considerably eroded. The amount of money, therefore, left to Beric and Berenice had been substantially less than their father had been led to expect. Nevertheless, by the time that Cornelius himself had died, in the spring of 1475, of a surfeit of drink and hard living, he had managed to whittle away his children’s inheritance still further, and Valletort Manor was once more slipping into a state of decay.

Berenice Gifford — eighteen years old at the time she lost her father — and her brother were now almost entirely dependent on their Great-Uncle Oliver for the luxuries, and even, on occasions, the necessities, of everyday life.

‘And Master Capstick was only too willing to supply them with what he thought was right and proper,’ Mistress Trenowth said, getting up to close the inner shutters, for the October morning had suddenly clouded over. She returned to her chair and went on, ‘He felt it to be his duty, you understand, for having more or less forced his niece into marriage with Cornelius Gifford.’

‘But was that the only reason?’ I interrupted. ‘Wasn’t he fond of his great-niece and — nephew?’

Mistress Trenowth frowned. ‘He didn’t dislike them,’ she answered cautiously, ‘but he was old and they are young, and they didn’t pay him the attention that he thought was his due. The elderly grow exacting, Master Chapman, as you probably know. They get lonelier than they’ll admit to. It happened with the Master. Oh, his neighbours would have visited him as often as he could have wished, but there again, old people never want what they can have, only what’s not on offer.’

‘You mean that Beric and Berenice Gifford were neglectful of him?’

‘No, no! I wouldn’t say that. One or the other of them visited Master Capstick at least once or twice a month, and sometimes they rode over together. But very often the reason for their visit was because they wanted more money.’

‘And their uncle objected to giving it to them?’

‘It depended what it was for. If they said it was to mend the roof of some leaking outbuilding, or to rebuild a wall, or simply to keep them in clothes, he’d part with the amount in full without a murmur. But it’s what I said to you just now. They’re young, and the young need to have their moments of fun and extravagance. The master kept them on too short a rein because he was so afraid that they were going to prove profligate like their father. If Beric spent more than he thought he should have done on a horse or a hawk, or if Berenice bought silk and satin when he considered that she only had need of wool or linen, or if she purchased some extravagant jewel for her personal adornment, then Master Capstick would absolutely refuse to reimburse them by so much as a groat. “If they get into debt for such fripperies, that’s their look out,” he used to say to me.’

‘And did they? Get into debt, I mean.’

Mistress Trenowth sighed. ‘Almost certainly, because in the final year of his life, Master Capstick stopped giving them any financial help whatsoever, after he found out that most of the money they’d had from him for repairs to the manor had not been used for that purpose at all.’

‘And how did he happen to make the discovery?’ I wanted to know.

‘One day, he took it into his head to pay them a surprise visit. No one who knew him would ever have expected him to do such a thing, for he hadn’t been out of the house for years except to visit his man of business, down by the Dominican Friary. I was amazed when he told me to go to the livery stable and hire a wagon and horses.’

‘And did this refusal to lend them any more money lead to bad blood between Master Capstick and his great-niece and — nephew?’

‘He was very angry when he returned home,’ Mistress Trenowth admitted. ‘I do remember that. What had passed between the three of them, I could only guess at from the fact that they didn’t come to visit the Master for quite a long time afterwards. But then, towards the end of the April just past, Berenice arrived in Bilbury Street, all smiles, just as though nothing had happened, to tell her uncle that she was betrothed to Bartholomew Champernowne, a young relation — although how distant I’m not quite sure — of the Champernowne family.’

‘And did this news please Master Capstick?’

‘There was a sort of reconciliation between them,’ nodded Mistress Trenowth, ‘and the Master promised her a handsome dowry when the marriage should eventually take place. But he told me after she’d gone — and he admitted saying this to her face — that he wasn’t parting with any money beforehand in case her story was a trick, or in case this Bartholomew Champernowne should prove to be as impoverished and feckless as Cornelius Gifford had been. “Once bitten, twice shy,” I remember him saying.’

‘And Berenice wasn’t angry at such plain speaking?’

‘She didn’t seem to be. Indeed, I don’t recall ever having seen her look so happy.’ A little smile lifted the corners of my companion’s mouth, and she heaved a romantic sigh. ‘She was obviously very much in love, and I believe that Master Capstick himself was half-persuaded that there was no foundation for his suspicions. But experience had taught him caution.’

A day or so later, however, all thoughts of his great-niece’s betrothal were temporarily driven from Oliver Capstick’s mind by the return to Plymouth of an old friend of his youth, a certain Edwin Haygarth, who had made his fortune in London, in the glass-making trade. This Master Haygarth had a granddaughter of marriageable age, his only remaining family, and almost as soon as he had renewed acquaintance with Oliver, he had proposed a union between this granddaughter and Beric Gifford.

‘The Master was delighted with the idea,’ Mistress Trenowth continued. ‘His early mistake with his niece had convinced him that, after all, money was of far more importance than breeding. And marriage to this Jenny Haygarth would have made Beric rich for life.’

Beric, now a handsome, self-willed youth of eighteen, was summoned to his great-uncle’s house and the proposition put to him.

‘Well, to be honest, it wasn’t so much put to him,’ my companion said, ‘as that the lad was told what was expected of him. Jenny Haygarth was rich and pretty. I don’t think it so much as crossed Master Capstick’s mind that Beric would refuse to do as he wished.’