The Tavern in the Morning

Chapter Two

Next day the weather had changed. Improved, almost, for, although it was actually colder, the rain had stopped and the wind had lessened. Josse set out around mid-morning under a clear blue sky, and, wrapped up in a cloak which Ella had renovated for him by lining the hood with a precious piece of fur, he felt quite cheerful.

As he and Horace trotted along, he looked round him at the winter-dead landscape. You would think, he thought, that everyone had gone, deserted their hovels and hamlets, been driven away by some dread calamity. There’s nobody about, no sign of any life, human or animal.

It made him feel quite lonely. To reassure himself, he imagined the inside of a cottage such as Will and Ella lived in. Small and dark, yes, but dry, if the inhabitants took the trouble to attend regularly to their roof. Warm — the one thing everyone made sure of was to keep the fire alive, no matter how small the room, how tiny the hearth. Reasonably clean, too, provided a woman was a good manager. Sharing your home with your animals tended admittedly to make cleanliness a problem, but there were ways. Apparently.

It was, Josse realised, something about which he really hadn’t a clue.

The water in the streams and ponds was frozen hard now, and, on the banks, remnants of dry grass and bracken were coated in glistening white frost. Pretty — Josse noticed a skein of geese flying in formation up ahead, alive and active in contrast to the dead hare he’d just seen beside the track, already half-eaten by anonymous predators — but such severe weather sorted the survivors from the weak, no doubt about it.

Hunching deeper into his cloak, he kicked Horace into a canter and turned his head down the long sloping road that led off the flank of the higher ground and into the valley where Tonbridge lay.

* * *

Goody Anne was in tears.

‘Oh, sir, I’m that glad to see you, I can’t put it into words!’ she sobbed, clutching Josse’s hand and wringing it between her own. She was a strong woman, and quite soon he had to disentangle himself.

‘What a business, Mistress Anne,’ he said, patting her plump shoulder.

‘They’re saying I gave him a bad plate of supper!’ she said, the indignation clearly still fresh. ‘Me that’s been feeding folks all my life! It’s an insult,’ she went on, with quiet dignity.

‘I agree,’ Josse said. ‘If it’s any comfort, dear Anne, I don’t believe for one moment that you are to blame.’

She gazed at him, eyes filled with sudden hope. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No. If by some terrible mischance there had been a dish that had gone bad, where are all the other victims?’

Her lips moved in silence as she worked it out; it must be the shock, he thought charitably, she was normally a quick-witted woman. ‘You mean, lots of people would have eaten the same meal, and they’d all have fallen ill?’

‘Aye.’

‘And they haven’t.’ She gave a visible shudder. ‘Thank the good Lord, they haven’t!’

‘Amen,’ Josse said. ‘So, Mistress Anne, we have to look at other possibilities.’

She was looking at him keenly. ‘Such as?’

‘Well, perhaps the man was sick when he arrived here, and merely died in your guest chamber of something that had already written his death warrant. Perhaps he was very, very drunk. Perhaps…’ He paused. Unable to think of anything else, he finished lamely, ‘Something like that.’

Anne gave him a grateful smile. ‘You’ve a good heart, sir knight, that you have.’ Drying her eyes, she said, ‘You’ll be wanting to talk to a few folks, ask a few questions, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Will I? Josse thought. He couldn’t for the moment think what he might ask. Then, recovering, he said, ‘I’d like to see the room where he died. And talk to the maid who found him.’ His mind seemed to have recovered. ‘And I’d better know who he was and where he came from, so that I can pay a visit to his family, whoever they are.’

‘If they’re sick too, it’ll put me in the clear,’ Anne said, accurately but with little regard, Josse thought, for the dead man’s kin. Shock again, he decided. In her right mind, Goody Anne wouldn’t wish a ghastly death on somebody purely to prove that her food wasn’t poisonous.

‘We’ll start with the guest chamber,’ Goody Anne announced. And led the way along the passage.

* * *

The guest chamber had, Josse was relieved to find, been cleaned. The thin rugs on the floor still showed patches of damp from their recent washing, and the cot, stripped of bedding, was covered in a haze of condensation. The leather flap over the window had been fastened back, and the cold, fresh air circulating in the room was fighting gamely with the pervasive stench of vomit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet winning.

‘We found him half on and half off the bed,’ Goody Anne said, holding her nose. ‘As if he’d lain down, then, feeling the sick rise up, leaned out over the floor to puke up.’ She muttered something else, something about folks that hadn’t the decency to find a bowl to be sick in and save other folk from the mopping up.

‘Had he been drinking hard?’ Josse asked.

Anne gave him a look. ‘They’d all been drinking hard. Always do, market day. It’s my best day.’

‘Do you think a surfeit of alcohol killed him?’

She considered. ‘I’ve heard tell of such things,’ she admitted. ‘Young feller I knew when I was — er, when I was younger, it happened to him. He got drunk, then fell heavily asleep on his back, and choked on his own vomit.’ She shook her head. ‘But that can’t be what happened to this poor soul.’

‘It can’t?’

She sighed. ‘No. Like I said, he was leaning out over the edge of the bed. The vomit ran out of his mouth, not back down his windpipe.’

The talk was becoming rather too graphic, for Josse. Especially standing in a room that reeked all too strongly of its last occupant’s demise.

‘I’ll talk to the girl who found him,’ he announced, striding for the door. ‘Come on, Mistress Anne.’

* * *

The serving maid who had discovered the corpse was a small, thin, pale-faced girl of about fourteen or fifteen. She had light brown hair tied in a knot on the nape of her neck, pale bulging eyes with light-coloured lashes, spots on her chin and lumpy hands reddened from constant contact with cold water. She had a permanent sniff, a habit of wiping the dewdrop off the end of her nose with the back of her hand, and she answered to the name of Tilly.

For some reason, Josse detected instantly, she was very disturbed by his gentle questions.

‘I can’t tell you nothing!’ she kept crying. ‘I went in and there he was, and that’s all there is to it!’

‘You knew who he was?’ Josse asked.

‘Eh? How d’you mean?’ She looked cagey.

Josse tried another tack. ‘Were you serving in the tap room the previous evening?’

Tilly hesitated. ‘Might have been.’ Josse waited. Eventually, as if even Tilly’s limited intelligence realised there wasn’t much future in evading the truth on a point that could instantly be decided by others’ testimony, she said, ‘Yes.’

‘And you served the dead man?’

‘No,’ she said instantly. Then: ‘Yes, maybe. It’s hard to tell, when we were so busy.’

‘I’m sure,’ Josse said soothingly. ‘What I’m asking is, when you saw the dead man in the morning, did you recognise him as one of the previous evening’s customers?’

She looked at him as if he were daft. ‘Course I did! He’d stopped the night, hadn’t he?’

This was getting nowhere. Realising that he still didn’t know the dead man’s identity, Josse thanked Tilly for her help — she wouldn’t have noticed the mild irony — and sent her back to the kitchen.

He spoke to half a dozen men who had been in the tavern the night the man died before anyone could tell him the dead man’s name.

It was Peter Ely. He had been in his mid-thirties, it was guessed, and he farmed a few meagre acres in the Vale of Tonbridge, some five or six miles out of town. He was in the habit of coming to the market, where he would sell whatever produce he’d brought with him before repairing to the tavern for a drink and a bite before setting off for home.

Nobody knew whether he had family. Nobody, it become clear, knew very much about him at all.

If he was already ill, Josse mused, taking a break from questioning the clientele of the tap room and strolling around the yard, then that’s an easy answer, and I almost hope it’s the right one. Because if he wasn’t, and if, as I strongly believe, we can rule out a dish of bad food, then somebody must have killed him. Slipped poison into his food while he wasn’t looking, and murdered him.

And if that’s what happened, I’m left with the question, who? Who on earth, and for what purpose, could have wished to kill a poor, humble peasant who doesn’t seem to have had anything remarkable or memorable about him whatsoever?

He shook his head, stumped.

A thought occurred to him, prompted by a sudden rumble from his hungry stomach.

Food. The dish of food.

Was there any chance…?

Hurrying back inside the tavern, he raced to find Tilly.

* * *

‘It’s a-cause of all the pother,’ she said, indicating with a hopeless gesture the piles of food-encrusted trenchers, platters and dishes stacked in a lean-to abutting the kitchen. ‘There’s always a lot, see, after market day, and, what with getting the body out, and the clearing-up, and all the comings and goings and what-not…’ The words ended on a weary sigh, as if she didn’t have the heart to finish.

Three days after market day, and washing-up not yet done. No, Josse thought, he could quite see that wouldn’t accord with Goody Anne’s orders under normal circumstances.

‘Never mind, Tilly,’ he said encouragingly. ‘I’m quite sure nobody’s going to be cross with you.’ She turned mournful eyes on him, as if she didn’t share his confidence. ‘Anyway, as it happens, it may prove to be very helpful that the platters are still soiled.’ He ran his eyes over the mess, wondering where to begin. ‘Er, Tilly, could you try to think back and tell me what the dead man ate for his supper?’

She didn’t answer. Turning, he noticed her expression. Pale eyes wide, face even whiter and glossed with a fine sheen of sweat, she looked terrified.

‘Tilly?’ he repeated, trying to sound gentle. ‘What’s the matter?’

She shook her head, and emitted a strangled sound. He waited. Then, whispering the word as if admitting to some dread crime, she said, ‘Pie. He had chicken and vegetable pie.’

Wondering as he did so why she should make such a scene about a question which surely could not have been unexpected, Josse attacked the stack waiting for Tilly’s attention. He didn’t bother to look at any of the rough wooden trenchers from which the tavern’s customers ate their meals; there was absolutely no way he could have told which one had been used by Peter Ely. What he wanted to inspect was the considerable number of larger serving platters, on which, presumably, each dish had been cooked, and from which individual portions would have been cut.

There seemed to be dozens. Oh, Lord, he thought, overcome by the task, this is hopeless! Even given that I can detect which serving platters held pie, then what? I’m …

At the bottom of the second stack, where it had been supporting a tottering column of trenchers which Josse had one by one removed and discarded, was a big pie dish. Scraps of pastry adhered to its rim, and in its base was a congealing mass of meat, gravy and vegetables. He picked it up, looked questioningly at Tilly and, after a moment, she nodded.

He gazed into the pie dish, suddenly reluctant to take his testing to the next logical step. A roomful of vomit, a man’s dying face contorted in agony …

Firmly he took hold of a piece of onion between finger and thumb. He brought it up close to his face and stared at it. He sniffed it. Then, finally, he touched it very lightly against the inside of his lower lip.

Nothing.

He waited. Tilly’s watching eyes seemed to burn into him.

Nothing.

He put the piece of onion carefully back in the pie dish, and then replaced the dish on the floor of the lean-to.

Still nothing.

I was wrong, he thought. Wrong about that dish, anyway, which means I’ll now have to go through the remaining three stacks to see if I can discover another pie-dish.

Which was not a pleasant prospect.

‘Tilly, I’m going to continue the search,’ he said. ‘Can you remember how many pies you got through on market day? Because-’

A tiny tingle in his lower lip.

He stopped what he was doing, straightened up. Waited.

No.

Ah well, it was-

Yes! From an all-but-undetectable tingle, now the spot inside his lip, where he had touched the onion to the gum, was burning as if he’d put a live coal on to it. Elbowing Tilly out of the way, he ran for the pump in the corner of the yard, working the handle feverishly, holding his open mouth beneath the stream of icy-cold water. It was only self-preservation, not deliberate action, that made him hold his head so that the water ran into his mouth and then straight out again, rather than going down his throat.

The burning sensation soon began to diminish. He went on rinsing out his mouth for some time after it had ceased altogether. By then, not only his lower lip but his whole face was so cold that a burning coal might actually have been quite welcome.

He rinsed his hands as well, rubbing the finger and thumb of his right hand over and over again.

Then, when at last he was satisfied, he asked Tilly for an old sack, and, careful not to touch the pie dish again, enveloped it in the sack and went in search of Goody Anne.

She was sitting in the tap room with her feet up, drinking a mug of her own ale. She looked up apprehensively as Josse entered.

He held up the sack. ‘I’ve found the culprit,’ he said quietly. ‘Not your pie, Goody Anne, or, at least, not your pie as it left your capable hands.’

She looked doubtfully at him, obviously not prepared to be relieved until he’d told her everything.

‘And?’ she asked.

‘I suggest we destroy this,’ he said, swinging the sack. ‘Smash the platter, bury it somewhere no creature will dig it up.’

She whispered, ‘Why?’

‘Someone put poison in it,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, which I don’t believe I am, someone put a large dose of wolfs bane in a portion of the chicken pie. Then they fed it to Peter Ely.’

* * *

Now that he knew about the poison, the chief reason for visiting Peter Ely’s home — to see if anyone else in his family had fallen sick — seemed to have been removed. But Josse decided to go, anyway: it didn’t seem right that nobody went, and, with the forces of law and order stirred up like a henhouse circled by a fox over the discovery of the wolfs bane, it seemed that, if Josse didn’t make the effort, nobody else would.

Sheriff Pelham and Josse had met before. Josse wasn’t keen to renew the acquaintance, and nor, it seemed, was the sheriff.

‘You again!’ he greeted Josse when, preparing to set out for the Ely acreage, Josse approached him to ask to be given Peter Ely’s meagre personal effects.

‘Me again,’ Josse agreed. He explained his mission, and the sheriff, having scratched his head to see if he could come up with some objection, discovered he couldn’t and grudgingly handed over a small bag made of coarse linen.

‘I’ll have that back when you’re done,’ he said, pointing a dirty-nailed forefinger at the bag. ‘That’s official property, that is.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of it,’ Josse said. He didn’t wait to hear Sheriff Pelham’s reply.

* * *

The Ely home was a small and ramshackled cottage, a lean-to, in fact, tacked on to the end of a row of three other cottages which, on first sight, seemed better maintained. Peter Ely, Josse observed, hadn’t been a man to turn his hand to a repair; the roof was holed, the door was off one of its hinges and the whole place had an air of squalor and neglect.

He dismounted and, tethering Horace, walked up to the door and put his head inside the cottage’s single room.

‘Hello?’

Two figures materialised from the gloom, followed by another, smaller one; as his eyes adjusted, Josse thought they might be Peter Ely’s father, wife and adolescent child. Whether the latter was male or female was not immediately apparent.

‘Eh?’ said the old man.

‘I have ridden out from town,’ Josse began, not really sure where to start — did these wretched people even know Peter was dead? — ‘to seek out the kin of Peter Ely.’

The woman, gazing at Josse dully, said, ‘’E be dead.’

‘I know,’ Josse said. ‘I’m very sorry.’

There was a silence. The three Elys went on staring. Finally, Josse remembered the bag. ‘These belongings were his,’ he said, holding out the bag. The woman shot out a hand and grasped it, swiftly tucking it away inside some fold of whatever garment she was wearing in what looked like an automatic gesture. ‘They are Peter’s effects,’ he added. ‘Found on his — found on him.’

‘Aah,’ said the old man.

‘I’m ’aving ’em!’ the woman hissed, giving the old man a vicious dig in the ribs as if fending off an attempt to wrest her late husband’s possessions from her. ‘Anything ’e ’ad, it’s mine!’

Nobody seemed to wish to dispute that.

The four of them went on standing there for some time. Eventually Josse said, ‘Er — it appears Peter was poisoned. More than that I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

‘Poisoned,’ echoed the old man.

It was the only response any of the three made. And even then, it seemed more an observation than a grief-stricken moan.

Despairing of them, Josse said curtly, ‘I’ll wish you farewell.’ mounted Horace, spurred him and hastened away.

* * *

It was clear he would have to put up at the inn overnight. For one thing, it was getting dark and, for another, he still had so much to find out.

He hoped Goody Anne could offer an alternative guest chamber. Fortunately, after making a few hasty rearrangements, she could.

After supper (mutton stew washed down with ale, and quite delicious), he was lingering by the fire in the tap room, reluctant to go up to a cold bed, when Goody Anne came hurrying in.

He could tell from her face that she had something to tell him; giving her a quick grin, he said, ‘Well? What have you found out?’

She smiled back. ‘T’isn’t me, it’s that wretch of a girl.’

‘Tilly?’

‘That’s the one. She’s — oh, you’d better come and see for yourself, no doubt it’ll be quicker in the long run.’ She took his mug from his hand, thumped it down and, grabbing his sleeve, hurried him out of the tap room, down the passage and into the kitchen. Tilly, face in her hands, seemed to be sobbing.

‘Come on, then, my girl!’ Anne said angrily. ‘You can tell the gentleman here what you just told me!’

‘Oh, no!’ Tilly wailed.

Anne folded her stout arms across her deep bosom. ‘Either you do or I shall,’ she said relentlessly.

‘Come, Tilly,’ Josse said, moving forward and crouching down beside the girl. ‘What can be so terrible?’ He tried a small laugh. ‘After all, you didn’t poison the old man, did you?’ He chuckled again. Very soon, he realised he was laughing alone; Anne was staring at him with a face like thunder and Tilly had broken into renewed wails.

‘Dear merciful God,’ Anne muttered. Then: ‘Tilly, you didn’t poison him, not really, and no one’s going to say you did, not while I’ve got life in my body. You mayn’t be much,’ she added, half under her breath, ‘but you’re better than nothing, and I won’t see you dragged off and accused of sommat you didn’t do.’

Tilly, who seemed to find that slightly reassuring, had raised her head and was now looking at Josse out of pink-rimmed eyes. Her distress, he noticed, hadn’t done anything for her looks.

‘Tilly?’ he said gently.

She took a deep, gulping breath, then said: ‘It were the last bit of pie, see. There was this man — handsome, he were, lovely black hair all glossy like an ’orse, he gave me such a nice smile and he said, what did I recommend? What was really tasty? And, what with it being the last bit, and him being so nice, I, well, I-’ She started weeping again.

‘You were serving a nice, friendly man,’ Josse said, trying to pick up the narrative, ‘and you were going to serve him the last slice of pie. Is that right?’

Tilly nodded. ‘Aye. I was just putting the trencher together — bit of pie, gravy, stack of vegetables, slice of bread, when Tobe yells-’

‘Tobe?’

‘Tobias,’ Goody Anne said. ‘The boy.’

‘Ah. Go on, Tilly.’

‘Tobe, he yells out, another chicken pie! and I thinks to myself, that’ll mean starting a new one. Then, like I says because ’e were so nice, I thinks, why not give ’im the first slice from the nice fresh pie, and the last bit of the old pie to whoever else wanted pie? ‘Specially when I had a look and saw it was some silly fool of a man, half-drunk at that, who’d been going to get the new bit.’ She glanced at Josse. ‘See?’

It was a rambling explanation, but Josse thought he did see. ‘You had two orders for the pie,’ he said slowly, ‘one from your nice handsome man, and one from the man who we now know was Peter Ely. Yes?’ Tilly nodded, wiping a long trail of greenish snot on to the back of her wrist. Josse stepped back a pace. ‘There was only one serving left in the pie you’d been dishing out and, naturally, you’d have served it to the handsome man rather than cut into a fresh pie. Yes?’

‘Aye,’ Tilly agreed. ‘She — the mistress — is very strict about that. We always have to finish one dish before we start on the next.’

‘Quite,’ Josse said. ‘But then, just as you were about to take the handsome man’s meal out to him, Tobias calls through another order for the pie, which means you can give the last of the old pie-’

‘I don’t know as I care for all this talk of old pie,’ Anne interrupted plaintively. ‘It wasn’t old, it were made fresh that morning, same as all the day’s food!’

‘Yes, Anne,’ Josse said, trying not to let his irritation show. ‘I’m only saying old pie to distinguish it from the uncut one. All right?’

Anne sniffed. ‘Suppose so.’

‘Now, Tilly.’ He turned back to the girl. ‘You decide to give the last slice of the cut pie to Peter Ely, and you prepare a pretty trencher of the pie you’ve just cut into for your handsome man. Yes?’

‘Aye!’ Tilly risked a thin smile.

‘There!’ Josse exclaimed. ‘That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?’

But the girl had slumped into despondency again, ‘I gave ’im the pie what killed ’im,’ she moaned.

‘Yes, child, but it wasn’t your fault!’ Josse said, exasperated. ‘You didn’t poison the remaining slice in the cut pie, did you?’

‘Course not!’

‘Well, then. And-’ He had been on the point of saying, and if you hadn’t swapped the portions, your handsome man would have died instead of Peter Ely. But it wasn’t a comment which stood any chance of cheering Tilly up, so he didn’t.

* * *

Later, lying on a narrow cot under covers so thin that he was glad of his thick cloak — Goody Anne had explained that he could normally have had more blankets, only the ones Peter Ely had sicked up on still weren’t dry — Josse reviewed the day’s progress.

It didn’t take long.

Someone had wanted to kill someone. They’d tracked him to the inn at Tonbridge, spied for long enough to hear him order his supper, then somehow they’d sneaked into a busy kitchen and slipped a fatal dose of wolfs bane into the portion of pie destined for the victim.

Wolfs bane, Josse thought, momentarily distracted. Also known as monk’s hood, because of the hood-shaped blue flowers, it had leaves like parsley and a root like a little brown turnip. Used by healers to rub on the skin for pain relief, but to be handled with care as all parts of the plant were poisonous. One of the oldest of mankind’s poisons, well-known to — probably well-used by — the Greeks and the Romans.

Easy to get hold of, here in south-east England? Josse didn’t know. But, easy or not, someone had managed it.

The poisoned pie was virtually on its way to the victim — he picked up his thread — when young Tilly swaps the trenchers so as to reward her friend the handsome man with the newly-cut pie. Poor lass, he thought, distracted again, I don’t think such a small philanthropic gesture would have got her very far with her glossy-haired fellow, not given the child’s meagre appearance, dull wits and habit of wiping her nose on her hand.

Where was I? He was becoming sleepy. Ah, yes, the swapped pies.

No wonder he’d had difficulty imaging the innocuous Peter Ely as a murder victim. He hadn’t been. The poisoned pie hadn’t been destined for him, but for Tilly’s handsome man.

And now the handsome man had gone on his way. He’d left more than three days ago, probably innocent of the fact that someone had just tried to kill him. With nobody knowing who he was, where he’d come from or where he was going, it looked as if Josse’s next step in unravelling the murder had already been laid down for him.