The Three Kings of Cologne

Twenty

‘You killed her,’ I said. ‘You or your wife. Isabella came home that day, soaking wet from her long gallop across the downs, hours spent in the wind and rain, so the first thing she did was to change her gown. She took off the old patched and darned purple dress she used for riding and changed it for one of green silk or velvet. After that … Well, only you, Master Linkinhorne, can tell me what happened next.’

It was the following day. I had waited until after dinner before setting out for the Gaunts’ Hospital, in order to make certain that its inmates would be up and about, and that the early morning round of the apothecary and the almoner would be over. I had spent an uneasy night, my — and Adela’s — rest periodically broken by the need to review the facts in my mind and reassure myself that my conclusion was the correct one. Adela, as always a source of comfort, did her best to convince me that, with the evidence at my disposal, I had reached the right conclusion.

‘It has to be Jonathan or Amorette Linkinhorne. But will you be able to make him admit it? Master Linkinhorne has only to deny everything, and to maintain that denial, to make matters awkward. Both the Clifton hermit and Master Moresby would have to be called on for their testimony, and I doubt if either would be prepared to swear to what they’ve told you. Not after all these years and not against a man of eighty-five summers who’s old and frail. If Mayor Foster is hoping for a plain, straightforward conviction, based on irrefutable evidence, he will be disappointed.’

I could do nothing but agree with her: Adela’s assessment of the situation chimed so exactly with my own. But my instinct was to be defensive, too. What could John Foster reasonably expect after a score of years? I had done better than anyone had a right to anticipate after such a length of time.

Adela had soothed me in the same gentle tone of voice she used to smooth away the children’s troubles. And it had occurred to me, as it had done more than once or twice before, to wonder if she saw me as the eldest and perhaps the most troublesome of those children. As ever, I put the thought from me and allowed myself to be lulled to sleep eventually in her loving arms.

We had the remainder of yesterday’s fish stew for dinner and, when I protested, my wife reminded me that, after today, the rest of Mayor Foster’s money must be returned to him.

‘And until you get back on the road again, Roger, we have very little left of our own.’

So it was with mixed feelings that, after dinner, I walked out of the Frome Gate and along the Backs to the hospital, set against the cloud of apple blossom that was, at present, its orchard. The cooing of the pigeons from the pigeon loft sounded loudly on the soft morning air.

Before I could state my business to anyone in authority, however, I was waylaid by that ever vigilant pair, Miles Huckbody and Henry Dando.

‘Saw you coming,’ announced the latter triumphantly, his rheumy blue eyes screwed up against the sunlight shafting in through the open doorway behind me.

‘That’s right,’ confirmed his friend, his seamed and wrinkled face — the face of a much older man than Miles Huckbody really was — expressing equal smugness. ‘Keeps our eyes and ears open, we do. There’s not much we misses.’

‘If it’s old Jonathan Linkinhorne you’m lookin’ for,’ Henry Dando cut in, ‘he’s in the infirmary. Taken there this mornin’ after breakfast.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked anxiously, but neither of my informants seemed to know (or care particularly, if it came to that).

I sought out one of the chaplains, who reassured me that there was no cause for alarm.

‘Just the general malaise of old age. Fatigue and boredom. I daresay he’ll be glad to have a visitor.’

I doubted it, not one who confronted him with what I had to say. I hesitated momentarily, wondering if I should retreat and return another day, but then decided that if the thing were to be done at all, it would be better to do it quickly and get it over with. The chaplain reaffirmed that the patient’s indisposition was not serious and conducted me into the long, narrow, whitewashed dormitory that was the hospital infirmary.

It so happened that Master Linkinhorne was the sole occupant, much to my great relief. He was propped up against pillows on a palliasse at the far end of the room and glanced towards the door as I came in with my guide. As we approached and he recognized me, I saw his eyes widen in — what? Apprehension? Alarm? But the next moment, they were shuttered by his lids, and when he opened them again, they were devoid of all expression.

‘Someone to see you, Jonathan,’ the chaplain said.

I sat down tentatively on the edge of the mattress. Here and there, bits of straw stuck through the thin ticking, irritating my legs and making me thankful that I was not an inmate of the hospital, especially a sick one.

‘What do you want?’ Jonathan Linkinhorne grunted at last, after a silence during which I debated how to explain the reason for my presence; an accusation of murder is hardly the easiest of subjects to broach.

In the end, I decided that the direct approach was the best, probably the only, one to take, so I came straight out with it — and waited for him to refute my words with a storm of anger and indignation. He did indeed lift a hand as though to ward off what I was saying, and, to begin with, I saw both shock and denial in the faded blue eyes. The slack flesh around the jawline quivered for a moment before he suddenly heaved a great sigh and let his head fall forward in acquiescence.

‘I killed her,’ he said. ‘I had to. Isabella had attacked my wife with a knife. It was Amorette’s life or hers.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t the first time she had done so. Once before, Isabella tried to stab her mother while in a towering passion.’

‘What provoked her rage on that day?’ I asked, wondering if I were being told the truth or not. And yet, after all I had learned about Isabella, it had the ring of authenticity about it.

As though reading my thoughts, my companion raised his head and stared defiantly at me, the eyes, in which blindness was steadily and surely taking a hold, sparking with anger.

‘You may believe me or not, as you please, but what happened, happened exactly as I shall relate it to you. Everything is as clear in my memory as if it had occurred only yesterday.’ A great sob was wrenched out of him, but he had his emotions under control again almost at once. ‘It would be a wonder if it were not. There’s not a single day has passed in the last twenty years when I haven’t gone over those dreadful events in my mind and wondered if they could have been avoided. To kill one’s own child must be the most heinous crime before God and man.’

‘Tell me how it came about,’ I suggested gently. I found myself beginning to feel sorry for the old man.

Jonathan nodded. He was calmer now, breathing easily, an expression of relief smoothing out his features. The dreadful secret, suppressed for so long, was at last going to be shared with another.

‘Isabella had been out riding all day; a day of terrible wind and rain. In the morning, after breakfast, my wife had pleaded with her not to leave the house; to forgo her exercise just for once. Isabella was suffering from the flux and my wife considered it unwise for her to ride at all in the circumstances, but especially in such weather. I added my voice, begging our daughter not to be so foolish. Begging is perhaps not the right word. Ordering would be a better one.’

‘To which Isabella took exception,’ I hazarded. Although from what I knew of her, it was more a statement of fact than a guess.

Master Linkinhorne pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘She had long outgrown our control.’ He shrugged. ‘You think me weak, I’ve no doubt. Most fathers would have taken a strap to her, put her under lock and key, but somehow I could never bring myself to do so. She was the child of our old age, Master Chapman; the child Amorette and I had given up hope of having when the Lord saw fit to send her to us. We lavished love upon her from her birth; no child could have been more cherished. And how did she repay us? With contumely, with vituperation, with … with … I must say it, with hatred.’ There was a pause, then he grimaced ruefully. ‘But I think, if memory serves me right, I told you all this when you came to see me three weeks ago. You must forgive me if I repeat myself. It is, unfortunately, a habit of old age.’

‘No matter. But you were telling me about the day of the murder,’ I prompted.

He visibly flinched at the last word, and said nothing further for a moment or two. Then he took another deep breath and continued.

‘Ah, yes. The murder. Although I must confess that I’ve never thought of it as such.’ A further pause, and then he shook his head vigorously as if renouncing something.

‘That’s not quite the truth, though, is it? If I hadn’t considered it to be murder, I wouldn’t have concealed what happened — even to the extent of sending out the servants next day to make enquiries as to Isabella’s whereabouts and who might have seen her.’

I frowned. ‘But not very urgent enquiries. Nor did you pursue them for any length of time. Once I began to suspect you, your apparent indifference to what might have become of your daughter, the ease with which you seemed to accept her disappearance, only added, in my estimation, to the weight of evidence against you. But you still haven’t told me precisely what happened that day she returned from riding.’

Once more, he lifted his frail shoulders and dropped them. ‘As I’ve said, it was a dreadful day. When Isabella came home not long before suppertime, she was soaked to the skin. She went straight up to her chamber and changed her gown from the old purple one she had put on that morning — one she kept for dirty and muddy days — to the green silk one my wife had made for her a few months earlier. Then she joined us in the solar where Amorette was doing her embroidery, seated at her frame, and I was idling away an hour before the evening meal. I asked her — Isabella that is — where she had been and what she had been doing in such weather. My attitude, my tone of voice were moderate enough, I can assure you, even though my wife and I had both been extremely worried for our daughter’s safety. They certainly didn’t warrant the unrestrained outburst of fury with which my question was greeted. (Although, in all honesty, I have to admit that the flux always made Isabella even more ill-tempered and intractable than she normally was.) For some reason — women’s reasons again, perhaps — our daughter’s insolence infuriated Amorette. She got to her feet in such a rage that she was almost speechless and did what I had never seen her do in her life before. She slapped Isabella full across the face with such force that Isabella was sent staggering back against the wall, cutting her bottom lip on one of her teeth.

‘Amorette and I had been eating fruit; some of the previous autumn’s apples taken out of winter store. There was a knife, lying on the plate along with the cores and peel. Before I realized what was happening, Isabella had seized it and was attacking her mother in a frenzy. My wife was fending her off as best she could and calling to me for help. I tried to drag Isabella away, but she was like a woman possessed, lending her the strength of ten. Within seconds, I was bleeding from a cut to my hand.’

‘So you hit her with something. Something heavy,’ I said, as once again Jonathan Linkinhorne paused.

‘Yes.’ The monosyllable fell flatly between us, heavy as lead, before he went on, ‘There was a pewter vase in a niche in the wall. I hit my daughter over the back of her head with it.’ Tears welled up suddenly in his eyes, furrowing his cheeks; great sobs racked him, the more shocking and poignant because they were silent. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her,’ he rasped after a moment, ‘just to stop her killing Amorette. She fell where she stood, but when we turned her over, to pick her up, we found Isabella was dead.’

The voice faded and became suspended, and the old man’s chest heaved as though he could barely breathe.

‘I’ll call the Infirmarer,’ I said anxiously, getting to my feet.

‘No!’ Jonathan gasped, reaching up and plucking at my sleeve. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment or two. I’ll tell you the rest. It will be a relief to unburden my conscience after all these years.’

So I sat down again on the edge of the mattress and waited for the spasm to pass. When it had I asked, ‘Did none of the servants hear anything of this quarrel?’

He shook his head. ‘They had all gone home. The only two who might have done were both out of the house. Emilia Virgoe, Isabella’s old nurse, and her maid, Jane Honeychurch, were both absent that day. I forget why.’

‘Mistress Virgoe told me that she was staying with her sick sister in Bristol. You had given her leave of absence to do so. As for Jane Honeychurch — Goody Purefoy as she is now — she said …’ My voice tailed off as memory came flooding back and I recollected exactly what it was that Jane Purefoy had said.

The old reprobate on the bed gazed limpidly back at me, but a tic suddenly appeared in one of his cheeks. ‘What did she say?’ But the question was tentative.

‘That she had gone into Bristol to visit her foster mother. That your wife, who was visiting a friend there, had taken her in the covered waggon. That Mistress Linkinhorne also brought her home again, after dark. That, by then, Isabella had already disappeared.’ During the ensuing silence, Jonathan Linkinhorne and I stared each other out, but his gaze was the first to drop. I went on remorselessly, ‘Isabella didn’t attack your wife, did she? She had done so once, but not on that occasion. Suppose now you tell me what really happened.’

I thought, by the way he compressed his lips, that he would refuse to say anything more. There was, after all, nothing I could do to force him to speak. He was a sick old man and there were no witnesses to the conversation we had just had. But in the end I think, as he had said, the need to unburden himself was genuine. Reluctantly, he abandoned his former story.

‘All right,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t kill Isabella. She wasn’t attacking my wife. As you’ve discovered, Amorette wasn’t even there. But my cousin was.’

‘You mean Sister Walburga?’ I interrupted.

Jonathan nodded. ‘Yes, Jeanette. She’d entered the Magdalen nunnery as a postulant some few days before and had come to take formal leave of me. It isn’t a retired order, but she knew that we wouldn’t see much of one another in future, and she wanted my blessing. My approval, I suppose, of what she was doing; of the step she had taken. And it was while she was with me that Isabella came home.’ He heaved himself up a little in the bed. ‘What I told you just now wasn’t altogether a lie. Parts of it were true. But it was Jeanette and I who were in the solar when Isabella came in after changing her gown. I did ask Isabella where she’d been and she did fly into a rage, but it was me she attacked with the fruit knife …’ His voice became suspended.

‘And it was Sister Walburga who hit her with the vase,’ I finished for him.

‘Yes. I didn’t want to implicate her unless I had to.’

‘So what did you do when you realized that your daughter was dead?’ I asked, although I could guess at least part of the answer.

‘It was getting dark. I had promised Jeanette some vegetables to take back with her for the nuns, and they’d been dug up earlier by one of the men before he went home, and loaded into the cart we used for market. She said I must help her put Isabella’s body into the cart as well, and drive back with her to the nunnery. It’s outside the city walls, like this place, so curfew didn’t matter. She said a grave had been dug in the nuns’ graveyard for one of the Sisters who was very sick and had been expected to die, but who, in my cousin’s opinion, was more likely to recover. I asked what would happen if she didn’t, but Jeanette said it was a chance we had to take. And if she did get better, my cousin said it would be an easy enough matter to plant the idea of a miracle in the minds of the other two nuns.’

‘Which she successfully did, according to Sister Apollonia,’ I said. ‘But go on.’

My companion shifted restlessly. ‘There’s not much more to tell. We had the house to ourselves: the hands we employed, the two girls and the men, all had homes in the village. We couldn’t afford to feed them more than their dinners. Only Emilia and Jane Honeychurch lived with us. So we put Isabella’s body in the cart, I drove it to the graveyard, we buried Isabella in the vacant grave, I left Jeanette at the nunnery door, together with the sack of vegetables, and returned here. I turned Isabella’s horse loose and lived in dread for the next few days that it would make its way back again. But it never did. It was a valuable animal and someone no doubt found it wandering and thought his luck was in.’

‘Your wife?’ I queried. ‘Did you tell her the truth?’

‘Oh, yes. I had to.’ The rheumy eyes clouded over. ‘It hit her hard, but in the end, she agreed that we had to protect Jeanette because she had only been protecting me. We made a pretence of searching for Isabella, but of course we knew we would never find her. We knew where she was all the time. But the knowledge was too much for Amorette to bear. The following year she drowned herself in the Avon. Of course, most people thought it was an accident, and there was no proof to the contrary. Even I couldn’t swear it was suicide, although naturally I had my doubts …’

‘You told me, when we spoke before, that you sent that day to Emilia Virgoe’s cottage to ask if Isabella were there, yet you knew she wasn’t at home.’

‘God’s fingernails, man!’ Jonathan thumped his coverlet in exasperation. ‘As far as I knew then, what I told you didn’t matter. I didn’t think you were going to ferret out the truth and disturb my peace.’ He began to breathe heavily again. ‘And you can’t be sure that what I’ve told you now is really the truth, can you?’ He gave a wheezing laugh that stuck in his throat and threatened to choke him.

He was right, of course. He had told me two different stories within a very short space of time, adapting the second to fit the information I had gathered for myself.

Jonathan gave a throaty chuckle which rapidly degenerated into a spasm of coughing. When, finally, he could speak, he wheezed, ‘Jeanette, if you question her, will deny everything.’ I wondered how he knew that. ‘And then you won’t know who to believe, now will you?’

‘I know Isabella was killed at home by you or whoever was with you.’

‘I’ll deny everything I’ve told you. I’ll swear you’re making it up.’

I hesitated. I knew that such evidence as I had was flimsy. A lawyer who knew his trade — and which of them doesn’t? — could easily bemuse Hob Jarrett and his two cronies into doubting the evidence of their eyes; into doubting even that there was a piece of Isabella’s gown still in the grave, let alone that it had been green. Silk or velvet? They had described it as both at one time and another. And Robert Moresby’s evidence, relayed to me by Juliette? On reflection, no colour of the gown Isabella was wearing had been mentioned, nor, as Adela had guessed, would Master Moresby wish to get involved. No, I might have solved the mystery, but I would never prove my case. It was true, what Jonathan Linkinhorne and everyone else had said from the beginning: it was all too long ago. Raking over such cold and dead ashes was a profitless pastime, a wasted effort.

‘What will you do now?’ Jonathan asked. His voice, in the last few moments, had grown fainter.

I glanced at him in concern, but he waved his hand at me impatiently, a dismissive movement as if he understood that there was nothing left for me to stay for.

I got to my feet. ‘I’ll tell Mayor Foster what I’ve learned. The rest is up to him.’

My companion smiled weakly, but his tone, when he spoke, was a little stronger.

‘He won’t do anything. At least, not if he’s wise. Warn him, if you have to, that I’ll refute everything I’ve told you.’ He was seized by another bout of violent coughing before adding faintly, ‘I intend to end my days, whatever their number, here and die in my bed. And if His Worship has any intention of visiting me himself, with the mistaken notion that he can wrest the truth from me, tell him to spare himself the trouble.’ He sketched a ghastly smile. ‘I may even do that for him.’

Jonathan Linkinhorne was certainly a sicker man than the chaplain believed him to be.

I said again, ‘I’ll fetch the Infirmarer.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing he can do. Won’t let him. Won’t take his potions. Leave me be. Just go.’

I went.

John Foster bit his lip.

‘So you really think there’s nothing we can do? No accusation we can bring?’ As I shook my head, he added sadly, ‘I had hoped for better than this.’

I felt a flare of annoyance, almost of anger — unusual in my dealings with this man.

I had waited until Monday before seeking out the Mayor, catching him early, just after breakfast, at home, too soon for him to have started the working day. I had told him everything I knew, the evidence I had for believing Isabella was killed in the Linkinhorne house, how I had come by it, and finally repeating Saturday’s conversation with Jonathan himself. But I had also advised that to pursue the accusation could do no good.

‘You should have had a witness to your talk with Master Linkinhorne,’ the Mayor said fretfully. ‘Surely you should have thought of this?’

I took a deep breath and waited until I had slowly unclenched my hands.

‘It would have done no good, Your Worship. With a witness, he wouldn’t have said anything; he wouldn’t have admitted to the truth at all.’

‘Whatever the real truth is.’ John Foster sighed, then his features, previously set in unwontedly stern and aggrieved lines, gradually relaxed. ‘Forgive me, Master Chapman. I realize you did your best and it is, as you say, all a very long time ago. Well, well! I shall say nothing of what you’ve told me. There would be no purpose in doing so. But the ground must be re-consecrated, of course.’

‘You intend to go ahead, then, with your plan to build your chapel and almshouses on that plot?’

‘Certainly.’ He looked somewhat surprised that I should ask such a question.

‘And to dedicate the chapel to the Three Kings of Cologne?’

He smiled. ‘Even that. It would have been nice, of course — ’ his tone was still faintly reproachful — ‘to have earned my peers’ approval by solving for them a mystery which has interested them more than a little. However, it was not to be, and I’m not the man to be discouraged by small setbacks. Besides,’ he added with a comical grimace, his good humour now quite restored, ‘if the building progresses at the same rate as clearing the graveyard ground has done, it might be some time yet before I need make my intentions fully known. And by then — who can tell? — our disagreements with members of the Hanseatic League may be over.’ But he spoke like a man with no confidence in such a prediction.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, preparing to take my leave of him, ‘that I was unable to fulfil all your hopes of me.’ I proffered a leather bag, the same drawstring purse he had given me a few weeks earlier, but which now jingled rather less than it had done then. ‘The rest of your money, sir. My wife is a careful housekeeper.’

He was affronted. ‘No, no, Master Chapman! I won’t take it! Of course, I won’t! You’ve earned every penny of it. If I’ve been churlish in my thanks, then please forgive me. It was reprehensible of me. You have achieved a great deal.’

I argued a little more, but soon saw that I was giving offence where none was intended, and so took my leave, walking down the street to my own home.

Adela grabbed the purse, when I explained what had happened, and put it away. As the person whose task it was to put food on the table and attend to her family’s wants, she was less scrupulous than I when it came to accepting gifts of money. And who could blame her? I was never going to make her a rich woman, not if we both lived to be a hundred.

‘You’re disgruntled,’ she said, putting her arms around me. ‘And yet you solved this mystery, as you’ve solved all the others.’

‘But not as satisfactorily,’ I argued. ‘No one’s been brought to book for the crime.’

‘It was a very long time ago,’ Adela protested, words seared into my brain. ‘Twenty years. And from all that you’ve ever told me, there have been other occasions when the guilty person has apparently gone free. But God, my love, moves in His own mysterious way. It’s not our place to question His wisdom. You’ve done all you can. That should be enough.’

But somehow, it didn’t seem enough. I was beginning to wonder if my God-given powers were deserting me; if it wasn’t time I settled down and became nothing more than a pedlar. (Richard Manifold would have said that that was all I was, in any case.) Perhaps God had no further use for me.

It was a sobering thought.