A Plague of Poison (23 page)

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Authors: Maureen Ash

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BOOK: A Plague of Poison
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Bascot returned the captain’s smile, for he was well aware of Roget’s reputation with women, and owing him a debt for finding out the truth about Ivor Severtsson, he agreed to the request.
They did not have long to wait. Before many minutes had passed, Mistress Marchand appeared at the door of the church and came to where they were standing, her servant trailing behind. Roget gallantly removed the short cloak he was wearing and spread it over a small stone seat near the pathway and the young matron sat down.
“I have examined my conscience while I have been in the church, Captain Roget,” she said, “and decided that I must do all I can to help you discover the evil person who murdered poor Fland. I think I may know something that will assist you.”
“I am greatly interested to hear it, Mistress,” Roget assured her.
Motioning her servant to go and wait for her at the gate, she did not speak until the woman had done so. “I saw Fland on the afternoon of the day he died,” she admitted to the captain. “He had not made a delivery to our house for a few days, not since just before that terrible potter poisoned the spice merchant’s family in Hungate, and so we spent a little while in … conversation … just to talk about the trial that was to take place, you understand.”
A slight blush coloured her cheeks as she said this, but Roget gave no sign of noticing. “I understand completely,” he said to her in a gentle tone.
The young matron’s face cleared when she saw no censure in his eyes and then became reflective as she cast her memory back to the last time she had been with her lover. “Fland was very excited,” she said. “He said that the last time he had brought the fish I had purchased, he had seen someone who was going to make a great improvement in his lot, a man he had known in his childhood and who he had never thought to see again.”
She looked up at both of the men who were standing before her. “When I asked him why this man had offered to be so generous, he said that it was not because he was willing to be so, but because he—Fland—had found out about a crime this person had committed, and the person was willing to pay a good sum of silver to keep it a secret.”
“Did Cooper tell you the man’s name?” Roget enquired.
She shook her head. “He only told me that the name the man was using was a false one. That is why I thought it might be important to tell you, Captain. Perhaps this man is the one who killed Fland.”
Roget gave Bascot a glance full of meaning before answering Mistress Marchand. Here, indeed, was information that might lead to Cooper’s murderer. “Please think hard, Mistress. Did he say anything else about this person? Where it was that he had known him, perhaps?”
“I think it must have been someone he met while his parents ran the alehouse on the Wragby road,” she replied, “because he told me he had been born there and had never lived anywhere else until it burned down.” She frowned in concentration for a moment. “I thought this person must be an outlaw, for Fland said that brigands used to come to his father’s alehouse and he often told me stories about them and the daring robberies he heard them plan.” She shivered a little. “His tales sounded exciting when I heard them, but now …” Tears once again filled her liquid brown eyes. “I think it may be that the man he saw was one of those outlaws, one who had come to Lincoln and was fearful that Fland would tell the sheriff of his presence in the town.”
She gave Roget a look of appeal. “I told Fland he was putting himself in danger by agreeing to protect this man, even if he was going to get paid for doing so, but he would not listen to me.”
“It would seem you were right in your caution, Mistress,” Roget said, “especially now that Cooper is dead.”
She nodded and stood up. “I was very … fond of Fland and will miss his cheerful face at the market. I hope you catch the man who killed him.”
Roget exchanged a look with Bascot. He and the captain were both aware that although she had warned Cooper of the peril he was in, she did not realise that she, too, could be seen as a threat to the man who had murdered him.
“I do not wish to alarm you, Mistress,” Bascot said to her, “but whoever killed Cooper may be aware of your … friendship with him and fearful that you know more about him than you do. It may be that he will make an attempt to ensure your silence.”
A look of panic came into the woman’s eyes, and Roget was quick to assure her he would keep a guard posted near her house both day and night until Cooper’s killer was caught, adding that she would be wise not to speak to anyone, even her closest friends, of what Fland Cooper had told her.
She seemed to take some comfort from his words, and then her eyes widened as another fear struck her. “But if guards are outside our house—my husband, he will wonder why …”
“There is no need for Master Marchand to be informed of the reason why they are there,” Roget said quickly. “It is my duty to keep the town safe, and with this recent killing, it will not be thought unusual if extra guards are on patrol.”
Seeming somewhat relieved, she thanked the captain and accepted his offer to walk with her to the door of her home and see her safely inside. As she and her maidservant left the churchyard in Roget’s company, Bascot felt Gianni tug at his sleeve. The Templar had noticed the boy had been listening intently to the merchant’s wife and now his face was full of animation. When he had Bascot’s attention, he laid the leather satchel he had been clutching possessively to his chest on the ground between his feet and pointed towards the lane that ran from Spring Hill down the back of Hungate Street. He then swivelled his hand in a back and forth movement that resembled a fish swimming through water.
Bascot understood what the boy was saying, but not why he thought it was important. “Yes, Gianni, it is probable that Cooper would have delivered the fish to the back door of the Marchand house,” the Templar said. “The kitchen is at the back and that is where the fish would be stored until it was cooked.”
It was not until Gianni made further motions, bringing his fingers up to shade his brow in an indication he was looking for something, and then pointing to his stomach and drawing his forefinger across his neck in the sign for death, that the Templar realised the implication of what the boy was communicating. The lane Gianni was pointing to led down behind Reinbald’s house and had been considered to be the way that Wilkin had got onto the merchant’s property on the day he had placed the poison in the kitchen. Since the draper’s wife had said Cooper had seen the person she believed was his killer just before Reinbald’s wife gave the honey to her neighbour, Gianni was suggesting that the fishmonger’s assistant had seen the man who had done it and, since Wilkin was in the castle gaol at the time Cooper was killed, it could not have been the potter.
When Bascot asked the boy if his understanding of his hand motions was correct, Gianni clapped his hands together and nodded enthusiastically. The Templar gave the boy’s conjecture consideration for a moment and then said, “But Cooper did not say to Mistress Marchand that he saw the person from his childhood in the lane, Gianni, only that he met him on the day he brought her previous order of fish. He could have seen him somewhere else in the town, in the marketplace, perhaps, or near another house where he was making his deliveries.”
Gianni pointed to his mouth and shook his head.
“Yes, you are right. There is nothing in what Cooper said to suggest he did
not
meet his killer in the lane.”
Rather than being the poisoner, it was much more likely, Bascot thought, that it had been as the draper’s wife had suggested and Cooper’s murderer had been an outlaw he had known when he was young. Some felon that had mended his ways and come to Lincoln to take up honest work and did not want his past, and his former crimes, known. But Mistress Marchand had also said that Cooper had told her he had found out about a crime this person had committed which he wished kept secret—that did not sound as though the fishmonger’s assistant had been referring to former villainy, but something much more recent.
Bascot thought back over the last few months. The only serious crimes that had occurred in the town were the poisonings. There had been a few petty thefts, some drunken brawls and one case where a man had beaten his wife’s lover so badly that her paramour had almost died, but nothing of sufficient import to warrant killing a man to keep the commission of it from being revealed. He knew Gianni was desperate to help the beekeeper’s family, and proving Wilkin innocent would be a sure way of doing so. It was more than likely that the boy’s desire had led him into imaginings that had no basis in fact. But even so, Gianni’s suggestion had led the Templar into remembering the nagging doubt he had formerly felt about Wilkin’s guilt. Was it possible he had allowed the proliferation of evidence to subjugate an instinct that had been a true one?
He bid Gianni pick up his leather satchel. The boy’s logic had enough merit for him to investigate it further. “The Nettleham apiary is near the alehouse where Cooper once lived. I will question Wilkin about the customers that used it. Perhaps that will give an indication of whether the man who killed the fishmonger’s assistant could have had any connection to the poisonings.”
Twenty-five
W
HEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE CASTLE, THE Templar sent Gianni to their chamber at the top of the old keep, telling him to unpack the paper and scribing instruments they had bought that morning while he went to question Wilkin. Gianni nodded happily, rubbing his hand lovingly over the soft leather of the satchel before he scampered away. His jubilation had been increased, Bascot knew, by the hope that his master would be able to prove Wilkin innocent.
The potter was in an apathetic state when Bascot entered the cell. He was crouched in the corner, his eyes dull and devoid of any emotion. There were fresh bruises on his face. It would appear the guards were continuing their rough treatment of the prisoner. Bascot called his name and Wilkin looked up.
“The night before last a man was stabbed to death in Lincoln, potter,” Bascot said. “It is possible you may have known the victim. His name was Fland Cooper; he was about twenty years of age and was the son of the man who was the ale keeper at an alehouse on the Wragby road.”
His words produced no response from Wilkin. “We can find no trace of whoever killed Cooper,” Bascot went on, “but it is believed it may be someone from his past, from the days when he was a young lad growing up in the alehouse.” Still there was no flicker of interest from the man in front of him. An incentive was needed to rouse the prisoner from his stupor. “If you help to find his murderer, potter, there is a chance that, by doing so, you will aid your own cause.”
That suggestion brought a response from Wilkin, whose eyes brightened as he drew in his breath sharply.
“I do not promise that such will be so,” Bascot cautioned him sternly. “Only that it might.”
The potter nodded his understanding, but his listless expression had disappeared. “Tell me,” Bascot asked, “did you know Fland Cooper? He has been working in the fish market near Spring Hill for the last few months.”
Wilkin shook his head. “I do not remember him from Wragby, so I would not have known who he was if I had met him in the town.”
“Did you frequent the alehouse his parents ran? It was not far from Nettleham, I understand.”
“I went there only a few times, many years ago, when I made deliveries to a customer who lived in Wragby,” Wilkin replied. “Guy Cooper was not the ale keeper then. His old widowed mother was the one who ran it.”
“I have been told that many of the alehouse customers were outlaws. Is that true?” Bascot wanted to try and ascertain if Cooper’s murderer could be, as the draper’s wife had assumed, an outlaw from the past. If he was, then Gianni’s assumption that the monger’s assistant had been killed to keep secret his knowledge of the poisoning crimes would be in error.
“There were no brigands there while the old woman was alive,” Wilkin told him, “but there was talk of them being there when her son took over after she died.”
“When did the widow die?”
“About three or four years ago, I think,” Wilkin replied. “After her death her son inherited the alehouse and took charge of running it. He was a tosspot. He served his ale to all manner of miscreants. ‘Tis said his drinking was the cause of the place catching on fire, that he left a candle burning and him and his wife were too drunk to escape.”

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