A Play of Knaves (25 page)

“Four of us did, yes,” Basset said in courteous agreement.

Ellis, Joliffe, Piers, and Gil each held up a hand, smiling, Ellis saying as courteously as Basset, “We did.” Then, with sudden suspicion, “Has something more happened?” saving Joliffe the trouble of asking.

“Not yet,” Kyping said. Joliffe eased a little: Kyping’s displeasure seemed general, rather than at them in particular. “You saw Hal Medcote there?”

“We did,” Ellis said. “He was quarreling with Gosyn.”

“And with Master Ashewell?” Kyping asked.

Ellis frowned with thought. “Not so much. It seemed mostly between him and Gosyn. After he left, Gosyn and Master Ashewell quarreled with each other, though.”

“About what?”

“About the same thing Hal Medcote and Gosyn had been quarreling over,” Ellis answered. “About the marriages.”

“Either Gosyn knew before, or else he’d just heard that Medcote wanted Nicholas for Eleanor,” Joliffe said. “Why he and Ashewell were angry at each other about that we never gathered, but Gosyn was angry at Hal Medcote because Hal wants Claire. You’d heard that before.”

“From you and elsewhere, yes,” Kyping said tersely.

Before Joliffe could guess why he sounded angry at that or whether he was angry for another reason, Kyping asked Ellis, “You agree Hal Medcote and Gosyn were quarreling because now Hal wants to marry Claire, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Does it seem Hal still means for his sister to marry Nicholas Ashewell?”

“Yes,” Ellis said again.

Maybe deciding that too many words was better than too few, Kyping asked Joliffe, “You’ve no thought of why Gosyn and Master Ashewell quarreled?”

“It seemed to be because Gosyn was set and certain he won’t marry Claire to Hal, and somehow Master Ashewell took offense,” Joliffe said readily. “Maybe because he had some hope of having Nicholas free from marrying Eleanor now Medcote is dead, and he was out of humour at finding Hal means to hold him to it. Which means Hal must know whatever it is his father was holding against Ashewell and must be holding it, too.”

Joliffe waited, hoping Kyping would say something about that.

Kyping looked at him, giving nothing away.

Joliffe prodded, “You’ve not found out what it is, have you?”

“No.”

“Have you asked Hal Medcote about it?”

“Yes.”

“And Master Ashewell?”

“Yes.”

Kyping was becoming as miserly with words as Ellis had been. Hoping to loosen him, Joliffe tried, as if the thought had only just now come to him, “In their way, both marriages make sense. It’s a reasonable joining of lands to everyone’s good in the longer run, I’d say.”

Sharp with dislike, Kyping answered, “I’d not wish Hal Medcote on any daughter of mine for any reason, and Eleanor Medcote deserves better than some stripling who doesn’t want her.”

Interested in how much Kyping had betrayed with that, Joliffe went altogether another way, asking, “What about Jack Hammond? Have you questioned him?”

“Yesterday. To give him a better fright I had him brought to me under guard as if I was about to arrest him. He talked very willingly.”

“To any use?” Joliffe asked.

“He claims he was at his uncle’s overnight. That they went together from the church ale and Jack stayed the night with him, trying to talk out his anger and to borrow money. Claims he started home as soon as there was light enough to see his way. ‘To be in time for his god-bedamned boon-work for the god-bedamned priest,’ was the way he put it.”

“Seems he didn’t talk out much of his anger,” Joliffe said dryly.

“Nor he didn’t get any money out of his uncle either.”

“Who, I suppose, lives in a direction that makes it reasonable Hammond should be going home by way of here,” Joliffe said.

“He does, and though I’m sure I got to him before any word passed between him and Jack, he tells the same tale and I have to think he’s told me straight.”

“Pity,” muttered Ellis.

Kyping’s somewhat bitter smile agreed with him. So, silently, did Joliffe. Jack Hammond as Medcote’s murderer would save everyone a deal of trouble. But aloud he only said, “And I suppose Jack saw neither Medcote’s body or even his horse as he passed, what with the heavy mist and all.”

“He did not,” Kyping said resignedly. “Nor is it likely he would have raised the hue-and-cry if he had.” Because few men wanted to be first-finder of a dead body and have all the irk of duties that came with it. Kyping shrugged. “Ah, well. There’s still others I’m asking questions after.”

“Including Master Ashewell and Gosyn?” Joliffe asked.

“And you lot,” Kyping said. “There’s only your word for each other that none of you left camp that night.”

Joliffe acknowledged that with a small bow of his head. “True. But if it wasn’t one of us, then isn’t it likely the murder was not by someone coming on Medcote by chance but done deliberately by someone who followed him there? Or knew he would be there? You’ve asked to find who from his manor went anywhere that night?”

“Servants seen talking in the village, you mean. Someone who said too much to the wrong person,” Kyping returned.

“Or a servant who claims he was in the village or somewhere, but no one remembers seeing him there.”

“I’ve been asking those questions, yes, but going at it the other way, too—trying to sort out who couldn’t have killed Medcote, no matter how much they may have wanted to, from all those who disliked Medcote enough to maybe do it.”

“Who couldn’t have?” Joliffe asked.

Kyping nodded at Rose. “Her. Anela Medcote. Gosyn’s wife. Mistress Ashewell. Eleanor Medcote.” He was seemingly keeping to the thought that no woman could have killed Medcote the way he had been killed, but Eleanor Medcote was altogether another matter from the other women. She had surely known as well as the rest of the household had where her father was going, and she was quite sufficiently built that, if once she had him down, she might have been able to do the rest. Curious why Kyping dismissed her with the others, Joliffe asked, “You think Eleanor Medcote couldn’t? Or is it that you think she wouldn’t? I saw no love lost between her and her father.”

“If she hadn’t murdered Medcote before this,” Kyping said somewhat too sharply, “she’s unlikely to have done it now.”

He sounded ready to leave it there, but Rose—bless her, thought Joliffe—asked, “Why? What had he done to her before?”

“Her first husband.” Kyping bit the words off short and angrily.

This was where Kyping had the advantage, Joliffe thought. He knew these people and about their pasts in ways the players could not match.

But that was maybe against Kyping, too. Knowing too much too nearly maybe made it hard for him to sort what mattered from what did not—the grain from the chaff—and to see what else he could get him to say, Joliffe said, “I take it her first marriage was bad. You don’t think being forced to another marriage was more than she was willing to bear? Or does she want this marriage?”

“She doesn’t want it,” Kyping said.

Rose asked, “Then how could she be forced to it? She’s a widow, with say in her own life. She surely has dower that she could live on if that was the only way to be free of her father.”

That had to be true enough, it being unlikely Medcote had married her the first time to a poor man. And while a woman brought a dowry of goods or land or money to her husband when they married, he in his turn settled a portion of his own land or goods or money on her in dower, to be hers should he die first, to see her provided for as much as might be in her widowhood. Poor men left little; rich men left much. But either way it was all of it likely to be laid out in the marriage contract that careful couples—or their parents—saw made before ever the Church’s blessing came into the matter.

But Kyping said sourly, “She had dower, right enough, but Medcote drove a twisted bargain with her first husband and he was a twisty mongrel in his own right and crabbed with years into the bargain. They settled it between them that nothing was to come into Eleanor’s own hands until she’s thirty years of age. Until then she was to be dependent on Medcote for everything. Including another marriage.”

“And now she’s dependent on her brother,” Joliffe said.

“On him now, yes,” Kyping agreed.

So killing her father would not have been enough to free her, and Eleanor must have known that. Again Joliffe thought that Hal Medcote had best look to his back, because even if she hadn’t killed their father, she might have less scruple against him. He kept that to himself, though, and asked, “What about men who might have done for Medcote? I take it you fully think Jack Hammond is clear.”

“Unless his uncle and a quarter of his uncle’s village are lying together for him.”

“Could they be?”

“I doubt it. Hammond isn’t that well-liked by his uncle. Or by anyone else there for that matter. I’m still prying about other men who wouldn’t mind Medcote dead, but even of the ones I don’t know for certain where they were, it’s hard to judge how they could have known where he would be. I’ve had no satisfaction from the Medcote servants that way, yet, try though I have.” Kyping looked at Rose. “Could someone have overheard Medcote when he was with you?”

“No. There was no one close by.”

“You’re certain?” Basset prompted.

“Yes,” Rose snapped.

Kyping was watching her too carefully for Joliffe’s ease; nor was he any way eased by Kyping saying at her consideringly, “Being asked about it makes you angry,” as if finding something particular about that.

Sharply, giving no ground, Rose said back at him, “It’s having even to think about him makes me angry. He was a mind-befouling kind of man.”

Kyping made a small sound that might have been agreement, and Joliffe asked, to take Kyping elsewhere than Rose, “What of Master Ashewell and Gosyn? Is it certain where they were that night?”

This time Kyping did not try to hide his thought behind a straight face but said, his mouth as wry as his words, “They claim they never left their own places after they came home from the church ale, and I’ve found no one to gainsay them.”

“Then maybe it’s true,” said Basset. “There’s usually someone ready to make trouble for someone if they can.”

“True enough in Gosyn’s case for certain,” Kyping agreed. “Maybe less likely with Master Ashewell.”

“What of Father Hewgo?” Joliffe asked.

Kyping showed surprise at that. “The priest? What would he know of where Master Ashewell or Gosyn were?”

“I mean would he have had chance to know where Medcote was?”

Kyping held quiet, his stare brooding on Joliffe but his thought apparently on the priest because after a moment he said, “There was less love lost between them all the time, I’ve noted, and there was maybe more wrong than has shown on the surface. But I doubt Father Hewgo’s such a fool as to think Hal Medcote will be any great improvement over his father in dealing with one matter or another.”

“Unless Medcote knew something Father Hewgo didn’t want him to know,” Joliffe said.

“But he’d have to worry that Medcote had shared something like that with Hal, as Medcote seems to have done with whatever he’s holding over Ashewell.”

“Father Hewgo might have thought the risk worth the taking, if there was chance Medcote hadn’t told Hal,” Joliffe said.

Kyping held that thought for a long moment, frowning on it before he said, “I’ll ask some questions that way, too. So. Now you know fairly well all that I do. What have
you
learned?”

He asked it of Basset and Joliffe both, and Joliffe looked to Basset, who looked back at him and said, “It’s yours to tell.”

Joliffe accepted that with a slight shrug and said to Kyping, “We’ve told you the only new thing we had—what we heard at Gosyn’s last night.”

“How deep do you think the quarrel is between Master Ashewell and Gosyn about these marriages?” Kyping asked.

“I would guess fairly deep. If there’s peace kept between the families, it will be because of the wives, and I don’t know if that will work either. I don’t know what Mistress Ashewell thinks of any of the business, but we heard Gosyn’s wife say she didn’t see why Claire shouldn’t marry Hal if she couldn’t have Nicholas.”

“She must not know much about him, then,” Ellis muttered.

“She maybe doesn’t,” Kyping said. “Or chooses not to. She’s never been a sharp-witted woman. Good-hearted and a good wife, but never with much reach beyond her kitchen yard and never any heart for trouble—either making it or seeing it.”

“And now she’s dying,” Joliffe said.

“Has been this past half year, now anyone looks back on it,” Kyping said regretfully. “She’ll see summer in but likely won’t see it out.”

“How will Gosyn take that?” Joliffe asked.

“Joliffe,” Rose said, disapproving.

But Kyping answered, “Hard. There’s no one will say she hasn’t always been the better side of him, keeping him safe from his own ill-humours as much as anyone could. Gosyn is going to be the worse man for her being gone.”

“That’s maybe why she’d like to see her daughter safely married while she still can,” Rose said. “Except marrying her to Hal Medcote has nothing ‘safe’ about it, does it?”

“Nothing,” Kyping agreed. “By all the look of it, he’s his father over again.”

“What I’d like to know,” Joliffe said, “is what Medcote was using to force Master Ashewell to this other marriage.”

“So would I,” said Kyping grimly. “I’ve been hoping to learn something along the way that would add weight to my asking him again, but I haven’t.”

And he probably believed no more than Joliffe did that Ashewell was likely to give away whatever it was unless he was forced to it.

Kyping was looking at them, one after the other, as if to draw some useful answer out of them. Joliffe kept his own face blandly unhelpful, knowing the others were matching him. Even Gil in the months he had been with them had learned the usefulness of a blank face when faced with someone’s questions that couldn’t, or else shouldn’t, be satisfied. Just now they were none of them lying. There was nothing else to tell. Whether Kyping believed it or not was hardly their fault, and his terse sigh only betrayed his impatience as he seemed to accept there was nothing more to be had from them and said, “Well enough. I still can’t give you leave to go, not until the crowner comes. If you learn aught in the meanwhile . . .”