Chains of Folly (31 page)

At the fourth shop, they struck gold. The moment Bell asked about liniment containing monkshood or wolfsbane, the apothecary looked highly suspicious. Thus Bell explained at once that they did not wish to buy but hoped to trace the substance used to kill a man.

“Heaven! Oh, heaven!” The apothecary covered his face with his hands. “I knew I should not have sold it to him. I knew it, but he seemed so distraught over his dog, a great mastiff, which had gone mad. They had the beast confined but even he did not dare go near it to kill it. It raged and howled so he said, near weeping, and he loved the beast and wanted it out of its misery. He wanted a poison that would be swift and sure, not something that would add to the poor beast’s pain and let it linger. He had seen the effect of wolfsbane. He gave me his name…”

“Gave you his name?” Magdalene echoed. “What name did he give you?”

“Gehard fitzRobert, he said. It was not a name like John Smith, which is real enough but so common that people say it when they want to hide their true names. I believed him. God help me. I believed him.”

“Gehard…” Bell breathed, and looked at Magdalene. “Could Gehard have bought the poison and somehow… He was not clever. Could he have mixed up the cups or decided to taste the stuff…”

Magdalene giggled. “He was not clever, but no one is stupid enough to drink poison he has himself prepared. No,” she added more seriously, “from what you have said of Gehard he would never even think of using poison. He would kill with his knife or sword or his bare hands.” She frowned. “And it was not Gehard who asked about monkshood in the other shop.”

“No, it was not,” Bell agreed, and turned back to the apothecary, who was still wringing his hands and biting his lips. “It is no fault of yours,” he said soothingly. “It is a tale I might well have believed myself. There are several mastiffs in my father’s house that are well loved. Do you remember what this Gehard looked like?”

“Yes, I do. We spoke for some time. First he asked for liniment and when I assured him it was safe to use because the honey in it was made horribly bitter, he asked if I had any pure tincture of the monkshood or some of the ground root. I looked at him hard then and asked what he wanted it for. That was when he told me the story of the mad dog.”

“And what did he look like?”

“Ordinary,” the apothecary said.

Magdalene and Bell exchanged glances. At first when the apothecary was so certain he remembered what his customer looked like, each had wondered if it had been Gehard. But no one would ever describe Gehard fitzRobert as ordinary.

“Can you say nothing more?” Bell asked.

“Well, he was wearing a sword belt and boots for riding, which made me believe he had come from the country…the dog, you see. For the rest, he was…ah…medium. Of medium height, his hair not fair nor dark, blue eyes, I think, or possibly gray. His voice…yes…he was soft spoken, even plaintive…about the dog.”

“Not Gehard,” Bell said. “Gehard was a giant of a man and anything but soft-spoken.”

“I assure you,” the apothecary said earnestly, “the man who bought the tincture of monkshood from me was no giant and seemed almost weeping when he begged for the drug.”

“Oh, we believe you,” Magdalene said. “Since murder was done with the monkshood, it is not at all surprising that the purchaser of the poison gave a false name. We were surprised because the name he gave was of his victim.”

“Terrible. Terrible.” The apothecary shuddered. “I will never sell the raw product again. Never.”

“A good idea,” Bell said. “And since it does not seem to be often requested in its raw form, you will lose little by it. Now, I will have to tell the sheriff of Southwark that you sold the drug, and he may come or send a man to hear the description you gave first hand—”

“Oh, please!” the apothecary moaned. “Can you not keep me out of this? I have been honest with you. Must I be punished for that?”

“I am sure no blame will attach to you,” Bell said, but he knew it was not impossible that the sheriff or his man would take out his irritation on this relatively innocent bystander. He shrugged, “Well, I will tell the sheriff that we have found the source and give him a description of the purchaser. If he does not press me for where I found the information, I will not offer your name.”

The apothecary confounded himself in thanks as Magdalene and Bell left his shop. Outside they walked back toward the bridge in silence for few moments.

Before they reached the noisy bedlam that crossed the Thames, Magdalene said, “You know who the description the apothecary gave sounds like, to me? It sounds like Linley.”

“So it does,” Bell agreed, “although I only saw Linley that once on the stair, and he was below me which disguised his height. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Sir John. Is he so different?”

Magdalene laughed ruefully. “Not really. He is of medium height. I would call his hair dark rather than neither blond nor black and I think his eyes are brown, but in the dimness of the shop they might look gray. Only, why are you so fixed on Sir John?”

“I do not mean to be. But the only other good candidate we have is Linley and he seems to have been… Perhaps you should try to pin down the time he left Ryton’s house more firmly and I will ask again about when he arrived in the Cask of Wine.”

“Very well. I have a pair of cuffs I have embroidered that I can bring to Claresta. Meanwhile, you should also ask in Baynard’s Castle when Sir John left there and in what direction he rode. We have only Raoul’s word for that. I cannot see why he should lie about this, but I never trust him about anything.”

“There is also Father Holdyn,” Bell said slowly. “He is not the man who bought the monkshood. He is a very big man and dressed as a priest—”

Magdalene shook her head. “Is he such an idiot as to wear a priest’s robes to buy poison?”

“No, but he is not at all medium, either.”

Now aware of the reluctance with which Bell had named Holdyn, Magdalene hesitated. They walked in silence for a few moments. Then, because she felt even Bell might not see what he did not want to see, she spoke.

“A priest much addicted to good works would not need to buy poison from an apothecary,” she pointed out. “He could go to the still room of any hospital and take what he liked, probably without any question. You know, Bell, the man who bought the monkshood might really have had a mad mastiff.”

“And given the name Gehard fitzRobert?”

“No. You are right about that. The man who bought the monkshood must have been the murderer.”

Bell sighed. “Nonetheless, I will remind Winchester that he must ask Holdyn why he lied about not knowing Nelda. But it still makes no sense. Even if he knew her and killed her, perhaps by accident, why should he kill Gehard? How could he even know Gehard? They had nothing at all in common.”

“Yes they did. They had Nelda in common.”

“Good God, so they did.” Then Bell frowned. “And if Holdyn was obsessed with her—I cannot think of any other reason for him to give her his crucifix—and he discovered that Gehard killed her… No. I simply cannot believe that Holdyn would use poison. I cannot.”

“Likely he did not. How would he get into Nelda’s room?”

Bell snorted unhappily. “Unfortunately he may have had a key. Suspicious as she was, she might have given the priest a key so he would not need to knock on her door or call out to her.”

They had reached the bridge by then, and Magdalene thought again about getting the cuffs and going to Lime Street to speak to Claresta. However, she saw that the shadow at her feet had shrunk to near nothing; it was almost noon. It was time for dinner and then the clients would be coming. She and Bell turned into the busy chaos of the bridge, weaving past stalls and shaking their heads at insistent peddlers who thrust trays and baskets at them.

When they had reached the relative quiet outside the Old Priory Guesthouse, she asked, “Will you come and have dinner with us?”

He glanced upward at the position of the sun. “I think I had better see if I can catch Winchester. I do not remember that he planned to have any guest to take dinner with him today. If no one is with him, I can tell him what we learned and urge him to summon Holdyn to explain himself.”

Magdalene nodded and rang the bell. Diot came out of the house and opened the gate. They walked in together, but at the door of the house Bell turned left. Before he started around the house to go through the gate into St. Mary Overy churchyard, Magdalene patted his arm.

“I hope your doubts about Father Holdyn are resolved,” she said softly. “You can tell me what transpired at the evening meal.”

She turned away before Bell could find an answer. Both her assumption that he would come that evening and that he would expose to her—a whore—possibly incriminating information about a relatively important Church official deserved a rebuke. Bell shrugged. Considering that the bishop had sent him to her for help, she had a right to assume. And despite what his head “knew” and propriety ordered, there was no comparison in pleasure and good conversation between taking his evening meal with the whores—yes, whores, not ladies although he often named them so in his own mind—of the Old Priory Guesthouse and the men of his troop.

Bell arrived at the bishop’s house just as one of the servants was carrying up a well-laden tray. “Ask m’lord if he will speak to me while he eats,” Bell said. And when the servant came down he told Bell to go up. To his pleasure, there were two places set at the table, and Winchester waved him toward the stool placed at right angles to his chair.

“So. You have more news for me, I suppose.”

“Yes, my lord. We know who sold the monkshood and we have a description—such as it is, medium everything—of the man who bought it.”

Winchester smiled as he speared some slices of pork on his eating knife. “Medium everything?” he repeated.

Bell smiled too and also set both pork and lamb (nearly mutton, he thought) on his trencher. “The apothecary who sold the poison, a flask of pure tincture of monkshood rather than a liniment, said the man was of medium height with hair neither light nor dark and blue or gray eyes.”

The bishop sighed. “A description that will fit about two thirds of all the men in the city.”

“Not quite,” Bell replied around a bite. “The man wore fine clothes and a sword. Thieves and hired men may wear a sword, but seldom clothing fine enough to be noted by a successful merchant.”

“A knight. But is the description really of any help? You cannot even say the tincture was purchased to do murder.”

“That I can, my lord, because the purchaser gave the apothecary the name Gehard fitzRobert.”

The bishop laid down the spoon he was about to dip into the pottage. “He gave the name of his victim? Why?”

“I cannot know, of course, but I think because it was on his mind. Thus that name was the first thing that came to his tongue when he did not want to sound as if he were hiding his true name by giving one too common, like John Smith.”

Winchester raised an eyebrow, but then looked down to finish his aborted gesture and dip his spoon. “From your cheerfulness, you have someone in mind.”

“Two someones,” Bell said, looking less cheerful when he considered exactly what he was going to say, “but I have evidence that one of them was elsewhere when Nelda died and the other should not have even been in London—or just arriving now—when Gehard was poisoned.”

The bishop looked exasperated and Bell explained more fully, mentioning that he believed Sir John was the man from whom Nelda had stolen the letter. That distracted Winchester from the murders to what was, basically, more important to him.

They discussed the mysterious silence about the letter. No one had mentioned it. Even Linley, who had tried to get back from Magdalene the tokens and money Nelda had hidden, had not asked about any letter. It was also curious that if the purpose of leaving Nelda’s body in Winchester’s bedchamber was scandal, that too had failed. Bell asked if it was safe for him to mention that Winchester already had the letter; the bishop thought and said yes, that he had informed the king.

The talk did not trouble either of their appetites, and they worked their way through more of the roasts, a pottage, stew, and a boiled carp. Then the subject shifted back to Nelda’s and Gehard’s deaths. Bell reported that he and Magdalene would try to make sure of the time that Linley left Master Rhyton’s house and when he arrived at the Cask of Wine alehouse. Perhaps they had jumped to conclusions. Perhaps there had been time between those two events for him to have gone to Nelda’s house and killed her, and taken her key.

Also, Bell said, he would ask more specific questions at Baynard’s Castle about the elusive Sir John. Had he actually ridden to Oxford or Devizes, or had he discovered that the letter had been stolen and rushed back to Nelda’s place where they quarreled and he killed her? If so, Sir John could have taken her key and searched her room. Perhaps he had been lying hidden in London in the hope of retrieving the letter. Winchester said he understood Bell might want to mention the letter to Lord Hugh and began to rise.

“My lord,” Bell said reluctantly, without readying himself to rise also, “there is one other who could have had a key. Magdalene—no great respecter of persons—pointed out that the one person Nelda might have trusted enough to give a key, so that he would not need to knock or to call out to her and be noticed would be—

Winchester’s lips thinned. “Father Holdyn. But why should he kill Gehard? How could he even know him?”

Bell shrugged. “They both knew Nelda. As to why Father Holdyn should kill Gehard…you understand, I cannot believe this, but there are reasons presented by logic. Could Holdyn have been involved in Gehard’s arranging an attack on you? He would have known where and when you would be going to see the archbishop.”

“No.” The word burst out and then Winchester said, “Why? What possible profit could Father Holdyn win by my hurt or death?”

“By your hurt or death he might have gained a less careful and honest overseer of the London diocese.”

“That is ridiculous. I have been overseeing Holdyn’s work as episcopal vicar since London’s death and have not found so much as a whisper of corruption. As to wringing money from the Church, it is the other way. He gives much of his income back to the Church.”