Shroud of Dishonour (12 page)

“Are you the captain of the sheriff’s town guard?” she asked in a voice that was soft and mellow.

“I am,” Roget confirmed.

“I saw you both enter Adele’s house from next door, which is where I live,” she said. “My name is Constance Turner and I wanted to speak to you.”

Looking behind her, she motioned to someone on the other side of the gate. A young serving maid crept through. She was a very small and skinny young girl, and looked to be no more than fifteen years old. Her bony little face was fearful and she was wringing her hands in distress.

“This is my maid, Agnes,” Constance said. “I think she may have seen the man that murdered my neighbour.”

“
I
AM A PERFUME AND UNGUENT MAKER,”
M
ISTRESS
T
URNER said, “and, because goat’s milk is kind to women’s skin, I often use it in my preparations. I like to get it as fresh as possible and buy it from a neighbour just a few houses away who milks his goats early in the morning. Yesterday, I sent Agnes with a jug to get some and, as she was returning, she saw a man knocking at Adele’s door.”

Mistress Turner then added, without any seeming embarrassment for living in such close proximity to a prostitute, “All of us who live in the adjoining houses were well aware that Adele was a harlot and thought none the worse of her for it. She was a good neighbour, discreet and kindly spoken, and so we took no notice of the men who came to visit her on a regular basis. They, too, were circumspect and all of them are, or were, in the habit of coming in the evening, after dark. To see a man knocking on Adele’s door at such an early hour drew Agnes’s attention.” She glanced at the maid and bid her relate what she had seen.

The maid was shy, but her confidence had been bolstered by her mistress’s ease of manner. ” ‘Twas like Mistress Turner said, lords,” she told them. “It were early, just after Prime. I was comin’ back with the goat’s milk when I saw this man walkin’ ahead of me. I didn’t take no notice ‘til he stopped and rapped on Mistress Adele’s door. After a minute or two, I saw her open it and speak to the man, and then she let him in.”

“Did you see his face,
ma petite
?” Roget asked.

Agnes shook her head. “He had his back to me. I could only see that he were neither short nor tall, just middlin’.”

“What about the colour of his hair, or the cut of his clothes?” Bascot asked.

Agnes flushed a deep red at being addressed directly by a man of knight’s standing, and she answered hesitantly. “I couldn’t see how he was dressed, or his face. He had a cloak on, a long one that reached the ground with a hood that was pulled up.”

“That is why I thought the man Agnes saw must have been the one that strangled Adele,” Constance Turner interjected, her voice trembling a little for the first time at mention of how her neighbour had died. “The spring weather is warm. Why would a man wear a cloak and hood on such a fine day unless he wished to mask his identity?”

She gave both men a direct glance before she went on. “It is possible, of course, that he merely did not wish to be recognised while visiting a prostitute, but it was very early in the morning for such an activity and, considering that my neighbour, from what I understand, was killed about the time that my maid saw the man at her door….”

“You are probably correct, mistress,” Bascot told her, “but without a description, it will be very difficult to identify him.”

Constance nodded to Agnes. “Tell them the rest.”

Again, Agnes blushed, but did as she was bid. “When the man lifted his hand to knock on the door, his cloak hitched up and I could see the clasp that were holdin’ the edges together at the neck. I came nearer to him while he was talkin’ to Mistress Adele and could see it plain.”

She lifted eyes shining with awe. “It was a wondrous clasp, masters, a circlet of gold bearing the image of St. Christopher! There were jewels on it, too, around the edge and on the saint’s staff.”

“Are you certain?” Bascot asked doubtfully, wondering if her youthful imagination had caused her to embellish the details of what she had witnessed. “You must have seen the clasp only fleetingly and from a distance.”

But the little maid’s insistence forced him to reject his misgivings. “I knows the blessed image of St. Christopher right well, lord,” she said earnestly, “for I carries his likeness to keep me safe whenever I goes about the town for my mistress.”

She reached inside the collar of her gown and pulled out a cheap pewter medal strung on a cord around her neck. It was etched with a crude picture of the saint reputed to protect travellers, a staff in his hand and a small child atop his shoulders. “The clasp the man wore had a picture on it just like this one,” Agnes asserted, “and, like I said, I was near enough to see it plain. I knows it was St. Christopher.”

Bascot and Roget looked at one another. This little bit of information could indeed be useful. Only a man of more than moderate means would be able to afford such an ornament and, to Bascot’s private relief, was unlikely to have been worn by a Templar. The vow of poverty each brother took on entering the Order dictated that any wealth they possessed was to be given to a family member or donated as a charitable gift before they were accepted for initiation. It was possible there might be a brother who secretly retained some of his smaller valuables, but not probable. The evidence of the gold brooch decorated with precious stones, combined with two purses each containing thirty silver pennies that had been left by the murdered harlots’ bodies, would suggest the killer was a man of considerable fortune. It was unlikely the retention of such wealth could have been kept privily in the closeness of the Templar communal routine. But while both men were grateful to the perfumer for offering her maid’s testimony, the knowledge the two women possessed could put them in danger.

“We thank you for your help, and that of your maid,” Bascot said to Constance. “But I would caution you both not to mention to anyone else that Agnes saw this man, or his clasp. If the early caller at Adele Delorme’s door was indeed the murderer, he took great pains to ensure he would not be recognised. If he believes you possess even the smallest clue to his identity, your lives may be in peril.”

The faces of both women blanched white and Agnes started to whimper. “As long as you keep silent, there should not be too great a risk,” Bascot assured them. “And I am certain Captain Roget will assign one of the town guards to keep a constant watch over your house, just in case the man you saw should return.”

“
Certainement
,” Roget assured the perfumer. Despite the gravity of the situation, Bascot noticed that the former mercenary was favourably impressed with the appearance of Constance Turner. She was not the type of woman who usually attracted Roget; those that Bascot had seen him with during the time the Templar had spent in Lincoln castle had been more buxom and openly lusty in demeanour. But from the smile that lit the captain’s face when he spoke to Constance, it was certain that he found her calm manner and soft brown eyes more than lightly appealing.

“There is just one more question I would like to ask you, mistress,” Bascot said. “I am sure you will have heard that another prostitute was murdered before your neighbour and that her body was found in the Templar chapel of the Lincoln commandery. It has been said that her death was due to one of my Templar brethren having congress with a harlot. Since you said that you, along with others who live on this street, knew the identities of all the men that visited your neighbour, I must ask if, to your knowledge, any of them was a member of our Order.”

Constance and Agnes both shook their heads. “All of Adele’s patrons were men who live in the town,” the perfumer replied. “As far as I am aware, you are the first Templar that has ever been seen at Adele’s door.”

I
T WAS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON BY THE TIME
R
OGET RETURNED to the castle bail. He and Bascot had spoken to all of Adele Delorme’s patrons from a list Mistress Turner supplied and questioned them as to their whereabouts on the previous morning about the time that Agnes had seen a cloaked and hooded man enter the prostitute’s house. Every one of them had witnesses to their presence elsewhere, most having been at home with family members or household servants near at hand. A couple had already been at work—one in the chandlery shop he owned, the other in his premises in Parchmingate where he stocked a selection of writing implements and supplies. The assistants of both men vouched for their presence.

The captain knew that Camville would not be pleased with their failure to discover any trace of the man and dreaded giving the sheriff his report. Apart from knowledge of the time the cloaked figure had entered the prostitute’s house, there was nothing else. When Roget left Bascot to make his way back to the enclave, he saw the same look of frustration on the Templar’s face. There seemed to be nowhere else to search.

Gianni was in the ward when Roget came in through the castle gate and saw the dispiritedness in the captain’s eyes. The time for the evening meal was over and the boy had been on his way to the barracks to sit down in a quiet corner and complete some mathematical exercises that Lambert had given him. Gianni was now in the final stages of completing the
Quadrivium
, lessons in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Since a clerk would have little use for knowledge of the stars and their movements or be involved in entertaining a patron with his skill on a musical instrument, Lambert, who was tutoring Gianni under John Blund’s direction, had skimmed over both of these subjects and was concentrating instead on mathematics, for a good command of arithmetic was extremely important if the boy was to become a competent clerk.

Now, as Gianni watched Roget trudge up the steps of the forebuilding and into the keep, the lad felt a fleeting pang of nostalgia for the time before his master had left to rejoin the Order. In all of the previous investigations the Templar had carried out, it had been Gianni who had been by his side, often helping his master to find some important scrap of information that led to a successful outcome. He touched the pieces of much-scraped vellum on which Lambert had written the questions Gianni was to study. The lad knew that after Roget had made his report to Sir Gerard, he would, as was his habit, come and share a cup of ale or wine with Ernulf. It was also probable that the captain would tell the serjeant of the people they had spoken to that afternoon about the most recent murder and what results, if any, had been gained. Gianni decided that he would take his papers into Ernulf’s cubicle and, as he had done earlier, listen to their conversation. He might not be able to accompany his former master and help him seek out the evil person who had killed those poor women, but hearing about the places the Templar had been and the information he had gleaned would go a little way to assuaging the exclusion Gianni felt.

I
N THE PRECEPTORY,
B
ASCOT TOLD D’
A
RDERON OF THE PAUCITY of evidence he and Roget had uncovered. The preceptor was a little heartened by the fact that the cloak clasp Agnes had seen was expensive.

“Even if it does not exonerate one of our brothers from having congress with these women, it does make it unlikely that it was a Templar who committed the crimes,” d’Arderon said. “No brother is allowed to retain any of his personal wealth once he has joined the Order, although …” The preceptor gritted his teeth and did not finish what he had been about to say.

Bascot knew what d’Arderon’s unspoken thought had been. It had been over eighty years since the Templar Order had been founded and, since that time, the number of brothers had grown from a sparse few to many hundreds scattered over all the lands of Christendom. With such an influx of initiates, and despite the Order’s attempt to ensure that all applicants were free from the taint of worldly desires, it was impossible to ensure that every brother took his oath with complete sincerity. If an initiate found himself to be apprehensive of the abject state of poverty the Order required of its brethren, it would not be difficult to secrete some coins or small items of jewellery in a scrip or saddlebag as security against a time of need. And to any man with enough evil in his heart to commit secret murder, the retention of a few valuables would seem a paltry sin by comparison.

D’Arderon gave a heavy sigh. “I do not see what more we can do until the answers arrive from the northern preceptories,” he said. “And, if the replies contain no report of any of the newly arrived men having been punished for consorting with prostitutes, we are at a standstill.”

“Not necessarily, Preceptor,” Bascot replied and gave voice to the thought that had occurred to him after he left Roget and was on his way back to the enclave. “It may be that we have been misled, deliberately or otherwise, away from the true provocation for these crimes.”

“What do you mean?” d’Arderon asked in surprise.

“The occupation of both of the murdered women has led us to believe that the betrayal signified by the silver coins and the cross carved on Adele Delorme’s torso is concerned with harlotry. But perhaps the victims were prostitutes because, by the very nature of the trade they ply, they are easy targets for violence. Harlots are accustomed to entertaining men who are strangers and would not be wary of being alone in the company of a man they do not know. If that is so, it might be that the murderer is not accusing the Templar brethren of lechery, but of a falsity of an entirely different nature.”