The Midwife's Tale (17 page)

“We have heard that Mr. Cooper sometimes received strangers in his office,” I said. “Do you remember any of them?”

“Some men from the city gave their names. Mr. Yeoman and Alderman Hodgson visited a lot.” Hearing Edward’s name gave me a start, but I didn’t think Ellen noticed my reaction. “The strangers just told me to take them to Mr. Cooper.”

“Do you remember who visited him in the days before he died?”

“Mr. Yeoman came here twice,” she said with a shrug. “But he came here often.”

“Do you know if Richard Hooke ever visited your master?” I asked without much hope.

“Maybe,” she said, but without much confidence. “I don’t know Mr. Hooke.…” She thought for a moment. “There was an Italian here last week,” she offered. “Said he came from the Lord Mayor.”

I looked at her in astonishment. “A small man with bright clothes?” I asked. She nodded. “Did he have a scar?”

“Yes, my lady, running down his face like this.” She drew her finger across her face along the same line as Bacca’s scar.

“Did you hear anything of what they said?” I asked, barely concealing my excitement.

Ellen nodded vigorously. “Mr. Cooper saw him in his study. He sent me away, but even from the second story I could hear Mr. Cooper shouting.”

“What did he say?”

“He called the Italian a Papist wretch, that the King should not surround himself with such devilish company. He said that God would have His revenge on him for his Popery.”

“Did the Italian say anything?”

“Not that I could hear. When he left, he almost seemed in higher spirits than when he arrived. I don’t think Mr. Cooper frightened him. On his way out, he said I should mind my master before he got in trouble. What did he mean by that?”

I ignored the question. “Ellen,” I said, “what happened the night Mr. Cooper died?”

“I was already in bed when it happened. I heard a crash. It must have been when he fell. I came to see what was the matter. By the time I came downstairs he was dead. It was a horrible sight.”

“Did anyone visit him that night?”

“I don’t think so. But I retired early that night because…” She suddenly grew apprehensive and seemed to swallow the rest of the sentence.

“Why did you retire early?” Tears filled the girl’s eyes and she looked away from me, desperate not to answer. “Ellen, you must answer.”

“Because Mr. and Mrs. Cooper fought that night,” she cried out at last. “It was horrible. He screamed that she must submit to him, that it was God’s law. She struck him on the arm with a ladle, and he punched her in the breast. That was when I fled to my room. I never saw Mr. Cooper again until I saw his body.”

I felt a coldness gripping my heart. Could Esther have killed Stephen after all? I pushed the thought away—married couples fought. It was the way of the world.

“They say a servant found the ratsbane in Mrs. Cooper’s cupboard,” I continued.

“I found it,” she said, weeping. “Why did she kill him? Mr. Cooper could be a hard man, but he loved her.” I waited with ill-disguised impatience while Ellen dried her eyes. “Why are you here, my lady? What is your business?”

“We told you that,” I said. “We are here at Mrs. Cooper’s behest.”

“Yes, but she is my mistress. Before I help you, I must know why.” There was an edge to her voice as she came to Esther’s defense. I could not help admiring her resolve.

“Lady Hodgson believes Mrs. Cooper is innocent,” Martha blurted out. “She is here to find the guilty party.”

“Innocent? But the constable seemed so sure! Mr. and Mrs. Cooper fought that night, and I found the poison in her cabinet myself,” Ellen said. She looked at me, her eyes alight. “Do you really think someone else killed Mr. Cooper? Can you prove it?” Tears filled Ellen’s eyes once again, this time in relief that someone else had taken up her mistress’s cause.

“I will never believe that Mrs. Cooper killed your master. And I promised her that I would find out who did. I intend to keep that promise.”

Martha crossed the room and took Ellen’s arm. “Can you take Lady Hodgson to Mr. Cooper’s study?” she asked.

Ellen wiped her nose on her sleeve and nodded. She led me up two flights of stairs and stopped at a heavy door. “I don’t have a key,” she said apologetically.

“Lady Hodgson has one from Mrs. Cooper,” Martha said. “Lady Hodgson, why don’t you take care of our business, and I’ll visit with Ellen a bit more. I don’t imagine she’s had much company of late.” Ellen looked grateful, and I nodded. The two of them went down the stairs, and I inserted the larger key in the door’s lock. It turned easily, and despite its weight the door swung open without a sound.

The sense of order that pervaded Stephen Cooper’s study bordered on the fanatical. His massive desk lay directly across from the door, so that anyone who entered would find the man hard at work. I surveyed the office. Behind the desk on a shelf were perhaps a dozen large, leather-bound books, presumably where he kept his accounts. The walls were lined with hundreds of books that appeared to have been organized by height; folios, quartos, and octavos all stood together with no intermixing at all. The spine of each one was flush with the edge of the shelf. Four quills sat on the desk, lying perfectly parallel with the front edge, and an ink pot with a fifth quill still in it sat next to them. I looked more closely and found that the pot still was nearly full of dried ink. The wasted ink seemed out of place with the prevailing order of the rest of the office, and I took it to mean that Stephen had mixed a batch of ink just before he died. But if that was the case, what had he planned to write? There were no papers or books on his desk.

Two cabinets flanked the door through which I’d entered. Presumably this was where Stephen had kept his business papers. They were secured with small locks, better for discouraging snooping servants than resisting determined thieves. My eyes fell upon the chest Esther had described. I crossed the room and knelt by the chest but immediately realized that the key Esther had given me was far too large for the flimsy lock that secured the strongbox. I considered the situation, for it raised a number of vexing questions, the most immediate of which was how I would open the chest. After a moment, I realized that I didn’t need a key.

“Martha,” I called down the stairs, “may I speak to you for a moment?”

“Yes, my lady,” she said as she climbed to the third floor. I closed the door behind her and explained the situation.

“The key and the lock don’t match?” she asked, no less confused than I.

“We’ll talk about that later. But right now I need you to open the lock.”

She brightened at my request and without hesitating removed a leather pouch from her apron. She selected two delicate tools from the pouch and began to probe the lock. After a few minutes, I heard the lock snap open. She turned and handed me the lock with a flourish. “My lady,” she said, and started for the door.

I put my hand on her arm to stop her. “That didn’t take long. Was it a simple lock to pick, or are you that expert?” I asked.

“Well, I am an expert,” she said with a modest smile, “but it was dead easy. That lock is better suited for protecting your linen than…” She stopped and gazed at the chest. “Why would someone put so weak a lock on that kind of chest?”

“Why indeed?” I asked. “We’ll worry about that anon. It’s open now, and you should get back to Ellen.” Martha slipped out of the room and started down the stairs. I closed the study door and briefly pondered the meaning of the lock I held in my hand. No answers presented themselves, so I turned my attention to the contents of the chest.

The lid of the chest opened as silently as the door, revealing several large bundles of letters, each tied carefully with a silk ribbon. I leafed through them and saw that Stephen had made copies of every letter he sent and matched it with the reply, then grouped them by the subject of the exchange. I carefully placed each bundle in my valise. To my surprise, there was a single loose letter lying at the bottom of the chest. I slipped it into my bag with the rest and looked in confusion at the empty chest. Esther had been very clear that Stephen kept his diary in the chest—but where was it? I searched the room, but everything seemed to be in its place. The desk drawers were all unlocked and contained a few account books along with a well-thumbed Bible, but no diary. I scanned the room one last time but could find nothing more of interest, so I took my bag and descended the stairs.

I followed the sound of voices to the kitchen, but when Ellen and Martha heard me coming, the conversation stopped. As I entered the room, Ellen began to scrub the table furiously, though it seemed clean enough to me. I considered her situation and felt the same sympathy for her that I had for Martha the day she came to my door. She seemed a hardworking and conscientious girl, but her life had been blown off course by winds far more powerful than she. With Martha now in my household, I could not take on another servant, but I thought I could find a place for her.

“Ellen,” I said, “have you thought about where you will go?”

“Go? I won’t go anywhere. I’ll wait here for Mrs. Cooper to return.”

“What if she doesn’t?” prodded Martha. “She has been convicted of petty treason.” Ellen seemed unsettled by the question but said nothing.

“Ellen, I have many friends who might be in need of a maidservant as diligent as you,” I said. “If you like, I can try to find you a place.”

Ellen looked at me in astonishment, trying to find words of thanks. “My lady, I—I do not know what to say. That is very generous of you,” she stammered. “But I can’t. I … I don’t know what I will do.”

“You might need a new position,” I persisted. “Let me help you.”

Ellen agonized over my offer before curtsying deeply. “I would be very grateful, my lady.”

With that, Martha and I bade Ellen good-bye. She saw us to the front door, and we began the walk back to my house.

“What a strange girl,” I said. “She might soon be out of employment, and she wasn’t sure she wanted my help finding a position? It will be no easy thing for her to find a new household, not if her master has been murdered and mistress burned.”

“If I came from that household, I’d be in no hurry to find a new master. Mr. Cooper was different than Mr. Holdsworth, but not much better. Chicken for dinner every day?”

“I had no idea Stephen could be so rigid. How did Esther live with it for so many years?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe she chose not to,” Martha said with an impish grin. I ignored the comment, and she did not pursue it. “What did you find in the chest?” she asked.

“It’s not what I found, but what I didn’t find,” I said. “His letters were exactly as you’d expect.” I opened my valise and showed her the beautifully wrapped packets. “But the diary is missing.”

Martha raised her eyebrows in surprise. “It wasn’t in the chest?”

“Nor the desk, nor anywhere else. It’s gone.”

“I don’t have the sense that Mr. Cooper is the sort of man to misplace his diary. Could he have hidden it before he was murdered?”

“He could have, but why would he? He didn’t know he was going to be murdered. No, it must have been taken after he died.”

“What about the money? Did someone take that, too?” She said it in a joking tone, but it wasn’t until that moment I realized that there had been no money in the chest. I stopped on the spot, trying to put the pieces together.

“There was no money,” I said. “There was no money, no diary, and Esther gave us the wrong key. What is going on?”

“That’s easy enough to explain,” Martha said tartly. “She lied to us about the money and the diary—if there ever
was
a diary—and then she gave us the wrong key. She never told us that Mr. Cooper beat her, or about the fight the night Mr. Cooper died. She’s sending you on a wild goose chase. And by convincing you of her innocence, she gained another six months to play her game. And
I
have gained an extra week’s wages.” Martha looked at me triumphantly, fairly exulting in the evidence against Esther.

“We don’t know anything yet, and she is still my friend,” I said peevishly. “I trust you’ll remember that.”

“Yes, my lady,” she said. “I am sorry.”

“And the business with the strongbox explains neither his quarrel with Lorenzo Bacca nor the suit with the Hookes. And who was Stephen’s late night visitor? Whoever it was, he was likely the last one to see him alive. No, there’s too much other business for this to be something as simple as a wife killing her husband.” Even to my own ears, my words rang hollow. I still believed in Esther’s innocence and would fight to prove it, but I could not deny that what I’d learned had only hurt her cause.

“We should go to the jail and confront her,” Martha suggested.

“We can’t just walk in whenever we please,” I pointed out. “As far as the Lord Mayor is concerned, we’ve done our job, however badly. We’ll need another letter to get us through the gate.” I looked at my valise. “Perhaps there is something in the letters that will help.”

“Or confuse things even further,” Martha added helpfully.

I smiled despite myself. “Yes, or that.”

We arrived at my house, and I was pleased to find a member of the trained bands standing guard at the door. He was one of Sergeant Smith’s men, and as we approached he bowed and stepped aside. While Martha and Hannah prepared dinner, I went upstairs to read Stephen Cooper’s letters. I’d just laid them on my desk when there came a loud knock at the front door. I wondered if it was another birth or if Elizabeth’s son had weakened further. Hannah appeared at my door a moment later.

“My lady, a boy just brought this for you.” I recognized Edward’s handwriting and opened the letter, expecting an overdue reprimand for my testimony on Esther Cooper. But it was far too short for that.

The body of an infant has been discovered in a privy at the end of Coneystreet nearest St. Martin’s Church. Please come as quickly as you can.

I sighed heavily. Enquiring into the death of an infant was an awful business. I called Martha and told her we were going back out.

Chapter 13