The Midwife's Tale (32 page)

“No, let her sleep,” I said. I did not want to involve her in a difficult birth so soon after the death of Elizabeth Wood’s child. The chances of a second tragedy were too great.

I descended the stairs and found a lad waiting just inside the front door. One of the guards stood there as well, eyeing him suspiciously. “Where is the birth?” I asked the boy.

“It is near St. Martin’s church,” he said. “My mistress is Elizabeth Woodall.”

I looked over the boy. He seemed stout enough but was unarmed. I turned to the guard. “I need you to accompany me to this labor.” He nodded and the three of us set out.

We arrived at Elizabeth’s home in short order, and I asked the guard to wait at the door until I completed my work. A servant ushered me in and took my cloak. “Her room is at the top of the stairs, on the right,” she said.

I hurried up but paused when I reached the door, for I heard laughter coming from within. I opened the door and saw why. Elizabeth lay in bed, nursing her newborn child. She saw me and waved me over. The child’s face bore the bruises of a difficult delivery but seemed no worse for all that, thank the Lord.

“Thank you for coming at such a late hour, Lady Hodgson,” she said. “The baby came just minutes after we sent for you. He gave us a scare, but all is well.”

I congratulated Elizabeth and searched the room for Dorothy Mann. She sat on a couch, holding a glass of wine. I sat beside her. I recognized the mixture of exhaustion and relief on her face—she knew how close the night had come to ending in tragedy.

“A difficult case,” I said. Dorothy nodded and sipped her wine. “Elizabeth doesn’t know how bad it was, does she.”

“I didn’t want to worry her while she was in travail, and now that the child is safe there is no reason to frighten her. The child came with his shoulders first. Every time I tried to turn him, he seemed to fight me. Soon he lodged himself so tight I feared for both mother and child.”

“How did you save him?”

“I remembered something you talked about once,” she said with a faint smile. “I put her on her hands and knees, so the baby might work back up to the matrix. That gave me enough room to work. He took a beating, but I turned him.”

I could hear the pride in her voice. She had performed a miracle and knew it. A servant brought me a glass of wine, and I gladly accepted. Dorothy and I drank and talked of the news of the town, of births and deaths.

“I don’t know if you have seen her yet, but I sent a client your way last week,” I said.

“Really? Who was it?”

“In truth, I don’t know. I heard talk of a pregnant serving-maid in All Saints parish. I told them to report it to you.”

“Oh, yes, Ellen Hutton. I visited her yesterday. She refuses to name the father, but I haven’t started to press her yet. She will tell me soon enough. She doesn’t seem brave enough to deliver a child alone.”

“Ellen Hutton?” I asked, my mind racing. “Stephen Cooper’s servant?
She
is the pregnant maid?”

“She didn’t deny it, just refused to say anything. But I felt her belly and breasts. In my judgment she is pregnant.” She paused. “Aren’t you caring for her mistress while she is in the Castle?”

I sat in silence, trying desperately to make sense of this piece of news. I knew that Ellen’s pregnancy could be vital to solving Stephen Cooper’s murder, but between the wine and the late hour, my addled mind could not see the picture clearly.

“Lady Bridget, are you all right?” Dorothy asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. How long has she been pregnant?” I asked urgently.

“It’s hard to say—five months, perhaps. What is going on? When did you become interested in ordinary bastardy cases?”

“It is nothing,” I said. “I must go.”

I paid my respects to Elizabeth and walked home as quickly as I could. The rising sun transformed the Minster’s walls into towering columns of flame. As I gazed at their majesty, my mind raced over the facts of the case. In the fresh air, my head cleared and I began to understand the importance of what I’d learned.

When I arrived home, I pulled Martha into the parlor. “Ellen Hutton has been pregnant since February,” I blurted out. She looked at me sharply and I saw her mind begin to work its way through the implications of my discovery.

“Who is the father?” she asked. “Could it be a suitor? She told us Mr. Cooper chased her suitor away even though he was an apprentice nearing his freedom.”

I furrowed my brow, trying to get the final pieces to fit together. “Who did Cawton the tailor say Richard was courting?” I nearly shouted in excitement when I remembered. “The tailor said Richard was courting a girl named Helen. But it wasn’t Helen, it was
Ellen
! It must have been! And it can’t be a coincidence that both their masters were murdered. Richard and Ellen killed them both.”

“But why would they kill Mr. Cooper to begin with?” Martha asked. “What did they have to gain from murder?” Her question brought me up short.

“I don’t know. Perhaps they hoped to rob him?” I wondered.

“But they didn’t rob him. They deliberately killed him.”

I shook my head and continued to think. While some of the pieces fit, Martha was right—Ellen and Richard had no obvious reason to kill Stephen.

A dark look crossed Martha’s face. “They killed him for revenge.”

“Revenge for what? Because he tried to keep them from courting? That’s hardly the worst thing that Stephen did.”

“When we saw Ellen at the apothecary shop, what herbs was Richard using?”

I closed my eyes, picturing the scene in my mind. “Thyme … hyssop … Oh, God!” I cried, my eyes flying open. “Dittany. Ellen wasn’t there getting herbs for Esther’s cough. She was getting them for herself to end the pregnancy. They wanted to kill her child before he was born. But why?”

“Because it’s not Richard’s child,” Martha said softly. “It’s Stephen Cooper’s. Ellen said he beat Mrs. Cooper, but never hit her. But what man strikes his wife but not his maidservant? She was hiding something, and now we know what. He raped her and left her pregnant. No doubt he threatened to have her whipped if she fathered the child on him. Richard and Ellen sent him the letter demanding the money, and after he paid, they took their revenge. And once Cooper was dead, they tried to get rid of the child as well.”

Martha retreated into her thoughts, and we sat in silence as I considered what she had said. “If you’re right, when we questioned Richard about the ratsbane we signed Penrose’s death warrant,” I said. “Penrose would have denied selling the poison, and we would have returned to Richard. They had to keep him from talking to us.
Ellen
was the whore who lured Penrose upstairs at the Black Swan, and Richard beat him to death.”

“With all he had suffered, Richard would have taken as much satisfaction in murdering Penrose as Ellen did in killing Cooper.”

“Esther isn’t guilty of treason. Ellen and Richard are.”

“You can’t be serious,” Martha cried. “Ellen and Richard might be murderers, but traitors?”

“That is what the law says,” I answered, taken aback by her tone. “It’s the order of things.”

“Why? Because they rose against their
natural
lords? Such shit! By that thinking, I’m a traitor, too, am I not? I had a hand in my master’s death; shouldn’t you charge me as well? Stephen Cooper and Thomas Penrose were tyrants. They deserved no better.”

I stared at Martha, recalling the abuse she had suffered before coming to my home. I wondered for a moment if she, rather than Tom, had murdered her master. I chased that thought away and tried to mollify her.

“Your situation is different, and you know it,” I said. “You did not intend to kill your master. And while I do not mourn Mr. Cooper and Mr. Penrose, justice must be done. Ellen and Richard are murderers, and it was probably Richard who tried to kill me and Will. We have to stop them before they kill anyone else.”

Martha nodded. “But what do we do?” she asked softly. “We’ve no evidence of their guilt, and Mrs. Cooper still stands convicted.”

“I will ask my brother to question Ellen. She will confess soon enough.”

“Perhaps,” Martha replied. “But I’m not so sure.”

“I’ve questioned murderesses before,” I reminded her. “Few women have the stomach to lie when pressed.”

“I don’t think Ellen will confess so easily.”

“Why do you say that? Even Rebecca Hooke confessed.”

“Yet she is free,” Martha replied archly. “I know Ellen seems like a harmless maidservant, but look at what she’s done. She planned her master’s murder carefully, and when threatened with discovery, she planted—
and then discovered
—the ratsbane in Mrs. Cooper’s cabinet. She intended for Mrs. Cooper,
who had done her no wrong,
to be burned in her place. Then, when we began to close in on her and Richard, she led Penrose into a trap and watched as Richard dashed out his brains. A woman who has done all this can endure a few hard words without bursting into tears and confessing her crimes.”

I considered her point, and my heart sank when I realized that she was right. The murderesses I’d questioned had killed on the spur of the moment and been racked by guilt. Ellen had murdered two men in cold blood and connived in the death of her mistress. How sure could I be that she would confess? And if she did not, what then?

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

“They won’t try to leave the city until the siege is lifted. Richard is too careful for that.” I nodded. “We can search his quarters again. Perhaps there is something there. And then we find them and question them separately. We can lie, and turn each against the other. If we drive a wedge between them, one or the other will confess. The constables tried to do that with Tom and me once. If either of us had confessed, we’d both have hanged.”

“Let’s hope Ellen and Richard trust each other less than you two did.” I didn’t know if the plan would work, but I had no alternative to offer. “I’ll have one of the guards escort us to the shop.” Neither of us had forgotten that a killer still might be lurking in the city’s alleys, hoping for another chance to attack.

*   *   *

We arrived at Penrose’s shop and found it locked. I wasn’t sure that the guard would appreciate our plan to break in, so I posted him at the end of the block closest to the Black Swan. “Hurry,” I told Martha as she began to work on the lock. “Our guard thinks we have a key.” Luckily the lock proved more cooperative than on her first attempt, and a few seconds later we stepped in. “Secure it behind us,” I said. “If someone tries to enter the shop, I would like to have some kind of warning.” Martha nodded, and I heard the lock click.

“It doesn’t look like Richard has been back,” Martha said.

“If there’s any evidence, it will be in his chamber.” We crept upstairs and found Richard’s room exactly as we’d left it.

“What are we looking for?” Martha asked.

Despite the tension, I laughed out loud. “I don’t know. Remember, this was your idea. You check the bookshelf, I’ll search his desk.” When I saw Richard’s journal, I realized that it was our best hope. I found the early entries detailing his abuse at Penrose’s hands and read quickly until I found his first mention of Ellen. She had come into the shop to buy nutmeg. “We were right,” I said. “He started courting Ellen in March.”

“She was already pregnant by then, wasn’t she?”

“Dorothy thought so. It seems that Stephen was the father of her child. Have you found anything?”

“Not yet,” I said. “He’s got lovely handwriting, though.”

I read through the diary as Richard detailed both Penrose’s outrageous abuse and his growing love for Ellen. As their courtship progressed, his entries began to include poems about Ellen, often comparing her to the flowers and herbs that heralded the coming of spring. It was overly elaborate, of course, and I could not help marveling that the same hand that wrote these poems beat a man to death with an iron bar. After a long description of a kiss he stole from Ellen on the Ouse Bridge, the entries suddenly stopped. I checked the date of the last entry—May 28. I called Martha over.

“Look,” I said, pointing to the date and the diary’s sudden end.

“You think that’s when they decided to murder Mr. Cooper,” she said.

“The timing is close enough,” I said grimly. “Once they started planning, he could either create false entries or stop writing altogether. They are the murderers.”

“But is having the diary enough? Will your brother order their arrest?”

“He might. We could also use it against Ellen. I’ll tell her that in the diary Richard blamed both murders on her. If she thinks Richard betrayed her, she might tell us about his role.”

I handed the notebook to Martha and she started toward the door. A loud creak came from the stairs. I froze and looked desperately at Martha. The alarm on her face told me that she had heard the sound as well. Another stair creaked, and I scanned the room in desperate hope of finding some sort of weapon. Martha and I stood as still as we could, though we knew that we were as good as caught.

“Mr. Penrose asked me to fix that stair some months ago,” Richard Baker said as he climbed the last steps and entered his chamber. “I suppose I should have listened to him, at least on that occasion.” He held a short cudgel in his right hand and slapped it softly in the palm of his left.

I tried to speak but found that my mouth had gone dry and only a croak emerged from my throat. I tried again. “Richard … please.” I found myself at a loss.

“Why did you come back?” he asked. “You know what kind of man Penrose was. Why couldn’t you just accept his fate? I heard that Alderman telling you it was God’s justice. Why didn’t you listen?”

“Richard, put down the club and let us go,” I said. “This doesn’t have to happen.”

“Really?” he asked with a harsh laugh. “If I let you go, you’ll forget you were here? You’ll let a murderer escape? Are you going to ask me to believe that? Do I seem so stupid?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Thank you for that. Penrose had no idea how much smarter I was than him. Even as an apprentice I was ten times the apothecary he could ever hope to be. The man killed far more patients than he ever helped.”