Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

“Unacceptable levels — you sound like a health minister on telly.”

“The idea,” she said, “is to stop smoking while using the patch. That’s the point. The patch gives you enough nicotine to satisfy the craving without smoking.”

“It wouldn’t give me enough.”

“No, I bet it wouldn’t,” she said, and she smiled.

He lit a cigarette. “I’m going to have my shower and then perhaps you’ll redo those plasters for me.”

“Of course I will,” she said.

Mandeville and the Staple by Terry Mullins

One of the delights of reading an historical mystery is the probability of coming across some tidbit of information one did not know before. And of course it’s not only the reader who may discover something new. Terry Mullins tells us: “Before writing ‘Mandeville and the Staple’ I had not realized the full importance of wool in English history. I knew about the famous woolsack on which the Lord Chancellor sits when the House of Lords is in session, but it was largely a curiosity to me. In fact, it symbolizes the part wool played in making England a world power. That woolsack has sat beside the throne since before the time of Henry VIII.” Mr. Mullins’s sleuth, Sir John Mandeville, is based on an historical figure...

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For several centuries before the Renaissance, an organization of large wool merchants controlled the sale of wool from England to the Continent through The Staple. They shaped the commercial destiny of Western Europe through this monopoly.

A while after giving up his wanderings over the globe and settling down in the quiet town of Liege to write, Sir John Mandeville heard that the merchants of The Staple were threatened with destruction of their trade. As a member of the Fellowship of The Staple, Sir John felt compelled to go to their aid.

He left Liege two weeks before Lent was over and he planned to stay until after Easter. The Bishop of Liege had become somewhat too zealous in encouraging the good citizens of Liege to fast, and Sir John’s landlord (and taverner) was responding with inexplicable devotion. Since Sir John liked meat and drink almost as much as he liked a good audience for his stories, he viewed the encroaching saintliness with disfavor. The Bishop of Calais was, as he well knew, more broadminded about such things.

He found the merchants of The Staple terrified and confused. Jorge Stonor, the hearty, honest man in charge of The Staple, seemed at his wits’ end.

“We have had a time of it, Sir John,” he said. “We have really had a time of it. It’s an even chance whether we’ll have to move The Staple back to England.”

“Tell me about it, Jorge. I’ve only heard rumors, some of them pretty wild.”

“We get the wool over from England all right. It’s here in Calais the mischief begins. There’s been wool burnt and seals broken and even a customs officer of the English Crown beaten. The Crown demands that we protect its officers as well as our own members — which we would, we would, if we had any idea who’s behind it all. If we was in England, where wool lost by one man could easily be replaced from another source, I’d suspect the Lombards, but they wouldn’t damage wool here, not when they’re buying and scarce wool will drive the price up. No, I can’t fix the blame at all.”

“Any new people around?”

“Not in The Staple. ’Course, there’s new people all the time ’prenticed to the wool merchants and there’s more small merchants all the time. Two new ones came with the fleet last crossing, but they’s as scart as the rest of us. It’s a near thing, Sir John, a near thing. If The Staple’s damaged, all England’s damaged. The Crown depends on us for its customs revenue, not to mention borrowing from merchants when it’s short of deniers, which is most always.

“Trouble for The Staple is danger for all England. Money for ships and soldiers comes from us. It ain’t easy to fight England’s troops, not after Crécy and Poitiers, nor to get at the king. But it’s easy as pie to hide and damage The Staple. And that counts as good as winning in fair battle.”

“You could always go to Bruges.”

“What good would that do? They would just follow us.”