The Burgundian's tale

He reddened and I thought he was going to bluster and make denials. But he seemed to think better of it, and grinned instead. ‘I had Judith’s promise that if she died before me — which, mark you, is by no means certain with only nine years between us — the workshop would be mine. She told me it was the least she could do after I had run it so successfully for her all these years. And I know for a fact she meant what she said. She showed me her will. Her old will, that is.’

‘She made a new one?’

‘Oh, yes! Within a fortnight of Fulk’s arrival. Everything — all her money and the workshop — was to go to him. She said nothing, but he made no seceret of the fact. Why should he? He was cock of the dunghill and he couldn’t stop crowing.’

‘Did Mistress St Clair give any of you any reason for what she’d done? Or didn’t you ask?’

‘Jocelyn and I both tackled her and both of us got the same answer. Fulk was her nephew. She’d nursed him as a baby, when he and his mother lived with her and my cousin. His mother was her twin. He was her own flesh and blood. I pointed out that he always had been, but she hadn’t let it worry her for the past twelve years. She said she hadn’t seen him since he was six. Now that she had, her feelings towards him had been reanimated and she realized how much she loved him. The truth is,’ Lionel added viciously, ‘he buttered her up and told her anything she wanted to hear almost from the first day he arrived: how young she was for a woman of thirty-nine — his mother, her twin, hadn’t aged half as well; how often and how fondly his mother and Duchess Margaret had talked about her and wished she were with them in Burgundy; how his mother had spoken of her sister with her dying breath. Oh yes! He quickly realized that Judith would swallow any lie that flattered her and bolstered her ego.’

‘And what were Mistress Alcina’s feelings about her stepmother changing her will?’

‘Oh, she didn’t care. She thought Fulk was going to marry her, you see. She counted on inheriting everything through him.’

I stirred in my chair and sighed. With so many people to suspect of murdering Fulk Quantrell, it was a relief to be able to rule out Alcina Threadgold as well as Judith St Clair.

But I wasn’t going to be let off the hook that easily. A voice spoke scathingly from the parlour doorway. ‘He wasn’t going to marry her! You know very well he wasn’t! You were present when he told her so!’

‘Mother!’ Lionel rose from his seat and hurried across to give his parent a dutiful peck on her cheek.

Dame Broderer, I thought, as I, too, got to my feet, was not at all what I had expected. I had envisaged a much older woman, not the fashionable, well-preserved dame I saw in front of me. She must have been little more than a child when she gave birth to her son.

She seated herself in Lionel’s chair and waved me back to mine.

‘Now,’ she said, eyeing me up and down, ‘who is this? Apart, that is, from being a pedlar and an extremely handsome young man.’ I did my best to look modest. ‘Lal! An explanation, please! You know I don’t like strangers in my house without knowing who they are or what they’re doing here.’

Lionel told her as briefly as he could, helped by the fact that she refrained from interrupting him with pointless questions or exclamations. She simply sat, regarding me steadily with a pair of fine blue eyes, of which her son’s were a pale and smoky copy.

When he had finished, she gave a satisfied nod. ‘Yes, I’ve heard Miles Babcary tell that story about the pedlar as well. So! That was you, was it, Roger Chapman? Then I trust you’ll discover the truth of this sorry affair. It’s high time someone did. There are too many people whispering behind their hands about my boy. Not, of course, that he’s the only one. Brandon Jolliffe and his parents, Godfrey and Jocelyn St Clair — they’re all being pointed at as potential murderers.’

‘But not Mistress Threadgold?’ I queried.

Dame Broderer snorted. ‘She’s escaped the worst of the gossip so far because most people assume she was going to marry Fulk Quantrell. Therefore, in due course, all Judith’s money, not just half, would have come to her through him.’

‘A reasonable assumption,’ I prompted her as she paused.

‘Indeed! If it had been true.’ Dame Broderer turned on her son. ‘Lal, for heaven’s sake pull up a stool and stop looming over me. You’re blocking the daylight.’

Somewhat to my surprise, Lionel made no objection to this reprimand, but did as he was bidden. However, his broad grin indicated an amused tolerance of his mother and her ways rather than intimidation. They understood one another, this pair.

‘Are you saying,’ I asked, ‘that Fulk Quantrell wasn’t going to marry Alcina Threadgold?’