The Burgundian's tale

There was a lapse of several seconds before the door creaked protestingly on its hinges as it opened a little wider. Bertram and I squeezed through the gap.

In spite of the warmth of the morning, the house felt icily cold as if, indeed, the Angel of Death had enfolded it in his wings. I was startled; I was not generally given to such flights of fancy, and I gave myself a mental shake. I was growing morbid with my advancing years, and that would never do.

Once again, Mistress Pettigrew made as though to snatch the cloak from me, but I prevented her. ‘Where did you find it?’ she whispered.

‘More to the point,’ I retorted, ‘where did you last see it?’

She shivered. ‘The master took it upstairs with him, yesterday, to put across his knees while he slept. But when I found him, it wasn’t there. I didn’t think about it at the time, I was too upset; but later, last night, I got to wondering where it had gone.’

‘Something else that had vanished, like the flask and the beaker,’ I suggested.

The housekeeper still evinced no overt interest in the two latter items, but I saw her eyes flicker. She repeated her question about the cloak. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I can’t tell you that just at the moment.’ I clasped one of her small, cold hands in mine and said earnestly, ‘It’s very important that you say nothing to anyone else about this at present. Can you keep a secret?’

She stared up at me, her rheumy eyes suddenly wide with suspicion. ‘Does the master’s death have anything to do with the murder of that nephew of Mistress St Clair?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’

‘Because …’ She hesitated, considering her words, then added in a rush, ‘Because I wondered if the master’s death was natural. There was something about his face, some discolouration, that didn’t seem normal to me.’

‘You mean, you think Master Threadgold was murdered, like Fulk Quantrell?’ Bertram demanded, nudging me excitedly in the ribs.

‘I … I don’t know.’ The housekeeper looked frightened, fearful that she was letting her tongue run away with her. ‘It’s just that … well, there was something else that occurred to me … during the night.’

‘What was that?’ I asked gently. She was plainly wishing she hadn’t spoken, but, unlike me, felt impelled to voice her suspicions.

‘Go on,’ I urged. ‘You can rely on Master Serifaber’s and my discretion.’ I looked sternly at Bertram as I spoke, and after a moment he gave a reluctant nod.

Mistress Pettigrew bit on her thumbnail with small, pointed teeth, rather like a rat’s, but after a while she forced herself to continue.

‘When I brought Mistress Alcina the beaker for the wine, she asked me if I’d like to have a cup before she took it upstairs to her uncle. She said the flask was overfull.’

‘And did you?’ I prompted.

She nodded. ‘I thought … I thought it tasted a little odd. And then, very soon afterwards, I fell asleep. And I seem to have slept extremely soundly for quite a long time.’

Fourteen

‘Are you saying you think the wine was drugged?’ Bertram demanded eagerly, his brown eyes sparkling with the excitement of the chase.

The housekeeper eyed him with growing unease, obviously regretting her moment of indiscretion and wishing she hadn’t confided in us. But of course, it was what she had meant, or at any rate meant to imply. She said nothing and looked anxiously at me.

‘Hold hard a minute, Bertram,’ I began, but my protest was ignored. The lad was pursuing his own train of thought.

‘And if Master Threadgold had been drugged, it would have made it easy for someone to smother him. Roger!’ He turned triumphantly to me. ‘Didn’t you mention a cushion stuffed behind the dead man’s head? You know — when you were telling me about your viewing of the body?’

I cursed my too-ready tongue, which was prone to describe what I saw in detail. I was beginning to realize that Bertram was a sharp lad with a retentive memory and not the casual young layabout I had originally thought him.

‘There was a cushion,’ I admitted cautiously.

‘There you are, then! So all we have to decide is who murdered Master Threadgold. It must have been his niece, Alcina. Don’t you see?’ He was well away by now. ‘She must have murdered Fulk when she realized he wasn’t going to marry her, and somehow her uncle found out the truth. So she had to get rid of him, as well. She brought him the drugged wine, waited until he fell asleep, then suffocated him with the cushion. The case is solved!’

He beamed at me with the ridiculous self-confidence of the young. I could recognize myself nine years earlier, in those heady days when I was convinced that any man past the age of thirty must almost certainly be impotent, and that any person on the other side of forty was heading rapidly downhill towards senility and the grave. Ah, youth!

‘If you imagine I haven’t already thought of all this,’ I admonished Bertram, belligerent at being made to feel old before my time, ‘you’re much mistaken. But unlike you, my lad, I intend to ask a few questions before leaping to conclusions.’