The Burgundian's tale

When Judith St Clair said, ‘There! There! Look!’ I should never have been taken in. I, of all people, should never have followed the direction of her pointing finger.

It was a year, or maybe slightly less, since I had been cudgelled over the back of the head while obeying another duplicitous woman’s instrucion to look out of a window. And there I was repeating the same mistake and peering at the floor of Judith’s bedchamber because she told me to do so; because I was gullible enough to believe there was something there. I didn’t see her open the ‘fly trap’; I hadn’t even heard William Morgan enter the bedchamber by way of the ‘secret’ stair. It was only when he grunted, ‘Open the door wider, mistress,’ that I realized he was behind me, and, of course, by then it was too late.

Far too late.

As I tried to straighten up, suddenly, nerve-wrackingly aware of what was happening, I was heaved forward, head first through the wall into the hidden cupboard, and even before I could gather my wits about me, the door of the ‘fly trap’ swung shut. And there I was, thanks to my crass stupidity, caught in the spider’s web.

It was several minutes before I could even move. I had banged my head on the edge of the shelf as I fell, and had hit the floor at such an angle that I was completely winded. I also discovered, to my chagrin, that I was crying like one of my two young sons, but hastily attributed my tears to rage and frustration rather than pain.

At last I sat up, tenderly feeling my right ankle, which was throbbing, but found that I could move it easily enough and therefore concluded that no lasting damage had been done. Only then did I address myself to the situation I was in.

Of course, I groped for the key, which should have been hanging from the shelf behind me, in order to open the door from inside. But the hook was empty. I would have been an even bigger fool than I had already proved myself to be had I expected otherwise. Judith St Clair had removed it before I was summoned to her bedchamber. She had planned everything with the faithful William Morgan before I arrived.

After Mistress Jolliffe’s visit, she must have guessed I would come, and had probably expected me earlier. The sisterhood of women had ensured that Lydia would warn Judith that I was asking questions about Edmund and his relationship to both Brandon and Lionel. Judith could not possibly have known exactly how much I knew, nor what I had made of such information as I had, but she was not a woman who took chances. Her attempts to have Roger Jessop murdered only on account of what he might have discovered demonstrated that. So she had summoned William Morgan, her faithful henchman, and together they had laid the trap. No doubt some signal — perhaps ‘There! There! Look!’ — had been pre-arranged to bring the Welshman from his hiding place behind the door to the ‘secret’ stair.

It had been unwise to show my hand so plainly; lying there in the airless dark, I could see that now … The airless dark! I had been wondering what the murderous duo’s plans were for me, but it was suddenly blindingly obvious. They need do nothing until the lack of air in the ‘fly trap’ suffocated me; then, at night, they could carry my body down to the river and tip me in. There would be no stab wounds, as there had been with Edmund Broderer, to indicate that I had met my death other than by drowning. If Judith insisted that I had left the house after talking to her, and William confirmed that he had shown me out, who would contest it? Not Godfrey, who was doubtless lost in the sayings of Marcus Aurelius. Not Paulina Graygoss and the maids, busy in the kitchen preparing ten o’clock dinner. As for Alcina and Jocelyn, they probably had no idea that I had ever been in the house that morning; I had seen no sign of either of them. I really was caught like a fly in a trap.

Keep calm, I told myself. Breathe slowly and don’t use up too much air. Yet what was the point of that? Neither Judith nor William was likely to open the door for at least twenty-four hours, if not longer. They would make absolutely certain that I was dead before disposing of me.

My eyes were growing used to the gloom by now, and I stood up carefully to make a search of the shelf. But it revealed nothing that I had not seen during my previous visit, except for a paper folded and sealed. I turned this over once or twice, before noticing that it bore an inscription in a large, bold, confident hand. Even so, I had to squint a little to make it out, then recognized, with a painful jolt to my stomach, that it was addressed to me.

‘Roger the Chapman,’ it ran; and underneath was the message: ‘Candle and tinder-box on the floor.’