A Play of Treachery (34 page)

Instead, he caught bewilderment on some faces, several head-shakes of agreeing denial from others, and a tightening of M’dame’s mouth that warned he had maybe pressed too far. But he went on, still working to sound no more than stupidly wondering, “Besides, who would even know she was gone to the garden at all? She would not have told anyone she was going to meet Master Durevis, surely.”

Isabelle said, “Even Blanche and I did not know for any certainty where and why she was gone. We only guessed at it. I doubt she would have said more to anyone else.”

Blanche nodded ready agreement with that but unwarily added, “Nor would we have told anyone anyway, even had we known.”

“And let what came of your silence lesson you against it another time,” M’dame snapped.

Everyone momentarily froze. Then Guillemete burst into open sobbing and collapsed sideways, her face into Lady Jacquetta’s lap. As Lady Jacquetta bent over her, stroking her hair and murmuring to her, Blanche and Marie broke into matching weeping, and M’dame gave a cold nod of permission at Joliffe, letting him know he could leave.

He did, setting aside on a chest the goblet he had forgotten he still held as he made his escape, glad to leave the weeping but regretting as he closed the door that he had not learned more. Come to it, had he learned much at all or anything of use? Not who besides Blanche and Isabelle had known Alizon had gone out, nor how word had come to Alizon to meet Durevis. Marie at least seemed willing to think he was not the murderer but a victim, too. Was that simply from blind hope, or because she knew something she was not saying? And could he find chance to ask her without others there to hear him? He had not yet fully shaken free of the thought that Alizon might have been killed simply because she was in the way of someone’s attempt at Durevis. Did Marie might know something that would help there?

An altogether new thought came to him—that there was nothing to say that the man who had attacked Durevis was the same as whoever stabbed Alizon.

Joliffe gave an inward shudder of refusal against that possibility. Better to keep to the likelihood they were the same man. And if Durevis told truly when he said whoever had stabbed him had run out of the garden as if back to the
hôtel
—always remembering that Durevis and truth might not keep close company much of the time—then the murderer was almost surely someone of either the bishop’s or Lady Jacquetta’s household. And if—for some reason—this someone needed Durevis dead
now
but had no other likely way to come at him, that could explain the hazard-laden chance they had taken in the garden.

But, again, if Durevis was the intended victim, why not make more certain of his death, instead of taking that single ill-done stab and then fleeing? Someone ruthless enough to kill Alizon to have her out of the way would surely have made sure of Durevis.

No, this had to do with Alizon and, almost to a certainty, with the secrets she had laughingly said she might have to tell. Almost surely she had been killed to keep her from telling any secrets. And Durevis had been killed because . . .

Not because he “was there” when Alizon was killed. He had not been there. Nor had he come so soon afterward that he might have caught her murderer just after the act. By the evidence of the blood, there had been time enough for the murderer to get well away. Why had he risked lingering long enough to kill Durevis? Did he think Alizon had already told these secrets and killed her in punishment, then attempted to kill Durevis for the same reason?

But if the murderer knew enough to know Alizon had learned these secrets, whatever they were, didn’t he know she had not yet had chance to tell Durevis? Or had he been uncertain whether she had or not, and so decided that her death would serve either as a sure silencing—or else as punishment?

But why kill Durevis? The questions kept coming back to that. If Alizon had already told him these secrets, he could be expected to have already done with them whatever he meant to do, already told whomever he meant to tell, making killing him a pointless trouble once Alizon was dead, whether for punishment or revenge.

What were these damnable secrets?

Supposing they even existed.

Durevis said Alizon
thought
she would have something to tell him. What if this whole business of “secrets” was not part of the matter at all?

If it was not, then Joliffe was even further than he feared from finding a trail to the murderer. He did not even know the nature of Alizon’s supposed secrets. Were they the murderer’s, and so he had killed to protect them? Or were they someone else’s, and the murderer had killed on that someone’s behalf? Estienne as an Armagnac spy might well have secrets he needed to keep. But how would Alizon know anything of his secrets?

No, the secrets were here. In these rooms. Among these women.

But how to learn them?

“Master Ripon?” Foulke asked uneasily.

Joliffe became aware he was standing in the middle of the parlor, staring into air. Alain was gone, but Foulke was standing at the outer doorway, feet apart, hands behind his back in the patient waiting way he spent so much of his time, to be ready when needed, and looking at him worriedly.

Joliffe shook himself and said, going forward, “I was just giving thanks to be out of there.”

“How goes it with them?”

“Fairly much as it was when they were out here. They’re weeping and wondering, and blaming themselves for letting Alizon go out, and telling each other they aren’t to blame.”

“I’ll warrant M’dame isn’t telling them they aren’t to blame.”

Joliffe gave a short laugh of agreement and almost went on, not wanting to lose the track of his thoughts in talk, but stopped with another thought and asked, “What of you? Is she blaming you?”

“No, for a mercy. There were some heated questions yesterday, but my duty is to keep the unwanted out, not pen the women in. I’d no way to know the girl was going anywhere she shouldn’t.”

But someone had known and followed her to the garden; and since everyone in a household had duties that set where they should be at most times of any day, who, yesterday, had not been where they should have been? That question alone maybe served to lessen possibilities, because anyone in the bishop’s household would have difficulty keeping close enough watch on Alizon to know when she went out, let alone have chance to follow her then and linger in the garden and not be missed. And that narrowed the matter to someone among Lady Jacquetta’s people—an ugly thought. But everything about this was ugly.

“We’re all wondering why she went out at all,” he said.

“Ah, that’s known well enough,” Foulke said. “It was to meet Master Durevis. The hunt is up for him, no mistake.”

“I wonder how he got message to her to meet him. It surely didn’t come openly?”

Foulke frowned with thought. “No one’s said aught about a message coming for her. You’re right, though. She must have heard from him somehow.”

Frowning, too, to show John Ripon was thinking deeply, Joliffe tried, “Someone could have passed secret word to her at dinner in the great hall, I suppose.”

“My lady and the rest of them dined here, not in the hall,” Foulke said. “Broke their morning fast and had dinner here yesterday.”

“In the chapel then, at the morning’s Mass.”

“Aye, that’s possible,” Foulke granted.

“Or someone who came here that day, or maybe the day before?” Joliffe ventured.

Foulke considered that with a, “Hm,” a pause, and then, “Nobody in particular comes to mind. Not anybody I saw talking to her, anyway. For what that’s worth.” He named several names of household servants, and then, “There was Master Cauvet in the morning. He came early with some message from her uncle to my lady. He had to wait until she finished dressing. I don’t know but what he talked some with Alizon or some other of the women while he waited?”

Foulke did not sound certain of it but Joliffe supposed that, yes, Cauvet might well have done so, with no one thinking twice about it, and easily able to pass a small written message to Alizon secretly. But that would mean . . . regrettable things about Cauvet.

It could also mean that Cauvet might well have known when and where Alizon and Durevis would be.

For appearance’s sake, Joliffe gave a regretful shake of his head and said, “None of it makes sense, does it?”

Foulke agreed, and Joliffe went on his way, unsure where to go next with his questions. He would have preferred to stay in talk with Lady Jacquetta’s demoiselles. Somewhere among them there had to be things they knew, that, piece by piece, meant little, but if he had the pieces and put them together rightly, they might go well toward answering much. But very likely there were pieces to be had elsewhere in the
hôtel
, too. The trouble was that to find them he had to ask the right questions, and hopefully not bring the murderer’s heed around to him while he did.

Something else was twitching at his mind. There was something he should be wondering about, something . . .

As he came to the foot of the stairs from Lady Jacquetta’s rooms, Alain closed on him and demanded, “How is it with Guillemete? You saw her? How is she?”

Resigned to dealing with him, Joliffe said, “She had been crying before I came in, she was crying when I left. Lady Jacquetta was comforting her.” He spread his hands apologetically. “I saw no more of her than that.”

“I need to see her,” Alain said. He was urgent, angry, and sullen. “But M’dame is angry at me and won’t let me.”

“Angry? About what?” Joliffe said in surprise.

The question, coming from outside his own intense pit of misery, seemed to take Alain by surprise. He fumbled, “I . . . All I did was forget I was . . . to go out with her yesterday. To the goldsmith’s. She told me in the morning, but I forgot. I . . . just forgot.” He turned bitter. “They were safe enough with Mathei. It didn’t matter I didn’t go. I waited for them to come back, to make my apology as soon as might be. Before I could, Foulke wanted help looking for Alizon and—” He broke off, grabbed his temples between his hands, and moaned, “I just want to be with Guillemete and she won’t let me!”

Joliffe spread his hands in apology again, not sure for what, and went away, down the stairs toward the great hall, thinking that if Alain followed him, he could hope to scrape him off on someone there. To the good, Alain stayed where he was. To the better, he had jarred loose the something that had been twitching at Joliffe’s thoughts. Where had Guillemete been when her sister was killed?

All the other demoiselles seemed accounted for. Where had she been?

He had the discouraging thought that he was gathering questions far faster than he was finding answers. If he had been able to ask the outright questions, he might have got useful answers, but as that afternoon went on, all he was able to do was wander apparently aimlessly through the
hôtel
, talking to whom he happened on; and while people were talking of not much else than the murder, what questions he could work into their talk gave him nothing useful.

Even more hindering was that everyone jumped at the chance to ask
him
questions about what he had seen in the garden. Estienne was among the most eager to hear what he could tell, and while Joliffe kept brief what he told, he was at least able to learn in return that Estienne had been among those away from the
hôtel
with Bishop Louys yesterday afternoon.

A pity: Estienne guilty would have caused Joliffe no pain at all.

The best he gained was in talk with Cauvet and several others of the bishop’s household when he wondered to them how Alizon had come to be in the garden at all, saying, “What’s being said is she was there to meet Master Durevis, and that no one has seen him since. But how did she know he would be there?”

One man ventured on the openly probable. “A message, surely.”

“But how did it come to her if nobody knows about it?” Joliffe persisted with John Ripon’s insistent ignorance. “My lady’s demoiselles surely should not get secret word from men.”

That brought laughter among the men. Cauvet said, “They should not. That does not mean they do not,” and remembrances followed from one and another of the men of times they had bribed a servant to take a message where it would otherwise not have gone. Only in their foolish younger days, never here, they immediately added.

“Nor will whoever did it yesterday ever confess it now,” Cauvet added.

By the afternoon’s end, what Joliffe had mostly gleaned was that while it was widely known Remon Durevis was missing and being sought, most people’s thoughts were that either he must be the murderer or else that he could not be and was missing for some reason of his own. Not a few favored the murderer being an altogether unknown someone from outside Joyeux Repos. Only one man pointed out—more with delight at his horror than with fear it was true—that the murderer could be someone among them right now.

Joliffe would have been glad of a chance to talk with Master Wydeville, but heard in passing that he had left the
hôtel
in mid-afternoon. That left the hope that he was gone to question Durevis again and more closely.

For himself, after several probably wasted hours and a Lenten-dull supper, he accepted he had not come much of anywhere pursuing “how” and “who” among the household. That left “why,” which almost surely must have to do with the secrets Alizon had laughed about, and because Lady Jacquetta’s ladies lived within narrow bounds within the household, the where and how Alizon could have come by secrets was likewise narrow, and narrowed the possibilities of whose secrets they were.

With very limited eagerness, he made to return to Lady Jacquetta’s chambers, only to be surprised at the foot of their stairs by several men coming down. In the gray twilight of early evening he took a moment to sort out they were some of the squires and gentlemen who often spent evenings in Lady Jacquetta’s rooms, Alain among them, and he bowed and asked “What’s toward, sirs?”