Cruel As the Grave (9 page)

Justin did not know how to answer him. He could not very well admit he'd been engaged to clear the chief suspects in Melangell's murder. Yet he was reluctant to lie to this man; if he could not share Godwin's grieving, at least he could respect it.

Luke had no such scruples. "I am the under-sheriff," he said, conveniently forgetting to clarify that his authority was rooted in another shire. "I wanted to go over what you told my serjeant."

Godwin was quiet for a moment. "That serjeant of yours did not seem all that interested in what I had to say."

He had to be talking about Tobias, the serjeant first called to the scene; whatever Jonas's failings, he was nothing if not thorough and would give a peddler's daughter the same diligence due the highborn. "Well," Luke said smoothly, "another serjeant will be conducting the investigation from now on, a man named Jonas. I think you'll find him more obliging."

Godwin smiled dourly, for a lifetime's experience had taught him how improbable it was that the authorities would ever be "obliging" to the likes of him. "I told the other one that I knew who murdered my girl. You find the man who seduced her, who bedazzled her into playing the whore for him, and you'll find your killer."

"Why do you think she had a lover?"

"She was always sneaking off, refusing to tell me where she'd been, even when I took my hand to her. And after she died, I went through her belongings, found trinkets and cloth and a brass mirror. She had no money to buy such stuff, and she was no thief. He gave them to her, and then he killed her."

Godwin's voice was oddly without emotion, flattened out and stolid sounding. Justin had heard these tones before, from those who'd long ago stopped expecting life to be easy or even fair. He found himself thinking; that a lack of hope was as onerous as the lack of money. But then he thought of Melangell, escaping out a window to keep her moonlit trysts in a deserted churchyard. A little less hope might have kept her alive.

The rest of the interview with Godwin was unproductive. According to him, Melangell had offered to pick up his shoes from the cordwainer, did not return. When he got back from making his rounds, he'd gone looking for her, not becoming truly fearful until darkness foil. He'd spent the night searching for her and got home at dawn to find the serjeant, Tobias, waiting to take him to identify his daughter's body.

But he claimed to know nothing of her churchyard rendezvous and could shed no light on her last hours. When they pressed him, he became more and more taciturn, spending his words like a miser's hoarded coins. Luke had seen this act before: the rustic peasant who was too slow-witted to be worth interrogating. Even when it didn't work, it was a hard shell to crack, and he did not protest when Godwin insisted he must get back to work.

"Papa!" A child was running toward them, weaving agilely between the sailors clogging the wharf. "A ship is about to pass through the bridge! Look ... they are taking down the mast. Can I go onto the bridge to watch?"

"If you do not get underfoot," Godwin agreed, waving her on. By then she'd noticed Luke and Justin. Sharp black eyes peered at them curiously through a ripple of wind-tossed ebony hair, for she was too young to wear a veil; Justin guessed her age to be about eleven. She had a thin little face, an equally angular body, as yet showing no softening curves, swathed in a well-mended gown that was too big for her; one of Melangell's hand-me-downs? Justin had almost forgotten there was a younger sister.

One glance was enough to tell her that these men were good prospects; a man wearing a sword was a man sure to have some money to spend. "Papa, did you show them those new hats, the ones with the wide brims? Or the brushes made with boar bristles? Or the-"

"They are not here to buy, Cati. They are looking into your sister's death."

Cati did not have her father's stoicism. Emotions chased across her face, like shadows encroaching upon sunlight. There was pain, so raw the men flinched to look upon it, followed by rage that was utterly adult in its intensity, and then the saddest response of all - suspicion.

Justin supposed it was only to be expected that Cati would mistrust those in authority. Peddlers were viewed as a necessary evil, tolerated and rousted by turns, all too often convenient scapegoats for crimes in need of quick solving. Although he did his best to reassure Cati of his goodwill, he got nowhere fast, his smiles and gentle questions met with a blank stare. If Cati had been privy to her sister's clandestine love affairs, she was not about to break faith with Melangell now. She shook her head mutely, shrugged, even lapsing into Welsh once or twice. Justin soon gave up. Luke had not even tried, for he knew that none were more tenacious in the safeguarding of their secrets than children, especially secrets that were forbidden.

~~

Afterward, they walked slowly back home, tired and disheartened, as the day's light faded and the sky's sunset afterglow gave way to a deepening twilight haze. They'd stopped at the riverside cookshop to buy pork pies for themselves, sausage for Shadow, and by the time they reached Gracechurch Street, the city was silvered in moonlight.

Justin was more discouraged than Luke, for he was the one bound by Nell's rash promise, and it was pinching and chaffing more and more. After an entire day chasing down Melangell's elusive ghost, he was still groping for answers. He could not rule out either Geoffrey or Daniel Aston as suspects in the girl's killing. Luke had helpfully pointed out that even her father might well be a suspect, too, for he had no alibi for the time of the murder. When Justin expressed skepticism, Luke reminded him that men had killed in the defense of family honour since the dawn of time, and to that, Justin had no comeback.

"Why could it not be a stranger?" Justin argued, almost plaintively, for he was in a precarious situation and well aware of it. If one of the Aston boys were guilty, he'd fail Agnes, a woman to whom he owed much. Yet if the girl's father had slain her in a fit of misguided rage, what would become of Cati?

"It could have been, I suppose," Luke conceded, throwing him a bone. "I doubt it, though. No one heard any screams, did they? It's been my experience that when a woman is accosted by a stranger, she'll scream her head off. But if she is there to meet someone she knows, she's not as likely to realize her danger until it is too late. Even if they were quarreling and even if she was afraid, would Melangell have feared that her father or her lover had killing in mind?"

Justin winced, for the dead girl was beginning to seem real to him. He could envision her humming under her breath as she hastened to meet her lover, admiring herself in that brass mirror, teasing her little sister and coaxing the landlord into doing small favors for her. A girl who was spirited enough to defy her father, who doted on animals and "liked men," a girl who'd died too young and far from her Welsh homeland, probably buried in a pauper's grave. It occurred to him now that he wanted to catch her killer as much for Melangell as for Agnes or Cati.

"Of course," Luke theorized, "if that jackass Aston is right and she was a harlot, then the killer could have been almost anyone, for half the men in London would tumble a pretty young wench if the time and price were right."

"I do not think she was a harlot," Justin said, so firmly that Luke glanced at him in amusement.

"Can you be so sure of that? We're not talking about the Blessed Virgin Mary, after all, but a girl who ... how did Geoffrey so delicately put it? ... liked men."

"That does not make her a whore," Justin insisted, and even he could not have said if he was also defending his own unknown mother, defending Claudine.

"I pity you, de Quincy. Any man so trusting of women is like a sheep for the shearing. As it happens, though," Luke conceded, "I tend to agree with you. It does not sound as if the girl was out on the street, at least not full-time. So we're back to a closed circle. The lover? The spurned lover? The father?"

"The truth, Luke, is that I have no idea who killed her."

"Neither do I," Luke acknowledged cheerfully. "But then, I'm leaving on the morrow so it - What? What is amiss?" he asked, for Justin had come to an abrupt halt on the path, only a few feet from the cottage.

Justin answered by pointing toward the door. After being stalked by Gilbert the Fleming, he'd gotten into the habit of snagging the latchstring around a nail whenever he left the cottage. Now it dangled free, offering swaying proof that the latch had been lifted. But was the intruder still within? Bathed in moonlight, silent as a cemetery, the cottage gave away no secrets. All seemed normal. All had seemed normal, too, in Gunter's stables just before the Fleming had launched his murderous attack.

Someone else might have shrugged, assumed the string had broken free, and barged on in. But Luke was never one to mock caution; on several occasions, that niggling sixth sense had saved his life. He and Justin slid their swords from their scabbards in unison. They worked well as a team, but then they'd had some practice at it. Justin hit the door first, with Luke right behind him, entering fast to take any intruders by surprise.

The tactic worked. Claudine was certainly surprised, sitting bolt upright in bed with a startled scream. She'd lit a cresset lamp, and it gave off enough light to reveal that the shapely body in the bed was naked under the sheet. Her skin looked golden and glistening in the lamplight, her hair spilling over her bared shoulders, darker than the night itself, and Justin's breath caught in his throat.

Claudine was still clutching the sheet, her eyes wide. But as she looked from Justin, who was slowly sheathing his sword, to Luke, who was leaning against the door, grinning widely, a smile flitted across her lips.

"Oh, my," she said, and began to laugh.

6

LONDON

April 1193

Reluctantly taking his eyes from the laughing Claudine, Luke glanced toward Justin, who had yet to move or speak. "There's a sight to strike any man dumb," the deputy joked, although he sensed there was more at play here than sexual tension. "It looks like I'll be bedding down tonight in Gunter's smithy. You'll not be getting rid of me without paying a price, though, de Quincy. I'm going nowhere unless I'm introduced to this vision in your bed."

Justin grudgingly complied and Luke sauntered over to the bed to kiss Claudine's hand, much to her amusement. "Lady Claudine, you have given me a memory sure to warm up the coldest winter nights. I thank you for that. Sadly enough, it is a debt I can only repay by leaving. I shall take myself off to the smithy and try to figure out what you can possibly see in de Quincy."

"Passing strange, for that is the same thing I've often wondered about Aldith and you," Justin said, with a smile as strained as his humor. As soon as the door closed behind Luke, he shoved the latch into place. "What are you doing here, Claudine?"

She'd begun to pet Shadow, who was wriggling happily under her caresses. Her eyebrows arched, both at the question and the tone. "If you need to ask that, Justin, it has definitely been too long since we've lain together!"

Justin hastily sought to recover lost ground. "I meant how did you get here. Surely you did not come on your own? The streets are not safe for a woman after dark, especially one who looks like you." There was no need to feign concern over her safety; he discovered now that his anxiety was quite genuine.

She was mollified by the ring of sincerity in his voice. "I asked a friend to bring me; you remember Nicholas de Mydden?"

"The coxcomb with straw-color hair?" He saw her eyes crinkle at the corners and knew she thought him to be jealous. Not that he was, he assured himself. How could he be jealous of a woman he meant to walk away from? That would make no sense. She had propped herself up on one elbow, watching him through the sweep of those improbably long lashes. Jesii, but she was beautiful. If Bathsheba had been even half as lovely, no wonder King David had been smitten at first sight of her in that rooftop bath.

His treacherous imagination immediately conjured up an image of Claudine in her bath, soft and wet and slippery with soap, a wayward mermaid, eyes filled with moonlight and that midnight hair flowing free, trailing over her breasts into the water like silken seaweed. But he'd not shared a bath with Claudine, knew that he never would. Theirs had been a love affair of stolen moments and no talk of tomorrows; even before he'd learned that she was John's spy, he'd known there could be but one ending for them. And now it was done. She was the most desirable woman he'd ever bedded, and the most deceitful. No matter how much he wanted her, he could not trust her. Even more troubling, he could not trust himself when he was with her. It had to end.

"Claudine, we need to talk."

"Yes, we certainly do," she agreed. "But first can you find us something to drink? I've been waiting for over an hour and I am parched."

Justin had a half-full wineskin on the table. When he found a cup, she stopped him from searching further, saying, "No, do not bother. We can share it." He did not think that was a good idea, but there was no tactful way to refuse. He carried it to the bed and she slid over to make room for him. Against his better judgment, he sat beside her and held out the cup. She drank deeply, smiling at him over the rim. "Now ... you first. What did you want to talk about?"

Justin sought to keep his gaze on her face; it was no easy feat, as her sheet had slipped. "About us."