The Fabric of Murder (Mysteries of Georgian Norfolk Book 2) (3 page)

‘You think so?’

‘Who knows?’

Foxe pondered a moment.

‘Get many of the other Master Weavers here, Gracie?’

‘Quite a few.’

‘They’re the target then. What did they think of Bonneviot? How did he treat his business rivals? Was he doing well, or beginning to slip?’

Gracie inclined her head in agreement. She knew that would cause him acute discomfort. He had to bite the inside of his cheek hard to stop himself jumping up and covering that long, beautiful neck with kisses.

‘Sorry, Gracie. I really do have to go. I need to talk to your sister before she starts getting ready for this evening’s performance.’

‘You know she’ll tell me if you …’

‘I know. Merciful God! How you two work on me! My poor heart …’

Gracie laughed in a most unladylike way. ‘I’ve heard it said some people wear their heart on their sleeve, Ash. This is the first time I’ve met someone who wears his heart tucked in the front of his breeches!’

Foxe snatched up his portfolio and fled before his resolve crumbled altogether.

‘Have you been to my sister?’

Miss Catherine Catt – Kitty on the stage – was two years her sister’s junior with rich, auburn hair and the temper to match. Apart from that, the sisters closely resembled each other. Gracie was a little taller, a brown-eyed brunette with a slightly fuller figure. Kitty was more delicate and elfin-looking and had startling green eyes. Their father, Edward Catt, had been a prosperous local merchant who fell for the ravishing Peggie Lewisham, burlesque actress and dancer. She had given their two daughters her beauty. Their father had contributed both his brains and his business sense. The women’s morals were entirely their own choice.

Foxe nodded.

‘Did you …?’

He sighed. “No, Kitty. I’m sure you’ll ask her to be sure, but the answer is still no. I am well aware that it’s your turn next.’

‘One day, Ash, we’ll maybe meet you together.’

‘God in heaven, you’d need to give me warning! I can just about manage each of you alone. Together would be enough to put an end to me.’

‘But what a way to go!’

‘Stop it, Kitty! I’ve already had to fight your sister off. It’s too much to expect me to go through that all again. Look, to be fair, I’ll give you exactly what she extorted from me.’

The same long kiss, then a swift withdrawal, just in time to prevent Kitty’s hand from completing its journey to his groin.

‘This is business, Kitty. Behave!’

‘I am behaving.’

‘Badly! Now put your delightful little claws away, Kitty dear, and stop tormenting me.’

Sometimes he wondered why he subjected himself to their constant teasing. Was it just their beauty and eagerness for …? With Kitty so close he didn’t dare use the word, even to himself. Well, that was a good part of it, if he was being honest. Yet there was more. Both were uncommonly intelligent. Both were bold. Both were damn good actresses, even if one worked on a somewhat smaller and more intimate stage – or used to.

‘So, Ash. Business. Who am I to be this time?’

‘Don’t know yet, Kitty. I’m sure you know by now the mayor has asked me to look at Daniel Bonneviot’s murder.’

‘I didn’t, but I’m not surprised.’

Kitty didn’t have the same access to information as her sister, it appeared. That didn’t matter to Foxe, since he employed Kitty in quite a different capacity.

‘Yes … well, I’m going to need to talk to one or two of his close family members. I thought maybe we could revive one of our couples. You can be my beautiful young wife. I can be your rich but sour husband.’

Kitty clapped her hands. ‘Even better, we could attend to offer our condolences. You provide a manly shoulder for the widow to cry upon and I console the menfolk.’

‘Kitty! That is enough! If you won’t play properly, I won’t let you play at all.’

He was rewarded with a sullen pout and a sharp rap on the knee.

‘It may not even be those characters. I know almost nothing about the family at this point. The little I do know suggests that Bonneviot kept them all on a short rein, especially in terms of money. The son, I’ve been told, went to London to go on the stage.’

‘Bonneviot … might use a different stage name, of course … no, never heard of him.’

‘I can’t claim to be surprised. Your sister described him as a feeble object. It seems even her girls couldn’t coax a rise out of him, if you understand me.’

‘Pah! I don’t want to go near him then. Is he a molly?’

‘Nobody I have spoken to seems to know. But that’s beside the point for the moment. All I need from you today, my dear, is your assurance that you will help me, on the usual terms.’

‘All …?’

‘Catherine Catt! You are, I declare, a thoroughly shameless baggage!’

‘That’s why you love me, Ash.’

‘Alas, you are correct – at least in part. I also think you are beautiful, clever, bold and an extremely talented actress. You could be a star of the London stage, if only you could rouse yourself …’

‘Truce! Truce! If you go through all that again, I will scream. Apart from the beautiful, bold, clever and talented bit, of course. You can play that tune as often as you like. Very well, dearest Ash. I will assist you again, as you always knew I would. Now be off with you. I am playing the lead tonight and must prepare myself without unnecessary distractions.’

‘Oh,’ Foxe said. ‘That’s what you call it, is it?’

As he left, in some haste, Miss Kitty Catt’s hairbrush struck the door behind him, right where his head might have been. Thus, as he descended to the street, he mentally added accuracy in throwing to her many other talents.

A
t this stage
, Mr. Foxe needed most to see and feel how the dead man and those around him lived. He always did this at the start of any investigation. It was impossible to understand things otherwise. Nor could he frame the right questions until he could set them against the appropriate background.

That’s why, the next morning, Mr. Foxe the bookseller missed his normal morning coffee for once. Instead, he slipped out of the house and walked away towards the river.

The great city of Norwich was still enclosed, in large part, by its old city walls. These had such a large circuit that moving beyond them had not yet become necessary enough to change the city’s shape. Here in the northern quadrant, across the River Wensum, a district had grown up between the water and the walls. A distinctive neighbourhood, in many ways, and one devoted to weaving, spinning and the textile trade.

Starting in the days of Queen Elizabeth, a flood of Protestant refugees had left the Low Countries. For almost a hundred years, religious persecution drove them out. France, Spain and Austria fought over the lands they held. Who won mattered little. To these Catholic monarchs, so many Protestants would always be unacceptable.

The refugees scattered to the few Protestant countries open to them. Many settled in England, where most found London to their liking. Of those who moved on again, a majority favoured Norwich, England’s second city.

Relations with these immigrants, known as Strangers, were not always easy. Yet Norfolk already had long ties with the other shores of the German Ocean. A few generations saw the vast majority of Strangers mix into the local population and lose their distinct culture.

One of their remaining legacies to Norwich was this district just to the north of the river. Many of the Strangers had worked in the great cloth trades of Flanders. Their skills and industry had helped to lift Norwich to its present position as the premier place in England for the production and finishing of fine worsteds.

Foxe did not hurry. It was a fine day and he enjoyed the sights and sounds of the city along the way. To a visitor, buildings and streets would seem little different to those of any other great city, save in one thing: the scarcity of people abroad.

There was plenty of activity along the river though. Gangs of men loading or unloading barges and wherries. Carters moving between the warehouses which lined the quays. Shouts from within the boats’ holds and from those lined up to fetch and carry.

Foxe wandered along the quay amongst all the hustle and bustle. At first sight, you would have thought him indifferent to his surroundings. Yet he always seemed able to anticipate an obstruction and step aside in good time. In reality, he was drinking it all in. The cacophony of noises. The boats’ hulls banging against the quays. The heavy steps of the dockers. The creaking of wood and rope. The constant murmur of voices – now punctuated by a shout or a curse – mixed with the shrill yelping of the gulls. And the smells! Tar, hemp, wood, the stained water of the river, the sweat of those heaving on ropes or lifting sacks and bales. Even the cargoes added scents as you passed. Here was grain or malt going to Yarmouth to be shipped to London or overseas. There was coal for the city’s fires. Here teas, or spices, or bricks, or the roof tiles the Dutch boats used for ballast.

After he crossed the bridge, he turned to the right, towards the Cow Tower. That was where he recalled that Brock had said Daniel Bonneviot’s house lay. The street now angled away from the water, leaving a space filled by warehouses. All had one side open to the boats and the quays and the other to the street to provide entry to carts.

The sounds and scents changed also. Here was the clue to why Norwich’s streets often seemed oddly empty of people. This was a working city. From windows high in many of the houses came the constant slap and clatter of the weavers’ looms. As you passed by others, you could hear the low, rhythmic humming of spinning wheels. Along the quays, people worked and talked in the open air. Here the workers stayed hidden within. For long days – even for some nights too – they attended to the production of what were known as ‘Norwich stuffs’. The fine, glossy fabrics that were the city’s pride and its main source of income.

Foxe looked for an urchin. There would always be some about. Such children would be too young to work yet – which meant very young indeed. Instead they spent their time running errands, picking pockets, or playing in the streets and gutters. Their mothers and elder sisters worked at their spinning wheels. Their older brothers sat at the drawlooms in the garrets, pulling up the warp threads while their fathers threw the weft shuttle.

Finding such an urchin, Foxe enquired which was Bonneviot’s house.

‘You be too late, mister. T’others be there afore you, already beatin’ on the door. An that won’t do ‘em no good. That’s a hard man, that Bonneviot is. No wonder that’s got ‘is throat cut, as I ‘eard. A wonder ‘e wasn’t killed long afore this.’

‘What others? There’s a penny for a smart lad with the right answer.’

‘Don’t know who. But they be plenty riled up. A big group on ‘em. Summat about bein’ cheated out of what’s rightfully theirs. Look! ‘Ere they comes now. I told ‘e they’d get nothin’ from that place.’

A group of perhaps six or eight men was approaching.

‘Be that good enough for my penny, mister?’

Foxe paid up. He would go to look at Bonneviot’s house another time. Now he waited until the group passed him, all exchanging angry remarks and yelling curses over their shoulders towards the place they had just left. Then he wandered along behind them, not too close, but good enough to see where they went.

A
s Foxe expected
, the group went no further than a tavern some fifty yards or so from the bridge he had just crossed. For a while, he waited outside, lounging against a wall, until he judged they would be well enough settled with jugs of ale. Then he went within, ducking his head under the lintel and finding the level of noise even greater than he had expected. Indeed, he had almost to shout to the landlord in his stained and greasy apron, just now returning behind his bar, for his own pot of ale.

‘What’s all the fuss about?’ he asked.

‘No bloody idea,’ the landlord said. ‘They ain’t none of our regulars. If they thinks they can drown their sorrows in my ale, then wreck the place to work off their anger, they thinks wrong.’

He slid one hand under the counter and brought it up again, now wrapped around a fearsome wooden truncheon.

‘I should keep away from ’em, mister. Sit you over there in the corner. They’ll neither see nor bother you there. I can see at once you ain’t the disputatious type.’

Foxe followed the landlord’s advice. It was what he was going to do anyway. He’d be close enough there to hear what was going on, especially if they kept shouting as loudly as they were.

‘Bastard owed me nigh on five pounds! Who’s going’ to pay now, that’s what I wants to know. I got childer to feed.’

‘We all be in the same boat. Bonneviot owed me a tidy sum too. Kept pressin’ me to work faster and longer hours, then tries to cheat me out of the few shillin’ he agreed to pay.’

‘Someone did for ‘im though, din’t they. ‘E got what ‘e deserved. I hopes that’s black soul do go right to ‘ell. That’s where ‘e ought to be.’

‘Course, now that’s dead, who’ll pay anyhow? It’ll all be talk o’ wills and lawyers. More delaying while poor men starves.’

‘An’ ‘e weren’t the only one in this city playing suchlike tricks on ‘onest working men! All they masters be at the same game. As soon as they got any excuse, they lays us off. ‘Ow can we live like that, that’s what I wants to know.’

‘I say we comes back o’night and brings a few torches. Lobs ‘em through ‘is winders.’

‘Them bastard constables ‘ud be on us afore we even got there, I reckon. Old mayor an’ ‘is cronies be runnin’ scared o’ summin’ like that. This ‘ole place be full o’ constables after dark.’

‘I did see some fair flints in the street back there. Couldn’t we slip back and lob a few o’ them beauties through ‘is glassworks right now?’

This suggestion met with general agreement and some rapid downing of the remaining ale. Foxe slipped away before the others left. He wanted to be well clear before any trouble broke out. Besides, he’d learned a good deal of what he wanted to know. Maybe, if he hurried, he could fill in a few more blanks before it was time for dinner.

T
he trouble
with visiting all parts of the city, Foxe decided, was all the costume changes it demanded. You had to blend in sufficiently, or no one would speak a word in your presence. Without that, he could have gone at once to his next potential information source. But it would never do to arrive at Alderman Halloran’s home dressed as he was and expect to gain admittance.

Back home then. A word with Alfred to summon a chair. Foxe did not want the world and his wife to notice where he was going. A swift change into attire more suitable for the elegant and urbane bookseller visiting a rich customer. A wig and hat to top it all off. Then a few moments working out the questions he needed to ask, before the chair arrived.

All this, of course, depended on Halloran being at home. There might be a meeting of the City Council. He would take that chance.

Foxe sat well back in the chair to shield himself from the casual watcher and thought hard during the short trip to the alderman’s house.

What had Bonneviot been up to? As one of the master weavers in a city devoted to the cloth trade, he should be more than usually prosperous. Hadn’t Halloran said Bonneviot employed about thirty weavers. That was well above the usual number, so it marked him out as particularly successful.

A hard man. Would that alone account for him delaying payments to his workers? The habitual urge to demand quick payment and pay tardily? Foxe knew relations between the great men of the city and the thousands of self-employed workers were tense. The weavers, dyers, hot pressers and finishers, who produced the great bales of finished cloth sent to the London buyers, felt they didn’t get a fair share of the profits. That was why the people of Norfolk, and especially Norwich, had a reputation for being turbulent and fractious.

Someone had murdered Bonneviot. Had some angry worker come upon him, demanded his money and, being pushed aside, drawn a knife and killed his tormentor? Was it as simple as that? Or was this death planned and thought through in advance?

Foxe's luck was good. The alderman’s footman invited him inside, took his hat and stick and said he would ask his master if he was available to speak with a visitor. When he returned, he led the way into a pleasant parlour room where Halloran was waiting.

‘Surprised to see you so soon, Foxe. Solved it all?’

‘Not yet, Alderman. I have made one or two discoveries, however, that have raised questions I hope you can answer. At this stage, I would like to be sure I am at least on the right track.’

‘Glad to see you so busy. Mr. Mayor has already been bothering me for news. I gather his informants are telling him there may be some move to attack the premises of the city’s master weavers. Quite a few men have been laid off in the past few weeks. Being hungry and without work brings a powerful urge to hit out at someone.’

’That’s one of my questions, alderman. I thought our cloth trade was healthy. Yet this implies some master weavers at least have less business that they once did.’

‘What you have to understand, Foxe, is that the trade has constants ups and downs. The men in London who buy our cloth are prey to people’s whims. One minute, fine satin is all the rage in the capital. The next it’s muslin or damasks. Then only silk will do – or camlacoes or camblets. And that’s without reckoning on the ups and downs in people’s wealth or willingness to buy. About the only trade that’s steady is bombazine for mourning dresses.’

‘A difficult trade overall, then.’

‘And one in the hands of those same London merchants. The weavers and merchants of Halifax have long sold much of their produce abroad. There demand may be rising, even as home demand is falling. Thus it evens out.’

‘Do our master weavers not sell abroad too, sir?’

‘Most certainly. But almost always through those same London dealers. To trade overseas requires a good deal of capital, which our men lack. Prices may be good, but you may wait long for payment. Meanwhile, you have to meet your own costs.’

‘Ah, now I see, sir. But that would apply to the whole of the Norfolk cloth trade, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes it would, Foxe. But these new manufactories in the north of the country use machines, even if the quality suffers. That means their costs are lower than ours. We still use independent workers in their own homes. We can only survive by cutting our costs to the bone in hard times. That means low wages and people paid off.’

‘So if Bonneviot did this, he wouldn’t be acting unusually for a Norwich master weaver?’

‘Ah, Bonneviot. A hard man, as I said before. No, everyone has to lay people off sometimes. But Bonneviot … Bonneviot cut hard and he cut fast. Most of us don’t like putting good men out of work. We try to wait fashion out or reduce costs in other ways first. Not Bonneviot. At the first sniff of weak trade, out they went. People reckoned he enjoyed showing how powerful he was.’

‘So why work for him?’

‘Simple. He was the largest single employer – or one of the largest. Besides, if you complained or failed to turn up when he needed you, you wouldn’t work for him again. In some cases, so the stories go, he even put false rumours about of thieving so no other master would take the man on either.’

‘Another question, alderman, if I may. You told me the other day you had sold him yarn. But you implied you’d only done it from time to time. I think those were your exact words.’

‘Bonneviot didn’t like to pay even a quarter as much as he liked to collect payments due to him. He’d find reasons to delay, or complain about the quality, or simply say he’d forgotten. However he did it, you’d find yourself waiting for months for him to settle your account. My business is large enough to be able to avoid customers like that. Others weren’t so fortunate.’