The Green Man (20 page)

‘Unbelievable,' commented Albany, and looked as though he meant it. ‘Did you never exert your rights as a husband and compel her to obey your wishes?'

Rab Sinclair hung his head, somewhat shamefaced.

‘I couldn't,' he said. ‘I loved her too much to risk upsetting her. Don't misunderstand me, my lord. She never repulsed me, never said no. She did her duty, always. She never pleaded headaches or any of the other womanly excuses – except, of course, when she had the flux – and I had always assumed that she got as much pleasure from the act of love as I did. Women aren't passionate creatures, like men. It would be unseemly if they were. Not the sort of women one marries, that is. Whores, naturally, are different.' He paused for a moment, plainly looking back at a misspent youth with considerable pleasure, before continuing, ‘So, you can imagine, my lord, the horror and sense of betrayal with which I read, actually read in her very own words, detailed descriptions of her lovemaking with another man.'

‘So how did Mistress Sinclair refer to this other man?' I asked, interested now in spite of myself and my hunger. ‘She must have called him something.'

Albany nodded in agreement.

‘She simply called him by an initial. J.' Rab Sinclair spread his hands in a despairing gesture. ‘J. How many James and Johns are there, do you suppose, in this city alone?'

‘How did you come across this “book”? This diary?' I asked, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees. ‘Surely Mistress Sinclair was not so careless as to leave it where you could find it?'

‘No, of course not.' He spared me a fleeting glance before turning back to the duke. ‘Aline had gone for a day or two to visit her old aunt, who lives in Roslin. I don't know if you recollect the woman, my lord? Margaret Sinclair, the sister of Aline's grandfather and the only living kin that she and her brother had left since the death of their parents. Anyway, be that as it may, my wife had gone to visit her because word had reached us that the old lady had been ill.'

‘You didn't accompany Mistress Sinclair?' I broke in to enquire, and got a dirty look for my pains. (I was beginning to get the impression that Rab didn't like me. In his eyes, I was a low-born interloper poking my long nose into his affairs; but as it was his master, the duke, who had introduced me into their counsels, he was forced to conceal his antagonism as best he could.)

‘No, there was no need of my presence. Her brother, John, escorted her.' He suddenly seemed a little bewildered. ‘Where was I? What was it you wanted to know?'

‘How you came to discover this confession of Aline's,' Albany prompted gently. ‘You say she'd gone to see her great-aunt for a day or two, so obviously she wasn't in the house when you stumbled across it.'

Rab Sinclair pushed a hand through his thick, dark hair.

‘It wasn't I who found it,' he said. ‘It was Maria Beton, my housekeeper. She was cleaning out our bedchamber the day after Aline left. She said it was a good chance to do so, because, when she was at home, Aline spent so much time up there, in that little window embrasure overlooking the street, that she could never find the time to clean it properly. It's not,' he interrupted himself indignantly, ‘that I hadn't made provision for a solar for Aline when we wed. There's a little room on the ground floor at the back, overlooking a scrap of garden, which I said could be hers. But she preferred the front of the house, where there's more to see.'

‘Understandable,' I murmured, and was treated to another glance of distaste.

Albany frowned at me. ‘Go on, Rab,' he urged. ‘And as quickly as you can, man! It's past dinnertime and my Cousin Gloucester will be wondering where I am.'

I endorsed this sentiment with a firm nod and the determination not to distract Master Sinclair with any more questions unless it was absolutely necessary. I did feel, however, that a little prompting wouldn't come amiss, our informant, judging by his vague expression, being not quite sure at which point he had arrived in his story.

‘Your housekeeper found the book while cleaning out your and Mistress Sinclair's bedchamber. Whereabouts exactly did she discover it? It must have been well hidden not to have come to either your, or her, attention earlier.'

There I was again, not two minutes after making my resolution breaking it almost at once. I just could not curb my natural curiosity.

‘Maria – Mistress Beton, that is – had long wanted to turn out a corner cupboard that Aline had brought with her as a bride and which she normally kept locked. Oh, I had seen inside it many times, and as far as I knew it contained nothing more than a few childhood keepsakes, the gown she wore on our wedding day (and which, for some reason, she had not wished to store in her general coffer with the rest of her clothes) and a cedarwood box holding a few bits of jewellery belonging to her mother. That was all.'

‘Why did Mistress Beton wish to turn it out?' I'm not sure who asked the question, myself or Albany, but it was probably in both our minds.

Rab Sinclair looked surprised.

‘Dust. Spiders lurking along the shelves. Maria Beton,' he added heatedly, ‘is a very house-proud woman. It bothered her to think that the cupboard had never been properly cleaned. And when she discovered that my wife had left the key to it behind, she thought it a splendid opportunity to do so at last.'

‘And the parchment leaves – the diary, I suppose, if one may call it that – was inside?'

‘Yes. Concealed in the folds of the wedding gown.' Rab Sinclair shivered. ‘When Maria shook out the folds of the skirt, in case the moths had got into it, the parchment leaves fell out. We could both see at once that the pages were covered in Aline's writing, so naturally Maria handed it to me.'

‘So you read it?'

‘Wouldn't you have done?'

Albany chuckled. ‘He has you there, Roger.'

I was forced to admit he had. If I had discovered a diary in Adela's handwriting, I would have been unable to resist the temptation to read what she had to say. Besides, wives have no business to conceal things from their husbands: the luxury of secrets is a man's prerogative, not a woman's.

‘So you found out that Aline had a lover.'

The duke began rubbing his cramped thighs preparatory to standing up. He told me to shout for the gaoler, but before I could do so, Master Sinclair exclaimed urgently, ‘But not only that!'

Albany's waning attention was rearrested. He had half-risen from the bed, but at these words, sat down again.

‘What else then?'

‘My lord!' His friend leaned forward, grabbing unceremoniously at a velvet sleeve. ‘My lord, a whole page – more – was devoted to the different ways she and her lover had thought up to kill me. Poison; an arranged accident; stabbing, making it look as if an intruder had broken in at night; drowning; and other ways I can't remember for the moment. It was obvious that they were planning to murder me, my lord!'

This put a different complexion on the matter. I asked the one question that mattered. ‘Where is the book now?'

‘I don't know.'

‘What do you mean, you don't know?' Albany seized his friends by both hands and shook them. ‘You still have the book? You kept it, of course? You confronted Aline with it when she returned home?'

‘Not at once. I was too shocked. I didn't really believe what I'd seen. I … I put it back in the cupboard, under the folds of the wedding gown where Maria had found it. I was so shaken, I was ill for several days. Mistress Beton will confirm what I say.'

‘Did you tell her what you had discovered?'

‘No. How could I? It was too horrible.'

Albany asked angrily, ‘Didn't you have the sense to show her the diary?' But Rab Sinclair just shook his head.

‘I was too ashamed. And I still wasn't sure that it wasn't some kind of horrible joke.'

‘But when Mistress Sinclair came back from Roslin, surely you tackled her about it eventually? What did she say?'

‘She denied everything. She became quite hysterical. She said I was making it up. She challenged me to produce the … the diary.'

‘So? Did you?' Again, I don't know whether it was the duke or myself who spoke, but I feel sure that the same question was on both our lips.

Rab Sinclair shook his head.

‘No. When I went upstairs to fetch it and confront her with it, it had gone.'

S
omeone had to ask the stupid question, so I saved Albany the embarrassment and framed it myself.

‘What do you mean, gone? Are you certain?'

Rab Sinclair turned on me savagely. ‘Of course I'm certain,' he snarled. I thought he was going to strike me.

The duke again clasped his friend's arm.

‘Robert! Rab! Calm yourself. Roger just needs to make sure. Did you search the cupboard thoroughly?'

Master Sinclair controlled his temper with an effort.

‘I had everything out of it. I shook out the wedding gown. I scraped with my nails along the back and sides of each shelf to ensure that there was no crack between it and the cupboard wall where the diary could have lodged.' He raised his hands in a despairing gesture. ‘Mind you, I don't need anyone to tell me that that was a waste of time. The parchment sheets were too big, and the knots of ribbon that bound them too thick, to permit of such a thing happening. I merely mention it to demonstrate how desperate I was. No,' he finished on a quieter note, ‘it had vanished.'

‘But who might have taken it?' I asked. ‘Do you suspect your housekeeper, this … this Maria Beton?'

‘Of course not!' His anger flared again as he leaped to his servant's defence, before once more controlling his emotions. ‘Why should she? She had no idea of the diary's contents.'

‘Normal curiosity,' I suggested. ‘Mistress Beton must have seen that when you read them they upset you. Surely it would only be human nature to want to find out what the diary said. Had you locked the cupboard again after you replaced it?'

Master Sinclair shifted uncomfortably.

‘Yes,' he admitted at last. ‘But I left the key where Maria had found it, on a neighbouring shelf. All right! Perhaps, with hindsight, it was a foolish thing to do, but I was so upset at the time that I couldn't think properly. Besides,' he added defiantly, ‘I trust Maria totally. She is a distant kinswoman of Aline's and has been with us since we were married.'

‘Nevertheless, the diary vanished,' Albany pointed out grimly. ‘And according to you, she was the sole person, apart from yourself, with the slightest knowledge of its existence and where it was hidden. As Roger says, her curiosity to know what was in it – what had disturbed you so greatly – must have been extreme. And the key was there to her hand, where you had left it.'

‘But why would she steal it?'

The duke gave vent to a splutter of laughter. ‘My dear friend, don't be so naïve! To blackmail Aline, of course. Once she had mastered the contents, Mistress Beton could have held them over Aline's head and wrung from her anything she wanted.'

Master Sinclair, who seemed to have shrunk back into his corner while we talked, suddenly sat forward, flapping his hands.

‘No! No, she couldn't. Maria can't read.'

Albany and I were both stricken to silence by this information. Our chief suspect – the obvious and, as far as we were concerned, the only one – had been snatched from us.

‘Well,' I said grudgingly, ‘that necessarily puts a different complexion on the matter.' I thought for a moment or two, while Albany looked equally nonplussed. At last, I said, ‘Leave that for now. Let's go back to Mistress Sinclair's denial of any knowledge of the diary after her return from her aunt's. When you failed to produce it, what happened then?'

‘She maintained her total ignorance of any such object. She became even more hysterical, accusing me – me! – of having a mistress and of fabricating this tissue of lies – that was what she called it – in order to divorce her.'

‘Did she say who this mistress of yours was supposed to be?'

‘No, how could she? For she knew as well as I did that there is no one; that I have always been faithful to her and her alone. I swear on our Saviour's suffering on the Cross that this is the truth.'

I didn't much care for Robert Sinclair, but I reckoned it would take great courage to swear such a tremendous oath if he were lying. The fear of eternal damnation, of roasting for ever in the fires of Hell, would surely deter him as it would us all.

Albany evidently thought the same, for he sprang to his feet and went to put an arm about the other man's shoulders, once more exhorting him to be calm. ‘We believe you, Rab. We believe you.'

‘Master Sinclair,' I broke in, ‘where was your wife's brother while all this was taking place? You told me he had accompanied his sister to their aunt's house at … at …'

‘Roslin.' Albany supplied me yet again with the name.

‘Roslin,' I repeated, trying to commit it to memory. ‘So,' I continued, ‘he had presumably brought her home.'

‘Yes. But naturally I said nothing to Aline until Johnnie had left to go to his own house in the Grassmarket. It was their parents' home. He still lives there.'

I nodded. ‘So, after he left you confronted your wife with your knowledge of the diary. What happened next?'

‘I told you. She denied the accusation frantically. She pretended to be hysterical …'

‘Pretended?'

‘All right,' was the snapped response. ‘Perhaps she really was frightened by the realization that I had discovered the diary and was aware of its contents. But by the time she had challenged me to produce it, and by the time I had searched for the thing upstairs and been forced to admit that I couldn't find it, she was perfectly calm. Moreover, she had had the opportunity to think. She must have known that, from then on, I should be on my guard. Any hope she had cherished of planning my murder to look like an accident was gone. She had to do something quickly. I can't imagine what was in her mind, or how she hoped to explain my death afterwards, but she ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife that Maria uses for cutting meat. I had followed her, and when she turned round and came at me, clutching it in her hand, I knew she meant to use it. I struggled with her furiously and finally got possession of the handle, but as I did so, she must have slipped and fallen forward on to the point of the knife. The blade entered her heart. She died immediately.'