The Green Man (24 page)

‘Matter? Why … n-nothing,' I stammered, feeling extremely foolish. ‘Nothing.'

She followed the direction of my gaze and laughed, but without displaying any sign of real amusement.

‘Oh, that medallion,' she said. ‘Those eyes staring up at you! They are very lifelike, are they not? The embroidery is remarkable. In fact the whole coverlet is extraordinarily well done.' She came to stand beside me, stooping to smooth the quilt with one admiring hand.

‘The Green Man,' I murmured. ‘A strange conceit for a bed-covering.'

‘Not for the St Clairs. Or Sinclairs, as the name goes now-adays.' She glanced sideways at me. ‘The chapel at Roslin, built by the last Earl of Orkney forty years ago, is almost a shrine to the Green Man, there are so many heads carved into the wood and stonework. You have not been there?'

I shook my head. ‘No. Although my lord of Albany was very anxious to make a detour to visit it as we approached Edinburgh the day before yesterday, but the Duke of Gloucester forbade it.' I looked round at the housekeeper as I spoke and realized, by the sudden lowering of her sandy lashes and the slight flush that stained her cheeks, that she had been regarding me with an intensity which, had I noticed it earlier, I might have found unnerving. However, I gave no sign of having marked anything untoward and asked, ‘Does the Green Man have any special significance for the Sinclair family? I caught sight of a beam end, downstairs in the solar, which also showed his head.'

‘Special significance?' she repeated, then paused a fraction of a second too long to make her subsequent denial truly convincing. ‘No. I do not think so. The Green Man is, of course, a symbol of fertility, of renewal, but that is all.'

‘Who embroidered this coverlet?' I enquired. ‘Mistress Sinclair?'

‘Aline?' Maria Beton was scornful. ‘She was not a skilful enough needlewoman. No, it was made many years ago by her grandmother's mother. Or maybe, perhaps, by her mother. I do not know.' She hesitated, then said, ‘May I ask why the Green Man seems to disturb you so much?'

It was my turn to be on the defensive.

‘Disturb me? No, no! No such thing. As you say, those eyes are very lifelike; the embroidery superb. At a quick glance, it was as if someone were looking up at me. It gave me a bit of shock, that's all.' As I spoke, I laid hold of the quilt and began pulling it off the bed.

‘What are you doing?' Mistress Beton demanded indignantly, clawing at my arm with restraining fingers.

I shook myself free.

‘I'm stripping the bed,' I answered, ‘just to make certain that the diary has not somehow or other become entangled with, or hidden in, the coverings.'

‘How could that have happened?' Her tone was furious.

And she was quite right to be angry. I was not even clutching at straws now, but at thin air. I knew very well that I should find nothing, but continued just the same to strip the bed of all its furnishings, even shaking the curtains and climbing on the stool again to inspect the top of the canopy, simply in order to convince myself that I was doing something useful. The truth was that I had no more idea where this diary, so vital to proving Rab Sinclair's innocence, was concealed than I had when I entered the house half an hour and more ago.

I stared in frustration at the pile of bed linen, pillows and feather mattress heaped on the floor. I bent to heave the latter back into its wooden frame, but Maria Beton snapped, ‘Leave it! I'll see to it later. When you've gone,' she added pointedly, and led the way downstairs again. She made no effort to return to the solar, but stood in the passageway, one hand on the latch of the street door, a foot tapping impatiently on the flagstones.

However, I made no immediate move to depart.

‘Mistress,' I said imploringly, ‘can you think of no one else besides your neighbour who entered this house on either Saturday or Sunday last?' A thought occurred to me. ‘Did neither you nor Master Sinclair go to church on Sunday?'

But I was doomed to disappointment here as well.

‘No.' She did not elaborate and I had no choice but to accept this brusque and unadorned negative. I sighed.

‘Then I won't bother you any further, Mistress, except to thank you for your courtesy in receiving me. Meantime, if you do remember anything, or if the diary suddenly comes to light, you may send a message to the castle to any one of the Duke of Albany's servants.' I executed a brief bow. ‘I'll relieve you of my presence and go to call on Mistress Callender.'

The housekeeper frowned and gestured angrily.

‘Do you really need to bother the goodwife? She can tell you nothing. Nothing! She will not like to be questioned.'

I doubted this. My experience as a chapman had taught me that in general goodwives, bored and lonely by the middle of the day, were only too glad to talk to anyone who was not either a debt or a rent collector. Mistress Callender might, of course, prove to be an exception to the rule, but if that were indeed the case, I should have to rely on my well-practised charm. (I could hear Adela's mocking laughter echoing in my head.) It also struck me that Maria Beton's agitation on behalf of her neighbour was not consonant with her general air of self-containment and indifference to her fellow creatures. I was more than ever determined to call next door.

Mistress Callender was every bit as pleased to see me, and every bit as voluble as I had expected her to be. A little, bird-like woman of indeterminate age – she could have been anything between forty and sixty – with exceedingly bright blue eyes (an ugly, almost kingfisher blue), I was in possession of her life's history within quarter of an hour of entering the house.

She was the widow of a carpet-maker who had left her in comfortable, if not affluent, circumstances, sole owner of this comparatively recently built house close to the castle ward, and with sufficient savings to maintain it as a lady would wish. For she desired to assure me that she was indeed a lady, daughter of a gentleman and gentlewoman as I could probably tell by the fact that she spoke English with a fluency taught her at her mother's knee, and not the broad Scots dialect used by so many of her neighbours.

‘For my mother, sir, was an Englishwoman. Only from just over the Border, it is true, but English nevertheless. And she never did hold with the Scots' tongue, even though my dear father would speak it occasionally, to her great distress. I must admit that I do use it myself now and then, but only when forced to.' She smiled, batting surprisingly thick eyelashes at me, suddenly coquettish. ‘You, I think, are not from these parts?'

We were by this time seated in her upstairs parlour, for her house was one, like most of the others, with an outside staircase and I thought I had glimpsed a cow and a sheep peering at me from the ground floor casement, but I had been hurried past before I had time to be certain. The parlour was a comfortable chamber with cushions distributed the whole length of a settle pulled up in front of a small, but very welcome, fire burning on the hearth which was set, as modern hearths were, in the wall instead of in the centre of the room. Chimneys were now much in vogue, even here in the wild, barbarian north. The floor was covered not with the usual rushes but with a beautifully woven carpet in vivid greens and reds and yellows, a rare luxury even in the more decadent south and something I had never seen before except once, in a royal palace. I complimented my hostess on it.

She flushed with pleasure and suspended the story of her life to assure me that it was an example of her late husband's work and as fine an example of the carpet-maker's art as you would find anywhere in Scotland or, indeed, in England.

‘For my dear Thomas said to me, “Annuciata,” he said, “why should we not have the comfort of my trade as well as those whom God, in His wisdom, has seen fit to set over us?” And I agreed with him.'

I nodded vigorously to demonstrate that I, too, was in agreement with the late Master Callender's sentiments; then before the widow could continue with her narrative, I proceeded to enlarge on the brief explanation for my presence that I had been able to give her when she first answered my knock at her door. The realization, not perfectly understood until then, that I was working on behalf of no less a personage than the Duke of Albany – possibly her future king, as I was at pains to emphasize – finally stemmed Mistress Callender's recital of her own concerns and made her more than eager to cooperate with anything I wished to know.

Not that she wouldn't have eventually got round to the murder next door, for it was plainly the most exciting occurrence in her life so far, but from the moment she accepted that I was an emissary of royalty – even renegade royalty – she became even more loquacious than before.

‘I was the one who found them, you know.' Her voice rose a little as the full horror of that moment returned to her. ‘They were in the kitchen. Aline was lying on her back on the floor, and just for a moment I thought she'd slipped and fallen and that Master Sinclair was trying to help her to her feet. Then I saw the knife in his hand, dripping with blood. Aline's blood.' Mistress Callender's tone was shrill now and she had gone rather pale. There was no doubt that the memory affected her deeply. ‘He had stabbed her, right through the heart.'

One of her hands fluttered towards me. I took and held it in a sustaining clasp as I was plainly meant to do while making sympathetic noises.

‘It must have been a terrible moment for you. Why had you gone in there?'

‘I saw Aline and her brother return some while earlier and thought it would be neighbourly to call and welcome her home. Maria had told me on the Friday that she – Aline – had gone to visit her aunt at Roslin, accompanied by Master Buchanan, and would be away two or three nights. So I waited until I saw her brother leave, and then I … I …'

I pressed her hand before releasing it. ‘I understand,' I said. ‘And after that?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't remember really. I think I screamed and ran into the street … and went on screaming. I recall a lot of people surrounding me, shouting and asking questions, but I think, after that, I must have fainted, because the next thing I remember is being in a neighbour's house and her husband forcing whisky down my throat.' She shuddered delicately. ‘Such a horrid drink.'

‘You say that Mistress Beton had told you of Mistress Sinclair's visit to Roslin on the Friday. How … How did that come about?'

‘I'd gone in there with a recipe for quince jelly that I'd promised Maria. She and I often exchange recipes. She's not quite so good a cook as I am, but she tries.'

I doubted if Mistress Beton would agree with this dictum, but held my peace.

So far everything Mistress Callender had told me agreed with the testimony of both Rab Sinclair and the housekeeper. It was time to probe a little deeper.

‘Had you ever had reason to believe,' I asked, ‘that Mistress Sinclair had a lover?'

My companion's extraordinary blue eyes opened to their widest extent.

‘A lover?' she breathed. ‘Aline?'

I nodded. The idea was plainly new to her.

‘No, never,' she answered. ‘She wouldn't. Not Aline. Why, she adored Robert.' She paused, then added slowly, ‘But I would have said that he adored her, as well.'

‘So why did he kill her?'

‘He … He said it was an accident. Of course! I'd forgotten until this moment, but I can remember him shouting it after me as I ran from the kitchen.'

‘Yet when you saw him stooping over Mistress Sinclair's body, that wasn't your impression?'

‘No. I mean yes. Or do I? I don't know. Sir, you're confusing me.'

‘I'm sorry.' I took her hand again and patted it. ‘Think back, Mistress. Clear your mind of all I've said to you. Just think of what you saw when you entered the room.'

She stared at me, all coquetry forgotten. I could feel that she was trembling. After a moment or two, however, she answered quietly, ‘I thought – I was sure – that he had killed her. But maybe I was wrong. Perhaps it was an accident …'

‘Why did you think Master Sinclair had killed his wife?' I insisted. ‘You knew them both. You believed that they adored one another. So why would you think, even for a moment, that he'd murdered her?' She was silent, mulling over what I had said. ‘Did you,' I went on, ‘hear raised voices as you entered the Sinclairs' house?'

Somewhat to my surprise, she shook her head decidedly. ‘No, all was quiet as far as I can recall.' Then, suddenly, she gave a brief nod. ‘Yes, I remember now. It was the expression on Robert's face as he looked down at her that made me think he'd killed Aline.'

‘What sort of expression? Can you describe it?'

Mistress Callender closed her eyes for a second or two, frowning.

‘I'm not sure,' she said at last, withdrawing her hand from mine and pressing it to her forehead. ‘In fact the more I think about it, the less reason there seems to be for me to have suspected what I did. I suppose it was simply shock that prompted my behaviour. And yet …'

‘Go on,' I urged. ‘Try to picture the scene again in your mind's eye. It's not so long ago, after all.'

Obediently she closed her eyes once more and concentrated hard, but finally gave a little sigh and shook her head.

‘No. I'm sorry. But I do assure you, sir, that something at the time made me take fright. And if you are saying that Aline had taken a lover that would surely explain any untoward expression of Master Sinclair's that I might have seen.' The full import of what I had been hinting at suddenly struck her; and the bird-like features sharpened with curiosity. ‘But who says that Aline had taken a lover? Maria Beton? You don't want to believe everything she tells you, that's for certain. It's my opinion that she's in love with Robert Sinclair herself. I wouldn't put it past her to have tried to poison his mind against his wife.'