Page 23 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

T he peer has been brought into the house and laid on the mattress in the main chamber.

The body lies now on its back, displaying the eyes masked with mud, the mouth’s gasping desperation frozen in death.

They have removed his long-gown, laying it on the coffer.

The front and sleeves of it are heavily soiled and still wet from the mud in which he lay, the back muddily scuffed but drying.

His nightshirt from chin to hem, his shins, his feet, are all mired.

It seems wrong to leave a man to appear sightless in death. Why should they not pay His Lordship the respect of washing? If Sir Malcolm objects later, Oliver Sanderson will bear witness that the coroner released the body.

There are cloths to hand in a basin of water, ready for the washing.

She takes one, wrings it out and starts to wipe away the mud, cleaning the eyes first. Continually rinsing, she gradually clears the mud from around the nose and mouth, then the cheeks, chin and neck, rinsing through the beard.

As she cleans the temples, the forehead, ‘See there, close to the hairline? See this discoloration, the break in the skin. He was struck.’

‘Hard enough to stun him?’ Philip says. ‘But not to render him witless?’

She tries to compass the intent that must have existed, deliberately to strike fast and true, to remove the victim to a place where he could be smothered with ease and in silence.

How could anyone deliberately do this? It worms into her imagination, spawns a sense of the remorse that can never be assuaged.

If remorse even reaches this killer. A cold, pitiless heart was how Philip expressed it.

Almost she can feel sorry for such a one, forever burdened by the irreversible act.

But for a motive, all she has to go on is a group of people, any of whom may be concealing their true feelings about their former master.

Philip is still wiping away mud. ‘They hit twice. See this bruise here.’

She leans to look. ‘Or they struck once, this side, and he fell, hitting his head.’

‘On the hall floor?’

A thought strikes her, ‘Or the screens passage. If your uncle heard something last night, he would have come down, I suppose?’

‘To check on the boxes, undoubtedly he would,’ Philip confirms. ‘And that reminds me.’ He pulls at the strings of his uncle’s nightshirt to loosen them.

From the neck he lifts away a cord holding a small key.

‘His linenfold box.’ He slips it over his head and tucks it down beneath his shirt.

‘Someone knew something, enough to persuade them to rifle through my uncle’s goods.

’ He frowns. ‘But no one could have known. Except our people.’

‘And my people,’ she says reluctantly, but he negates that.

‘You didn’t cause that accident, had no warning we would come here.’

‘Somebody got in, somehow,’ she says. A thought flits through her mind. Might one of his Lordship’s men have stayed in the house when the others went out to their loft? How to suggest it without offence …?

But Philip is onto another thought. ‘Our people have been with us since Paris. They’ve had plenty of opportunity …’ He breaks off.

‘Opportunity?’ she prompts.

‘We had a bad crossing and my uncle was vexed that the boxes were thrown about in the storm. But what if someone disordered them in searching through?’

‘More than one person,’ she says. ‘Some of those boxes needed two to move them.’

‘Jackson?’ he says. ‘Pearce? They’ve been with the Hardcastles for years. My uncle wouldn’t be driven by anyone but Jackson. Farley and Larkin we hired in London for the journey, they didn’t know us before.’

‘The Frenchwomen?’

Philip gives a bleak smile. ‘Can you see Louise hauling one of those boxes? She’d just about manage the linenfold box. Could Honorine? In the middle of the night, on a tossing boat? She doesn’t strike me as strong enough for two. Perhaps someone was following us,’ Philip concludes.

‘And got into this house unseen?’ she asks. ‘It’s not possible.’ Unless with all the coming and going of arrival we simply didn’t notice? A dark December day, the ins and out of unfamiliar faces?

Philip continues his thought. ‘That was what my uncle thought. He said—’

He breaks off at a knock on the door downstairs. Glancing down from the chamber window Alice sees the tailor who was one of the jurymen, supporting another figure.

‘Who is it?’ Philip asks, coming to join her.

‘It looks as if they’ve found Louise.’ She tries to imagine what it must have been like for Louise and Honorine, travelling terrified through hostile, Catholic France.

But here in Protestant England, couldn’t Louise have helped her sister just a little, by accepting her guidance and staying in their chamber?

As she heads for the stairs, Philip’s last comment about being followed echoes in her mind. What was that about?

Downstairs, a pathetic sight greets her. Head bowed under the cap, leaning into his shoulder, his arm protectively round her shoulders, Louise indeed. Apron to her eyes, sobbing softly, her clothes damp with patches of dark at the knees.

‘Louise, we were so worried about you. Are you well? You are not hurt?’ Unthinking Alice has spoken English and with Louise looking out with reddened eyes above the apron held to her face, it is the tailor who answers.

‘I believe Mam’selle is unhurt. She is in great distress, as you see, was like this when I found her.’

‘Come in,’ she says. ‘At least she is safe, thank Heaven. How did you find her?’

‘I know no French,’ the tailor tells her.

‘I pointed to myself and told her I too am Huguenot , which seemed to reassure her.’ He smiles as Louise shyly glances up at him, nodding her head.

‘Yes, Huguenot, that’s what I said, didn’t I?

You see,’ he says, turning back to Alice, ‘my name is Corvin. My father was a young man when he persuaded his parents to flee from France last century. Their name was Cauvin .’

‘And it has changed over the years to Corvin?’

‘I believe they felt it politic to anglicise the spelling. Most Englishmen take a French-sounding surname to mean a Catholic. Even Jehan Cauvin is known here as John Calvin.’

And Calvinists are the very opposite of Catholics.

‘Come through,’ she says, ushering them both to the winter parlour.

‘Master Corvin, I am very grateful to you for bringing her back. Now, Louise, soyez confortable et calmez-vous. Tout va bien .’ All is well?

she wonders. All is far from well. ‘Where did you find her?’

Louise dabs at her eyes with her apron as she seats herself on the backstool by the fire, heaving the occasional shuddering breath. At least she is no longer crying.

‘The others went along the road,’ Master Corvin tells Alice, ‘but I thought, if she is fleeing she will be afeared and is like to hide when she hears people coming. So I walked through the woods to Master Renwick’s place down towards town, then I simply quartered the way back and suddenly there she was, not so far from here as it turns out.

On her knees, hiding behind a bush, but she came out soon enough when I was able to reassure her and she allowed me to bring her back.

I doubt she understood one word in ten, but it seems the name of my grandparents, and “ Huguenot ”, decided her. ’

‘I shall send her sister in here while she dries her clothes and warms herself,’ Alice says, and translates for Louise.

‘Perhaps Honorine will persuade a better explanation out of her than I would.’ And explanation there will have to be, to satisfy Sir Malcolm and Justice Townsend that she was not fleeing because of any wrongdoing .

With Joe dispatched to advise Sir Malcolm and the other searchers that Louise is found safe, Alice returns to the two girls in the winter parlour.

Honorine does her best to explain to Alice the terror she and her sister experienced getting out of La Rochelle, the fear-filled journey through Catholic France to Paris, their abandonment at the very door where they believed they would find refuge.

And then finding Lord Hardcastle’s house and making the voyage to England where their hopes rose for a safe future in London.

Finally the dashing of those hopes on hearing of His Lordship’s violent death.

Louise, the timid one, panicked and took flight, convincing herself that London was a mere mile or two away.

The only thought in her mind was to find sanctuary.

Alice comprehends enough of the explanation.

Honorine herself is scared of possible accusation but trying to exonerate her sister who was utterly convinced the two of them would be branded murderers if they stayed.

Alice summons more hard-learned French as she replies, ‘Does Louise realise that she was going in the completely wrong direction when Master Corvin found her?’

Honorine shrugs, at a loss. ‘Myself, I suppose I would not know the direction to London. We have made the journey in the luggage coach which had the shutters at the windows and we could hardly see the road through the cracks. We were not emerged until we were arrived in your courtyard.’

I ought to be more in sympathy, Alice reminds herself.

In a strange country, a frightened girl would as likely choose the wrong way as the right.

‘Well, please persuade Louise that she must stay in this house now. I will be with you to translate when the coroner or the justice ask their questions, and I will do my best to help you.’

Even Honorine is out of temper with her sister. ‘Louise has more of good fortune than she merits,’ Honorine replies, with a quelling look in her sister’s direction. ‘She knows she has caused a great fracas and is truly repentant.’