Page 25 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

S he has thought hard about this. Clearly Philip did not mention any nocturnal venture to the coroner.

If he had, the assumptions of both coroner and jurors could have been very different.

Is that his reason for withholding such information?

She has no right to expect confidences from Philip, but his uncle is dead and “I wasn’t there to protect him” is what Philip said to her.

Now she sees a different meaning to his words. There is nothing for it.

Philip is not in the stable loft. When she asks, there is a surly response from his four men, who are not playing dice but sitting or lying around aimless. An atmosphere of suspicion swirls like pipe smoke, stalking the dim air between the makeshift beds.

She finds him in the winter parlour writing at the table facing the window. Before him sits his uncle’s linenfold box, lid open, displaying blank sheets within. A few completed letters lie on the table. His ink bottle stands to one side, next to it a small knife for sharpening the quill.

‘I am glad I find you alone, My Lord,’ she says. ‘I hope I do not disturb you.’

He puts the quill aside. ‘I need to let various people know of my uncle’s death. Cranley offered to do it but I sent him back to his chamber to rest.’

‘He is in no state for any task, I believe,’ she says.

‘I’m finding this hard enough myself, so I welcome distraction. How can I serve you?’ This is a serious Philip, matured in just two days from the jesting young man atop the overturned coach. She finds herself hoping hard that he will give her an open and honest answer.

‘There is a question I need to ask you,’ she says, moving towards the hearth to add a log to the fire.

‘I’ve not heard the coroner’s verdict, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘I understand it has not been announced,’ she says, sliding round the point. ‘No, it’s about yourself.’ And then, for all her preparation to gently tease out the answer to her question, it comes forth in a rush. ‘Where did you go the night before last, after everyone was abed.’

‘Who says I—?’

‘My Lord, your boots were muddied. They were cleaned that day you arrived, but needed doing again in the morning.’

‘Ah,’ he says, and looks up at her. ‘Yes, I went out.’ There is no avoiding the implication. ‘And by doing so I let his killer in.’

‘Sir, is that what you meant when you said to me you weren’t here? That you heard nothing?’

‘I should have been here, and it’s true I heard nothing. So I assume it happened while I was out.’

‘Who put the bar back across the kitchen door when you left?’

‘No one was with me.’

‘You took the bar off to open the door?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Did you replace it when you returned?’

‘I must have done. You do these things without thinking. Yes, I remember. I was careful not to wake anyone.’

‘If there is an investigation, it is likely Justice Townsend will speak to more people than those questioned by the coroner.’

He draws back in his chair. ‘Are you saying you mean to tell the justice?’

Alice shifts uneasily. ‘Sir, my household know. I cannot tell them to keep it a secret if asked by the justice. So you need to prepare yourself for Master Townsend asking you about your muddied boots.’

‘Very well, I understand.’ He turns back to his writing, then as though reconsidering, turns back. ‘And I thank you for coming to me in this way.’

‘Sir, was it raining when you went out?’

He gives a short laugh. ‘Yes, as it had been all evening. The cloak in my chamber is testament to that. It’s still damp, despite the fire in there.

I saw my uncle comfortable in his chamber and went straight out.

There was no point waiting for it to cease.

In true contrary fashion it stopped after I came back, just as I got into bed. ’

‘Did it take you long to go to sleep?’

‘I must have dropped off immediately. Your country air.’

‘Were you out long?’

He considers. ‘Something over an hour, not more than an hour and a half. And if it eases your mind, my business was nothing to do with my uncle.’

She considers before asking her next question. ‘My Lord, I do not wish to pry, but who else knows where you were?’

‘Can you ask that in a different way?’

So there are to be no names. ‘Are there those who can vouch for your whereabouts?’

‘None I am prepared to call on.’

‘You understand, sir, going out without explanation …’

‘I have long since realised that my action let his killer into the house, and I shall have to live with that.’

‘I meant, it could reflect badly on you.’

‘That’s for me to worry about.’

‘Of course, but …’ Alice frets that he is not facing the reality of his position. Even a lord can be arrested and accused of murder. There is no certainty Wipley will decide a verdict of misadventure. She sighs. ‘Then I have done all I can, sir, which is to warn you.’

He pushes back his chair, turning it to face her. ‘I am alive to the favour you do me in mentioning this. I didn’t give my boots a second thought. I’m grateful, believe me. I think that if there are sides in this, you of all people are on my side.’

‘I don’t want to see you in trouble,’ she says.

‘Nor I, as it happens.’ His quizzical look makes her smile in return and her suspicion, if such it was, is already melting away.

It is a relief that he can both take her seriously and also lighten the tension between them.

He goes on, ‘Which is why I want to consult you, Mistress Jerrard. If you have a few minutes, there is something I should like to show you.’

‘As long as it does not compromise any evidence I or my household will be asked to give, sir.’

‘No, I can assure you of that. Draw up a chair, no, allow me,’ suiting the action to the words.

‘What a pleasant parlour this is. Even now in winter your herb garden is a picture from this window.’ Sitting down again he draws from between the buttons of his doublet a little cloth bag about the size of a pocket, opens the flap and draws out two pieces of paper.

‘Look.’ He lays them on the table, turns them to face her.

Small pieces, much smaller than the sheets on which his letters are written. ‘I’m trying to fathom these.’

She leans to make out lines of writing on each. One is torn down its right side, the other down its left, leaving some words incomplete at those edges. What remains makes little sense:

‘The first piece of paper has a straight left edge,’ she says, pointing, ‘and this other one is cut straight on the right. If this was written on one sheet of paper, the written lines might match across, albeit with a section in the middle missing.’

‘Exactly what I thought,’ he agrees. He lays the two written pieces on the table leaving a gap of about a third of the sheet’s width between the two written sections.

‘That’s the size of the missing piece. I know that because this is my uncle’s writing paper.

When he finished writing, he tore it into three. ’

‘This is your uncle’s hand?’

‘Yes.’

She draws the pieces towards her on the table. ‘They certainly fit. Each line on the left flows across to the line on the right. Which means we can read from the end of one line to the start of the next, as here, her cruel shields on hardened raft etcetera. These pieces were in his box?’

‘They both were, until he took one out and passed it to me in this little bag in Paris. The other he gave me when we first arrived here. He said he thought for the time being it was safer if he didn’t hold any of “the riddle”, as he called it.’

The door opens and Maureen walks in with two ale mugs in hand.

‘I thought mistress, you might like some refreshment,’ she says.

She does not look at Philip, places the mugs on the table between them.

Alice has leaned her arm across the pieces of riddle.

‘Thank you, Maureen.’ Maureen dips a curtsey and turns to leave.

As the door closes, Alice puts a finger to her lips and tiptoes to the door.

Maureen’s footsteps fade as she crosses the hall into the screens passage.

‘Something wrong?’ Philip asks.

‘I’m imagining things. I thought she might pause to listen. I took her to task earlier for … no matter. So your uncle felt it safer not to keep his section of the riddle?’

‘My uncle …’ Philip looks embarrassed ‘… he could become quite exercised over small things. The position of dishes on the table, that business of the luggage. Much ado about nothing. But this box I always knew was important. He kept his most confidential papers in it. I should have realised when he took that fragment out to give it to me. Now I see these two pieces, read the words, surely they mean something? This is not a nonsense born of his constant worrying.’

Alice can remember all too clearly her own disregard of her mother’s frequent concerns, usually regarding Alice’s conduct and the excuses she made for her defiance.

It’s just Mother’s way. She doesn’t understand that things have changed since she was a girl.

Alice’s experience inclines her to believe in Philip’s light disdain of his older relative’s concerns.

But lurking behind her fellow-feeling is the disquieting fact that Philip will not say where his nocturnal foray took him.

Is it linked with the box? What does he expect to find out from this text in his uncle’s hand?

‘Does any of it mean anything to you?’ she asks him.

He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. Who has been chained? What raft? Which king is the robber-king? Who holds the third piece?’

‘You’ve searched in the box?’

‘I’ve been right through it. Twice.’ He tips the box for her to see inside. it is a simple four-sided box, no shelves, no drawers.

‘Who else might hold the middle section?’