Nottingham smiled wryly.
“I suspect the Mayor and the corporation will only worry about them when they can’t get one.”
Carver, Nottingham thought when he was alone. Bloody Carver. Could he have been so wrong? Every sinew in his body had said the man wasn’t capable of murder. Even now he found it hard to believe. So far there was nothing to connect him with these fresh killings. But if Carver had committed them… then perhaps it was time to quit this post, before the Mayor dismissed him for incompetence. He tried to blink the tiredness from his eyes. He’d love to be away in his bed now, but there wasn’t going to be much sleep until all this was over.
The door of the jail opened tentatively and Nottingham looked up sharply, brought from his thoughts. A woman stepped in, glancing around nervously, as if unsure what evil she’d find inside and bracing herself to face it. He stood and bowed slightly to her.
“I’m looking for the Constable,” she announced in a quavering voice.
“I’m the Constable,” he said, moving to hold the chair for her. She was about thirty-five but worn by age and work, in a homespun dress of fair quality — her best, he guessed. She wore a woollen shawl around her shoulders, the fingers of one hand clutching it tightly at her neck. Her skin had the leathery look of someone who’d spent plenty of time out in the fields, lines radiating from the corners of her eyes and mouth in a plain face, her eyes flickering around the room, frightened. She’d tucked her hair into a cap, but he could see strands that had freed themselves, a mix of mousy brown and iron grey. He decided his farmer’s wife had found him.
“I’m Richard Nottingham, the Constable of Leeds,” he told her formally, settling into his own seat. “Might I ask your name, mistress?”
“Nell Winters.” She blurted it out as her gaze took in the details of the room. He knew how forbidding it could look to innocent eyes: thick walls, the doors to the cells stout and dark. It was a place for those who’d broken the laws, not those who lived by them. From the Constable’s office, spare and cramped, but at least warmed by a hearth, a corridor ran back long the building’s single floor, past the heavy, locked oak doors of each of the five cells to the windowless mortuary room with its pair of stone slabs.
“I don’t think you’re a Leeds woman,” Nottingham prodded gently. “I don’t know your face.”
“No.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t manage it. “We live in Alwoodley.” He knew the area slightly, four or five miles to the north of the city on the road to Harrogate, with wooded hills and good grazing.
“You’re looking for your husband, perhaps?”
“Yes,” she admitted, and he saw she was glad at first that he’d understood without her having to explain. Then realisation flooded into her mind, and her hands were covering her face as she said, “Oh God, no.”
Nottingham knew she needed comfort as tears and sobs racked her, but he didn’t move. Propriety forbade it. Instead, the best he could do was offer his messy kerchief for her to dab her eyes and hide her face.
“Is he dead?” she asked finally, her eyes rimmed with red.
“How was he dressed when he came to town?”
She gave a brief description.
“I’m sorry,” Nottingham told her gently, and she began to weep again. The minutes passed, until she seemed drained of tears for the present, and he began asking questions. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, when she was struggling to keep afloat in her grief, but he had no choice.
“What was his name?”
“Noah.” She barely whispered the word and tried to keep her face composed. “His mam called him that ’cause he was born when it had been raining for days and she thought they’d all end up living on an ark.”
“He was a farmer?”
She nodded.
“Why did he come into Leeds?”
“He wanted a new suit.” She shook her head at the stupidity and waste of it all, and her fingers pulled at the kerchief as if she was trying to tear it apart. “For years he’d wanted some clothes made in the city. He’d done well, the farm had made money the last few years, and he decided it was time to treat himself, so he could dress a bit more like a squire.” She offered a faint, wan smile.
“Did he come in yesterday morning?” Nottingham asked, and she nodded in answer.
“Said he’d be home last night. When he wasn’t back by this morning I had one of the lads drive me in on’t cart.” She hesitated, torn between wanting the truth and not wishing to hear a word. “How did he die?”
This was the part the Constable hated most.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Winters, but someone killed him.”
“My Noah?” She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t understand, her eyes widening suddenly as she tried to draw a breath. “But why? He were a good man, he wouldn’t get in a fight or owt like that.”
“We don’t know why yet,” he told her, knowing there was at least a grain of truth in his words.
Her face had a stunned look, mouth hanging slightly open.
“We think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know how else to put it,” he admitted.
“But you’ll find whoever did it and see him swing.”
He wasn’t sure if it was a plea or a command.
“I will,” he assured her, although at the moment it seemed as much hope as certainty.
“I want to take my man home and give him a proper burial,” she insisted suddenly.
“Of course,” he said. “Do you have your cart here? I’ll have my men carry his body out.”
She crumpled again at the mention of the word
“He’s dead,” she moaned in a voice that was little more than a croak. “He’s
Nottingham helped Mrs Winters back outside, feeling the pull of her weight against his arms. Two farm lads waited by the cart, and he instructed them to look after their mistress, then went to round up two men to carry out the corpse. He couldn’t have allowed her back to see him, not with the whore in the same room. She was a bright woman, that was obvious, and she’d easily have put two and two together; she deserved more dignity and a better memory of her husband than that.
By the time the wagon pulled away the day was well progressed. Nottingham felt the tiredness in his bones, an ache that crept from the inside out. He wanted this man who’d killed four people, wanted him in a way he couldn’t remember wanting to find any criminal in the past. He wanted to see the man’s face. More than that, he wanted to hurt him for what he’d done to Pamela. And if it was Carver, he’d find no mercy.
Before he could consider what to do next, a messenger from the Moot Hall walked in, summoning him to the Mayor’s office. Nottingham drew a deep breath and wondered how to approach the interview. He didn’t want to mention Carver yet, until he was certain, and the last thing his Worship would want to hear was that they had a madman targeting prostitutes and their clients. If that knowledge became public it would send a shock through the entire city. Too many men used whores, many of them gentlemen of influence. He pondered exactly what he might say.
He dusted off his coat, then ran fingers through his hair. It was another vain effort towards making himself presentable, but it would have to do. He had no looking glass in the jail. The man would just have to take him as he found him, exhausted in mind and body.
He was ushered directly into the Mayor’s office without waiting; not a good sign, he decided. Kenion was at his desk, hunched over some papers with a quill in his hand. Absently he gestured Nottingham to a seat, then ignored him for several minutes as he pored over a document before fretfully adding his signature to it. After coming off worse in their last interview, he wanted to establish the pecking order, and make sure it was known before a word was said. Finally Kenion looked up.
“More murders, I hear,” he said accusingly, skipping the pleasantries.
“Another prostitute and her client,” the Constable responded.
“And what are you doing about catching the man responsible?” Kenion folded his hands across his chest, glaring at Nottingham.
“All we can. We know who the victim was, a farmer from Alwoodley, in town to buy a decent suit of clothes.” Even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t divert Kenion.
“I don’t give a tinker’s cuss who
