Pamela had come on the recommendation of her grandmother, Meg, a seamstress who’d raised the girl after her mother died. She’d soon learned the ways of the place and made herself invaluable, always cheery and good- natured, even when the children were fractious.
She ended up staying for four years, sharing every hour of their lives, until she’d become like a third daughter. When she met Tom Malham, a farm labourer from Chapeltown, it had been Nottingham who had vetted him and approved the match. And when she left for a new life with him, there had been a hole in their house for a long time.
So he couldn’t understand why she was here, stabbed and bloodied and left with the rubbish, beside a minister who’d only arrived in the city four days before.
He studied her face again, but there was no mistake; it was Pamela, beyond doubt. There had been no peace in her when she died; her lips were pushed back in a cruel rictus of pain. She was clothed in a tattered dress of cheap homespun, ripped at the hem and mended many times, her legs and feet bare, the skin already pale and waxy. A broken scrap of blue ribbon hung round her neck, as if someone had torn something off it.
“Definite murder, the pair of them,” Brogden announced, doing his duty and dragging the Constable sharply from his thoughts. The coroner replaced the handkerchief over his nose and Nottingham caught the heavy smell of lavender.
“From his appearance, the man must have been of a little substance,” the coroner continued unnecessarily. “That coat and breeches didn’t come cheap. The woman was probably a servant or a whore, though. A bit old for the tastes of most men, I’d have thought.”
“I know who they were.” There was a coldness in Nottingham’s tone that caused Brogden to glance warily at him for a moment.
“I’ll bid you good day, then,” he said, and tried to find a reasonably dry track out of the yard. Nottingham watched him leave, then turned to Sedgwick.
“You stay here and watch no one tries to strip this pair clean. I’ll send some men to bring them to the jail. After that I want you to talk to everyone you can find in the court.” His deputy nodded, and Nottingham continued, “You can trust Brogden to miss the obvious. These two weren’t murdered here, there’s not enough blood. So they were brought here, and it couldn’t have happened silently. Someone must have seen or heard something.”
“I’ll find out, boss.”
They wouldn’t talk to him but they might open up to Sedgwick, he thought. The man looked more like one of them, his shoes barely holding together and his coat the product of many better years before it ever came into his possession. They wouldn’t fear him the way they did the Constable. Nottingham might have come up the hard way himself, from Constable’s man to deputy to Constable, but now his authority scared people.
“When you’ve finished, come back and tell me what you’ve found.”
He just hoped the man could come up with something solid. Meanwhile, he had to go and break word of two deaths.
3
The chantry chapel bell on Leeds Bridge had tolled the end of the cloth market, and now other traders were setting out their wares on Briggate. Men were putting up chairs and saucepans, knives and spoons, selling everything that any house might need, from the finest quality to roughly mended tinker goods. Isaac the Jew, the only one of his tribe in the city, had a trestle filled with old clothes, from rags to the cast-offs of the rich. Up by the Market Cross others displayed the quality of their poultry, with chickens, ducks and geese locked in small wooden cages, their frightened racket drowning out any hope of talk.
Nottingham walked by it all, scarcely noticing the chatter and gossip of the sellers as his mind raced. Unbidden, the picture of Pamela’s face as she lay there came into his mind.
A whore, just as his own mother had been. It made no sense to him. His mother had had little choice, cast out with no money and a young son after her husband learned of her love affair. With no skills and a reputation as a fallen woman, no one would employ her. Her body was all she had to make money. It had been hard, living hand to mouth, especially as she grew older and less desirable. Nottingham had helped, working when he could, stealing if the opportunity rose, but it was little enough. He’d watched his mother grow weaker, hating her life and herself, until she let death claim her. But Pamela… as far as he knew, she was still happily married and living in the country. How could she have died in Leeds, dressed like a pauper, with a man she could barely have met?
He had to find Meg, her grandmother, and tell her, to try to discover what had brought Pamela back to the city, and when.
He knew perfectly well what his first duty should be. He ought to be going to the merchant’s house to inform him that his minister guest had been murdered. Then he should be using all his men to find Morton’s killer. In the eyes of Leeds Corporation, the men who ran the city, Pamela’s death would count for nothing.
But this time he couldn’t look through their eyes.
The last he’d heard of Meg, she’d found a place in Harrison’s almshouses, a series of neat cottages behind St John’s Church. She’d be seventy now, if she was even still alive. When he knew her she’d been an optimistic, industrious soul, sewing every hour she could manage to provide for herself and her granddaughter. But she’d never missed a Sunday in church, both morning service and evensong, singing the hymns with a heartfelt joy and belief.
Nottingham couldn’t stop the thoughts skittering through his mind like blown leaves. If Pamela had come back to Leeds, why in God’s name hadn’t she come to him? They didn’t need a servant any more, that was true, now the girls were older and helping around the house. But he’d have found her a position with a decent family.
He kicked a stone and watched it rattle down the Head Row as he crossed and made his way through the grounds of St John’s, taking the winding path between the gravestones laid flat on the earth. Nearby, girls from the charity school sat outside and learned politely under the eyes of a teacher. A teasing sun played down, tempting with the faint promise of warmth that might come later in the day. The almshouses stood together in a small terrace, sheltered by the back wall of the churchyard. They were homes for the lucky pious few among the poor who could find places there, where they could live out their days with a secure pension, free from the terrible spectre of the workhouse.
He walked curiously to the first of the houses, its stonework carefully pointed, the window glass clear and shining, door freshly painted, and knocked. There was a long pause before it was answered by an ancient woman, bent so low with arthritis that she had to cock her head to look up at him.
“Good day, Mistress,” Nottingham said politely. “I’m looking for Meg. She used to live here.”
The woman breathed in gently, gave a smile that turned her wrinkled face beatific, and pointed down the row.
“She still does. Fourth door, just down there. The one with the window box. She’ll enjoy having a visitor, she doesn’t get many.”
“Thank you,” he replied, bowed courteously to her and made his way down. There was a tranquillity about the place, just far enough from the city proper to seem removed, although merchants were beginning to build their mansions on nearby streets, and the sound of the boys over at the Free School carried across the field.
There was indeed a window box at the fourth cottage, and blooms had been coaxed out of the late flowers. If his errand hadn’t been so grim, this would have been a good place to sit and think and visit awhile. For a second he wondered why he hadn’t come to see Meg before.
But he knew the answer to that. There was always so much to do. If he wasn’t working, he wanted to spend time with his family. There were barely enough hours to sleep, let alone think of himself.
Nottingham brought his fist down lightly on the door, suddenly aware of his tatterdemalion appearance, the coat with its frayed cuffs, stained with dirt and blood, the old breeches and mended hose.
He could hear her slow footsteps on the flagstone floor, still unsure how to break the news. Pamela had been her only remaining family.
Then she was before him, the door swinging wide. Time had been kind, letting her face settle in wide laughing lines around her face and eyes. Her thin grey hair was carefully gathered under a mob cap. She stared up
