anyone, I am afraid I cannot now remember it.”
Alinor, her impatient nature surging to the forefront, said brusquely, “Then give it more consideration, mistress! If a woman has so much passion for a man that she betrays her husband to be with him, then she hangs on his every word, and savours every tidbit of conversation he offers. Cast your mind back and try to recall if he mentioned anything about the places he had been in Lincoln or the names of any of the people he met.”
Cowed by Alinor’s stern tone, Clarice’s lip trembled, and she made an effort to reply. “He did say he had visited the shops of other furriers in Lincoln but had found none whose stock compared with Simon’s. And I remember that he once remarked on the excellence of the wine sold by the merchants in Lincoln.” She looked at Alinor anxiously. “Is that what you wish to know, lady?”
Before his cousin could make a response, Richard interjected, “That is just the sort of information that we are seeking,” he assured her. “Did he happen to tell you which furriers or wine merchants that he visited?”
Calmed by Richard’s understanding tone, Clarice turned to him gratefully but, nonetheless, shook her head in regret. “No, but on one of the occasions he came to my husband’s shop, Simon took him through to the hall to share a cup of wine. It was… it was the day before the feast. I think Aubrey may have had another commission from Lady Petronille to purchase more furs; at least that is what I assumed, for he had mentioned that his mistress had been well pleased with the ones he had purchased previously. He and Simon were in the hall quite a long time and it is possible that, while they were speaking together, Aubrey mentioned the names of the other furriers he had visited, perhaps in reference to a comparison of prices.”
With a sigh of relief, Richard instructed a servant to bring Simon Adgate to the solar and, wishing to discuss privily what Clarice had told them, instructed her to wait for her husband’s arrival at the far end of the room. As she moved out of earshot, Alinor said to Richard in an undertone, “What a witless jade. I cannot understand why Adgate married her.”
Richard grinned. “There are other attributes that a man looks for in a wife, Cousin, besides intelligence. And you must admit that Mistress Clarice is very comely.”
Alinor gave Richard a sidelong glance of exasperation and said, “Be that as it may, Richard, I am still suspicious of Adgate and agree with the Templar that he may not be telling the complete truth. Let us see what he has to say about this conversation he and Tercel had behind closed doors.”
Eighteen
“I am certain Adgate is the one who committed the murder,” Alinor exclaimed later that afternoon as she and Richard sat in the solar with Bascot and her aunt. “Richard and I first interviewed his wife alone, and then had Adgate join us. Beforehand, Clarice told us that her husband had spoken at some length with Tercel in private, in the hall of their home, and may have mentioned something about the people with whom her lover had become acquainted with in Lincoln. But when we summoned Adgate and asked him about the conversation, he said that, contrary to his wife’s recollection, they had been closeted together for only a short space of time, just long enough to discuss the cost of a fur hat Tercel wished to purchase for himself. The price had been far too high, Adgate said, and the conversation a brief one of only a few moments duration. I saw the bemusement on Clarice’s face when her husband said this. It was not the truth, I am sure of it. Adgate is lying, I know he is, and why else would a man do so unless he has something to hide?”
“It may not be the act of murder he is keeping secret, Alinor,” Nicolaa admonished her niece patiently. “And, even if it were, you have no proof of your accusation. The other guild leaders whom Adgate sat alongside at the feast have already testified that he did not leave their company until it was time to retire, so he was overlooked for the whole time when the murder was committed. It is impossible that he is the one who carried it out.”
“Even if he could not, I am still not as certain as you that he did not pay someone to do it for him,” Alinor insisted. “Someone who was already within the bail. It could be one of your own servants, Aunt, maybe one of the men-at-arms who were on duty on the ramparts that night.”
Nicolaa’s response was reproving. “I think that is highly unlikely. None of my household servants have ever given me the slightest reason for distrust. The same is true of the men-at-arms. Besides, as we said before, that would imply that Adgate knew beforehand of his wife’s intended assignation in order to arrange the matter, and I am reasonably confident he did not. While I am aware that Mistress Clarice is not possessed of a great intelligence, I doubt whether she is brainless enough to let slip to her husband beforehand the details of the meeting with her lover, so how could he have been aware of it? And aware of it Adgate would have to have been if he was to instruct a hired assassin to wait for Tercel outside the chamber where he and Clarice had their tryst. And why go to all the trouble that such a scheme would entail? It would have been far simpler for a hired killer to murder Tercel while he was abroad in the town-slip a knife in his ribs while he was in a crowd or lure him down a deserted byway and do the deed there. We have been through all this before, Alinor, and discounted Adgate as a suspect. I know you are anxious to put an end to this matter, but you will not do so by grasping at will-o’-the-wisps.”
Alinor got up and paced a few steps. “Mayhap that is so, but I can sense Adgate’s guilt, rolling off him like a storm cloud.” She sat back down, frustration written all over her face.
Nicolaa turned to Bascot. “Did you have any success today in your interview with the seal maker, de Marins?”
“Not insofar as to consider either he or his wife as suspects, lady,” the Templar replied. “As Ernulf thought might be the case, they came to Lincoln from Doncaster some twelve years ago, and had never lived here before that. In addition, Sealsmith’s wife told me that she and her husband were wed only eighteen years ago, not long enough for us to consider her as a candidate for the mother. But questioning them was not entirely in vain. Mistress Sealsmith gave me some useful information which, although gossip, I am certain is true.”
The Templar paused for a moment as he silently reviewed his visit to the sealsmith’s manufactory. It was a moderately sized establishment, with living quarters above, and located on the same street as Simon Adgate’s shop. Although Sealsmith was called a seal maker, it was actually the matrices, the implements impressed with a design on one end for marking hot wax, that Sealsmith manufactured. When a manservant admitted Bascot and Gianni into his workshop, the seal maker was busy at a small forge melting silver for the base of a matrix. He was a burly man of middle height with a thatch of thick black hair and heavy eyebrows that joined one another across the bridge of his nose. When Bascot’s rank and name were announced by the servant, it was obvious that Sealsmith was reluctant to leave his task, for he greeted his visitor with a sullenness that was barely concealed. Upon being told that Bascot had come to ask both him and his wife some further questions about the night that Tercel had been killed, he had answered brusquely and with an air of impatience.
“We saw nothing that had ’owt to do with the murder,” he said in a broad accent. “Just like we told Sir Richard at the time.”
“Nonetheless,” Bascot said sternly, “I still wish to speak to both you and your wife.”
His ill temper still evident, the seal maker gave the task of overseeing the molten silver to one of his young apprentices and, stomping to a door set in the interior wall of the workshop, called loudly for a servant to fetch his wife.
Imogene Sealsmith was a rather dowdy woman of middle years, with small dark eyes and an upturned nose that gave her the look of an inquisitive bird. Far more amenable than her husband, it was she, rather than the seal maker, who responded to Bascot’s questions, repeating the same answers she had given Richard Camville; that she and her husband had never made the acquaintance of the victim or noticed him during the feast. It was not until Sealsmith, distracted by a clumsy movement of the apprentice tending the forge, darted over to take charge of the small ladle full of molten silver, that Imogene was more forthcoming.
“ ’Tis true that neither my husband nor myself had ever spoken to the man that was killed,” she said quietly, “but from what I have heard since his death, I think it might have been him that I saw arguing with Simon Adgate outside our gates the day before we went to the castle for the celebration.” She paused and gave the Templar a glance of satisfaction when she saw she had gained his interest. “Was he a man with fair hair, personable looks and a swagger of self-importance?”
Judging her a woman with a love of indulging in salacious gossip, Bascot answered cautiously, keeping his own voice low so that her husband could not overhear. “There are many men who would fit that description, mistress. Perhaps I could judge better if you tell me why you think the person you saw may have been the
