Veil of Lies

again.”

He wasn’t certain if he detected a mote of triumph in her face. She was on the cusp of saying more when there was a scrambling on the stairs. Adam Becton stumbled in, nearly knocking Crispin aside.

He bowed to Philippa. “Mistress,” he panted. “There are—There is—” He stared at Crispin.

She clucked her tongue at Adam and raised her chin. “What is it, Adam? Tell me.”

“Well,” he glanced at Crispin, “they’ve just arrived. They are in the parlor.”

Philippa tightened her shoulders. Crispin imagined all the mourners and how tiresome they could become. “Who?” she asked, exasperated.

“Master Walcote’s brothers,” he breathed.

Philippa’s flushed cheeks suddenly drained of color. “Brothers? Merciful Jesus!”

15

Philippa’s hand went to her throat. She hurried out the door with Adam at her heels.

Crispin stood alone in the solar with the ripe body of Nicholas Walcote for company. He looked at the corpse but knew he’d get better answers downstairs.

Adam scrambled to precede Philippa to the parlor and he unlocked the door and entered. Crispin made it to the shadow of the doorway in time to observe three people—two men and one woman—stand and turn their heads. Adam bowed and announced, “Madam Philippa Walcote,” and stepped aside.

One of the men marched forward. His frowning dark brows matched dark greasy hair that was cut across his forehead and was covered by a green rondelle hat, which sported a shell pin from Santiago de Compostela. His green houppelande sleeves boasted two more pilgrim badges, but it was the gown’s design Crispin took special note of. The sleeves were cut long as was the fashion, but they didn’t quite touch the floor as he expected from a man in a wealthy cloth merchant family. Nor did the toes of his shoes stretch out in exaggerated points.

“Why were we locked in this room?” the man demanded.

“My apologies,” said Philippa, employing her best cultivated speech, though it riffled along the edge of hysteria. “It was Nicholas’s custom to lock the doors. He insisted on it.”

The man’s face reddened, set to erupt. Crispin decided to intrude and nodded to Adam as he entered.

The servant licked his lips and announced, “Crispin Guest—the…Tracker.”

They all turned toward him. The first man in green approached Crispin and eyed his threadbare clothes. “‘Tracker’? What by God is that?”

“I explore crimes. The murder of your brother, for instance.”

“Are you the sheriff, then?”

“No, but I often work with him.”

“This is all nonsense!” cried the man. “Not so much as a messenger was sent to us about Nicholas! We had to hear about it from common talk. And this wife of his. This is the first we’ve heard of that!”

“Talk travels quicker than any messenger,” said Crispin, but he absorbed the brother’s other words with curiosity.

The man huffed and muttered under his breath, fingering the tiny gold monstrance hanging from a chain around his neck.

“Please, Lionel,” said the woman. She glided toward him and slipped her arm in his. The nap of her scarlet velvet gown did not shine like Crispin remembered from similar fabrics he used to call his own, but it was trimmed richly in fur. But not fox. Squirrel perhaps? “You’re frightening the girl,” she went on. The woman’s face was long and pinched and looked as if she were sniffing something unpleasant. “Let our dear sister-in-law speak. She has such a delightful accent. I myself am curious as to when exactly they were married.”

Philippa paled and pressed her lips together. Without missing a beat, she spoke in the most refined accent she could muster, pronouncing her words with assiduous accuracy. “We have been married for three years. This is the first I heard that Nicholas had brothers.”

“This is really too much!” bellowed Lionel.

The woman’s wan smile reminded Crispin of the serpent of Eden. “Nicholas was always wont to keep to himself, husband. This is just one more example—”

“Keep your opinions to yourself, Maude,” said the other man. Though husky, the breadth of his bright red shoulder cape made his head look small. Nose reminiscent of Lionel’s, his other features, including his coloring, were more like Nicholas’s. His face, not as broad as the other brother, angled down to a cleft chin covered with the shadow of a latent beard.

“I beg your pardon, dear Clarence,” said his sister-in-law. She swept her skirt aside to walk deliberately in front of him.

The beefy Clarence lifted his nose at Maude and turned to pour himself wine from a flagon on a nearby sideboard.

Lionel bobbed his head in emphasis. “It is like Nicholas to do exactly what he liked.”

“Was it like him to get murdered?” said Crispin. Curious to see their reaction, Crispin wasn’t disappointed.

“Now see here!” Lionel advanced on Crispin. “Sheriff or not, you’ve no right—”

“He isn’t the sheriff,” reminded his brother Clarence into his wine bowl.

Crispin gazed down his nose at Lionel, deflecting the man’s scathing look. “I am curious. Nicholas Walcote was an enigma in London. Did he always live in this house?”

Lionel calmed and he glanced at Clarence, but it seemed Clarence was used to deferring to Lionel. “We all lived here. We were raised in this house.”

“It was the family business, then?”

“Yes. And when Father died we thought to continue on here, all of us. It was not to be.”

“Why?”

“Nicholas was impossible to work with! He insisted on his own way, his rules, his decisions.”

“So you left.”

“Yes. Clarence left first.”

Crispin turned to the other brother. Clarence seemed surprised to be addressed and raised his brows. “Yes, I went to Whittlesey and started my own business there.”

“I joined him soon after,” said Lionel.

Clarence drank the contents of the bowl and poured more. “Yes, lucky me.”

“So the two of you entered into business together.”

Clarence laughed but there was no mirth in the sound. “As if I would be caught dead—”

The others held their collective breaths. In the silence, everyone remembered the body in the solar. Clarence shrugged and took a drink. “Dear Lionel tried to take it over and I was forced to retreat to St. Neot to start on my own. Again.”

“You’d have run it into the ground,” said Lionel.

“Be still, old man, or you may find yourself on a bier.”

Lionel growled, fisted his hand, and rushed his brother, but Crispin got between them and held up his hands. “Masters! This is a house in mourning!”

Clarence shook out his shoulders. Without any show of embarrassment, he scanned the room and retreated to the sideboard to pour more wine.

Red-faced, Lionel calmed and turned his back on his brother.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Crispin suggested, and brought a chair for the tight-lipped Philippa, then pulled another forward for Clarence. Lionel and Maude had their chairs and they looked at each other. As if on cue, they both sat at the same time. Crispin stood above them. “Differences there may have been,” he went on, “but this is