No one else seemed to have anything to offer. Sedgwick stood, careful to leave the ale. ‘If you think of anything else, come and find me,’ he said. As he walked away Rountree was already greedily pouring for himself.
By evening Lister had gone carefully through all the letters, scribbling notes in his tiny, cramped writing. Finally he threw down the quill in frustration.
‘Well?’ Nottingham asked.
‘There’s nothing about any plans, just love notes and meetings.’
‘Keep looking tomorrow. There might be something in there. How do you care for the job?’
‘It’s surprised me,’ Rob replied thoughtfully. ‘I like it.’
The Constable smiled grimly. ‘A suicide isn’t the best way to start, but you’ve done well. Go home and back at six tomorrow. And not a word to your father, please.’
‘I won’t say anything,’ he promised.
Nottingham didn’t dawdle on the way home, but strode out of the city, fingering the letter in his pocket. His boots clattered over Timble Bridge and up Marsh Lane, and the door opened on a rusted hinge with a soft creak more redolent of winter than bright summer.
Mary came quickly from the kitchen, her eyes expectant then glowing as he grinned.
‘You did it?’ she asked with a laugh.
‘I did,’ he told her with surprise and produced the paper from his pocket. ‘She’ll have no trouble finding another position with this. Where is she, anyway?’
‘In her room. She’s been there most of the day, poor love. Go and show it to her, Richard, it’ll cheer her up.’ She gave him a full, deep kiss and he drew her close, stroking the back of her neck until she pulled away. ‘Go on, make her happy.’
He tapped on the door of Emily’s room and entered. She was sitting on the bed, a book open in her lap although she wasn’t reading. As she turned to him he could see the redness of old weeping in her eyes and the puffiness of her lips. He held out the letter.
‘Take a look at that,’ he said and waited as she unfolded it and skimmed the words once, then again, her mouth widening as she read.
‘Papa.’ The word was part question, part squeal of joy. She ran to him, arms wide, and hugged him. ‘But how did you. .?’
‘Never you mind,’ he said, happy to see her mood so suddenly lifted. ‘Don’t worry, Hartington won’t say a word, and you should be able to find another position quite easily with a recommendation like that.’
‘With something like this I could be governess to the king.’ Her pleasure filled the room. ‘Thank you, papa.’
He left her reading the paper again, feeling that perhaps today had been worthwhile.
‘For my money Sarah Godlove came into Leeds every week and met Jackson,’ the deputy said firmly. It was still early and the morning light shone with the promise of another warm day as the three of them sat in the jail. ‘I know we don’t have proof yet, but. .’
Nottingham sat forward thoughtfully in his chair, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled under his chin.
‘We can find that,’ he said slowly, ‘or as close to it as we’re likely to get. You said Jackson was seen with a girl. They must have gone somewhere and they couldn’t have been alone in his rooms. After all, they had her honour to protect.’
‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ Sedgwick agreed.
‘Go and talk to his landlady. If anyone visited him there you can wager she’ll know and can probably give us a description.’ He turned his eyes to Lister. ‘We know Sarah liked to ride. Go and talk to the stables. If she was coming here she’d have wanted her horse somewhere safe.’
‘Yes, boss.’ Rob frowned. ‘And if we find out that it is her, what do we do then?’
‘Then we have a place to start digging. Think about it. She’s married and seeing another man. That gives Samuel Godlove a reason to kill her if he knows about it. Or Jackson, for that matter.’
‘What about the baby?’ the deputy wondered.
‘If she was carrying a baby,’ Nottingham warned heavily. ‘All we have is a servant’s take for that. And if there is a baby it might easily be Jackson’s.’
‘What about Anne Taylor?’
‘Who’s she?’ Lister asked.
‘Sarah’s maid. Vanished after his mistress died.’
‘Do you think she might have done it?’
‘No,’ the Constable told him. ‘She’s dead, like as not. She hasn’t been in touch with her family. Where else would she go?’
The others left, and Nottingham picked up the pile of love letters Sarah had sent Jackson. Her writing was rounded, girlish, large on the page.
He took up another page.
On the third he read,
Her eagerness, her passion, leapt out at him. They were the words of a girl, but he had no doubt about the depth of her feelings. She’d loved Jackson completely. And his love for her must have been as absolute as hers — why else would he have killed himself once he learned she was dead? He felt saddened and sickened by the sad waste of life.
He settled to finish his report, surprised but grateful that the mayor hadn’t demanded an arrest yet. Still, he thought as he walked up Briggate towards the Moot Hall, by the end of the day they might know a great deal more.
On both sides of the street the traders were setting up for the Saturday market, their stalls spilling into the road. Men were shouting and boasting, servants flirting and gossiping, full of anticipation as they waited.
He heard someone chuckle and turned to find Thaddeus Harris at his shoulder, a broad smile showing off a set of broken, rotted teeth, watching as his apprentice finished setting up the stall.
‘Seen Amos Worthy, Constable?’
‘No,’ he answered, surprised at the question. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Thought he might have come in to see thee. Someone robbed him last night.’
Eleven
He left his report with a clerk at the Moot Hall and walked swiftly down Briggate. Anything involving Amos Worthy was grim news. Nottingham was more than ready to believe it had been his men who’d cut the whore as a warning; it was his style. But Worthy was also a man of strange honour, and he and Nottingham shared a tangled history that reached back through the decades.
The old, unpainted door on Swinegate was unlocked, the passage running straight through to the kitchen, and the Constable walked in without knocking. Worthy would be there in the tottering old addition to the already ancient house, enjoying the warmth of the fire in the hearth even in the midsummer heat.
In his sixties, the man had aged since the winter. His hair had thinned, his face was a little more gaunt, and he’d taken to walking with a silver-topped stick since he’d been stabbed in the thigh. He was a rich man but he still dressed in the same old dirty clothes every day, hoarding the money he made from his girls and all the rest, a man with his finger in many of the city’s pies, some legal, most not.
Even now, older and looking a little smaller, he wasn’t a man to be crossed. He had power and a violent
