A Matter of Blood: Spy-craft and treachery in Elizabethan England (Tom Walsingham Mysteries Book 6) by C. P. Giuliani

Author:C. P. Giuliani [Giuliani, C. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2025-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

“The Deacon?” Skeres all but squeaked. “Ye never think —?”

Tom shushed him. Perhaps a bookshop wasn’t the best place to discuss things with the Minotaur — much less because, like them, several people had taken shelter in there from a sudden squall. “I’m not sure that I don’t, but Stafford does — or so he says. What I didn’t expect was to find you believing the fellow innocent.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The lad fingered the gilt-brass figurine of a crouching lion that weighed down a small pile of ballad sheets. “As nasty a weasel as you please, but murther? I’m thinking of the murtherers you’ve caught — the ones as meant it, not as were paid to do it.”

“And?” Tom prodded, rather fascinated than not.

“And I don’t know: there ’ave been wolves, and snakes, and rabid dogs, foxes and vixens. Weasels, though? Not even one of them.”

Thinking back to the years he’d spent uncovering killers for Sir Francis, Tom couldn’t deny it. “But, as you say, there are also the hired ones.”

A hum, and Skeres weighed the brass lion in his palm, making the chiselled mane catch the light. “If I wanted a murtherer, I don’t know that I’d ’ire that one.”

“Neither do I — besides, Gifford was in gaol by the time Arundel began to help the Ambassador in earnest.”

Another hum. “Unless…” Checking himself, Skeres leant close to whisper. “Unless the Deacon smelt a rat, poisoned Arundel, then the French pinched ’im… But no.” The round face fell. “The Fleming says there’s no poison as would kill after a week, don’t ’e?” And was that a covert glance, angled at the bookseller’s watchful apprentice?

Oh Jove…

Tom snatched the lion from the lad, and slapped it back on the table. “No, Dolius — and think: with Jourdain’s death, the chance of murder grows harder to discount, so Stafford tries to blame it on the man nobody will believe.”

One triumphant forefinger rose. “Because it’s ’imself as did in Arundel, and ’e don’t want you to nose about too much!”

But was it? Stafford, blustering, clumsy, and resentful, and so convinced of his own subtlety… “I don’t know,” Tom sighed.

“Why not? The Deacon calls ’im a traitor, and Arundel was going to buy ’is own pardon by denouncing ’im. Dearie dearie, and whatnot.”

All of it true enough, and yet… “You said it yourself, Dolius. Think of how these murders were done: is Stafford the right sort of beast?”

Skeres scratched his head, and chewed his cheeks, and tilted his head this way and that, as though he were contemplating the Ambassador, until… “Cuds-me,” he huffed. “But then who’s done away with the physician?”

A handsome Seneca in-folio had pride of place on a draped table. Hadn’t this Roman philosopher written that diligent research would unearth things hidden? Tom leafed through the book — but what he came across was how future lies in uncertainty, and man always squanders his allotted time. What a cheerful fellow! “Perhaps we’ll get an inkling soon enough, if Faulkes’s true master — or mistress — will just take fright enough.

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