Girl In A Red Tunic by Alys Clare

Author:Alys Clare [Clare, Alys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444716702
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2006-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

After a long time Josse said, ‘What do you want me to do?’

Leofgar turned to him, his eyes alight with some emotion that Josse could not identify; it occurred to him later that it was probably gratitude.

‘I must find out what Walter Bell was after and why he attacked my wife,’ he said. ‘I want you to help me.’

‘Aye. I will.’

There was silence for a moment. Then Leofgar gave a cough and said, ‘Thank you.’

Josse, who also felt the need of a little recovery time, said after a pause, ‘I may already be able to offer something for you to think about. We have been led to understand that you knew the Bell brothers, moreover that there was some sort of a dispute between you and them and that this was the reason for Walter Bell having sought you out.’

‘Who told you that?’ Leofgar demanded. ‘It is a lie, I swear it! I had never seen him before the moment that I looked down on his dead body in my own hall!’

‘Aye, and I believe you,’ Josse hastened to reassure him. ‘Me, I always doubted it anyway. Said as much at the time,’ he added, half to himself. ‘Earlier you said you had some idea why Bell had gone to the Old Manor. What was it?’

‘Theft,’ Leofgar said simply. ‘Rohaise is insistent that the first thing he did was to have a thorough look at our table, as if it were his aim to search for—’ He gave a helpless shrug. ‘I cannot say. Then, as I told you, he broke open the chest.’

‘Was there anything of value in the chest?’

‘Oh – some pieces of silver. Quite valuable, I suppose, but we keep them put away because the bright shine of the metal is such an attraction to Timus and Rohaise is tired of constantly having to polish off his sticky finger marks.’

Josse waited, and after a moment Leofgar said slowly, ‘Walter Bell must have seen the silver, for he scattered the entire contents of the chest on the floor. Yet he made no move to steal anything ...’

‘I think,’ Josse said gently, ‘that we may rule out theft as a motive. Could it ...’ But this was delicate ground and he had no wish to arouse the young man’s ready anger again. ‘Perhaps his intention was to do what he tried to do to your wife,’ he said as tactfully as he could.

Leofgar shook his head impatiently. ‘I thought of that too but a man intent on raping a woman while her man and her servants are from home is hardly likely to rummage through the household belongings first. I have always understood rape to be a crime of hot blood and swift implementation.’

The fury was there, simmering beneath the surface, but at present Leofgar was keeping it under control. With a flash of insight, Josse thought suddenly that perhaps Walter Bell’s death had been relatively easy after all, compared to what Leofgar might have done to him had he come home to find the man raping his wife.

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