[Roger the Chapman 04] - The Holy Innocents by Kate Sedley

Author:Kate Sedley [Sedley, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9780061043796
Google: 5QrNoQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0061043796
Barnesnoble: 0061043796
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I wondered how often I had heard that same phrase in the past two days. Completely vanished. The words mocked my impotence to see through them to the truth. How had the Skelton children left the house? Why had they left the house? When I knew the answers to those two questions, it maybe that the mystery would be solved.

The second question was easier of solution than the first, the explanation having already been presented to me on more than one occasion. Andrew and Mary had intended to stay out until curfew in order to teach their stepfather a lesson, and had managed to pass beyond the town walls without being noticed. As the keeper on the West Gate had said, not an impossibility, given the amount of traffic in and out of Totnes. The first question, however, posed greater difficulties unless I could shake the testimony of either Bridget Praule or Agatha Tenter.

'Are you sure,' I asked Bridget gently, 'that there was no moment, no one single instant, when you left the downstairs parlour for any reason, or your attention was so distracted, that the younglings could have crept down the stairs, through the room into the passage and thence into the street?' But before she spoke, I already knew what her reply would be.

'None at all!' She gave a vigorous shake of her head. 'I was in the parlour for the whole time the master was absent, and did not stir outside of it. I must have seen the children had they descended. Master Colet was not gone much above an hour. He liked his dinner promptly at half past ten o'clock and would not have been late returning.'

She had grown agitated, afraid that she was being accused of lying, and again I patted her hand.

'I'm not questioning your word, Mistress Praule, only clearing the last shreds of doubt from my mind. When did Master Colet decide to close up the house and look for new accommodation?'

'After the children's bodies were discovered. Until then, you see, we all hoped and prayed that they would be found alive and well. And if they had made their own way home, they would have come straight to the house, so we had to be there in case that happened.'

'And how did your master seem to you throughout that time of waiting?'

'Oh, he was very upset. Wouldn't eat much. Left half his meals, even though Agatha tried to tempt him with all his favourite dishes. He couldn't sleep, either. I remember, several times, looking out from my room in the loft and seeing, across the courtyard, a chink of light between his bedchamber shutters, which meant his candle must still have been burning. And once, when he shouted at me for some silly mistake I'd made, he apologized and told me to take no notice: he wasn't himself, he said. He said, too, that if anything had happened to the children, people would blame him because he was the only person to gain by their deaths.

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