The Richest Man in Town by Vail Jason

Author:Vail, Jason [Vail, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - Middle Ages
ISBN: 9798859529483
Publisher: Hawk Publishing
Published: 2023-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

“Wal­ter Masse­day,” the de­pos­i­tory clerk said con­tem­pla­tively. “Yes, I do re­call him.”

He was a spare man whose habit hung upon him like a sack, as if he took his fast­ing du­ties a bit too se­ri­ously, un­usual in cathe­dral staff who were bet­ter fed than most men. He bent over the Hoke­ton ac­counts with squint­ing eyes, hold­ing them very close to his face. He had un­doubt­edly spent years peer­ing over ac­counts in the bad light of the vault un­der the cathe­dral, for he had but a sin­gle can­dle for il­lu­mi­na­tion which flick­ered near at hand.

“Hard to for­get, an amount like that,” the clerk added, straight­en­ing up. “Doesn’t hap­pen of­ten.”

“Al­most never, I would guess,” Gilbert said.

The clerk shrugged. “It hap­pens some­times. You would be sur­prised.” He waved be­hind him at the in­ner vault where vis­i­ble through a pad­locked iron grate chests could be seen lin­ing the walls, stacked one on top of the other. “We even hold de­posits for the king, and for most of the no­ble houses in the March.”

“So the pay­ment of this debt aroused no sus­pi­cions? It set off no alarms?”

“Not es­pe­cially. Ev­ery­thing was in or­der. Why do you ask? Is there a prob­lem?”

“When you say ev­ery­thing was in or­der, what do you mean?”

The clerk did not an­swer this di­rectly. In­stead, he said to two young cler­ics seated on benches by the stone stairs lead­ing up to the choir, “Robert, Hugh, fetch the Hoke­ton box.” He re­moved a chain from around his neck; a key dan­gled on the chain.

One of the young men un­locked the pad­lock and the two en­tered the in­ner vault.

There was a great deal of thump­ing and bang­ing and shortly the two men ap­peared with one on each end of a chest. The way they stag­gered with it in­di­cated it was very heavy. They set the chest on the flag­stones by the clerk and re­turned the key.

“There you are, Brother Fer­min.”

Fer­min lifted the lid and took out a batch of parch­ments. He fin­gered through and ex­tracted one leaf, which he placed on his ta­ble and turned it around so that Gilbert could read it.

Gilbert could plainly see that it was a let­ter of credit made out to one Wal­ter Masse­day.

“How can you be sure it’s not a forgery?” Gilbert asked.

“We have ways,” Fer­min said. He pointed to the seal. “For one thing, the seal is gen­uine. We keep an im­pres­sion which I use to match against any such let­ters. And I can tell you, this seal is the same as on all Hoke­ton’s other let­ters of credit. So I had no rea­son to doubt it. Also,” he put a fin­ger on the text of the let­ter, “we re­quire a spe­cial phrase be in­cluded in such let­ters. It is there. Fi­nally, I am fa­mil­iar with the hand­writ­ing. It’s the same as the other let­ters we have from Hoke­ton.”

“Whose hand­writ­ing would that be?” Gilbert asked.

“Why, Hoke­ton’s clerk, of course. Hard­man, Hard­bec, or some­thing.”

“What can you tell me about this fel­low, Masse­day?”

Fer­min stroked his lips. “Young fel­low, twenty-five? I don’t know.

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