The Combermere Legacy Read online

  I stopped in the shadows, at a point in between two buildings from where we could view Cripps’ cottage on the other side of Little Wood Street without being seen ourselves, and whispered to Alexander.

  “There is one thing that bothers me,” I said. “If the murderer is aware of the significance of Assumption Day to Massey, that means he already knows Wilbraham’s word. If that is the case, where did he get it from, and why is he demanding to see both Wilbraham and Maisterson’s words?”

  “That I cannot say,” said Alexander. “Perhaps he wishes to conceal the fact that he knows Wilbraham’s word for some reason. Or maybe he knows Bressy and Alice are after Wilbraham’s word too and wants to prevent them from getting hold of it. In any case, one thing it does suggest is that the kidnapper does not know what Maisterson’s word is.

  This, I considered, was probably true, but the whole thing was undoubtedly becoming more complicated. I was gathering a plethora of information, but the one thing that was missing was the vital clue I needed to identify who the kidnapper was and where Amy was being held.

  At that moment, my attention was drawn by a movement from across the street, and Alexander nudged me gently.

  “Here we go,” he whispered. “Now we shall see what Cripps is up to.”

  The shadows cast by the moon fell across Cripps’ porch, so, at first, it was difficult to make out the identity of the dark figure fumbling with the front door. But then I heard Alexander give a sharp intake of breath as he realised the same thing as I had, for the person who stepped out into the moonlight, carrying a wicker basket, was not Eldrid Cripps at all, nor was it a man of any description. For the female figure scurrying down the street towards Welsh Row, glancing nervously from side to side, was unmistakeably none other than Sarah Fletcher.

  Chapter 18

  Nantwich – Friday, August 2nd, 1644

  ‘What had I learned?’ I asked myself the following morning.

  That Eldrid Cripps was having an affair with Sarah Fletcher? Probably – but what business was that of mine?

  That Cripps had a motive for wanting to see Fletcher framed for the murder of Henry Hassall? Maybe – but in his position as constable, Cripps could have made sure Jacob Fletcher was arrested for any crime he chose, within reason.

  Why then had Cripps been so adamant on pressing his claim that Fletcher was the perpetrator of this particular crime, even when it had become clear that he was not? That plainly did not make sense.

  And what relevance did Cripps’ money troubles have on the whole affair, if indeed they were connected at all?

  I sat propped up in bed with my pillow jammed behind my head against the wall, trying to shake off a fitful night’s sleep and wondering if I was ever going to make sense of the conflicting jumble of messages that were bouncing about inside my head. With my mind spinning, I forced myself out of bed in good time and readied myself for my appointment with Thomas Maisterson.

  Mrs Padgett, being in no fit state to be left on her own, had remained at our house in Beam Street overnight and had spent the night being comforted by Elizabeth, while I had been banished to a spare bed chamber. I could tell by the expression on Elizabeth’s face that neither she nor Mrs Padgett had managed much in the way of sleep.

  Around 8 o’clock, an exceedingly grumpy Jack Wade knocked on the door, wanting to know why nobody had been available to make his breakfast, but he soon calmed down when he saw how exhausted and careworn we all were. I gave him a hunk of bread and some small beer before packing him off to collect cheese from the nearby farms that had indicated they had produce to sell. It was beginning to irk me that once again I would not be able to help Wade in his preparation for market day and that I could not call personally on the network of farmers I had worked so hard to develop.

  I watched as Wade manoeuvred my horse and cart down Beam Street towards the bridge that would take him along Welsh Row and out towards the villages to the east of Nantwich. Today Wade was due to visit farmers in Acton, Barbridge, Bunbury, and Faddiley, communities which were glad to find an outlet for their produce, now that Byron’s royalist forces had been chased back to Chester. I had to admit that, with all the upheaval in my life since January’s battle, if it had not been for my apprentice’s diligent work my salt and cheese businesses would by now have been in a sorry state indeed.

  As the wheels of the cart clattered over the cobbles at the start of the Beast Market, a youthful figure careered at speed out of Pepper Street, slipped on some of the detritus that lay discarded on the street, and nearly became entangled with the horse’s legs. The horse shied slightly, but Wade controlled the animal expertly. Nevertheless, my apprentice shouted angrily at the youth, who raised his hands in apology and picked himself up gingerly, before continuing to jog in my direction.

  It was then that I realised I was looking at none other than Ezekiel Green. The young clerk stopped breathlessly at my gate with a look of anticipation on his face.

  “Have a care, young man,” I warned. “I have lost one carthorse already these past few months. I do not want to lose another.”

  Ezekiel looked suitably contrite but could not hide his excitement. “I am sorry, Master Cheswis,” he said, “but I believe I have found some information that will interest you, relating to the murder of Mr Hassall.”

  “Indeed?” I said. “Where from?”

  “From the archives, sir. I have re-read some of the witness statements from Roger Crockett’s inquest and some papers from later court records, which I believe you might want to see. They cast an interesting light on the events of the past twenty-four hours.”

  I looked at Ezekiel with interest. “You mean the renewed attack on Gilbert Kinshaw and the disappearance of Adolphus Palyn?”

  “I do, sir. Do you have the time to accompany me to the Booth Hall? I would show you my findings.”

  I glanced over the wall that ran to the rear of Lady Norton’s house on the other side of Beam Street and focussed on the clock tower of St Mary’s. It was already nearly nine o’clock.

  “I am expected at Thomas Maisterson’s shortly,” I explained, “and I must attend him. However, if you would return to your archive, I will be with you as soon as I can.”

  Once Ezekiel had departed, I left Elizabeth and Mrs Padgett to their domestic business and walked over to Thomas Maisterson’s residence, a fine half-timbered town house a few yards from the sconce at the end of Pillory Street. When I arrived, I was surprised to find a footman waiting for me by the front door. He ushered me inside with minimum ceremony.

  The servant led me into a small reception room furnished with a low table and several ornately carved wooden chairs. On two of the walls hung expensive-looking tapestries, whilst above the fireplace a portrait of a distinguished-looking gentleman dressed in the fashion of Queen Elizabeth’s time stared back at me. This I took to be one of Maisterson’s ancestors.

  I had barely been waiting two minutes when Maisterson himself strode purposefully into the room, followed by Roger Wilbraham, who was looking a lot healthier than he had done the day before. Both men wore worried expressions, but Maisterson’s countenance lightened somewhat when he saw me looking at the painting.

  “That,” he said, “is my great-great-uncle, John Maisterson. This town owes him much, for he was at the forefront of the effort to rebuild Nantwich after it burned down in fifteen eighty-three.”

  “He looks like a man of some status,” I agreed.

  “Yes, unfortunately. However, it seems he may have been up to his ears in the intrigue that has ultimately led to the predicament we currently find ourselves in.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “but I find it hard to believe that any of the trustees appointed by Abbot Massey have been entirely blameless in all of this. It appears the honour of being appointed one of Massey’s chosen trustees was something of a poisoned chalice. One of them, Roger Crockett, was most violently murdered, whilst the rest of them, at least those who we can identify, appear at the very least to have conspi
red to cover up the true nature of the murder and help the main perpetrator to escape, but may also have been guilty of conspiring to murder Crockett themselves. It is a veritable nest of intrigue.

  “Massey must be turning in his grave to think that his plan, to put aside monies for the re-establishment of the monastery, a noble and godly aspiration, would end up creating the motive for bloody murder.”

  The two gentlemen shuffled their feet in embarrassment.

  “It is indeed a bitter irony,” agreed Wilbraham, “but we cannot dwell too much on that. Our task is now to make sure we do not become victims ourselves. What do you make of the messages that were delivered here yesterday?”

  “I have not seen the messages that were delivered to you,” I reminded Wilbraham, patiently.

  Maisterson acknowledged this with a grim smile and extracted an envelope from inside his doublet. He then took out the single sheet of paper, laid it out on the table, and smoothed it flat for me to read.

  If you wish to avoid responsibility for the death of the hostage I hold, please submit your engraving into the possession of Master Daniel Cheswis by Wednesday, August 14th.

  “The letter sent to me was identical,” said Wilbraham, placing his own sheet of paper on the table.

  I picked it up and examined it carefully. Both Wilbraham and Maisterson’s letters were written in the same hand and on the same poor quality paper as the letter that was delivered to me.

  “What I think is that the murderer is interested in Mr Maisterson’s engraving, and not yours, Mr Wilbraham,” I said, handing my own letter to Maisterson for both gentlemen to read. “I believe the murderer already knows Mr Wilbraham’s word, although exactly how that has come to be, I cannot say.”

  I then went on to explain Alexander’s theory about the significance of Assumption Day. Wilbraham, to his credit, looked a little surprised but not in the least flustered.

  “I can only assume that this information was passed on unknowingly by one of my ancestors, either my father, my grandfather, or my great-grandfather, to one of the ancestors of the unknown trustee,” he said.

  “That is probably true,” I agreed. “The problem is that your ancestor probably had no idea who the final trustee was, although the ancestor of the murderer of Henry Hassall and Geffery Crewe would have known the identity of all of the trustees. What is odd, though, is that your ancestor appears to have given the information over willingly.”

  “Or maybe he had no idea the information was being surrendered at all,” ventured Wilbraham.

  “But when could this have occurred?” asked Maisterson. “These engravings were entrusted to us as a secret. They are not the kind of thing you would show to a stranger.”

  Maisterson had a point. It seemed to me that there were relatively few occasions when it would have been possible for one trustee to gain knowledge of another’s word without him being either aware of it or specifically wishing to divulge it.

  “You are no doubt correct,” I said to Maisterson. “It is seventy years since Massey’s treasure has been an issue. In the interim, the importance of the treasure has been largely forgotten and has rarely been discussed. Most of the trustees, in fact, were not aware of each other’s identities. Indeed, the Crewe family was not even in the area until recently.

  “My guess is that the Wilbraham family’s word was divulged around the time of the murder of Roger Crockett, but finding out how and by whom may require the skills of an archivist, someone who can distinguish the wheat from the chaff in seventy-year-old documents. I believe I know one such person.”

  * * *

  As expected, I found Ezekiel Green in his dimly lit office at the back of the Booth Hall, leafing diligently through his reports and ledgers. I coughed lightly as I entered, causing the young clerk to blink nervously and look around himself in an owl-like manner. It was as though I had flooded the room with daylight, but then, as he recognised me, Green smiled and gestured towards a chair.

  On Ezekiel’s desk, I noticed, still lay the court documents he had shown me the last time I was there, but next to them were several other documents, which were bookmarked at specific pages.

  “You have been busy, Ezekiel,” I stated. “What have you found that you think will interest me so?”

  Green placed his pen back in his inkwell and closed the ledger he had been working on, before swinging his chair round to face me.

  “I have been carrying out considerable research since we last spoke,” he said. “Just as you asked me to. Until yesterday, I was beginning to lose hope of finding any further information that might prove useful to you, but then I heard about the unfortunate attack on Mr Kinshaw and the disappearance of Adolphus Palyn. I didn’t realise why at the time, but a bell rang in my head, as though this were important.”

  “Why would it do that?” I asked.

  “Master Cheswis, it is well known that your wife sold her first husband’s business to Gilbert Kinshaw, and that Kinshaw was attacked shortly before your housekeeper’s granddaughter disappeared. The rumours are that this might be connected with your absence from Nantwich yesterday, and therefore also with the death of Mr Hassall. Rumours spread quickly round here, Mr Cheswis, as you know. Everyone is aware of your interest in solving Mr Hassall’s murder.”

  I gave Ezekiel a sharp look. I was not sure I wanted to be seen as undermining Sawyer and Cripps’ official investigation, but I guessed that the two constables would not hesitate to spread word that their work was being affected by a meddling ex-constable, especially if they were unable to solve the murder themselves.

  “So what conclusion did you draw?” I asked.

  “It took me a while to remember exactly what it was that was troubling me about Adolphus Palyn’s disappearance,” said Ezekiel, “but I knew it was something that I had read in the reports from Roger Crockett’s inquest and the subsequent sessions trial. So I recovered the archives from the repository below and set about re-reading the statements from the inquest.

  “It was then that I noticed a very interesting thing. Roger Crockett’s main servant at The Crown was a man called Thomas Palyn, who was a significant witness on the side of Bridgett Crockett, both at the inquest and during Mrs Crockett’s subsequent attempt to bring Richard Wilbraham and others to trial over her husband’s murder.”

  “But Palyn is a common enough name.”

  “Quite, so I sought out Bridgett Palyn, who is of an age with me. She confirmed that this Thomas Palyn had been her great-great uncle, and that she herself had been named after the widow of Thomas’s employer, who, of course, was Bridgett Crockett. She then went on to tell me an incredible tale of perjury and subterfuge, which almost resulted in Thomas Palyn ending up on the gallows. All hearsay, of course, and naturally I had no idea whether any of this could possibly have any relevance to Adolphus Palyn’s disappearance, so I spent last night digging out more documents from our archives and was able to piece together a most fascinating story.”

  “Then I am all ears,” I said, sitting down on a spare chair. “What can you tell me about Thomas Palyn, and why was he so important?”

  “You will remember that at the coroner’s inquest, which took place on the Saturday following Crockett’s death, Bridgett Crockett argued that her husband had died as the result of multiple blows inflicted by a crowd of attackers, amongst whom, she swore, was Richard Wilbraham.”

  I nodded the affirmative.

  “Well, the inquest, of course, found that Edmund Crewe, who had been conveniently spirited out of the vicinity, was solely responsible for the murder. This you already know. From the start, though, Bridgett Crockett argued that the whole of the process presided over by Maisterson the coroner was corrupt.

  “She accused him of intimidating John Hunter, the painter she had engaged to paint the corpse, of loading the jury with his own friends, and, most seriously, she accused him of hiding the wounds on her husband’s body, of locking the church doors during the inquest so that the general public could not get
in to see the state of the corpse, and of attempting to trivialise the fatal blow struck by Crewe – all, she said, in order to protect his own friends and kinsmen accused of the murder. One of the key witnesses who spoke out on Bridgett’s behalf at the inquest was Thomas Palyn.

  “That would, perhaps, have been the end of the matter if it were not for the fact that Bridgett refused to accept the coroner’s verdict and initiated an ‘appeal of murder’ against Richard Wilbraham, the Hassalls, and others. This was the circumstance in which most of the witness statements we have been looking at were collated. Initial hearings related to the case were held over a twelve day period in Chester, Nantwich, and Wybunbury in the presence of the chief justice of Chester and other commissioners.

  “One thing which emerged from these hearings was that there appears to have been several attempts to bribe Palyn by Maisterson’s faction offering the servant money, pasture, subsidised rent, and other benefits if he were to testify to Maisterson’s single blow theory. Indeed, Palyn made bribery claims at the inquest itself. However, this seems to have been followed by an apparent promise by Bridgett Crockett that Palyn would be well-rewarded if he testified to her version of events. In the event, he did exactly that, incriminating not only Wilbraham and Hassall, but Maisterson too.”

  “Are you saying that Palyn was not to be trusted?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily,” replied Ezekiel. “I cannot say. After all, these events happened seventy years ago. Although it is true that comments made about Palyn at the time were not particularly complimentary. At various times he was described as ‘a naughty lewd fellow’ and ‘a venomous spider’ amongst other names. What is certain is that the chief justice’s investigation was by no means the end of the matter.