Bad Money (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 6) Read online

  Bad Money

  Jason Vail

  Bad Money

  Copyright 2016, by Jason Vail

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Hawk Publishing book.

  Cover illustration copyright Can Stock Photo Inc.

  Cover design by Ashley Barber

  ISBN-13: 978-1534630406

  ISBN-10: 1534630406

  Hawk Publishing

  Tallahassee, FL 32312

  Also by Jason Vail

  The Outlaws

  Stephen Attebrook Mysteries

  The Wayward Apprentice

  Baynard’s List

  The Dreadful Penance

  The Girl in the Ice

  Saint Milburgha’s Bones

  Lone Star Rising Stories

  Lone Star Rising: Voyage of the Wasp

  Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

  Martial Arts

  Medieval and Renaissance Dagger Combat

  Bad Money

  Part One

  April 1263

  Chapter 1

  “Help me! Dear God in Heaven, help me!” a woman cried from the depths of Bell Lane. “Oh, please, please help!”

  “What’s got into Mistress Bartelot, I wonder?” Harry the beggar said. The carving he had been working on sank to what little he had of a lap. “Has she taken to apprehending miscreants on the street now?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Stephen Attebrook said. He withdrew his left foot from the warm salt bath that Jennie Wistwode had brought out from the kitchen and toweled off the stump of what remained of it and hastily returned the foot to his boot before anyone at the inn just across the yard might spot his shame. “But it sounds more serious than that. I hope no one’s died. It’s too early for that.”

  In the past few months, Stephen had more than enough death and grief to fill several lifetimes in his work as Ludlow’s deputy coroner. He did not relish the prospect of having to attend another death, and this one across the street and probably someone he knew.

  Stephen added, “We haven’t even had breakfast yet. And besides, I need to get up to the castle or I’ll miss the muster.”

  Word had come to Ludlow that Llywelyn ap Maredudd, a Welsh princeling, was on the march into Shropshire for a bit of raiding and pillaging. Roger Mortimer and Percival FitzAllan had summoned all Englishmen in this area of the borderlands to gather at Ludlow with their arms to oppose Maredudd.

  “It’s not like they’re going to want you, damaged as you are,” Harry muttered, attending to his carving with more attention than before.

  “They’ll want me now that the Prince has taken the king’s army away and left us to fend for ourselves against the Welsh,” Stephen said.

  “I doubt it. Look what happened last time. Nobody likes a cripple.” Harry knew well what he was talking about, since his legs had been taken off above the knees after a wagon had rolled over them. Compared to that, Stephen’s injury, his foot lopped off at the arch, was rather minor, although anyone who saw it was as repulsed as much by his stump as by Harry’s.

  Already people were responding to the cry. Stephen heard the front door to the inn slam open, and several people were rushing out the side door into the yard and making for the gate to Bell Lane, none of them, fortunately, sparing Stephen a glance so that he was able to struggle into his boot, even though his foot was still damp.

  “You don’t think it’s the housekeeper, do you?” Harry asked. “I rather liked Mistress Dungon.”

  “I don’t see why it should be,” Stephen said without conviction, setting off across the yard as fast as his bad foot would allow: a rather stumpy, awkward jog. “Try to keep up, will you? You’ll miss the best gossip, and I know how much that’s worth to you at the gate.” The “gate” was Broad Gate down the hill from the inn, Harry’s normal post during the day. But this being a Sunday, he was prohibited from begging, his normal work.

  “It is unseemly of you to make light of Mistress Bartelot’s misfortune,” Harry said, drawing on the padded leather gloves that protected his hands from the ground. With his legs off below the knee, he had to use his hands to get around, which he managed with surprising speed and agility.

  “I take my example from you, my friend,” Stephen said as he reached the gate and entered Bell Lane.

  There was a sizeable crowd gathered before Mistress Bartelot’s house, which stood just a few doors down on the other side of the street from the inn.

  Mistress Bartelot’s window on the first floor, from which she spent her day surveying the comings and goings on this little avenue of commerce, was open as usual. But she was not seated as usual, clutching the gold cross that adorned her neck. This morning she stood at the window, hands upon the sill, babbling something that was now indecipherable, her face a study in anguish. She was a gaunt woman, severe in appearance and in dress. Deep lines ran from her eyes to her strong chin, accentuating the boxiness of her face. She always wore black fringed with white lace, as if she remained in mourning for the husband she had lost at least a decade ago.

  “Felicitas!” cried Edith Wistwode, the proprietor of the Broken Shield. “Whatever is the matter, dear?”

  “Oh, dear God!” Mistress Bartelot replied. “I’m ruined! Ruined! It’s all gone! Every scrap!” She shook her hands in the air and then dropped her face to her palms. “Even my bauble!” she was heard to mutter through her fingers.

  And it was only then that Stephen noted that she did not have the heavy gilded cross around her neck as she always did, and he began to get a sense of what might have happened.

  “Mistress Bartelot!” Stephen called. “May we come in? You must tell me the nature of this misfortune.”

  Mistress Bartelot sniffed and wiped her nose. “Dungon,” she said to someone in the chamber behind her, “will you please go down and let Sir Stephen in.”

  When Mistress Dungon, the housekeeper, opened the door, the crowd took it as an invitation for them all to enter, curiosity being as irresistible an addiction as wine. But Dungon barred the door with an outstretched arm, making an exception only for Edith Wistwode. She shut the door on the others, who would be left to pry the matter out of Edith, who was not much of a gossip, especially where her friends were concerned. Everyone already knew that Stephen was a lost cause as regards to news, but there was always the hope that he would tell Harry. One fellow, who knew who could be depended on, stopped by Harry at the inn’s gate, and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you later, eh?”

  “Right, Bob,” Harry said. “Don’t forget to bring a farthing or two.”

  “It’s Sunday!” Bob objected.

  “What difference does that make? A man’s got to eat,” Harry was heard to say as the door to Mistress Bartelot’s house swung shut on Stephen’s back.

  “It’s terrible, simply terrible,” Dungon said as she led Stephen and Edith through the hall to the stair that climbed to the first floor.

  “What’s so terrible?” Edith asked, anxious although it was clear by this time that death was not involved in whatever misfortune had befallen the house.

  “I’ll let the mistress tell you,” Dungon said.

  Stephen had never been in Mistress Bartelot’s house before. They crossed the passage to the hall, Stephen glimpsing what had once been a shop to the left, but which was now empty, shuttered and forlorn. The hall held nothing but a plain wooden table and two stools, not a chair to sit comfortably by the fire on the floor which had gone out. It was a sure sign of poverty that Dungon had let the fire die. The floor itself was hard-packed dirt.

  The hall lay in
the middle of the house, open to the roof to allow the smoke from the fire to escape, like many such houses. There were sleeping chambers at the front, over the shop, and at the back, over the pantry and buttery. Mistress Dungon climbed the stairs to the forward chamber.

  The housekeeper opened the door and stood aside for Stephen and Edith to enter.

  Mistress Bartelot stood in the center of the chamber, which was as bare of furniture as the hall. There was only a bed without curtains, a stool by the window, a wardrobe in the corner and a small chest beside it, the top open.

  “Felicitas, dear!” Edith exclaimed as she rushed to Mistress Bartelot’s side. “What is it?”

  Mistress Bartelot pointed to the chest. “It’s gone! All of it!”

  Edith peered into the chest. “So it is. But what was it?”

  “My entire fortune. All I had left. All I had to live on.” Mistress Bartelot dropped her face to her hands and shook her head. Edith put her arm around Mistress Bartelot’s shoulders, which was a feat as Edith barely stood as tall as the other woman’s armpit.

  “What am I do to now?” Mistress Bartelot sobbed. “How am I to live?” She raised her head. “The rent is due in only a few weeks and I’ve nothing to pay it with now.” She drew away from Edith. “I’ll be thrown out on the streets . . . like that dreadful man!” She waved in the direction of the Broken Shield.

  “You’ll not have to live like Harry, I promise you,” Edith said. “Here, sit down.” She guided Mistress Bartelot to the stool and forced her to sit.

  “But I have no family left — my husband gone, my children dead! No one! I am alone!”

  “You are not without friends. You shall be taken care of. I shall see to it. Now, tell us exactly what happened.”

  Mistress Bartelot’s mouth drew down at the corners, elongating a face that was already square and long, the crevasses that ran from her nose to her chin growing even deeper than normal. “I slept poorly last night, so I was late in getting up. Dungon was already here, and she woke me. I rose to find that!” She pointed to the chest. “Someone broke in during the night and took everything!”

  “What did they take?” Stephen asked. “Money?”

  “Money? I have no money and have never done.”

  “What was this fortune then?”

  “My husband left me spoons. Silver spoons. He liked to collect them, you see. He spent a good bit of all we ever earned on them. I thought it an extravagance, a lot of nonsense. But when he died, I found I could sell a spoon, or a part of one, now and then, to pay my bills and my rent. It is how I lived. I have nothing else. The guild won’t take care of me, you see. Reginald quarreled with them. He was accused of embezzling guild funds, and they expelled him. He hanged himself. Edith knows the story! Everyone does. It is my shame!”

  Edith glanced at Stephen, who had not heard this story, and nodded.

  “I suppose he used the money to buy the spoons,” Mistress Bartelot said. “I never thought about it until now.”

  “Put it out of your mind,” Edith said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Your cross is missing,” Stephen said.

  “They took that too. Everything I own is gone. I’m a pauper now. My mother would be so ashamed. She had such expectations, and none of them played out.” Mistress Bartelot looked grim. “Lucy! Just think what she will say when she hears the news! She could never forebear from gloating whenever I went there.”

  “Lucy?” Stephen asked.

  “Lucy Wattepas,” Edith answered, identifying the wife of one of the town’s leading craftsmen, the goldsmith Leofwine Wattepas. “They are cousins, although distant ones, from my understanding.”

  Mistress Wattepas nodded. “We both came from good gentry families, and have both fallen so low. That’s the lot of the youngest daughters, you see. If no one can be found for us among our own class, we are dispatched to some merchant or craftsman. My father had only daughters, an even dozen of us. Reginald was the best my father could do. Lucy was luckier. And she has never let me forget it.”

  “These spoons,” Stephen asked, “did anyone else know you had them?”

  Mistress Bartelot shook her head.

  “Not even Dungon?”

  “She is in my confidence, but she is the only one.”

  “I didn’t even know,” Edith said, “and we’ve been friends since Felicitas came here.”

  “Where did you sell these spoons?” Stephen asked.

  “To Wattepas, of course. Who else? He is the only goldsmith hereabout,” Mistress Bartelot replied. “Do you think you can find them? My spoons? I would be ever grateful.”

  “It is a long shot,” Stephen said. “Whoever is responsible is probably well gone by now.”

  Chapter 2

  “Thank you, Sir Stephen for your concern,” Mistress Bartelot said. She seemed to be recovering somewhat from her distress. “Dungon, if you would show my guests out?”

  Dungon, who had remained just beyond the chamber door, said, “Very good, my lady.”

  That form of address sounded odd in this house. Mistress Bartelot might have started life out as a lady, but she wasn’t considered one after marrying a tradesman. But Stephen let the conceit pass. She wasn’t the only person he knew in Ludlow who entertained it.

  “Thank you, Dungon,” Stephen said as he passed the housekeeper at the head of the stairs and went down. “I would like to see the rest of the house.”

  “I don’t think her ladyship will allow that,” Dungon said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, she’s quite particular about people poking about beyond the hall.” Dungon sighed. “It’s bad enough there.”

  “You mean she doesn’t want people to see how impoverished she’s become.”

  “Yessir. I’m afraid so.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “A church mouse has got more in its larder than the lady.”

  “And you? She can afford you but not food?”

  “Some appearances must be kept up no matter what. Although I haven’t had me wages this month, and it don’t look I’ll see them.”

  “What good would it do to poke about?” Edith asked as they reached the hall. “It would only upset her.”

  “You know as well as I,” Stephen said. “We might find how the thief got in the house. There might be some clue to whom it is.”

  “I shall leave it to you,” Edith said turning toward the front door. “I’ve an inn to run and hungry guests. And I don’t want Felicitas to think I’ve taken advantage of her misfortune to rummage through her cupboards.”

  “If she only had cupboards,” Dungon muttered.

  “Thank you for that, Dungon. I shall see you at the inn, Sir Stephen,” Edith said. She marched toward the passage to Bell Lane.

  Dungon and Stephen stood without speaking. The smell of dust in the air rather than the smoke that permeated a happy house made Stephen sad and reminded him of his own condition.

  “The pantry’s that way,” Dungon said at last to fill up the silence if nothing else, or perhaps to get the distasteful chore over with so she could be about whatever business Mistress Bartelot required, though that could not be much.

  “I think I can find it without your help.”

  “I’m sure you can, sir. It ain’t like we’ve hidden it.”

  The doors to the pantry and buttery stood across from each other in the passage to the rear garden. Neither was lighted, but Stephen could see well enough that the windows opening at the rear of the house were shuttered and barred from the inside.

  “Were any of these windows open when you got up?” he asked.

  “I haven’t touched nothing here,” Dungon said.

  Stephen nodded to himself. Whoever had broken in had not used this route. Thieves were never so considerate as to close the door, or in this case a window, as they left.

  He went out to the back garden and examined these windows again, and could see no sign that either had been forced just to be sure. He could imag
ine Gilbert Wistwode asking if he had checked that detail and he did not want to be wanting. He brought his face close to the back door as well. The wood frame was old and had many nicks, but none were fresh.

  Stephen dropped to all fours, heedless of the startled expression on Dungon’s face, and searched the ground beneath the windows for any sign that a ladder had been used to gain entrance above, or that someone had boosted up the thief, which had occurred in another burglary recently. But the grass and the ground seemed undisturbed.

  “These windows,” Stephen asked, “you’ve not touched them this morning?”

  “No reason to,” Dungon said.

  “They were shuttered up tight and barred last night, as they are now?”

  “I check them every night before going to bed. They were such as you see them now.”

  Stephen backed away from the house and looked at the windows of the upper chambers. Both were open.

  “Which one is yours?”

  “The one on the right.”

  “Were the windows open all night?”

  “I like the fresh air, especially now that it’s spring. Helps with the stink.”

  “And you heard nothing?”

  “I’m a heavy sleeper, unlike her ladyship.”

  “She obviously heard nothing.”

  “She’d have said so if she did, I’m sure.”

  “And you had nothing to do with the disappearance of these spoons?”

  Dungon’s mouth tightened. “Are you accusing me?”

  “I’m asking you. You’re the only person who knew about them, apart from Leofwine Wattepas. Who else was in a better position? It wouldn’t be the first time a servant stole from her master.”

  “You can search my things, if you care to. You won’t find them.”

  Stephen wondered how much of this was a bluff. “I think I will.”