By Murder's bright Light

well as a bag containing his few pathetic belongings, including the flask.’ She watched the priest’s dark eyes carefully. ‘Do you want to look at these?’
    Athelstan nodded.
    ‘But don’t put yourself out,’ he added anxiously. ‘Perhaps, if your maid Tabitha would be good enough to take me upstairs?’
    The mousey, grey-haired woman smiled at her mistress who agreed. Athelstan, leaving the coroner jovially accepting Mistress Roffel’s offer of wine, followed Tabitha upstairs. The rest of the house proved equally dismal, dark and rather dank. The furniture and hangings were tawdry — clean and sweet-smelling but battered and dingy. He passed the main bedchamber, where the door was ajar, and glimpsed a four-poster bed with clothing slung across the coffer at its foot. Tabitha took him into a small, dusty chamber with coffers stacked along the walls. The maid stood for a while looking around.
    ‘How long have you served your mistress?’ Athelstan asked quietly.
    The maid looked at him, crinkling up her eyes. ‘Oh, ever since the miscarriage sixteen or seventeen years ago.’
    ‘And she is good to you?’
    Tabitha’s face became hard. ‘Mistress Roffel is as harsh as her husband ever was. They richly deserved each other. She intends to return to Leith . I will be pleased to see the back of her!’
    Athelstan flinched at the venom in the woman’s voice. He watched, then helped, as she pulled a pair of leather, sea-stained panniers from behind a chest.
    ‘I slung it there after removing the flask. Shall we take it downstairs?’
    Athelstan put it over his shoulder and they returned to the parlour. Cranston , now on his second cup of claret, was describing to a bored but polite Mistress Roffel his own exploits at sea many years before.
    ‘You found what you wanted, Brother?’ she asked, stopping Cranston in mid-sentence.
    Athelstan put the leather bag on the floor, undid the buckles and emptied the contents out. They were not much: a pair of knee-high, woollen stockings; a needle and some thread; a quill; an inkhom; some unused scraps of parchment; a shirt; two rings, scratched and rather battered; a St Christopher medal; a small compass; and a calfskin-bound book of hours. Athelstan picked the book up, undid the catch and leafed through the yellowing pages.
    ‘His only legacy from his priesthood days,’ Emma explained. ‘Wherever he went, he always took that with him.’
    ‘Yet,’ Athelstan observed, ‘he was not a man of prayer and neither are you. Father Stephen at St Mary Magdalene regarded you as strangers.’
    Mistress Roffel was about to reply when Cranston burped and emitted a loud snore. Athelstan looked at his fat friend, who slouched in the chair, nodding, his eyes closed.
    ‘Is Sir John well?’ Emma asked.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Athelstan replied sourly. ‘He’ll sleep like a babe and wake shouting for refreshment.’
    The friar turned over the pages of the book, noticing how the blank pages at the end carried strange entries which could perhaps be accounts — sums of money, sometimes followed by the note ‘in S.L.’.
    ‘What are these?’ Athelstan asked.
    ‘God knows, Brother. My husband was a secretive man. I am still visiting the goldsmiths along Cheap-side to discover where he banked his monies.’
    Athelstan leafed over the pages and stopped to look at one fresh drawing; a squiggly line running across one page, small crosses carefully drawn alongside. The drawing looked fresh: the friar showed it to Mistress Roffel but she replied it made no sense to her. Athelstan sighed and placed the book back among the other possessions.
    ‘Your maid tells me that you are leaving the city,’ he said.
    ‘My maid knows too much for her own good,’ Emma retorted. ‘But, yes, once these matters are finished, I intend to collect my possessions, whatever monies my husband has left me, and return to Scotland .’
    ‘You hate London so much?’
    They all turned, surprised to see Cranston awake, blinking and smacking his lips.
    ‘Do you hate London , mistress?’ the coroner repeated.
    ‘It holds bitter memories: it’s best if I forget the past.’
    ‘And you know nothing to resolve these mysteries?’ Cranston asked.
    She shook her head.
    ‘And you, Sir John, do you know who murdered my husband and desecrated his corpse?’
    Cranston lumbered to his feet, shaking his head.
    ‘No, mistress,’ he breathed. ‘However, if I do find out, believe me, you’ll be the first to