The Treason of the Ghosts

Peterkin was used as a
messenger by lovesick swains.’
    ‘And
did you go to Hamden Mere?’
    ‘Yes.
It’s a marsh in a copse of wood on the south side of the town. I was impatient.
I wanted to know who it was: the tavern becomes busy after the horn is sounded
and the market’s ended.’
    ‘Why Hamden Mere?’ Corbett asked. ‘Why not Devil’s Oak
or Gully Lane ?’
    She
smiled. ‘It’s where I used to play as a child.’
    ‘And
where you take your love swain?’
    ‘Yes,
but don’t tell Taverner Matthew: he’s always boasting how he runs a good
house.’
    ‘And
what happened?’ Corbett demanded.
    ‘I
went and waited. I searched and I looked but there was nothing — a cruel jape —
so I came back.’
    ‘Did
you later question Peterkin?’
    ‘Yes
I did, quietly. I didn’t want to make myself look as big a fool as he is. He
just gaped at me, said it was a poem he had learnt and didn’t say any more.’
    ‘But
you believed him the first time?’
    ‘He
showed me a coin: said he’d been paid to deliver it.’ She shrugged. ‘That
convinced me.’ Adela became all nervous.
    ‘You
know what I’m going to ask,’ Corbett said softly. ‘Is that how Elizabeth was trapped?’
    ‘But
I had no proof,’ she hissed. ‘I was frightened. I did not want to become a laughing
stock. The taproom would never let me forget the day I believed simple
Peterkin. Even if I had said something — who would believe me? What proof did I
have?’
    Corbett
took a coin from his purse, went across and pushed it into the wench’s hand.
    ‘What’s
that for, Master?’ she asked cheekily.
    ‘Your
company,’ Corbett replied. ‘If I were you I’d go across to the church. I’d buy
a candle and light it.’
    The
young tavern wench looked puzzled. Corbett opened the door. She slipped out, he closed and locked it behind her.
    ‘You
danced with death,’ he murmured, ‘and were allowed to walk away.’
    Corbett
went to the window and stared down at an ostler cooling horses off in the yard
below.
    Of
course, Corbett thought. Poor Peterkin! Frightened of being
taken away, so easily terrified, so quickly bribed. Who would pay much
attention to him? The man may be a dullard but the same doggerel would have
been taught to him time and time again, only the place changed. Corbett
wondered how many other young women in the town had received such an invitation? Some would ignore it, dismissing Peterkin as mad
as a March hare. Others, like Adela, would go, perhaps at the wrong time, and
find nothing. Poor Elizabeth was not so fortunate. Of course, she’d tell no one. She wouldn’t want anyone to
know about the secret or, as Adela said, be made to look a fool if there was
nothing there.
    Corbett
turned his back on the window. No one would ever connect the two: daft Peterkin
and these murders. He was weak and helpless; a wench like Adela would find him
no threat. Corbett smiled grimly. The killer was clever: love trysts,
messages...! As Adela had proved, young women did not like their elders to know
about such things — a conspiracy of silence which the killer exploited.
    Corbett
picked up the Book of the Dead.
    ‘He
didn’t strike twice,’ he murmured. ‘He just did it the once!’
    Elizabeth was
lured to some place where the Mummer’s Man was waiting. Peterkin, he concluded,
would be the perfect messenger. Probably after a day or so, the message and the
memory would fade and, if the simpleton realised there was something wrong, how
could he proclaim what he had done? Corbett vowed to have words with Peterkin. In the meantime... He opened the Book of the Dead and, going
back twenty years, began to read. He recalled lines from a poem:
     
    Amongst
the dead I have walked,
    And
amongst the dead I have found the truth.
     
    Corbett
closely studied the Book of the Dead and found what he was looking for:
unexplained deaths. He closed it and sat back. Melford was truly a place of
bloody slaughter! He recalled Beauchamp
Place and that pathetic skeleton stowed away in
the old chapel wall.
    ‘Some
are left,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Some are buried, which means not all have been
discovered!’
    He
recalled what Tressilyian had said about the poacher. Was it possible?
    ‘Two assassins!’ Corbett murmured.
    He
thought of Furrell and Sorrel: one a lecherous poacher, the other committed to
what? Justice? Vengeance? Both knew the countryside, and what did Furrell mean about ‘the truth being
plain as a picture’?
    Corbett
pushed back