Tombland

‘Master Boleyn,’ I said seriously, ‘if we are to get you acquitted, we must consider who else might have had a motive to murder your wife. A motive to set you up for the murder. And identify who might have been able to put your boots and the hammer in the stables after the attack. Is it true that you and the stable boy had the only keys?’

‘Yes.’ His face softened. ‘My horse, Midnight, is a fine steed, but temperamental. He will do anything I tell him, but is suspicious of others. I would not let the twins near him, he kicks at them on sight, and I feared he might do the same to Isabella or my workmen. He was safe only with the stable boy. But he could not have been involved.’ Boleyn gave a mirthless laugh. ‘The boy’s a wantwit, though he had a remarkable way with horses. I took him on at the start of the year, though I had some doubts; he had a reputation as an unreliable scamp, but someone told me he had a feel for horses. It was true, he was very good with Midnight, and the horse liked him. I think young Simon preferred animals to people. The twins were always baiting him. He could no more have killed my wife than flown to the moon. He always kept the keys with him, at my instruction. After the murder he handed them in and left. I think Scambler was scared, he was scared of his own shadow, that one.’

Nicholas and I exchanged a look. I said, ‘We saw a boy called Scambler in town on the way here. A skinny lad of about fifteen.’

‘That’s him.’

‘Some apprentices tripped him while he was carrying a bale of wool, making him drop it in the mud. His employer sacked him on the spot. They called him Sooty.’

Boleyn nodded. ‘He’s always careering madly around the city, always in some sort of trouble because of his scatterbrained foolishness.’

‘What happened today was not his fault,’ Nicholas said.

Boleyn shrugged. ‘Boys will be cruel. But you can forget about Scambler in connection with this.’

‘That we cannot,’ I answered firmly. ‘If we are to investigate this matter thoroughly, we have to interview everyone who was potentially involved. You say he was the only one apart from you with a key to the stables. When he left you, where did he go?’

Boleyn shrugged, irritated now. ‘I don’t know. I believe he has an aunt around Ber Street. His parents are dead. Someone will direct you easily enough, Sooty Scambler is well known in Norwich. But you will be wasting your time.’

‘The key to your defence is finding out who put those things in the stable,’ I said determinedly. ‘I need all the information I can get. I shall spend this week finding it.’

‘Serjeant Shardlake has a great reputation for discovering murderers,’ Nicholas stated proudly.

Boleyn looked at me. Clearly he did not believe it. ‘Well, anyway, I thank you,’ he said.

‘Now,’ I continued. ‘What of others with a possible motive? I am afraid I must consider Isabella, and your sons.’

Boleyn spoke slowly and patiently, but with a deep underlying anger. ‘Isabella, like me, obviously had a motive for killing Edith. But none whatever for leaving her body on gruesome public display, which could only throw suspicion on us.’

‘I agree. And that is the strongest card you have. By the way, was Isabella questioned?’

‘Yes. And convinced the coroner she had nothing to do with the murder.’

‘No deposition was taken from her. Nor from Gerald and Barnabas. What if they had discovered that their mother, whom they had no reason to love, had returned to Norfolk?’

Boleyn looked me in the eye. ‘I know my sons are ruffianly brutes. But they did not do this.’

Toby said, ‘Master Shardlake met them. At your house in London.’

Boleyn looked surprised. ‘What were they doing there?’

‘I fear they had come to see what they could steal.’

Boleyn grunted. ‘They have no love for me. I have always known that. And yet – after their mother left, both of them, believe it or not, were full of sorrow. They cried for weeks. I do believe that in their way they loved her.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘I am their father, but my eyes are not closed to what they are like. Yet I cannot believe they did this.’ He sighed again. I could see he had had enough, yet we had little time, so I pressed on.

‘That leaves your neighbour, Leonard Witherington. You and he had a quarrel over the boundary between your lands. If you were found guilty and the lands were to be forfeited to the King, he could buy them.’

Boleyn laughed bitterly. ‘He’d have to contest that with Sir Richard Southwell, whose land adjoins ours on two sides. He’d lose that battle. No, it’s the boundary Witherington wants changed.’

‘Have you had any trouble with Southwell?’

‘I’m too small a fish for him to bother with. It’s Witherington; he sees changing the boundary as a way to stop his peasants protesting about his taking their land for sheep, he would use the extra land as common land or waste for them. But my own peasants would make trouble then.’

‘I gather there has been a confrontation already.’