‘Do you know where he was headed?’
‘It’s none o’ my affair. Now if you’ll excuse me, sir, we’re that busy...’
‘Thank you, Goodwife.’
Dodd and Will the Tod exchanged glances.
‘Ah know how ye can solve yer troubles, Deputy,’ said Will the Tod as he finished his second quart.
‘How?’
‘Find Solomon the gateguard and get him to say he saw Barnabus coming in for the night.’
‘Barnabus says he was at Madam Hetherington’s.’
Will the Tod guffawed. ‘Ye could speak to the women, I suppose,’ he said. ‘For a’ the good that’ll do ye.’
‘No doubt they’ll lie,’ said Dodd.
Carey looked at him properly for the first time. Dodd’s long dour face was always hard to read, but at the moment he looked happy. That meant he was uncommonly pleased with himself.
‘What have you been doing, Sergeant?’ he asked. ‘Before you came here, I mean.’
Dodd sniffed. ‘I was looking for Simon Barnet.’
‘Why?’ asked Carey.
Dodd gave another sniff and drank some more beer. He looked as if he was having one of his perennial internal struggles. At about thirty-two years Dodd was the same age as Carey himself, although he looked older, and he had spent most of that time hiding a surprising intelligence. Whatever was going on under the miserable carapace would decide whether Dodd grunted something noncommittal or whether he actually explained what he was up to. Carey had already learned from experience not to interfere with his thought processes, and so he waited as patiently as he could.
‘Ye see, sir,’ Dodd began, ‘begging your pardon, but I didna think what Barnabus was at last night was so important.’
Carey didn’t like being told his orders were unimportant but he kept his mouth shut.
‘Ye see,’ Dodd said again, staring at the lees in his mug, ‘I thought it stood to reason, if he’d had a good alibi for last night he would have said so to us. And he’d have said so earlier, and not even Lowther would have put him in the dungeon.’
‘Go on.’
‘So he hadnae got none or couldnae remember. So then I thought of what your lady sister said and I wondered, sir.’
‘What Philadelphia said?’
‘Ay sir. Lady Scrope.’
Carey tried to remember. Come to think of it, there had been something...
‘She said they found Barnabus’s dagger and one of my gloves by the corpse.’
‘Ay, sir. That was it. So that set me to wondering. How they got the dagger—well, if Barnabus was at Madam Hetherington’s it’s no mystery, but how did the murderer lay hands on one o’ your gloves?’
Carey laughed. ‘By God, how did I miss that? Excellent, Dodd, of course.’
‘Ay,’ said Dodd smugly, ‘so I said, the one to ask is Simon Barnet. But I havena found him.’
‘Damn.’
‘No bother, sir; the lads are in town now and I’ve set them to searching for him. He’ll turn up. And then,’ Dodd said ominously, ‘we’ll ask him.’
They had finished eating by the time Bangtail Graham and Red Sandy Dodd arrived, looking about for them. Red Sandy went straight up to Carey and handed him a piece of paper. Carey looked at it with awful foreboding; it was an official-looking letter sealed by Scrope’s signet ring. He put it down by his trencher and finished his beer, his heart beating hard. The seal was in the nature of a Rubicon: once opened... He thought about it.
‘Now why would the Warden do that?’ asked Will the Tod’s voice, fascinated.
‘Hm?’ Carey asked.
‘Send for ye by letter? He only has to tell Red Sandy to tell ye...’
‘Och,’ said Dodd. ‘It’s quite friendly, really.’
Carey had worked it out but was a little surprised that Dodd had.
‘See,’ explained Dodd patronisingly to his father-in-law. ‘If he’s made a warrant out for Sir Robert, an’ he tells him by letter, he’s covered but Sir Robert can still... er... get away and no one the wiser. Or not, as he chooses.’
‘Trouble is,’ Carey said, putting his tankard down again with a decisive tap, ‘where the hell would I go?’
‘The Netherlands?’ suggested Will the Tod, with all the impersonal ingenuity of one who was quite secure in his position. ‘There’s always room for right fighting men there.’
‘Or Ireland?’ put in Dodd with ghoulish interest.
Carey shuddered slightly. He had heard descriptions of that particular hellhole from Sir Walter Raleigh, one of those unfortunate enough to have served there, of malarial bogs and half-savage but extremely intelligent and ferocious Wild Irish.
