‘I expect I’ll get round to it. Well, that was the last time I paid my various creditors. Since then... I’m a younger son, Dodd, as you are yourself. I get nothing from my father except the occasional loan and a good lecture. I’ve got no land and no assets at all, except my relatives and the people I know in London and Berwick.’
‘How d’ye live at Court, sir?’
‘The Queen likes me and she gives me money occasionally. Sometimes I can help someone get an office, or they believe I can.’
‘Is that all? I heard it was very expensive, living at Court.’
‘Oh Lord, Dodd, it is, it is. It’s crippling.’
‘So ye must have some means of earning money, sir; it stands to reason.’
‘I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else.’
‘Ay. My word on it.’
‘Gambling.’
‘Eh?’
‘I gamble. I play cards. Not dice, and I don’t bet on bears or dogs. Just cards.’
Dodd was fascinated. ‘Can ye win enough that way, sir?’
‘Yes, usually. There are plenty of people with more money than sense at Court, and a lot of them want to play me because I’m the Queen’s cousin and they’re snobs and want to boast about it, or they’ve heard I’m... good, and they want to beat me.’
‘And you get enough that way, sir?’
‘Yes. I paid Sergeant Nixon out of my winnings on Sunday night. Most of it was originally Lowther’s money anyway.’
Dodd laughed, an odd suppressed creaking noise. ‘No wonder he’s out for your blood.’
‘He would be anyway.’
‘No, but see, sir, he’s used to winning against your sister and my lord Scrope.’
‘Of course he is. They’re both appalling players.’
‘How about horses, sir? D’ye ever bet on them?’
‘What, tournaments and suchlike? Yes, on myself to win, to try and cover the cost of it.’
‘Nay, racing.’
‘No. Cards are more reliable.’
‘That’s where I lose my money,’ confided Dodd. ‘At cards too, but on the horses as well. Will ye teach me to play, sir?’
Carey looked at him, astonished that the stiff-necked Sergeant could admit that he needed to learn. But then the only other person who had done that had been the famously proud Sir Walter Raleigh.
‘I expect so, I learnt it myself from a book. I’m afraid I don’t play seriously with you and the men, though, because you can’t afford to lose enough.’
‘Och, I’m happy to hear it. Take yer living off Lowther by all means. So why did ye leave London, sir, if ye could support yourself at play?’
‘Well, unless you cheat, which I don’t unless somebody’s trying to cheat me, it’s still fairly precarious. You can always have a run of bad luck. And things were getting a little... tense.’
Dodd had the tact not to ask directly. ‘Ye felt like a change?’
‘Ay,’ said Dodd. ‘Ye couldna keep on as Deputy then.’
‘Quite.’
‘Seems like ye’ll need to marry money or land, sir, like I did.’
Carey sighed again, cracked his knuckles. ‘That’s what everybody keeps telling me.’
But ye’ve lost your heart to Lady Widdrington, who’s married to someone else and not likely to inherit much either, thought Dodd sympathetically, though he didn’t say it.
‘So what do you think about who murdered Atkinson?’ Carey asked abruptly, obviously forcing his mind away from depressing thoughts and back to puzzles.
Dodd hesitated a moment longer and then answered slowly.
‘All I can say is, by my thinking there’s two kinds of murder. There’s the kind that happens in a right temper when ye go after a man that insulted you with a rock in yer hand and beat out his brains. Or there’s the kind where ye think about it beforehand and then do it when he’s not expecting ye. That’s the kind of murder that happened to Atkinson.’
‘Yes. Throat cut. I couldn’t see any signs on him that he’d fought at all.’
‘He wouldn’t know how any road. What about the man that got your glove off of Simon Barnet?’
Carey nodded, scratching the lymer bitch around her ears. She moaned with pleasure and rubbed her chin on his leg. A couple of the Keep servants came in and began laying the tables ready for the second of the two meals they served daily.
