The Witching Pool: A Justice Belstrang Mystery (Justice Belstrang Mysteries Book 2) by John Pilkington (love letters to the dead .TXT) 📗

He hesitated, then looked aside briefly. ‘There are rumours aplenty,’ he murmured. ‘But I’ll not deny that the woman seems harmless enough to me. That’s as far as I’ll go.’

I was curious now. ‘What kind of rumours would those be?’ I asked. But at that, a look came over the man’s face which I remembered well: one of plain obstinacy.

‘I’ve said that’s as far as I’ll go, sir,’ he answered. ‘Now, since you seem determined to see the prisoner, I’ll conduct you to the cellars.’

He waited, whereupon I allowed him to lead the way. Down the stairs we walked, Lisle ahead with keys jangling at his belt. The floor below was gloomy, stone-flagged and lit by torches. There were few prisoners here, most being confined in the old chamber at the ruined castle. Hence the newest arrival had been given a room to herself, at the end of the passage where we stopped. Lisle fitted the key, opened the door and stood aside, allowing me to enter the tiny cell.

It was so dark that I could see little, but at last I made out a pallet of straw and a pail in the corner. The place looked empty, until a slender figure materialised from the gloom. I stopped abruptly, whereupon the prisoner spoke – not in the cracked voice of an old crone, which I confess I had expected, but in one as soft and mellow as any I have heard.

‘You wish to see me, sir? Then you’re most welcome – how can I aid you?’

***

We stood, she and I, for in the absence of even a stool we could do no other. Having assured Lisle I would call him if I were in need, the sergeant closed the door upon us. He would not lock it, he said, but a watch would be kept, though to my mind such action was needless. For my immediate impression of this woman was not only that she presented no danger to anyone, but rather the opposite. She was a healer, her son had said, the day before at Thirldon. She had thought I was come to ask advice about some remedy as, it emerged, one person who knew her had already done. Hence her surprise was great when she learned the reason for my visit, and almost at once she was asking after her family.

‘Edward’s a good man and a good father,’ Agnes Mason told me, after I had given her what reassurance I could. She stood erect and composed in her plain frock and apron, her hair long and unbound. ‘But he’s not much of a farmer. You’ll have seen they’re poor folk, sir. If the worst happens, they won’t be able to put up a fight against Giles Cobbett. Mayhap you don’t know him, but he’s a man who’ll have his way.’

‘I know him a little,’ I said.

‘For years he’s wanted our piece of land, for sowing he claims,’ she went on. ‘To add to Humphreys’ acres, so he can raise the rent – I speak of my neighbour, Abel Humphreys. Though both of them know the land’s good for little but pasture. We keep pigs, a cow and a few hens…’ she sighed. ‘But you won’t want to hear me complain, sir. I’m thankful, and sore amazed that you’ve come here. What shall I tell you? Ask what you will.’

I was silent for a while, marshalling my thoughts. In truth, before meeting Agnes Mason I had been inclined to adopt my magistrate’s manner, and put her to question as I would have done anyone suspected of wrongdoing. But now I was in a quandary, for her very presence had dashed aside any prejudices I harboured. So: I will confess it now, and have done with it.

Agnes was but a little short of sixty years old, her hair silvered with age. Yet she had the face, manner and shape of a woman of fifteen or even twenty years younger – and to my great surprise, I was sorely attracted to her.

There, I have said it. And the mixture of feelings that arose, as she and I talked, threatened to become a trial in my mind. I thought briefly of my dead wife, and of Hester; I had barely looked at anyone of the other sex in ten years, and was content - or so I told myself. Yet here, in an odorous and gloomy cell, accused of a heinous crime, was a woman with cornflower-blue eyes that looked steadily into mine as she spoke, and disarmed me utterly.

It was almost as if Robert Belstrang were bewitched.

‘Ask what I will, you say…’ I gave a cough, shook myself inwardly and tried to behave like the lawyer I had been. ‘Well, perhaps you should give me your version of events, any way you please. Touching especially, perhaps, on your feelings towards your landlord.’

‘There’s little to tell,’ Agnes said, after a pause. ‘I was taken by the sergeant, with nothing said beyond the charges, and brought here. As for feelings, I have few of any sort towards Cobbett. I rarely see him, and I see less of his daughters. He keeps them on a tight leash at Ebbfield, even the eldest… or so he did.’

She lowered her gaze. ‘That poor maid, as pretty as they come. To take her own life – it’s a most hellish thing, which has caused me troubling thoughts.’ She looked up, then: ‘But one thing I swear, Master Belstrang: I’d no more have wished harm on that girl than I would on my own grandchildren.’

Her voice rose as she delivered the last words, and by instinct I regarded her keenly. At such times, in the past, I always tried to read a suspect’s gaze, seeking any trace of deception. But there was