Free The Alehouse Murders by Maureen Ash Page B

he was going to have a woman in there, or another of his dice games. So I hid and waited.”
    She looked up in earnest supplication at Bascot. “I didn’t know them bodies was in the barrels until I saw Wat lifting them out. Truly I didn’t. The barrels they were in were at the back, where I put ones waiting to be rinsed out and dried. I’d just made a new brew. Wat knew I wouldn’t be using any of those for a day or two. I swear, sir, in the name of the Blessed Virgin, I didn’t know those bodies were there.”
    “What else did you see?” Bascot asked impatiently.
    Agnes’ hands clutched nervously at the folds in the front of her gown as she answered him. “I saw a man—I think it was a man—at the door into the yard. He was standing there, watching, as Wat carried those poor dead souls inside. I couldn’t see his face, he was wearing a cloak with a hood, and the candlelight was dim and behind him. There was little light from the moon. But it was him that shut the door after Wat had finished and then I didn’t see either of them anymore.”
    “How long did you stay hidden?”
    “Until the morning light came, sir.” The tears on Agnes’ face had dried, leaving her face flushed. “I waited all night watching for some sign that the stranger had left. He must have come in at the front and left the same way. It wasn’t until it was light that I was bold enough to go inside and, then . . . you know what I found.”
    “There must have been some noise from inside—when your husband was killed.”
    “No, sir, there wasn’t. Not that I heard anyway. The only other thing I saw was some candlelight from our bed chamber above. Just glimmed briefly at the open casement, then it was gone.” She looked up at him hopefully. “You was right, sir. If I’d been up there, I’d of been dead, too. That was why I was frightened to tell the truth. I thought if the murderer knew I had been there, seen him—well, he might come back again and do me in to be along with my Wat.”
    “Did you tell the priest what you just told me?” Bascot asked.
    “No, sir. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Jennet. I didn’t even show her this.” She thrust a hand in the voluminous folds of her skirt and pulled out a small shiny object and handed it to him. “I found it, in the morning, just as the sun came up. I saw it glinting on the ground, beside one of the barrels that Wat took, took . . . one of them that had a body in it,” she finished lamely.
    Bascot examined the object she handed him. It was a small silver brooch, too tiny to be of use for a cloak, probably intended for pinning a woman’s garment of light weight. It was fashioned in a circle, formed by a pair of clasping hands, and with the letter M—most likely for the Virgin Mary—scrolled on the top. The design was not unusual, betrothal rings were often made so, but uncommon in a brooch. The pin was bent, but still held in the clasp, as though it had been pulled from the material it held. It was not particularly valuable, but to Agnes it was worth quite a few of the pennies she charged for stoups of her ale. The fact that she had produced it meant that it was probable she was finally telling the truth.
    He put the brooch into the purse at his belt, to keep company with the scrap of material Gianni had found. “Yesterday—you did your business as usual? You tended to your ale, served customers—all as on any other day?” Bascot asked Agnes.
    She nodded. “It were busy, what with all the people come from other parts of the country for the fair. I served in the taproom. I barely had time to set out my malt for the next mash, or prepare my gruit.” Bascot knew that gruit was the flavouring for the ale, and that Agnes would have used the herbs he had found in the cubbyhole upstairs in the alehouse. “I uses a special mixture for gruit that my mam taught me, bog myrtle and honey. That’s what makes my ale so good.”
    “The Jew and the two strangers—they were never