16 - The Three Kings of Cologne Read Online Free PDF

insult that made them grow pink with indignation.
    Maria Watkins gnashed her gums and declared that she’d always known that that girl would come to a bad end. She appealed to her friends. Hadn’t she always said so?
    The others nodded solemnly. ‘We all did,’ Bess Simnel amended, unwilling to let one of them take credit over the other two.
    ‘But did you know her well?’ I asked, frowning and stooping to untie the rope from around Hercules’s collar. ‘I was told she and her parents lived in the manor of Clifton.’
    ‘True enough,’ Margaret admitted. ‘And she was some years younger than any of us.’
    ‘Four or five, at least,’ Goody Watkins agreed.
    ‘Oh, really, Maria!’ Bess Simnel was scathing. ‘In your case, ten or eleven, surely. Isabella would be over forty now, if she’d lived. And you can’t pretend to me that you’re a day younger than fifty-five!’
    Margaret Walker intervened hurriedly. ‘Let’s just say that Isabella Linkinhorne was younger than the three of us and leave it at that. And yes, the family did live in the manor of Clifton. But that didn’t prevent us hearing about her and her wild goings-on.’
    ‘An only child, Alderman Foster tells me, and very spoiled,’ I said.
    But mentioning the Alderman was a mistake, and they insisted I inform them of his and my involvement in the search for the murdered woman’s killer. They were, of course, thrilled. They would be first with this news throughout Redcliffe and then the city. They were immediately willing to tell me everything they knew.
    Disappointingly, this varied little from what John Foster had already told me, except that they remembered Isabella visiting the city on occasions with her parents.
    ‘And not just with Master and Mistress Linkinhorne,’ Bess Simnel said, nodding her head and pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘I recall times when she arrived entirely on her own, without even a maid in attendance.’
    ‘That’s true enough,’ Maria Watkins agreed, mashing one of the oatcakes to pulp with the back of a horn spoon, then feeding her toothless mouth with the crumbs. ‘Hard-faced hussy she was, in spite of her youth.’
    ‘She was very beautiful, as I remember,’ objected Bess.
    ‘Didn’t say she wasn’t,’ her friend retorted, spluttering through a mouthful of crumbs and spitting most of them out over the table. ‘Jus’ said she was hard-faced. And so she was.’
    ‘You’re both right,’ Margaret said, keeping the peace. ‘Lovely to look at, but wilful with it.’
    ‘Men,’ Goody Watkins opined darkly. ‘They were her weakness. And her downfall, mark my words.’
    ‘They’re most poor women’s downfall,’ Bess Simnel agreed gloomily.
    They all three nodded and glared reproachfully at me. I knew better than to try defending my reprehensible sex, and looked suitably conscience-stricken. Even Hercules raised his head and gave me an accusing stare.
    ‘Was there a particular man in Isabella’s life?’ I asked.
    Margaret sniffed, Maria Watkins let rip with a raucous laugh and Bess Simnel looked down her nose.
    ‘More than one, if all the rumours were true,’ my former mother-in-law said disapprovingly. ‘The story was that one of ’em was a Bristol man.’
    I was puzzled. ‘Why was it only a story?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t she ever seen with him?’
    Goody Watkins guzzled some beer, then smacked her lips together. ‘She was a crafty piece, that Isabella Linkinhorne. She was never actually seen by anyone with any of her lovers. Leastways, not up close, so’s they were recognizable. And if she’d a man in Bristol, she kept him pretty dark.’
    ‘It sounds to me,’ I said severely, ‘as if this poor girl’s reputation was undeserved. If no one ever saw her with a man …’
    ‘Oh, she was seen all right!’ Margaret protested. ‘From the time she could get astride a horse …’
    ‘Or a fellow,’ cackled Goody Watkins, then laughed so heartily she choked on a crumb.
    ‘Be