‘Who wanted Hugo Hackett dead?’ Rosamond asked.
Her blunt question made Lina scowl. ‘How should I know? I had little to do with him.’
‘You lived in his house for several years. Your sister was his wife. You must have some notion of what the man was like. Was he quarrelsome? Was he litigious? Did he gamble excessively? Was he in debt?’
‘I tell you, I do not know!’ Lina’s hands curled into fists, but she was closer to tears than to violence. Installed on the cushioned window seat in Lady Appleton’s study, her face was the very picture of misery.
Rosamond made an exasperated sound. She lacked the patience to coax information out of her friend. They had already wasted most of the day while Lina dithered. First she’d pled exhaustion. Then it was a headache. Then she’d needed feeding, since she’d slept through dinner. If Rosamond was to find the real killer, she must depart for London on the morrow. As it was, she doubted there would be anything left to see at the scene of the crime. The murder had taken place nearly a week earlier. Then, too, the more time that passed, the less reliable memories became. If anyone had seen or heard something untoward that night, such recollections would by now have been influenced by Isolde’s insistence that Lina had killed Hugo Hackett.
‘Sit here.’ Lady Appleton indicated the chair drawn up to her coffin desk, so called because of all the long, narrow compartments, or ‘coffins’, used to store pens, inkpots, paper, and various other writing supplies. ‘Write down a list of suspects as Lina gives you their names.’
Rosamond obliged and took up the sharpened quill. She slanted a glance at Lina as she dipped it in thick black ink. ‘If she has no suggestions, I can make a few of my own. Isolde Hackett is the most logical person to have killed her husband.’
Lina came to life, sputtering in protest. ‘My sister would never do such a thing!’
‘The victim’s spouse must always be considered. Who else benefits more?’
‘Ask rather who loses more?’
‘That depends upon the marriage.’
‘She was there in the house,’ Lady Appleton pointed out from her perch atop the trunk that held her collection of books on herbs, medicines, gardens, and poisons.
‘So were others,’ Lina objected. ‘Servants. Apprentices. And someone could have broken in. Or Hugo might have invited his killer to visit. I do not know how long he had been dead when I found him.’
‘All true, but we cannot rule out your sister. For all you know, she may have spent years nursing a grudge against her husband.’
Twisting her hands together in her lap, Lina hunched forward but she did not meet Rosamond’s eyes. ‘Everything I saw between Isolde and Hugo spoke of their affection for one another. They never quarreled.’ She made an odd, choking sound. ‘Sometimes I hated Isolde for that because I knew it would do me no good to appeal to her for help. She always deferred to Hugo, certain he knew best, even when it came to what man I must marry.’
‘But Isolde has profited by his death by at least her widow’s third. Had they children?’
‘No.’ Lina looked pained as she added, ‘Isolde inherits all Hugo had.’
Rosamond held the pen poised over the paper. ‘What of other kin? Or a business partner?’
‘There is no one.’
Rosamond drew a double line beneath Isolde’s name. Isolde was now free to marry again if she chose. If she’d had her eye on someone else while Hackett was still alive, there was motive aplenty. Lina had said that silkwomen ran their own businesses. Mayhap she’d wanted control of his, as well. For the most part, Rosamond’s own situation being an even more rare exception, widows were the only women who could enjoy such legal rights as managing their own money and property and making a will, free of interference from any man. In the ordinary way of things, a woman became her husband’s property when they wed, no better than a slave under the law.
‘Hugo Hackett tried to coerce you into marriage. How did he treat his apprentices and servants? Was he the sort of man to beat or threaten them into obedience?’
‘He did not tolerate laziness,’ Lina admitted, ‘but I never saw him beat either of his apprentices.’
‘Names?’
Rosamond wrote as Lina ticked off each member of the household. As a mercer, Hackett had taken two apprentices. As a man of wealth, he’d employed three maidservants – a tiring maid for his wife, a scullery maid, and a maid of all work – as well as a cook and a cook’s boy.
‘What about his business associates? Other mercers? His suppliers?’
Head in hands, Lina made a low sound of distress. ‘I never paid any attention. I had my own trade to learn.’
Rosamond wrote ‘business rival,’ but that was nearly as useless as adding ‘unknown thief’ to her list. ‘Does Isolde have her own shop?’
‘A workshop.’
‘So what her women produce goes to Hugo to sell.’ Most mercers dealt in luxury goods. ‘Mayhap she discovered he was cheating her.’
‘To cheat her would be to cheat himself,’ Lina countered. ‘He had no claim on her income but she nevertheless gave him all she earned. She said men were better at managing money.’
Rosamond busied herself sharpening the pen and made no comment.
That Hugo had surprised a thief seemed unlikely, especially when Lina herself had been obliged to pick the lock on the garden door before she could get back into the house. He might have let someone in, but how was she to discover that person’s identity if he had? She set aside her penknife and drew a line down the middle of the page, starting a second column. Isolde was at the top of that list, too.
‘I need names of people to talk to, Lina. The Italian merchant you were intended to wed – what was his name again?’
‘Alessandro Portinari.’
‘And the person who told you of Portinari’s … illness?’
‘Cecily Kendall. She is his neighbor in Lime Street, an elderly woman but a good customer. Isolde was wont to send me to her to deliver goods. I … I think that is how Alessandro first came to notice me.’
Rosamond wrote down the name and underlined it, then glanced at Lady Appleton, wondering at her silence. She had not spoken for some time.
A thoughtful frown on her face, the older woman’s gaze rested on Lina. ‘I do not pretend to know much about the mercery of London, but it seems to me that there has always been rivalry between English merchants and strangers. Is it not somewhat unusual for an English girl to be wed to an Italian?’ She did not mention the age difference. That was not uncommon.
‘It is not unheard of,’ Lina said in a whisper.
‘Is there some special reason Hugo Hackett promoted the match, mayhap a business advantage? Did you not say this Portinari is in the silk trade?’
Lina nodded but did not speak. The dull red color seeping into her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment but did not entirely explain it. Rosamond could not fathom why she would hold anything back, but it was obvious she was not telling them all she knew.
When Rosamond would have spoken sharply to her friend, demanding the whole story, Lady Appleton signaled for her to remain silent. She addressed Lina in a gentle, unthreatening voice. ‘Dear girl, we cannot help you if you do not trust us.’
‘I may be wrong.’ Lina mumbled the words.
‘If it concerns Hugo Hackett,’ Rosamond said, ‘you must tell us. It could be important.’
‘I think … I think the reason he would not relent when I repeated what Widow Kendall told me was that he owed Alessandro a great deal of money.’
‘He arranged your marriage to pay off a debt?’ Rosamond knew that men bartered their female relatives all the time, but that did not make it right.
‘It is possible that he did, yes. But I cannot see that it matters. Alessandro was not at the mercery that night.’
‘Are you certain? What if Hugo sent for Portinari while you were locked in your bedchamber? What if he confronted him with Goodwife Kendall’s accusations? What if Hugo tried to renege on their bargain? Perhaps the Italian lost his temper and killed him.’ In her enthusiasm for this theory, Rosamond gestured so vigorously with one hand that she nearly overturned the inkpot.
‘He might have struck Hugo in anger,’ Lina conceded, ‘but I doubt he would stab him to death. How could he expect to collect a debt once Hugo was dead?’
‘From his widow.’ A thought struck Rosamond and she grinned. ‘Then again, if neither of them killed Hugo, mayhap Alessandro will decide he’d prefer to marry Isolde to settle Hugo’s account.’
Lina shuddered. ‘I’d not wish a man with the pox on anyone. Despite her accusations against me, Isolde is still kin.’
‘But such a solution would leave you free to marry elsewhere,’ Lady Appleton murmured.
At those words, the expression on Lina’s face turned wistful. Lady Appleton’s eyes narrowed. Her voice had an edge to it when she asked the next question. ‘Who else objected to this marriage?’
‘No one.’ Lina’s reply came much too quickly to be believed. She began to toy with one of her rings. It was of the type known as a gimmal, with double hoops and bezels joined together at the base. Such rings were customarily given by a man to his beloved.
‘Whose name is inscribed next to yours?’ Of a sudden, it occurred to Rosamond that if there was someone else Lina would prefer to wed, the revelation of Portinari’s affliction provided her with a convenient excuse to refuse the match.
‘Tommaso has naught to do with this.’
Rosamond exchanged a skeptical glance with her foster mother. ‘Tommaso? Another Italian?’
Abandoning the coffin desk, Rosamond crossed the room to give Lina her handkerchief. Once again, tears appeared to be imminent.
Sniffling, dabbing at her eyes, Lina blurted out her answer. ‘Tommaso Sassetti is Alessandro’s nephew, his sister’s son.’
‘His heir?’
‘Only if he does not displease his uncle. He has no money of his own. If we were to wed, we would be penniless without my dowry. At best, Tommaso might find employment as a translator, and I would have to work in some other silkwoman’s shop.’
‘How long have you known this Tommaso?’ Rosamond asked.
‘I met him when Isolde and Hugo and I dined with Alessandro.’
‘So he must have been aware of his uncle’s plans for you.’
Underscored by pitiful sobs, Lina provided a disjointed account of her courtship by Tommaso. To Rosamond it sounded as if that young man might have believed that Hugo Hackett was the only obstacle between him and Lina’s dowry.
She returned to the desk and added Tommaso Sassetti’s name to her list of suspects.