Eleanor gasped in shock.
“Forgive me, my lady. I have no wish to point an accusing finger at an innocent,” Maud said. “Although I do find the creature obnoxious, I mention the name only to suggest there were others who might have had cause enough to do violence.”
“What reason would Constance have to kill anyone? I thought her eyes looked only to Heaven, however benighted her vision of it might be.”
“Mistress Constance hated her husband. I was not the only one who heard her loudly refuse to lie with him and plead that they take vows of celibacy for the salvation of their souls. Yet she was not without carnal longings and had a hot eye for a well-formed man. When my son first returned home, now more a man than the boy who left here, she even gazed upon him like a hungry traveler might look upon an innkeeper’s savory stew. Then he bluntly told her that he would be no woman’s supper.” Her lips briefly twitched with a smile.
Eleanor mind began to race with this new possibility. Ranulf was quite certain he had seen a woman visiting the groom the night he was murdered. Might it have been the elder son’s wife? Yet surely he would have recognized her. There must have been too little moonlight to identify the person. Perhaps he had just assumed it was Hilda?
But Constance was a slight woman, unlike the cook, and thus more like the steward’s wife at a glance. How could he have confused such different women? As for Luce, now that she had been murdered, she was unlikely to have been Tobye’s killer. Indeed, this mysterious woman visiting Tobye might be innocent as well. The killer could have arrived later.
Eleanor wiped her face as if removing an annoying cobweb. “Tobye had quite the following of women. Was Mistress Constance one?”
The widow might be mistaken for Hilda in poor light, the prioress thought. As much as she believed Maud was innocent, dare she finally eliminate her from the list of suspects? Aye, she could. What Mariota had seen was not a lover’s embrace but that of mother and son. In light of what she had just heard about the longtime relationship between steward and widow, she doubted Maud would invite Tobye to her bed. What she knew of the widow just did not suggest the woman was a killer.
Then whom had Ranulf seen?
“There is much common gossip,” Maud said with evident hesitation. “I do not want to spread malicious untruths.”
“I am a stranger here and thus seek to learn what others know. If you believe the tales are born only of spite, I have no wish to hear them. That said, I beg your opinion on how much truth lies in others.”
The widow sighed. “There was a rumor that Mistress Constance was obsessed with the groom. Even Tobye laughed about her with his fellows, and I did overhear him once jest that her eye was often on his groin while she bent her knee to God. Whether this was true, I cannot confirm.” She looked at the prioress as if hoping this was sufficient.
“Did he ever claim to have lain with her?”
“I can avow no direct knowledge of that, my lady, although I never heard such a story. Perhaps there was pleasure enough in telling the tale that this stern and pious wife might chase after a lusty groom. What I did notice, however, is that his jests about her, which I overheard from others, grew quite cruel. One might think he had grown weary of her longings?”
“Public mockery is hard enough to bear for any mortal, but more so to one who purports to be righteous,” Eleanor replied. “The humiliation has most certainly driven some to murder. And a woman could slip up on a sleeping man and slit his throat. Perhaps she is also the one who drove a knife into Hilda’s back. But I wonder if Mistress Constance was strong enough to strangle a younger woman and hoist her body to simulate a hanging? Ranulf’s wife was too slight, was she not?”
“Aye, but might not jealousy add strength to a hand already driven by shame? Surely she had heard that Tobye was bedding Mistress Luce.”
“Although envy is a very malignant sin, especially when joined to lust and public shame, I am not convinced that Mistress Constance is our murderer. Out of fear, a woman might strike a man with a dagger, or even in a moment of rage, but she does not usually choose that means to kill and Tobye’s death was most certainly planned.”
“Yet Jael, the wife of Heber, drove a nail into Sisera’s head…”
“…with the strength of God’s hand to save Israel. Nonetheless, you may be right. Yet is it truly reasonable to conclude that a woman could strangle another, one who would fight back with equal vigor, and then pull her dead body…?” Eleanor gasped.
“My lady?” Maud stretched out a supporting hand as if she feared the prioress had just been stricken with illness.
“I am well enough, good mistress, but have reason to curse my slow wit! There is another I have never considered, one whose motives for the violent acts are becoming clearer now.”
The door to the chamber crashed open.
Both women whirled around.
Master Ranulf was bolting the door shut behind him.