16 - The Three Kings of Cologne by Kate Sedley

could get, his chin propped in his cupped hands, staring sightlessly at a half-full beaker of ale in front of him.
    Before I could approach my quarry, however, I was intercepted by two old acquaintances, Miles Huckbody and Henry Dando. Like all old people herded together with no one but their own generation for company they were desperate for news of the wider world and the stimulation of younger minds.
    ‘What you doing here, Roger?’ Miles asked, his long, wrinkled face alight with curiosity beneath the white hair. He slipped one bony hand into the crook of my elbow and stroked the sleeve of my jerkin with the other. ‘You remember Henry, here,’ he went on, when his friend’s attempts to attract my attention became too importunate to ignore.
    ‘Master Dando,’ I said, smiling into the faded, rheumy blue eyes and wishing their owner at the devil.
    Miles Huckbody let out a squawk of protest. ‘You’ve no cause to go a-“master”-ing him, Chapman. Henry ain’t of any importance.’
    ‘I’m just naturally polite,’ I said; a claim that provoked another cackle of derision from my companion.
    ‘Who you come to see?’ Miles demanded. ‘Is it one of us?’ He stared up at me hopefully.
    ‘I’m afraid not,’ I apologized. ‘I want to speak to Master Linkinhorne.’ And I nodded towards the silent figure, hunched over his drink.
    ‘Oh, ’im!’ Henry Dando sniffed. ‘You won’t get a lot of joy outta him. Miserable old sod, ’e is. Don’t talk to anyone much.’
    This was bad news. But then I asked myself what would Jonathan Linkinhorne – provided he was anything like his cousin, Sister Walburga – have in common with Miles Huckbody and Henry Dando, with their constant stream of old men’s chatter? Besides which, at present, he must be suffering from a deep sense of shock, and possibly self-reproach, to think that his daughter had been dead, brutally murdered, for all these years when he had thought her alive somewhere, well and happy.
    ‘You’re here about that body they dug up in the nuns’ graveyard, ain’t you?’ Miles poked me sharply in the ribs. ‘Jonathan’s daughter, weren’t it? That Sergeant Manifold was here yesterday and spoke to him in private. Old Linkinhorne, he didn’t tell us nothing. But gossip soon leaks out in a place like this. Bound to.’
    ‘You can’t keep nothing secret in here,’ Henry Dando confirmed, trying to look regretful and failing miserably.
    I guessed that such a morsel of news had generated enough excitement to keep the Gaunts’ inhabitants in a ferment for months to come.
    There was no point in denying my mission. ‘You’re right. I do want to speak to Master Linkinhorne about his daughter,’ I agreed, disengaging my arm from Miles’s clawlike grip. ‘But alone,’ I added firmly. ‘I’ll wish you both good-day. It’s been a pleasure seeing you again.’ (As I’ve remarked before, we all have to tell untruths from time to time.)
    ‘We’ll introduce you,’ Miles offered.
    ‘He knows us, you see,’ Henry added.
    ‘I’ll introduce myself,’ I said in a tone of voice that left them in no doubt that I was refusing their very kind offices.
    They sheered off, muttering together in offended whispers. I took no notice, seating myself at the opposite side of the trestle to Jonathan Linkinhorne and folding my arms in front of me. He glanced up briefly, registered the fact that my face was unfamiliar and looked down again at his beaker, but without making any serious attempt to finish his ale.
    ‘Master Linkinhorne,’ I said.
    He raised his head once more, this time frowning. ‘Do I know you?’
    In his youth, he must have been a heavy-jowled man, but the flesh now hung slackly around the jawline, running into his neck and making him appear almost chinless. Like Henry Dando, indeed like a lot of blue-eyed people, the colour of the irises had faded with age, but in his case they were also milky, hinting at incipient blindness. He had pushed back