‘No, I have not been back to chambers. If she called this afternoon, she was unlucky. No doubt there will be a message tomorrow.’

Coleswyn smiled wryly. ‘I keep thinking of those two beetles we saw fighting in the stableyard. Why do Edward and Isabel need their carapaces, and what lies underneath?’

‘God alone knows.’

He fingered the stem of his glass. ‘Recently I met an old member of the Chandlers’ Guild, Master Holtby. Retired now, over seventy. He remembered Isabel and Edward’s father, Michael Johnson.’

I smiled. ‘Met by chance, or design?’

‘Not purely by chance.’ He smiled wryly. ‘In any event, he said that Michael Johnson was a coming man in his day. Shrewd, prosperous, a hard man in business but devoted to his family.’

‘You can see all that in the painting.’

‘Yes, indeed. He inherited the business from his own father and built it up. But he died way back in 1507; that was one of the years when the sweating sickness struck London.’

I remembered the sweating sickness. More contagious and deadly even than the plague, it could kill its victims in a day. Mercifully there had not been an outbreak for some years.

Coleswyn went on, ‘The family were devastated, according to old Master Holtby. But a year later Mistress Johnson remarried, another chandler, a younger man called Peter Cotterstoke.’

‘Common enough for a widow left alone to marry a new husband in the same trade. It is only sensible.’

‘The children were about twelve, I think. Master Holtby did not remember any trouble between them and their stepfather. They took his name in place of their father’s, and kept it. In any case, poor Cotterstoke also died, a year later.’

‘How?’

‘Drowned. He had been down at the docks on some business to do with a cargo, and fell in, God save his soul. But then to everyone’s surprise, Mrs Cotterstoke sold the business soon afterwards, using the proceeds to live on for the rest of her life. Disinheriting her son, Edward, in effect. He would have started as an apprentice in the business in a year or so. Master Holtby told me there was no love lost between the mother and either of her children.’

‘But why?’

‘He didn’t know. But he said old Mrs Cotterstoke was a strong, determined woman. He was surprised she sold the business; he would have expected her to run it herself, as some widows do. But no, she just lived on in that house, alone. Edward started work at the Guildhall soon after, and Isabel married, while she was still very young, I believe.’

I considered. ‘So some quarrel divided all three of them. And old Mrs Cotterstoke – we agreed that the wording of the Will looks as though she wished to set her children against each other, taking revenge from beyond the grave.’

‘But for what?’