‘Lady Isabella,’ Cranston queried, ‘what about the shoemaker?’

She played with the sparkling ring on her finger. ‘Well, over the last few months, my husband used to make reference to a shoemaker. He claimed the shoemaker knew the truth, and the shoemaker was guilty.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what he meant. Sometimes, at table,’ she smiled falsely, ‘my husband was like you, Sir John. He loved a deep-bowled cup of claret. Then he used to chant: “The shoemaker knows the truth, the shoemaker knows the truth”.’

Cranston watched her closely.

‘These riddles your husband used, when did they begin?’

‘The quotations from the Bible? About - oh, fourteen or fifteen months ago.’

‘And the shoemaker riddle?’

Cranston noticed that Lady Isabella had become tense and anxious.

‘Shortly after Christmas? That’s right. He first made the riddle up during one of our mummer’s games at Twelfth Night.’

Somehow Athelstan knew these riddles were important. The room had fallen deathly silent except for Cranston’s abrupt questions, the equally abrupt answers and the snapping and crackling of the logs in the fire. What did this group fear? he wondered. What was the meaning of the riddles?

‘Tell me,’ Athelstan spoke up, ‘did anything happen in the household to account for these riddles? Anything in Sir Thomas’s life? Sir Richard, Lady Isabella . . . you were the closest to Sir Thomas.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sir Richard muttered. ‘My brother liked to speak in riddles, refer to shadowy things, lectures and parables. He was a man who loved secrecy for secrecy’s sake and hugged such secrets to his chest like other men do gold, silver or precious stones. No, nothing special happened here.’

‘Are you sure?’ Cranston turned and looked at him, resting his cup on one large, plump thigh. ‘Are you sure, Sir Richard? My memory fails me about specific details but was there not a death here eight months ago?’

Lady Isabella’s face now paled and Sir Richard refused to look up.

‘No!’

‘Come, come, sir,’ Cranston barked. ‘There was something.’

‘Yes,’ Lady Isabella said softly, ‘Sir Richard’s memory fails him.’ She looked at Sir John more guardedly, as if realising the coroner was not the fool he liked to appear. ‘There was Eudo’s death.’

‘Ah, yes, Eudo,’ Cranston repeated. ‘Who was he?’

Sir Richard looked up. ‘A young page boy. He fell from a window and broke his neck, out there in the courtyard. No explanation for the fall was ever given, though Sir Thomas believed he may have been involved in some stupid jape. The boy was killed outright, head smashed in, neck broken.’

Cranston drained his cup and beamed in self-congratulation, giving a sly grin at Athelstan, who glared back. He wished the coroner had told him about this!