Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters Page A

the night?”
    “So he could,” agreed Hugh unhelpfully, “but there’s no man so far claims he did. Unless you’ve recalled something no one else knows? Did you see anything of him after he was thrown out?”
    Walter shifted uneasily, looked ready to blurt out a whole indictment, and thought better of it in Juliana’s hearing. Brother Cadfael took pity on him.
    “It might be well,” he said guilelessly, “to take a look at the place where this assault was made. Master Walter will show us his workshop, I am sure.”
    Walter rose to it thankfully, and ushered them away with alacrity, along the passage and in again at the door of his shop. The street door was fast, the day being Sunday, and he closed the other door carefully behind them, and drew breath in relief.
    “Not that I’ve anything to conceal from you, my lord, but I’d as lief my mother should not have more to worry her than she has already.” Plausible cover, at any rate, for the awe of her in which he still went. “For this is where the thing happened, and you see from this door how the coffer lies in the opposite corner. And there was I, with the key in the lock and the lid laid back against the wall, wide open, and my candle here on the shelf close by. The light shining straight down into the coffer—you see?—and what was within in plain view. And suddenly I hear a sound behind me, and there’s this minstrel, this Liliwin, creeping in at the door.”
    “Threateningly?” asked Hugh, straight-faced. If he did not wink at Cadfael, his eyebrow was eloquent. “Armed with a cudgel?”
    “No,” admitted Walter, “rather humbly, to all appearance. But then I’d heard him and turned. He was barely into the doorway, he could have dropped his weapon outside when he saw I was ware of him.”
    “But you did not hear it fall? Nor see any sign of such?”
    “No, that I own.”
    “Then what had he to say to you?”
    “He begged me to do him right, for he said he had been cheated of two thirds of his promised fee. He said it was hard on a poor man to be so blamed and docked of his money, and pleaded with me to make it good as promised.”
    “And did you?” asked Hugh.
    “I tell you honestly, my lord, I could not say he had been hardly used, considering the worth of the pitcher, but I did think him a poor, sad creature who had to live, whatever the rights or wrongs of it. And I gave him another penny—good silver, minted in this town. But not a word of this to Dame Juliana, if you’ll be so good. She’ll have to know, now it’s all come back to me, that he dared creep in and ask, but no need for her to know I gave him anything. She would be affronted, seeing she had denied him.”
    “Your thought for her does you credit,” said Hugh gravely. “What then? He took your bounty and slunk out?”
    “He did. But I wager he has not told you anything of this begging visit. A poor return I got for the favour!” Walter was sourly vengeful still.
    “You mistake, for he has. He has told us this very same tale that you now tell. And confided to the abbey’s keeping, while he remains there, the two silver pence which is all he has on him. Tell me, had you closed the lid of the coffer as soon as you found yourself observed?”
    “I did!” said Walter fervently. “And quickly! But he had seen. I never gave him another thought at the time but—see here, my lord, how it follows! As soon as he was gone, or I thought he was gone, I opened the coffer again, and was bending over it laying Margery’s dowry away, when I was clouted hard from behind, and that’s the last I knew till I opened an eye in my own bed, hours later. If it was two minutes after that fellow crept out of the door, when someone laid me flat, it was not a moment more. So who else could it be?”
    “But you did not actually see who struck you?” Hugh pressed. “Not so much as a glimpse? No shadow cast, to give him a shape or size? No sense of a bulk heaving up behind you?”
    “Never