Murder by Misrule

  ***

  On Friday, Francis sought out the laundress in her domain. The question of the blood on the murderer's doublet nagged at him. There must have been a lot of it, especially on the sleeves and cuffs. The killer might have given the clothes away, but a costume suitable for Queen's Day would have cost a pretty penny. Worth salvaging. If the murderer was resident at Gray's, he might have sent the clothes to the Inn's laundress.

  The laundry was a stone outbuilding beyond the kitchens. An enormous kettle bubbled over a huge bed of coals. Two roughly-dressed but very clean boys stood on blocks of wood, taking turns stirring a mass of linens in the kettle. The laundress was a woman of middle years who had the hatchet face of an angry Turk and arms as brawny as a blacksmith.

  She regarded him with a deep frown as he approached. He knew she was remembering his foray into alchemical studies last summer, which had resulted in an unspeakable mess.

  He asked her if she had seen any clothing with unexpected quantities of blood on it shortly after Queen's Day.

  "How much blood d'ye expect?" she asked. He couldn't fault her astuteness.

  His efforts to describe the probable extent of splattering transformed her frown into a suspicious scowl. "What have you been up to now, Mr. Bacon?"

  "Nothing, nothing, I assure you. The clothes in question are not mine." He cast frantically about for an excuse. "Em, er, it was a colleague. An experiment, you might call it, involving poultry—"

  She held up a beefy hand to stop him. "T'ain't my job to know, sir." She scratched her chin, which was adorned with three coarse hairs. "Blood, now. I don't recall it, and ye'd think I would. Nasty business, blood. The devil to get out. It'll never come white again, howsoever long ye boil it. But I don't do all the washing, mind. There's many who think they'll get better in Holborn."

  "As I feared." How many women took in laundry between here and Westminster? A dozen at least as regular work. And what hard-pressed goodwife would turn down a shilling in exchange for her silence?

  Francis smiled and prepared to take his leave, but she wasn't finished. "Queen's Day, though. T'weren't blood, sir, but there was a mess of sopping clothes left for me that night. Seems a boatload of yon gentlemen went into the Thames after the pageant. Drunk as porpoises, sir, is what I heard."

  "Porpoises," Francis echoed, wondering where she had learned the word. Some ballad, probably. He hadn't heard about a wherry accident, but then he'd avoided all mention of the Queen's Day festivities, having been barred from enjoying them. Could the murderer have engineered that tumble as an excuse to wash away the signs of his crime in the murky waters of the Thames? He'd have to be a crafty opportunist. And worse, a gentleman of Gray's.

  He pressed a halfpenny into her palm and started to walk away. Then he turned back and gave her another one. She really had done a Herculean job of getting all the mustard out of his velvet curtains.