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lovely eyes, soft hazel flecked with green, and a clear, honey-coloured complexion. The eyes, however, with their fringe of long, dark lashes, seemed to have dulled with the passage of time, and her skin was muddied and sallow. In short, the past six years had not dealt kindly with her. Nevertheless, she still had that air of command as of someone accustomed to obedience, and which she almost certainly inherited from her late mother, a member of the de Courcy family. But Alison also had a fair share of her father’s guile and his rock-hard determination to get his own way by any means at his disposal. She would pander to my vanity by treating me like an equal if it served her purpose, unlike her husband whose high opinion of himself was too great ever to allow him to employ such a measure.
    I had never liked William Burnett. His father, another of Bristol’s Aldermen, had, according to my mother-in-law, been a sensible, down-to-earth man who had made light of his kinship with Lord Henry Burnett, a nobleman who lived in the village of the same name, a few miles outside the city. But the Alderman’s weakness had been his only son, whom he had indulged and encouraged in every kind of folly from William’s boyhood onwards. The result was an empty-headed man of great self-consequence who thought only of his own convenience and pleasure. In appearance, he had changed very little from the young fop I had first encountered in Alderman Weaver’s house nearly six years earlier. The pikes of his shoes were perhaps a little shorter than they had been then, and it was no longer necessary to fasten the points to his knees with ornate golden chains. But they were still of a length to set any dandy aquiver with admiration, and the auburn hair which curled fashionably to his shoulders was anointed with a peculiarly pungent pomade. His clothes, too, would not have been out of place at King Edward’s court, his parti-coloured, tightly-waisted tunic being almost obscenely short and his cod-piece decorated with dangling golden tassels. His ornamental red velvet cloak was lined with black sarcenet, his sleeves slashed to reveal insets of oyster satin. Beside him, in her dark blue, fur-trimmed gown and white lawn hood, his wife paled into insignificance.
    Nevertheless, I addressed myself to Alison Burnett, ignoring her husband. ‘What do you want of me, Mistress?’
    I already knew what she wanted, but I did not expect it to be expressed with such uncompromising vigour. ‘You must go to my father and denounce this imposter who calls himself my brother.’
    ‘Quite so,’ her husband put in, adding peremptorily, ‘and the sooner the better!’
    I heard my mother-in-law’s sharp intake of breath and imagined rather than saw the decisive shake of her head. Alderman Weaver was her landlord and employer: she could not afford to incur his hostility, even at second-hand. I gave her a reassuring glance.
    ‘Mistress Burnett, I cannot do that. For one thing, I never met Clement Weaver and so am in no position to say whether this young man is your brother or no. I never even saw the dead body of Master Clement, any more than I saw those of his fellow victims. You know the circumstances as well as I do.’
    ‘How dare you speak to my wife like that—’ William Burnett was beginning, his voice shrill with indignation, but once again Alison’s raised finger prevented him from saying more.
    ‘That’s enough, William. We must respect Master Chapman’s scruples. What he says is very true.’ She smiled up at her husband to soften the reproof, but William continued to glower like a sulky schoolboy, one hand tugging bad-temperedly at the red and black silk cord which girdled his waist.
    Alison turned back to me. ‘Nevertheless, Master Chapman, both my husband and I would be grateful if you could call on us tomorrow, so that we could refresh our memories of events now six years distant, and also acquaint you with a few of the facts concerning this