The Holy Innocents

The mysterious murder of two children captures the determined curiosity of Roger the chapman, the 15th-century English peddlar with a nose for detection, recently met in The Weaver's Tale (1994). With the War of the Roses a distant backdrop, the recently widowed Roger arrives in the town of Totnes, where he is asked to guard a fine house in the absence of its owner, Eudo Colet. A tavernkeeper, intimating witchcraft, tells Roger about the strange disappearance and death of Mary and Andrew, Colet's stepchildren, who had recently lost their mother, heiress Rosamund Crouchback. The children's nurse, a poor cousin of the dead heiress who hates Colet, asks the chapman to investigate. It was believed that the children, whose mutilated bodies were later found in the river, could not have left the house unobserved. At the time of their disappearance, Colet had been in the company of a town notable. Probing the seemingly prosperous and contented village society, Roger uncovers deep wells of greed and jealousy. As in the three previous Roger the chapman tales, Sedley weaves a compelling puzzle into the vividly colored tapestry of medieval English life. (Feb.)