The Sticklepath Strangler aktm-12

by Michael Jecks

  ‘You were killed once. I can do it again, and again and again,’ she spat.

  The Parson wailed; two men scurried away from her, and Samson’s cries became a hoarse coughing as he fell to his knees. Simon saw him tumble to his side, the obscene flap of skin from his head sliced away entirely as his wife flailed at him, striking him in the head and chest.

  Then the shock which had made his feet leaden, left Simon. As others pulled away from her knife’s reach, the Bailiff ran behind her; the next time the knife rose, he caught her wrists and held them. Gripping her tightly, he forced his fingers under her own until she gave a sob and dropped the blade into the mud. Only then did Simon glance at Baldwin.

  The knight had dropped to his knees at Samson’s side, and now he looked up and shook his head wearily. ‘He is truly dead this time, I fear.’

  Felicia was relieved. It was done now. Even the hounds appeared to have realised and both had stopped their howling. When they had stopped, she didn’t know, for she had been watching the events at the graveside, but now that she turned back, she noticed that they were both silent in their kennel.

  She left them and walked through the crowd, pushing her way onwards until she came to her father’s body. All about him were the men of the vill, standing and staring down sombrely, while Gunilda knelt weeping nearby. Felicia looked at her, feeling a curious detachment.

  There was an almost total absence of feeling for her mother. It was strange, but now, as she looked at Gunilda, she felt only a vague sympathy for her. Gunilda had tried to protect her from Samson, but she had failed.

  Then the knight was in front of her, turning her slightly so that her attention couldn’t focus on the dead body of her father.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Baldwin asked softly. ‘This is a terrible place for you to be, child.’

  ‘I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  Baldwin studied her for a moment. She stood quietly, her eyes steady. If he had to bet, he would gamble that she was less affected by the dreadful scene than he was himself.

  ‘I have come to fetch Mother,’ Felicia said.

  ‘Yes,’ Baldwin said, standing aside. He saw the Coroner glowering, and walked to him. ‘Don’t worry, Roger. There’s nothing to concern you here.’

  ‘Nothing? I just witnessed a murder!’

  ‘Maybe you saw a woman stab an already dead man. I don’t know, we shall have to discuss the matter with the Church authorities. I may be able to talk to the Bishop. Essentially, it is an ecclesiastical affair. Nothing to do with us.’

  ‘I can just see the King’s Sheriff taking that view,’ Coroner Roger scoffed, but then he nodded. ‘Whatever happens, though, I’ll be able to consider it more rationally tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep and a meal.’

  ‘Yes,’ Baldwin said, but he was troubled as he watched Felicia go to Gunilda’s side. She bent, taking her mother’s arm, and Gunilda gazed up at her with alarm, as though she could not remember her own daughter’s face. A young lad walked over to them, and Baldwin recognised Vincent. He took Gunilda’s other arm, and she allowed herself to be led away between the two youngsters.

  Baldwin could not help but think that he would himself prefer death to life, rather than see such a lack of sorrow on his own daughter’s face. Felicia had witnessed her father’s murder, but she looked as triumphant as a woman who has seen her husband’s murderer executed.

  Felicia opened the door and thrust it wide with her hip. Carefully she pulled her mother inside, and Vin trailed in their wake, halfheartedly holding Gunilda’s hand.

  ‘I’ll leave you, then,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ Felicia said, settling her mother on a stool and wiping Gunilda’s brow.

  Vin looked away with embarrassment. He thought there was every chance that Gunilda would be taken for the murder of her husband, although there was the claim of homicide while her mind was unbalanced. Anyone could believe that, having witnessed the scene. Perhaps she was fortunate that the Coroner and Keeper were there to see the whole terrible affair.

  Felicia was silent. Passing him a jug, she drank deeply from a cup, then said, ‘You remember that day by the river? You ran away then. Why?’

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I was scared of your father.’

  ‘You’re safe from him now, Vin.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with a half grin. ‘That was why I came back last night.’ Her hand touched his, gripping it and lifting it to her heart, where she held it gently cupping the swelling of her breast. Leaving his hand there, she tugged at the laces of her dress. Both hands now, pulling the material apart so that he could glimpse the rounded flesh beneath, and then the cloth of her tunic came away and he could see her flat belly, the rising dark hairs at the base, her thighs.

  ‘Do you want me again?’ she murmured, shuffling out of her clothes and reaching up to kiss him.

  He responded eagerly. ‘I thought last night proved that well enough.’

  ‘You seem to like my body,’ she smiled, chuckling throatily, the hard points of her nipples almost brushing his chest. He had the fleeting impression that they could stab him to the heart.

  ‘Your father… I was scared. He’d have killed me,’ he said as she picked up her clothes unselfconsciously, bundling them into a ball and throwing them into a corner next to a little torn apron.

  She took his hand and lifted it to her breast, feeling how he trembled. ‘He’d never have known, Vin.’

  ‘Bitch!’

  They had both forgotten Gunilda, who had remained seated on her stool, and who now stood and hurled herself at her daughter, flailing with her fists.

  ‘Get away from him! What are you, a she-devil? You would whore in my own house? Get out, you fool, leave this place!’ she shrieked at Vin, and he retreated from her.

  ‘You call me a bitch?’ Felicia bawled. ‘You dare call me that after lying back and letting him rape me every night? And you know what he did with those girls, don’t you? When they batted their eyelashes at him, he went with them! And you let him, you old cow!’

  ‘Get out, boy! Have nothing to do with her!’ Gunilda shouted at Vin.

  All he could do was flee, and he pelted from the place, out to the yard. He could remember every curve and swell of her body as though it was there before him, and the thought of lying with her tore at him, making him wonder whether he should go back, ask her to walk out with him, away from the house, back to their riverbank, but as he reached the main roadway, he paused and leaned against a pollarded tree, resting his brow on the bark. A thin mizzle was falling, kissing his face with a touch as light as a fairy’s, gentle little kisses that began to soothe him.

  Then, listening to the river, he realised that he now knew what had happened. And he couldn’t tell anyone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Baldwin rose with the first light, and was up at the table before the host had woken or stirred the fire.

  He was more concerned than he could remember over the events of the previous evening. Never before in England had he witnessed that sort of crowd behaviour, with a whole vill joining together against the law, prepared to destroy a man from the worst motives, from bigotry and superstition. It was a hackneyed word, ‘superstition’, one which he had used too many times recently, but it was the only one which fitted the behaviour of the mob last night.

  The memory of that terrible anger, and of his own frustration, and worse, the image of that dagger rising and plunging again and again into the breast of the hapless Samson, made Baldwin feel physically sick. He was not squeamish, he had killed men himself: he had killed one already this summer, but that was different. This was the slaughter of a man whose only crime at the time was that his own companions and neighbours had mistakenly thought him dead when in fact he was only wounded.

  At least his murder was less cruel than leaving him buried alive. Not that the reflection was itself particularly comforting. The man had been rescued, only to be struck down. No matter how bru
tal he had been in life, he didn’t deserve that end.

  The people had wished to burn him alive, believing him to be guilty of the murder of the vill’s children, and yet Samson was already buried when Emma died. The killer must be someone else.

  Baldwin leaned on his elbows, resting his chin on his hands. There had been six murders, if he was right. First Ansel de Hocsenham in 1315, the first year of the famine. That happened before Thomas and Nicky arrived, so they were innocent. From what the Reeve had said, Denise died in 1316, so she too died before Thomas got here, and Athelhard was killed that same year; the other girl, Mary, was strangled a little while after his death, as though the true killer was cocking a snook at the vill. Aline died in 1318, and Emma now in 1322. There was no logic to these deaths in terms of the gaps between each one, no apparent sequence that Baldwin could detect.

  Surely all the deaths were committed by the same person. Peter was presumably innocent. One of the victims was his own child, and although parents did kill their offspring, Baldwin had never heard of any being tempted to cannibalism. Likewise, he was inclined to believe that Swetricus was not the murderer because of his daughter Aline’s death. And the Reeve would always have had enough food. He wouldn’t have needed to kill.

  Baldwin was content with his earlier reasoning. He could imagine someone killing the Purveyor and then taking the opportunity to fill his empty belly. But why should that person then turn to killing children? Presumably because they were easier to kill, less able to defend themselves.

  Baldwin frowned. He seemed to recall someone telling him that Ansel de Hocsenham had been a large, brawny fellow. That would mean that only a similarly large fellow would have been able to overwhelm him, surely, or a group. Perhaps the Foresters had had a part in his death, for all their protestations of innocence.

  Or could it have been Drogo alone? The Forester appeared to be as concerned as the Reeve to conceal whatever had been going on in the vill. He had been surly and uncommunicative from the very beginning. And Vin too was an odd fellow.

  Baldwin recalled thinking that there was a pattern, and then he realised that it was the girls’ ages. There was something about their ages which appealed to their killer. He was considering this when Simon spoke.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘You are awake too? I had thought I was quiet enough to leave you sleeping,’ Baldwin said, shuffling along the bench.

  Simon donned his shirt and sat with him, scratching at his groin. ‘Damned fleas get everywhere.’

  Baldwin moved a little further away.

  ‘So what do you think?’ the Bailiff yawned.

  ‘We must speak to Swetricus and see what he has to say,’ Baldwin said with decision.

  He was determined to leave early and get to Swetricus before the peasant left to go out to the fields. The Coroner asked them to go ahead without him. Roger’s ankle had swollen considerably overnight, and now he was unable even to pull his boot on. Baldwin and Simon drank a little water, and walked out, Aylmer trotting from one scent to another.

  The clear sky promised good weather, with a thin veil of clouds which looked very far away and insignificant, and Baldwin felt almost ridiculous as he walked up to Swetricus’s door. To be talking in the broad daylight about ghosts and vampires felt ludicrous – and even to discuss a murderer seemed out of place. Nothing so appalling should exist in the glare of this perfect weather.

  Another thing he noticed was that as they passed houses, there was chattering and even a couple of people laughing. The fear which had apparently lain over the whole vill had departed.

  Swetricus opened the door and stood blinking at the two men.

  ‘We want to talk to you about these murders,’ Baldwin said, and Swetricus ungraciously stood aside for them to enter, Aylmer following.

  About a low table were three children, all girls. As Baldwin walked in, all three rose and fled to their father, hiding behind him and peering around him at the two strangers. Baldwin smiled and tried to put them at their ease. He gave Simon a glance, and saw the quizzical expression on his face.

  ‘It is obvious that you are a good father,’ Simon said to Swetricus.

  ‘Try to be.’

  ‘I have a daughter myself,’ Simon said, looking at the eldest of Swetricus’s girls. ‘She is about your age, I would think. Her name is Edith. What are you called?’

  ‘She’s Lucy,’ Swetricus said, looking down. There was unmistakable pride on his face as he tousled her hair. ‘Pretty as her mother.’

  ‘She died?’

  ‘Not long after this: Katherine. Bleeding.’

  ‘I see. Sad,’ Simon said, automatically copying him and falling into a monosyllabic frame of speaking.

  Baldwin was less empathetic. He propped his backside on the table and peered about him. The house was a typical peasant’s hovel. No rushes to cover the floor, so the bones and detritus stood out against the packed earth. There was a bed, which was a pile of fresh ferns with a rug thrown atop, three stools, and one tiny chest that looked as though Swetricus himself must have made it with ill-designed tools. Aylmer went to investigate the garbage about the table.

  ‘We are here to ask about the deaths.’

  ‘Denise, Mary, my Aline, and now Emma.’

  ‘And the curse.’

  ‘We all feared.’

  ‘Because of the dead Purveyor?’

  ‘And Samson. He was a devil.’

  ‘Your daughter Aline – did he rape her?’

  Swetricus looked away. ‘I never guessed. No one told me. She disappeared; thought fallen in mire. Now I think different.’

  Baldwin looked at the girls. ‘Would they know?’

  The three were undernourished and filthy, but from the way that Swetricus put his hands on them, it was obvious to Baldwin that the man loved his girls and that his love was reciprocated. His protective stance didn’t alter as he said, ‘No, they don’t know.’

  ‘What of you? Do you think that Samson killed all those girls?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And the Purveyor? Would Samson have killed Ansel de Hocsenham?’

  ‘Maybe. Samson hated taxes.’

  ‘Did the miller suffer from hunger during the famine?’ Simon asked.

  ‘The miller, he had food. Not hungry like others, like his wife and daughter.’

  ‘They did not eat so well as him?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘He said he needed to eat to work, to feed them. Took most for himself.’

  Baldwin nodded, considering the man. ‘Swetricus, I am confused about much which has happened here in the vill. One thing that niggles at me is, why should your girl Aline have been buried? Denise and Mary were left where they had been killed. So was Emma. Why was Aline different?’

  ‘Don’t know. It hurt. Hurt lots. Not knowing… It was cruel to hide her like that.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who could have done such a thing?’

  Swetricus looked at him, and a cold, bitter anger glittered in his eyes. ‘If I knowed, I’d kill him.’

  ‘One last question, Swetricus. Where was Emma supposed to be sleeping on the night she died?’

  ‘At the mill, I think. They let her stay in the barns.’

  They left shortly afterwards. The Reeve had sent men to recover the Purveyor’s body, and the group could be seen wielding their spades up on the hill. Baldwin stood a while watching, trying to ignore Aylmer, who was crunching at a bone of some sort just behind them.

  It was Simon who broke into his reverie. ‘Isn’t that the Foresters up there? Shall we see if Vin is there?’

  Vin didn’t notice them at first. It was only when Adam stopped and muttered a curse under his breath that Vin glanced around and saw them. ‘Shit! Are they here for you, boy?’

  ‘Shut up, old fool,’ Vin said boldly. If Adam called him ‘boy’ one more time… Somehow he knew that they were coming to question him again. Leaving his spade, he rubbed at his back and stretched. To Baldwin he looked as though
he was tense, preparing himself for an interrogation.

  The other Foresters were watching and no doubt listening with interest, but Drogo seemed furious as he greeted the two men with: ‘What do you want now, eh? Not happy yet? You’ve seen off Samson, you’ve seen the ruin of Reeve Alexander and probably me, and now you’re determined to attack my Foresters, is that it?’

  ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about. We just have some questions to ask this fellow,’ Simon said.

  ‘I have nothing to hide,’ Vin said.

  ‘Glad I am to hear it,’ Baldwin smiled. ‘Where can we talk in peace?’

  ‘I have nothing to hide. We can stay here,’ Vin repeated.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Baldwin. ‘But I would speak with you in private.’

  Drogo walked to Vin’s side, then led them away to a fallen tree farther down the hill, where all could sit. He took his seat next to Vin on a heavy bough, while Baldwin and Simon rested upon the trunk. Aylmer wandered away to sniff at a stone wall nearby. Soon he had disappeared in among the furze.

  Baldwin eyed Drogo ruminatively. ‘You appear very keen to look after this fellow.’

  Vin curled his lip. The man had no idea how harsh Drogo made his life.

  ‘Someone has to, now his father is dead,’ Drogo replied stiffly.

  Baldwin said, ‘You were a friend of his father’s?’

  ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘You did not answer my question, Forester,’ Baldwin observed, studying him closely. ‘And I think I begin to comprehend some words of Serlo’s at last. I have been astonishingly foolish! Vincent: I am worried about your efforts in all this. You lived up on the moors when the Purveyor was killed, and you were still there when Denise died?’

  ‘Yes. Until my father died, in the second year of the famine.’

  ‘And then you were in your bailiwick when Mary and Aline died.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where were you when Emma died?’

  ‘At the tavern with Drogo and Adam.’