Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘Really?’ Norbert asked with some surprise, ‘why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ Hermitage was as appalled as he had been for a long time, ‘why not? What do you mean why not? You don’t go round murdering people.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘Yes I know they did, well, they were going to try, but just because someone’s a killer, you don’t kill them.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ Norbert said as if it was obvious, ‘course you do. What else do you do with them?’

  There was nodding around the hall from the muttering groups that actually this sounded quite right and proper.

  ‘You hold them up for justice.’

  ‘And then execute them,’ Norbert concluded.

  ‘That’s as maybe, but not if they haven’t actually killed anyone yet,’ Hermitage felt the argument, which was perfectly clear, was slipping away from him somehow.

  ‘So you wait till they’ve killed someone first? Bit hard on the victim I’d have thought. In this case Lord Bonneville.’

  ‘But they may not have come to kill him.’

  ‘They did, they told me. Well, the one in the wheel told me while I was finishing the thing off.’

  ‘And you never thought of mentioning this while I was running around trying to find out what the hell was going on?’ Poitron demanded.

  ‘Didn’t seem any point,’ Nobert’s voice shrugged but his stance never moved an inch, ‘they were out of the way, no point in fretting about it.’

  ‘Apart from the fact you sent a severed head to the second most dangerous man in the world. A man who is likely to send a whole army next.’ Poitron plonked himself on the edge of the table and folded his arms in angry thought.

  ‘This is awful,’ Hermitage concluded, not really sure what to try next.

  ‘Don’t see why,’ said Norbert with a shrug, and the room clearly agreed.

  ‘Well,’ said Hermitage, as patiently as he could manage, ‘there are two dead men, a head sent back to Le Pedvin, us here about to fail in the mission he gave us, and as master Poitron says, the same Le Pedvin, now extremely angry, likely to descend on the place and finish off everyone.’

  Silence fell on the hall; even Norbert’s motionless rigidity had a touch of concern about it.

  ‘Aha,’ said Hermitage, turning to Norbert in a sudden moment of realisation, ‘what about Lallard though? He didn’t come to kill Lord Bonneville. Why did you kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Norbert said blankly.

  Now Hermitage was completely stumped. He had assumed that if a village had a killer in its midst, it would be that killer who did all the killing. Surely in a place this small there wasn’t more than one? What sort of land had he walked into? Oh yes, he recalled, it was Normandy. Perhaps this sort of thing really did go on all the time.

  ‘Well who did then?’ he asked, forgetting that he was supposed to be the investigator.

  ‘I don’t know do I?’ Norbert retorted, ‘all I did was clear up afterwards. Can’t have a messy hovel full of blood and bodies.’ Norbert’s eyes darted around the room again, he was clearly very disturbed by all these untidy people making the hall a mess. A solitary bleat from somewhere in the back of the crowd made the man twitch.

  ‘And you put the body in the peas?’ Hermitage couldn’t make any sense of that. Surely the best way to tidy up a body was to put it in the ground somewhere.

  ‘Of course,’ Norbert confirmed, ‘let it rot away. Good fertilizer.’

  ‘Good what?’ Hermitage turned to Wat with a very worried whisper. ‘Wat, I think the man is mad.’

  Wat whispered back. ‘Well of course he is. He chopped a blacksmith’s head off and sent it to Le Pedvin. How mad do you want?’

  ‘Lallard was a bad lot anyway,’ Norbert went on, ‘always thought he was Le Pedvin’s spy, best rid of him.’

  The muttering seemed to agree with this sentiment as villagers started to exchange a variety of tales about Lallard and his behaviour.

  ‘It’s poor Cottrice I feel sorry for,’ one of the voices from the back called out, ‘puttin’ up with him all these years. If I was her I’d have killed him meself.’

  There was more muttering agreement about this, which gradually grew in volume.

  Wat took hold of Hermitage’s arm and whispered into his ear, ‘Have you got any idea who killed Lallard?’

  ‘No,’ Hermitage whispered back, ‘I thought it would be Norbert.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes, very good. Even if it comes to you, I think you should keep it to yourself. I don’t think this lot want to know who killed Lallard.’

  Hermitage looked at him in surprise, ‘Of course they do. A man is dead.’

  ‘A man they didn’t like very much, Le Pedvin’s spy, the same Le Pedvin who is their doom, and the same Le Pedvin who sent us. I don’t think I need to point out that we are heavily outnumbered.’

  Hermitage had heard of expediency, he even knew how to spell it, but he’d never been a supporter and certainly not in such disgraceful circumstances.

  ‘Wat,’ he chided, ‘we cannot let a killer go free, assuming I can work out who it is.’

  ‘And what do you suggest we do about it. In fact what do you suggest we do about Norbert?’

  ‘Well,’ Hermitage began.

  ‘In the village of Cabourg,’ Wat went on, ‘amongst all the villagers, and Norbert, and the guards. The ones with all the weapons.’

  ‘Are you suggesting we simply walk away?’ Hermitage was appalled yet again.

  ‘I think we’ll be lucky if we get away with that. The killer has been exposed, well one of them, and they now know they’re going to get Le Pedvin on their backs. I think dealing with Norbert is the least of their problems. In fact if Le Pedvin was going to pop round to my workshop again, I’d rather have Norbert with me.’

  Hermitage really had nothing more to say. He realised their situation appeared pretty hopeless, but surely that didn’t mean abandoning all propriety and truth. He had to admit that his dealings with the other deaths he had come across had some element of compromise in them. Compromise that gave him the shivers but at least kept him alive. And now here they were again. One known killer they couldn’t do anything about, and one they might never find. What was the point? He vowed never to have anything to do with this investigation business again. Even when he solved the crime, the right thing was never done.

  He then recalled that when there was investigating to be done, he wasn’t really asked whether he wanted to do it or not.

  He looked around the room and saw that Wat was right, they might never get out of here at all.

  The noise in the room had risen to a hubbub, it was hard to pick out what was being said but the conversations were certainly focussed on the death of Lallard. Hermitage’s heart sank when he picked up a distinct phrase within the general noise, one he had heard on many occasions. ‘Maybe it was the monk,’ someone suggested.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Wat muttered.

  Hermitage felt the eyes in the room turn to him and thought that this could end a lot worse than a dunking in the river.

  ‘I did it,’ a voice called out as a figure pushed through the crowd.

  Hermitage’s relief was a wave that washed him from head to foot.

  ‘Stabbed him right in the back and I’d do it again tomorrow,’ said Cottrice as she stood in the room with her hands on her hips, daring anyone to say a word.

  The mutters in the room seemed disappointed that it hadn’t been the monk after all, but they soon petered out with a round of “I told you so.”

  ‘But…’ Hermitage began, he desperately wanted to understand.

  Cottrice shrugged, ‘He deserved it, him and that wretched sword of his. If I could have lifted the thing properly I’d have used that on him. All his wandering off, and then catching him at Margaret’s, well that was the last straw.’

  ‘Where are Margaret and her husband then?’ Hermitage asked, worried that Cottrice’s vengean
ce might have spread its wings.

  ‘Soon as they saw me kill Orlon they ran off,’ Cottrice snorted at such sensitivity.

  ‘They were there?’ Hermitage was horrified.

  ‘Oh yes, I had to go through them to get to him.’ Cottrice smiled in a very unique way.

  Hermitage just shook his head in sadness at the whole situation.

  ‘And you were kind to me,’ Cottrice touched Hermitage’s arm, which gave him an almost overwhelming urge to twitch. ‘I couldn’t let this lot string you up for something I’d done. And anyway, if Le Pedvin’s coming here to finish us all off, what’s the point?’ She smiled a bit more genuinely now. ‘Good to get things like this off your chest isn’t it?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Hermitage managed to say, disturbed that the woman was confessing to murder as if she’d admitted not actually liking cheese that much. ‘But you were very upset when we arrived and Lallard was dead.’

  ‘I’d just stabbed my husband in the back, wouldn’t you be upset?’

  Hermitage really had no answer to that, and didn’t want one.

  ‘We’ve still got the problem of Le Pedvin,’ Poitron piped up, ‘and these two.’ He gestured to Hermitage and Wat, clearly putting them all together in his head.

  Silence returned to the room while the village considered its situation.

  ‘We could always kill ‘em,’ Norbert suggested, ‘send their heads to Le Pedvin.’

  ‘Is that all you can do?’ Poitron demanded, ‘cut people’s heads off and send them places? Didn’t help much the last time did it?’

  ‘Made me feel better,’ Norbert grumbled.

  Hermitage was dying to ask how you actually went about sending someone’s head somewhere. He didn’t imagine it was the sort of cargo carried by regular merchants, but realised now was probably not the best moment for a discussion on transportation.

  ‘So we kill them,’ Poitron said, as if the decision was made, ‘then what? Le Pedvin’s still going to come. We’ve killed his assassins and from the sound of it he really, really wants Lord Bonneville dead. He’s not the giving up and going away type’

  ‘Cheers,’ Lord Bonneville called from his drunken stupor.

  ‘Yes he does, doesn’t he?’ said Wat in a very thoughtful manner.

  All eyes turned to him, some of them probably wondering whether to do him first, or the monk.

  ‘I think I’ve got an idea,’ Wat’s tone was very knowing. Quite disturbing, but knowing.

  Caput XXVII

  A Shocking Suggestion

  ‘Wat,’ said Hermitage as he took his friend aside, while the audience took in the proposal.

  ‘Yes?’ said Wat, clearly very happy with himself.

  ‘I think that even having an idea like this is sufficient to see you confined to the darkest corner of the kingdom of the damned. Suggesting it out loud must surely rank as one of the higher sins and seeing it through is simply unthinkable.’ Hermitage did his best to sound fierce and demanding. He wasn’t at all sure how it came out.

  ‘It’s good,’ Wat insisted, ‘everyone wins.’

  ‘Except your immortal soul.’

  ‘I’ll worry about that.’

  ‘And probably the immortal souls of anyone nearby at the time. Certainly of anyone who knew about it, let alone those who go along.’

  ‘What do you suggest then?’ Wat turned to Hermitage with that look in his face. The look that said he was prepared to listen carefully to any alternative proposals, and then carry on exactly as he’d planned in the first place.

  ‘We must do what’s right,’ said Hermitage, although he couldn’t immediately think what that involved in these circumstances.

  ‘And what exactly does that involve in these circumstances?’ Wat asked, which had Hermitage stumped.

  ‘Norbert killed the two men in the log store, and Cottrice killed Lallard,’ he said, hoping that running things through again might help, ‘so they must face justice.’

  ‘From just you and me,’ Wat said it as if this was plainly ridiculous. Which Hermitage realised it probably was.

  ‘Or we go back and tell Le Pedvin,’ Wat went on, ‘always assuming the villagers would let us. Which, if I was in their position, I absolutely would not. You’ve seen what they do to blacksmiths and wheelwrights, God knows what they’d come up with for a weaver and a monk.’

  Hermitage had to admit this was an awkward situation. Experience told him that bringing justice anywhere was a troublesome task, but this suggestion of Wat’s really was going too far. He dropped his head and shook it slowly in despair.

  ‘Look,’ said Wat brightly, ‘Bonneville’s not done any harm has he? He’s not capable most of the time and he doesn’t even want to be a duke, let alone a king.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And if we let things carry on he will get his head cut off by Le Pedvin. Or worse.’

  ‘Worse than Le Pedvin?’ Hermitage found it hard to conceive of anything worse than Le Pedvin.

  ‘No,’ Wat corrected with some irritation, ‘worse than getting his head cut off. And then how would you feel? It would be your fault an innocent man ended up dead.’

  ‘Or worse,’ Hermitage suggested, trying to join in.

  ‘Worse than dead?’ Wat sounded lost, and shook the idea from his head. ‘This way we keep Le Pedvin happy, we keep the village of Cabourg on the map and not razed to the ground, and we keep Bonneville alive.’

  Hermitage just shook his head, sorrow piling onto the despair.

  ‘And most importantly of all,’ Wat added, ‘we get to stay alive as well. Which I’m in favour of.’

  ‘But the blacksmith and the wheelwright and Lallard,’ Hermitage protested.

  ‘You mean Le Pedvin’s assassins and one of the most despised men for miles around? You mean the bad people should be avenged by killing the good people? Isn’t that one of your two wrongs making a right?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Hermitage protested, although the speed of the discussion was leaving him behind. That and the fundamentally atrocious nature of the suggestion.

  ‘Well work it out yourself Hermitage,’ Wat suggested, ‘you always feel better when you’ve worked something out yourself.’

  Hermitage took a breath. He hardly liked to repeat the definitively sinful idea, fearful that some of the sin would rub off on him in the telling. There would certainly be plenty of guilt. He plunged in anyway. Perhaps as he retold it, he would spot the flaw in the plan.

  ‘Norbert chops Lallard’s head off,’ he began.

  ‘Which can’t be a sin, because Lallard is already dead,’ Wat explained cheerfully, ‘and we can’t use the blacksmith because Le Pedvin’s already got his head, and the wheelwright’s got a hole in him.’

  ‘He then throws the head away somewhere, probably in the sea.’ Hermitage paused at that point, ‘which I’m sure is some sort of sin, interfering with the dead. I’d just need to look it up.’

  ‘Carry on.’

  ‘We then put Bonneville’s clothes on the headless corpse and bury it in the family crypt.’

  ‘Which must surely be the opposite of a sin, whatever that is, burying someone in a crypt. Someone who didn’t deserve it.’

  ‘Burial is a serious and sombre business and helps the soul on its journey to heaven. Chopping heads off and burying the wrong corpse is outrageous.’ Hermitage could see that all the little bits of this plan were truly awful, he just couldn’t get the whole thing to add up to awful as well. There must be some fault in his thinking.

  ‘Keep going,’ Wat pressed.

  ‘Bonneville then heads south to become a fisherman.’

  ‘Which will make him very happy, and keep him alive.’

  ‘We then go back to Le Pedvin and report that Bonneville was discovered, the mad man Norbert cut his head off and we buried him.’

  ‘And if Le Pedvin comes to look he’ll find the headless body of Bonneville in the Bonneville crypt.’

  ‘It’s a lie though,’ Hermitage protested. He knew tha
t of all the horrible bits of this truly revolting conceit, lying to Le Pedvin was beyond him.

  ‘But then Le Pedvin lied to us,’ Wat responded, ‘two wrongs again.’

  ‘And Norbert and Cottrice?’ Hermitage pressed, ‘the man who chopped another man’s head off and built a second into a wheel. And the woman who stabbed her husband in the back?’

  ‘Small price to pay,’ Wat shrugged, ‘the alternative being?’

  Hermitage sighed, the alternative had been explained to him in ghastly detail. ‘Le Pedvin comes over here and kills everyone, Bonneville first. Then he finds our bodies, where the villagers have dumped them, probably headless after Norbert’s ministrations.’

  ‘Including Cwen,’ Wat whispered.

  This did cause Hermitage to take a breath in genuine shock.

  ‘If this lot discover she’s not a guard at all they won’t be happy. If they discover she’s with us and came from Le Pedvin, she’ll end up with one less head than she’s currently using.’

  Hermitage risked a glance towards Cwen, who was still standing as guard-like as possible, avoiding any contact with the villagers who were now engaged in lively conversation all around the hall.

  Wat had found his weak spot. He was prepared to die for his faith at some point or other. He had been for quite a while and so the threats to do him harm, while frightening in their immediacy, were only as transitory as the rest of the world.

  He also secretly thought that Wat would come to a sticky end at some point. The weaver took so many risks, with so many dangerous people that one of them was almost certain to make his feelings felt in a very terminal manner.

  Cwen though? Cwen was young and innocent. Well, young at least. She was only here because of her desire to look after them and what had they bought her to? Impersonating Norman guards, interrogating potential killers, carrying out deceits on their part. Hermitage would have to atone for the sins he had committed against this poor creature. And he couldn’t do that if he was dead could he?

  He would also have to remember never to refer to Cwen as a poor creature, she’d probably chop his head off herself. He dropped his head in resignation.