The Sticklepath Strangler

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Is something wrong, Nicky?’

  Simon found himself being confronted by a tall man with sparse dark hair and a narrow, suspicious face. He was reminded of Ivo Bel. Both men had long faces, the same nose, and deep-set, rather intense eyes, but there the similarity ended. This man looked like he had a more open, genial temperament. Unless, apparently, he found another man talking to his wife. He snarled, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Please, Thomas, do not be concerned. Our daughter was talking to him, up on those moors.’

  ‘I wasn’t on the moors,’ Joan protested.

  ‘Enough!’ she said, giving her daughter a shake. ‘You spoke – it is enough. You should not, and that you know.’

  ‘I didn’t see her on the moor,’ Simon explained, pointing. ‘It was on the road here, and she didn’t talk to me – I spoke to her.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And why’d you want to do that, then?’ the man asked suspiciously.

  ‘You are Bel, aren’t you?’ Simon stated.

  He had intended to throw the man off-balance, and was pleased that his ploy worked. The fellow’s eyes narrowed, and there was a fresh wariness about him.

  ‘That was my name once; no more.’

  ‘What name do you use now?’

  ‘I am called Thomas Garde, and this is my wife Nicole – and now you know who we are, who are you, and why are you so interested in us?’

  ‘I am Bailiff of Lydford Castle, and I’m here to help the coroner. When I saw your daughter, I asked her about finding the body. That is all – apart from your brother.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Simon surveyed him with interest. It was obvious that he had touched a raw nerve, because Thomas’s face blanched and he cast a quick look at his wife. ‘Nothing, except that he is here.’

  ‘Is this true?’ Thomas demanded of his wife. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, her face downcast. ‘I did not want to tell you this. I did not think it was necessary to worry you.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him. Where’s he staying?’

  Simon said mildly, ‘I don’t see why you should be so bothered about him being here.’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ Thomas snapped.

  ‘I’m helping the Coroner. I can make sure it’s his business, if you want.’

  Thomas scowled, and he would have spoken, but his wife touched his arm. She looked up at him appealingly, and he gave an exasperated snort. ‘Oh, very well, Nicky!’

  ‘My husband married me when we were in France,’ Nicole said.

  ‘I had noticed your accent,’ Simon said with a half bow to her. She returned his smile, but weakly, as though there was little enough to smile about.

  Thomas took up their story. ‘At the time I was in the service of a nobleman in Gascony, but he died and his son had no place for me in his household. Still, we parted on good terms, and he gave me a purse to remember his father. With it I bought a little parcel of land here and our pigs. All my father’s property fell to my brother. I had nothing.’

  ‘I see. And that caused friction between you and your brother?’

  ‘No. Ivo took everything, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He’s a grasping, selfish man who has always taken what he desired. When I returned from France with my wife, he tried to persuade her to leave me and become his whore. He couldn’t believe I could give her a life to compare with living with him as his prostitute.’

  ‘It was brave of you to leave your home and come all the way here, my Lady,’ Simon said.

  ‘It was not so very hard.’

  ‘I will find my brother,’ Thomas said, ‘he must be at the inn. Nicky, go back to the house. If he turns up, tell him to leave. I don’t want him pestering you again.’

  ‘Yes, Husband.’

  Thomas looked as though he was going to say more to Simon, but after studying him balefully for a while, he spun on his heel and marched through the mud towards the inn.

  Nicole sighed. ‘He is a good man, but his brother offended him greatly, I think.’

  ‘I can quite understand your husband’s feelings,’ Simon said. ‘What’s that?’

  There was a howling from some sheds at the edge of the cemetery. Nicole barely glanced towards them. ‘Samson’s hounds. They are mourning their master’s death.’

  ‘Let’s get away from this miserable place,’ Simon muttered.

  ‘You see,’ the Frenchwoman continued as they left the mill, ‘it was not so very easy for Thomas to marry me.’ She let go of her daughter’s hand. ‘Emma is over there, why don’t you go to her?’

  ‘I played with her all afternoon,’ Joan protested.

  ‘And morning, too. You think I don’t guess? Now, go!’

  Once her daughter was out of earshot, Nicole continued quietly, ‘You see, where I lived, my father was the executioner. The people of the town loathed him. And me.’

  ‘I see!’ Simon breathed. No one wanted to continue the line of a murderous bastard like an official executioner, nor would anybody want to sleep with a woman born to such a man. Well, Simon wouldn’t, anyway. It was repugnant.

  She caught his tone; she must be used to hearing revulsion in people’s voices. ‘Thomas was the only man who treated me like a woman. He did not care, you see, what other men said. All he cared about was that he loved me, and that I loved him. That was all. I could never betray his trust in me. His love. That was why I was so shocked when Ivo asked me to leave Thomas for him.’

  ‘I don’t know that it is so surprising,’ Simon said gallantly.

  ‘It was so confusing. Ivo was staying with us, and he made me his offer while Tom was working.’ She gave a snort and wouldn’t meet Simon’s eye as she said, ‘He wanted to buy me, like a milch cow or a dog. It was a simple transaction. And he had no thought for his brother, whom he would be betraying – whom he asked me to betray! No, he just expected me to fall at his feet and agree because he had money.’

  ‘You refused.’

  ‘Of course. I was married to a good man who loved me, and this other offered to buy me. It was contemptible.’

  ‘Your daughter told me that the warrener said they argued about vampires,’ Simon said tentatively.

  ‘Vampires?’ she repeated, shooting him an amused glance. ‘I expect Serlo thought it was kinder to scare Joan than tell her that her uncle wanted to steal her mother.’

  Simon sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Her humour faded. ‘The worst of it is, now I think Ivo hates Tom so much, he would do anything to destroy him and win me.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Thomas marched into the tavern and looked round, glowering. When the taverner appeared in the doorway, he rapped his knuckles on the table-top to attract the man, then called for a jug of ale. Once it arrived, he held Taverner’s wrist.

  ‘Will, you wouldn’t hide something from me, would you?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Someone tells me you’ve been putting up a man I know – Ivo Bel.’

  ‘Of course. He’s been here a few days. So?’

  Thomas wanted to reach up and grab Will’s tunic, yank him down and beat his face into the wood of his table. ‘I wanted to be told if he arrived here.’

  ‘Tom, whatever there is between you two, it’s nothing to do with me. I run an inn and I’ll offer rooms to any traveller.’

  ‘That’s an end to it, is it?’ Thomas said, feeling the anger coursing through his body. ‘Do you want me to make it your problem?’

  The innkeeper sighed. ‘If you do, you’ll only make life difficult for yourself, Tom Garde. You’ll have the reeve on your back.’

  ‘The reeve, my arse! It’s got nothing to do with him.’

  ‘Alexander came by today, before going to Samson’s inquest, and asked me to let Ivo stay on. So if you’re not happy about it, you speak to him.’

  ‘You could have told him to go to the inn at South Zeal, you bastard. You could have told me he was here, you could have warned me and my wife, couldn’t you
?’

  ‘Tom, let go of my hand.’ His voice was cold, and Thomas immediately released him. None of this was the innkeeper’s fault.

  Thomas sipped his ale. ‘This inquest – what good is it doing? How can anyone hope to find what happened to Aline after so many years?’

  ‘God knows. You were here when she disappeared, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We came here just after the famine, about the same time Peter’s daughter was killed. Terrible business, that. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

  ‘No,’ the taverner agreed.

  ‘And now Ivo is here again, curse him,’ Thomas sighed.

  ‘Yeah, well. You leave him be. He’ll soon push off. What’s the point of punching him and getting a fine? If you’re that keen to lose money, give it to me. At least I’ll spend it wisely, which is more than I can say for some around here.’

  Thomas managed a wry grin, and by the time he was halfway through his drink, his mood had improved to the extent that he could chuckle at some of the taverner’s sallies.

  ‘All right, Will, I’ll leave him for now, but you tell him that if I find him anywhere near my wife, I’ll kick his teeth so far down his throat, he’ll have to stick his food up his arse to chew on it.’

  * * *

  Nicole’s words haunted Simon for the rest of the day, and it was with relief that he saw the last of the drinkers leave the inn so that he, Baldwin and Coroner Roger could settle down to sleep.

  ‘You’re quiet, Simon,’ Baldwin yawned.

  ‘Yes, well, there’s been a lot to absorb today,’ Simon said.

  ‘Too many corpses,’ Coroner Roger grunted in agreement.

  ‘You spoke to Houndestail?’ Simon asked. He had forgotten in the emotion of Samson’s inquest.

  ‘Yes. For a fee he agreed to go back to Exeter, the tight-fisted, thieving son of a moorland horse-dealer! Still, it will be good to see whether there was any record of the purveyor’s death.’

  ‘Tomorrow I suppose the funerals will go ahead?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Yes, the miller’s and the girl’s bones.’ Sir Roger sighed heavily. ‘Mind, with that priest, it’s a gamble. I hope he does not get them confused. He was so drunk today it’s a miracle he could remember his offices.’

  ‘What did you think of the story about vampires?’ Simon asked reluctantly.

  ‘It was nonsense!’ Baldwin stated bluntly. ‘Purest nonsense. A story to scare a child.’

  ‘But your friend, the man who wrote that book…’

  ‘William of Newburgh died over a hundred years ago.’

  ‘So how did the folk here know of such things? Why should men mention them?’

  ‘Simon, are you really asking me to guess at the workings of the minds of the local peasants? Dear Heaven, just go to sleep.’

  Coroner Roger chuckled quietly. ‘If you will tell these stories, Keeper, what do you expect? Simon is concerned that someone might come and cut out his liver tonight.’

  As he spoke, a mournful howl shivered on the wind, then a second.

  ‘What the devil?’ Roger demanded. ‘Wolves?’

  Simon explained, ‘I think it’s the miller’s hounds. They started earlier on.’

  ‘Wonderful! At least he’ll soon be in the ground and out of the way!’ Roger said unsympathetically, rolled over, and was soon snoring.

  ‘Baldwin?’ Simon asked a few moments later, but Baldwin was either asleep or pretending to be. He had turned the cold shoulder to Simon, and the bailiff was left staring up at the ceiling, starting at every creak and groan of the building. No matter how he tried to stop thinking of vampires, in his mind’s eye he could see the cemetery fringed with its pollarded trees, and figures moving among them.

  * * *

  Next morning, after Mass, Simon joined the funeral parties at the graves of the miller and Aline; a doleful pair of ceremonies, but that of the girl’s bones was strangely touching. Her father Swetricus was there, with his three other daughters, aged from twelve up to sixteen years old, all weeping unaffectedly. The girl had been dead these four years past, and yet from looking at her sisters, Simon thought, one could believe that she had died only days before.

  The ceremony at Samson’s graveside was not improved by the behaviour of the priest, who was already drunk at this early hour of the morning. His voice was a low mumble, his hands shook as though he had the ague, and Simon felt disgusted that he could so demean the service. Matters were not helped by the steady howling of Samson’s dogs; nor by the sudden shriek as they all approached Samson’s grave.

  ‘No, no! I won’t have him put in his grave without a coffin. He must be done properly!’

  Simon turned to see Gunilda, Samson’s wife, their daughter beside her.

  ‘There’s no time to build a coffin, mistress,’ one man said. There was a hint of exasperation in his voice, from which Simon guessed that she, like her husband, was not very popular in the vill.

  Still, they humoured her. Two men went off to the mill, and soon returned with some long timbers.

  ‘We can put him under this. That will have to do.’

  She sniffed, then sobbed again, her daughter wailing at her side, and the grave was dug with the howling of the hounds throbbing in the background.

  Simon watched as a rough board was fashioned from the timbers, two men lashing them together with thongs, and then the funeral continued, the priest looking annoyed that it had taken so long to get things done. When the men were finished, the priest moved to the head of the corpse and swayed gently as he sprinkled it with holy water from a sprig of hyssop. Simon recalled that the ceremony came from Psalm fifty-one, which said, ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ As usual there were the solemn Latin phrases, but Simon was sure that the priest missed out a few words. He wasn’t certain, because it was some time since he had learned Latin, and weeks since he last attended a funeral, but one thing he did know – the priest, in his hurry to get away, was rattling through the service faster than he should.

  The body was wrapped in a winding-sheet which was brown and stained, as though it had already lain some months in a grave. At the head Simon could see the blood still leaking from the scalp wound.

  Simon felt sad on behalf of the dead man. To his eye it was disrespectful to put the miller in his grave in this way: hastily, without preparation, wrapped in a soiled shroud, the priest drunk. He watched sombrely as men picked up the corpse and set it down in the grave. One of them placed some large rocks at either side of Samson for the lid to rest on. He may not have a proper coffin, but at least his body wouldn’t be crushed. He would have some dignity in death. The boards were passed down and set over the body and then, while the priest intoned more doggerel and flailed about with his sprig, dashing water into the grave but over many of the congregation as well, the two men began to shovel soil back into the hole.

  It was a grim scene, made still more bleak and unpleasant by the cross in the middle of the cemetery, which appeared to have chosen this moment to droop. The cross arm had slipped from the horizontal, and as Simon looked at it, he could see that the wood was rotted by the wind and rain which lashed at the vill.

  He felt a sudden unpleasant sensation. The sight was one of utter melancholy, and seeing the men up to their shins in wet soil, women wailing, the priest quivering and looking ready to puke, the crooked cross standing out above them all, Simon felt a trickle of ice run down his spine. He shivered, filled with foreboding.

  Somehow he felt sure that this was not an end, that even the formal inquest tomorrow would not bring his visit to Sticklepath to a close, and depression overwhelmed him.

  The party at the side of the grave watched as the diggers finished their work and stood back, one of them with his shovel over his shoulder, the other leaning on his. The two wailing women covered their faces. Slowly, in dribs and drabs, the crowd began to move away, only a few remaining to console the widow and daughter. Soon even this last remnant started
to make their way to the mill, whose wheel could still be heard rumbling like far-distant thunder.

  That last picture would remain with him: the mourners helping each other through the mud towards the machine which had caused their loss. And that sound of thunder grumbling far away.

  * * *

  Drogo yawned, leaned against the oak and scratched at his ear. There was a bite there from the midges last night, and it itched like the devil.

  He was tired, so very tired. The long sleepless nights, the constant fear that the coroner might notice something amiss – all had taken their toll. All those children. Denise, Aline, and Mary, the disobedient little brats.

  Leaving the tree, he slumped down and picked up his skin. It was made from a kid goat, stitched into the form of an animal, and it held a few pints of water, enough to permit a man to survive even if he got lost out on the moors. Not that Drogo was worried about survival.

  He had often thought about death but never before had it seemed so appealing. Now he looked upon it as a long rest. There had been times, especially during the famine, when he had done everything he could to survive, but what was the point? His woman was dead, and with her, all love had shrivelled. There was nothing left for anyone else. He had once had a daughter, but she was dead now, and all he felt for other men was an intense, burning jealousy that they should still have what he missed so badly, so desperately. The death of his little Isabelle was a terrible agony, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. While he lived, that pain would be there.

  He hated the others, men whose daughters were still alive. Sweet, pretty things, who could cuddle up to their father, snuggle beneath the blankets on a cold winter’s evening. None of them truly understood. All thought they did, but none of them could.

  Staring out over the bleak wasteland that was the valley from Cosdon to Steeperton, over the Taw Marsh, he felt his face twist once more into his habitual grimace. Now he only had his son. He couldn’t lose him too. He wouldn’t.

  But questioning from strong men like the coroner could scare people, especially feeble cretins like the parson. He was terrified, a drunk, because he had led the vill to murder Athelhard. If he hadn’t told them Meg’s story, they wouldn’t have killed her brother.