The Leper's Return

by Michael Jecks

  Seeing his self-absorption, Simon laughed. “Forget her. You have a murder to solve. So tell me, whom are we to see now?”

  “The daughter of the man who was killed. Her name is Cecily, and she was discovered in the same room as her father’s corpse. She was knocked senseless.”

  They were soon at the house. Clearly most of the townspeople had accepted the fact that Tanner was not going to be bribed into allowing them to view the corpse or the place where Godfrey was killed, and had left to get on with their work. Tanner stood aside for them to go in, and Simon led the way, but not before Baldwin had caught a glimpse of the men standing well back, almost in the alleyway opposite. It made him frown for a moment, seeing the lepers there, but then he shrugged. Why should he assume that lepers, by mere virtue of their disease, should be uninterested in the fate of others? He knew that old men were always keen to hear of the demise of their peers, or of those younger than themselves. There was a greedy fascination with death among those who were likely to experience it for themselves in the near future, and lepers surely fell into that category.

  Yet when he glanced over his shoulder, he was surprised to see how keenly one of the rag-clothed figures was following his progress to the door. It was the new man, the one he had seen with Quivil earlier, and Baldwin made a mental note to ask the leper master about the stranger when he had a chance.

  The door was open, and just inside, seated on a stool from which he could see both front and back doors, was a watchman. He stood and nodded to Baldwin, and let the two pass into the hall itself.

  “Ugh! You could have warned me, Baldwin!”

  “Squeamish, Simon? I had thought you would have been cured of that after looking into so many murders.”

  “It’s one thing to become used to the sight of dead men, but quite another to suddenly get presented with a corpse, especially when the stench is so strong!”

  The knight had to agree with that. Someone had been in and fuelled the fire, and the room was close, the atmosphere heavy with the sweetness of death. As he moved toward the body, he grimaced. The crushed skull was already feeding the flies. Waving them away as best he could, he crouched down to repeat his investigation of the night before.

  Godfrey had been an older man, certainly over fifty, and his hair was thin and gray. From the size of the damaged area, one conclusion seemed obvious. “He can’t have known anything about it.” Something caught Baldwin’s notice as he spoke. The man’s nose was scratched, and as Baldwin peered closer, he saw a series of short, but deep marks on the chin, and more on his left cheekbone. The wound on the back of the head itself was on the right side, a little above the point where it joined the neck. “Yes, we can be quite sure that as soon as this blow struck, he was dead,” he said musingly.

  “Fine—you enjoy yourself, and I’ll get some fresh air while you carry on.”

  Suiting his action to his words, Simon went to the nearest window, the one toward which the body was pointing. Soon he had thrown open the shutters, and could breathe in deep, satisfying lungfuls. There was something about Baldwin’s eagerness to examine the victims of violent death that had always repelled the bailiff. He took a little too much pleasure in his work. Today was no exception. Even now, Baldwin turned the body to and fro in his search for other wounds, opening the dead man’s shirt and checking the torso, feeling the chilly flesh for the onset of rigor mortis, before prying the lips apart to gaze in at the mouth.

  Simon looked away. It was too morbid for his taste. When a body was dead, that was an end to it as far as he was concerned. Simon’s interest lay in people’s motives for killing, and that meant questioning all those concerned; Baldwin’s conviction was that any body could tell how it died, and that might give clues as to who the attacker was. It was a view which Simon had seen demonstrated often enough for him not to dispute the fact, but he was enormously grateful that Baldwin was always keen to take on that part of the investigation himself, and didn’t require Simon’s help. In fact, Simon knew full well that his friend was glad to be left to study any clues alone.

  The window was quite low. This place was not designed for defense like so many others. Standing here, Simon could see the stableyard to his left. In front was the edge of the kitchen’s wall, which stretched on to the right, out as far as the wall between Godfrey’s and Coffyn’s.

  If someone was to try to rob the place, they wouldn’t try to escape through any of the windows at the front of the place. Only a fool would run away through a busy street, surely—but then many felons were fools, he reminded himself. Intelligent men rarely turned to crime. But if that was the case, and if plates had been stolen, then the best escape route was through the back, and perhaps over one of the walls.

  The idea caught his imagination. From what Baldwin had said, Godfrey had shouted at someone trying to defile his daughter. That implied the drawlatch was at the window. Why else should Godfrey have tried to cross over to this window? Yet if the thief was inside, and Godfrey thought he was trying to rape or harm his daughter, did that mean the man had taken the plate with the woman’s agreement? Or had he struck her down and then removed it—in which case, what on earth had Godfrey meant when, according to Coffyn, he had shouted: “So you’d defile my daughter too, would you?”

  “Baldwin,” he said, “tell me again where the three bodies were.”

  “Hmm? Godfrey was here, as you can see. Arm held up, as though he was instantly killed by the blow to his head. I think that is quite likely—the blood flowed freely, as you’d expect, and although there was a light spray under his arm, the main flow of the blood followed the line of his arm. This other arm is interesting, though. Very!”

  “Come on, tell me where the bodies were.”

  “You see, the knuckles of his hand have been barked, as if he managed to thump one of the men before he was killed.”

  “That is not a surprise.”

  “No, but at least we know that one assailant might have been wounded. It might help. Oh, very well, Simon, don’t fret! The servant was there, nearer the door, as if he was going to his master or Cecily.”

  “The girl?”

  “She was here,” said the knight, getting to his feet with a groan and cracking of bones. “Here, Tanner said, between the body and the window. Why?”

  “I wonder what she was wearing.”

  “Simon, what are you talking about?” Baldwin demanded.

  In answer, the bailiff pointed. At the side of the window, where the shutter met the wall, was a splinter of wood, and on the splinter was a torn piece of blue material.

  “So? Anyone could have snagged their tunic on that,” Baldwin said dismissively.

  “True enough,” Simon agreed, pulling it gently. “But it looks very fresh. The cloth hasn’t been here for a long time—if it had, it would have faded. This window faces south, it catches the sun all day, but this stuff has kept its bright color.”

  Baldwin held his head to one side, gazing at his friend. He took the scrap from him and turned it over in his hand. “It does look new,” he admitted. “I wonder if it is Cecily’s or the thief’s.”

  “Let’s ask her.”

  9

  The guard fetched a maid, a pretty young girl with dark flowing hair named Alison, who was, they were told, Mistress Cecily’s servant. She took them back through the hall and into a warm parlor. Here they were told to wait, and she slipped out through a door. A few minutes later Cecily was with them.

  Simon placed her at some twenty-five years old, perhaps a little more, but she had the natural grace and the elegance of a much older woman. She entered softly, seeming to float over the ground. The bailiff couldn’t help comparing her with the gorgon accompanying Jeanne de Liddinstone. Emma and Cecily were of about the same height, but that was where the similarity ended. Cecily had large, luminous eyes of a peculiarly intense shade of blue, and a fine, pale complexion that looked almost transparent. Her features were oval and regular, and there was a pleasing regularity in the hig
h cheekbones, small mouth, and delicately arched eyebrows.

  But that wasn’t what Baldwin noticed about her. It was her sadness that struck him. Her high brow should have been unmarked in a woman born to wealth, but the lines were etched harshly across her forehead like parallel scars, her cheeks were sunken, her lips swollen and bloody from being punched, her eyes red-rimmed from sleeplessness and weeping. Her whole demeanor was that of a beaten cur, worn down by constant ill-use, and the livid pink and mauve bruise that marked her chin and cheek only served to emphasize her distracted misery.

  “Please, take a seat,” the knight said quietly. “We shall be as quick as we may be.”

  She went to a seat near the fire, all the way her head hanging, the picture of grief. But just for a moment, after she had settled herself and arranged her tunic to her satisfaction, she met his gaze, and he could swear that he recognized a cynical, measuring look in her eye. It was only fleeting, and was immediately replaced by every appearance of sober misery, as he would have expected from a dutiful daughter when her father has been killed, but the impact of that swift glimpse into her mind wouldn’t leave him. Although he wanted to believe her, he couldn’t forget it.

  “You are here to ask me what happened last night?” she asked softly, mumbling slightly as she tried to move her mouth as little as possible.

  “Yes, if it will not upset you too much. I am the—”

  “I know you. You’re the Keeper.”

  “Yes, and this is a friend of mine, who is helping me to try to find your father’s killer. Simon Puttock, bailiff to the Warden of the Stannaries at Lydford. Can you remember what happened to you last night?”

  “As if it was burned on my soul!” she declared, and gave a sudden shiver.

  That, at least, Baldwin thought, looked genuine. “Please tell us all you can.”

  “I was up in my room when it became dark, and walked downstairs. When I came to the hall, I noticed that a tapestry over one of the windows was loose. So I drew it back over the window, and was about to leave the room to look for my father or one of the servants, when I heard a noise behind me. I turned, and was hit.” She touched the tender bruise at her mouth.

  “You fell unconscious immediately?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so far as you could see, your father wasn’t there then?”

  “No. Father had the habit of going and walking the boundaries of the garden each evening, and I think he must still have been out when I was attacked.”

  “What next do you remember?”

  “Nothing. When I came to, I was in my chamber, and my maid was with me.”

  “This man who hit you,” Simon asked, “what did he look like?”

  She shot him a glance. “I don’t know. It was dark, and I think he had his face covered with a strip of cloth or something.”

  “Was he taller than you? Than your father? Fat or thin? Muscled or weak?”

  “I feel he might have been taller than me, but really, anything more than that I couldn’t say.”

  Baldwin leaned forward. “We have heard that your father gave a loud cry. That must have been as he was struck. You heard nothing?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “If I had heard him, I would have said.”

  Baldwin bit back a sharp retort, reminding himself that the girl had suffered an attack herself. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Please try to concentrate. I know it must be very difficult, but if we are to find your father’s killer we shall need something, even the most trivial-seeming detail … ”

  “You think I don’t know my father’s dead?” she burst out. “Good God in Heaven, if I could tell you who it was, I would!”

  “Then, lady, think hard. Did you see what he was wearing?”

  “It was all dark clothing, I think he had a rich scarlet tunic, and a heavy cloak.”

  “What color was the cloak?” Baldwin pressed.

  “It was dark—one color looks like another!”

  Baldwin sat back and threw a harassed glance at his friend. Simon shook his head. It was plain enough that they would get nowhere with Mistress Cecily, not unless she recalled some more hard facts they could deal with. Baldwin nodded to himself, then leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “There is another thing we have been told,” he said hesitantly. He was reluctant to bring the matter up, for it smacked of prurience. “My apologies again if it is distasteful, but I have been told that your father was heard to shout at your attacker. He bellowed, ‘So you’d defile my daughter too, would you?’ You didn’t hear anything like that?”

  She looked up at him, and he could see a tear moving slowly down her cheek as she shook her head. Her mouth moved slightly, as if to frame the word “No,” but no sound came.

  “Putthe thought you were missing some plate. Have you checked it all?”

  Cecily clutched for the arm of her chair. “The plate? You expect me to count up all my poor father’s silver when he’s lying in there dead? I neither know nor care whether someone might have taken it!”

  Simon stirred. “Baldwin, I really think we should leave the lady alone now, she’s told us all she can.”

  “Yes, of course. Lady, I am grateful to you, you have been most helpful, and I am terribly sorry to have had to bring it all back to you. If you could ask your servant to show us out.”

  Simon glanced at him with faint surprise. Baldwin was not usually so keen to stick to formalities. The young woman called sharply, and they heard a pattering of light footsteps, then Alison was with them. Baldwin stood, bowed, and walked back into the hall with the maid, leaving Simon to mutter his own farewell and trot after them.

  He found the knight by the body once more. Baldwin had paused, as if caught by a sudden thought. “Tell me, Alison. Your mistress—the last time I saw her, she was wearing a new blue tunic, I think. Very dark. Isn’t that what she was wearing last night?”

  “Why … Yes, sir, she was.”

  “Tell us what you heard, and what you found when you came in here and discovered your mistress.”

  “Well, sir, I don’t know that I should. I—”

  “Come along! You have already told all the gardeners and grooms, haven’t you? And your friends, so it is already all over the town,” Baldwin grinned.

  “He wouldn’t—I mean … ” She stopped, flustered.

  “Do you want me to have to question each and every other servant until I discover who your sweetheart is?” the knight chuckled. “Come, I am not asking from some perverted motive. I have to try to find your master’s murderer.”

  She gave him a quick look from the corner of her eye, then ducked her head. “All right, sir. I was upstairs with my mistress in the early evening, but when it got dark, she came downstairs. She told me to wait.”

  “Was it usual for her to leave you up in her chamber while she went to fetch something for herself?”

  “Mistress Cecily is a very gentle and kind lady. If I’m busy she’ll often help me, and yes, sometimes she does run her own errands.”

  “So you were busy last night?”

  “Not particularly. I was making up her bed and sorting through some of her clothes, that’s all.”

  “And her father was out, she’s told us. That was normal?”

  “Recently, yes. What with the … ”

  “Yes?” Baldwin prompted gently.

  She gave a little sigh, and a shrug. “Well, since Master Coffyn next door got in these soldiers of his, the master was nervous. He argued with Master Coffyn several times over them.”

  “You heard them argue?”

  “It was hard to miss them, they were shouting so loud.”

  “Where was this?” Simon asked.

  “Why, in the hall here.”

  “So Coffyn used to come here often enough?” Simon pressed.

  “Oh yes, sir. My master had invested a lot of money in Master Coffyn’s business over the last few months. He often used to come here to tell my master how the business
was doing.”

  Baldwin pulled her back to his own theme. “But your master thought Coffyn’s men might rob this house?”

  “Yes, sir. Not that I saw any of them near, but you know what stories there are about wandering soldiers like them. None of them owe any loyalty but that which they give for money.”

  Baldwin nodded. He was perfectly well aware of the increasing public concern about such people, but he had no desire to be caught up in a debate on their morals with a serving-girl. “And is anything missing? Could Coffyn or his man have taken anything?”

  She gave him a quick look, then studied the sideboard. When she faced him again, she met his gaze with what looked like defiance. “No, sir. Nothing is missing.”

  He peered at her, nodding slowly. “Very well. What happened when your mistress left you and came in here?”

  “Well, sir, she was gone some little while when I heard her father. He was shouting something about her being defiled. I didn’t know what to do. I was just going to go downstairs, when I heard something else. It froze the blood in my veins, sir, it really did. It was her father. He gave a great roar, and I swear I never want to hear a noise like that again as long as I live!” She shivered at the memory, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve before continuing. “I was scared out of my wits, not knowing what to do. The only way out of the solar block is through the main hall, and if there was a madman killing people there, I didn’t want to go! But then, when things had been quiet for some time, I thought I should steal down. I was about to go when I heard another scream, and—”

  “Another scream?”

  “Yes, sir, not so deep as the master’s, more like a kind of shrill cry, it was.”

  “Could it have been Putthe?” Simon asked.

  “I suppose so. Anyway, after that, I heard footsteps running away, and—”

  “In which direction?”

  “Hmm? Oh, out at the back … but not straight away. I am quite certain that the man went out along the house. I think he must have gone to the wall to the side of the house, and out over the wall into the little street.”