Crowner's Quest

by Bernard Knight

  The Archdeacon had been staring at the cobwebbed roof-beams with an air of abstraction, but now brought down his bright grey eyes to fix them upon the coroner. ‘I wonder if another small fact fits into this puzzle,’ he mused.

  The others waited expectantly.

  ‘A week ago, I was discussing our finances with the Treasurer, John of Exeter, partly to forecast our income in the new year that is about to begin. Among many other matters, he said that he had had a rather vague promise of a substantial sum from one of our canons. I didn’t press the matter to ask from whom it had come, as it is not uncommon for the more affluent of our brothers to make such donations – but it may tie in with de Hane’s promise to his confessor.’

  Privately, the coroner felt all this talk of canonical riches too vague to be of any use, but so far it was all he had by way of background on the dead man. ‘So do you think that Robert de Hane had some hidden wealth, in spite of his outwardly modest style of living, and that he was killed in furtherance of its theft?’ he suggested.

  De Boterellis shook his pudgy face. ‘When he confessed to me in such an indefinite way, the matter seemed in the future, that he was regretful for aspiring to keep what was going to come to him, rather than what he already possessed.’

  There was another thoughtful silence among the circle of men perched on their high stools, until Jordan de Brent’s deep voice broke it. ‘One trivial matter,’ said the archivist. ‘Our brother Robert rarely left the cathedral Close. He was either at his devotions in the cathedral, or home, or here in the library. Yet in the past three weeks he vanished several times for a day on the back of a pony and returned with mud-spattered feet at dusk.’

  ‘And you say that was unusual?’ asked de Wolfe, who spent half his life on the back of a horse.

  ‘Very much so – he was a most sedentary person. I’ve no idea where he went, he merely told me that he would not be here in the library on those few days. His vicar-choral and secondary must have stood in for him at services. They or his manservants might know where he went.’

  This added scrap of information seemed to exhaust the meagre pool of knowledge about the late Canon de Hane, and after de Wolfe had arranged with Jordan de Brent for Thomas to sift through de Hane’s manuscripts the hungry priests dispersed to their midday meals. The coroner and his clerk walked across to the house where the death had taken place. In it, there was an air of sadness that ill-befitted the festival of Christ’s birth. The body still lay on the bed as the coroner had yet to hold the inquest. Afterwards it would be removed to lie in reverence before the high altar in the cathedral.

  Gwyn was in the kitchen, a lean-to built against the back of the house, projecting into the narrow garden. Most of the canons’ houses, originally wooden, had been refashioned in stone. They were long, narrow dwellings, one room wide with a main hall in front, then several small bedrooms, and various nooks and crannies for lodging guests and accommodating the resident secondary priest. The few male servants slept either in passages or in the shacks in the garden, which also had a stable, as well as the wash-house and the privy where the body had been found.

  With the coroner’s officer were two servants of the deceased canon, as well as a young secondary and a vicar who deputised for de Hane at many of the daily services. They all looked uneasily at the swarthy coroner as he swept into the kitchen.

  Gwyn eased his huge frame off the corner of the table where he had been sitting. ‘No one seems to have any light to shed on this affair, Crowner,’ he growled, scratching his crotch vigorously, a habit he had akin to Thomas’s tic.

  De Wolfe’s black brows descended as he scowled round the assembled faces. ‘I’ve heard that the canon made some unaccustomed excursions on horseback out of Exeter these past few weeks. Did any of you accompany him?’

  One of the servants, a young man named David, with muscles bulging through the sleeves of his plain hessian tunic, took a step forward. ‘I made his pony ready for him, sir, and offered to go with him, but the Canon was most insistent that he went alone.’

  ‘Was that unusual?’

  ‘It was unusual for him to go anywhere at all, Crowner,’ replied David, who seemed too bright and intelligent to be a lowly yard-servant.

  Then, unwilling to be left out of the picture, his older colleague cut in, ‘Though we have two good horses and a pony in the stable, they are hardly ever used. Their hoofs have to be trimmed for lack of wear on the road.’

  ‘Have you any notion of where he went?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  ‘It couldn’t have been very far,’ said David. ‘The Canon, God rest his soul, was a timid horseman. The nag usually walked for him and rarely got up to a trot. On these trips, he never left the Close until the ninth hour of the morning, and he was back before the city gates shut at dusk, which is early this time of year.’

  John glanced across at his bodyguard. ‘Gwyn, what distance would a slow pony travel in that time?’

  The Cornishman pulled at the ends of his shaggy moustache. ‘Not far – perhaps to the edge of Dartmoor or down to Exmouth and back, I reckon. Depends on how long he stopped to conduct his business when he got there.’

  The coroner turned back to the sturdy young groom. ‘Do you know which way he went?’

  David shrugged. ‘Only on one of the three occasions did I see him leave the city, sir. I was buying fish in Carfoix and I saw him making down the hill towards the West Gate.’

  De Wolfe made the usual grunting noise in his throat. ‘That could lead him to half of Devon. You’ve no idea where he went or what he was doing?’ he persisted, his eyes roving across the others, to be met with sorrowful shakes of their heads.

  ‘He always took a roll of parchment in his saddle-scrip,’ volunteered the younger man, hesitantly. ‘And though the pony came back fairly clean, the Canon’s boots and the hem of his robe were caked with red mud, for I had to clean them.’

  ‘So he must have been walking somewhere away from his horse,’ put in Thomas. This obvious interpretation was received by Gwyn with a pitying scowl.

  As with the meeting with the canons, further questions led to no useful answers and the coroner became impatient. ‘Now that it’s daylight, let’s look again at the place of his death,’ he commanded. He led the group out of the kitchen into the cluttered yard, where chickens and ducks flapped from under their feet. The stench of the privy was no less in daylight, but de Wolfe climbed the rough steps and pulled open the rickety door. The remains of the girdle-cord still hung down from a gnarled rafter, the frayed end swinging gently in the cold breeze.

  The coroner’s gaze went to the edge of the planks that formed the seat of the privy, worn smooth by several generations of canonical buttocks. ‘No scratches or mud there, Gwyn,’ he observed. ‘If he had hanged himself he would have had to stand on there to tie the rope above, then launch himself into eternity.’ John turned and dragged Thomas forward. ‘Get up there and see how far you can reach to the roof-beams.’

  As the lame clerk scrambled awkwardly up on to the seat, Gwyn grabbed his leg and pretended to push him down one of the twin holes into the malodorous pit below. The clerk shrieked in terror and tried to kick him in the face.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop it, you pair of fools!’ snarled de Wolfe.

  ‘But the little runt is too small to reach,’ objected Gwyn.

  ‘The canon was only a hand’s length taller, so lift him up a little,’ snapped the coroner.

  With a grin, the officer grabbed the clerk around his waist and hoisted him up a few inches. ‘About there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Can you reach the knot now?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  Thomas waved his hands in the air, but they fell well short of the knot tied around the rafter that supported the woven wattle under the thatch.

  ‘Is he high enough?’ asked Gwyn again.

  John stood back in the doorway to check Thomas’s elevation compared to the dead man’s height. ‘Plenty high enough – so there’s no way he could have tied
the rope up there. Somebody much taller did it for him, standing on the seat.’

  He motioned Gwyn to put Thomas down and his officer again resisted the temptation to drop the clerk into the ordure below.

  ‘No more to see here,’ grunted de Wolfe, and turned to face the handful of servants and priests who stood at the bottom of the privy steps. ‘Did any of you see anything untoward out here last night? Any strangers in the yard or the house?’

  There was a chorus of denials. Then the old steward spoke up. ‘Most of the servants from the Close were either at their homes or at Yuletide revelries in the taverns, and the priests were either in the cathedral or celebrating at each other’s lodgings.’

  ‘And anyone can come to this yard down the side passage,’ added the resident secondary, a pale young man with a hare-lip. ‘From there they can come into the house through the back door.’

  De Wolfe paced the yard, but could think of no way to further the matter. ‘Right, the inquest will be held here at the second hour of the afternoon. All of you will be present.’ He strode off up the side lane, making for home and a confrontation with his wife.

  When he reached the house in Martin’s Lane, however, only Mary was there. ‘The mistress has gone off to St Olave’s’, she informed him archly, ‘then to eat with her cousin in Fore Street, she said.’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘You’re still in disgrace. Last night was a great disappointment to her.’

  De Wolfe snorted in disgust. ‘The bloody woman! The party was almost over – and only I and the Archdeacon left them.’

  ‘It doesn’t need much for the mistress to take umbrage,’ observed Mary, sagely. ‘Now then, Master John, do you want me to make you a meal?’

  De Wolfe picked up his cloak again. ‘No, dear Mary, I’ll go down to the Bush before the inquest – I’ll have a bite to eat there.’

  As he marched out, the buxom maid murmured under her breath. ‘I’ll wager you’re hoping to get more than a bite at the Bush, my lad!’

  His favourite tavern, run by his favourite woman, was built with empty plots of ground on either side. This gave the name Idle Lane to the short cross street that joined the top of Stepcote Hill to Priest Street in the lower part of the city. The inn was a square, thatched building with frame walls filled with wattle-and-daub.

  John pushed open the door, ducked his head under the low lintel and went into a hubbub of sound, smell and smoke. The fire glowing on a wide stone hearth had no chimney, but vents under the edge of the thatch allowed the fumes to filter out between the ends of the beams that supported the attic-like upper storey. As it was Yuletide, the place was full with men and a few women, making the most of the chance to drink during the day.

  His usual place at a small table on the other side of the fire was occupied, but as soon as the old potman saw him with his one good eye, he unceremoniously pulled two youths off the bench and waved de Wolfe across. ‘Morning, Cap’n, I’ll tell her ladyship you’re here.’ Edwin was an old soldier half blinded in Ireland, where he had also lost most of a foot. He always called de Wolfe by his military rank, to acknowledge his reputation as a fighting man.

  The coroner slipped off his wolfskin cloak and hung it behind his table across a screen, a wattle hurdle hammered into the earth floor to keep off the draughts. Within half a minute, Edwin was stumping back to slap a quart pot of ale in front of him. ‘She’s coming directly, Cap’n. Do you want some food?’

  ‘Yes, and plenty of it, Sergeant. I could eat that old foot of yours, if you’d still got it!’

  The ancient cackled with glee, rolling the white, collapsed eyeball horribly, then stumbled away to the kitchen.

  As he drank the warm ale gratefully, John looked around at the throng. He nodded and spoke to a few nearby, all of whom were well aware of his intimacy with the landlady of the Bush. Many were tradesmen – of all types, from tanners to wool fullers, from butchers to tinsmiths. There were some off-duty men-at-arms from the castle and a few burgesses, the upper echelon of the merchants and traders in Exeter. The women were either the mistresses of some of the men – never their wives – or whores: their business never stopped for festive days.

  He heard Nesta’s high voice shouting at her serving-maid and cook somewhere at the back of the big room, where Edwin was now busy drawing ale and cider from casks wedged up against the wall. As trade was brisk, the pottery mugs received only a token swill in a crock of dirty water before he refilled them under the spigots.

  This was life as John liked it, even though he appeared a morose, solitary man. He was happiest in the company of men, despite his appetite for women’s charms. After a few mugs of ale his tongue would loosen and he enjoyed telling tales of past campaigns, of travel in foreign parts and hearing the latest scandals from Winchester or London. To sit by a warm fire in a busy tavern and listen to the bustle of life around him, to exchange greetings with men he had known for years, was a comforting change from the sterile hours of silence or stilted conversation he suffered in the house in Martin’s Lane. As he reflected on these things, he was suddenly and pleasantly interrupted. A warm body slipped on to the bench and pressed against him, a soft arm sliding through his. ‘How is my favourite law officer today? I hear you had a busy night in the cathedral Close.’ The owner of the Bush was a one-woman intelligence service: everything that took place in Exeter seemed to be common knowledge in the tavern within minutes of its happening.

  John de Wolfe looked down at her with a rare smile of pleasure and affection. He saw a pretty auburn-haired Welsh woman of twenty-eight, with a heart-shaped face, a high forehead and a snub nose. Slightly under average height, Nesta was curvaceous, with a small waist and a bosom that was the object of many a man’s dreams in the city. ‘You are the best thing I’ve seen so far today, sweet woman,’ he said, with mock-gallantry.

  The redhead pretended to pout. ‘As you’ve spent your time with the corpse of a strangled prebendary, that’s no great compliment, sir!’

  He squeezed her thigh with a big hand. ‘If you know so much about my business, madam, maybe you’d like to tell me who are the culprits.’

  She leaned across to take a drink from his mug, using the opportunity to press her breast against him. ‘Give me a few clues and I’ll solve it for you, John. But what else has been happening to you this past day or so?’

  He sighed and slid an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m in disfavour with Matilda, once again.’ He told her what had happened during her party last night.

  He got little sympathy from his mistress. ‘Poor woman! Fancy having such a husband as you! If you’d left my entertainment like that, I’d have blacked your eyes – and then banned you from my bed for a month.’ She was only half joking, for though she had no particular liking for Matilda, she knew there was fault on both sides and that, when he chose, this man could be as awkward and stubborn as a mule.

  He grinned at her as one of the maids arrived with his food. ‘If she banned me from her bed for a month the only penalty would be that I was spared her snoring – for no other activity occurs on our couch, I can tell you.’

  Nesta prodded him in the ribs in mock-outrage. ‘A fine story! You couldn’t keep your nightshirt down even if you were in bed with Bearded Lucy.’ This was a repulsive hag, reputed to be a witch, who lived in a hut alongside the river. All the same, Nesta was secretly pleased to know that he claimed to keep his virility for her. ‘Eat your victuals, Sir Crowner, and stop talking such nonsense.’

  As he tucked into his food, for which the Bush had the best reputation among all the taverns in Exeter, Nesta was called away to settle an argument between the cook out in the yard and one of the maids. Using his dagger and his fingers, de Wolfe tucked into a slab of boiled bacon and fried onions that rested on a thick trencher of bread laid directly on the scrubbed boards of the table in lieu of a platter. The juices soaked into the trencher, which would be collected with all the others and given at the end of the day to the poor in the Bretayne district. As he ate his meat and
spread yellow butter on to bread torn from a wheaten loaf, he felt calm and contentment spread though him, though the death of the canon still niggled in the back of his mind.

  At the last mouthful, Nesta came back with a fresh quart of ale for him. ‘Tell me about this poor man in Canons’ Row,’ she demanded. Although she was a prodigious source of information and gossip, he knew that his confidences were safe with her – not that much was ever confidential in this small city, where everyone considered their neighbour’s business common property.

  He told her what little he knew of the death of Robert de Hane and the lack of any apparent motive. He spoke in Welsh, as it was her native language and the one his mother had used with him as a child. Even when Gwyn was with them they talked in Welsh, for his own Cornish was similar, as was the Breton spoken by many visiting traders and shipmen.

  ‘Why kill a harmless old man like that?’ she asked, full of sympathy as always for the defenceless and the underdog. ‘You say he had no wealth or possessions to steal?’

  De Wolfe took a deep draught of his ale. ‘There was some talk of his coming into wealth, which he was giving to the Church, but he had nothing that could be stolen from his house or his person.’

  Her hazel eyes studied the strange man alongside her: he was not handsome, with that long gaunt face and beak of a nose, but he was tall, sinewy and utterly masculine. Though usually gruff and sparing with words, he could be loving and tender and she knew, to her great delight, that when roused he was a lover without compare, his long body a relentless machine for giving them mutual pleasure.

  She had known him for six years, since her late husband Gruffydd had given up soldiering and bought the Bush Inn. John and Gruffydd had been together on several campaigns, the Welshman a master archer from Gwynllwyg2 in south Wales, the home of the long-bow. Within two years, though, Gruffydd had been dead of a fever and Nesta was left with an inn and substantial debts. De Wolfe had loaned her money and paid for help in the tavern, until her own hard work had turned it into a successful business. It was only then that friendship had become passion, but she was well aware that it would never go beyond that: it was unthinkable that a Norman knight would leave his wife – especially a de Revelle – for a mere alehouse-keeper. Nesta also knew that he had other women tucked away around the county, but once again she settled philosophically, if reluctantly, for what she could get and was content to believe that she was his favourite.