Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  ‘But then it would be the originals that stank of the wax, not the copies!’ objected Gwyn.

  Thomas smiled smugly. ‘I feel sure that the copies would have to be repeatedly matched to the wax impression, while the blank wards were being filed down to make sure they were an exact fit.’

  Light dawned on de Wolfe. ‘So Canon Basset could have pressed the keys of the chest into the wax, then brought it here for this man Osbert Morel to make copies?’

  Thomas nodded energetically. ‘Certainly! The only problem is when would he have access to both keys to allow him to do that?’

  They all thought about that for a moment. ‘Both keys are only together when the chest is actually being opened in that deep chamber in the Tower,’ said Gwyn. ‘But the Keeper is always there then, having brought his own key.’

  John shrugged. ‘I wonder if he stays all the time when men from the Exchequer are checking and rechecking the contents?’ he said. ‘I suspect old Herbert de Mandeville would have often gone back to his chamber upstairs and left Simon to get on with his boring tasks.’

  ‘Unless he was in conspiracy with the canon himself,’ suggested Thomas.

  John cautiously dipped his finger into the brownish substance in the pot and found it to be as firm as a pat of good butter. His fingertip sank into the surface and left a perfect impression. He repeated the process with the smaller amount in the little box, with the same result.

  ‘That’s how it was done, then!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Simon Basset, man of God or not, is our culprit. He managed to copy both keys and then when he was in the Tower on one of his legitimate visits to check other boxes, he somehow opened the treasure chest without being seen.’

  Gwyn leaned back against a table, making it creak alarmingly.

  ‘How would he manage that? There was always a guard with him, surely?’

  ‘Basset was very well known there; he was a senior member of the Exchequer and came regularly to deal with the inventories,’ countered Thomas. ‘I doubt the guards would be watching him like a hawk all the time he was there. They weren’t to know that he wasn’t supposed to open that particular chest.’

  De Wolfe nodded. ‘It happened, so that’s how it must have been done, for lack of any other explanation. He could have slid some gold objects under his wide cassock while he was pretending to count the items. Maybe it was done over several sessions, not all at once.’

  Back in their chamber in the palace, John put their trophies of the wax box and pot of mixture on his table and regarded them solemnly.

  ‘There is one big problem with all this,’ he said sadly. ‘If Simon Basset was the perpetrator, why was he murdered?’

  There was a silence as the other two contemplated this recurring riddle.

  ‘He must have had an accomplice,’ said Gwyn. ‘Otherwise, who killed the ironmaster? I can’t see a fat canon committing murder on the marshes, even though it was not far from his house.’

  ‘And where is the stolen treasure now?’ asked Thomas. ‘There is no trace of it in the canon’s house, so presumably this unknown accomplice has it in his keeping – and perhaps eliminated Simon Basset to avoid having to give him his share.’

  De Wolfe peered into the wax pot as if he could find the answer in its rusty depths.

  ‘Clever though you have been, Thomas – and I give you full credit for it – we are no nearer solving the mystery because of it. We need this second villain – and most of all we need to recover that gold, or we’ll have the wrath of the king and his Council upon us.’

  For lack of any other inspiration, the next day John rode into the city to question Herbert de Mandeville about the keys. Gwyn stuck with him like the shadow he had become, but no assailant leapt from a side street to attack him. The Constable of the Tower was not pleased to see the coroner yet again, but given the Justiciar’s overriding authority, he had no choice. The interview was fruitless, as the Constable vehemently denied ever leaving Simon Basset alone with the chests in the strongroom. John did not believe him, as there was something in his voice that was too defensive and it was patently obvious that he could never have admitted to being in dereliction of the rules for opening the boxes. In fact, at first de Mandeville refused to accept that the canon was involved in the theft at all and tried to denigrate John’s evidence that the keys from Simon’s pouch had been pressed into wax for nefarious purposes.

  There was nothing to be gained by arguing and de Wolfe left the Tower, unsure of what to do next. As they walked their horses slowly through the crowded, smelly streets, Gwyn ruminated on the litany of events that had brought them to this stage in the investigation, if it could be called that with so little progress.

  ‘Surely this mystery man is the key – the one who ate with Basset before he was taken ill in the bawdy house,’ he called to the coroner, pushing aside a ragged fellow who ran alongside his mare, trying to sell him a handful of bruised-looking plums.

  De Wolfe moved Odin nearer, as there was a hideous racket coming from a quartet of musician-beggars who were performing at the side of the street on pipe and tabor, rebec and bagpipes.

  ‘So he might be!’ he yelled at his officer. ‘But how are we to find him after all this time?’ They moved on to a less noisome part of Cheapside, riding knee to knee to make conversation easier.

  ‘What about trying to get the sheriff’s help, now that we have direct orders from the king himself?’

  They were within a short distance of the Guildhall and John felt that there was no time like the present. They left Cheapside and turned into a side street to reach the building that housed the city’s administration, an impressive stone edifice that had been built only two years after St Bartholomew’s Hospital, which also figured in the dead canon’s epic.

  Leaving Gwyn holding the horses, he went inside and demanded to see one of the two sheriffs. After a cool reception from a clerk sitting in an anteroom, he produced his warrant, which he now carried rolled in an inner pocket of his short riding mantle. The sight of the three royal lions and the dangling red seal, which was large enough to cover the bottom of a pint ale-pot, immediately changed the surly attitude of the official, who led him to an upstairs chamber where Godard of Antioch was sitting at a table on a low platform, directing the activities of a trio of clerks busy scribing at desks below him.

  The fleshy sheriff was no more pleased to see him than the Constable of the Tower had been, but again the sight of John’s warrant made him listen to what the coroner had to say.

  ‘I have now had direct and urgent orders from the king himself, to pursue this matter of the theft of royal revenue,’ said de Wolfe, in a decisive tone that made it clear that he was in no mood for prevarication.

  ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ growled Godard, who like everyone in London knew of the theft from the Tower.

  John explained the canon’s involvement in the crime.

  ‘But it is clear that there must have been at least one other involved, possibly more. One of these must have been responsible for his poisoning and I need to know who it was who ate with him shortly before he was taken mortally ill.’

  ‘And how by St Peter’s cods, do you think I can help you with that?’ grumbled the sheriff.

  John patiently explained the need to find the tavern where they had eaten and to try to trace the other man. Godard was scathing in his response, but John’s persistence and his tapping of the Lionheart’s warrant, eventually persuaded the sheriff to give his grudging agreement.

  ‘You are wasting my time, de Wolfe, you must know that!’ he sneered. ‘How in hell’s name do you expect me to find a fellow, description unknown, several weeks after eating at an unknown tavern in an unknown part of England’s greatest city? Hey?’

  Privately, John found it hard to disagree with him, but he was getting desperate.

  ‘Your constables know the city like the backs of their hands – the eating place cannot be far from Stinking Lane, as the canon walked there, according
to the girl in the brothel. A fat canon may well be remembered by a skivvy or a potboy, especially if a reward is offered. I am sure the Exchequer would gladly pay a few shillings for useful information.’

  After more grumbling and a grudging acceptance, the sheriff agreed to set some of his men on to the task, as long as it did not interfere with their other duties. Unconvinced that Godard would put himself to much trouble over this, John rolled up his royal parchment and put it away inside his cloak, then thanked the sheriff and went out of the building to his patient officer waiting in the street.

  With no other leads to follow up, they made their way back to Westminster where, somewhat to John’s surprise, a case was waiting for him. The sergeant of the guard accosted him as soon as they entered and told him his services were needed at the back of the palace.

  ‘One of the laundry girls claims she has been ravished, sir,’ he announced. ‘We have a man already chained in a cell, but I’m told that this now comes under your jurisdiction.’

  John sent Gwyn to collect Thomas from their chamber upstairs and the three of them followed the sergeant around to the large open area at the back of the palace, where the stables and servants’ lodgings were situated. The place was quiet, as the majority of the people and horses were far away in Gloucestershire. The laundry was a large wooden hut, steam billowing out from iron cauldrons set in stone fireplaces. Behind were several lean-to rooms where the women lived and in one cubicle a girl of about sixteen was lying moaning on a mattress laid on the floor. Two older women were tending her solicitously and raised outraged faces to the coroner as he walked in.

  ‘The poor wretch has been shamefully abused, sir,’ said one forcefully. Middle-aged and shabby, she held a cup of weak ale to the girl’s lips. ‘The bastard should be flayed alive, the dirty swine!’

  John’s task was to confirm that the victim had indeed been raped and to record the facts for submission to the justices, which in this case would be the barons sitting on the King’s Bench in the Great Hall. However, he was no physician and needed some advice on the state of the girl, so a midwife was sent for, one of those who practised in the village. While they waited for her, he extracted the story from those who appeared to know what had happened. The girl herself was too shaken to speak coherently, her teeth chattering as she lay hunched beneath a tattered blanket, the younger woman holding her hand and making soothing noises to her.

  The older woman was more than forthcoming with her evidence.

  ‘That evil bastard Edward Mody did it, Crowner,’ she snapped. ‘I more or less saw it happen – heard it, at any rate. He took her in this very room while I was dollying sheets in the main hut!’

  ‘Mody’s an ostler from the stables,’ explained the sergeant. ‘He’s the man we’ve got locked up.’

  ‘Always sniffing around young Maud here, he was. Wanted to walk out with her, but she turned him down and quite right too. He’s a pig of a fellow, smells like one and acts it, too.’

  The midwife came, a wheezy old woman who walked with the aid of two sticks. How she managed to deliver babies in her state of health, John failed to imagine, but he left her to her task whilst he went to see the suspected man, locked in one of the cells that acted as the palace gaol, yet another shed attached to the back of the stable block. The sergeant opened the door and John went in to find Edward Mody, a coarse-looking man of about thirty, chained by an ankle fetter to a massive iron ring set in the wall. He was crouched on the floor, which was covered in dirty straw that looked as if it had already been used in the stables.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, sir. She was quite willing, I swear!’ he yelled as soon as de Wolfe entered. The rest of the interview was a loud declamation that she was his girlfriend and that she had changed her mind about allowing their sexual congress after the deed was done.

  John had heard similar stories many times before and he suspected that probably some of them were true. However, it was not his duty to judge the matter, only to record all that was said and present it on his rolls to the judges. He came out within a few minutes and told Thomas that he would dictate his statement when they got back to their chamber. Going back to the laundry, he saw the old crone with the walking sticks, who gave him a piece of rag stained with blood.

  ‘You’ll need that to show the justices as proof, Crowner,’ she cackled. ‘The poor girl’s been ravished right enough and her a virgin, too! Bruised and battered, she is, around her vital parts. Still bleeding a little, as that cloth testifies.’

  He gave her a penny and she stumbled off, quite satisfied with her fee. As she left, the gaunt figure of the Keeper appeared, having heard that there had been trouble in his palace, breaking the welcome quiet that the exodus with Queen Eleanor had brought him. Anything untoward that happened in the precinct came within his notice and Nathaniel de Levelondes was still concerned that one of his guest-chamber clerks had been murdered and no one had yet been arrested for it, as well as the coroner himself being half-strangled in St Stephen’s crypt.

  He heard from de Wolfe that this was a genuine rape that had happened on his premises.

  ‘I’ll see that the girl gets a few days free from her duties in the laundry,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And the miscreant can appear before the justices in the morning – we can get him hanged by nightfall.’ They went on to talk about the stabbing of Basil of Reigate and John had to admit that he had made no progress in finding the killer.

  ‘My officer had a brief glimpse of him as he ran past our chamber, but then he vanished,’ he said in his defence. ‘This palace is too large and full of passages and doors to catch anyone unless you are right on their heels.’

  The Keeper grunted his agreement. ‘There are plenty of louts in the village, to say nothing of the city, who would murder their own mother for half a mark!’

  ‘I wonder if it was the same lout that had me by the throat under the chapel the other day,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘The problem with this place is that half the population of England seem to wander in and out as they please.’

  De Levelondes shrugged. ‘What else can we do but let them in? It is a court of law, where all sorts of folk, criminals, witnesses and jurors have to attend. We have merchants in the hall, and traders bringing supplies to us, pilgrims by the hundred coming to the abbey – Westminster is at the crossroads of the world!’

  John then brought up the vague hint offered by Robin Byard about Basil being afraid of the consequences of overhearing some seditious talk in the guest chambers.

  ‘Do you think that is a feasible possibility?’ he asked. ‘There have been rumours of King Philip sending spies to England.’

  The Keeper gave a cynical laugh and repeated the Justiciar’s opinion on the matter.

  ‘There have always been spies here and no doubt the palace shelters more than its share of them. We have a constant stream of visitors from across the Channel and God knows where the sympathies of some of them may lie.’

  John went back to his chamber and when Thomas had written the short account dictated by the coroner on to his rolls for the use of the court next day, they settled back into their usual inertia, as de Wolfe could think of no way to push forward any of their investigations, in spite of the stern admonitions of Hubert Walter. That evening, he went to the Lesser Hall for his supper, where the patrons were few in number now that the court was absent. At least he did not have to dodge Hawise, as the certainty had strengthened within him that Hilda was his true love and that he must remain as faithful to her as his poor weak nature would allow.

  The two under-marshals were also absent and he found himself sitting opposite Archdeacon Bernard de Montfort, who had remained in Westminster to continue his researches in the abbey archives. With him were the two other nobles from across the Channel, to whom Bernard had introduced him some time ago, Guy de Bretteville and Peter le Paumer.

  ‘My work is coming to an end soon, so I shall take myself back to the Auvergne,’ he said, with his usual slight lisp due t
o his distorted lip. ‘I have another trip down to Canterbury to search for one more ancient document which I think is in the scriptorium of the cathedral.’

  He was an amiable companion, with a massive appetite that demolished each new dish that the servants placed on the table.

  John asked him about his research, more for politeness’ sake than any real understanding of his obsession with the saintliness of Edward, last king of the Saxons. De Montfort readily obliged and chattered on happily, with John giving monosyllabic replies, more concerned with getting his share of the roast pigeon and the boiled bacon.

  By the time the puddings, figs, nuts and cheese appeared, de Bretteville and Peter le Paumer had engaged de Montfort in an obscure debate about the criteria that Rome employed to elevate worthy men and women to sainthood and John’s attention had wandered. De Montfort must have sensed that he was being left out of the conversation and brought him back into the fold by asking him how his own investigations were progressing. John felt some sympathy for physicians and apothecaries, who must suffer like coroners, when their friends pester them about their own illnesses, as he often was about his efforts at detection.

  ‘There is something to report about the robbery at the Tower, I’m pleased to say. The king himself has charged me, through the Chief Justiciar, with discovering who stole his treasure, and I am making rapid progress towards catching the thieves.’

  He uttered this bare-faced untruth with no compunction at all, as it was his only hope, faint as it was, of scaring the culprits out of cover.

  The archdeacon nodded as he swallowed the last spoonful of his cherry torte. ‘And what about this rumour we heard of spies in the palace being connected to that poor clerk who served us so well in the guest chambers?’

  Again John concealed his total ignorance of who might responsible. Bernard de Montfort was an inveterate gossip and there was no better way of spreading John’s false optimism, than telling the archdeacon.

  ‘Ah, there I am also most optimistic!’ he replied. ‘I hope to lay my hands on Basil’s murderer before the week is out. There are certain pieces of the riddle still to fall into place, but I shall soon have them, never fear!’