The Grim Reaper

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Why should you think otherwise, Crowner?’ asked Thomas, with his unfailing curiosity, even for the macabre.

  ‘Because I have seen ligatures around the already dead – and this one has a head injury, just like the Jew.’

  De Wolfe, who had been supporting the head while Gwyn unwrapped the stocking, showed the palm of his hand, which was covered in sticky blood. ‘The back of her head was violently struck – this time with force enough to crack the skull in spite of her wig. I can feel pieces of bone grating together under the hair and skin.’ He wiped his hand on the crumpled silk stocking. ‘We have a killer who seems to stick to his methods – first a blow to the head to silence the victim, then another means of causing their death.’

  He stood back and gazed at the pathetically still harlot. For the first time, he noticed that an ominous bloodstain was spreading through her gown over the area of her lower belly and upper thighs. The significance was all too obvious, but still the men shied away from the intimate probing that would be necessary to determine exactly what had happened.

  ‘We need a wise woman’s help here,’ de Wolfe muttered gruffly. ‘Gwyn, make sure that a message gets to Polsloe soon after dawn to get that midwife nun over here.’

  Gwyn nodded, then, anxious to change the subject, said ‘No sign of any written message, though?’

  ‘The written message was on her temple, Crowner,’ pointed out Thomas, sensibly. ‘It seems clear enough to me.’

  John nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose you’re right. There’s little else we can do here, now – we know who she was, how she died and that it was by the same crazy hand that killed Aaron.’ He led them outside, and Osric pulled the door shut.

  ‘Can we do any more tonight?’ asked Gwyn. ‘It must be halfway to dawn now.’

  De Wolfe remembered Nesta’s threat about breakfast, but he also had Matilda to contend with. He was back on the old knife-edge of weaving a safe path between them.

  ‘If you have the names of those who were at the Bush, we can leave it until early morning. The Saracen will be our first call, to get that evil swine Willem to the inquest, if this girl was working mainly out of his lousy ale-house.’ He trudged away, leaving Thomas to find his pallet in the Close and Gwyn to bed down in the castle gatehouse, while he himself went home to make his peace with Matilda as best he could – although he knew that when she discovered his new case was centred around the Bush, she would make his life hell.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In which Crowner John eats a hearty breakfast

  It was not long before Sir John de Wolfe, warrior and Crusader, again showed his yellow streak when it came to facing up to women. Matilda was sound asleep when he eased himself quietly into the solar and even more quietly on to his side of the wide mattress. He was up before dawn and slid out before she awoke, putting off the evil hour when he must tell her about the body in the Bush.

  Mary was also up and about, getting the cooking fire going, but he refused her offer of food and took himself off to Idle Lane just as it was getting light. The Bush was already in full swing, with the lodgers breaking their fast and some early traders calling in for food and ale.

  Nesta looked sleepy but was full of smiles, and John’s morbid fears that she might have had second thoughts about their reconciliation were unfounded. ‘I came before breakfast, as you demanded, woman,’ he said, with mock ferocity. She gave a swift kiss and sat him down at his favourite table, behind a wattle screen near the empty fireplace. She hurried away, yelling for her two maidservants, and within minutes a wide pewter platter, heaped with thick slices of bacon, three griddled eggs and leeks fried in mutton fat, was put before him even though it was Friday and a fish day in the eyes of the Church. A wooden bowl filled with boiled oatmeal followed, swimming in milk and honey, and a quart of best ale completed his meal. Nesta sat opposite him, chin in hand, daring him not to eat every morsel.

  ‘This is fit to break the fast of a Gwyn, not a John!’ he complained happily, tucking in with a will, determined to swallow every scrap to please her, even if it killed him.

  Between mouthfuls, he told her of the discoveries at St Nicholas and brought her up to date on the similarity of this case with the death of the Jewish moneylender. He knew that Nesta would keep his confidences – and also that, like Thomas de Peyne, she was an invaluable source of information, for little happened in Exeter, and for miles around, that was not gossiped about in the Bush, which was one of the city’s busiest taverns.

  ‘So you feel it must be a priest?’ she asked, wide-eyed at the macabre story.

  ‘With that knowledge of the scriptures and the ability to write, it can hardly be anyone else. Only someone like Thomas would be able to pick such appropriate texts.’

  There was a sudden awkward pause, as both realised what he had just suggested. Nesta laughed, a short embarrassed laugh. ‘Of course, that’s nonsense. Anyway, he would have been with you each time.’

  There was another short silence.

  ‘He wasn’t, in fact. But it’s still damn ridiculous – although he has been acting strangely since he tried to kill himself.’

  They both made a conscious effort to throw the foolish thought from their minds.

  ‘What’s the next thing, then?’ she asked. ‘Put every priest in Exeter to the peine forte et dure?’

  ‘That would please Gwyn, I’m sure. No, I’ll have to seek out those clerics who are known to be a bit strange and put some pressure on them.’

  The landlady made a rude noise, indicating her derision. ‘You’ve got little chance of that, Sir Crowner! The Bishop will have you excommunicated if you start pestering his troops – Benefit of Clergy and all that.’

  ‘He can waive that right if he is so persuaded, just as he has agreed we may have jurisdiction in the cathedral precinct over any crime of violence there.’

  Nesta sniffed disdainfully – she was tiring of all this talk of the law, when she just had her lover back again. But it was too early in the day for passion and when John had finished his massive breakfast, he felt more like slumping back against the wattle screen than investigating a murder. As always, his sense of duty triumphed. This was just as well, because the inn door flew open and his officer stormed in. When he saw his master with Nesta, Gwyn’s craggy face broke into a radiant smile, his blue eyes dancing above the ginger foliage on his face. He adored the Welsh woman and his mortification when they had split up was only equalled by his present delight at the healing of the wound.

  Nesta, who was familiar with his gargantuan appetite, offered him food, but he had already eaten at a stall on the way down from Rougemont. He would have succumbed to the mildest persuasion to have another meal, but de Wolfe hauled him away. ‘To the Saracen, man! We have a day’s work before us. There are hangings to attend as well. Where’s that bloody clerk of ours? He knows how many swing today.’ He left the Bush with a promise to Nesta that he would return later and trudged off with Gwyn to the tavern where Joanna was said to have had her base. The Saracen was at the top of Stepcote Hill, between Idle Lane and St Mary Steps, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Bush. It was a similar building, though lower in the roof. Its walls were dirty pink, washed with white lime coloured with ox-blood. Over the door was a crude painting of a man with a turban, holding a scimitar, though de Wolfe decided that the artist could never have been nearer the Holy Land than Exmouth.

  ‘Have you set up the inquest at St Nicholas?’ he asked Gwyn, as they approached the inn.

  ‘Yes, the jury will be there at the ninth hour – the prior was not pleased, the miserable old sod.’

  They stepped aside to let a donkey pass them, heavily laden with bales of wool going to the fulling mills, its hoofs slipping on the cobbles of the steep lane. When it had passed, they were opposite the inn door and John ducked inside. The stench, even at that early hour, was ten times stronger than the Bush, which Nesta kept cleaner than any other ale-house in Exeter. The Saracen was indeed a foul den. The four maids were al
l prostitutes, paying Willem the Fleming half their fee for the privilege of picking up their customers between serving ale and cider. Many of his patrons were thieves and coiners and much of the business transacted there was the disposal of stolen goods.

  When they went in the landlord was at the back of the room, throwing a thin layer of mouldy rushes on top of the filthy ones that were already strewn over the floor. They looked as if they had not been changed since old King Henry died, for they were dotted with scraps of food, dog droppings and assorted rubbish. Here and there they moved, as a rat foraged among them.

  When he saw his visitors the Fleming dropped his bundle. The arrival of law officers always meant trouble and his flabby features signalled his suspicion and displeasure. ‘The bloody crowner, no less!’ he grated, his foreign accent still strong even after twenty years in Devon. ‘What in hell do you want this time?’

  He was as big as Gwyn, but fat rather than muscular. His jowls hung over the collar of his grimy smock and the long leather apron bulged over his belly.

  ‘You have been harbouring a girl known as Joanna of London?’ snapped de Wolfe.

  ‘Harbouring? What d’you mean, harbouring?’ The small eyes glittered over a sneering mouth. ‘An inn is open to anyone who wishes to enter. The law demands it.’

  John sighed, he had no inclination to bandy words with this fat bastard.

  ‘Don’t waste my time, Willem. She was a whore who worked out of your ale-house, we all know that. I’m not interested in the way you run your business, I just want to know about this Joanna.’

  The little eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s the crowner that’s asking, then she must be dead, eh?’

  ‘Yes – and you’ve lost your cut from her earnings. The girl’s been murdered. I want to know where she lived, when you last saw her and who she was with.’

  The inn-keeper roared with laughter. ‘Would you like to know her grandmother’s maiden name while you’re at it? She slept here sometimes, yes – when she wasn’t in some man’s bed elsewhere. But where she went and who with – Holy Mary, she was whore! A dozen different men on a good day.’

  It was the answer de Wolfe had expected, but he felt he had to go through the motions. ‘She slept here sometimes, though?’

  ‘Up in the loft. She usually had money and paid for a twopenny pallet. As she was a regular, so to speak, I let her stay in one that has a screen at the side – though I suspect she usually crept out to service the other lodgers at a penny a time.’

  ‘Did she have any belongings?’

  ‘She left a bundle alongside her mattress. Clothes, I suppose.’

  The coroner demanded to see them and, grumbling under his breath, Willem reluctantly led them up a flight of wooden steps to the floor above. It was similar to that in the Bush, only smaller and dirtier. A row of verminous straw-filled mattresses lay on the floor. At each end was a vertical screen of woven reeds, which gave some slight privacy to the mattress behind it.

  ‘When did she come here?’

  ‘About two months ago. Said she had had to run from London, as she had stabbed her keeper, who was beating her for holding back some money. Sounded like the truth, for once.’

  John looked behind the screen and saw a bundle tied up in a scarf, lying on the bed. Ignoring the fleas that hopped on the sacking cover of the pallet, he untied it and, in the dim light under the thatch, looked cursorily at two gaudy dresses, a gauze shift, some stockings that matched the one that had been around her neck and a cloth bag containing a dirty hairbrush and a tiny pot of rouge.

  ‘No money, I see. There was nothing on her body, either.’

  Willem sneered again. ‘A girl like that would be too wise to leave a ha’penny lying here. It would be stolen within two minutes. She’ll have stashed her funds in a hole somewhere. Harlots never carry it on their person – most of their customers would cut their throat for the price of a drink. Maybe that’s what happened, anyway. Why are you bothering about a dead strumpet?’

  De Wolfe ignored him and clambered back down the steps. At the door, he had one last question. ‘When did you last see this Joanna?’

  The Fleming scowled at him. ‘I don’t mark the comings and goings of every whore who uses this place. She was around sometime yesterday, as far as I recall. In the morning, I think.’

  They left the Saracen with some relief, Gwyn scratching vigorously after having added to the colony of fleas that normally lived in his clothing. As they loped up Smythen Street, past the clanging of the forges to where St John’s Row turned through to Fore Street, Gwyn vented his opinion of the Saracen and Willem the Fleming, his description coloured by a string of oaths.

  ‘But, for once, I think he has no involvement in this,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘The business with the Biblical quotations makes this a more sinister affair than just the casual croaking of a harlot.’

  They passed St John’s church and crossed the main street then turned again into the narrow lanes at the top of Bretayne to reach St Nicholas’s, squelching through a rivulet of sewage that ran down the middle of the alley and pushing aside goats and a pig. Inside the gate, the compound around the monastic building was well kept, compared to the squalor outside. A cobbled area lay around the walls and outside was a garden where the monks grew vegetables and herbs. A few fruit trees around the boundary fence were well into leaf.

  A score of men hung around the door to the mortuary, watched suspiciously by two monks set there by the prior to prevent them stealing anything. Thomas was there too, looking as unhappy as ever, his lips making silent conversation with some invisible being.

  ‘Let’s get on with this, there’s hangings to be attended afterwards,’ snapped the coroner, going to the storeroom door and flinging it open. He heard the lane gate scrape open and turned back to see Nesta coming in, with one of her serving-maids in attendance. As the discoverer of the body, she was obliged to be present at the inquest and had covered herself for the occasion with a decorously dull-green cloak with a hood that covered her linen coif and burnished copper hair. Old Edwin limped gallantly behind them, grasping a knobbly staff in his fist, to guard them through this disreputable part of the city.

  Gwyn marshalled the jury to each side of the door, like a dog with a flock of sheep. They were all last night’s drinkers from the Bush, with the two constables at each end. A handful of old men and goodwives from the nearby hovels came in to listen at the back – a dead whore was a welcome diversion from the sordid routine of life in Bretayne.

  Gwyn gabbled his usual royal command to open the inquest and Thomas squatted on a keg just inside the storeroom, with his parchment and pens on a piece of board across his knees. John stood in the open doorway to conduct the proceedings and, after a quick preamble, asked Nesta to step forward. With a dead-pan face, he asked her to identify herself, then went on to question her. She answered demurely, with downcast eyes, and although almost everyone there knew that she was the coroner’s mistress, not an eyebrow lifted and not a smirk passed across a face. ‘Lady, can you put a name to the deceased from your own knowledge – and were you the First Finder?’

  Nesta said softly but clearly that the woman was known as Joanna of London and that she had frequented her hostelry a number of times, even though prostitutes were not encouraged there. She had last seen her in the Bush late last night, then described how she had gone out to her brew-house some time before midnight to attend to her latest batch of mash. She had taken a horn lantern, but had tripped over something in the shadows and almost fallen. It was then that she had seen the dead girl lying on her back. She had screamed and run to the back door of the inn, where Edwin was coming out to investigate, followed by several of the patrons.

  ‘A nd was a Hue and Cry made straight away?’ demanded de Wolfe, with deliberate sternness.

  ‘It was indeed! Some of the men rushed around the yard to make sure no one was lurking there – they looked in the kitchen, the privy, the brew-house and even the pig-sty. Others ran out of the gate and
searched the wasteground in Idle Lane and went as far as Priest Street, Stepcote Hill and Smythen Street. But they found nothing suspicious, so they called Osric, the constable, then sent Edwin up to the castle, where he found Gwyn of Polruan.’

  The coroner had one last question, which he had genuinely forgotten to ask Nesta back at the Bush. ‘There was a drinking cup near the dead girl’s hand. Do you know where it may have come from?’

  The landlady shook her head. ‘Gwyn showed it to me last night, but it’s not one from the Bush. Mine come from a different potter.’

  De Wolfe thanked her gravely and Nesta stepped back to stand with her maid. Then a succession of jurors was called, those who had been involved in chasing around the streets of Exeter in the middle of the night. They all told the same story, confirmed by Osric and his fellow constable when they gave their evidence.

  As with the inquest on Aaron, John felt no obligation to mention the writing and the strange circumstances, so there was little else to be said. The jurors had to view the corpse, so they paraded through the storeroom, where Gwyn showed them the stocking that had been around Joanna’s neck, then pointed out the strangulation groove on her skin and the bloody wound on the back of her head.

  Outside again, de Wolfe concluded the proceedings in short order. ‘The dead woman is Joanna, a whore reputed to be from London, as her striped hood would confirm. She lodged at the Saracen, but they know nothing of her movements last night. As she is a woman, there is no need to present Englishry, which would be impossible, anyway, as she is a stranger. The cause of death is clear. She was struck on the head to relieve her of her wits, a blow that broke her cranium and which alone would have killed her within hours. But before she died she was throttled with one of her own stockings – a spare one, as she was wearing two, but it matches some that were found with her chattels at the Saracen. Dame Madge from Polsloe Priory has earlier this morning examined the girl on my behalf and found certain injuries of a depraved and licentious nature, which need not be described to you in any detail. It seems likely that they were inflicted immediately after death.’