The Renegade Merchant

by Sarah Woodbury

  “It would have been easy enough for a sneak thief to have seen him in the tavern and followed him to his room,” Gareth said.

  Gwen tipped her head. “The room is cleaner than I would have imagined a simple thief would leave it—and look how this man is laid out east to west.”

  “The whole scene implies that the killer gave what he’d done some thought. This man’s death may not have been planned, but the aftermath—” Gareth nodded his head as he went through in his mind the steps the murderer must have taken in order to leave the room as they saw it now, “—that definitely was.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Gwen said.

  “Nothing in front of these two.” Gareth lifted the man’s arm and laid it down again. “I’d put his death after midnight and before dawn. He’s isn’t completely cold, but he’s stiff.” Gareth looked up at the innkeeper and returned to English. “I gather this man was a guest? Can you tell me his name?”

  After a dismayed glance at Cedric, Rob said, “He wasn’t a guest.”

  “We both know him well,” Cedric added. “His name is Roger Carter, and he is one of the most important men in Shrewsbury.”

  Chapter Five

  Gareth

  “This man was Adeline’s betrothed?” Gareth gazed at the body as if seeing it for the first time. He was having trouble accepting the way his two worlds had just collided.

  “Yes, my lord,” Cedric said.

  “Why didn’t you say so when you came to get us?” Gareth swiveled on the ball of his foot to look over at Cedric, who stood to the right of the doorway.

  “I didn’t think it mattered since I didn’t think you would know him,” Cedric said. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

  Gwen was shaking her head back and forth repeatedly, seemingly unable to muster up the appropriate words to convey how she felt.

  The questions tumbled over themselves in Gareth’s mind, but he asked the first one that leapt to the forefront. “Why would Roger Carter rent a room at this inn?”

  “He didn’t,” Rob said.

  Gareth sent him a piercing look, at which point the innkeeper got the hint that his answer wasn’t sufficient.

  “The room was rented to someone else.”

  “Who?”

  Rob gestured helplessly. “A stranger. Came two nights ago. Kept to himself.”

  Gareth rose to his feet. “What was his name?”

  “Irish, wasn’t he? Could hardly understand three words out of ten that came out of his mouth, but he said his name was Conall.”

  “Did the proprietor just say that the dead man was Irish?” Gwen said in Welsh to Gareth, apparently having lost the thread of the conversation due to Rob’s rapid fire English.

  Gareth nodded, but he kept his attention focused on Rob. The innkeeper was one of the first men Gareth had encountered who hadn’t blinked an eye at Gareth’s foreign appearance or his Welsh accent. And if Roger Carter was on the town council, his murder would send shock and panic throughout the town. Gareth didn’t know if that would make it harder or easier for him to get the residents to tell him what they knew. “Why would Roger Carter have been in his room?”

  Rob shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I never saw Conall but twice: when he paid that first night and when he returned home the second. He let himself out in the mornings before the dawn.” His smile was apologetic. “With the tavern, I’m awake past midnight most nights, so I have others to look after the place during the morning hours.”

  “How many nights did Conall pay for?” Gareth said.

  “Just the two,” Rob said. “I expected him to have been off this morning—before dawn again, he’d said, so I was coming to see to the room when I found Roger lying there dead.”

  “Do you know why Conall was in Shrewsbury in the first place?” Gareth said.

  Rob shook his head. “At the time, I thought it strange for an Irishman to come to Shrewsbury at all, but he said he had business in the town.”

  “Apparently, some of that business was with Roger Carter,” Gwen said, finding her voice.

  Another shrug from Rob. “I wouldn’t have said so—no word of them meeting came to my ear—not before today, anyway.”

  “Might it have?” Gareth said.

  Rob raised his eyebrows. “I own a tavern, and people talk. If Conall and Roger Carter were doing business, it’s more surprising to me that I didn’t hear of it.”

  “What did Conall say his business was?” Gareth said.

  “Wool,” Rob said.

  “Buying or selling?” Gareth asked.

  “Selling.”

  Gareth grunted. To have an Irishman come to Shrewsbury to deal in wool would be a strange thing, since there were already more sheep in this part of the world than people. Shrewsbury didn’t need more wool merchants, a fact so self-evident that he’d even heard people say the phrase it’s like bringing wool to Shrewsbury, to imply that a deed was unnecessary and redundant. “Did you believe him?”

  “There wasn’t anything to believe or disbelieve. I don’t meddle in my customers’ business. If they pay and don’t damage the room, they can stay as long as they like.”

  “So you don’t know the last time Conall was in this room, or if he ever had visitors?” Gareth said.

  Rob gestured to the body on the floor. “Other than Roger, obviously? No.”

  “You didn’t hear them fighting?” Gwen said, and Gareth was glad not only that she’d asked the question—since coming from him it might have sounded accusatory—but that she’d been able to follow the continuing conversation. Trained as a musician, and thus already conversant in Latin and French, she had a good ear. He wasn’t surprised that she was starting to find her rhythm with English too.

  Rob grimaced. He seemed genuinely disturbed by the death of Roger Carter—maybe not for the man himself, but for the circumstances. “The common room is loud. Earl Robert’s army could have been attacking out here, and I wouldn’t have known.”

  He genuinely seemed to be trying to help, which under other circumstances might have made Gareth more suspicious of him rather than less, especially given Gareth’s experience with Prince Cadwaladr, who tended to overthink things and tie himself up in knots. Gareth found it as hard to trust an Englishman as an Englishman might find it to trust him, a Welshman.

  Still, while it was too early to make judgements, Gareth found it unlikely that Rob would have murdered Roger Carter and left the body in his own inn, especially if it was he who called the watchman. Roger was a worthy of the town. Even a man unused to murder would have known to dispose of the body in a far less incriminating fashion. On top of all that, Rob’s hands and face bore no marks of a struggle.

  “Do we have your permission to question your staff to find out if they encountered Conall more than you did, or if they noticed when Roger arrived last night?” Gareth said.

  Rob gestured with one hand. “I have no objection.”

  “Did you arrange Roger’s body this way, or was he like this when you arrived?” Gwen said.

  “He was like this.”

  “Did you have guests in the other rooms last night?” Gareth said.

  “I had two merchants passing through with their apprentices, who slept in the stable. The merchants attended a guild meeting that didn’t break up until after midnight. The apprentices spent the time until their masters returned in the common room. They all left this morning early, like they’d planned. Heading east, I think.”

  Gareth groaned inwardly. If he rode from Shrewsbury this very instant, it might be possible to track them down, but if they’d taken a side road, it would be wasted effort. If they were guilty of murder, he would regret letting them go, but it was too long a shot. And in truth, not his problem, as he needed to remind himself again. He was helping out—standing in for John Fletcher who hadn’t yet arrived. This was neither Gareth’s investigation nor his problem.

  Gwen, however, either didn’t see it that way, or had forgotten it, and said to Gareth. “Our first st
ep, then, appears to be to track down Conall.”

  Gareth looked again at Rob. “Can you describe Conall for me?”

  Rob snorted. “He looked like a bloody Irishman, didn’t he? Red hair, freckles, and skin as white as snow.”

  “Red hair like Roger Carter’s?” Suddenly inspired, Gareth pulled a piece of paper and charcoal from the inner pocket of his coat and drew a quick outline of a face.

  “No,” Rob Horn said. “Not dark like Roger’s—bright like fire.”

  “Long hair or short?”

  “Short—cropped to almost nothing.” Rob stepped to Gareth’s side to look at what he was doing. He proceeded to answer Gareth’s questions about the size of Conall’s nose and the shape of his mouth. In a matter of a few strokes of Gareth’s hand, a picture of Conall took shape on the paper. Before long, Rob nodded, satisfied. “That’s him, all right.” Then Rob pursed his lips. “I know you’re thinking Roger came here because he had business with Conall and Conall betrayed him, but I never pegged him for either a renegade or a killer, even if he was Irish.”

  “What makes you say that?” Gareth said.

  “He liked to laugh,” Rob said. “Come to think on it, I thought I heard his laugh in the common room yesterday evening. I didn’t think of it until just now, since I didn’t actually see his face. Maybe it wasn’t him.”

  “It seems obvious that Conall is the murderer, but—” Gwen canted her head to one side. “Do you know of anyone else who might want to murder Roger Carter?”

  “Now that’s a question.” Rob barked a laugh. “But what you really should be asking is who wouldn’t?”

  Chapter Six

  Gareth

  “What do you mean, who wouldn’t?” Gareth asked this question even though he might have made a good guess on his own, just from the little he’d heard about Roger Carter from John Fletcher. Gareth distinctly remembered John mentioning that, although Roger had achieved a certain stature in the town, he had a temper. For that reason, few had been surprised when Adeline had run away rather than marry him. Gareth, however, wanted to hear Rob say that himself.

  Instead, Rob shook his head and looked down at his boots. “I hate to speak ill of the dead.”

  This was no time for mincing words. “The man was murdered,” Gareth said. “If we are to find Roger’s killer, we must know the truth about him, and the only way we’re going to find that out is if you, and everyone else, tells it to us.”

  Rob still didn’t seem to want to speak, so Gareth turned to Cedric, eyebrows raised.

  Cedric wrinkled his nose, his eyes on Rob, and then shrugged. “Rob’s right. Roger had enemies. Many, in fact.”

  “Why would that be?” Gareth said, again feigning ignorance.

  Cedric cleared his throat and then said very clearly, as if reciting a Latin lesson. “Because he was a son of a bitch and a bastard.” Then he looked sheepishly at Gwen, though she might not have even understood the English profanity, and added, “or so my father says.”

  Gareth assumed that Cedric didn’t mean either of those epithets literally and waited patiently for either Cedric or Rob to elaborate.

  Finally, Rob sighed. “Cedric’s right. Roger Carter had a cruel streak and a temper. When he was in a foul mood, woe to the man who stood in his way. From what I heard, he beat his apprentice every other day for his mistakes or for not doing exactly as he was told—or maybe even because Roger liked it.”

  Cedric nodded. “I heard that Roger was elected to the town council because the other members were afraid of him.”

  “He threatened them?” Gareth said.

  Rob shrugged. “Maybe not in so many words, but he is rich and influential.”

  “Influential with the sheriff?” Gareth said.

  Cedric shook his head. “Not him. The Lord of Ludlow thinks highly of him and his work, however.”

  “I have to admit, his carts don’t lose wheels often,” Rob said, “and if they do, he fixes them for no charge. He is rigid, but when he says he will do something, he does it.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought a man could become rich as a cartwright,” Gwen said.

  “It isn’t the carts but the carriages,” Rob said. “When the Lord of Ludlow orders a fine carriage for his wife and Roger makes him one fit for a king, more orders follow. He made one for Robert of Gloucester earlier this year.”

  “Robert of Gloucester supports Empress Maud,” Gwen said, “and this city stands for King Stephen.”

  Rob quirked one eyebrow. “Money is money, miss. It doesn’t matter who buys a man’s goods as long as someone does. We were for Maud before we were for Stephen, and the Earl is as good as his word and pays well.”

  Other than a few dark days nearly ten years ago when Shrewsbury Castle, which had been held for Empress Maud, had fallen to King Stephen and he’d had the garrison slaughtered, this region of England had mostly escaped the war between the royal Norman cousins. This close to Wales, when danger came, half the population would retreat west anyway, waiting for the violence to die down before returning to their homes and livelihoods. Many, John Fletcher among them, had Welsh blood, and those who didn’t might find that friendship with a Welshman for once came in handy.

  Upon their return and the appointment of their new sheriff, the allegiance of the townspeople would have changed from Maud to Stephen, but few of the common folk were much concerned with who sat on the throne in London.

  Rob canted his head. “Besides, once Roger started doing well, he looked for ways to invest his money.”

  Gareth’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

  Rob shrugged. “If a neighbor had an idea to start a business, Roger would go in with him on it, as a partner. He wouldn’t be the one who would do the work—just someone to put up the money to start it. He had such arrangements all over Shropshire.”

  Gareth himself had never thought about wealth in that way. When he saved, he stored coins in a bag and either carried the bag with him, or gave it to Taran, King Owain’s steward, to keep for him. Taran had a ledger where he recorded every transaction. The idea that Gareth could take what he’d saved and invest it in someone else’s business was a completely foreign idea to him. It seemed to make sense to both Rob and Cedric, however.

  Gareth pointed with his chin to Rob. “Thank you for your help. If you can think of anything that could assist us in finding Conall, or if you have a thought of the specific name of a man who might want Roger dead, please send word to me at the abbey or to John Fletcher at the castle.”

  Gareth was of a mind that he’d pulled everything he could out of Rob for now. John Fletcher might want another go when he arrived, but it wouldn’t be helpful in the long run to overtax an important witness from the start. If he needed to, Gareth could come back.

  Rob gestured to Cedric. “If you like, I could let him know if I remember anything else. Cedric’s my cousin’s lad.”

  “That would be fine.”

  Rob turned to leave the room, but then he hesitated one more time. “What of the body? I’d like to rent the room tonight.”

  “Unless something else unforeseen happens, he and we will be gone by then,” Gareth said.

  Rob nodded, looking satisfied.

  Cedric moved aside to let the innkeeper leave, and then he took Rob’s absence as an opportunity to approach the body for the first time. His eyes were wide, and Gareth just managed to keep a grim smile from his lips. Here was another young man excited by the mystery of violent death, having little experience with it up until now.

  It was Gareth’s thought that all men yearned to be tested and not found wanting. Even in this time of war, not every man could be a soldier, but every young man desired to be one—until the battle actually began. War made old men out of young men in a day, if not an hour.

  “Bad luck for Uncle Rob to have this happen in his inn,” Cedric said. “It isn’t good for business.”

  “If he’s telling the truth about what happened,” Gwen said.

 
“Of course he is!” Cedric said.

  What Gareth wanted to ask was lad, how long have you been in service to the sheriff? but Gwen took care of that response for him too. “You know your uncle better than we do, but people lie to us all the time, Cedric. We can’t assume anything.”

  Cedric deflated. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. Just because he’s my uncle doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t lie to my face if it would save his own skin.”

  Gareth raised his eyebrows at Gwen, silently urging her to keep talking. She had a way of getting information out of people simply by being curious. People told her things that they wouldn’t tell Gareth.

  “That sounds like a very different person from the uncle you were defending a moment ago,” Gwen said. “Are you speaking from experience?”

  Cedric’s expression turned rueful. “My mother doesn’t trust him and doesn’t like me coming around here. Uncle Rob isn’t respectable. He did something a long time ago—not here, somewhere else—that makes my Da almost spit whenever he speaks of him. They’ve never told me what it was.”

  It sounded like Cedric’s Da was an opinionated man, given that he appeared to have had a similar reaction to Roger Carter. Gareth had never met Roger, but on the whole, Rob seemed a reasonable man.

  “But you like him,” Gwen said, not as a question.

  “He’s always talked to me like I was worthy of respect, even when I was a boy,” Cedric’s brow furrowed. “He isn’t as welcoming to me now that I’m one of the sheriff’s men.”

  “How long have you been one?” Gwen said.

  “Three weeks. I’m just past my nineteenth birthday.” That made Cedric even younger than Gareth had first thought. Cedric looked down at his toes for a moment. “I don’t want my uncle to be the murderer.”

  “It’s important to remember that we know very little at this point. The murderer might not be either Rob or Conall,” Gwen said.

  “Conall is Irish,” Cedric said, revealing the English prejudice, though Gareth hadn’t noticed when he’d been in Ireland with Prince Hywel years ago that the Irish committed murder any more or less than any other people.