by Alys Clare
‘So we’re saying now that our skeletal vagrant was murdered?’ I was taken aback. ‘But I saw no marks of violence, no signs of death by another’s hand!’
‘Did you look for them?’ Theo asked swiftly. ‘Or did you simply assume he’d died from sickness or starvation? Not that it would have been unreasonable,’ he added charitably, ‘since we had no cause to believe otherwise.’
I sighed. I’d planned my visit to Theo to be brief, and I wanted my dinner. It looked, however, as if the pleasures of Sallie’s cooking were to be postponed.
I said resignedly, ‘I’d better take another look.’
FOUR
The crypt beneath the empty house has little natural light, so Theo and I each took with us three lanterns. By their flames, down there below ground level, I unwrapped the corpse and began my second, more careful examination.
And I found quite a lot that I had missed in my first cursory inspection. I found the hard skin on the heels and the deformities on the toes that indicated this man had walked for endless miles in inadequate, poorly fitting footwear. There’d been little left of his thin little shoes when he was found. I found the swollen, distorted knee joints that backed up the impression of a man who had wandered far. I found more of the lumpy growths I’d noticed before. And, on his back, buttocks and elsewhere on that poor, thin body, I saw the marks of ill usage. At some time in his life, this man had been beaten hard enough to leave deep scars.
I looked carefully over every inch of him and eventually I concluded that he hadn’t died by violence.
‘You’re sure?’ Theo said when I told him.
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘He wasn’t stabbed or strangled, he wasn’t hit on the head, he wasn’t beaten to death.’
‘Could he have been poisoned?’
‘It’s possible, but poison usually involves a voiding of the body as it tries to rid itself of the toxins, and I’d have expected to see vomit or evidence he’d been passing loose stools, or perhaps both, on the body and in the place where he died, and I didn’t.’
‘Not on the body, perhaps, but you’re sure about that ruin where we found him? It stank, right enough.’
‘Yes, of urine and decaying flesh, neither of which suggests a body responding to having been poisoned.’
But still Theo wasn’t satisfied. ‘Could he have done all the throwing up and stool-passing before he got to the ruin? Crawled in there to die?’
‘It’s possible,’ I conceded.
He nodded, as if I’d given the answer he wanted. ‘So, let’s say he was the man apprehended at Wrenbeare by this Lady Clemence and her daughters, and he saw something he shouldn’t have done, and her ladyship decides to make absolutely sure he doesn’t tell anyone by slipping him some food – in the guise of a charitable gift to encourage him on his way, perhaps – and it’s poisoned.’ He looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘What d’you reckon?’
It didn’t sound very likely to me. ‘If she’d caught him trying to break into her home, would she really offer him food?’ I said. ‘And, if she did, wouldn’t he be suspicious? He could hardly believe she wished him well.’
Theo frowned. ‘I suppose you’re right. All the same, I think I’ll head out to Wrenbeare and have a word with Lady Clemence Fairlight.’ He met my eye, and he was smiling. ‘Since I’m quite sure you’re keen to have a look at this mad daughter – oh, I saw the spark of interest there when Jarman Hodge spoke of her – I reckon you’d better come with me.’
We had our midday meal with Theo’s comely wife, Elaine, and the three children. Carolus entertained us with a lively recounting of the story of Noah, which apparently he’d been studying with his tutor, although the child’s lively imagination had added a few colourful touches such as Noah being considerably more censorious than in the original version and trying to ban the pigs because they were too smelly and the hens because they were stupid. The two younger children, Isabella and Benjamin, sang us a song that Elaine had taught them, although they had to be discouraged firmly by their mother from the substitution of rude words – I distinctly heard Benjamin say bum – for the rather more staid original version. The meal was delicious, as was the ale. All in all, it was with reluctance that Theo and I finally tore ourselves away.
It was a ride of some half a dozen miles to Wrenbeare. We were trusting to post-prandial somnolence to have kept the family at home, and so it proved. We were admitted by a musty-smelling servant – few, it appears, are willing to turn away a coroner in pursuit of his duty, and Theo can be very imposing – and, after a short wait in a lofty wood-panelled hall with dark, unfaded rectangles on the floor to indicate where items of furniture once stood, shown into a long, dimly lit but very evidently dirty room where the Fairlight women awaited us. There was no sign of the son-in-law and no explanation was given for his absence.
Lady Clemence sat straight-backed on an elaborately carved chair by the fireplace. She was large, fair, exceedingly plain and aged, I guessed, in the fifties. She wore a brocade gown that must once have been gorgeous, but now its deep blue shade had faded in places and there were stains and worn patches down the bodice and on the front of the skirts. Her posture and the severity of her gaze, however, gave authority to her bearing, and as she spoke a greeting that superficially welcomed us while at the same time seemed to demand what we thought we were doing disturbing her in this way, she eyed the pair of us with sparse-lashed, bulging, light hazel eyes.
‘I am here to enquire about an intruder reported to have been hanging around your house some two or three weeks ago and—’ Theo began.
Lady Clemence raised a plump, imperious hand. ‘No, no, no,’ she said. From somewhere in the room I heard someone echo the words, and a slightly hysterical giggle. But Lady Clemence was still speaking, and I made myself listen. ‘Your man came before,’ her ladyship said, ‘and I told him he was mistaken.’
‘Mistaken!’ came the mischievous little echo.
Other than a disapproving frown, which might well have been for Theo and me, Lady Clemence ignored it.
‘The reason for the enquiry,’ Theo went on, almost as if he hadn’t heard her protest, ‘is because a body has been found that appears to match the description of the man seen lurking here.’
Lady Clemence sighed. ‘But nobody was lurking here.’
‘We hear differently,’ Theo said baldly.
The woman sitting in the matching chair on the other side of the fireplace now chose to speak. ‘You should not listen to gossip,’ she said reprovingly. ‘If my mother says there was no intruder, there was no intruder.’ She gave a nod as if to emphasize her utterance.
I studied her. She was obviously Lady Clemence’s daughter, with the same big-boned, chubby body and the same fair hair and skin. Her nose was like a lump of clay that had been pulled into a point, so that the nostrils were distorted into long, narrow slits. She wore a wedding ring on her left hand, and I assumed she must be Agnes, the elder daughter.
‘Mistress Lond,’ Theo said, turning to her with a brief bow. He had obviously reached the same conclusion.
‘Indeed,’ the woman said. ‘We know nothing of dead bodies, Master—?’
‘Davey,’ Theo said.
‘Master Davey. Thank you.’ Agnes Lond’s tone was icily polite. ‘As I was saying, no dead bodies have—’
‘Dead bodies!’
This time the echo was too loud for any of us to pretend we hadn’t heard it. And now the source of the mimicry came out of her hiding place behind one of the long, drooping curtains half-drawn against the bright day and skipped forward to stand beside her mother.
For this woman, too, was clearly Lady Clemence’s daughter, although her resemblance to her mother and her sister was twisted and strange, like a reflection in a distorting mirror. She was squat, and her arms – and probably her legs too, although they were covered by the skirts of her gown – were short and malformed. She had somehow arranged her tight bodice so that the flesh of her breasts was pushed up and spilled ou
t. If the intention had been to attract, to seduce, then the failure was total. Her almost colourless eyes were set at an odd angle in her face, and her widely smiling mouth – although in truth the expression was closer to a grimace or a rictus than a smile – revealed gaps between her teeth, which were jagged. There was something wrong with her nose, too, for it appeared truncated and turned up at the tip in an exaggerated way, so that one was all but staring up her nostrils.
She went up to her mother and sat on the arm of her chair, wriggling herself close and leaning her head on her mother’s shoulder. I saw Lady Clemence edge away slightly, and her face wore a mask of distaste. ‘Run away now, Denyse,’ she said, her tone chilly. ‘These men have come to speak to me, not you.’ She looked around anxiously, and I heard her hiss to her elder daughter, ‘Where is Mary? Why is she not here?’
Without a word, Agnes got up and left the room.
‘I saw a dead body,’ Denyse said. She was watching Theo and me slyly, and the intensity of her pale gaze made me uneasy.
‘Did you?’ I heard the spark of sudden interest in Theo’s short reply.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Denyse sang. Then abruptly she leapt off her mother’s chair, dashed at Theo and, flinging her stubby arms round his waist, pushed her face up towards his, her wet lips pursed as if for a lover’s kiss.
‘Denyse!’ thundered her mother.
Denyse spun round. ‘I did! I DID!’ Her voice rose to a deafening screech. ‘This nice, big man says there was a dead body, and I want to help him! And you can’t stop me!’ Now she flung herself at Lady Clemence, all the time screaming, ‘Dead, dead, dead!’
Although short, Denyse was sturdy, and I feared for Lady Clemence. Hurrying forward, I took hold of Denyse’s shoulders and, trying gently but firmly to pull her off, said, ‘That’s enough, now, come away and sit down quietly.’
Denyse spun round and, quick as a cornered cat, raised her hands and tried to scratch my face. I caught her wrists just in time, holding the hands with their sharp nails inches away from my eyes.
Behind me I heard footsteps running across the floor, and then a calm, maternal voice said kindly, ‘Mistress Denyse, so this is where you’ve got to!’ Arms were wrapped round Denyse, pinning her own arms to her sides, and, turning, I saw a tall, well-built woman of around forty clutching the young woman to her. Denyse was whimpering. This, I guessed, was Mary; a supposition borne out by the way Lady Clemence was glaring at her.
‘You were supposed to be looking after her!’ she said in an all too audible whisper.
Mary turned calm eyes to her employer. ‘She escaped,’ she said.
Lady Clemence looked as if she’d like to say more – probably a great deal more – but Theo’s and my presence, it seemed, prevented her.
We watched in silence as Mary took her charge away.
Then Lady Clemence gave a deep sigh. ‘My younger daughter refers not to recently having seen a dead body, Master Davey,’ she said, staring up at Theo, ‘but to an occasion when she had the misfortune to observe, many years ago, the corpse of my late husband.’
Theo, it seemed, was at a loss as to how to reply.
‘That must have been a very disturbing experience.’ I stepped into the breach. ‘She was a small child?’
Lady Clemence turned to me. ‘She was ten years old.’
‘Ah.’ Not an infant, then. I wondered briefly whether the late husband had died by violence, that the sight of his body should so have distressed his daughter, possibly to the extent of turning her mind. Then it occurred to me that it was far more likely that the insanity had predated the unfortunate viewing of her father’s corpse, and that this had been the reason for the distress.
Something, definitely, was not right with Denyse Fairlight.
Theo was staring at Lady Clemence, a faint frown on his face. ‘It is my job to identify the body that has been found, my lady,’ he said coldly. ‘You have told me that you have no knowledge of the dead man, yet, as I told you, others insist he was seen in the vicinity of your house.’
‘Others may well have seen him,’ she said grandly. ‘My daughters and I did not.’
‘I shall be making further inquiries,’ Theo said.
Lady Clemence inclined her head.
There seemed nothing to be gained by our staying there. To my great relief, Theo bowed to the lady, bade her farewell and turned curtly on his heel. I followed him out of the room, across the hall and out into the fresh air.
‘Could it be as simple as that?’ I asked as we rode away.
‘As what?’ he replied angrily.
‘As the outdoor servants who were letting their tongues run away with them in the tavern having seen the vagrant hanging around, while the ladies inside the house didn’t.’
He made a sort of humphing sound that could equally have been agreement or rebuttal.
After a while he said, ‘There’s something going on in that house.’ Silence. Then: ‘Yes, Gabe, it could well have happened the way you say, but in my bones I know it didn’t.’
‘And your bones are recognized as reliable in law?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘Oh, yes.’
I didn’t argue.
I totally agreed with him.
Then I said, ‘You’re not going to be satisfied with her ladyship’s somewhat brusque denials, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘I’m going to get Jarman Hodge to return to the tavern where the Wrenbeare servants go to drink and blabber about all the goings-on there, and I shall go with him.’
I noticed there was a light of excitement in his bright blue eyes. ‘I’m coming too,’ I said before I could think about it.
He grinned. ‘Thought you might say that.’
We arranged to meet on the edge of the village later that evening. I’d been home in the meantime, eaten, then dug out the heavy cloak with a deep hood that I purchased a few years ago for protection when summoned out to attend a patient in foul weather. It has the advantage of covering me adequately well to disguise my identity, if necessary. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it known far and wide that the doctor had been seen fraternizing in the tavern late at night.
Theo and Jarman were waiting for me just beyond the last village house. It was less than half a mile to the tavern, which was in fact not that close to the moor’s edge and some way from Wrenbeare, and they were on foot. I dismounted and walked beside them. Reaching the inn yard, I tethered Hal and followed them inside.
On the way over, Jarman had seemed confident that the men we needed to talk to would be there, and so it proved. Once in the tap room, Jarman walked over to two men, one middle-aged, one a youth, sitting on a bench beside the hearth, mugs of ale in their hands, and, leaning down, muttered to the older one, turning to indicate Theo and me. ‘The groom and the stable lad,’ Theo said quietly to me.
Jarman straightened up and beckoned us over. Theo took some coins out of his purse and, handing them to Jarman, told him to fetch ale for us all. Then he drew up a second bench, he and I sat down and he said to the older man, ‘My name is Theophilus Davey, and I’m—’
‘You’re the coroner, aye, so he tells us’ – the man nodded in Jarman’s direction – ‘and you want to ask us to repeat to you what we told him a while back.’
‘About the intruder at Wrenbeare, yes,’ Theo said. ‘Will you give me your names?’
The man hesitated, then, appearing to decide no harm could come of it, stabbed a thumb in his own chest and said curtly, ‘Christopher Hammer, groom.’ He jerked the same thumb at his companion. ‘He’s the stable boy. Name of Cory.’ He didn’t say whether the latter was a forename or surname.
‘Thank you,’ Theo said. He waited while Jarman put five mugs of ale before us. Then: ‘You told my officer that you’d chased after someone who was loitering around Wrenbeare, and that—’
‘Wasn’t me blathering for all to hear, it was him.’ Christopher dug an elbow into the ribs of the lad. He turned and glowered at him. ‘Can’t take hi
s beer, this one.’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t let him drink so much,’ Theo said pointedly. Addressing the lad, he went on, ‘Cory, tell me what you saw.’
The boy looked very uncomfortable. ‘We both saw it, master Coroner sir!’ he protested.
Theo suppressed a sigh. I heard him mutter under his breath. ‘Very well, then, you both saw this intruder, but only you talked about it? Is that right?’
‘Er – yes,’ Cory acknowledged. Picking up Theo’s mounting impatience – which wouldn’t have been hard as it was written all over him – he said, ‘He came twice. First time, he was just hanging around, going round the house, peering in at the windows, but he didn’t knock at the door nor nothing. Kit here asked him his business, and he legged it. We chased him for a bit – running away like that, he made us suspicious – but he was swift and we had work to get on with.’ He gave a little self-righteous nod. ‘Second time, it was late, and dark, and we reckon he must have got inside somehow, because he came hurrying out of the house as if the hell hounds were on his tail, and there was a lot of screaming – that was probably Mistress Denyse, she screams a lot – and then a bit of shouting, and then it all went quiet.’
‘And did you chase him that time too?’
Cory shot a glance at Kit, who minutely shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
I wondered if Theo too had the impression he was lying.
‘Thank you,’ Theo said. ‘That’s very helpful. One more thing: did either of you get a good look at this intruder?’
‘We both did, first time he appeared.’ Kit had taken over the account. ‘And I reckon we saw enough of him, second time, to be sure it was the same man. Well, I say man, but he was skinny as a whip and not over-tall, and in appearance more like a young woman, or even a girl.’
‘So how can you be sure it was a man?’ Theo demanded.
Kit looked at him pityingly. ‘I can tell a man from a woman,’ he said.
‘What else can you tell us?’
Kit paused to think. ‘Dirty, with ragged clothes – a coat, I think it was he wore, but it was hard to tell. Barefoot, or as good as, with little slippers on his feet. Hair longish and unkempt, in a tangle round his face. Pale – I recall how his flesh was so white it seemed to glow, for all that he was so filthy. And—’
