The Tinner's Corpse

by Bernard Knight

  He need not have trodden so warily, for Paul Smithson, his normally waxy face pink with good wine, gave him a knowing wink from one piggy little eye.

  ‘It was a poorly kept secret, especially for those with sharp sight. Mistress Joan had a fancy for another tin-master – unfortunately, her husband’s main business rival.’

  ‘You mean Stephen Acland? Did Walter know of this?’

  ‘I’m sure he suspected it, though his main quarrel with Acland was over the tin-works. Stephen wanted to expand and Walter kept beating him to obtaining new boundings on the moor, as well as refusing to sell some existing sites.’

  ‘Was their antagonism ever violent?’

  ‘Not beyond words, as you saw at the last inquest. Their men may have had a fight or two, I hear. Tinners tend to take sides very strongly when their masters fall out.’

  The priest poured another full cup of wine for himself and drank most of it in a gulp. ‘Maybe Walter Knapman would have been glad to see Acland in a coffin, but I doubt the feeling was mutual.’

  ‘You hinted that Acland and Mistress Joan were … well, very friendly. Do you think it had gone beyond mere friendship?’ The crafty Thomas suddenly appeared to take fright at his own temerity. ‘But, please, I would not wish to probe any secrets of the confessional,’ he gabbled, crossing himself spasmodically.

  Paul Smithson, cup in hand, bellowed with laughter. ‘Confessional? Our dear Joan never came near the shriving pew. Anyone with half an eye could see what was going on. She’d shake off her old mother, who slept every afternoon, and dismiss her maid when she went picking flowers or riding in the countryside. By some strange coincidence, she often rode past the long-house near Chagford Bridge.’

  The clerk thought he had better change the subject, before the priest became too graphic. He suspected that the vicar had a rather unhealthy interest in the comely Widow Knapman and her love life.

  ‘This death must have saddened Walter’s brother and stepson,’ he hazarded.

  ‘I’ve not seen Peter Jordan yet, but Matthew seems upset – though, considering he’s Walter’s twin, he shows little emotion. I sense his main concern is with his future as a tin-merchant until the inheritance is settled.’

  ‘As twins, were they close?’

  ‘Not really. They grew up here, I’m told, but Matthew has been in Exeter these many years.’ He paused and wiped wine from his lips with an unsteady finger. ‘From time to time there are whispers that they were not really twins or that they had different fathers – though I doubt that Nature can allow that with twins.’

  Thomas sat in the priest’s house for a time, drinking sparingly while Smithson became more inebriated, but although his tongue loosened, nothing more of any real interest emerged from him and eventually the clerk escaped. Drinking gave him no pleasure and usually a splitting headache. It certainly did nothing to raise his sombre mood, and sitting in the comfortable house with the complacent priest had merely emphasised Thomas’s ecclesiastical loss.

  He had left his pony in the manor barton and started to trudge back the half-mile to report to John de Wolfe. Just as he was passing the churchyard, opposite the Crown tavern, he saw a dismal procession coming towards him from the square, at the bottom of which another road came in from the direction of Exeter.

  First came a black horse ridden by a young man with a dark moustache, then a light cart pulled by a pair of sturdy ponies, driven by a lad perched on the front rail. As a rearguard, four sumpter horses with empty panniers were led by a middle-aged man, the carter Matthew had employed in Exeter.

  In the cart, partly hidden from view by the wooden sides, was the body of Walter Knapman, shrouded in canvas. A black flag drooped from a staff lashed to the tailboard and a wreath of ivy leaves was hung on the tip of the draught-pole between the two horses.

  The carter stopped his pack-train outside the alehouse to let the cart carry on alone. As the cortège passed slowly along the street, the street vendors and passers-by stopped and bowed their heads or doffed their caps in respect for one of their most prominent townsmen, as he made his last journey to his fine house.

  Thomas waited until the cart turned down past a huge oak known locally as the Cross Tree, just outside the church. When it had vanished, he turned and plodded on to find his master.

  There were still a few hours of daylight left when the coroner’s team met up in the hall of Wibbery’s manor to eat and talk about the day’s events. Gwyn had spent a few hours in Chagford’s taverns, now crowded to capacity by the arrival of tinners for the coinage ceremony the next day. The timber hall was rather small and old-fashioned, with a floor of beaten earth covered in rushes and a central fire-pit inside a raised rim of stones and hardened clay. A few trestle tables had been set up with benches and stools, and more trestles rested flat against the walls. The main door, sheltered by fixed screens, gave out on to the steps down to the bailey, and another smaller door led into the solar and the guest-room, where Wibbery and his wife lived.

  The three from Exeter sat at the table nearest the fire, where logs and moor peat glowed cheerfully. A matronly servant from the outside kitchen brought food that made up in quantity for what it lacked in imagination, given the limited range of meat and vegetables remaining after the long winter. It suited Gwyn well, as his capacity for food and drink was phenomenal. Mutton stew by the quart and trenchers covered with boiled bacon were supplemented by cabbage and turnips in a wooden bowl the size of a small shield.

  The bottler, a wizened old man with a cleft palate, brought a large earthenware pitcher of good ale, and a smaller one of rough farm cider, which had swirls of green filaments in the bottom that reminded the more fastidious Thomas of seaweed.

  De Wolfe and the Cornishman ate heartily, while the clerk picked moodily at his food. As they ate, the coroner interrogated the others between mouthfuls, learning first from Thomas what he had extracted from the plump priest of St Michael the Archangel. Then Gwyn, whose afternoon in half a dozen alehouses had not diminished his appetite for Wibbery’s brew, reported what his spying had yielded. ‘There’s big trouble fermenting among the tinners. I thought Cornish fishermen were a rough lot, but some of these lads from the moor are tougher still.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  ‘They are resentful that Richard de Revelle remains Warden. Now that they’ve heard their best candidate to replace him is slain, they’re suspicious that it was done to put a stop to his campaign to take over the Wardenship. Some accuse the sheriff himself, others say that de Wrotham and Fitz-Peters are behind the killing.’

  He stopped to stoke his mouth with bacon and cabbage, then sluice it down with a noisy gulp of ale.

  ‘Is that their main complaint?’

  When he had swallowed sufficiently to speak, Gwyn continued. ‘No, they are mad at this Saxon fellow, the one they blame for damaging their workings. Many say that it must have been him who killed Henry of Tunnaford and others claim that he must also have slain Knapman. Some want to organise search parties to seek him out and lynch him.’

  This fitted with what de Wolfe had heard, but he had always abhorred mob justice and decided to tackle de Revelle about keeping order in the county. ‘Did you hear anything about Walter Knapman? How do the tinners feel about his death?’

  ‘There’s a big split in their ranks. He employed over a hundred himself and they bemoan his passing, not least because they are unsure what will happen to their livelihood. Another lot work for Acland and are at daggers drawn with the Knapman crowd, especially as he was preventing Acland from expanding his business and giving them more work.’

  Thomas roused himself to intervene. ‘Did anyone confirm what the priest suggested, that Acland was dallying with Walter’s new wife?’

  The Cornishman wiped broth from his pendulous moustache with the back of a hand. ‘There were some winks and nudges when I asked if there was bad blood between the two tin-masters. One man in the Crown hinted that Knapman knew of his wife’
s affair and was planning to set some of his men on Acland one dark night – but maybe that’s just alehouse romancing.’

  ‘Did you learn anything else of use?’

  ‘I heard some hints about brother Matthew. Some of the tinners – especially the loners who worked neither for Walter nor Stephen Acland – say that Matthew is crooked. He overcharges on his dues for selling their bars and fiddles the prices. I’m not sure how it works, but a couple of tinmen, after a few quarts, were grumbling about him. One suggested that he was even cheating his own brother.’

  John pushed away his gravy-soaked trencher, unable to eat any more. ‘You seem to have wheedled a lot of gossip out of them in only a few hours.’

  ‘Didn’t need much wheedling – they drink like fish and their tongues are easily loosened. They seemed to take to me, especially when I let it be known that my own father was a tinner before he turned to fishing.’

  ‘They took to you because you’re even uglier and rougher than most of them,’ sneered Thomas, with a brief return to his old baiting of the coroner’s henchman.

  For once, Gwyn looked pleased at the little clerk’s insult, hoping it heralded a rise in Thomas’s spirits. In spite of all the teasing and mock contempt Gwyn usually showered on him, he was quite fond of him, and since his recent depression had been concerned for his welfare.

  The coroner hunched over his final pot of ale and, half to himself, mulled over the situation in and around Chagford. ‘We’ve got one apparently senseless slaying of an inoffensive tinner, old Henry, and, within days, a more subtle killing of his master. So are they connected and did the same hand kill both men?’

  All he got by way of an answer from Gwyn was a grunt, and Thomas had subsided once more into silence.

  ‘There seems to be a possibility that this Aethelfrith could have killed the overman, as it’s in his territory, so to speak, and he’s been seen damaging other tin-workings. But killing Knapman seems unlikely – Dunsford is well away from his usual haunts and, anyway, it looks as if at least two men attacked Walter.’

  ‘Maybe there’s more than one mad Saxon on the moor?’ contributed Gwyn, using his dagger to slice a shrivelled apple from last autumn’s crop.

  ‘No one’s suggested it yet,’ said de Wolfe, with a shrug. ‘Now then, we’ve got Acland, who had a grudge over tin-works with Walter Knapman and who strongly objected to him campaigning to be the next Warden of the Stannaries. And he fancies Knapman’s wife, who is now an attractive and probably wealthy widow ready to snap up.’ He rasped his fingernails thoughtfully down the black stubble on his face. ‘And Gwyn says he heard murmuring about brother Matthew’s possible dishonesty, even towards his brother. It may be only a rumour, but if it is true, if Walter was beginning to suspect such treachery, would Matthew want him silenced?’

  ‘A bit far-fetched, Crowner,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘I only repeated what I heard from two tinners, and it may have no damned truth in it at all.’

  De Wolfe pondered this, then finished the last of his ale and stood up. ‘I’ll go down to the town and see the grieving family again. I’d better tell them of the arrangements for the inquest and the return to them of the corpse for burial.’

  Thomas roused himself enough to tell his master that he had seen the carter arrive with Knapman’s body some time ago.

  ‘A young fellow on a good horse was escorting it along the high street.’

  ‘That will have been Peter Jordan, the stepson. I need a word with him, too.’

  Leaving Gwyn still eating and his clerk perched despondently on his bench like a bedraggled sparrow, de Wolfe went down to the bailey and fetched Odin from the stable. He walked him slowly down the lane to Chagford, pulling his cloak around him as a chill wind began to blow from the east. Though signs of spring were everywhere, a great band of grey cloud was moving across the sky, with a pinkish tinge that suggested snow to come.

  The town was full of men as he passed the square, some already drunk and quarrelsome even though it was only early evening. The booth for the coinage was finished and an overflow from the alehouses around it were using it for drinking, arguing and fighting. Gwyn had been right when he observed that tinners were a tough bunch – it was a night for local folk to stay behind their own front doors.

  When he reached the Knapman demesne below the church, Harold came out of the back door as de Wolfe handed his stallion to an ostler’s lad. The Saxon looked even more tragic than before and was wringing his bony hands as he came across the yard. ‘The master has come home, Crowner. He’s in the main living room now.’ He spoke as if Walter was alive and waiting to receive guests. ‘Peter is here, as well as Matthew,’ added Harold, in a sepulchral voice.

  He led the way indoors, and as John passed through the central passage he looked into the larger room and saw a shrouded body lying on the table, a lighted candle at head and foot. The parish priest and two old dames were with it, the one to shrive and the others to wash the tinner’s corpse.

  The steward showed him into the other room, where a silent group sat around the large stone hearth that occupied most of one wall. Matthew Knapman and Peter Jordan rose as he entered and Harold pulled an oaken stool across for him to join the half-circle around the fire. The delectable Joan and her mother Lucy acknowledged him with nods and faint smiles, but Joan’s surly brother Roland merely scowled at him.

  The coroner perched on his stool like a black raven among some pigeons and a woodpecker – Joan had discarded her mourning dress and was wearing a kirtle of iridescent green silk. John hoped that she would revert to her black for the inquest and burial tomorrow, or local tongues would wag more than ever.

  He broke the silence by explaining that an inquest was necessary because of the violent death, and repeated his view that it was unlikely any light would be cast on the identity of the perpetrator.

  ‘The jury, in a death that happened miles away, will have no personal knowledge of the circumstances, and can only reach a verdict of murder by persons unknown,’ he said baldly.

  ‘What about this presentment business?’ asked the stepson. De Wolfe marked him down as a sharp, intelligent young man, even if the black moustache overpowered the narrow, pale face.

  ‘Your stepfather was certainly not a Saxon, though these days the distinction between Norman and English is becoming so blurred as to be often impossible to determine.’

  ‘It’s just another way to squeeze money from us. It should be abolished,’ complained Matthew. ‘The King uses every device to raise more cash for his wars in France. We still haven’t paid all the ransom money to the bloody Germans.’

  De Wolfe ignored this valid but mildly treasonable remark and answered Jordan’s question. ‘I will have my clerk record that no presentment of Englishry was made, but in my discretion I will ignore the matter of the murdrum fine, as the inquest is not being held at Teignmouth.’ He hunched his shoulders and stuck his head out towards Matthew Knapman. ‘What is the situation about Walter’s tin-workings? My officer tells me that there is concern among his tinners for the security of their employment.’

  ‘I can look after the stream-workings, until things are settled,’ said Roland, harshly and unexpectedly. ‘I did some tinning once, as a prospector, before I became a tanner.’

  There was a silence, but everyone ignored his offer. Matthew returned to the coroner’s question. ‘It depends on what’s contained in his will, if there is one. We have to consult the lawyer in Exeter to see if Walter made such provision.’

  Lucy piped up from her corner by the fire. ‘If there’s any justice, his widow should inherit. That’s surely the law.’ Her son nodded vigorously, glaring around at the others.

  Peter Jordan, his face suddenly flushed, shook his head. ‘It certainly is not, and if a will has been made, that decides the matter. If there is no will, the laws of intestacy hold.’

  John had picked up a smattering of the law since he had been obliged to attend most of the court sittings in Exeter in all manner of issues. ‘
It will be complicated, then,’ he ruminated. ‘Walter had no natural children, but had a brother, a stepson and a wife?’

  ‘And I am the nearest to being his child, by custom if not by blood,’ cut in Peter Jordan, to the accompaniment of a sneer from Roland.

  De Wolfe shrugged, but before he could speak, Matthew thrust into the conversation. ‘I am his only blood relation and a closer one would be impossible to find – not only a brother but a twin, sharing the same womb.’

  The coroner noted once again how the prospect of wealth made the silent garrulous and argumentative, rapidly thrusting mourning into the background. Perhaps Joan Knapman had the same impression, for she spoke for the first time. In spite of the softness of her voice, it held something that gripped the attention of the others.

  ‘Let us not soil the moment with concern about money. The men will work as they work every other day, until we know whether there is a will and what it contains. Let us put Walter in the earth before we begin fighting over his possessions.’

  This sensible advice silenced the other claimants and the conversation was diverted by the arrival of the priest from the other room. He wore a long black tunic, carried a leatherbound missal and wore a narrow brocade stole around his neck as a concession to the occasion. For a few moments he discussed with them the nature of the service in St Michael’s. Then de Wolfe confirmed that the body must be moved from the house to the square, as the jury had to inspect it; immediately afterwards it could return to the church. ‘I shall hold the inquest two hours after dawn. It will last but a few minutes so we can clear from the square before the coinage begins.’

  Matthew sighed. ‘It seems appropriate that Walter’s last appearance should coincide with a ceremony that he attended scores of times, central to the whole business of being a tinner. There will be many there to mark and regret his passing.’