The Manor of Death

CHAPTER TWO

Soon after dawn, John de Wolfe roused himself from his bed, which had been a hessian bag stuffed with straw. The accommodation for guests in Axmouth's premier inn was a barn-like building at the back of the tavern, where the upper floor was reached by a ladder. On the bare boards, a dozen such mattresses were spread out, the management providing a coarse blanket as an added luxury, under which the lodgers slept in their clothes, minus boots and headgear. The coroner stood up and looked around the loft in the pale morning light, which squeezed in through several slits in the walls. He saw four or five other men huddled on their pallets, as well as Thomas and Gwyn, the latter snoring like a grampus.

Pulling on his boots, he prodded his officer and clerk with a toecap and, when he was sure that they were groaning themselves awake, went down to the floor below. Here, several other men, all shipmen by their clothing, sat on benches at a long trestle table, slurping gruel from wooden bowls and eating fresh barley bread cut from several loaves lying on the scrubbed boards.

At the end of the room, a boy was stirring the oatmeal in a large pot hanging from a tripod over a fire.

When de Wolfe dropped heavily on a bench and grunted a vague greeting to the ruffian next to him, the lad brought him a bowl of porridge and a spoon carved from a cow's horn. Then a young girl, no more than eight years old, came around the table with a large jug to top up the crude clay pots with watered ale.

As he finished his gruel, which had the consistency of back-yard mud that had been trampled by pigs in wet weather, he reached for the nearest loaf and cut off an inch-thick slice with his dagger. There was half a cheese next to the loaf, and at the risk of blunting his blade he hacked off a large piece and began chewing while he cleared his mind of sleep.

By now, Thomas and Gwyn had tumbled down the ladder and started on their own frugal breakfast.

'We hold this inquest and then ride for home, Crowner?' asked the Cornishman hopefully.

John grunted. 'Doubt we'll learn much from it, but we have to start somewhere. I need to talk to the bailiff and the portreeve first.'

'A pity that vessel, The Tiger, sailed on Sunday,' observed Thomas, his narrow face twisted in distaste at the sour porridge. 'I feel someone aboard her might be the miscreant. After all, the lad lived across in Seaton, but his body was hidden on this side of the river, so he was almost certainly slain here.'

'Well, they bloody have gone, so there's no use regretting it.'

A man sitting opposite joined in. 'They'll be back as that cog belongs here, she's not just a visitor to the Axe.' He was a beefy mariner, with a short tunic which looked as if it had been made from a spare sail.

'When is she likely to return?' demanded de Wolfe. The sailor shrugged. 'They've gone to Calais, but it doesn't mean they'll sail straight back. They might find a cargo for the Rhine or back down to St-Malo. Could be ten days, could be a month.'

The man next to him sniggered. 'Depends on who they meet out in the Channel!' He was a foxy little fellow with a bad squint. The first shipman glared at him, and John had the impression that he had kicked Foxy hard on the leg under the table, as the smaller man jerked and winced.

'Who's the shipmaster — and who owns the vessel?' asked Gwyn.

'The master is Martin Rof, who lives in this vill. As to the owner, I've no knowledge; you'll have to ask Northcote or Elias Palmer.'

He rose rather abruptly, leaving half his bread on the table, as if he was unwilling to answer any more questions. As he left, he gestured sharply at the squinting man, who followed him sheepishly out of the door.

'What was all that about?' growled Gwyn. 'I say again, there's something odd about this place.'

The coroner turned to his clerk. 'Thomas, did you learn anything from your ecclesiastical friend yesterday?'

His clerk confessed that Henry of Cumba had nothing solid to tell him, though Thomas had sensed that all was not well in the town of Axmouth.

'It was clear that the Prior of Loders had a strong grip on the place and dictated much of what was done there,' mused the clerk. 'The parish priest is but a vicar employed by the priory for parish duties. This bailiff Edward Northcote seems an iron-handed master and acts more like a manor-lord than a servant of the priory.'

'What about the portreeve?' askedJohn.

De Peyne's humped shoulder shrugged under his thin cassock. 'It's clear that he is under the thumb of Northcote, though the pair of them seem to rule everything that goes on in Axmouth. Yet I had the notion that Father Henry suspects that Elias Palmer has his own intrigues, even though he appears to defer to the bailiff in everything.'

Thomas had coaxed little else out of the parish priest, and when they had finished eating John paid the ale-wife a few pennies and they went into the main street.

'Get as much of a jury as you can scrape together, Gwyn,' ordered the coroner. 'With that damned ship gone, we must make do with the widow, the lad's doxy, the First Finder and a few villagers and shipmen. If they are reluctant, wave your sword at them and threaten them with the name of the Lionheart!'

Gwyn ambled off towards the quayside and John led Thomas back up through the village to the bailiff's dwelling. It was a bright morning, spring being now well advanced. Birds were stealing straw from the thatched roofs of the cottages to build their nests, and the sun was drying the mud that rutted the road through the town. Inside Northcote's house, they found him leaning over the portreeve, as the latter inscribed a parchment on a table against the inner wall. Suddenly conscious that Thomas de Peyne was able to read, Elias blew rapidly on his wet ink and took a large pebble off the foot of the document, so that the parchment rolled itself up, out of sight of prying eyes.

'Just recording the tally of a cargo of wine unloaded yesterday,' he piped unconvincingly. 'There'll be dues to pay on that, by merchants in Taunton and Bristol. '

De Wolfe had no interest in Customs tax; he had a corpse to investigate. 'I will need you both at my inquest this morning. I will hold it across the cadaver in the churchyard, around the tenth hour. I want to get home to Exeter as soon as possible.'

Edward Northcote scowled at him. 'I have no time to waste on such matters. What has the slaying of some youth from Seaton to do with me?'

John's black eyebrows rose up his forehead. 'Are you not the bailiff of this vill?' he demanded. 'It is you who should be helping me in this tragedy. You are responsible for law and order here, on behalf of the sheriff! No wonder the Chief Justiciar has appointed Keepers such as de Casewold, if the bailiffs will not shift themselves to do their duty!'

'De Casewold! A self-important nonentity, running around bleating about justice yet unable to do a thing,' sneered Northcote. 'He has no power, no authority apart from his own rasping voice! '

The coroner gestured impatiently. 'I'm not here to bandy words with you, bailiff! I want to know about the vessel that the dead youth sailed upon.' He did not bother to ask if Northcote and Elias had heard that the lad's identity had been discovered, as he was well aware that those two would be fully informed within minutes of everything that went on in Axmouth.

The bailiff scowled at him suspiciously, an attitude that seemed almost permanent with him. 'Simon Makerel was a shipman upon the vessel. What else is there to know?'

'The cog herself, damn you,' snapped de Wolfe irritably. 'I know her name and that of the shipmaster, Martin Rof. But who owned her, where had she been on the last voyage and where has she gone now?'

It was the portreeve who answered this. He rolled up his parchment and stood it on end on the table before getting up from his stool.

'The Tiger belongs to Robert de Helion, a manor-lord who lives in Exeter, though his lands are scattered about this county and that of Dorset.'

De Wolfe knew of de Helion, but he had no closer acquaintance with him. He knew he was a rich merchant as well as a landowner but had no idea he ran ships as well. 'And what about this cog, when will she be back?'

He received the same reply as the one he had got on the quayside.

'She came in here last week from Barfleur with wine and dried fruit — and has taken wool and some tin over to Calais. Who can tell when she will return? It depends on what cargoes the master can find across the Channel.'

The coroner glowered at the pair before him, which seemed to leave them quite unperturbed. 'Is there anything else I should know about this vessel or her master?'

The bailiff and portreeve looked at each other, then Northcote shook his head. 'I don't know what you mean, Crowner. What is there to say about a merchant ship? They come in here by the dozen.'

'Their crewmen don't end up strangled by the dozen!' retorted John.

Edward Northcote shrugged dismissively. 'This is a seaport; sailors are rough, heavy-drinking men. They get into brawls over women and money all the time and not a few end up dead, one way or the other.'

The coroner made a rude noise. 'This was a youth on his second voyage, a lad who was mild-mannered, wanting to become a clerk. Is it likely that such as he would end up strangled and buried in a hidden grave?'

Northcote stared stonily at de Wolfe. 'That's for you to discover, sir. You catch the killer and I'll judge him in the Hundred court.'

John stuck his head forward aggressively, like a large black vulture. 'You'll do no such thing! When the man who did this is caught, he'll go before the king's justices in Exeter.'

He swung around to leave, but at the door he threw a parting command over his shoulder. 'You'll both be in the churchyard at the tenth hour — or I'll attach you in the sum of five marks!'

The inquest was as unrewarding as de Wolfe had expected, but it had to be done, partly to allow the widow to have her son's body returned for reburial across in Seaton. A motley crowd assembled on the green patch around St Michael's, with most of the population of Axmouth who were not otherwise occupied staring over the low wall at these unusual proceedings, the first inquest ever to be held in the village.

Gwyn had rounded up a score of men from both the village and the ships berthed along the strand, bullying them into a straggling half-circle facing the east end of the church. The corpse was wheeled out on its fishcart and placed in the centre, as Gwyn bellowed out his summons for 'all good men of the county who have anything to do with the king's coroner touching the death of Simon Makerel to stand forth and give their attendance'.

De Wolfe's menacing black-clad figure hovered alongside the cadaver, while Thomas sat nearby on an empty keg brought from the tavern opposite. He had a board across his knees to support ink and parchment, so that he could record the proceedings, sparse though they were. On his other side, somewhat to John's annoyance, Luke de Casewold stood as if he was also involved in conducting the enquiry. The Keeper of the Peace had insisted on riding the five miles from his home near Axminster especially to attend the inquest.

Henry of Cumba was called as the First Finder, and John accepted that the parish priest had fulfilled his legal duty by immediately informing the portreeve and bailiff of his discovery of the corpse. Strictly speaking, he should have raised the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households to search for the killer, but as the body had obviously been buried for days and the whole village had rapidly turned out to gossip about the event, de Wolfe refrained from imposing a fine.

Next, the bailiff grudgingly admitted that he had been informed of the death by the priest and had gone with the portreeve to confirm that there was indeed a body behind the hazel bush. Then the Keeper stood forward, even before de Wolfe could ask him, to deliver a self-important and long-winded description of how he had heard of the discovery and had sent his clerk hurrying to Exeter to notify the coroner.

Edith Makerel, the widow from Seaton, was this morning supported by her remaining son and a young woman who John took to be the girlfriend of the dead Simon. Between them, they gently moved the weeping mother forward, where she haltingly confirmed that the body was indeed that of her son.

'He was a good lad, kind to me and gentle, as one would expect for one who wanted to take holy orders,' she said between sobs. 'He should never have gone to sea. The life and the men he was with were too rough for his temperament.'

The coroner, as always uncomfortable with any show of emotion, particularly from women, tried to get her to enlarge on her comment that Simon had been worried or unhappy after returning from his voyage, but she was unable to be more specific. John tried another approach.

'If your son was of a religious nature, might he not have confided something to a priest?'

Edith wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. 'He was a diligent attender at Seaton church, sir, and respected the priest there very much. He might have done, I suppose, but he said nothing about it to me.'

John bent down to Thomas and muttered into his ear: 'We should have got the priest from Seaton over here. Would you be able to get anything out of him if you went over there?'

Thomas, though always anxious to help, looked dubious. 'If it was said in the confessional, he would not divulge it even to me. It seems an unlikely path to follow, master.'

De Wolfe grunted his acceptance of his clerk's opinion and carried on with some questions, but they led nowhere. The brother of the dead man, a sallow fellow probably six years older than Simon, had little to offer.

'As our mother has said, my brother seemed distant in his mind when he returned from his voyage. And he had money, which was unusual.'

Simon's girlfriend, a plain pudding of a wench about sixteen years of age, was equally unhelpful. De Wolfe gained the impression that she was more a dog-like follower of the sailor than his choice of a future mate — which fitted with his ambition to one day enter holy orders.

Then John called the portreeve, mainly to justify his insistence that Elias Palmer must attend the inquest, but, apart from confirming his view of the body and the name of the cog and her master that Simon Makerel had sailed upon, it was a futile exercise.

After scowling around the blank faces of the jurors, he asked if anyone had anything they wished to say that might be relevant, but there was a stony silence. Then Luke de Casewold, to John's smouldering annoyance, spoke up in his harsh, piercing voice.

'Come, someone must know something! This is a small port. Everyone always knows each other's business.' He smacked his palms together, like a schoolmaster warning his pupils. 'Speak up, or it will go badly with you!'

His threatening exhortation fell on deaf ears.

Though there was some muted grumbling and men looked sullenly at each other, no one volunteered a single word. The coroner, though regretting the lack of any progress, was secretly pleased that this interloper's brashness had failed so abjectly.

The last act in this fruitless performance was the exhibition of the body to the jury, which was demanded by the law. Gwyn pulled down the sheet that covered the head and neck, and the score of village men and mariners filed past, as de Wolfe pointed out the marks on the neck, which had become more livid and prominent with the passage of time.

'There seems nothing more to be said, then,' he concluded. 'No verdict can be reached on such thin evidence, so this inquest is adjourned until some later day. That will probably depend upon when the vessel, The Tiger, returns to this harbour.'

He stopped and cleared his throat as he looked at the grieving mother. 'In the meantime, the body of Simon Makerel may be restored to his family for burial.'

Gwyn stood and bellowed out that 'all good men may now depart and take their ease', and the crowd melted away, a substantial proportion going in the direction of the Harbour Inn and other alehouses.

Thomas packed away his writing materials into the capacious shoulder bag that he always carried, and the coroner's trio prepared to ride back to Exeter.

'We'll take food in the next village,' rumbled John as they collected their horses from the stables of the tavern. 'The sooner I'm out of this place, the better I'll be suited.'

He grunted a farewell to the bailiff and portreeve, who seemed indifferent to whether he stayed or not. The Keeper was a little more outgoing at their departure and came up to John's side as he settled himself carefully in Odin' s saddle so as to minimise the soreness of his backside. The boil had subsided a little, but it still gave him considerable discomfort.

'Sir John, it was a pleasure to work with you,' brayed de Casewold. 'I look forward to meeting you again when you return to hold the full inquest. I will keep you informed about the return of that cog and her crew.'

The coroner scowled at him. 'I have already charged the bailiff with that task,' he snapped ungraciously. 'About time the damned fellow did his duty. I'll be having words with the sheriff about his lack of enthusiasm for his job!'

Luke gave a wide smile. It was clear that there was animosity between him and Edward Northcote. 'I will keep my ear to the ground, coroner. There is something going on under the surface in this town and I'll not rest until I get to the bottom of it!'

Though he disliked the Keeper, John felt a little uneasy at the prospect of one lone man meddling too deeply in a place where there seemed to be a tyrant in charge. 'Take care how you proceed. I don't want to visit here again to deal with another corpse!' he advised.

De Casewold sniggered through his little rosebud of a mouth. He tapped the hilt of his sword. 'I can look after myself, thank you. Keeping the peace was the task our royal master gave me and I'll carry it out regardless of peril!'

With these brave words, he strutted away with a final wave to the brooding figure on the massive grey stallion.

They reached Exeter late in the afternoon, and de Wolfe was heartily thankful to see the great twin towers of the cathedral rising above the walls as they approached. His buttock and left leg ached from the long ride, and he resolved to visit an apothecary the next day if the boil did not improve considerably overnight. Gwyn left them outside the East Gate to go to his cottage in St Sidwell's, while Thomas continued to jog behind the coroner into the city. They rode along High Street until they reached Martin's Lane, a narrow alley that was one of the many entrances into the cathedral Close. Here, John bade him a gruff farewell as the little clerk carried on to the lower town, where he shared a room with a vicar-choral at a lodging in Priest Street.

With a sigh, de Wolfe hauled Odin's head around into the lane and rode the few yards to the livery stable where his lumbering horse had his home. After delivering the animal to Andrew the farrier, John crossed to his house opposite, one of two high, narrow buildings that stood in the short alley. Built of timber, its front was blank apart from a small shuttered window and a heavy front door. He pushed this open and entered a small vestibule, where boots and cloaks were discarded. On the left, a passage ran around the side of the house to the back yard, and on the right was another door that led into the hall, which occupied most of the building.

As he lowered himself gingerly on to a bench to pull off his riding boots, there was a patter of feet and a large brown dog appeared from the passage to greet him with a wagging tail and a lolling wet tongue. As he fondled the ears of his old hound Brutus, other footsteps approached and his cook-maid Mary came into the vestibule. A handsome dark-haired woman in her late twenties, she now stood with her hands on her hips, regarding her master with an assumed severity that masked her concern.

'How's your arse now, Sir Coroner?' she demanded bluntly.

'A kiss would improve it, no doubt,' he replied, standing up and pushing his feet into a pair of soft house shoes. He stepped towards her, obviously intending to put his words into deeds, but the maid moved back and jerked a warning thumb towards the door into the hall.

'She's in there and in a strange mood, so tread carefully! '

John groaned. 'My dear wife is always in a strange mood. What's the trouble this time?'

Mary picked up his riding boots to take them away to clean off the mud. 'Her brother called today, the first time we've seen him since he slunk off in disgrace. There was a lot of shouting and he left in a temper.'

Richard de Revelle, his brother-in-law, had been sheriff of Devon until the previous year, when largely at John's instigation he had been ejected by the king's judges for malpractice and suspected treachery. He had been in further trouble since then and had been lying low in one of his distant manors, so John was surprised to hear that he had appeared again in Exeter, though he had recently bought a town house in Northgate Street.

'I'll bring you a meal within the hour, then afterwards you had better let me attend to that boil of yours,' declared Mary.

As she left for her kitchen-hut in the yard, John reflected that exposing his nether regions to her would be no embarrassment for either of them, as they had enjoyed many a tumble in the past. Then Matilda had got herself a French maid, Lucille, who was too fond of carrying tales to make it safe for them to continue dallying in the wash-house or kitchen.

With a heavy heart at the prospect of his wife's sombre mood, he pushed open the hall door and went around the screens inside that helped to reduce the draughts in that gloomy chamber. The hall went right up to the bare beams supporting the shingled roof, the dark aged timber of the walls relieved only by some dusty tapestries portraying scenes from the Scriptures. The only modern feature was the large stone hearth that filled much of the inner wall, which John had copied from some he had seen in Brittany. Most houses still had a firepit in the centre of the floor, the smoke having to find its way out under the eaves, after half-choking and blinding the occupants. The conical chimney that rose above the fireplace to the roof was a recent innovation, like the flagstones beneath his feet. Matilda's elevated ambitions had insisted on these, instead of the usual floor of beaten earth covered in rushes or bracken.

He loped towards the hearth, where a small fire of beech logs burnt in spite of the pleasant weather. His wife was sitting in a high-backed wooden seat with a cowled top, holding a pewter cup in one hand and a rosary in the other. Her fingers were slowly clicking the beads and her lips were moving silently, but she did not look up as he entered.

John went to a side table and poured himself a cup of red wine from a pottery flask, then lowered himself gently into a similar chair on the opposite side of the hearth.

'I am back, wife. This suppuration on my body is giving me no small discomfort.'

Matilda slowly looked up and the clicking of her rosary stopped. Her heavy features regarded him dully, but she said nothing. He wondered again if her mind was failing, and his pity was mixed with a curiosity as to whether his marriage could be annulled if she lost her wits completely.

'I have spent the night on a hard floor in an alehouse in Axmouth — and much of the rest of the time on Odin's back,' he said, trying to strike some spark of reaction from his wife. She often upbraided him for spending so much time away from her, attending to his coroner's duties over half the county — which he resented, as it was she who had made him accept the appointment in the first place, as a stepping stone to her ambitions to climb higher in the hierarchy of Devon society.

His attempt at conversation failed, for her small dark eyes under their hooded lids swivelled back to regard the burning logs in the grate, and her fingers resumed their relentless manipulation of the holy beads. They sat in silence, and John moodily stared at her stocky body, swathed in its long kirtle of brown wool under a surcoat of dark red velvet. Her head was swathed in a white linen cover-chief that was draped around her face, even her neck being hidden by a wimple of the same material. They had been married for seventeen years, though until the last three he had barely spent a total of six months at home, being away with Gwyn at campaigns in Ireland, France and the Holy Land. They had been thrust together by their respective parents in a union that disposed of the least attractive of the de Revelle daughters and, in the case of John's father, struck a useful bargain between a younger son with no land and a woman from a rich family. De Wolfe did not hate her, in spite of the endless animosity that she generated between them. He just wished that she did not exist — or at least not as his wife.

Making one last effort, he told her of his exploits at the coast. 'We had a strangled youth at Axmouth. Buried and then unearthed by the parish priest.'

The mere mention of something religious seemed to trigger a reaction in Matilda, who spent part of every day on her knees, either in the nearby cathedral or at St Olave's Church in Fore Street. Apart from her considerable interest in food and drink, attending places of worship seemed to fill the rest of her life. Her head came up and she seemed to focus on her husband for the first time.

'A priest? How came that to be?' Her voice was rough, as if her throat was sore.

De Wolfe explained the circumstance, emphasising the religious connections. 'The town is part of a manor owned by the Priory of Loders. It seems the prior keeps a firm grip on the place through his bailiff and portreeve. '

Matilda nodded, looking almost animated compared with her former torpor. 'Loders is a daughter house of Montebourg Abbey in Normandy,' she announced as if she was preaching a sermon. 'Richard de Redvers, a former sheriff of Devon, gave it to the abbey many years ago.'

'Well, it looks as if they are reaping a good profit from it, for it's one of the busiest ports along this coast,' grunted John. 'The new Keeper of the Peace, a knight called Luke de Casewold, suspects that some of their business is not strictly honest. But that's none of my concern unless it's connected with the death of this poor lad.'

Once the mention of priests had passed, Matilda lost interest and went back to clicking her beads and staring into the fire. It was only the arrival of Mary with a large tray bearing their supper that brought her out of her gloomy reverie. She rose to her feet and took her well-padded body over to the long oak table that sat in the centre of the hall, with benches on each side and a chair at each end. Dropping heavily into one of these, she waited until the cook-maid had set a thick trencher of yesterday's bread in front of her, then laid two grilled trout upon it. A wooden bowl of boiled cabbage and another of fried onions appeared alongside, before Mary went to the other end of the table and gave the same to her master. Then she returned with a large jug of ale and filled earthenware cups before vanishing to the back yard to get the next course.

Matilda took her small eating knife from a pouch on her girdle and attacked the trout, muttering that it was fish again and not even a Friday!

John tucked in, as he was hungry after a day in the saddle and Mary was a cook to be treasured. Most people ate the main meal of the day at around noon and had very little afterwards, but Matilda, always keen to adopt new fashions that she could brag about to her friends at St Olave's, insisted on eating in the early evening — though this did not stop her healthy appetite from also being exercised at midday.

They ate in silence, which was the usual state of affairs in their household, as John was usually out of favour for one reason or another. A fresh loaf appeared, with yellow butter and a slab of cheese, and when Mary had cleared away the debris of the fish she brought two platters of dried fruit, imported from France.

When they had finished and gone back to their chairs near the fire, John sensed that his wife was even more depressed than usual. He tried again to strike up a conversation, and because of the guilt that she was always able to engender in him tried to discover what was troubling her today. Since de Revelle had been exposed as an embezzler and a coward, her former adoration for her elder brother had turned into a disillusion that had soured her life, but today she seemed worse than usual.

'I hear that Richard has visited you, Matilda?' he began, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible and not to display the dislike and contempt he felt for his brother-in-law.

'What do you care about that?' she whispered throatily, turning her square face towards him. 'Though I admit that he has gone from bad to worse, it was you who hounded him out of office and even out of the city!'

As John had saved Richard's life twice — and probably bent the law sufficiently to save him from the hangman's noose — he felt aggrieved that Matilda should unfailingly put the blame on him for the retribution that was inevitably to fall upon the former sheriff. He tried to ignore it once again, though it was difficult, given de Wolfe's irascible nature.

'Did he have any particular reason for calling today?'

'Does a man need a reason to visit his sister?' she snapped. Then she turned her head away and John was surprised to glimpse tears forming in her eyes. Matilda was a hard, unforgiving woman, whose only emotion was usually anger. To see her on the verge of weeping over her wayward brother touched a nerve in his generally unsympathetic character, tapping the guilt that she never allowed him to forget. He got up and placed an arm around her shoulder, though she sat as rigid as a plank under his unfamiliar gesture.

'Give it time, Matilda,' he muttered gruffly. 'It has been only a short while since that affair over the Arundells. If Richard lays low in his manor and keeps his nose out of public affairs, the matter will gradually be forgotten.'

'But I won't forget, will I?' she snapped with a vehemence that surprised him. 'I will go through the rest of my life with the knowledge of his perfidy — and I will always be pointed out by others as the sister of that man Richard de Revelle!'

There was no answer to that, and with a sigh John went to the side table and poured them each a cup of Anjou wine. Matilda accepted it wordlessly, never one to refuse a drink, whatever her mood. He sat down and, with the faithful Brutus dribbling on to his knee, quietly sipped his wine until the silence became too oppressive even for him to endure. Desperate to strike up some sort of dialogue, he searched his mind for some innocuous topic.

'It seems that the vessel that this strangled youth sailed upon was owned by a rich merchant from this city,' he began, knowing of his wife's fascination with, and compendious knowledge of, all the wealthy and titled families in this part of Devon. 'I've heard his name, but know nothing of him,' he said artfully.

Matilda took the bait and slowly turned her face towards him. 'Who was it, then?'

'Robert de Helion, a manor-lord from Barnstaple way, I believe.'

She shook her head reprovingly. 'It's Bridport, not Barnstaple. He keeps a town house near the East Gate.' She sniffed in a superior way. 'I sometimes glimpse his wife in the cathedral, though she usually attends St Lawrence's Church, which is almost next door.' Matilda gave the impression that anyone who did not patronise St Olave's was akin to a pagan.

'Is he a rich man, d'you know?'

'He is reputed to be very rich. By the way his wife dresses, he must be both affluent and generous.' Again she managed to convey a hint that her own husband was both poor and miserly. John ignored this and persisted in tapping his wife's knowledge of Exeter's elite.

'I am told he runs three cogs from Axmouth and some from Dartmouth. It is strange that Hugh de Relaga and myself have not run across him, being in the same line of business.'

He realised too late that he was entering dangerous territory here, as recently his partnership with de Relaga had been enlarged by taking in Hilda of Dawlish, one of John's former mistresses. Her shipmaster husband had been killed and his three ships had been absorbed into their wool-exporting venture. Matilda immediately pounced on the matter.

'No doubt you are too interested in your new partner to notice much about your business!' she growled. However, the temptation to air her knowledge overcame her jealous indignation. 'He has several sources of income, apart from his manor and his ships. I hear he owns both a tannery in Crediton and a fulling mill on Exe Island.' She scowled at John. 'If you would only take more interest in civic affairs and cultivate the burgesses and nobility more, you could be far more prominent in county affairs than just a corpse-prodder!'

De Wolfe felt an angry reply boiling in his breast at this unfairness. He had had King Richard's direct nomination for the post of coroner and was the second most important law officer in the county, after the sheriff. To be called a 'corpse-prodder' by the woman who had cajoled him into the appointment was outrageous, but he managed to hold his tongue long enough to down the rest of his wine, stand up and march to the door.

'I have to go up to Rougemont to see if there are any more reports of corpses for me to prod!' he growled sarcastically. A moment later the street door shut with a bang, leaving Brutus staring after him, disappointed that he was not getting his expected walk down to the Bush Inn.