Crowner Royal

CHAPTER NINE

In an upstairs room of a house in Stinking Lane, just inside the city wall near Aldersgate, a man lay naked on a feather-filled mattress. He was not a pretty sight to begin with, having an over-rounded belly and pale, pasty limbs, but the fact that he was groaning and dry-retching into an earthenware basin, made him even less attractive to the two women who stood watching him from the doorway.

‘He’s been like this for the past hour,’ reported Lucy, a pretty but over-painted girl of about eighteen years, with brightly dyed red hair reaching down her back. She pressed a long green brocade pelisse tightly about her body, her arms folded across her full bosom.

‘Has he not done what he paid for?’ demanded the older woman, a raddled former beauty, whose faded blonde hair was tucked beneath a white cover-chief.

Lucy shook her head, her eyes still on the man moaning on the pallet. ‘He got as far as taking off his garments, mistress, but then suddenly fell ill.’ She sounded as if it was a personal slight on her professional abilities that her client was unable to perform his duty.

‘He can’t stay here like this!’ snapped Margery of Edmonton, who ruled the bawdyhouse with a rod of iron. ‘If he dies on us, we’ll have the sheriff’s men here, frightening off other patrons, as well as expecting free favours for themselves.’

The more sympathetic Lucy, who over many visits had developed a fondness for her normally amiable customer, leaned over the sufferer and tried to converse with him between bouts of retching.

‘Was it something you ate, sir? Have you taken bad meat very lately?’

His eyes rolled upward and managed to focus on the face above him. ‘I supped at a good inn with …’ then his words tailed off as he tried to vomit again, though his stomach had nothing left.

His face took on a ghastly pallor and sweat appeared on his brow as a rigor shook his body. ‘An apothecary — get me an apothecary!’ he managed to gasp before another bout of retching started.

Lucy looked at her mistress, and then at two other girls, whose curiosity had brought them to peer into the room from the open doorway. ‘Can we send for Master Justin? He usually attends us girls when we have troubles,’ she asked hopefully.

The madam of the house shook her head firmly. ‘I’ll not have people parading through the place. If our gentlemen wish to be indisposed, they must do it elsewhere.’

‘What are you going to do, then?’ asked one of the girls at the door, a strange-looking strumpet with a patently false blonde wig and red dabs of rouge on her cheeks.

‘Go and fetch Benedict and Luke. Tell one of them to call a chair in the street. We’ll get him taken away.’

Lucy looked unhappy at this, but knew it was unwise and unprofitable to try to argue with the madam. ‘Where can he be taken?’ she asked.

‘He’s a cleric, so let him go to St Bartholomew’s. They have the best hospital in London, they can surely look after one of their own.’

She waved a hand peremptorily at the other girl in the passage.

‘Come and help Lucy get some clothes on the fellow! At least he can be carried decently through the streets. And then call one of the slatterns to clear up this mess.’ She pointed at the bilious fluid on the floor alongside the mattress.

With much groaning and piteous wailing from the priest, the two whores managed to force the sufferer’s limbs and body back into his hose, undershirt and long cassock. He seemed beyond any sensible speech now, his slack mouth dribbling saliva. The only words Lucy could distinguish as they wrestled his arms into his robe were ‘Green! Green and yellow — everything is yellow.’

Now two hulking men arrived on the scene, their usual tasks being to throw out any drunken or over-perverted customers. They lifted the priest bodily from the pallet and with an ease born of long practice, carried him down the stairs to the narrow lane. It was early evening and the streets around Aldersgate were relatively quiet. One of the thugs from the brothel had sent for a litter, a crude device with a wooden chair fixed to two poles, which a pair of porters manhandled for a small fee. Margery of Edmonton had grudgingly paid the two pence demanded, taking them from the purse attached to the canon’s belt, having again confirmed from Lucy that he had paid her his fee before falling ill.

She watched with relief as the two porters jogged off along Stinking Lane towards the gate, with the limp form of the sick man precariously slumped in the chair. Walking back into the house, she scowled at the three girls as if it was their fault that they had been landed with a patron who looked as if he was at death’s door.

‘Make sure that room is cleared up at once,’ she snapped. ‘And tidy yourselves as well, we’re expecting some guildsmen from the Mercers within the hour!’

On Tuesday morning, de Wolfe went at an early hour up to the house in King Street to see if there was any news of Canon Basset. A very worried chaplain and steward informed him that they had heard nothing at all, in spite of having servants scour the whole neighbourhood, including Westminster, Charing and up as far as the Holbourn in a fruitless search for any sign of their master or his horse.

‘I fear he has been waylaid by thieves and killed,’ wailed Gilbert, the chaplain. ‘There is no way in which he would have left us without word like this.’

‘Did he often go off without explanation?’

The steward, Martin, shrugged. ‘He is the master, he has no need to tell us what he is doing,’ he answered. ‘But usually he will say when he expects to be home, so that the cook knows when to be ready with his meals. The canon was very fond of his food,’ he added sadly.

John, with further admonitions for them to send him a message the moment they heard from Basset, left them to their morbid fears, though privately he thought they may well be right. Unless the Exchequer official had really fled with the stolen treasure, the coroner suspected that he had met with serious trouble somewhere — though whether this was connected with the theft of the gold, he could not guess.

Back in his chamber in the palace, he was pleasantly distracted from the matter of the canon by a message which had been brought by a boatman on a wherry from Queenhithe, a wharf in the city. It was by word-of-mouth, but none the less welcome, for the man was from the crew of the Mary and Child Jesus, another of the cogs belonging to the consortium run by Hugh de Relaga and the two appropriately named sleeping partners, John de Wolfe and Hilda of Dawlish. In fact, it was the ship upon which Hilda’s husband had been murdered with all his crew the previous year.³ The Mary had left Topsham, a port on the estuary of the River Exe below Exeter, on the same day that the St Radegund had returned from London and the shipmaster had been charged with sending a message to de Wolfe to say that Mistress Hilda had arrived home safely.

Given the hazards of travel, whether by land or sea, John was greatly relieved, though it increased his desire to make a visit to Devon as soon as he could manage to get there. He had not seen his own family for some time, either: his widowed mother, elder brother and sister lived on their main manor at Stoke-in-Teignhead, a few miles south of Dawlish, which was an added incentive to get back to that part of the county.

When the boatman had gone, Thomas de Peyne arrived and in the absence of any inquest rolls to copy, he began the uphill task of teaching his master the rudiments of Latin. De Wolfe seemed to forget more than he ever learned and both were secretly relieved when they were interrupted by a page sent up by the doorward. It was not the usual fresh-faced infant, but a more scrawny, cheeky cock sparrow of a boy.

‘There’s a man down at the entrance, a fellow from the city,’ he said pertly, his head around the door. ‘He wanted to come up, but the porter wouldn’t let him.’

‘Where’s he from? And why does he want me?’ demanded John, annoyed at the boy’s lack of respect. The page shrugged indifferently. ‘Search me, sir! Do you want to come down and see him?’

The coroner suddenly decided that his lessons were more important. ‘Go and see what he wants, Gwyn. If it’s an angry husband, tell him I’m gone to Cathay!’ he added facetiously, still pleased with the news of Hilda.

Gwyn ambled off, giving the page a playful cuff across the head for his impertinence, while John tried to concentrate on Thomas’s recitation of Latin verbs. A few moments later the Cornishman returned.

‘You’d better hear what this fellow has to say, straight from the horse’s mouth,’ he announced, leading in a rough-looking man dressed in the buff tunic and hooded leather jerkin of a city constable. With a surly gesture that John took to be a salute, the man pulled off his woollen cap and began a short recitation that he had obviously committed to memory.

‘My master the sheriff says he reminds you of the agreement you all made before the Justiciar, and keeping his part he wishes to tell you that there is a dead man for you in the city.’

He said this as if it were all one long word, not pausing for breath from start to finish. De Wolfe stared up at him from his place at the table.

‘Which sheriff are you talking about?’ he growled.

‘Sir Robert, who deals with corpses in Middlesex as well.’

‘You said it was in the city?’ cut in Thomas.

The constable scowled at the diminutive clerk. ‘Well, Smithfield and St Bartholomew’s are but a few paces outside the gates — they might just as well be in the city for all the difference it makes.’

‘And why is fitz Durand handing this to me?’ asked John. On past experience, the jealousies of the city men would seem to be against spontaneous gestures like this.

‘The corpse is that of a holy man — and from what we hear, from Westminster.’

A premonition seized de Wolfe, a not unreasonable one given the circumstances. ‘Do you know who he is?’

The sheriff’s man shook his head, which seemed to grow straight out of his shoulders, without any neck. ‘Not me, Crowner, I’m but a messenger. He is in the care of the hospital at the priory of St Bartholomew, that’s all I know. My master says that you can do what you like, he doesn’t want to know about it.’

It was soon clear that the man knew nothing more and cared even less, so de Wolfe dismissed him, with a message to take back to Robert fitz Durand. ‘Tell him that I am obliged for his courtesy and will attend to the matter straight away,’ he said curtly.

After the fellow had gone, John rose to his feet, eager to get some action. ‘Is this going to be our missing Exchequer canon?’ he asked his two assistants, as he reached for his sword belt hanging on a nearby hook.

‘A holy man, that’s all he said,’ objected Gwyn. ‘God knows there are enough of those in these parts!’ He prodded Thomas playfully in the ribs, but for once the little clerk ignored his teasing.

‘If he’s in St Bartholomew’s, perhaps he was taken ill with a palsy or a trepidation of the heart,’ suggested Thomas.

‘Then let’s go and find out!’ snapped the coroner, buckling on his belt and pulling the diagonal strap of his baldric over his right shoulder. ‘Anything is better than sitting around here yawning!’

They rode around the north-western corner of the walls, not needing to enter the city to reach Smithfield, where the great priory of St Bartholomew overlooked the barren heath used for cattle and horse sales, as well as for the butchery of animals and men. Outside the priory was the execution ground for the city, the notorious Smithfield elms being used as gallows, and where burning at the stake was carried out.

‘Odd place for the biggest hospital in England,’ grumbled Gwyn as they tied their horses to a hitching rail under the watchful eye of a gate porter. ‘Why put one outside a cattle market?’

The ever-knowing Thomas was ready with an answer. ‘Because seventy years ago, the first King Henry gave the land for it, that’s why.’

‘Gave it to who? And why?’ persisted the Cornish-man. De Wolfe was not sure if his officer was thirsting for knowledge or just trying to aggravate his clerk.

‘The king gave it to a Frankish monk called Rahere, who some say was previously his court jester,’ pontificated Thomas. ‘Rahere was an Augustinian who fell sick on pilgrimage to Rome. He swore that if he recovered from his fever, he would build a hospital in London in thankfulness.’

‘So why St Bartholomew?’ asked de Wolfe, as they walked towards the arched entrance into the large walled enclosure. ‘Wasn’t he the apostle who was flayed alive?’

Thomas nodded eagerly. ‘You are indeed a learned man, master! But the monk Rahere named his hospital and priory after the island in the Tiber on which was the hospital that saved his life in Rome.’

The history lesson over, the coroner loped to the doorkeeper’s lodge inside the gates and made himself known to the lay brother inside.

‘The sheriff has informed me that a cleric, possibly from Westminster, was brought here and died yesterday.’

John dangled his precious piece of parchment with the impressive seal before the man’s eyes. It had the desired effect, though as usual the doorkeeper was unable to read it. ‘I need to see the corpse and then question whoever dealt with the poor fellow.’

The lay brother, dressed in a shapeless black habit, hastened to help the imposing visitor.

‘I did hear that a priest had died, sir. No doubt his body is in the dead-house behind the hospital. I will have to enquire as to who treated him, for we have eleven monks who care for the sick, as well as four sisters of mercy.’

He rose from his table and yelled at a young boy who was squatting outside the door, scratching marks in the dust with a stick. ‘Elfed, take these gentlemen over to the mortuary, then come back here.’

The coroner’s trio followed the lad across the huge enclosure, where each August, England’s largest cloth fair was held, with a horse fair outside on the heath. They had the impressive pile of the priory to their left, its large church towering over cloisters, dorter, refectory, chapter house and a small chapel. The usual infirmary was missing, however, as the place had been established specifically as a hospital, which lay to their right. Several stone-built wards lay at the southern end of the great yard, together with some storage and accommodation for the nursing nuns, who like the brothers, were of the Augustinian order.

As they walked, they passed or overtook a variety of people, from ones hobbling on crutches, to others being helped by relatives, some moaning and sobbing. A sister in a black habit and flowing cover-chief, tenderly held a small baby, the mother walking ashen-faced alongside. A small cart, pushed by a youth, carried a woman flat on her back, keening in pain, her anxious husband bent over her as they went.

‘Cheerful place, this,’ grunted Gwyn, looking askance at the plentiful evidence of pain and suffering around them.

‘Thank God it exists!’ countered Thomas sternly. ‘Or there would be even more distress without the efforts of these Austin monks and nuns. May Christ and all his saints bless them!’

Their barefooted guide took them past the end ward block with its stone-tiled roof and came to a small structure jutting from a low building, which from the smell must have been the reredorter, the latrines of the hospital.

‘The dead-house is always in the worst possible place!’ grumbled John, but he walked unhesitatingly to the door, leaving the boy to scamper back to the gatehouse. Inside, it was hot and gloomy and pervaded by the lingering smell of the thousands of corpses that had passed through it over the years.

When their eyes became accustomed to the dim light, they saw a row of four wooden biers, stretchers with handles at each end, standing on four legs. Two were empty, the other pair held shrouded bodies.

Gwyn lifted the sheet from the nearest, but replaced it quickly when he saw the face of a woman, grotesquely deformed by a great tumour that grew from the lower jaw. ‘It must be the other one,’ he muttered and moved to the next bier. The face that was revealed this time was familiar to them all — it was Simon Basset, one-time canon of Lichfield.

De Wolfe moved up to stand alongside his officer, with Thomas hanging well behind, fervently crossing himself and murmuring Latin blessings for the dead.

‘Well, we’ve found our Treasury man,’ said John, with melancholy satisfaction. ‘Now he’ll never be able to tell us anything!’

They looked down at the cadaver, whose face had a serene expression. He was dressed in a hospital shift of coarse wool, his hands crossed peacefully over his chest, with a small crucifix pressed between his fingers.

At a sign from the coroner, Gwyn pulled the sheet right down to the corpse’s feet and they studied the exposed legs, then lifted the shift and examined the belly and chest. With one powerful hand, the Cornish-man turned the body on to its side, so that they could look at the back.

‘He doesn’t seem injured, what we can see of him,’ ventured Thomas, peering round Gwyn’s bulk. ‘What can he have died from?’

A deep voice came from behind to answer him. ‘I fear he was poisoned, brother.’

They turned and saw a tall monk standing in the doorway. He wore the black habit and scapula of an Augustinian, though over his front was a white linen apron speckled with a few spots of blood. He signed a cross in the air and Thomas responded with a genuflexion and his inevitable reflex touching of his head, heart and shoulders.

John turned to acknowledge him with a brief bowing of his head. ‘I am Sir John de Wolfe, the Coroner of the Verge. I am charged with investigating the disappearance of this man — and now with his death, it seems.’

‘And I am Brother Philip, one of those charged with trying to help the sick,’ replied the monk, with no trace of sarcasm in mirroring the coroner’s words. He had a pale, sad face under a severely cut tonsure which left little but a thin rim of fair hair around his head. ‘No doubt you can tell us the identity of this poor man, for he was unable to speak after he arrived and all we know of him is that he was in holy orders, and from the royal insignia on his cassock must have been in the king’s service.’

John explained who Simon Basset was and the monk’s pale eyebrows rose when he learned that the dead man was a canon of a famous cathedral and a high official of the Exchequer. The coroner did not mention the matter of the missing treasure, but merely said that the priest had gone missing from home several days ago.

‘This poisoning, brother. Are you quite sure about that?’

The Augustinian nodded gravely. ‘I am in no doubt at all — and I know what the poison must have been, for we frequently use it as a medicament. Several of my brother physicians came to examine the patient and all agreed with me.’

‘What was it, brother?’ interposed Thomas, whose insatiable curiosity overcame his reluctance to stay in the dead-house.

‘A common herbal remedy for dropsy and a failing heart. It was an extract of foxglove, which in small doses slows and strengthens the beating of the heart, but in excess is a potent poison.’

They all looked at the still shape on the bier, free from any sign of injury. ‘How could you tell that?’ asked Thomas de Peyne.

‘The dramatic slowing of the pulse, which became erratic and finally ceased,’ answered Brother Philip. ‘And the rough fellows who brought him to the hospital, though they knew next to nothing about him, said that before his speech failed, he had been vomiting and rambling about his sight being yellow and green, which is a characteristic of foxglove poisoning.’

‘Did the men who delivered him here know anything more?’ asked de Wolfe. ‘Where were they from?’

The Austin canon shrugged. ‘I fear I do not know. I see scores of these unfortunate patients each day, but only in the wards. Unless there is a relative with them, I rarely learn anything about their circumstances. The gatekeepers might be able to give you some more information.’

The coroner considered this for a moment, then tried another tack. ‘Brother, if you are convinced that he died of poison, have you any idea how he may have taken it — or been given it?’

This final distinction was not lost on the monk.

‘You mean did he swallow it himself — or was it given to him by some other person?’

When John nodded, Philip shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you from a physician’s point of view — all I can say is that it must have gone down his throat somehow. But as a man of God, I must surely believe that no priest would have endangered his immortal soul by deliberately swallowing a fatal dose of foxglove in order to kill himself.’

Nodding his head in fervent agreement, Thomas pursued this aspect. ‘Could you tell how large a dose was taken and how long before?’

Philip pursed his lips as he considered this. ‘Without knowing anything of the circumstances before he came here, it is difficult. Was he well until having his last meal, for instance, which might mean the poison was introduced into his food or drink? It must have been a large dose if the interval was short, for his symptoms were very severe.’

‘How is foxglove usually given?’ asked John.

‘All of the plant is dangerous, the leaves, stems and roots,’ explained Philip. ‘Chewing those could cause symptoms, but the severity of this case suggests to me that a strong extract was used. A watery infusion is most common, unless dried and powdered plant is used. But a tincture, where an extract in spirits of wine is used, is the most potent.’

‘Is this drug easily obtainable?’ asked Gwyn, entering the discussion for the first time.

‘At the right season, anyone wandering the country lanes could pick a sackful!’ replied the monk. ‘And the wise women who practise their helpful art in every village will have dried plants hanging in all their cottages. For a strong powder or a tincture, one would probably need to visit an apothecary’s shop, but there’s no lack of those in London.’

De Wolfe rasped his fingers over the black stubble on his cheeks as an aid to thought. ‘I agree that it seems highly unlikely that a rich canon would deliberately do away with himself, so that leaves murder or accident,’ he said. ‘Could it have been accidental?’

Again the monk shrugged. ‘As I said, it only needs a large spoonful of the strong tincture to do fatal damage to the heart. Normally, the tincture is given as a few drops. As long as the foxglove goes down the throat, it is potent — but it seems straining belief to think of any accident that could cause a person to drink it in error.’

The coroner agreed with Philip. ‘So that leaves us with murder as the most likely option! Is that feasible? Does foxglove have a foul taste?’

‘It is bitter, but only a small volume of the tincture is needed, which could be concealed in food or especially in wine. I have never seen a death from foxglove before, though I have had children who have unwisely chewed foxglove plants and once I saw a woman who had taken too much of her dried powder prescribed for dropsy. These people fell ill, but recovered as the dose was less than a fatal one.’

They talked around the matter for several more minutes, but it became apparent that Brother Philip had no more to tell them and he was anxious to get back to his care of the sick, a marathon task for only eleven monks and four nuns to attempt in the face of the huge population of the nearby city. They left him with thanks and a promise to notify Westminster of the death, so that Simon Basset’s earthly remains could be collected for burial.

On the way out to collect their horses, they stopped at the lodge, where John interrogated the gatekeeper. He was not the man on duty when Simon Basset was admitted, but he was soon found and had a clear recollection of the event.

‘We rarely get a priest brought in a chair litter,’ he observed. ‘Especially from a brothel!’

‘A brothel?’ barked the coroner. ‘How do you know that?’

‘The chair men told me that they had picked him up at Margery’s whorehouse in Stinking Lane. She gave them two pence to bring him here, to get rid of him, it seems.’

De Wolfe groaned — this bloody mystery was getting more complicated by the minute.

‘Did they tell you anything else?’ he demanded.

‘Only that the fellow was puking all the way and muttering and groaning. He kept saying that his vision had gone green and yellow — they thought he was either drunk or out of his wits.’

There was nothing else to be got from the man, and after taking directions the trio set off for Stinking Lane. They trotted through some squalid lanes to nearby Aldersgate and entered the city through the stone arch in the great walls that had surrounded London since the time of the Roman Empire. Stinking Lane appeared no more foul than the other narrow streets nearby, all of which had piles of rubbish outside the houses and sewage trickling down the central gutter in the unpaved thoroughfare between the motley collection of buildings. John reined in halfway down the lane, looking around for the most likely location for a brothel.

‘We’re right in the city sheriff’s territory now,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Is he going to take kindly to us investigating on his patch, after all that damned fuss he made the other day?’

De Wolfe glowered around at the closely packed houses, some of which had upper storeys hanging over the street.

‘He took the trouble to send us that messenger telling us of Basset’s corpse, so it looks as if he’s got no interest in it,’ he replied. ‘Now which of these bloody ratholes is Margery’s stew?’

Thomas walked his small palfrey on a few yards, to where a cripple in rags was squatting against the wall, picking through a heap of discarded vegetables for something still edible. Surreptitiously slipping the beggar a halfpenny that he could ill-afford, the soft-hearted clerk came back with the information that Margery’s brothel — not the only one in the lane — was the large house with a red door further down on the left.

Gwyn hammered on the door and a girl opened it. She looked startled at the sight of a huge man with wild red hair and moustache, assuming that he was a customer she might have to satisfy. ‘You want a woman, sir? Come in, we are sure to have something to your tastes.’

Then she caught sight of the two men on horses waiting in the street. ‘There are three of you? You’d best take your steeds around to the yard at the back.’

Gwyn managed to interrupt her flow of words. Grinning at the good-looking girl, who was about seventeen, he patted her paternally on her dark hair. ‘We don’t want your favours, lass, we want your mistress. We are law officers, seeking to discover something about a priest who was taken ill here two days ago.’

The mention of the law made the strumpet uneasy. Though it was not her problem, she knew that Margery had paid her usual bribes to the sheriff’s constables to leave them in peace, but she had also heard that their regular customer Canon Simon had died in St Bartholomew’s. Opening the door wider, she stood aside.

‘You need to speak to Dame Margery, then. And to Lucy, no doubt, for it was she who was with Fat Simon when he was took ill!’

By now, John de Wolfe had dismounted and had advanced to the door, leaving Thomas to guard their horses, knowing that the prim little priest would be most reluctant to enter a house of ill-repute. At the same time, the madam of the establishment had appeared, attracted by the voices.

Before she could open her red-painted mouth, John had boomed some orders.

‘Take us somewhere where we can speak!’ he commanded. ‘I am the king’s coroner and need to question you and your drabs.’

Margery of Edmonton had enough experience of both men and officials to know that here was someone who could neither be trifled with, nor bribed with money or sensuous favours. Without a word, she led the way down a short passage to a large room where there were clean rushes on the floor, several couches and chairs and a counter where a hogshead of ale and jars of cider and wine were displayed. With a flounce of her henna-stained hair, she turned to face de Wolfe.

‘Where are the sheriff’s men, sir? They usually deal with sad accidents such as this.’

‘This was no accident, woman. The canon was murdered,’ he snapped. The brothel-keeper’s powdered face cracked in an expression of outraged disbelief.

‘Well, he wasn’t murdered here. This is a respectable house!’ she added illogically, considering the nature of her business.

She sat down on a chair, but did not invite her unwelcome visitors to join her. The girl from the front door stood protectively behind her and now several other young women, all pretty and dressed in coloured silk gowns, appeared inquisitively at the doorway from the passage. De Wolfe, who in his younger days had more than a nodding acquaintance with whorehouses, recognised that this was a superior type of establishment with prices well above the stews that catered for the lower classes.

‘You were aware who the dead man was?’ began John, harshly.

‘Father Simon, some chaplain in the king’s service,’ replied the madam defensively. ‘We get a number of men of the cloth in here. Supposed to be celibate, I know, but that’s their business, not ours.’

‘He was a cathedral canon and an official of the Exchequer,’ snapped the coroner. ‘An important royal officer and I want to know who killed him!’

Margery, now pallid under her make-up, began protesting that he had died of bad food and that his death was nothing to do with her, but John cut across her excuses.

‘Did he say where he had been before he came to relieve himself here?’ he demanded.

For answer, the woman beckoned to one of the girls in the doorway. ‘Lucy, you attended to the priest. Come here and tell the coroner what you know.’

Reluctantly, Lucy sidled into the room and stood before John, her eyes downcast. He thought she was too fresh and attractive to be used by any man who had four pence, though he also knew that many girls eventually found a husband amongst their clients.

‘Tell me exactly what happened, Lucy,’ asked de Wolfe in a more kindly tone. ‘If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.’

‘He was a nice, kind man,’ she said with a sniff. ‘I’m sorry he’s dead — but I know nothing about it. I tried to help him when he was so sick.’

‘He was well enough when he arrived,’ mumbled Margery, but Lucy shook her head. ‘He was not his normal self even then. I noticed his brow was sweating, but thought he was excited at what was to come. Then we went up to one of the rooms upstairs and as he began taking off his clothing, he started to groan and clutch his stomach.’

‘Did he say anything about where he had been?’ asked de Wolfe, but Lucy wanted to tell her story at her own pace.

‘He slumped down on the pallet and pulled off his hose, then apologised for not feeling well. He said it must have been something he had eaten, though he had dined with a friend at a good inn so it was surprising that there should be anything amiss with the food.’

The coroner seized upon this. ‘Did he say who the friend was? Or which inn they had visited?’

To his chagrin, the girl shook her head. ‘It was at that very moment that he started to vomit. From then on, his speech made no sense, he was too occupied in throwing up and groaning. I tried to comfort him and clean him up as best I could, but soon had to call the mistress, as he became so distressed.’

In spite of more questioning of Lucy, her mistress and the other whores, de Wolfe failed to extract any other useful information. It seemed clear that following a good meal at a decent hostelry in the company of a friend, Simon Basset had arrived at his favourite brothel for his regular fornication. He was unwell on arrival and rapidly deteriorated, showing all the symptoms of foxglove poisoning, according to Brother Philip. Death had occurred without him becoming rational enough to explain what had happened and once again the coroner was stuck with a mystery.

They left for the ride back to Westminster with an extra horse led on a head-rope behind Gwyn’s mare, for the canon’s mount had still been tethered in the yard behind the whorehouse. The crafty Margery had failed to mention it, no doubt hoping to sell the beast, until Gwyn had queried how Basset had arrived in Stinking Lane. Reluctantly, she admitted that the horse was still there and John hurried to examine it in case the saddlebag contained some further clue — for a moment he even wondered if some of the lost treasure might be there. In the event, there was nothing, but they decided to return the valuable nag to the house in King Street, when John called to give them the sad news.

During the ride back, Thomas asked what he should do about recording the investigation on his rolls and whether there was to be an inquest.

‘This is a case well out of the ordinary,’ mused John. ‘I’ll do nothing until I confer with Hubert Walter. With someone who was both a canon and a senior Treasury official, found poisoned in a brothel, I have to tread carefully, especially as he may well be involved in the theft of the king’s treasure from the Tower.’

The more he thought about it, the more delicate the situation appeared. Though he himself was presently in good grace with the Justiciar and even the king, neither were men to be trifled with or offended — and there were many other powerful men, especially on the Curia, who would be happy to use de Wolfe as a scapegoat if some great scandal erupted.

Apart from that, John had no appetite for exposing the sexual inclinations of a pleasant priest through a public inquest. Though he was a stickler for applying the king’s will, there were issues such as the relative immunity of those in holy orders from the secular law, which gave them ‘benefit of clergy’. Especially since old King Henry’s conscience-stricken surrender to Canterbury over this issue, following the murder of Thomas Becket, one had to tread softly where priests were concerned and John was not going to put his head in a noose by doing the wrong thing.

His silent cogitations lasted for most of the journey and both Thomas and Gwyn had learned not to disturb their master when he was in this contemplative mood. At the house in King Street, one of the grooms saw them coming and recognised the canon’s horse being led home riderless and drew the correct conclusions. He rushed into the house and by the time de Wolfe dismounted, Martin the steward and Chaplain Gilbert had come out to meet him, their faces full of anguished foreboding.

The coroner solemnly confirmed their fears, and taking the chaplain aside explained the circumstances of the canon’s death. ‘It is up to you how much you tell the rest of the household, but I would advise you holding back some of the details, at least until I have discussed it with the archbishop.’

Gilbert was a sensible man and through his grief — for it seemed that Simon had been a popular and caring master — he promised to be discreet about revealing the whole truth. He also promised to set in motion the process of retrieving the corpse from St Bartholomew’s and arranging a funeral, dependent on the coroner’s decision about an inquest. He would also send a messenger to Lichfield to inform the cathedral and any surviving family of the death.

Promising to keep him informed, de Wolfe left the house to the stunned residents, who were no doubt wondering when they would be thrown out into the street following the collapse of their comfortable little world.