The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER TWELVE

De Wolfe went back to his tall, narrow house for another silent meal with Matilda. He knew that she would not be overtly objectionable until after the Justices’s banqueting sessions, but she was still surly, in spite of his attempts to regale her with details of his priestly interviews. He was careful to censor these, making no mention of the rumpus in St Mary Steps or of the nature of his conversation with her hero Julian Fulk. Her only questions were whether he had yet had official invitations to the celebrations at the Bishop’s Palace and the castle. When he had to admit that he had forgotten to make any enquiries about them, she fell into a glowering sulk.

Long experience of Matilda’s moods ensured that his appetite did not suffer and he did full justice to Mary’s spit-roasted duck with leeks and cabbage, followed by oats boiled in milk with a piece of honeycomb to sweeten it. Washed down with a pewter mugful of watered Anjou wine, he rose from the table as soon as he could and went across to the stables to visit Odin. The previous day his great destrier had suffered a kick on the hind-leg from another horse on the pasture at Bull Mead, just outside the walls.

‘It’s no problem, Crowner,’ Andrew the farrier reassured him. ‘I’ve bathed the cut with witch-hazel and covered it with goose-grease. He’ll be fine in a day or two.’

Unlike the previous month when de Wolfe had spent half his days in the saddle — to the detriment of his lovelife — there had been few distant cases lately, especially now that the north of the county was covered by the newly appointed coroner in Barnstaple.

‘I’ll have to take him out when he’s fit — the old horse’s joints will be rusting up from disuse,’ he told Andrew, a wiry young man with an uncanny rapport with horses. They stood talking about the stallion and the farrier suggested de Wolfe take him hunting, though the lumbering warhorse was not really suitable for dashing through the forest after deer or boar.

As they stood in amiable idleness, a large figure came around the corner of Martin’s Lane from the high street. For once it was not the coroner’s officer, but the portly frame of Brother Rufus, the castle chaplain. He hurried up to them, puffing and red-faced, the twisted cords of his girdle flying from his waist. ‘Sir John, I met your man Gwyn running down Castle Hill and he asked me to fetch you quickly as I was coming this way.’

‘What’s the urgency, Brother? Did he say?’

‘He had one of the burgess’s constables with him, that thin Saxon. Your man said there was another body. He claimed you’d know what he meant.’

Yes, John knew what Gwyn meant, and a cold prickling spread across the back of his neck. ‘Where were they going?’ he snapped.

‘Across the high street and into the lane that goes towards that little almshouse and hospital — St John’s, I think it is.’

Leaving the farrier holding Odin’s bridle, de Wolfe marched off and within seconds had vanished around the corner into the high street. He loped along towards Eastgate, thrusting aside the few Sunday afternoon drifters that got in his way. The Benedictine hurried after him unbidden, almost keeping up with him. Although he was heavily built, much of Rufus’s bulk was muscle rather than fat.

A few hundred paces along the main street, John turned right to dive into Raden Lane, which led to the little priory and hospital of St John. This north-east quadrant of the city was relatively affluent, and most of the houses there were owned by burgesses and merchants. Many had a garden behind high walls and it was outside one of these that the coroner saw Gwyn, waving his arms to attract attention.

‘We’ve got another body, Crowner!’ bellowed his officer, as his master came near. A few curious heads were already poking out of nearby doors and a couple of urchins were dodging Gwyn’s slaps as they tried to see past him through the garden gate. Even before he asked for details, de Wolfe stopped to look at the place. The solid two-storey house of new stone had a round arch over the central front door, with shuttered windows on each side and on the upper floor. The roof was of slate slabs and a chest-high stone wall ran in a rectangle around the sides and back, with a narrow lane on each side separating the house from its neighbours.

The coroner glared at Gwyn, daring him to spin out the story. ‘Well, tell me the worst!’

‘Osric called me — I was in the guardroom playing dice after dinner.’ He hurriedly continued, before de Wolfe could berate him for his usual irrelevancies. ‘This house belongs to William Fitz-William, a burgess of the Cordwainers’ Guild.’

‘I know who lives here, damn it! What’s happened?

For once, Gwyn was brutally brief. ‘He’s dead. Dropped into the well.’

‘Dropped? How do you know? He could just have fallen in.’

‘He’s lived here for years, so why should he now fall down his own well? And the water can’t be very deep so he could have stood up, not drowned.’

‘He might have hit his head on the way down.’ The coroner was sceptical about Gwyn’s intuitions, but the officer was stubborn in his opinion. ‘I just feel it in my water, Crowner. Something isn’t right.’

‘Let’s have a look, then. Why are you so sure it’s another murder?’

His officer pulled worriedly at his shaggy red moustache. ‘There’s something strange about this household. Judge for yourself.’

As he stood aside to let de Wolfe though the gate, which stood at the side of the house, Brother Rufus came panting up, closely followed by Thomas de Peyne, who had been sent down from the castle by Sergeant Gabriel.

‘Can I come with you?’ asked the monk. ‘If there’s something related to the scriptures, maybe I can assist young Thomas here.’

The coroner nodded his assent and his clerk scowled behind Rufus’s back, but they all trooped through the gate, which Gwyn shut firmly in the faces of the gathering onlookers.

De Wolfe saw a large yard with the usual huts for kitchen, privy and wash-house, as well as a small stable at the back, beside a vegetable patch. In the centre, between the house and the thatched wooden kitchen, was a well, with a knee-high circular stone wall. A leather bucket with a length of thin rope lay on the ground alongside, at the feet of Osric, the lanky Saxon constable. Sitting on the wall, slumped in a posture of despair, was a lad of about ten and alongside him was an older boy, probably thirteen or fourteen, whose hand rested on the younger one’s shoulder as if to comfort him.

The constable beckoned urgently. ‘Over here, Crowner. Take a look down the well first.’

John strode across the yard and peered down the shaft. About ten feet below ground level the surface of the water was broken by the buttocks and thighs of a man. The visible part of the body was clothed in a red tunic with a wide embroidered pattern on the hem.

The coroner stood back and looked at the top rim of the stone wall. He waved at the young boy to get off, so that he could see the whole circumference. ‘Fresh scratches here,’ he grunted to Gwyn, pointing. The others followed his finger and saw three irregular lines running roughly parallel to the inner edge of the shaft, a few inches apart. He turned at last to look at the boys, whom he had so far ignored. ‘Who are they?’

Osric took it upon himself to explain. ‘These are the two servants of William Fitz-William. This one is Edward,’ he said, tapping the elder on the shoulder, ‘And that’s Harry.’

De Wolfe stared at the lads, who seemed cowed and speechless in the presence of these large strangers. ‘Young for servants, are they not?’ he barked.

‘Fitz-William has a cook as well, but he lives elsewhere and comes in only during the day. These two look after his other needs.’

The constable’s tone made John aware that this might be no ordinary household, but he concentrated on the immediate situation. ‘So, what’s the story?’ Before Osric could start explaining, the coroner swung round to Gwyn. ‘Better find some way of getting him up from there. I presume this is William Fitz-William down the well?’

The elder boy spoke for the first time, in a dull subdued voice. ‘It is, sir. That’s the master’s tunic, with that embroidery on it.’

As Gwyn picked up the rope from the bucket and went to the edge of the well to ponder the best way of recovering the corpse, Osric continued his interrupted tale. ‘The lads sleep in the house, in a closet under the staircase. They say they heard their master come home late last night from some Guild meeting and go up to his bedroom as usual. This morning, they were up at dawn to light the cook-shed fire and begin preparing William’s breakfast.’

‘He always wants it soon after the sixth hour, when we hear the church bells for Prime,’ cut in Harry. His cherubic face was deathly white and he was shivering.

The constable took up the tale again. ‘Fitz-William failed to appear in his hall for the meal and after a time, Edward here went up to knock on his bedroom door.’

‘There was no answer, so I looked in and he wasn’t there, and the bed hadn’t been slept in.’ The older boy was blond and would be handsome when he grew, but he had the same pallid, pinched expression as the other lad, with wary, anxious eyes.

‘So what did you do, if your master was missing?’ demanded de Wolfe.

Edward shrugged. ‘He never likes us prying into his business, sir. He can get very angry with us.’ His eyes strayed to Harry’s, and de Wolfe noticed some mutual signal seemed to pass between them.

‘If this happened early in the morning, why did it take until this afternoon to discover him?’ Brother Rufus entered the questioning.

‘We didn’t need water until then,’ explained Edward, hesitantly. ‘I had filled the big jar in the kitchen last night and only went to the well about an hour ago as I had to carry a few buckets for the young plants in the vegetable patch.’ His voice went up a few tones. ‘It was then that I saw him. I almost hit him with the bucket, but pulled back on the rope in time.’

Though both boys looked scared, de Wolfe could see no signs of sorrow for the sudden death of their lord — he suspected that it was not a matter of particular regret to them.

Gwyn had worked out a way to retrieve the master shoemaker from his pit. ‘Someone will have to go down and pass this rope under his shoulders.’

He looked speculatively at the elder boy, but de Wolfe shook his head. ‘You can’t ask him to handle his master’s corpse. I’ll go, you take the strain.’

Osric vetoed this. ‘You are too big a man, Crowner, and Gwyn is even bigger. I’m thin and light so I’ll do it.’

Gwyn untied the bucket and wrapped the line twice around his middle, then threw the free end down the well. The skinny constable tucked his tunic up into his belt, revealing his nakedness underneath, apart from his thigh-length woollen hose. He climbed nimbly down the rope, his feet against the inside wall, Gwyn’s bulk taking the strain.

‘It’s not deep,’ said Edward reassuringly. ‘Only a couple of feet, since this dry weather.’ He seemed to have become more confident since these strange men had not treated him unkindly.

Osric lowered his feet into the water and sank well above the knees, his feet squeezing down into soft mud at the bottom. Quickly, he bent over the corpse and passed the rope under an armpit and across the chest. He tied it firmly between the shoulder-blades, then signalled to the ring of faces above.

Gwyn stepped on to the rim of the well, one foot each side and hauled straight up, with the burly monk leaning out to keep the line in the centre to avoid the body scraping against the rough stones of the shaft.

With a squelch and a splash, it left the water and, almost at once, Osric gave a yell. ‘There’s a damned great stone hanging around his neck!’

With Gwyn straining every sinew to hoist Fitz-William up, there was no chance to pause for an investigation. Grunting and cursing breathlessly, he hauled the body level with the parapet, and Rufus and John reached out to pull it in to the side and roll it over on to the ground. Red in the face, Gwyn stepped down and threw a look of triumph at his master. ‘What did I tell you, Crowner?’

Still unconvinced, de Wolfe gave one of his grunts. ‘Could be a suicide — we’ve both seen folk tie a weight to themselves to make sure.’

Gwyn snorted his derision as he untied the rope from both himself and the corpse. He threw the end back down the well to rescue Osric, who nimbly scaled the shaft with Rufus taking the strain at the top.

When they were all together again, they turned to the body, which lay crumpled, face down, in the yard. The two boys stood at a distance with Thomas de Peyne, Edward with his arm still around Harry’s shoulders, as if protecting him against the world as they watched with horrified fascination.

‘Turn him over, Gwyn. Let’s make sure it is Fitz-William.’

As soon as de Wolfe saw the face, discoloured though it was, he knew that this was the master shoemaker, for he had seen him about the town and at various Guild functions. Of middle age, he had fair hair cut short on his neck and a sparse beard and moustache.

‘He’s pretty blue in the face. Is that cord strangling him?’ asked the chaplain, pointing at a thin line wrapped around his neck.

De Wolfe bent down and put a finger between the cord and the skin. ‘No, it’s loose — the blueness is because he was face down for many hours, the blood sinks that way.’

‘No wonder he was face down with that damned great weight hanging around his neck.’ Gwyn lifted a crudely circular stone from Fitz-William’s chest. It was about a foot across and had a hole chiseled in the centre, through which the cord passed to suspend it from his neck.

‘That’s the top half of a hand quern, surely?’ exclaimed the monk.

The Cornishman slid the twine loop over the dead man’s head and stood up with the stone in his hands. He hefted it to gauge its weight then passed it to the coroner. ‘A good many pounds, that. It would certainly drop him head first under the water and keep him there.’

De Wolfe grinned lopsidedly at his officer, as he well knew what was in his mind. ‘Go on then, Gwyn. Perform your usual trick.’

The ginger giant dropped to his knees and placed the palms of his hands on the corpse’s chest and pressed hard. A gush of froth, tinged pink, erupted from Fitz-William’s nostrils and lips. Gwyn looked up, a satisfied smile on his face. ‘Drowned, no doubt about it. He was certainly alive when he went down the shaft.’

‘So why did he let someone hang a quern around his neck?’ demanded Rufus, to whom coroner’s enquiries were a novelty.

‘Perhaps for the same reason that the priest at St Mary Arches let someone push his face into a bowl of communion wine. Have a look, Gwyn.’

Still on his knees, the officer ran his big fingers over the sodden hair of the deceased and almost immediately found what they expected. ‘Swollen at the back — and I can feel a cut, with the bone crackling underneath. No blood, as the water has soaked it off.’ He stood up and wiped his fingers on his tattered tunic. ‘Exactly the same as the others. A hefty whack on the head from behind.’

Thomas, who had kept his distance while they prodded the corpse, left the two lads to come across to them. With a rather furtive glance at the boys, he pointed to the quern, which John still held. ‘That’s part of a hand-mill for corn, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes, a woman’s mill for the cook-house. It sits on another flat stone and she pours grain through the hole, then turns it round with her hands.’

‘Then I know what it means here — the scriptures again,’ said the clerk.

Before he had a chance to explain, Brother Rufus beat him to it. ‘Yes, Crowner, it’s obvious. The Gospels say, “Who so shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea.” ’ He jerked his head significantly in the direction of the two boys.

Thomas glared at the chaplain, outraged that he had stolen his thunder in front of his master. It was his task to interpret for Sir John, not this fat stranger! But worse was to come for the little clerk, as Rufus leaned over to look more closely at the quern. ‘Now that it’s drying, there are marks appearing — there!’ He pointed to some small scratches on the top surface, which appeared as fresh as those on the parapet of the well.

De Wolfe looked at them, but could make no sense of them.

‘Turn it round — they’re upside down this way,’ commanded the monk. ‘Now, see there — they read MT, MK and LK. That can only mean Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Gospels that record those particular words of Jesus Christ.’

‘Yes, St John doesn’t mention it,’ snapped Thomas, but he was too late, the monk had already stolen his glory.

The four men looked at each other then rather covertly at the two boys, who still stood together, watching them warily.

‘Is there no one else in the house?’ asked John.

‘No one. Fitz-William’s wife died in childbed years ago,’ answered Osric. ‘The lads work in the cordwainer’s shop during the day and wait upon the master when they return home. They were orphans, it seems, whom he brought here from a priory near Dorchester a couple of years ago.’

John rubbed his black stubble reflectively. ‘Then for their own sakes they had better be looked after in another priory here. St John’s is but a few yards away and they have almshouses and few orphans, as well as their hospital. I know Brother Saulf, who runs the infirmary. I’m sure he will take them in, at least for the time being.’

He lowered his voice to avoid the boys hearing him. ‘If this millstone business is what we think it means, then some delicate questioning is needed — but not at the moment.’

Together with the nearby hospital of St Alexis, founded by a wealthy city merchant a quarter of a century earlier, the priory of St John cared for most of the sick in Exeter. A mile or so away, the nuns at Polsloe Priory specialised in childbirth and women’s ailments. For the destitute, the aged sick and the beggars, St Alexis was the main refuge, but abandoned or orphaned children usually found a home in a priory or monastery, where they were often brought up to enter the Church.

Brother Saulf, a tall, wiry Saxon, administered the infirmary at St John’s and had helped the coroner on several occasions, the last when Thomas de Peyne had injured himself in his abortive suicide attempt. He sat now with the coroner, Gwyn and Thomas in a small room inside the porch of the priory. Brother Rufus had taken himself off to his little chapel in Rougemont and Osric had gone about his business, which included informing the two Portreeves that the city had just lost one of its burgesses.

The two boys had been delivered to the priory an hour before, and Saulf had settled them down in the refectory until it had been decided what was to be done with them. ‘They are apprentices of a sort, though Harry is very young,’ he explained to de Wolfe. ‘I had a long talk with them and they would like to continue at Fitz-William’s shop, to get themselves a trade for the future.’

‘Will the business survive his death?’ asked John.

‘No doubt of it. He has a partner with an equal share. They have half a dozen craftsmen making shoes in Curre Street,^fn1 as well as the shop in High Street. The lads can carry on there and come back here to sleep until some better arrangement can be made. Maybe eventually the partner can accommodate them at the workplace.’ He gazed candidly at de Wolfe. ‘I think it best if they stayed here for some time, where they can feel safe and not be preyed upon as they were before.’

De Wolfe nodded, understanding. ‘You think it’s true then, that they were maltreated by Fitz-William?’

‘They admitted it to me, softly and reluctantly. He had brought them from Dorchester because they would not be known in the city.’

John had difficulty in suppressing the outrage he felt at two lonely boys being preyed upon by a pederast like Fitz-William. ‘Osric said he had heard rumours about Fitz-William from men in his shop, but there was no proof. He thinks the boys were too cowed to mention anything outside that damned house.’

‘Our killer obviously knew the truth of it,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘For once, I feel he’s done the world a service in getting rid of that bastard.’

‘It should have been through the process of the law, though I agree that dangling from a rope was too good for Fitz-William,’ snapped the coroner.

Saulf brought them back to practicalities. ‘What are we to do with the corpse?’ he asked. ‘It lies in our little mortuary now, but with this weather warming up it won’t last long.’

‘I’ll hold my usual fruitless inquest in the morning, then he can be buried. Osric is finding out whether he has relatives hereabouts. If not, his damned Guild will have to pay for his funeral.’

‘It seems wrong to give such a man a decent plot in the cathedral Close,’ growled Gwyn. ‘He should be left to hang in a gibbet cage until he rots!’

‘We can’t bring a corpse to trial, so he can never be judged guilty.’

‘Don’t worry, he’ll be judged and sentenced by Almighty God,’ promised Brother Saulf, whose voice confirmed his absolute faith in heavenly justice.

‘I wonder what He will make of his killer, though?’ mused de Wolfe.

A modest cavalcade set out from the South Gate shortly after noon on the next day, to meet the King’s Justices and escort them into the city. Ralph Morin, the constable of Rougemont, was in the lead, with a dozen men-at-arms behind him. As Richard de Revelle was eager to make the best impression, they were all in full battle array, even though there had been no fighting in Devon for decades.

Morin made an imposing figure on a big black stallion, his massive frame draped in a long hauberk of chain-mail, each link laboriously shined with fine sand to get rid of the rust. In a round iron helmet with a prominent nose-guard, the huge, bearded man resembled his Norse ancestors. Like the men behind him, he had a huge sword dangling at his waist, hung from the leather baldric over his shoulder, and his left arm was thrust through the loop of a kite-shaped shield. As they trotted proudly through the streets, the older Saxons and Celts they thrust aside had a brief but unpleasant reminder that these were still the invaders who had come with the Conqueror to dispossess them of their land and their heritage.

Behind the military vanguard came the less belligerentlooking members of the procession. The sheriff was first, as the King’s representative in the county. Dressed in a dandified outfit of gold-trimmed green, he rode alongside Thomas de Boterellis, who had been told by the Bishop to represent him. Behind him was John de Alençon, appearing for the clergy of the city. His riding companion was Sir John de Wolfe, who as the county coroner ranked immediately behind the sheriff in the pecking order of law officers. Then came the two Portreeves, Henry Rifford and Hugh de Relaga, the latter outshining even de Revelle in a peacock-blue surcoat and feathered cap. The tail-end of the line of horses carried some clerks from the castle and court, as well as a pair of Guild Masters, the whole entourage protected at the rear by Sergeant Gabriel and another six soldiers, also attired in hauberk and helmet.

As they jogged along, harnesses jingling, the horses’ hoofs threw up clouds of dust from the main road. De Wolfe was dressed in his usual black tunic and grey breeches, and was feeling warm under his short wolfskin cape. Unlike most of the others, who wore a variety of headgear, he was bare-headed and his thick jet hair bounced over his collar as Odin steadily thumped his great feet on the track.

As they passed the public execution site on Magdalen Street, free from business on a Monday, the Archdeacon waved at the sinister shape of the empty gallows. ‘Any chance of finding a customer for that, John?’

De Wolfe had told him earlier of the latest killing and its now familiar biblical signature. ‘We have no idea at all. I had hoped that he would make some slip that would help us find him, but there’s been nothing.’

‘The royal judges are not going to be pleased, sitting in a town with a clutch of unsolved murders,’ the Archdeacon said, with a hint of grim satisfaction as he nodded towards the sheriff.

‘That’s why he’s looking so agitated today,’ replied John with a wolfish grin. ‘He has a cartload of problems already — the Dartmoor tinners want to get rid of him as their Warden, the Justices know of his leaning towards Prince John, his accounting for the county “farm” is more than suspect, and now he has four unsolved homicides perpetrated by a city priest.’

The ‘farm’ to which he referred was the total annual tax revenue for Devonshire. It was fixed each year by the King and his ministers, and the sheriff had to ensure its collection from the people, then deliver it in person twice a year to the royal treasury in Winchester. If he could screw more out of the population than the agreed amount he could keep the excess — which was why so many candidates, including barons and bishops, competed fiercely, with bribes and inducements, whenever a sheriff’s post fell vacant. Some nobles even managed to be sheriff of two or more counties at the same time!

The cavalacade trotted on for a few more miles along the road towards Honiton, the first town to the east. The countryside was pleasant in the late spring sunshine, primroses and bluebells still abundant. The trees were now in full leaf and white scented mayflower was scattered on the thorn bushes. They passed ox-carts, donkeys, flocks of sheep, squealing pigs and all the usual traffic until eventually, the castle constable spotted a distant cloud of red dust. One of the men-at-arms behind him blew a blast on his horn to signal that the judicial party was in sight. A few minutes later, the two processions met and pulled off into a clearing beneath the trees to make the formal greetings and assemble themselves for the march to Exeter. The sheriff of Somerset had provided a dozen soldiers as an escort from Taunton; they now turned round and made for home. Horses and ponies milled around as the arrivals moved among the Exeter party for the formal arm-grippings and hand-shakings.

De Wolfe knew one of them fairly well — Sir Walter de Ralegh was originally a Devon man — but the others were strangers to him. De Ralegh was an older man in his sixties and had known John’s father. He was a hardfaced individual, his features looking as if they been hacked out of granite with a blunt chisel, but he had a reputation for honesty and was a staunch supporter of King Richard. He introduced de Wolfe to the second judge, Sir Peter Peverel, a wealthy land-owner from Middlesex, who had manors all over eastern England. Peverel reminded de Wolfe of Hugh de Relaga, in that he dressed extravagantly and expensively. A rather stout, dapper man, the coroner felt disinclined to trust him too far, though that was perhaps an unfair judgement on such short acquaintance.

The third was Serlo de Vallibus, a senior clerk from the Chancery. He was a thin, silent man of about forty, with a high forehead and a sparse rim of beard around his sallow face. He wore a plain oatmeal tunic under a brown cotte, which matched the colour of the handsome palfrey he rode.

The last Justice, dressed in cleric’s garb, was deep in conversation with the Precentor, and de Wolfe sidled up to de Alençon while he waited to introduce himself. ‘Do you know this priest, John?’ he asked quietly, inclining his head towards the newcomer. Gervase de Bosco was a small, wiry fellow wearing the black robe of an Augustinian canon. Like Thomas de Peyne, he rode side-saddle, though on a better mare than Thomas’s dismal pony.

‘He is my counterpart in Gloucester, though when he has any time for any episcopal duties, heaven alone knows! He’s always off indulging in politics or sitting in judgement.’

‘Is he a fair-minded man?’

‘I’ve heard nothing to the contrary. He’s no lover of the Prince, so that’s something in his favour.’

When the greetings were finished, they set off on the hour’s ride back to Exeter, the newcomers pairing off with the locals in the procession. They were followed by the dozen court clerks and servants who had accompanied the justices and a few more were way behind with the two wagons that hauled their personal belongings and documents. The carts were slower than the horses and part of Ralph Morin’s contingent stayed with them as escort.

De Wolfe rode with Walter de Ralegh, and the two Devon-bred men found they had plenty of mutual acquaintances and local topics to make easy conversation.

‘How is this new crowner’s business going, de Wolfe?’ said de Ralegh suddenly.

‘The sheriff doesn’t like it, but that was part of the reason for Hubert Walter setting it up,’ answered de Wolfe wryly.

De Ralegh’s face cracked into a smile. ‘You’re taking business away from his courts into ours, I hear,’ he cackled. ‘Keep up the good work. These bloody sheriffs need bringing to heel — especially this one.’ He dropped his voice, though de Revelle was many yards ahead, gabbling to Peter Peverel, who the sheriff had rapidly identified as the one with most clout at court.

‘I hear you have some murderous problems in the city?’

De Ralegh’s abrupt change of subject caught John by surprise. He had no idea that news of the Gospel killer had spread so rapidly outside Devon, but seeing no reason to conceal or minimise the situation, he gave a detailed account of the four deaths.

‘And the last one was only yesterday, you say? God’s bones, what’s the sheriff doing about it?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. He’s been too concerned with your visit to bother his head with a triviality like multiple murder! He’s left it to me to worry about.’

The justice shook his head in dismay, but what de Wolfe had said was true. After yesterday’s killing of William Fitz-William, he had gone up to Rougemont to inform the sheriff of yet another murder, but all de Revelle had said was ‘Just get on with seeking the villain, John — that sort of challenge is right up your stret, I know,’ as he scanned a roll of parchment.

‘I’m the coroner, not the law-enforcement system of Devonshire!’ de Wolfe had muttered irritably.

‘If you need more help, take some men-at-arms. Ralph Morin will see to it,’ the sheriff had said, with a dismissive wave. ‘You enjoy ferreting out details, so leave me to deal with the important job of running the county,’ he added condescendingly.

De Wolfe knew only too well that de Revelle would be happy enough to take any credit for unmasking the serial killer, but was unwilling to burden himself with any effort to achieve it.

When the party reached the city, the judges were lodged in the New Inn at the upper end of the high street, the only one with separate chambers upstairs to accommodate them. Their servants were housed in Rougemont and the court clerks were distributed among the spare beds in the vicars’ lodgings in the cathedral Close and Priest Street.

John was tempted to go down to the Bush, but thought he had better put in an appearance at home for diplomacy’s sake: Matilda would be winding herself up for the first of the banquets the following evening. As he had anticipated, she was moderately civil and sat opposite him near the empty hearth, sharing a stone bottle of wine. At times like this, John had glimpses of what it must be like to have an amiable wife and a settled home-life, and resolved yet again to try to heal the breach between them. He knew deep down, though, that her abrasive nature and his quick temper were incompatible with the pleasant, ordered existence that some couples seemed to enjoy, but he resolved to keep her sweet for as long as possible this week.

Matilda insisted that he recount every detail of the Justices’ arrival and their entourage, especially what they were wearing. He invented most of it to keep her content, but his account of Peter Peverel’s gaudy fashions was not far from the truth.

He followed up with details of yesterday’s murder, which also grabbed her attention, especially as the victim had been one of the city’s commercial worthies. Through her familiarity with the town gossip, relayed through her cronies at St Olave’s, she was even able to confirm her husband’s suspicions about William Fitz-William’s perverted tendencies with young boys. Many of the women she met at her devotions were the wives of other burgesses and craftsmen and the lifestyle of Fitz-William since his wife’s death had caused tongues to wag.

‘So why didn’t someone do something to save the boys from such evil?’ de Wolfe grunted, aware that he was on dangerous ground by criticising her and her friends.

‘And what could we have done?’ she snapped. ‘Send the constable or the sheriff — or you, for that matter — to his house to ask him if he was committing the sin of Sodom?’

‘Maybe a priest might have been able to turn his heart — or, at least, try to aid the boys. Would your priest Julian Fulk have known of these rumours?’

Matilda stared at him suspiciously. ‘Why do you ask? I heard that you had been to see him. Have you been pestering that good man with useless questions?’

‘We’re just asking prominent priests in the city for any help they might be able to suggest,’ de Wolfe replied diplomatically.

‘Well, you can forget Father Julian,’ she said acidly. ‘If he knew anything useful, he would have come to you or his archdeacon.’

De Wolfe let the subject drop, and after their early-evening meal, he decided to go up to his chamber in the castle to see Gwyn before he left for St Sidwell’s ahead of the gates closing at dusk. It was also useful as an excuse for his intended foray down to see Nesta at the Bush.

As he climbed the last few steps of the steep winding stair in the gatehouse, he heard snuffling noises and Gwyn’s deep tones. Pushing through the sackcloth curtain over the doorway, he came across a curious sight. The big Cornishman was leaning over Thomas, with his arm around his humped shoulders, pulling him against the rough leather of his worn jerkin. As John entered, he grinned sheepishly, embarrassed that his master had caught him comforting the little clerk. For Thomas, when he jerked his face from Gwyn’s large chest, showed unmistakable signs of misery, his eyes moist and his lips quivering. He sniffed and wiped his face with the back of his hand, before scurrying across to his usual stool at the end of the table.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded de Wolfe, speaking gruffly to cover his own discomfort at seeing grown men display emotion — especially Gwyn of Polruan, who was normally about as sensitive as a stone wall.

‘It’s those swine down at the Close. They’ve thrown him out of his lodgings.’

John looked across at his clerk, who was giving an impersonation of a hunted rabbit. ‘Come on, tell me all about it,’ he commanded.

In a small voice choked with emotion, Thomas spilled out the sad story. ‘Two of the vicars and a secondary complained to the canon that they objected to having me — a suspected criminal — in their house. All I have is but a pallet in the servants’ corridor in Canon Simon’s dwelling, but the whispers about this killer have driven me out.’

De Wolfe dropped on to his own stool and thumped the table. ‘Who’s been spreading these malicious rumours?’ he grated. ‘I’ll go down to the Archdeacon and stop this outrage.’

Thomas half rose in terror. ‘No, Crowner! I don’t want my uncle involved any further in my troubles. I don’t think the canon himself wanted to throw me out, but I suspect the vicars were put up to it by someone above them.’

‘And that would be that bloody Precentor, no doubt!’ growled Gwyn.

‘When the real murderer is caught, all this will blow over and I can go back,’ said Thomas, with a marked lack of conviction. ‘But I couldn’t return there now, with this hanging over me.’

De Wolfe looked across at Gwyn and knew that the evil worm burrowing in his mind was also in his officer’s. Though they stoutly defended their clerk against any outsiders, a tiny voice kept whispering that Thomas had no alibi for any of the killings, he was unusually well versed in the scriptures, could use a pen as well as any man in Devon, and undoubtedly was in a disturbed frame of mind.

Guiltily, the coroner shook off these unwelcome thoughts to come to grips with the present problem. ‘We must find you somewhere to sleep until this foolishness is past. Let’s go down to the Bush and I’ll have words with Nesta.’

With Gwyn muttering imprecations under his breath against all priests, from the Pope downwards — and being uncharacteristically gentle with Thomas — they trooped out and made for Idle Lane.