The Manor of Death Read online

  The coroner was required for a number of duties at the shire court, held frequently to settle a variety of criminal and civil cases. He had to call upon 'attached' persons to answer to their bail and, if they failed to appear for four successive courts, declare them outlaw. This particular day, he also had to present various other matters, including several appeals of felony and two criminals who wished to turn 'approver'. There were several forfeitures of the property of hanged felons to register and a number of other administrative tasks, some of which would have to be handed on to the higher court, the Eyre, when it eventually delivered four king's judges to Exeter to try the most serious cases.

  The day passed, with Thomas de Peyne doing sterling work in producing documents and rolls and scribing new material for eventual presentation to the Justices in Eyre. At the end of it, John was content to go home to eat the rest of Mary's large pike for supper and doze with a jug of Loire wine. When his wife vanished to her devotions and her bed, he did not even have the will to get up and go down to the Bush. Ignoring Brutus's accusing eye, he slumped in his chair before the fire and let his mind wander over all his problems, professional and personal, until he finally fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In which Crowner John rides to Honiton

  Next morning it was almost a replay of the previous Tuesday, as Hugh Bogge, the Keeper's clerk, again turned up at Rougemont soon after the eighth hour, having left Honiton as dawn lightened the eastern sky. His message was also similar, in that he came to summon the coroner to the scene of a violent death.

  'Not a strangled young shipman this time,' he announced with morbid relish. 'A packman with his head stove in! But Sir Luke thinks there might be a connection between them.'

  In spite of his three-hour ride, Bogge was quite willing to travel back with them after a bite to eat and a change of horse. By noon they had retraced the fourteen miles of relatively good road back to Honiton, even Thomas keeping up a decent pace on his new rounsey. De Wolfe and Gwyn had become so frustrated by his tardiness on the old broken-winded pony that John had dipped into the sheriff's expense fund and bought a dappled palfrey for the clerk.

  They rode into the large village along its straight main street that was part of the Fosse Way, until Hugh Bogge led them down a side track that joined the road to Wilmington and Axminster, where the Keeper of the Peace lived. The cottages and shacks of Honiton petered out after a few hundred paces and, beyond a few strip-fields on either side, trees began again, patches of woodland at first, then denser forest beyond. Just where the last length of ploughed land gave way to a copse of beech and ash, John saw a cluster of people about twenty yards off the road.

  'That's the place, Crowner,' said Hugh, his fat face almost glowing with excitement. He obviously relished being a Keeper's clerk, savouring the minor dramas that went with the job.

  As they rode up and dismounted, they could see that Luke de Casewold was holding court amongst a handful of villagers. Some held a rake or hoe in their hands and seemed to have been working in the adjacent fields, where early oats and barley were showing green, as well as young bean and pea plants. After tying their horses' reins to convenient saplings, the four newcomers went along the edge of the trees to the group, and de Wolfe pushed his way past the yokels to confront the Keeper.

  'A dead packman, your clerk said?' he growled by way of a greeting.

  Luke de Casewold pointed down to a shallow depression in the ground, an old pit half-filled with moss and new nettles.

  'Hardly merits being called a packman, though I'm told he was more respectable once upon a time.'

  In the hole, partly obscured by the new spring weeds, was a body lying face up, his glassy eyes staring at the midday sun. A few bluebottles buzzed around the bloody fluid around the battered lips, and John could see that there were already yellow fly eggs on the eyelids. The face was badly bruised and one ear was half torn from the side of the head.

  'You say you know who he is, then?' demanded the coroner.

  'A well-known pedlar in these parts by the name of Setricus Segar,' replied Luke. 'Tramps the roads of Dorset and Devon trying to earn the price of his ale, on which he seems to live instead of solid food. '

  De Wolfe looked down at the pathetic figure crumpled in what was almost a ready-made grave. Hard as he was from years of fighting and killing, as well as the morbid tasks of a coroner, he could not but feel a twinge of pity for this wreck of a man having come to such a dismal end.

  'Then it's unlikely that he was robbed for his purse, if he was as poor as you suggest,' he said. 'What about his pack or whatever he carried to sell his wares?'

  Another man spoke up this time, introducing himself as Edgar, bailiff of Honiton. He was a tall, fair man of obvious Saxon blood, dressed in a short serge tunic and cross-gartered breeches. 'That's the odd thing, sir! His pack wasn't worth two bent pennies, just a few pins and needles and some creased cloths. But it was found untouched a mile from here, hidden under the hedge at the side of the road.'

  'Is this how he was found?' John waved a hand at the cadaver.

  'Indeed it was, Crowner,' said the bailiff. 'We know better in Honiton than to move a body before you are summoned,' he added virtuously. 'One of these men found him last evening when he was dumping weeds from the field.'

  'Do we know when he was last seen alive?'

  'A carter from Seaton said he saw Setricus in Wilmington the day before yesterday, trying to sell his wares.'

  Gwyn, who had stepped into the hole and was testing the dead man's limbs, looked up. 'Stiff as a plank! With these fly eggs, but no maggots yet, I reckon he died the night before last, if he was seen the day before that.'

  De Wolfe nodded at his officer. 'Have a good look at him, Gwyn. See how much of a battering he's suffered.'

  Then he turned around beckoned Luke away from the ring of locals who were gawping down at Gwyn's examination.

  'Why do you think there might be some connection with the death in Axmouth?' he muttered, out of hearing of the others.

  De Casewold's chubby face was pink with excitement as he expounded his theory. Like his clerk, he obviously thrived on mysteries and violent intrigue.

  'It was where the pack was found, John! It was hidden in the hedge just outside a ruined toft down the road. No one lives there, but there were signs that someone had been using it very recently. And there were cartwheel tracks in the track alongside the hovel, as well as fresh ox-droppings in the pasture.'

  The coroner disliked this man using his Christian name so familiarly, but he concentrated on trying to extract some sense out of what he was telling him. 'What has that got to do with our corpse down on the Axe?' he growled.

  The Keeper leant forward, as if imparting some great secret. The sour breath from his bad teeth made John move back sharply, but he listened intently to his deductions.

  'I'm sure there are illicit goods coming into the harbour there - but they have to be shifted inland. The only way to move heavier stuff is by cart, probably at night so as not to make it too obvious.'

  'So what has this to do with a dead pedlar?'

  'Maybe he was too nosy - or tried to steal something from them. Why else would anyone want to beat a penniless drunk to death?'

  John thought the notion unlikely but not impossible - and he had no better theory to offer. 'I'd better have a look at this place - a mile away, you say?'

  De Casewold nodded, but just then Gwyn gave a shout.

  'His head's been cracked like an egg, Crowner. Hit with something hard and heavy, I reckon.'

  Even Thomas, who usually hung back when his big colleague was ministering to the dead, moved to the edge of the hole with Hugh Bogge to see what Gwyn had found. He saw a long gash in the greying hair of the scalp, as long as a man's hand.

  'Surely that must be from a sword or big knife?' he quavered, a hand to his mouth.

  Gwyn guffawed and poked his finger into the gash to feel the broken plates of bone grinding against each other.
'No, you don't need a sharp weapon for this! A good smack with a club or a bit of tree-branch will split the scalp as clean as a whistle!'

  As Thomas cringed and moved back from the pit, the coroner joined his officer and between them they looked at the corpse in more detail. Pulling up the threadbare clothing, they found bruises all over the belly and chest, many fractured ribs being felt under the thin skin of the emaciated pedlar. When they had finished, John told the bailiff to have the corpse carried the short distance back into Honiton, where he would hold an inquest in the churchyard in a couple of hours. Leaving Gwyn and Hugh Bogge to organise a jury, he motioned to Thomas and they joined the Keeper in a short expedition to the ruined cottage. Their horses covered the distance in a few minutes and they alighted at a semi-ruined hovel set on its own in a half-acre of overgrown land.

  'Probably was lived in by some free tradesman from the village,' observed de Casewold. 'Long abandoned, by the looks of it. Perhaps he died without sons.' The mouldy thatch had caved in in places, causing one end wall to partly collapse, where the rain had dissolved the cob, a mixture of clay, straw and manure. The Keeper pointed to fresh-looking ruts that led in from the road to the side of the cottage, and de

  Wolfe saw for himself the ox-droppings on the rough grass nearby.

  'Where's this pack of his?' he grunted.

  'I left it inside. We can have a look around - perhaps they left something.'

  What they had left were the ashes of a recent fire and a stink of urine. The three investigators got in by pushing down a decrepit door whose leather hinges had rotted through. Thomas pointed to a crust of bread on the floor.

  'That can't have been there long, otherwise rats and mice would have devoured it.'

  The pack belonging to Setricus Segar did not detain them long. It was a poor haversack of canvas, containing several leather rolls with pins and needles, a bundle of faded ribbons and some folded lengths of woollen and serge cloth.

  'We are little the wiser, Keeper,' observed de Wolfe as they came back out into the sunlight. 'Does no one in Honiton know of this mysterious cart that travels by night?'

  Luke shrugged. 'Those who know, won't tell! And when the cart appears by daylight, who is to mark it from a score of others that ply up and down the roads every day? This is the direct track from Axminster to Honiton and Exeter.'

  As they jogged back towards the village, the coroner persisted in questioning Luke about his conviction that Axmouth was involved. 'Why do you think that they are shifting illegal merchandise from there?' he asked. 'No doubt most ports try to evade some of the duty due to the Exchequer, but is Axmouth any different from the rest?'

  The Keeper looked slyly across at John. 'I'm sure that it's more than just dodging the tally-man now and then - though I know he's as bent as a shepherd's crook. I feel it in my bones that there are people with blood on their hands involved in some of this trade - and both this hawker and the lad from that cog were silenced to keep their mouths shut.'

  Further questioning produced nothing in the way of proof, but de Casewold seemed adamant that some nefarious business was being run from the port on the estuary of the Axe. John wondered if some of the man's obsession was due to his personal dislike of Edward Northcote and the portreeve.

  They stopped at one of Honiton's several taverns for a bowl of potage and some bread and meat, then John held his inquest, another futile exercise in which he cajoled a dozen bewildered locals to bring in a verdict of felonious killing by persons unknown. Disgruntled by the inevitable imposition of the murdrum fine at the next Eyre, as it was obvious that no presentment of Englishry could be made over the body of Setricus, the jury dispersed, grumbling at the iniquity of the village having to find five marks just because some bloody pedlar got himself killed on their territory.

  As Thomas packed up his writing materials after inscribing the lacklustre proceedings on his rolls, de Wolfe had a last word with the Keeper of the Peace before they parted in opposite directions, Luke to his home in Axminster and John back to Exeter.

  'What are you going to do about this notion you have concerning Axmouth?' he grunted.

  De Casewold lowered his voice and looked around, though there was no one within twenty paces. 'I intend to find this damned cart - or one like it, travelling at night. If I can arrest the driver, I'll soon make the bastard talk!'

  For a short fat man, well past his prime as a sword-wielding knight, Luke seemed very confident of his prowess as a thief-catcher, and de Wolfe, though he disliked the man, hoped that he was not going to do something foolhardy and put himself in danger. Unlike his own bodyguard Gwyn, the Keeper's clerk, Hugh Bogge, would be about as much use in a fight as a bladder of lard. Still, there was nothing that he could do about it, and with a perfunctory wave he wheeled his horse about and set off back to the city and the prospect of another dismal evening with his wife.

  The following day was not only a Sunday but Palm Sunday, when Matilda began her orgy of devotions for the coming Holy Week with three attendances at the cathedral and one at the 'parish' church of St Olave's.

  To be exact, there were no formal parishes in Exeter, but the twenty-seven churches served numerous small areas within the city walls, some catering for only a handful of households within their shadow. The cathedral was not meant to provide for the general public, apart from the great festivals, being a place where continuous worship of the Almighty was maintained by the priesthood at their nine services each day. Palm Sunday was one of the occasions when the great church of St Mary and St Peter put on a show, with a procession not only within the precincts but around the city itself.

  John was not an enthusiastic churchgoer, but every few weeks and on the major religious festivals he stirred himself to accompany his wife, mainly out of a sense of duty and propriety. This day, he donned his best grey tunic and a short black cloak, both of them displaying the only colours he ever wore, to Matilda's eternal disgust. She would have preferred him to be more colourful, like the majority of upper-class citizens, but he was obdurate in his choice of clothes.

  Matilda had already been to a service at Prime, before the eighth hour, but now urged him out of the house an hour later to watch the procession before Lauds and High Mass. A great winding serpent of figures came out of the West Front of the cathedral, bearing crosses and banners as incense was wafted about. The canons and vicars, the secondaries, choristers and the parish priests preceded the portreeves, burgesses and guild wardens as the cortege chanted and sang its way around the Close to the Palace Gate and out into the streets to perambulate the city.

  When the procession finished its circuit, it came back into the cathedral to celebrate Lauds, Matilda and John joining the throng to enter the huge building. As they stood with hundreds of others on the bare flagstones of the great nave, watching and listening to the arcane performance of the quire and canons beyond the carved screen, Matilda nudged her husband with an elbow.

  'That's the one you were asking about, over there with the wife wearing the red-velvet mantle'

  John looked across a few heads and saw a tall dark-haired man dressed in an expensive green tunic under a long surcoat of cream wool. 'Who is he?' he muttered, not understanding what she was talking about.

  'That's Robert de Helion, the manor-lord of Bridport and a very rich merchant,' she murmured impatiently. 'You said he was the owner of that ship you were concerned about.'

  De Wolfe stared again, as this was the man he wanted to speak to about the cog The Tiger, which had not yet returned to Axmouth, as far as he was aware. He resolved to go and visit the man in the very near future, though Easter Week was a difficult time to conduct official business.

  Soon, the service came to its climax with the High Mass, and before long John found himself outside again, on the steps at the West Front. He hung about awkwardly while his wife gossiped with her cronies, which seemed mainly an opportunity for them to show off their new clothes and their old husbands, if they were men of note or successful at com
merce. Matilda had long ago given up trying to inveigle John into these huddles to display him as the king's coroner, and he stood silently on the margins, hunched like some large black crow in his sombre raiment. Eventually, the groups and cliques dispersed and they made their way home to Mary's dinner, before Matilda made off again to St Olave's for another round of kneeling and praying.

  De Wolfe declined to suffer any more religion that day and, after taking Brutus down to Exe Island for a run around on the grassy mudflats, he came home and slept in front of his beloved hearth until Matilda returned in time for supper. To him, the inertia of the Sabbath was a boring interruption of the week's work, and as he nodded off into slumber he resolved to do all he could in the coming days to get to the bottom of the murderous problems in the east of the county.

  When the new week began, the coroner's plans to pursue the Axmouth mystery were frustrated by new cases. First of all, he had to spend a full day in Crediton, investigating a house fire in which a man was killed by a falling beam when he tried to rescue his treasure chest. On Tuesday morning, after attending three hangings out at the gallows in Heavitree, he had a summons to ride to Totnes, where a felon awaiting execution had escaped with the connivance of the gaolers and had sought sanctuary in the nearest church. The fugitive had already spent twenty of his allotted forty days' grace sitting near the altar, to the annoyance of the priest, but now wished to abjure the realm. John had to ride down there with his officer and clerk and go through the ritual of confession, then send the man, arrayed in sackcloth and carrying a crude wooden cross, down to Dartmouth to catch the first ship that could take him out of England.

  With insufficient daylight to ride back home that night, he claimed lodging in Totnes Castle, an impressive circular fortification perched above the town, before setting off next day. It was late on Wednesday afternoon when they arrived back in Exeter at the end of the twenty-five-mile journey, and after enduring a stony-faced Matilda, who always complained when he spent a night away, he felt too tired to stir himself after supper to tramp down to the Bush. Though his boil had subsided, the long ride had made it ache, so he was glad to crawl into his bed as soon as it grew dark, ignoring the snores of his wife on the other side of the wide mattress. He knew that this new series of absences from the tavern in Idle Lane would not endear him to Nesta and promised himself that he would get down there on the following day, come what may.