Figure of Hate Page 30

  'Everything went well, I'm happy to report,' said Reginald in his correct, formal way. 'Your charming wife survived the voyage with only a touch of mal de mer, though her poor maid seemed to wish herself dead before we reached Barfleur.'

  John wondered how Reginald had come to regard Matilda as charming, but he decided that there was no accounting for taste.

  'And she reached her family without incident?' he asked.

  'I delivered her to their threshold myself. They seemed surprised to see her arrive.'

  That must be the understatement of the year, thought John, but he thanked de Charterai solemnly for his kindness and chivalry, before the Frenchman edged his horse away from the rest of the group a little and leant forward in his saddle to speak more confidentially.

  'Have you made any more progress over the death of either of the Peverels?' he asked in a low voice. 'Avelina is more convinced than ever that her husband was murdered.'

  John explained that he had had no opportunity to communicate with the Wiltshire sheriff or coroner, as he had been away - but he felt that after this lapse of time and with the absence of any physical evidence there was little that could be done. As for Hugo's death, there seemed to be a conspiracy of silence in Sampford, as far as the family was concerned.

  'Tell me,' he added. 'Does Lady Avelina know of any reason why the former sheriff, Richard de Revelle, seems to so earnestly cultivate the friendship of the remaining brothers? You will be aware that his reputation is not without flaws.'

  This was another understatement, but de Charterai nodded understandingly.

  'Your wife regaled me with some of the facts on the journey. I feel sorry for her, especially as your legitimate role in the matter could not have helped. But as to his presence in Sampford, Avelina can think of no reason but de Revelle's desire to get hold of that parcel of land that he so covets.'

  He looked over his shoulder at his mature lady love, then continued. 'But do not think that he is wooing all three Peverels! Ralph seems his main target, as Odo, like his father before him, wishes to keep the manor intact. And like most of us, de Revelle appears to think that Joel is an empty-headed wastrel. It is Ralph that he wants to succeed to the lordship, as then he will have the power to grant him these disputed acres.'

  After some more polite conversation and John's promise to keep Reginald informed of any developments, the two parties disentangled their mounts and continued on their way. After a few hundred yards, Gwyn looked over his shoulder at the retreating figure of the stately Frenchman, then raised his bushy eyebrows at his master.

  'He's a deep one, that! I still wouldn't put it past him to pay back the insults that Hugo Peverel laid on him, both in the tourney field and in that banquet. So don't cross him off your list yet, Crowner!'

  Just as the coroner was wrong about finding Reginald in Tiverton, so he was-wrong about next seeing Robert Longus in Exeter for the inquest.

  On the second morning after his visit to Sampford, the bells had barely finished ringing for terce, sext and nones at about the ninth hour, when there was a repetition of the familiar pattern of a lone horseman clattering up to the gatehouse with an urgent message for the coroner. .

  This time it was not the reeve but an ostler sent by the bailiff, to distance the latter a little from the displeasure of the Peverels for meddling in their manorial independence.

  'The girl Agnes, sir, she was found dead in the millstream this morning. Walter Hog thinks you should be told about it straight away,' the man announced in his strong rural accent.

  John de Wolfe rarely felt much emotion about his deceased customers, but this unexpected news saddened and angered him. He assumed straight away that this would be no accident, and he thought of the placid but intelligent girl who, after nothing but fifteen years of unremitting toil, poverty and abuse, had ended up dead in a brook. Within the hour, they were on their way back to Sampford, with Thomas and Eustace trying to keep up with Gwyn and the coroner as they went at a brisk trot along the shortest route to the troubled manor. By dinner time, they had reached the village and saw the bailiff and a few of his men waiting for them at the edge of the green, opposite the church. There was no sign of the Peverels and de Wolfe was in no hurry to have them ranting their protests at him.

  'Is the poor maid still where she was found?' he demanded, as he slid from Odirr's back.

  'We had to pull her from the water to make sure of who she was, but the body is lying on the bank,' explained Walter Hog, motioning two of the men to take the horses away for hay and water. Leading the way, he took the coroner's party across the track and down a steep lane at the side of the churchyard, which led down into the little valley below.

  'So she didn't go in at the mill?' snapped John, knowing from his previous visits that this was farther upstream.

  'No, this is the run-off from the wheel, quite a way down. Shallow it is here, except when there's heavy rain.'

  Below a small wooden bridge at the bottom, the brook was only a few feet wide and could easily be waded, but the bailiff took them under some trees and walked along the muddy bank for fifty paces to where a wide, deeper pool was formed where some rocks and a fallen tree had partly dammed the stream. On the edge, under a willow turning brown, was a still body, lying face up on the weeds. Standing near by was Agnes's mother, red eyed and being comforted by a shabbily dressed man who he assumed was her father. John muttered some platitudes of sympathy, which were none the less sincere for their gruffness, then crouched over the pathetic remains of the young woman. She wore a better kirtle than the ragged one he had seen her in before, so her mother must have made use of the two pence that he had given her for the purpose. It was mud-stained on the front and the upper half was soaking wet.

  'She was found by a woman picking watercress, soon after dawn,' explained WaIter. 'The poor girl was face down in the trout pool, her hair all streaming out in the current. Most of her body was on the bank - I can't understand how she could drown like that.'

  John looked up at Gwyn, who nodded back.

  'This was no drowning, Bailiff! Look at her neck!' The victims face-was tinted violet and seemed slightly swollen, even allowing for her normal chubbiness. Around her neck, just above her Adam's apple, was a band of pinkish skin about half an inch wide. Below it, her neck was pale by contrast with the livid colour above.

  'She's not been drowned, man - she's been strangled! By a ligature pulled tight around her throat.' The mother burst into tears and her husband awkwardly pulled her to his chest and patted her back. Thomas, full of compassion as usual, knelt by the corpse, crossed himself a few times, then went to the woman and began murmuring consoling words to her and her husband;

  'We can't examine her here, especially with them looking on,' muttered de Wolfe to Gwyn.

  'The church is nearest, let's get her there,' suggested the Cornishman.

  With scant ceremony, apart from John taking off his cloak to cover her, Agnes was carried in Gwyn's great arms like a baby, back up the hill and into the church, where Father Patrick appeared from the sacristy, flushed in the face and smelling of brandy wine.

  Waiter Hog and another man lowered the bier from where it was suspended from the rafters by ropes and laid the girl's body upon it, this time near the back of the chancel away from the altar.

  'We'll only look at the head and neck for now,' grunted John, with a delicacy that belied the appearance of these large, gruff men. 'WaIter, you can get some village woman later - perhaps the one who acts as midwife - to check the rest of the body, to make sure she's not been roughly violated.'

  Thomas had finished his pastoral efforts with the mother and came in with Eustace on his heels, to peer around John as he made a more thorough examination of the dead girl. As Gwyn lifted her head, he looked at the back of the neck, where the red band continued around the nape, crossing over in the centre. At the front and sides, it was sharply demarcated on the skin, with a line of tiny red spots along the upper edge.

  'Plenty
of blood in the skin and eyes,' observed Gwyn, pointing at the outer eyelids, which were peppered with a fine red rash, and at the whites of the eyes, which were visible under the half-closed lids. Here there were angry bright red haemorrhages, and in the skin of the face, especially around the jaw-line, were dotted bleeding points under the congested skin.

  'Even some crusted blood in the nose and one of the ears,' piped up Eustace, who was avidly taking in the dramatic scene. Thomas, whose interest in the signs of violent death was non-existent compared to the others', drifted off and went to talk to the rather unsteady parish priest, who stood uncertainly in the middle of the beaten-earth floor of the nave.

  'Do you know anything of this, Father?' he asked. The Irishman shook his head slowly and spoke as if his tongue were too large for his mouth. 'Only that she was found in the stream early today. Her mother, God give her peace, told me that she did not come home last night, but I am afraid that that was nothing new for Agnes, if she found a man with a penny to spare.'

  He seemed fuddled and could offer nothing else useful, so reluctantly Thomas went back to where Eustace was avidly following the coroner's pronouncements. With the bailiff and his assistant also looking on, Gwyn and John were closely studying the mark around the neck.

  'A narrow belt or strap,' declared Gwyn. 'Not a cord or a rope, as there's no twisted pattern and the edges are too regular.'

  De Wolfe grunted, which could signal agreement or dissent. Then his long forefinger pointed to three places on the mark, one under the angle of the jaw on the left side, another under the point of the chin and the third beneath the right ear.

  'These look too squared off to be mere chance,' he snapped. 'There's something on the strap at those points. '

  'What help is that, sir?' ventured Eustace de Relaga. 'If we can find a strap with something fixed to it exactly at those points, then it might well be the instrument of the poor child's death.'

  Privately, Gwyn thought this a slim chance, but he kept his opinion to himself. There was nothing else to find and Thomas persuaded the tipsy priest to find an old cassock in the sacristy to cover up the corpse, to allow John to reclaim his wolfskin.

  'Best bring the mother in here to keep vigil over her daughter for a time,' suggested de Wolfe. For some reason, the killing of the poor wash-house skivvy had pulled at his heart more than the usual run of pathetic deaths that he dealt with week in, week out.

  He marched out of the church, leaving Thomas to say some prayers over the body, in default of any help from Father Patrick.

  'Have your masters in the hall been told of this?' he asked Walter Hog.

  'Indeed they have, Crowner. Sir Odo seemed quite concerned, but Ralph just shrugged and said she had probably tried to steal an extra penny off a customer and got herself choked for her impertinence. As for Joel, he just sniggered at Ralph's explanation and told Roger Viel that he'd better look for another laundry maid if he wanted clean cloths on the table tonight.'

  John's opinion of the two younger brothers fell even more, but their callous indifference was none of his business. Discovering who killed Agnes certainly was, and he strode towards the manor-house compound with grim determination. As they marched through the wide gate in the stockade around the bailey, Gwyn wanted to know how they were going to set about things.

  'We've had little success with anything else so far in this damned place,' he said critically. 'No doubt everyone will again claim to have been deaf and blind this last day or so, with nothing at all to tell us.'

  As he stamped up the steps to the hall doorway, John half turned to his officer.

  'We've got two suspects who may already have killings to their discredit. Robert Longus and his stupid crony Alexander are high on our list of suspects for August Scrape, so let's start with them as candidates for the girl.'

  'I'd like to add bloody Ralph to that list, for he's a nasty enough bastard to have got rid of his brother to gain the lordship,' boomed Gwyn, careless as to whether anyone heard him inside the hall. The only one in sight, however, was the steward, Roger Viel, sitting at a table with a roll of accounts before him. Apart from the priest and Odo Peverel, he was probably the only inhabitant of Sampford who was able to read and write, a' necessity for the administrator of a large manor.

  He rose to meet them, anxiety written over his lined face as yet another death brought the King's coroner to the village. After greeting them and calling to a servant behind the far screens to bring food and drink, he invited them to sit at his table, where they were joined by the bailiff, Thomas and Eustace. There was still no sign of any-of the masters and mistresses of the house - the steward said thatJoel had gone off riding with Lady Beatrice and Avelina was in Tiverton visiting Sir Reginald.

  'I've no notion where Sir Odo and Ralph might be.

  They are probably somewhere about the bailey,' he concluded, but almost as he spoke Ralph Peverel stalked into the hall, slapping his thigh with a pair of leather gloves. Judging by his boots and cloak, he had been riding, and when Robert Longus appeared behind him, carrying a battered shield and a sword, it seemed obvious that Ralph had been training for the coming tournaments at Bristol and Wilton. On a previous visit, John had noticed an area just outside the stockade where the grass was churned into a welter of hoof marks and where two rotating tilts were set up for lance practice.

  He strode arrogantly across to the table and stood with his fists on his hips, glaring at John de Wolfe. 'By Christ's wounds, Crowner, are you pestering us again? I'll have to start charging you rent if you spend much more time here!'

  His attempt at sarcastic levity was lost on the dour coroner.

  'You know damned well why I'm here, Peverel! Another murder in Sampford and I suppose you know nothing about it and care even less!'

  Ralph flushed with anger.

  'You have no call to speak like that to the lord of a manor - especially before my servants!'

  'In my eyes, you are not the lord of this manor until the justices declare it to be so,' retorted de Wolfe. 'Now then, have you anything to tell me about the strangling of this poor girl?'

  Ralph walked to the next table and threw himself into one of the three chairs that the hall boasted.

  'What should I know about the throttling of some wash-house drab? You know her reputation. Undoubtedly some disgruntled customer from the village took exception to something she did - or didn't do!'

  He said this with such uncaring nonchalance that John felt like shaking him until his teeth rattled. 'You do not find it a coincidence that this is the same girl that your brother lay with on the night that he was slain?' he said sarcastically.

  Ralph seemed to have an answer for everything. 'Why should it be? We do not have so many whores in this village that the same one should not be at risk with men who wish to slake their passions.'

  'Could it not be that someone, like yourself, who declared that the girl was the killer of your brother, took the law into their own hands?'

  'The law should be in our own hands, Crowner! This is a manor with all the rights of manorial custom. We told you at the outset that we did not want your interference from Exeter, but could settle this ourselves. '

  John glared at the younger man, whose arrogance and insolence seemed to increase by the day.

  'Are you confessing to having taken the law into your own hands? Did you kill this girl, Peverel?'

  'Don't be so damned foolish, de Wolfe! D'you think I'd soil my hands on the dirty offspring of a serf? And if I had, would I be daft enough to admit it to you?'

  The coroner turned around slowly and looked back down the hall towards the door, where Robert Longus was still standing, the weapons trailing from his hands. He glared back defiantly, his hard face devoid of any expression within the rim of beard that encircled it.

  'I want to search the dwelling of your armourer - and his assistant, Alexander Crues.' John spoke over his shoulder to Ralph, who immediately jumped up and stalked over to the coroner.

  'What in h
ell's name for?' he shouted. 'Have you not intruded enough into our affairs? This is too much, I forbid you to interfere any further!'

  De Wolfe glowered back at the angry man. Gwyn saw that his patience with Ralph Peverel was wearing thin and his fingers wandered unconsciously towards his sword hilt, in case this developing feud got out of hand.

  'Are you defying me, sir? Remember that no one is above the King's law, not even manor-lords!'

  'I have friends in high places, Crowner, you will hear more of this! Why on earth should you wish to ransack this man's quarters, other than from spite and prejudice?'

  'Longus has been accused by a respectable silvercraftsman of being a robber and a murderer,' retorted John. 'Only your word now stands in contradiction, since your brother is dead.'

  The escalating battle of words was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Odo, who came through the door that led upstairs. As he had been said to be outside in the bailey, John realised that he must have entered through the postern door 'from the kitchens. In his temper, Ralph seemed to forget that he was not supposed to be speaking to his elder brother and burst out with his complaints about the coroner.

  'He wants to search the place, brother! This is becoming intolerable!'

  Odo turned a calmer face towards John, though it was still disapproving of this outside interference.

  'I fail to see how that can throw any light on the murder of this poor girl,' he said critically. 'But as the innocent have nothing to hide, I see no objection to pandering to his whims.'

  With this backhanded agreement, Odo went to the far end of the room and poured himself some ale from a large crock, taking no further interest in the argument. Ralph simmered with anger as he watched de Wolfe walk back to Robert Longus to question him.

  'We meet sooner than I thought! Can you account for where you were throughout last night?'

  'I was in the inn until two hours or so after sunset, then in my bed until dawn. I'm not married, so I've no wife to vouch for me!'

  This was delivered with thinly veiled insolence, in the expectation that Ralph would support him in everything he said.