Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries) Read online

  ‘He appointed me on the orders of King Richard!’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Are you challenging royal authority? That smacks of treason, sir!’

  An expression of sullen obstinacy came over Godard’s plain face. ‘I’m challenging nothing – but the right to appoint one sheriff for London and another for Middlesex was granted by the first King Henry when he granted the city its charter. If you want to dispute that, then take the matter to the mayor, to whom I am responsible.’

  ‘I may do just that!’ rasped the coroner, his simmering anger now rising to boiling point. ‘But that will take time, and in this blistering heat that cadaver will start to stink, especially as it has already spent a night in this putrid river!’

  The sheriff considered this for a moment, stroking his full belly with one hand as an aid to thought.

  ‘I’m a reasonable man, Sir John. I accept your point about the likely dissolution of the corpse in this weather,’ he said mildly. ‘Why do we not examine him together, then at least your mind will be assuaged about the cause of death?’

  Somewhat reluctantly, de Wolfe grunted an agreement, but did not give in completely. ‘What about getting the fellow back to Westminster? He is in minor orders and deserves a proper funeral before he turns green!’

  ‘I still wish to hold my own enquiry, as is the city’s right,’ declared Godard pedantically. ‘After that, you can do what you like with him.’

  De Wolfe managed to hold his tongue until after he had had the opportunity to look at the corpse. Then he intended petitioning the Chief Justiciar to kick a few backsides in the city of London, even if Hubert was out of favour with those belligerent bastards who lived in this swarming hive on the edge of the Thames.

  The sheriff began walking to the cart, his two officers reluctantly moving aside to let the coroner’s team through.

  Edwin once again identified the body to the sheriff, to legalise the enquiry that the Londoner was insistent upon.

  ‘You say he was stabbed, not drowned?’ demanded Godard, in his rather high-pitched voice. ‘I see no blood?’

  ‘He’s been washed in the damned river for the better part of a day,’ snapped John, his patience at breaking point. More calmly, he forced himself to explain the whole circumstances. ‘We happened to see the culprit running away, but we had no chance to catch or even recognise him,’ he added.

  Almost automatically, Gwyn began to step forward to perform his usual task of removing the clothes from the body, but de Wolfe, with uncharacteristic tact, motioned him back. Instead, William stood forward and once again removed the canvas sheet.

  ‘There should be a wound in his chest or belly,’ said the coroner, as the sheriff bent closer to the corpse. After fiddling with the black garment that covered Basil of Reigate, Godard nodded his agreement. ‘Here, there’s a rent in the cloth, just below his breastbone.’

  John peered more closely until his hooked nose almost touched the stiff wool, the sodden cloth having dried in the sun. As the sheriff pulled the material flat, he saw a tear something over an inch in length in the midline, about two hands’ breadth below the root of the neck.

  William began to pull the long cassock up over Basil’s head, struggling against the stiffness of death that had set in more markedly since the body had been removed from the water.

  Though this intimate examination was being held in the open air, the bailey of Baynard’s Castle was closed to all but those who had business there and there was no audience apart from a few curious men-at-arms who were kept at a distance by the gestures of William’s fellow watchman.

  When the cassock was taken off, a thin undershirt of creased, damp linen was revealed and again there was a similar slit cut in the chest area. ‘Lift it up, man!’ ordered Godard and a moment later, he waved a hand at the pallid skin which so far was free from even early discoloration of corruption.

  ‘There’s your injury, coroner!’ He pointed a finger at the stab wound which was oozing a small amount of blood, but was careful not to touch it. De Wolfe had no such scruples and prised it apart with his two forefingers to look at the edges.

  ‘Blunt at one end, so it was a blade with one sharp edge and a flat back!’ he declared.

  The sheriff looked at him cynically. ‘And how does that help you, sir?’ he asked. ‘There are probably ten thousand such knives within a mile of here.’

  John ignored him and transferred his eagle-eyed inspection to the corpse’s face.

  ‘What are you looking for now?’ asked Godard. ‘The cause of his death is patently obvious!’

  ‘He slipped off the landing stage while he was still bleeding,’ snapped the coroner. ‘Roll him over on to his face,’ he ordered, forgetting his role as an invited observer. William looked at his master, but the sheriff just shrugged and the watchman hoisted up one shoulder of the corpse. As the dead clerk turned over, Gwyn and Thomas, knowing what to look for, bent to watch the face and were rewarded by a flow of pink frothy fluid from the nostrils and mouth.

  ‘Stabbed he might have been, but he went into the river alive and drowning finished him off,’ declared de Wolfe, with a note of satisfaction in his voice.

  Godard of Antioch looked unimpressed. ‘Any wherry-man could have told you that!’ he said ungraciously. ‘What difference does it make? If he’d not been stabbed, he’d not have gone into the river and died, so your mysterious assailant is still a murderer.’

  ‘All information may be useful,’ muttered John obscurely, annoyed that the sheriff was undoubtedly correct.

  They checked that there were no other injuries on the body and William replaced the canvas and wheeled the cart back into the mortuary shed, where at least it would be out of the direct rays of the sun.

  ‘Did he have a scrip on his belt?’ asked de Wolfe.

  ‘A small leather pouch with a purse inside,’ answered the sheriff’s watchman. ‘It held but two silver pennies, so I doubt that he was killed for his wealth.’

  Apart from marvelling that someone had not already stolen the coins since the corpse was recovered from the river, there was nothing else John could do and he turned to the supercilious sheriff.

  ‘Do you still wish to continue with this matter?’ he barked. ‘I fail to see what you can learn here, when the crime was committed almost a couple of miles upriver.’

  ‘I can send my men to Westminster to question you people up there,’ retorted Godard stubbornly.

  ‘I doubt the Chief Justiciar would look kindly on that, sheriff!’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘In fact, I strongly suspect that he will wish to have words with you and your mayor over this apparent conflict of interests.’

  Godard seemed unmoved by this veiled threat. ‘I will record my verdict in the usual way. After you have gone, I will assemble a jury and declare that this man Basil of Reigate was slain at Westminster on yesterday’s date, by persons unknown. That will be the end of the matter.’

  ‘Not for me, it won’t!’ shouted de Wolfe. ‘I will investigate it properly and discover who did this foul act upon a servant of the king. You have been wasting my time, sir – and your own!’

  With a face like thunder, he stalked off across the bailey towards his horse. His three companions trailed after him, leaving the sheriff and his men to their own devices. As John reached Odin and unhitched him from a rail outside the guardroom, the priest, who had remained silent throughout all the exchanges, came hurrying after them, as de Wolfe climbed into his high saddle.

  ‘Sir John, what about the corpse? You said it must be returned to Westminster.’ He was a small man, with a face lined with worry.

  John looked down at him from the back of his patient destrier.

  ‘I will speak to the Keeper and perhaps the Chief Justiciar as soon as I return. They will arrange for the poor fellow to be collected.’ He wheeled Odin around to face the gate.

  ‘Meanwhile, keep him out of this damned sun or they’ll have to collect him in a couple of buckets!’

  That evening, the coroner decided to hav
e his supper in his rented dwelling, rather than in the Lesser Hall. The attraction of the delectable Hawise d’Ayncourt was strong, but he had an uneasy feeling that he might get himself into trouble if he let matters progress too far. He could not quite understand why she still used her own name, when she was married to Renaud de Seigneur, but he decided that was something it was not profitable to pursue.

  Osanna, their obese cook, told them that their meal would not be ready for another hour, so John and Gwyn adjourned to an alehouse on King Street, to quench their thirsts as the heat of the day began to lessen in the early evening. A slight breeze came up the river with the rising tide, bringing with it cooler air, scented with sewage and rotting fish.

  The tavern, alongside the palace gate, had the somewhat irreverent name of ‘The Deacon’, perhaps to offer a weak justification or even an alibi to a number of priests and clerks who often sidled in furtively. It was an old building, built of curved crucks of trees at each pine-end and a lattice of timbers supporting panels made from hazel withies plastered with cog, all in dire need of new limewash.

  There was an upper floor where rooms were let to lodgers, and above that in the loft straw mattresses were rented out at a penny a night for those who wanted cheap communal accommodation. The ground floor was a single large room where ale, cider and cheap wine were dispensed and it was here that Gwyn and his master sat to swallow a quart of a rather indifferent brew. Two stools were placed at an open window, where the shutters were thrown wide to admit the cooler air; a rough plank that acted as a sill formed a convenient shelf for their pottery mugs.

  ‘Thank Christ you talked Osanna out of those eels,’ said Gwyn with feeling. ‘She says now she’s got a decent bit of pork for us.’

  Food and drink figured largely in the Cornishman’s life, along with gambling and a good fight. De Wolfe nodded absently, his mind on other matters. ‘I hadn’t realised how jealous this city of London was about Westminster – though I suspect it works both ways,’ he said ruminatively. ‘When I spoke to the Keeper again this afternoon, you’d have thought that those across the Fleet river were as much our enemies as the bloody French!’

  ‘What’s he going to do about the corpse?’ asked Gwyn, wiping ale from his drooping moustache with the back of his hand.

  ‘He’s done it by now, no doubt. Sent a cart and a couple of palace guards to fetch it back here. He says it can lie in St Stephen’s Chapel tonight until it’s buried in the abbey cemetery tomorrow.’

  ‘What about an inquest – our inquest,’ asked his officer.

  ‘I’ll have to go through the motions in the morning, I suppose,’ replied John without enthusiasm. ‘I’ve already examined the corpse, but the jury will have to see it as well.’

  ‘Who are we going to get for the jury?’

  ‘I trust that Thomas has some names written down. There were those people on the landing stage and the sergeant of the guard, as well as the boy Edwin. We’ll have to make do with those.’

  ‘We don’t have a sheriff to inform here, not like Exeter,’ grumbled Gwyn. ‘It’s all so damned different. Who do you present the inquest roll to, after Thomas has written it?’

  John shrugged. ‘It seems to me that this Verge business was launched without much forethought. The abbot seems to think he runs everything in Westminster, so does the Keeper – and those sods over in the city claim that we’re subject to the county of Middlesex!’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ demanded Gwyn. ‘There’s no point in our sitting on our arses here, with very little to do and no one seeming to care whether we do anything or not. I wish I was back home, to tell the truth!’

  He took another swallow and added, ‘Especially having to put up with this horse-piss, instead of my wife’s or Nesta’s good ale.’ The mention of his former mistress sent John into a pensive reverie. He missed the gentle Welshwoman more than he cared to admit, even though he acknowledged that she had done the right thing by marrying the stonemason. They could never have been more than lovers, skulking to meet when his wife’s back was turned and with no prospect ever of a marriage between a Norman knight and a Welsh tavern keeper.

  There was Hilda of Dawlish, of course, who he loved as well, but now she was on the other side of England – and Matilda, though equally distant, was still his wife, more’s the pity! He was forty-one years of age and felt as lusty as ever – but unless he went whoring, he would have to put up with the frustrations of celibacy. This depressing thought brought the image of Hawise d’Ayncourt into his mind again and he briefly wished that he had forsaken Osanna’s promise of roast pork for another meal in the Lesser Hall.

  He was jerked out of his musing by Gwyn, who had been staring out of the unglazed window at the street outside.

  ‘What’s this? Here’s our favourite dwarf coming.’

  His affectionate slander was directed at Thomas de Peyne, who a moment later sidled into the tavern with a guilty look. Though many clerics were as fond of drink and women as the next man, Thomas was a shy, reserved little fellow, who looked on alehouses as a halfway stop to Hades. His skinny body, slight limp and hunched shoulder made him unattractive to women, except those who wanted to mother him. He was content with a world that revolved around his beloved Church and books of history and learning. His skill with pen, ink and parchment was exceptional and his insatiable curiosity had given him an encyclopaedic knowledge.

  ‘What brings you to this den of iniquity, Thomas?’ asked de Wolfe. ‘Are you pining for our brilliant company or have you something to tell us?’

  Gwyn reached out and dragged another stool for the clerk to sit on. ‘Do you want a cup of wine, Thomas?’ he asked solicitously. ‘It’s lousy stuff, the ale-wife says it’s from the Loire, but I think she means just taken out of the river there!’

  His friend shook his head, declining to compound his visit to a tavern by actually drinking there.

  ‘I just called in to tell you something I heard about the dead man we saw today,’ he said earnestly. He dropped his voice and looked covertly about the taproom, though the other patrons seemed indifferent to their conversation.

  ‘At supper tonight in the abbey refectory, the death of Basil of Reigate was a favourite subject for conversation, as everyone knew that his body had been brought back for burial. Then afterwards, I took a turn around the cloister, as did many others to aid their digestion and gossip some more.’

  ‘Mary, Mother of God, get to the bloody point, will you!’ hissed de Wolfe, who was afraid that Thomas was getting as long-winded as Gwyn when it came to telling a story.

  ‘Well, a novitiate that I know slightly, took me aside and said that he was very distressed, as Basil had been a close friend.’ Thomas hesitated and looked a little embarrassed. ‘In fact, I rather think that they might have been more than good friends, may God forgive them.’

  The coroner was not interested in the morals of Westminster clerics. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Thomas?’ he snapped.

  ‘This young man knew I was the coroner’s clerk and said he wanted to do all he could to bring his friend’s killer to justice. He told me that a few days ago, Basil had confided in him that his life might be in danger because he had overheard a seditious conversation in the palace.’

  Gwyn stared at him through the ginger frizz on his lumpy face.

  ‘What in hell is a “seditious conversation”?’ he grunted.

  ‘And why should it put this Basil in mortal danger?’ added de Wolfe.

  The little clerk wriggled uncomfortably. ‘He was quite vague about this, Crowner,’ he said apologetically. ‘It seems Basil was not very forthcoming about the matter – and then the novitiate, Robin Byard by name, was also quite furtive when he told me.’

  ‘You must know more that that!’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Or why bother to tell us at all?’

  Thomas almost twitched with nervousness at his master’s impatience. ‘It seems that during his duties in the guest chambers, Basil was behind a screen in on
e of the rooms, checking blankets in a chest. Two people came in and were unaware of him, but started speaking of something that would get them hanged if it was made known!’

  ‘So what was this something?’ demanded Gwyn, before John could get out the same words.

  ‘That’s the problem, Basil wouldn’t tell Robin, for fear of putting him in similar jeopardy,’ gabbled Thomas. ‘Neither would he say who the people were.’

  ‘So why did he bother to mention it at all?’ rasped the coroner.

  ‘He wanted help and advice, for it seems that in his anxiety to hear what was said, he tipped over the screen and the two persons saw that he had been listening,’ explained the clerk. ‘Basil gabbled some excuse and ran away, but they obviously knew who he was – and ever since he had been expecting to be silenced – which seems to have happened, for this killing was no robbery.’

  John and Gwyn looked at each other over the rims of their ale mugs. ‘Sounds a tall story, but the fact is that the fellow was stabbed!’ said Gwyn. ‘And you’ve no idea what this secret conversation was about?’

  ‘We’d better have a word with this fellow Byard,’ rumbled John. ‘But why did Basil tell this apprentice monk, rather than someone in authority?’

  ‘He was seeking advice, as he was his best friend,’ said Thomas carefully. ‘Robin Byard told him he must tell either the Guest-Master or the Purveyor – or even the Keeper of the Palace. But Basil said he was afraid he would either be disbelieved or be disciplined for eavesdropping on guests.’

  ‘How did a clerk in the guest house come to be so friendly with a Benedictine novitiate?’ asked John suspiciously.