The Poisoned Chalice (15 page)

‘Steady, boy! What earthly good could that do, except to get you into trouble? We have no proof at all that Godfrey knows anything about this.'

Edgar subsided into muttering under his breath, but Picot took up the theme. ‘He is an evil man. I know that from the way he treats his wife – he is unfaithful to her at every opportunity. The poor woman made a bad bargain when she married him. He harried his first wife into an early grave.'

Joseph smiled wanly at his friend, because he knew his secret – as did half the city. The attractive wife of the silversmith had been Picot's lover for at least half a year and it was also no secret that she heartily disliked her husband. Edgar, who was as perceptive as his father when he forgot his own self-interest, looked from one to the other. ‘It's all right, Father, I know about Eric's affair with Mabel Fitzosbern, you don't have to keep things from me as if I was a child.' Joseph rolled his eyes at Picot. ‘It seems common knowledge, Eric, like the crowner and his Welsh doxy. Let's hope that Godfrey isn't aware of it.'

‘I don't give a damn if he is. I mean to take her away from him one day,' said the wine merchant stoutly. ‘And maybe we can turn this to our advantage, for I can ask Mabel to keep her ears and eyes open for any hint Godfrey might drop about this terrible happening.'

‘He's hardly likely to confess to it, least of all to his wife!' objected Joseph.

‘But if he does, I'll kill him,' hissed the apothecary's apprentice.

Next morning, John stood moodily in front of the smouldering fire in the hall. Mary had given him his breakfast, which he ate in solitary state soon after dawn. Then, still in his bed shirt, he went out to the back yard and washed his face and neck in a bucket of water: it was Saturday morning, the day for ablutions. He had the second of his twice-weekly shaves, rubbing his face with soap made from goat's fat and beech ash boiled with soda, then rasped at his black stubble with a special knife, its edge honed to extreme sharpness. It was also the day to change his clothes, and Mary had put out a clean long undershirt and a grey tunic for him which he pulled over his head, after warming them before the fire.

He dragged on his braies, trousers that came to the knee, and then long stockings, over which he wound cross-gartering. His clothes were almost devoid of ornamentation or embroidery, merely a few lines of stitches around the high neck. He was not riding that day, so put on low shoes, pointed but without the extravagant curled tips in the new fashion that dandies like de Revelle and Fitzosbern sported.

‘It's cold out, that wind never ceases,' advised Mary, holding out a clean super-tunic in black woollen serge.

‘What was she like last night, after I left?' he muttered to his maid and former bed-mate.

Mary's eyes lifted to the small embrasure high above them that communicated with the solar, where Matilda was still in bed. ‘She stayed here an hour, poking the fire so hard it almost went out!' she whispered conspiratorially. ‘Then she yelled for Lucille and they went up to her solar. She's not moved since.'

John knew that, for he had spent the night on the further edge of their large palliasse, Matilda ignoring him in a pretence of sleep. ‘She'll come round, it's not so bad as last month.' Then his wife had barred the solar door against him for several nights, making him sleep on the floor of the hall before the fire.

After dressing, John intended to go up to Rougemont for the eighth bell, to be present when Richard de Revelle interrogated the two silversmiths, as he had threatened the previous evening. But Fate, that unpredictable meddler, took a hand in his plans. She arrived in the form of Gwyn of Polruan who, just as John was taking his cloak from a peg in the vestibule, banged on the outer door and pushed in from the lane outside. The east wind had brought the first flurries of snow and his tattered leather jerkin was spotted with white.

‘What's this, man?' demanded John. ‘You're usually up in the gate-house at this hour, feeding that great stomach of yours.'

The Cornishman brushed flakes of snow from his wide shoulders. ‘More trouble. We've got a body in the city. I don't like the looks of this one.'

Over many years, John had learned to heed Gwyn's warnings. Long before they had become involved in his work as coroner, Gwyn's mixture of common sense and Celtic intuition had so often proved correct, whether it was on the field of battle or lost in some god-forsaken forest or desert.

The coroner hung his cloak back on the peg and motioned Gwyn to come into the hall. He yelled down the passageway for Mary, then led the way to his hearth.

Gwyn, who rarely came to the house, looked about him silently at the large room, the high rafters and the table and chairs. John knew he was comparing this affluence with his own thatched hut of wattle and daub in St Sidwell's, but he felt that Gwyn was not in the slightest envious, only curious as to how the other half lived.

Mary bustled in and nodded pleasantly at the whiskered giant – they always got on well together, both practical, no-nonsense characters. John asked her to bring bread, cheese and ale to compensate Gwyn for his missed breakfast – he seemed unable to survive a morning without a top-up of food and drink.

His officer declined an invitation to sit in his master's house, but stood near the fire to melt the last of the snowflakes. John waited expectantly, knowing that Gwyn would take his time. ‘A woman's body, found less than an hour ago, in St Bartholomew's churchyard,' he began. This was one of the many small parish chapels dotted about the city, St Bartholomew's being in the drab quarter between the North and West Gates.

‘Who found it?'

‘An old crone who sweeps out the chapel. She arrived soon after dawn and saw a pair of feet sticking out from a rubbish pile just inside the gate.'

‘Have you been there yourself?'

‘I had a quick look, but touched nothing. The old woman told the priest and he sent word to the castle. I happened to be there when his servant came to the gate-house guard with the message.'

‘Does the sheriff know about it yet?'

Gwyn delayed answering as Mary arrived with a wooden platter of food and a jug of ale. She looked enquiringly at John, but he shook his head, having not long had his breakfast.

‘I doubt the sheriff knows – he's too busy with the visit of Hubert Walter to bother about a corpse.'

‘Any idea who the dead woman might be?'

Gwyn shrugged as he gulped down his food – he knew he would have little time to finish it. ‘Most of the body is hidden under old sticks and leaves – the midden is used for ashes from the priest's house fire, as well as trashings from around the churchyard.'

‘It has been deliberately hidden, you think?'

Gwyn nodded his great head, his massive jaw champing away. ‘Only the feet and lower legs can be seen,' he said, through a mouthful of bread, ‘but they are a woman's and the shoes are stylish and of fine leather.'

‘Anything else?'

‘There's blood under the calves, that I could see.'

John groaned. ‘Holy Christ, let it not be another rape – with murder added this time!'

He made for the vestibule and took down his cloak again. Throwing it over his shoulders, he pulled one corner of the square garment through a large bronze ring sewn over his left collarbone, then tied the end in a knot to hold it in place. ‘Drink that ale down and bring your cheese in your hand.'

He dived out into the cold morning and strode away, oblivious of the increasing snowflakes that drifted on the wind.

‘Did you raise the hue and cry?' John demanded of the parish priest of St Bartholomew.

The portly man nodded impatiently. ‘Of course! When the old woman told me, I sent my man off directly to find either you or the sheriff at the castle. Then two of my neighbours alongside the churchyard came out to see what was going on. I told them to knock up all the householders around the chapel and rouse the neighbourhood.'

True enough, a small crowd of people were jostling in the narrow lanes around the small plot that contained the chapel, while Gwyn guarded the rickety gate through the wall that ringed the few square yards of rank grass and bare earth.

St Bartholomew's was built on the edge of the poorest and least savoury part of Exeter. This quarter had long been known as ‘Bretayne', probably because the Saxons had pushed out the original Celtic-British inhabitants into this ghetto area, when they invaded the West centuries before.

The church was surrounded by lanes of mean hovels, some wattle, others planked, and some with earthen walls plastered with a slime of horse-dung and lime. Smoke filtered from every one, leaking out from under the eaves of thatch, stone or turf. The inhabitants largely matched their homesteads, a poor ragged lot, who worked as porters, slaughterers, or labourers on the nearby quayside and in woollen mills on the river.

The hue and cry was supposed to flush perpetrators out of hiding and to pursue them until caught, like a fox hunt, but John privately thought it a futile process, unless the crime had been witnessed so that the miscreant could be chased.

‘She's been dead a long while,' observed Gwyn, stooping down from inside the gate to tug at one of the still legs protruding from the shrivelled leaves and twigs. The foot was stiff on the ankle and the whole body moved slightly because of the rigor in the whole leg.

‘Let's move this stuff,' grated John, and began to push aside the rubbish, which shed grey ashes from the twigs and dry foliage.

Gwyn and the priest's caretaker rapidly shifted the garbage, which included kitchen waste and old floor rushes, revealing the whole length of the pathetic figure. The mantle, a cloak of good-quality brown wool, was thrown right over the body, completely wrapping the head and upper part. Below it, the legs down to the calves were clad in a kirtle of cream linen, and although soiled by the rubbish, it could be seen to be of fine workmanship, with elaborate embroidery around the hem. Woollen stockings ended in delicate shoes of soft leather.

‘This is a woman of quality, Gwyn. The noble ladies of Exeter are having a bad week, I fear.'

Gwyn pushed a few over-curious citizens back through the gate and yelled at others to move away.

The coroner stooped at the side of the corpse. ‘Let's see what we've got. Unwrap the cloak from her head, but gently.'

The body was lying close against the side of the stone wall and John moved crabwise to the head end, kicking aside more refuse to clear a wider space. Gwyn knelt and carefully pulled out one end of the mantle from under the woman, then drew it right back to expose her upper half.

She lay on her left side as if asleep, the face close to the wall. The coroner gently pulled on her right shoulder and rolled the stiff cadaver on to its back.

They saw a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with a peaceful expression on the even features. The face, eyes wide open, looked up at the grey sky and a few large flakes of snow fell gently on to her brow and cheeks. The hair was dark brown, parted in the centre of the crown, a plait coiled above each ear. She wore no coif or cover-chief on her head and no gorget or wimple around her throat.

John and Gwyn contemplated her for a moment, the gaping crowd behind the wall silent for once. ‘Her face seems familiar, but I can't put a name to it,' observed John thoughtfully.

His officer grunted. ‘She's out of my league, a real lady by the look of her clothing. What's she doing, alive or dead, in a low district like Bretayne?'

John knelt on the cold ground to get a closer look. ‘No marks on her face or neck. The clothing is not disarrayed, apart from her kirtle being above her ankles.'

Gwyn pointed to its hem. The bottom few inches were bloodstained and blood was mixed with the muddy ashes on the earth below. ‘Where's that coming from? Have we got another Christina Rifford? And, if so, why is she dead?'

John shrugged and climbed to his feet. ‘We can't leave the poor woman here. Is there room in the church?'

Gwyn looked across at the small chapel, recently rebuilt in stone to replace an older wooden structure. ‘I doubt the priest will want a corpse in there, bleeding over his floor – especially as it's Sunday tomorrow and he'll want to hold Mass and other offices. What about St Nicholas Priory?'

John agreed with Gwyn's good advice. The Benedictine monks would undoubtedly show their usual charity, and the little monastery was only a few hundred yards away, towards St Mary Arches.

The rotund local priest was only too glad to get the corpse off his property and snapped orders at his caretaker and three other men who were idling among the gawping onlookers. They went into the church to fetch the bier, which was hanging by ropes in its customary place from the rafters. The four jogged out with the wooden frame and set it on its legs alongside the body. With Gwyn supervising, they lifted the rigid corpse on to it and John threw the cloak over the woman for decency's sake.

Then he stood with Gwyn to look at the ground where the body had lain. A pool of blood, with a thin shiny skin of clot the size of a hand, lay on the hard earth. ‘Nothing else – no knife, no weapon, no footprint!' John commented. ‘Yet she was concealed right enough. No highborn lady comes to creep under a midden to die.' He turned to the four men standing expectantly alongside the bier. ‘Follow me to St Nicholas's. I'll go ahead and pray that the prior will accommodate us.' He stalked away, leaving Gwyn to potter about the scene and to question the onlookers, before he tried to disperse them – this was an unexpected novelty to lighten their drab existence.

John threaded his way through the stinking alleys between the poverty-stricken dwellings, filled with ragged children, mangy dogs, scuttering rats and trickling sewage. He dodged handcarts filled with firewood, wandering goats and porters bent double under heavy loads. He was greeted respectfully every few yards by old men tugging their forelocks and housewives and crones bobbing their heads in salute: Sir John de Wolfe had been known to most of the town's population even before he became coroner.