The Tinner's Corpse (22 page)

Walter’s widow sat pale and erect, her hands in the lap of her rich red silk gown, the colour of which matched the braid that was woven into the plaits that reached her waist, their ends encased in thin gilt tubes. ‘Thank you, no. I must take some time to get used to the idea of having no husband once again.’

Lucy was snivelling and trying to hold her daughter’s hand, but Joan rose to her feet and walked around to the saddle-weary tin-merchant.

‘We should be thinking more of you, Matthew. You were his twin, closer to him than any of us. And you are exhausted. You must rest – we will need all our strength for the coming days.’

Seemingly the strongest of all, she gave orders to Harold to settle her brother-in-law in a small room on the upper floor and supply him with food and drink. Then she thanked the priest graciously, virtually dismissing him – and less graciously sent her mother to bed.

When she was left alone with Acland, they moved to sit side by side near the glowing fire. Heads close together, they talked earnestly for a long while, her fingers covered by his powerful hands.

That same night, John de Wolfe had left the Bush with a mixture of emotions. They swung from recrimination with himself for mentioning his journey through Dawlish to despondency that the knot that had tied him to Nesta for over a year seemed now to have been undone. Then anger displaced gloom, as he first cursed the fickleness of women, then contemplated beating Alan of Lyme to a thin pulp.

As his hawkish figure loped rapidly back up the streets towards Rougemont, his mood settled into icy resolve. If Nesta had falsely accused him of a dalliance with Hilda that day, he had nothing more to lose by making that liaison a reality. He ignored the fact that had Hilda been at home when he called he would not have been innocent of Nesta’s charge, but such is the ability of men to be selective in their truths that he easily persuaded himself of Nesta’s unfairness.

He marched past Martin’s Lane and went on up to the castle, partly to have a genuine excuse for Matilda as to his whereabouts that evening, but also to apprise Richard de Revelle of Knapman’s death. The hall of the keep was almost deserted, apart from a few servants sleeping near the fire, and for once the sheriff’s door was locked with no guard outside. Thinking that de Revelle must be away at one of his manors, either Tiverton or Revelstoke, he went in search of his steward to enquire when he would return. A servant scurried off to find the man, who hurried back within a few minutes, with the news that Sir Richard was indeed inside his apartments. ‘He returned from two days in the country only a few hours ago, Crowner, very tired and hungry. Before retiring, he gave orders that he was not to be disturbed until morning.’

To hell with that! thought de Wolfe. If I have to work all the hours God made, so shall he. ‘It’s urgent, steward. Knock at his door until he answers.’

Reluctantly, but not daring to defy this bony crow of a man, the servant produced a large key from his belt and opened the door into the outer chamber, which de Revelle used for his official business. Beyond that was another door, leading into his bedchamber. The steward approached this and tapped timidly.

‘Hammer on the thing, blast you!’ said de Wolfe, from the middle of the room. The man knocked more loudly, his ear to the thick panels. There was a long pause and de Wolfe thought he heard scuffling and low voices. Then the sheriff demanded angrily to know who was there.

‘The coroner, sir. He says he has urgent news.’

There was more scuffling and then the key turned from inside and the sheriff slipped out and banged the door shut behind him. He had thrown a long cloak over his shoulders, but de Wolfe sensed he was naked beneath it. ‘I was in bed, damn you! What do you want?’

De Wolfe knew he had not been alone. His brother-in-law’s wife, the icy Lady Eleanor, rarely came to Exeter, preferring the comfort of their manors to the bleak quarters in Rougemont’s keep, which suited Richard very well, and it was not the first time that de Wolfe had caught him in bed with a doxy. ‘I think the recent challenge to you as Lord Warden of the Stannaries can be forgotten for the time being, Richard.’

The sheriff goggled at his brother-in-law. Was this why he had dragged him away from a warm bed and a warm woman at this time of the evening?

‘Walter Knapman is dead. Murdered!’ announced de Wolfe.

The sheriff stood stock still for a second, then pulled the heavy cloak more closely around him and padded on bare feet across the cold stones to sit in his chair behind the parchment-strewn table. He looked up at the coroner, almost fearfully. ‘Well, don’t look at me like that! I didn’t have the damned fellow killed,’ he said.

That possibility had not occurred to de Wolfe until then, but he stored it away in his mind for future consideration. ‘Did I suggest you had?’ he asked evenly.

‘I know the way your mind works, John,’ said Richard bitterly. ‘You’ll leave no stone unturned in seeking sins to lay at my door. Though the fellow irritated me beyond measure with his insolence, I’ve no fear of such as he.’ He glared up at his sister’s husband, his waxed beard as pointed as a lance-head. ‘In any event, I’ve been touring my tax-collectors from Lydford to Crediton to Cullompton, chasing the idle swine before the farm is due.’

De Wolfe filed away the fact that this area was diffuse enough not to be too far from Dunsford, where Knapman vanished – though he did not seriously consider that the sheriff would have carried out any dirty deeds himself when he had so many spies and vassals to act for him. He recounted the facts as far as he knew them, emphasising that it must have been murder, not an accident.

‘Whether he fell on his head or had it smashed with a rock, he was first toppled from his mount by a heavy blow on the back, so the death is still a crime. Then presumably he was dumped in the Teign – the flood waters soon carried him down to the coast.’ He paused, thinking of the corpse tangled in driftwood. ‘Just as well he was seen there. The next tide would have taken him out to sea, and then we would never have known what happened to him.’

Grumpily, with several sidelong glances at his inner door, the sheriff discussed what should be done and de Wolfe told him he was going to Chagford next day to investigate and hold an inquest.

‘The coinage is to be held there in two days’ time. As Warden, I had better attend, given all this trouble that’s blown up,’ muttered de Revelle.

De Wolfe gave a smile that was almost a leer. ‘You’ll be far from popular with the tinners after Crockern Tor. But I suppose you have a duty to be present. Bring a troop of soldiers. You may need them to protect you.’

With that last cheerless remark, de Wolfe left his brother-in-law sitting dolefully behind his trestle, his ardour considerably dampened.

Walter’s corpse was still on its way to Exeter across a pack-horse when John de Wolfe and his two assistants rode out of the city the next morning. Gwyn was his usual boisterous self, but his companions were both subdued. John, never talkative at the best of times, was still torn between sorrow and anger at his rejection by Nesta, while Thomas de Peyne slumped inertly on his pony.

The two men on the bigger horses were hampered by the clerk’s slower speed, and it took them more than two hours to pass through Dunsford and reach the mill on the river beyond the village. Here de Wolfe stopped to inspect the presumed scene of the killing. The Teign swirled down between undulating hills, heavily wooded on both sides. There was a rocky weir diagonally across the river just above the trackway, which forded the water through the shallows below. The mill was downstream from the ford, but took its water through a leat that began above the weir.

‘He couldn’t have been attacked very near here or the millers would have seen or heard something,’ reasoned Gwyn.

De Wolfe agreed and looked up the long slope through the woods, where the track gradually climbed up the side of the valley towards Doccombe, then on to Moretonhampstead and Chagford. ‘But a few hundred paces away, around a bend and into the trees, they’d be out of sight and sound,’ he said. ‘A thwack with a stave and a stone against the head makes little noise.’

Thomas stirred himself out of his doleful silence. ‘What about getting rid of the body, Crowner? He was a big man, as I remember.’

‘There must have been at least two assailants, for sure. One had to distract him somehow, while the other hit him unexpectedly with his staff. Knapman was too strong and alert to let one villain get the better of him.’

‘So two men could easily have carried or dragged him through the woods to the river,’ agreed Gwyn. ‘It would have to have been downstream of the mill or he’d have been caught in the weir.’

‘It’s all wooded down there, no dwellings at all. They’d not be seen or disturbed.’

Leaving Thomas with the horses, the coroner and his officer spent the better part of an hour clambering and squelching through the trees and along the riverbank, but found nothing significant. A tidemark of dead branches and twigs showed where the water level had been a foot higher after the recent storms. ‘A body could be pushed into the water anywhere along here and leave no clue on these muddy banks,’ grumbled the Cornishman.

Frustrated, they returned to their horses and stood in the middle of the track for a few minutes, looking at the river, the forest and the road from Exeter.

‘We may as well have a word with the miller, now that we’re here,’ grunted de Wolfe, with little enthusiasm but unwilling to leave any stone unturned. They remounted and walked their steeds down the path to the mill, which was visible behind a clump of trees near the riverbank. The rumble of the water-wheel grew louder as they approached the yard, where several ox-carts were delivering sacks of grain and loading up with flour for Dunsford and other neighbouring villages. One of the carters yelled for the miller and a dusty man soon clattered down the steps from the wooden building, banging flour from his leather apron as he came.

De Wolfe announced who they were and the miller, a florid, heavy fellow with blackened stumps for teeth, immediately became deferential and almost obsequious. Walter Knapman had been his master since the tin-master had bought the mill from the manor lord and he was eager to help any investigation into his death – not least because his job might depend on who took over from the dead owner. He also had a small item of news for the coroner. ‘Since Knapman’s men from Chagford came to search for him, a lad has said that he saw some men near the track soon after Knapman left here,’ he gabbled, waving an arm vaguely behind him.

De Wolfe’s black brows came together in a fierce expression at the words. ‘Why did we not know of this earlier?’ he demanded.

The miller turned up his whitened hands deprecatingly. ‘The boy is simple, Crowner. It only came out last night, when he was talking to his father. He’s one of my labourers, lives in that hut down on the riverbank.’ He yelled for the fellow, a scrawny, pale man who looked too frail to be lifting full sacks of grain and flour.

Within minutes, he was taking de Wolfe and Gwyn down the footpath behind the mill to a ramshackle cottage made of cob, roofed with turf. A few geese and fowls scratched outside and a thin cow was tied to a post near the hole that served as a doorway. Behind a square of hurdles, half a dozen pigs squealed their way around a mud-patch.

‘My wife keeps a few swine and our youngest son tends them. He was born late in my life and his poor mind is addled – though his three brothers are all well,’ the man said defensively. His Devon accent was so thick that even de Wolfe, a native of the south of the county, had difficulty in following his words.

‘What’s this news he might have about Master Knapman?’ the coroner snapped impatiently.

For answer, the mill-man stuck his head through the doorway and yelled something unintelligible. A moment later, a boy staggered out, helped by a push from a shadowy female figure inside the dwelling. ‘He’s wary of strangers since he was set on for sport by some soldiers passing on the road,’ explained his father, apologetically. He grabbed the lad by the arm and shouted at him, ‘Come now, Arthur, tell these gentlemen what you said to me last night.’

The boy was older than he appeared at first sight, probably thirteen or so, but his round, vacant face suggested that his comprehension was that of a child half his age. The tip of his tongue protruded between loose lips as his small eyes roved fearfully across the strangers’ faces. He muttered something that de Wolfe could not catch. ‘What did he say?’ he snapped.

The father translated and enlarged on his son’s story. ‘On the day the master vanished, Arthur here was herding the pigs in the wood on the other side of the main track, a tidy way up the hill. It must have been some time before noon as he knew he must soon come back here for his dinner.’

John thought testily that the mill-man was as bad as Gwyn for slowness in coming to the point, but with an effort he held his tongue.

‘He says he saw Master Knapman ride up the track from the mill and meet another horseman who came out of the wood. They both stopped then went back into the forest where there is a deer-track.’ He stopped to shake the boy by the shoulder and more indistinct words passed between them. Thomas, a Hampshireman, had not the faintest idea of what they said, so thick was their local accent.

‘Was that all he saw? Who was the other man? Does he know?’ demanded the coroner.

The father shook his head. ‘He knows the master by sight. The other was a stranger.’

‘Was that all he saw?’

‘No. He says another man, on foot with no horse, came out of the trees lower down the road and followed the two riders into the forest. That was the last he saw of them as he wanted his dinner and came home then.’

The lad looked from one man to the other as they spoke, his dull eyes striving to make sense of what was going on.

‘What were the men like, son?’ asked Gwyn, stooping to the boy and speaking kindly.

‘You’ll have to speak up, sir – he’s hard of hearing, too, has been since a babe.’ The father repeated the question in his loud, crude dialect and received some garbled answer from the boy.