Bernard Knight - Crowner's Quest

‘But a canon isn’t a monk,’ objected de Wolfe. He had little interest in the hierarchy of the Church, but knew that canons, or prebendaries as they were often called, were ordained priests and that Exeter was a secular cathedral, not a monastic house.

‘Many people have a monk’s habit,’ piped up the all-knowing Thomas from behind. ‘I’ve got one myself. They make fine wrappings to get out of bed or go to the privy on a cold morning.’

The Archdeacon shook his head. ‘Poor Robert de Hane had a better claim to one than just the need for a warm robe. In his younger years he was an Augustinian from the house of Holy Trinity in London’s Aldgate. This is probably his habit from his days as a Black Canon.’

Gwyn’s large, shaggy head was peering around the privy. ‘I suppose he stepped off the seat after tying the cord to a rafter.’ Looking up into the gloom, he could just make out where the rope was knotted around one of the rough supports for the thatched roof.

John de Alencon shook his cropped grey head sadly. ‘I cannot believe it. Self-destruction is a mortal sin. What man of the Church, especially a senior canon, would take his own life — and on the eve of the birthday of his Saviour, above all times?’ He passed a hand over his eyes in genuine distress. ‘I just cannot accept it, John.’

The coroner had been silently studying the corpse, his hawk-like face drawn into a scowl of concentration. ‘I don’t think you need accept it, my friend,’ he growled. ‘Gwyn, come and look at this.’ He beckoned his henchman to look more closely in the dim light at the side of the cadaver’s neck. The monk’s girdle-cord cut deeply into the left side under the angle of the jaw, then passed around to the right, where it was pulled sharply upwards and away from the skin in an inverted V-shape to reach a knot placed alongside the ear. From there, the cord stretched tautly up to the roof-beam. ‘We’ll see better when we cut him down, but look here,’ he commanded, pointing a finger at the skin below the ligature.

Gwyn of Polruan put his face closer until his bulbous nose almost touched the corpse. ‘There’s another mark around the neck, lower down.’

The coroner looked grim. ‘It can happen. I remember when King Richard executed all those Moors at Acre, and again at Ascalon, some hanged fellows had two marks. But it’s unusual.’

The Cornishman cast his mind back more than three years to when he had been with de Wolfe at the Third Crusade. At the fall of Acre, hundreds of Saracen prisoners were massacred, most by the sword, lance and mace — but many had been hanged.

‘True, the rope can bite first lower down, then slip up with the weight of the body.’ He sounded reluctant to agree.

The coroner’s finger moved to the back of the cadaver’s neck. ‘But it can’t do this!’ he snapped.

The Archdeacon and his officer craned their necks to look, and Thomas de Peyne was almost jumping up and down behind them to get a better view.

On the nape of the neck, just below the monk’s girdle-cord, the lower ligature mark crossed over itself, two short marks lying above and below the brownish-red line. John de Alencon looked questioningly at de Wolfe, his horror temporarily overtaken by curiosity.

‘He’s been garrotted — the cord was thrown over his head, the two ends crossed and pulled tight,’ grated the coroner. He stepped back and motioned to Gwyn. ‘Cut him down — gently now.’ He pulled the Archdeacon back to the door to make room, while Gwyn sliced through the cord high up and took the weight of the dead priest easily in his other brawny arm. The clerk stood watching in fascination, furiously making the Sign of the Cross.

‘Bring him into the house, where there’s a better light,’ ordered de Wolfe, and strode off ahead to the back door of the canon’s dwelling. Gwyn carried the corpse in his arms like a baby, the head lolling back, the fatal rope trailing on the ground.

With the Archdeacon, Thomas, a few junior priests and some servants following, they went through a door and up a passage into a chamber that had a simple bed as the only furniture, apart from a large wooden crucifix on the wall. The canon’s steward, a fat, middle-aged man with tears streaming from his eyes, stood wringing his hands alongside the bed, as Gwyn gently laid the body upon it.

‘Get more lights, Alfred,’ commanded the Archdeacon, and the steward hurried out, gulping orders at the other servants.

De Wolfe stood at the foot of the narrow bed and laid a consoling hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You knew him well, John?’

The senior cleric nodded. ‘Even before I came from Winchester eight years ago. I had met him in London when he was still at Holy Trinity. A good man, very learned in the history of the Church.’

As they waited for more illumination, John asked more questions. ‘What did he do in the cathedral community?’

‘He was a regular canon and had a prebend, like the rest of us, but held no particular office. Most of his time away from daily worship was spent in the cathedral library. I’m not quite sure what he was doing — you would need to ask Canon Jordan de Brent, the archivist.’

The coroner stroked his long jaw, dark with black stubble. ‘Was he politically active? I mean, in the Church hierarchy. Could he have made enemies?’

De Alencon’s lean face wore a sad smile, in spite of the tragic circumstances. ‘Never! He was quiet and retiring, hardly said a word at the chapter meetings. An unworldly man, his mind was lost in books and manuscripts.’ He waved a hand around the bare room. ‘You see this, a Spartan life, unlike some of our fellows, I’m afraid. Too many canons have forgotten the Rule of St Chrodegang and relish lives of comfort and even luxury. But not poor Robert de Hane here.’

The steward and a servant came back with a three-branched candlestick and a pair of tallow dips, which greatly improved the lighting. De Wolfe seized the candelabrum and advanced to the bed, with Gwyn on the other side. ‘Let’s have a good look at this. How much of the cord did you leave attached to the beam?’

Gwyn held his hands about a yard apart. ‘About this much. Another few inches were sticking out from the double knot around the rafter.’

De Wolfe held up the cut end of the rope that was still around the canon’s neck. ‘Another half yard here. Could he have reached from the privy seat to tie it to the roof?’

The Cornishman pursed his lips under the luxuriant cascade of ginger moustache. ‘He’s not very tall, but perhaps he could just do it on tiptoe.’

De Wolfe turned his attention to the knot in the monkish girdle. It was a pair of simple half-hitches, not a slip-knot. He pulled on the cord and the knot lifted well away from the skin. ‘There’s a gap in the mark under that, as would be expected,’ he muttered, half to himself. The upper mark, tight under the front and right side of the jaw, was a clear groove with a faint spiral pattern corresponding to the twist of the flaxen cord. But slightly lower was a similar, less pronounced mark, with narrow reddened margins, that circled the whole circumference of the neck. As he had pointed out in the privy, near the back of the neck this lower mark showed a blurred blob of abrasion on the skin, from which two short tails projected, one in either direction. He used a bony finger to point it out to the Archdeacon. ‘That’s not a hanging mark, John. Someone has dropped the cord over his head and pulled the two ends tight from behind.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked the worried cleric. A dead canon was bad enough, but a murdered one was ten times worse.

‘No doubt about it — it’s almost horizontal and there’s no gap where the rope pulled upward to the roof, like the other false mark. And those red swollen edges mean that it was done during life. They can’t be seen on the upper line, so he was dead when that was caused.’