Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

'But I was told that he was found face down,' snapped de Wolfe. 'Is that right?'

'He was indeed, I'll never forget the sight,' answered Odo, tensely.

'Then you wouldn't expect him to bleed much, until he was turned on to his back,' retorted the coroner irritably. 'Most of this blood issued from him after death. That's why it was remiss of you to move him. I need to see bodies in their original state.'

'What difference can that make?' sneered Ralph. 'He was stabbed to death, even our village idiot could have told you that.'

John glared at him, thrusting his head forward like an angry crow.

'If you've nothing helpful to say, I suggest you keep your mouth shut, sir! If I could be sure that he had not bled much before his body was interfered with, it would tell me that he was stabbed where he lay, probably face down. And that he died quickly!'

'How can you say that, Crowner?' asked Odo, with a trace of genuine interest in his voice.

'The blood has stained his garment only above the waist. If he had been on his feet, even staggering about for a few moments, it would have trickled down over his buttocks and thighs.'

Gwyn nodded sagely. Both he and the coroner prided themselves on being self-taught experts on death and injury, after twenty years on various battlefields, as well as a year investigating sudden death in Devon.

De Wolfe turned his attention to the back of the body, revealed now that the clothing was pulled up almost to Hugo's neck. It was a smeared mass of blood, with gobs of shiny clot adhering here and there. He turned to the priest, who was standing wringing his hands at the transformation of his church into a mortuary.

'Father Patrick, have you a cloth and some water we could use?'

The rotund cleric hurried away to a small door on the north side of the building, which opened into a small lean-to shelter that served as a sacristy and storeroom. Here, in addition to his second-best cassock and his service books, he had a broom made from a bundle of twigs, a wooden bucket and some cleaning rags for the altar cross.

'This is all I have, Crowner,' he said, offering a strip torn from an old surplice and some dirty water left in the bucket. Gwyn took them and carefully wiped away as much of the blood as he could from the skin between the dead man's shoulder blades. A ripple of suppressed horror went round the audience, which now also contained the reeve, the steward, the armourer and a couple of other manor officers. They saw a pattern of marks on the skin of the late lord's back which told of a violent attack.

'You'll need to make a note of these as soon as we've finished, Thomas,' commanded de Wolfe. He peered more closely, his big hooked nose coming within a foot of the bloody wounds.

'Six, no seven, stabs, both sides of the spine. All roughly in the same direction — the knife must have been held at about the same angle for them all.'

'Narrow blade, by the looks of it, Crowner. But not all the wounds are the same length.' Gwyn was unwilling to let his own expertise go unemployed.

'The length depends how far the knife was pushed in, if it was a tapered blade,' answered his master. 'But I agree, a smallish blade — the widest wound is well under an inch across.'

He clicked his fingers at his officer and pointed to Hugo's own dagger, resting in its sheath on the discarded belt. Gwyn pulled it out and showed it to his master.

'That certainly didn't cause these wounds,' he grunted. 'Double-edged and much too wide.' Having eliminated the dagger, de Wolfe now explored the depth of the stabs, and without hesitation rammed his forefinger into the biggest wound and pushed until his knuckle was against the skin.

'Goes deeply inside his chest, between the ribs,' he announced, before withdrawing the finger with a sucking sound. He absently wiped the blood with the soiled rag as he worked out something in his mind.

'The blade was held diagonally across the back, roughly in line with the ribs, so no bone was broken as it slipped between them. The killer must have been to the side of the victim, either right or left, when he struck — or she struck,' he added.

'A woman? Or a girl? That's the very thing we are suggesting!' snapped Ralph, with an I-told-you-so sneer.

De Wolfe shrugged. 'It may be unlikely, but I rule nothing out at this stage. It was a small knife such as women carry — and the force needed to slip a blade between the ribs, rather than smash through them, would literally have been child's play, let alone a woman's.'

Again there was a murmur of smug agreement among the brothers, who were only too eager to pin the blame on the laundry maid. As the coroner continued his examination, he found nothing else on the rest of the corpse, which he found interesting in itself.

'Not so much as a scratch on the hands or arms, so he made no effort to defend himself. Often an attacked man will fend off the blade with his forearm — or even grasp it to deflect it from his vital organs. There is nothing of that nature here.'

'And as the gentleman was an experienced tournament fighter, he would not have been taken easily,' Gwyn reminded him.

'Then my brother was obviously taken unawares by some cowardly assassin!' snapped Joel.

'Face down in the hay, he might well have been sleeping,' said John. 'Especially soon after having taking his pleasure with a girl.'

'Why is the skin dark red in places, but white over the shoulder blades?' demanded Odo, who seemed to have an inquiring streak in his nature.

'He has been lying on his back now for many hours, so the blood has settled to the lowest point,' explained de Wolfe. 'But lying on this hard bier has squeezed it from the shoulders and buttocks. Another reason for not moving the corpse until I had a chance to see it.' He turned his attention back to the sinister-looking cuts on the cadaver, and together with Gwyn poked and prodded at each gaping slit in the skin.

'D'you think that a few of the wounds show a blunter end?' he asked his officer.

Gwyn, pleased to be asked his opinion, nodded. 'This one — and this, almost certainly.' He pointed a grimy fingernail at the upper end of a couple of the injuries, where a slightly squared-off termination did not quite match the sharply pointed lower end. 'I reckon it was a single-edged blade, not a regular dagger with two cutting edges.'

The coroner nodded his agreement. 'A narrow knife, blunt along the back.'

Richard de Revelle was determined to be dismissive and obstructive.

'A great deduction, indeed!' he said sarcastically. 'There are probably forty such knives in this village alone. And for all we know, the killer might well be an outsider, creeping in here at night to thieve.' De Wolfe straightened up and stood with his fists resting on his sword belt. He would have liked to have used them to punch his arrogant brother-in-law on the nose, but restrained himself and said mildly, 'It's early days yet. Every small fact adds up when we are seeking a murderer.'

He nodded at Gwyn, who began to replace the clothing and lay the corpse face up on the bier, before covering it again with the sheet.

'I trust you have finished with poor Hugo now, Crowner?' said Odo, in a sepulchral voice.

'I have no need to examine his body again, certainly. But I will need to display it to the jury when I hold my inquest, as the law demands.'

'But surely we can go ahead with the funeral!' exclaimed Ralph. 'It is not decent to leave him above ground a moment longer than is necessary.'

The coroner shook his head emphatically. 'I am sorry, but that is not possible until I have held my inquiry and recorded it for the King's justices — when they next come to the county.'

'And when will this precious inquiry be held?' sneered de Revelle, determined to make things as difficult as possible.