Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

'We had to pull her from the water to make sure of who she was, but the body is lying on the bank,' explained Walter Hog, motioning two of the men to take the horses away for hay and water. Leading the way, he took the coroner's party across the track and down a steep lane at the side of the churchyard, which led down into the little valley below.

'So she didn't go in at the mill?' snapped John, knowing from his previous visits that this was farther upstream.

'No, this is the run-off from the wheel, quite a way down. Shallow it is here, except when there's heavy rain.'

Below a small wooden bridge at the bottom, the brook was only a few feet wide and could easily be waded, but the bailiff took them under some trees and walked along the muddy bank for fifty paces to where a wide, deeper pool was formed where some rocks and a fallen tree had partly dammed the stream. On the edge, under a willow turning brown, was a still body, lying face up on the weeds. Standing near by was Agnes's mother, red eyed and being comforted by a shabbily dressed man who he assumed was her father. John muttered some platitudes of sympathy, which were none the less sincere for their gruffness, then crouched over the pathetic remains of the young woman. She wore a better kirtle than the ragged one he had seen her in before, so her mother must have made use of the two pence that he had given her for the purpose. It was mud-stained on the front and the upper half was soaking wet.

'She was found by a woman picking watercress, soon after dawn,' explained WaIter. 'The poor girl was face down in the trout pool, her hair all streaming out in the current. Most of her body was on the bank — I can't understand how she could drown like that.'

John looked up at Gwyn, who nodded back.

'This was no drowning, Bailiff! Look at her neck!' The victims face-was tinted violet and seemed slightly swollen, even allowing for her normal chubbiness. Around her neck, just above her Adam's apple, was a band of pinkish skin about half an inch wide. Below it, her neck was pale by contrast with the livid colour above.

'She's not been drowned, man — she's been strangled! By a ligature pulled tight around her throat.' The mother burst into tears and her husband awkwardly pulled her to his chest and patted her back. Thomas, full of compassion as usual, knelt by the corpse, crossed himself a few times, then went to the woman and began murmuring consoling words to her and her husband;

'We can't examine her here, especially with them looking on,' muttered de Wolfe to Gwyn.

'The church is nearest, let's get her there,' suggested the Cornishman.

With scant ceremony, apart from John taking off his cloak to cover her, Agnes was carried in Gwyn's great arms like a baby, back up the hill and into the church, where Father Patrick appeared from the sacristy, flushed in the face and smelling of brandy wine.

Waiter Hog and another man lowered the bier from where it was suspended from the rafters by ropes and laid the girl's body upon it, this time near the back of the chancel away from the altar.

'We'll only look at the head and neck for now,' grunted John, with a delicacy that belied the appearance of these large, gruff men. 'WaIter, you can get some village woman later — perhaps the one who acts as midwife — to check the rest of the body, to make sure she's not been roughly violated.'

Thomas had finished his pastoral efforts with the mother and came in with Eustace on his heels, to peer around John as he made a more thorough examination of the dead girl. As Gwyn lifted her head, he looked at the back of the neck, where the red band continued around the nape, crossing over in the centre. At the front and sides, it was sharply demarcated on the skin, with a line of tiny red spots along the upper edge.

'Plenty of blood in the skin and eyes,' observed Gwyn, pointing at the outer eyelids, which were peppered with a fine red rash, and at the whites of the eyes, which were visible under the half-closed lids. Here there were angry bright red haemorrhages, and in the skin of the face, especially around the jaw-line, were dotted bleeding points under the congested skin.

'Even some crusted blood in the nose and one of the ears,' piped up Eustace, who was avidly taking in the dramatic scene. Thomas, whose interest in the signs of violent death was non-existent compared to the others', drifted off and went to talk to the rather unsteady parish priest, who stood uncertainly in the middle of the beaten-earth floor of the nave.

'Do you know anything of this, Father?' he asked. The Irishman shook his head slowly and spoke as if his tongue were too large for his mouth. 'Only that she was found in the stream early today. Her mother, God give her peace, told me that she did not come home last night, but I am afraid that that was nothing new for Agnes, if she found a man with a penny to spare.'

He seemed fuddled and could offer nothing else useful, so reluctantly Thomas went back to where Eustace was avidly following the coroner's pronouncements. With the bailiff and his assistant also looking on, Gwyn and John were closely studying the mark around the neck.

'A narrow belt or strap,' declared Gwyn. 'Not a cord or a rope, as there's no twisted pattern and the edges are too regular.'

De Wolfe grunted, which could signal agreement or dissent. Then his long forefinger pointed to three places on the mark, one under the angle of the jaw on the left side, another under the point of the chin and the third beneath the right ear.

'These look too squared off to be mere chance,' he snapped. 'There's something on the strap at those points. '

'What help is that, sir?' ventured Eustace de Relaga. 'If we can find a strap with something fixed to it exactly at those points, then it might well be the instrument of the poor child's death.'

Privately, Gwyn thought this a slim chance, but he kept his opinion to himself. There was nothing else to find and Thomas persuaded the tipsy priest to find an old cassock in the sacristy to cover up the corpse, to allow John to reclaim his wolfskin.

'Best bring the mother in here to keep vigil over her daughter for a time,' suggested de Wolfe. For some reason, the killing of the poor wash-house skivvy had pulled at his heart more than the usual run of pathetic deaths that he dealt with week in, week out.

He marched out of the church, leaving Thomas to say some prayers over the body, in default of any help from Father Patrick.

'Have your masters in the hall been told of this?' he asked Walter Hog.

'Indeed they have, Crowner. Sir Odo seemed quite concerned, but Ralph just shrugged and said she had probably tried to steal an extra penny off a customer and got herself choked for her impertinence. As for Joel, he just sniggered at Ralph's explanation and told Roger Viel that he'd better look for another laundry maid if he wanted clean cloths on the table tonight.'

John's opinion of the two younger brothers fell even more, but their callous indifference was none of his business. Discovering who killed Agnes certainly was, and he strode towards the manor-house compound with grim determination. As they marched through the wide gate in the stockade around the bailey, Gwyn wanted to know how they were going to set about things.

'We've had little success with anything else so far in this damned place,' he said critically. 'No doubt everyone will again claim to have been deaf and blind this last day or so, with nothing at all to tell us.'

As he stamped up the steps to the hall doorway, John half turned to his officer.

'We've got two suspects who may already have killings to their discredit. Robert Longus and his stupid crony Alexander are high on our list of suspects for August Scrape, so let's start with them as candidates for the girl.'

'I'd like to add bloody Ralph to that list, for he's a nasty enough bastard to have got rid of his brother to gain the lordship,' boomed Gwyn, careless as to whether anyone heard him inside the hall. The only one in sight, however, was the steward, Roger Viel, sitting at a table with a roll of accounts before him. Apart from the priest and Odo Peverel, he was probably the only inhabitant of Sampford who was able to read and write, a' necessity for the administrator of a large manor.