Michael Jecks - The Malice of Unnatural Death

‘Ah, good,’ the coroner said with satisfaction. ‘I knew this matter could soon be cleared up. What was his name?’

‘His name? I have no idea! He was just a messenger, not someone I would chat with.’

‘My lord?’ Baldwin asked.

‘I am afraid he was quite new to me. I did not know his name.’

Baldwin’s eyebrows rose. Messengers trusted by the king tended to be insiders at court, and he would have expected a wilypolitician like the bishop to have a great interest in speaking to them and showing himself to be courteous and friendly. After all, whether he liked the messenger or not, the messenger would have the ear of the king.

Stapledon had turned to face him. ‘Sir Baldwin, this is most important. You must go with the good coroner and investigatethis killing. Is that clear? I want to know if he was murdered for his money, or whether it was something more serious.’

Baldwin exchanged a look with the coroner. ‘Bishop, this man — he was a messenger, so had he come here to give you a message?’

‘Yes. And I sent him away with a response. It is a most important document. You have to seek it.’

‘It may well still be on him. What sort of document is it?’

The bishop glanced away from Baldwin, and appeared to be staring out through the window. ‘Sir Baldwin, if he has it still,it is a small parchment some four inches long, with my own personal seal at the top, and the seal of the Lord High Treasurerin the middle to secure it. I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important it is that the document is found. The thing isincredibly sensitive. You have to find it.’

Baldwin sighed with some exasperation. ‘Very well. Coroner, you will have searched the man’s clothing. What was in his pouch?’

‘There were messages there, but I did not feel free to rifle about in the king’s business. I didn’t look.’

‘What is in the document?’ Baldwin asked the bishop. ‘If you want me to find it, you have to tell me what I am looking for.’

‘Sir Baldwin, I cannot. You will know it if you find it. Just search the man and see if it is there. I must press you — itis enormously important to me!’

Warwick Gaol

The warder was back again. The crash of the great oaken door with the iron furniture was so loud, the noise of it echoed alongthe corridor. Even at the farthest end of it, Robert le Mareschal was stirred. He only prayed that the man wasn’t coming toquestion him again.

He had lost track of time. It was certainly a long while since he had gone to the sheriff and insisted on telling his story,how the figures had been made, whom they represented, how he and John of Nottingham had taken the figurine of de Sowe andpulled out the pin, then waited a moment and thrust it deep into the waxen figure’s breast. God, but Robert had been so scaredby then. He had almost fainted away with the fear. And then, when he heard of de Sowe’s death, there had been only an all-encompassingterror of what his master had achieved, and, together with that, a dread of his own fate.

The money was nothing. Money could buy nothing that mattered to him now. The whole affair had started with money, it was true,and then he had realised that it also gave him a chance to win his revenge on the faithless devils who had so ruined his father,but that was not enough, no, not by a long measure, to justify his own destruction.

It was when he heard that de Sowe was dead that he truly realised his peril, and only then did he take that terrible step, andgo to see the sheriff. And soon after he and all the others were taken and held in gaol. All twenty-five of the men who hadasked them to make the figures and kill the king and his favourites, as well as Robert and John of Nottingham. And John hadstared at him, and then smiled, as though he knew full well that the betrayal came from him, and Robert feared that more thananything: the knowledge that his master knew his guilt.

Because Robert knew — Christ Jesus, he knew! — that John of Nottingham was a truly evil man.

Exeter City

‘What do you think of this, Coroner?’ Baldwin said quietly as they made their way from the bishop’s palace, out through thepalace gate, and thence down to the southern gate of the city.

‘Me? I’d reckon he’s either lost a large part of his senses, or he has reason to know that there’s a dangerous document inthe messenger’s purse.’ Normally a man who would have a hundred filthy jokes to hand, the coroner was unusually quiet today. The seriousness of the matter had eradicated his sense of humour.

‘Is it likely that the messenger could have been killed for any other reason than the theft of his purse?’ Baldwin wondered. King’s messengers were almost never attacked or harmed. They were known by their small pouches with the king’s own arms onthem as much as by their uniforms.

‘A man might have seen him and desired to know what was held in his purse, I suppose. An off-the-cuff decision. A chance encounter. Man saw him, thought: “Nice little purse, wonder how much money’s in it,” ’ Coroner Richard proposed. He looked at Baldwin. ‘No. You’re right. He was murdered for this document,whatever it was.’

‘Which puts us in a very difficult position, old friend.’

‘Why?’

‘Because whoever killed that messenger must have known what was in his pouch, and desired it for his own reasons. And thatman therefore must be known to the bishop. He is probably in the bishop’s own household, because how else could a man havecome to know what was in the pouch?’

‘There was the messenger himself.’

Baldwin shook his head. ‘The messenger would be the last to know what was held in his pouch. He would only know the destinationof the message, not the content. No, it must have been someone in the bishop’s household who heard what was in it, and soughtto take it.’

‘Why?’

‘We cannot tell that until we have it in our hands. Perhaps blackmail, perhaps information that could be easily sold to someone?’ Such as the French king, he told himself. If Bishop Stapledon had written something defamatory of the queen, the informationcould be enormously useful to the king of England’s leading enemy.

‘Well, let’s go and check, then,’ the coroner said easily. They were already at the gate, and he motioned to their left, towhere the body lay, a beadle standing alert nearby.

Baldwin nodded, and crouched at the corpse’s side. The pouch was a small leather purse with the king’s arms painted carefullyon the side. It was well constructed, with a waxen coating to protect the contents against wind and rain, and the fasteningwas tight, so Baldwin found he had some difficulty in opening it at first. Inside were some small message rolls, each some four inches long, and two in diameter. He glancedover at the coroner, who stood now leaning against a wall, picking at his teeth with a small stick he had sharpened. He eyed Baldwin with a contented, untroubled look.

Sighing to himself, Baldwin carefully studied each seal before removing the pouch from the dead man’s belt and reinstallingall the messages in it.

‘Well?’ Coroner Richard demanded. ‘Was it there?’

‘No,’ said Baldwin, and he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder towards the bishop’s palace. This would not be a surpriseto the bishop, he felt sure, but no matter whether it was or not, the fact was that Baldwin was being asked now to seek outa roll even though he knew nothing about the contents.

Looking away from the palace, he found himself wondering how many people within the city walls could be carrying a roll justlike the one which had been stolen.

Dartmoor