Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

‘I will, master.’

‘That is good,’ Pyckard gasped, and his head fell back onto the pillow with a grunt of pain. ‘Oh, God. Take me to Your bosom soon!’

Baldwin and Simon left the tavern as soon as they had finished their drinks, and made their way up the street to Simon’s house, only to find that Sir Richard de Welles was already awake and sitting in Simon’s favourite chair in the hall, drinking from a large cup of wine.

‘Where have you two been?’ he rumbled. ‘You look like conspirators.’

Baldwin explained what he was doing here in Dartmouth, ending his story with his suspicion about the identity of the corpse in the road.

‘So you understand,’ he finished, ‘that this Frenchman must escape so that we don’t give the French king a pretext for further action. Last time a French sergeant died, it cost us Gascony. If a French knight from the household of the sister of the French king was taken and punished for rape, it would have dire consequences.’

‘You think so, hey? Right. I’ll have a messenger sent to Exeter to have a full description of the man and see whether there are any distinguishing features. Let’s hope it’s not the Stapledon lad, though. It’s always a bad business to have a famous stiff. No, I’d be happier if he was an unknown cleric or something. So, sir, you have been concealing things from a Coroner who’s trying to do his best to uncover a murderer, is that it?’ He waved aside Baldwin’s protestations with an easy gesture. ‘A joke, Sir Baldwin. If you kept something from me, I’m sure you had good reason. Suggesting that there was a foreign rapist in town who was killing people would not be the best way to keep the peace, I daresay. The question is, what do we do about it now?’

‘For my part,’ Baldwin said, ‘I would like to investigate both dead bodies. First I think we need to speak to this strange fellow Cynegils and see what he has to say. Then I’d like to go and meet John Hawley and ask him about the body found on the ship, and question the master of the ship too.’

‘The one that matters surely is the fellow in the roadway? The sailor’s death was at sea, so it’s hardly our affair,’ Sir Richard pointed out. A Coroner’s duties only extended to deaths on land or within sight of land.

‘I hope so, and yet my heart tells me otherwise. In your experience, Coroner, how many murders are actually concealed efficiently?’

‘Next to none! You know that yourself. Whether there’s an ancient feud between them, or one or other has given offence for some reason, or a man dislikes the look of another’s face. The fools tend to pull out a sword and whop anyone who takes their fancy. I never find that murder has been covered up.’

Baldwin reflected that this could simply mean that the Coroner had failed to notice efficiently concealed murders in the past. However, he replied politely, ‘In the main, I have found that too. A murder that seems planned and suspicious is a rarity. And yet here you appear to have two such murders. One planned and most efficiently put into force at night in the roadway; the second planned and executed, if you will pardon the word, on board a ship.’

‘You realise what you are suggesting,’ Simon said. ‘The man on the ship — if he was killed in port before the loading of the cargo, he would have been seen by the stevedores.’

Sir Richard shrugged. ‘So? He was killed at sea, then.’

‘If so, the killer knew that the body would be discovered at sea or when the ship docked. If he was on board the ship, he would have been at risk of discovery.’

‘It was a risk, I suppose. But he could have run as soon as the ship arrived.’

‘No. The ship’s master would have all the crew remain on board until the cargo had been unloaded, and when the body was found, I daresay any master would want to see who was responsible. But if the murderer knew that there was going to be an attack on the ship, he wouldn’t have had to worry.’

‘You mean that there was a pirate spy on the ship?’ Baldwin demanded.

‘More likely that a man killed this sailor and dumped his body in the ship before it sailed,’ the Coroner grunted. ‘If he was killed on the ship, someone would have heard something.’

‘Perhaps. Yet if the rest of the crew thought his death justified …’ Simon began.

The Coroner shook his head with certainty. ‘They’d have thrown him overboard. Sailors who think one of their number is bad luck, or is putting them in danger some other way, generally give him short shrift. The fastest way to be rid of him would be over the side, not knifed and thrown in the hold.’

‘True. I had not considered the ways of sailors,’ Baldwin mused. ‘I wonder if that could help us?’

‘I doubt it. Sounds like a marvellous excuse for running about the town like headless chickens and missing the point entirely. No, Bailiff, I think that there is one murder that matters here, and that is the death of the nephew of the Bishop of Exeter. The other fellow was a mere sailor. He can be mourned by his wife, but he needn’t concern us. Now, are you two going to come and see this disreputable and so-called “spy” Cynegils?’

Baldwin glanced at Simon and nodded. However, his mind was not on the ‘spy’, but on the fair-haired man in the tavern.

When Walter Stapledon had been so determined to keep all news of the rape secret, Baldwin was curious to know how it was that, within a few days, a man could be here in Dartmouth bruiting news of it abroad.

The best thing, he determined, was to find the man and make sure that he escaped as quickly as possible, no matter how repellent the concept.

Bill and Alred had been hard at work in their hole. The gravel was laid and tamped down as best they could, and now, as the two stood up on the road, Law was down in the hole spreading the damp and heavy sand about the place.

‘Looks like something’s going on over there,’ Alred said, watching the comings and goings from the inn.

‘There’re more folks there than I’ve seen this last week,’ Bill agreed. ‘Should we go and see what’s going on?’

Law looked up and peered between their legs. ‘I’ll go. You two’ll just get thirsty as soon as you get inside there.’

‘Meaning you wouldn’t?’ Alred scoffed. ‘You finish the work in there, Law. I’ll go and see what it’s about.’

Ignoring the comments hurled at his back by his disrespectful apprentice, the paver set off for the tavern, determined to have at least one pint of ale in peace.

Law would have to learn that he was still an apprentice. He wasn’t a full, equal partner in business, just as Bill wasn’t. The pair of them were as much use as a chalk chisel. Hopeless. If only they had kept their traps shut, they would have avoided those two men questioning them. He had nothing against the Bailiff, he’d seen enough of Simon Puttock to know he was a decent fellow, but this Keeper was a stranger, and Alred didn’t know what to make of him. The paver had a healthy contempt for most men involved with the law, whether they were lawyers, bailiffs, Keepers or Coroners. All of them were in it for their own benefit, and that would rarely, if ever, accord with the common man’s interests.

The inn was full, and as he tried to squint over the shoulders of the men in front, he could see little but a multitude of backs. Even when he managed to get a glance inside the tavern, it was so dark compared with the bright sunshine outside that he could make out nothing.

Remembering the night they had rescued the foreigner, Alred made a quick decision. Leaving the gathering crowd, he made his way round to the back lane behind the inn. At the break in the wall, he quickly clambered into the garden beyond, a noisome place that reeked of piss. A rat scuttled away as he strode past a compost heap, and he aimed a desultory kick at it, disgruntled with the world.