Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

And there the matter had to lie for the moment. Thomas was effusive in his thanks, and one small bonus for de Wolfe was that his clerk’s face became less doleful than before, even if there was little prospect of a favourable outcome.

At a dinner table some sixteen miles to the west, one stool remained empty, to the puzzlement and concern of the household. It was mid-afternoon, several hours past the usual time for the main meal of the day in the Knapman residence, but Walter had not returned.

‘Where did he go this morning?’ asked his brother Matthew, who had just arrived. He came about once a month to confer with Walter about the disposal of tin, arranging transport to Exeter and reporting on sales both at home and abroad.

Joan Knapman answered, annoyance at the lateness of their meal adding a sharper cadence to her voice. ‘He set off early, saying that he was riding to his mill near Dunsford, but would be home in time for his dinner,’ she said, with more than a touch of petulance.

‘It’s not like Walter to be this late for his food. He’s an able trencherman,’ added her mother, looking expectantly at the door to the yard, where the kitchen-shed lay.

Matthew reached across the table to top up the wine cups of the two ladies, then filled his own. ‘That’s strange. If he went to Dunsford. I came that way little more than an hour ago, but saw no sign of Walter. Are you sure it was Dunsford?’

‘Of course it was,’ replied Joan irritably. ‘How many corn-mills do you think he owns? He’s a tin-master, not a miller. I can’t see why he bothered to buy it last autumn, only it was going cheap when the miller died.’

‘I want my dinner,’ whined the old lady. ‘Are we going to wait for ever for Walter? Matthew has ridden for almost three hours and he needs some food.’

Matthew was certainly hungry, and even this good wine was no substitute for a full stomach. He was so unlike Walter in appearance that they would hardly have been taken for brothers, let alone twins. Matthew was two hands’ breadths shorter and had sparse gingery hair in place of Walter’s springy fair thatch. His face was fatter and there were unhealthy-looking brownish patches on his otherwise pink skin, which bore the scars of old acne scattered across it. He dressed expensively, but not well, with a clash of colours between his bright red tunic and blue surcoat. His manner displayed a shifty type of bonhomie, superficially amiable and courteous but leaving the impression that he would be gossiping about someone the moment his back was turned.

Joan heartily disliked him, though she was beginning to dislike everything to do with the Knapman clan, apart from their money. She signalled to their steward, who lurked anxiously in the background. ‘We will eat, Alfred. God alone knows when the master will come.’

He hurried out, and within minutes returned with one of the maids, bearing trenchers of bread, bowls of onion broth and a fat roast goose.

As they ate, Joan wondered how soon she might risk getting away to meet Stephen Acland. Unfaithfulness was always difficult to pursue in a small community like Chagford. Her mother knew what was going on, and was terrified that her daughter’s marriage to the rich tinner might be in danger, if Walter discovered that he was being cuckolded. However, she covered for Joan when she needed excuses to go out and claimed to chaperone her on walks around the town and into the surrounding countryside, as well as on some fictitious visits to the church.

Joan remained abstracted during the meal and her garrulous mother kept a conversation going with Matthew, who as time went on began to express his increasing concern at Walter’s absence. ‘There’s much business to discuss, especially as the next coinage session is due here within a few days. That means a great deal more tin being ready for shipment down to Exeter — and I need to know how much and its likely quality for pricing.’ He was careful not to add that he needed the same information to calculate how much extra he could skim off the top of the commission he earned for arranging its sale and export.

By the time they had eaten their fill, there was still no sign of Walter and Matthew suggested sending a groom to the mill to see what had befallen him. Alfred, the steward, dispatched a stableman on a good horse, with orders to follow the track through Moretonhampstead, the next large village, and on through Doccombe towards Dunsford. The mill was at Steps Ford, on the Teign, about six miles from home, less than an hour on a good horse.

Some three hours later the man was back, leading another stallion on a long rein behind him as he clattered into the yard. He ran breathlessly to find the steward and gabbled out his ominous story on the back steps of the house. ‘I was within half a mile of the mill when I met the master’s horse wandering home, riderless. I went down to the mill, looking in the road to see if he had fallen somewhere, but there was nothing.’

‘Had the miller seen the master?’ demanded the steward, poised to take the news indoors.

‘Yes, he had been there and done his business long before, then left as usual, well before noon. We called out the men from the mill and searched each side of the track and into the woods a fair way, from the mill to where I saw the stallion, but there was nothing. I left them widening the search — but he’s gone! Vanished!’

While Chagford was thrown into consternation by the disappearance of one of its most prominent townsmen, the King’s coroner was carrying out his promise to his clerk. In the endless round of devotions that were the life-blood of cathedrals, the quietest period was in the late afternoon when the service of Compline, the last of the canonical hours, had ended, and there were a few hours for eating and sleeping before Matins at midnight. These Offices meant little to de Wolfe, but he chose a time when his friend John of Alençon would most likely be free.

There were four archdeacons for the different areas of the diocese and John of Alençon was responsible for Exeter itself, as Bishop Henry Marshal’s senior assistant for the city. Like most of the twenty-four canons, he lived in the cathedral precinct and had the second house in Canons’ Row, the road that formed the northern boundary of the Close, a continuation of Martin’s Lane.

Some of his fellow prebendaries lived in considerable style, with many servants, good stables and well-furnished accommodation, but John of Alençon was of a spartan nature and lived the ascetic life. Exeter was a secular establishment, not monastic like some other cathedrals, and its priests were not monks. However, though standards had slipped in recent years, allowing many priests to indulge in a life of luxury, some of the canons, especially John, still clung to the old Rule of St Chrodegang, a strict code of conduct laid down by Bishop Leofric more than a century earlier.

When de Wolfe was shown into the Archdeacon’s living chamber by a servant, he found his friend sitting on a hard stool at a bare oak table, reading a leatherbound book before a large wooden crucifix hanging on the wall. There was no other furniture and the coroner knew from past visits that the priest slept on a simple palliasse on the floor of an adjacent room.

‘Am I disturbing you at your devotions, John?’

The thin face, with cheekbones of almost skull-like prominence, broke into a charming smile. Wiry grey hair complemented grey-blue eyes that smiled with the rest of his face, and all who saw him were convinced that here was a good man in every sense of the word.

His spare frame was clothed in a long plain cassock; the chasuble and alb were reserved for saying the Offices in the cathedral across the way. He assured his friend that he was not interrupting any great religious study and, in fact, looked slightly guilty. ‘To tell the truth, I am reading a most secular book, John.’ He laid a hand on the now closed volume on the table. ‘It’s Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain . I am still trying to decide if the man was a genius, a charlatan — or just plain mad.’