Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

‘Can’t we go upstairs, where we can at least talk more privately?’ he suggested, staring at a man who was grinning at him from a nearby bench.

‘I’ve got a tavern to run after I’ve snatched a meal,’ she said tartly. ‘And with your busy life, no doubt you can find better things to occupy your time.’

De Wolfe’s resolution to be calm and rational began to evaporate under the rising of his own temper, but he took a grip on himself and made one last effort. ‘Nesta, for God’s sake, we’ve forged too much between us over the past year to act like this. What’s got into you, that this young lout has turned your head?’

She dropped the bone on to the table boards and turned quickly to him, her lips pressed together in a thin line. As a redhead, her own temper more than matched his when she was roused. ‘Listen, Sir Crowner, what future have I with you? You’re married, however much you regret it. You are a high law officer for your king and county and a knight of some substance, while I am a mere ale-wife, little better than one of the villeins on your two manors. How long am I to keep my heart and my bed reserved for such a man as you with no prospect of preferment? Is it not better for me to look elsewhere for my future, while I still have youth and looks to offer?’

He saw tears in her eyes, which she angrily wiped away with her sleeve, before ostentatiously turning from him to attack her food again.

De Wolfe found he had nothing to say in response to this cry from her heart. He stood up and tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It would be better if I went to the Saracen to sample their ale tonight. But I’ll not leave the matter like this, Nesta. I’ll be back when we can both think more sensibly.’

He walked heavily to the door without a backward glance, ducked under the lintel and went out into the blustery evening.

A couple of hours later Gwyn found his master, after failing to track him down at his usual haunt in Idle Lane. With his remarkable capacity for ale and cider, it had been no great hardship for the Cornishman to seek the coroner in several other taverns before he came to the Saracen on Stepcote Hill. ‘I wonder at your drinking here, Crowner. You always say it’s one of the lowest ale-houses in Exeter.’

The Saracen had a bad reputation as a den for the worst type of cutpurses, whores and criminals. The landlord was Willem the Fleming, an obese hulk of a man who kept some sort of order by the strength of his huge arms. One of the drabs who combined the careers of harlot and barmaid dumped two pottery quarts of indifferent ale before them, and Gwyn immediately filtered half of his through his great moustache while looking keenly at de Wolfe over the rim.

Like most in the city, he knew there was trouble at the Bush between his master and the landlady — and had made an accurate guess at the cause. He was sad and worried, for he was fond of Nesta and concerned about the coroner’s unhappiness. But though he had been de Wolfe’s constant companion for almost twenty years, they were still master and servant and he was not presumptuous enough to raise the subject.

It seemed that de Wolfe wished to keep the issue bottled up, as his first words were about duties for the morrow. ‘Have we anything I must attend in the next two days?’ he demanded. He had drunk well over half a gallon of ale in the last couple of hours but, unlike wine, it never seemed to affect him and his efforts to dull his anxiety over his mistress had come to nothing.

His officer rocked his gingery head from side to side. ‘Tuesday is hanging day, but there’s nothing for the scaffold tomorrow. And the other matter I’ve heard is not coroner’s business — yet.’

De Wolfe raised his head from his ale-jar. ‘What business is that?’

‘I heard gossip in the Anchor — the inn down near the quay-side — before I found you here. It will interest you, I’m sure.’

By now, de Wolfe should have been used to Gwyn’s habit of spinning out news, but it was still infuriating. ‘Tell me, then, for Satan’s sake!’

‘There were men there from Matthew Knapman’s warehouse, which is nearby. It seems their master’s servant had just ridden back from Chagford, with orders to turn out half a dozen men at dawn to ride back with him.’ Gwyn paused for dramatic effect, but the steely look in de Wolfe’s eyes made him hurry on with his tale. ‘Matthew’s brother Walter, the one we saw in Chagford and on Crockern Tor, has gone missing. They found his horse riderless today but not a sign of the man himself.’

The news roused de Wolfe out of his miserable reverie. The tin-master’s disappearance and the recent ghastly murder of one of his overmen seemed more than a coincidence. Yet, as Gwyn had said, the man’s disappearance need not concern a coroner. He might be found disabled after a fall from his horse — or he might have been attacked by outlaws, even rival tinners.

‘Where did he vanish from? Was it on the high moor?’ he asked.

‘Nowhere near there — it was almost half-way back to Exeter, it seems. Knapman owns a mill on the Teign, the other side of Dunsford from here.’

De Wolfe nodded. Dunsford was where they had discovered a Saxon treasure-trove a few months back.

‘Maybe the sheriff has spirited him away, so that Knapman can’t dispossess him as Warden of the Stannaries!’ joked Gwyn.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘But there’s no cause for us to meddle in it.’ He stretched his long arms and legs. ‘If there are no duties tomorrow, I’ll ride down to see my family. I’ve not seen them since that Templar stayed there last month.’

An alarm bell rang in Gwyn’s head. Fond as de Wolfe was of his brother, sister and widowed mother, he often went months without visiting his family home at Stoke-in-Teignhead. And the road from Exeter to Stoke passed through Dawlish.

As soon as the city gates were opened at dawn, Odin and Gwyn’s big brown mare clattered through the cobbled archway of the South Gate, bearing their riders out on to Holloway and the road to Topsham, the little port where the Exe river widened out into its estuary and the open sea beyond.

They passed a stream of people bringing produce into the city, ox-carts laden with cabbages and root vegetables stored over the winter, mules and donkeys labouring under wicker panniers filled with butter, cheese and eggs, and a stream of peasants, some pushing handcarts laden with whatever was available in spring before the new crops had come to fruition. Others drove pigs, sheep and a few spring lambs, all destined for the slaughterers in the Shambles of South Gate Street — a few old women even had a live chicken under each arm, hoping to make a penny out of someone’s Tuesday dinner.

The track dipped into the little valley just beyond Southernhay, where the outflow of the city’s drainage gave the little stream its odious name of Shitebrook, and then up on to the level road that ran along the bank of the Exe, past St James’s Priory.

At a steady clip, the two big horses rapidly covered the three miles to Topsham, where a large flat-bottomed rope-ferry carried them across to the marshy ground on the other side of the river. Soon they were trotting towards the low hills that ran down to meet the sea at Dawlish. An hour later, as they approached the village on the sand, Gwyn privately wondered how his master was going to deal with the situation. As they slowed to a walk to splash through the little creek that sheltered a few boats from the open beach, he won his mental wager with himself. De Wolfe began to inspect the one or two larger sea-going vessels that were beached on the banks of the stream by the ebbing tide.

‘Very few vessels here today, Crowner,’ observed Gwyn, keeping a straight face. He knew very well that de Wolfe was looking for the one owned by Thorgils the Boatman, the husband of the lovely Hilda.