Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

‘Get him up from the waterline and turn him over,’ ordered de Wolfe, a grim thought already forming in his mind.

Willing hands disentangled the cadaver from the holly-bush and pulled the thorny twigs off the tunic. Gwyn and the reeve each took one of the outstretched hands and slid the body up the wet sand to the grass, then rolled it over on to its back.

Puffy and sodden, with scratches on cheeks and forehead, the square face stared sightlessly up at the grey clouds. The soaking hair was plastered to the scalp, but the fair ringlets confirmed the identity the features had already proclaimed.

It was Walter Knapman, lately a tin-master of Chagford.

John de Wolfe wrestled only a short time with his conscience. His rigid sense of duty soon convinced him that both his visit to his mother and the dalliance with the delectable Hilda were now out of the question. One dead tinner from Chagford was mystery enough, but to have two within a week was pushing coincidence too far. The news would have to be taken to Knapman’s family without delay, and investigations would have to be made in earnest. He motioned to Gwyn to step back from the chattering crowd, who fluttered around the body like agitated birds. ‘We must get him away from here and examine him properly. Which direction was this pack train going?’

Gwyn shouted across to one of the men and found that they were bound for Exeter, the panniers of the eight sumpters laden with cloth from a mill at Paignton.

‘They can carry the corpse there for us. If one of the horses has its load shared out among the others, we can lash the body across its back. I’ll even buy a length of their cloth to wrap round it, for decency’s sake.’

Gwyn gave his master one of those looks that de Wolfe had come to recognise as an expression of doubt. ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ he asked, with a sigh.

‘These pack trains move awful slow, Crowner. They’ll not be in Exeter until this time tomorrow.’

‘So? Knapman’s in no hurry — he’s dead.’

Gwyn refused to be brushed aside. ‘The body’s been soaking in water a day or so already. By the time he’s bumped along all the way to Exeter tomorrow, he’ll not be that fresh. Shouldn’t we take a look at him now?’

As usual, his henchman was right. But to strip the body here, on a bleak sandbank in full view of the village, was unseemly, even to a hardened character like de Wolfe. Then inspiration came to him. ‘We’ll take him just up the road to Holcombe and use one of my brother’s barns to examine him. Then we can ride on to the city and let these folk take their time bringing him the rest of the way.’

An hour later, they pulled open the tall doors of a wattle and daub farm building at Holcombe, aided by the local manor reeve, who fussed over his master’s brother like a hen with a favourite chick — he had known him from infancy. He was Hilda’s father and was well aware — even secretly approved — of John’s affection for his daughter.

Knapman’s body had been rolled in a length of serge and lashed over the back of a sturdy pony, his head resting on one pannier, his legs on the opposite one. Gwyn untied the corpse and carried it like a baby into the barn, even though the dead Walter was no lightweight. The two hauliers, who rode their own steeds, one at each end of the line of roped pack-horses, waited patiently outside, mollified by the promise of a fee for this funereal transport.

In the barn, which in early spring was virtually empty, the reeve rolled out a small handcart to provide a flat platform for the body. Gwyn laid it down and they stood back to view it carefully.

‘No blood to be seen,’ observed the Cornishman, ‘but he’s been well washed in the river.’

‘Where did your alehouse gossip say he went missing?’

‘Last seen near the mill near Steps Ford on the upper Teign.’

‘The same river, certainly. He must have been washed down twenty miles or more — but it’s been in full spate after that cloudburst.’

De Wolfe looked at the pallid face, the skin soggy and peeling in places. But the expression was calm enough, giving the lie to the nonsense about contortions of fear and agony remaining after death. His experience of hundreds of corpses on the battlefields of Europe and the Levant had long ago disabused him of that fable.

He moved to the side of the cart and pulled up the half-open eyelids to examine the whites of the eyes. The globes were already softened and partly collapsed, but there were no blood spots to suggest throttling. Some fragments of grass floated out of the corners of the eyes as the water drained away and John pulled down the lids to blanket the sightless stare. ‘Nothing around the neck, no marks of a rope or throttling fingers,’ he commented, as Gwyn and the reeve watched him pull aside the neck of the brown tunic.

‘Could he have been thrown from his horse, perhaps?’ asked the reeve who, as an old retainer, was bold enough to ask questions of the man he once knew as a child.

‘Quite possibly, it happens often enough,’ conceded de Wolfe, though he thought that it didn’t happen that often to folk who have just lost an employee through murder. He motioned to Gwyn to go round to the other side of the cart, and together they began to remove Knapman’s clothing.

‘One boot missing, but that’s common enough in drowned men, both in sea or river,’ boomed Gwyn, who, as a former fisherman, considered himself an expert on waterlogged corpses.

They removed Knapman’s broad leather belt and de Wolfe picked up the purse slung from it. There was a chink of coins and when he opened it, a handful of silver pennies and a small gold crucifix tumbled out. ‘Doesn’t look like a robbery. No outlaw or footpad would leave these behind,’ he remarked.

They hauled the long brown tunic over the head, having to fight the stiffness of death to free the arms from the sleeves. Underneath, Knapman wore a shirt of fine linen and a pair of worsted breeches tied around the waist with a drawstring.

‘Nothing on the front of him, apart from these scrapes and scratches,’ grunted the coroner’s officer.

‘That happened after death, I’m sure — no bruises or blood under the edges of the rips. All done against rocks and tree trunks, rolling down the river.’

De Wolfe moved to the head and felt with his long fingers among the thick wet mop of hair. When they reached the back point of the scalp, they stopped abruptly. ‘Ah, here we have it. The head is cracked like an egg.’ The reeve, bending to peer more closely, jerked back when he heard the grating crepitation of bone fragments rubbing together as de Wolfe massaged the rear of the skull.

‘So he might have taken a heavy fall, Sir John?’ The manor servant was keen to promote his theory.

‘He might, indeed. It’s a long way down from a big stallion, especially if you land on a rock.’

John’s presumption of foul play was starting to waver a little, but it was soon revived when Gwyn hauled the body over on to its face.

‘What have we here, Crowner?’ he bellowed, almost gleefully, pointing with a massive forefinger at a red mark running diagonally across the back between the shoulder-blades.

De Wolfe hunched over the corpse, to peer down at the pale, macerated skin. There was no purplish-red livor mortis due to the sinking of blood, because the body had been constantly rolled and twisted by the currents. But a clear double track of red bruising ran from the back of the right shoulder across the spine for a distance of four hand spans, fading away below the lower edge of the left shoulder-blade. The two lines ran parallel, with a clear central zone the width of a thumb between them.