Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

Pink in the face with anger, the landlady flounced away from the discomfited coroner. Brutus gave a little whine and nuzzled his head more closely against his master’s leg.

As soon as the coroner had left Matthew Knapman’s house that afternoon, the tin-merchant had left his wife to sniff away her mild sorrow at their fireside and had taken Peter Jordan with him to the yard of a haulier with whom they did business. They passed through the Watergate in the south-west angle of the city walls and walked in silence along the quayside, where several merchant vessels and barges were aground at low tide. At the yard, Matthew arranged with the carter to move his brother’s body to Chagford after it arrived next day at the castle.

The man normally collected crude tin from the moor and later hauled some of the refined metal to other cities in England, using both ox-carts and his trains of sumpter horses and Poitou mules. ‘I’ll see that it arrives by tomorrow night, with all due reverence,’ he promised, secretly worried that the death of the most prominent tin-master might affect his business.

As they walked back to the house, Matthew gave instructions to his step-nephew. ‘I’ll have to ride to Chagford straight away, to break the news,’ he said, in a hollow voice. ‘You stay until the corpse arrives in the morning and see that everything is done with decorum. Ride with it when it leaves. A light cart should get there before nightfall.’ He looked at the sky, overcast and grey. ‘As I hope to now, if I leave without delay.’

However, Matthew Knapman arrived in Chagford well after dark, although he pushed his horse to the limit over the sixteen miles from Exeter. Leaving the steaming beast to recover in the charge of a stable-boy at the back of the Knapman hall, he walked the few yards to the priest’s house on the edge of the churchyard. Here he recruited Paul Smithson to help him break the news to Walter’s wife, and together they went to the house

The steward, Harold, met them outside the main door, returning from the stable where he had been investigating the arrival of a rider after dark. In the light of a tar flare set in the wall, his face was apprehensive. He immediately guessed the reason for Matthew’s late visit, and wept pitifully when he was told of the violent death of his master, whom he had served for almost twenty years. Then he straightened up, stopped sobbing and led them into the house.

‘The mistress is in there with a visitor — come to offer support at the master’s disappearance, no doubt,’ he added, with a hint of sarcasm. In the main room the old woman, Lucy, sat dozing in a high-backed chair near the fire, while Joan Knapman, her dark hair hanging in two thick plaits over her bosom, sat stiffly at the table, now bare except for a wine flask and two French glasses. On the other side, leaning on the scrubbed boards, was Stephen Acland, his burly figure perched on a stool.

At the sound of footsteps, he turned his head, and when he saw Matthew and Smithson enter, rose to his feet, an almost defiant expression on his face. ‘I came to see if there was any news of Walter,’ he said, before the newcomer could utter a word. ‘We have had our differences, I know, but he’s still a neighbour and a fellow tinner.’

Matthew glanced at him perfunctorily and crossed to stand before Joan, putting a fatherly hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him calmly. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said, in a low voice.

As Matthew nodded slowly, there was a squeal as Acland’s stool abruptly grated across the flagstones. ‘Christ Almighty, no!’ he cried, waking Lucy, who joined in the clamour as Harold starting sobbing again in the background.

‘Be quiet!’ snapped the new widow, dry-eyed and in control of the situation. ‘What’s happened, Matthew?’

He sank to another stool and leaned his arms on the table as he told them the story as far as he knew it from the coroner. Joan’s mother tottered to her daughter and tried to put a comforting arm around her, but the younger woman shrugged herself free. The parish priest also came near her, but experience warned him to leave his platitudes until later.

‘I’ve arranged for him to be brought home tomorrow,’ continued Matthew sadly. ‘The crowner will be coming and there will another inquest, I’m afraid, before he can be laid to rest.’

Joan laid a slim hand on his arm. ‘It’s hard to believe, Matthew. He was so active, so alive. How can he be gone so quickly from our lives?’

The dead man’s twin stared at her and was almost surprised to see that her eyes were moist in the dim candlelight. He had never approved of his brother’s new marriage and thought Joan a hard, calculating woman, concerned only for her own comfort, but now, for the first time, he saw some vestige of affection, too late for his brother’s solace, for Matthew knew that Walter had had doubts about his new wife’s fidelity. ‘And you, Joan? This must be doubly hard for you, to lose two husbands in such a short time,’ he said.

The new widow accepted a scrap of handkerchief from her mother, who fluttered about her like a demented moth. Dabbing at her eyes, she pulled herself up to her usual stiff-backed posture and gave a deep sigh. ‘I have expected this since yesterday. When he failed to come home, I knew something terrible had happened. And when last night and much of today had passed, the only answer was that he was dead. Yet I thought he must have had a fall from his horse or some other accident — not that he had been murdered and found in a river a score of miles away.’

Matthew had never known her so talkative and wondered again if he had misjudged her. Yet this other man was here in the same room, almost suspiciously solicitous for her welfare. He watched Acland pace restlessly to the hearth and back.

‘What in hell is going on around the moor these days?’ demanded the rival tin-master. ‘First that overman, now Walter himself! Is there some evil spirit battening on us tinners? Some of the old workers believe in Crockern, the pagan god of the moors, and I’m beginning to think that way myself.’

Matthew laughed bitterly. ‘If there is, it’s a spirit that can wield a staff pretty well — and a cleaver in the case of poor Henry.’

The priest nodded in the candlelight. ‘I think we can blame a human presence for these outrages, not some moor phantom. But that’s of little comfort to poor Joan. Is there anything I can do for you, dear lady?’

Walter’s widow sat pale and erect, her hands in the lap of her rich red silk gown, the colour of which matched the braid that was woven into the plaits that reached her waist, their ends encased in thin gilt tubes. ‘Thank you, no. I must take some time to get used to the idea of having no husband once again.’

Lucy was snivelling and trying to hold her daughter’s hand, but Joan rose to her feet and walked around to the saddle-weary tin-merchant.

‘We should be thinking more of you, Matthew. You were his twin, closer to him than any of us. And you are exhausted. You must rest — we will need all our strength for the coming days.’

Seemingly the strongest of all, she gave orders to Harold to settle her brother-in-law in a small room on the upper floor and supply him with food and drink. Then she thanked the priest graciously, virtually dismissing him — and less graciously sent her mother to bed.

When she was left alone with Acland, they moved to sit side by side near the glowing fire. Heads close together, they talked earnestly for a long while, her fingers covered by his powerful hands.

That same night, John de Wolfe had left the Bush with a mixture of emotions. They swung from recrimination with himself for mentioning his journey through Dawlish to despondency that the knot that had tied him to Nesta for over a year seemed now to have been undone. Then anger displaced gloom, as he first cursed the fickleness of women, then contemplated beating Alan of Lyme to a thin pulp.