Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

‘Would you say the marriage has been happy?’ asked Thomas, delicately.

‘On Walter’s part, certainly. He was besotted with his new wife. I fear he spoiled her, giving her everything she asked for — and much that she did not.’

‘And on her side?’ the little clerk probed.

‘She was so reserved that it was hard to know what went on in her mind. I married them in the church and it would be unChristian of me to cast any aspersions, but I felt that it was no love match on her side. Walter was a wealthy tin-master, likely to increase in stature as time went on, and Joan was attracted by his riches and his prominence.’

Thomas accepted more wine and, suspecting that the priest had already imbibed plenty before he arrived, gambled that the drink would relax his reticence. ‘Tell me, if you think it not too impertinent a question between two men of the cloth,’ he said, with a deprecatory little cough, ‘is it likely that the widow may have been casting her eye elsewhere?’

He need not have trodden so warily, for Paul Smithson, his normally waxy face pink with good wine, gave him a knowing wink from one piggy little eye.

‘It was a poorly kept secret, especially for those with sharp sight. Mistress Joan had a fancy for another tin-master — unfortunately, her husband’s main business rival.’

‘You mean Stephen Acland? Did Walter know of this?’

‘I’m sure he suspected it, though his main quarrel with Acland was over the tin-works. Stephen wanted to expand and Walter kept beating him to obtaining new boundings on the moor, as well as refusing to sell some existing sites.’

‘Was their antagonism ever violent?’

‘Not beyond words, as you saw at the last inquest. Their men may have had a fight or two, I hear. Tinners tend to take sides very strongly when their masters fall out.’

The priest poured another full cup of wine for himself and drank most of it in a gulp. ‘Maybe Walter Knapman would have been glad to see Acland in a coffin, but I doubt the feeling was mutual.’

‘You hinted that Acland and Mistress Joan were … well, very friendly. Do you think it had gone beyond mere friendship?’ The crafty Thomas suddenly appeared to take fright at his own temerity. ‘But, please, I would not wish to probe any secrets of the confessional,’ he gabbled, crossing himself spasmodically.

Paul Smithson, cup in hand, bellowed with laughter. ‘Confessional? Our dear Joan never came near the shriving pew. Anyone with half an eye could see what was going on. She’d shake off her old mother, who slept every afternoon, and dismiss her maid when she went picking flowers or riding in the countryside. By some strange coincidence, she often rode past the long-house near Chagford Bridge.’

The clerk thought he had better change the subject, before the priest became too graphic. He suspected that the vicar had a rather unhealthy interest in the comely Widow Knapman and her love life.

‘This death must have saddened Walter’s brother and stepson,’ he hazarded.

‘I’ve not seen Peter Jordan yet, but Matthew seems upset — though, considering he’s Walter’s twin, he shows little emotion. I sense his main concern is with his future as a tin-merchant until the inheritance is settled.’

‘As twins, were they close?’

‘Not really. They grew up here, I’m told, but Matthew has been in Exeter these many years.’ He paused and wiped wine from his lips with an unsteady finger. ‘From time to time there are whispers that they were not really twins or that they had different fathers — though I doubt that Nature can allow that with twins.’

Thomas sat in the priest’s house for a time, drinking sparingly while Smithson became more inebriated, but although his tongue loosened, nothing more of any real interest emerged from him and eventually the clerk escaped. Drinking gave him no pleasure and usually a splitting headache. It certainly did nothing to raise his sombre mood, and sitting in the comfortable house with the complacent priest had merely emphasised Thomas’s ecclesiastical loss.

He had left his pony in the manor barton and started to trudge back the half-mile to report to John de Wolfe. Just as he was passing the churchyard, opposite the Crown tavern, he saw a dismal procession coming towards him from the square, at the bottom of which another road came in from the direction of Exeter.

First came a black horse ridden by a young man with a dark moustache, then a light cart pulled by a pair of sturdy ponies, driven by a lad perched on the front rail. As a rearguard, four sumpter horses with empty panniers were led by a middle-aged man, the carter Matthew had employed in Exeter.

In the cart, partly hidden from view by the wooden sides, was the body of Walter Knapman, shrouded in canvas. A black flag drooped from a staff lashed to the tailboard and a wreath of ivy leaves was hung on the tip of the draught-pole between the two horses.

The carter stopped his pack-train outside the alehouse to let the cart carry on alone. As the cortège passed slowly along the street, the street vendors and passers-by stopped and bowed their heads or doffed their caps in respect for one of their most prominent townsmen, as he made his last journey to his fine house.

Thomas waited until the cart turned down past a huge oak known locally as the Cross Tree, just outside the church. When it had vanished, he turned and plodded on to find his master.

There were still a few hours of daylight left when the coroner’s team met up in the hall of Wibbery’s manor to eat and talk about the day’s events. Gwyn had spent a few hours in Chagford’s taverns, now crowded to capacity by the arrival of tinners for the coinage ceremony the next day. The timber hall was rather small and old-fashioned, with a floor of beaten earth covered in rushes and a central fire-pit inside a raised rim of stones and hardened clay. A few trestle tables had been set up with benches and stools, and more trestles rested flat against the walls. The main door, sheltered by fixed screens, gave out on to the steps down to the bailey, and another smaller door led into the solar and the guest-room, where Wibbery and his wife lived.

The three from Exeter sat at the table nearest the fire, where logs and moor peat glowed cheerfully. A matronly servant from the outside kitchen brought food that made up in quantity for what it lacked in imagination, given the limited range of meat and vegetables remaining after the long winter. It suited Gwyn well, as his capacity for food and drink was phenomenal. Mutton stew by the quart and trenchers covered with boiled bacon were supplemented by cabbage and turnips in a wooden bowl the size of a small shield.

The bottler, a wizened old man with a cleft palate, brought a large earthenware pitcher of good ale, and a smaller one of rough farm cider, which had swirls of green filaments in the bottom that reminded the more fastidious Thomas of seaweed.

De Wolfe and the Cornishman ate heartily, while the clerk picked moodily at his food. As they ate, the coroner interrogated the others between mouthfuls, learning first from Thomas what he had extracted from the plump priest of St Michael the Archangel. Then Gwyn, whose afternoon in half a dozen alehouses had not diminished his appetite for Wibbery’s brew, reported what his spying had yielded. ‘There’s big trouble fermenting among the tinners. I thought Cornish fishermen were a rough lot, but some of these lads from the moor are tougher still.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘They are resentful that Richard de Revelle remains Warden. Now that they’ve heard their best candidate to replace him is slain, they’re suspicious that it was done to put a stop to his campaign to take over the Wardenship. Some accuse the sheriff himself, others say that de Wrotham and Fitz-Peters are behind the killing.’