Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

Justin Green looked unhappy, but he had no choice in the matter. ‘There’s a small mortuary in the churchyard — just a hut like this, where they leave bodies before burial. He could go there.’

By now the tinners had all stopped working and were leaning on their shovels, watching silently. De Wolfe raised his voice to carry up the glen. ‘There’ll be no labour tomorrow morning, men. You will all be needed at the inquest, as you were all the last to see the deceased.’

This set off a murmur of discontent, as it meant the loss of half a day’s earnings.

‘The funeral can be arranged for soon afterwards, so you can pay your respects to your overman and friend at the same time,’ called out the bailiff, trying to mollify the tinners. He turned to de Wolfe. ‘Where will the inquest be held, Crowner?’

‘If the cadaver is to be housed in the churchyard, that will do us. Then he can be put into the earth straight away, if you arrange it with the priest. You can send word to his family on the way back this evening.’

John turned away and strode up the stream, towards the settling troughs and the rest of the workmen. ‘Who found the body and where exactly was it?’ he demanded, in his deep, sepulchral voice

A young lad, no more than fifteen, stepped forward, grasping a long rake. ‘I did, sir. We all came up together as usual, but we saw the stream running pink and I ran ahead, thinking maybe a deer had fallen down the breast of the workings and lay dead at the upper end.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘Henry was under the top of the trough, where the water comes in from the cascade. Face down, he was. I could only see his legs at first, but when I looked under the trestles, I could see he was bleeding into the ground.’ The boy shuddered. ‘Then I saw he had no head.’

The coroner took him by the elbow, not unkindly, and steered him towards the place. ‘Show me where he was, boy.’

With the others trailing behind, the pair walked alongside the long, flat trough. De Wolfe felt the cold water seeping through his boots as he crunched over the coarse gravel and pebbles, which were covered with a few inches of water where the stream spread itself across the ravaged ground.

The trough was made up of flat boards, about a yard wide and with edges a foot high. It became narrower towards the lower end, where a spout allowed the contained water to fall into a large square wooden box, the overflow of which ran on to the ground and found its way back into the stream.

‘How does this contraption work?’ he demanded.

The overman explained, pointing out the various elements of the crude equipment. ‘The tin shode is in small lumps and grains, mixed up with all the earth and pebbles and broken rock of the ground. They say it was washed down in past ages by the river from the deep veins up on the moor.’

‘In Cornwall some men are directly mining such veins now, as the ore in the streams has been exhausted,’ cut in Gwyn, anxious to show off his family connections with tinning.

‘We dig out the banks of the stream and discard the earth and rocks, throwing them on to those waste piles,’ continued Yeo. ‘Then the small stuff gets tossed into the upper end of the trough, where we lead in a stream of water tapped from the torrent as it falls over the upper breast.’ He indicated a narrow leat, a long U-shaped gutter made of narrow planks, which jetted clear water into the top of the trough. ‘Look in here, Crowner. See those laths fixed to the bottom?’

De Wolfe peered into the swirling muddy water and saw that, at regular intervals, cross-slats nailed to the base of the trough formed a series of low dams that impeded the downward flow of water.

‘The tin shode is much heavier than the gangue — the ordinary sand and gravel. Much of it sinks to the bottom of the trough and gets caught behind those slats. What gets past falls into the buddle.’

‘What’s a buddle?’ asked the ever-curious Thomas.

‘It’s that box at the bottom. Every so often, we stop throwing in new burden and clear out the tin shode from the trough and the buddle. The younger lads then pick out any rubbish that’s still in it, then it’s shovelled into panniers for the ponies to take down to the blowing-house.’

They had reached the top of the workings and the boy pointed to the upper end of the trough, supported a couple of feet from the ground on a series of rough trestles hammered into the stream bed. ‘Henry was lying there, sir. His head was under the trough — or would have been if he’d had one. The water was running red around him,’ he added, with the morbid relish of the young.

De Wolfe raised his head as his eyes followed up the leat. Its upper end was pegged into the side of the small waterfall that gushed over the eight-foot bank which formed the upper end of the workings. ‘Is there anything up there?’ he demanded.

Yeo shook his head. ‘Just the virgin stream going up the valley to the moor. We’re gradually working back as we dig. Every few weeks we have to dismantle this lot and shift it further up, as the breast falls in because we’re hacking the sides away.’

The coroner jerked his head at Gwyn, and the big man lumbered away to scramble up the sloping bank in a welter of falling stones and gravel. Using the leat as a handhold, he gained the top and vanished from sight.

All the men were watching now, making no effort to work even though they were losing pay, which partly depended on their output of shode. ‘I sent three of the men up there yesterday to seek the poor fellow’s head,’ grumbled the overman. ‘They found nothing, even though they followed the stream up as far as Fenworthy Circle where the old pagan stones are.’

‘No sign of any weapon that could have done the damage?’

‘Nothing, Crowner.’

‘Could it have been one of your own tools? The blood might have been washed off in the stream.’

The overman grimaced. ‘We got nothing sharp enough for that. Couldn’t have been a pick, and our shovels are wooden with a iron band nailed to the edge.’

John began to walk back down the workings, his feet now cold and wet inside his boots. The prospect of a warm fire and food at Waye Barton manor house was rapidly becoming attractive. ‘Have you any feelings as to who might have done this?’ he snapped at Yeo.

‘That I have not, sir! It’s beyond my understanding — we never had any trouble of this sort before.’

‘No great rivalry between different gangs of tinners?’

The overman turned up his calloused hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Not at all, Crowner. To start with, most of the gangs here on the Upper Teign belong to Walter Knapman. No point in fighting among the same team. There may be rivalry between the owners, such as Knapman and Stephen Acland, but that’s nothing to do with us tinners in the stream-works.’

When they reached the hut again, de Wolfe turned round in time to see Gwyn slide down the slope of the breast, then stride towards them, his great legs splashing through the stream and his ragged cape blowing out behind him in the keen breeze. ‘Nothing to see up there, apart from a few sheep,’ he growled.

De Wolfe sighed. This was going to be another unsolved murder, unless he could make someone talk at the inquest next day.

‘Let’s go, then. There are arrangements to be made back in the town.’ He strode towards the horses, waiting further down, their bridles held by the youngest of the apprentice tinners. ‘Bailiff, you stay and get that body carried down to the church. I’ll find my own way to the manor.’ Under his breath he added, ‘And I trust the lord of Chagford is more hospitable than many others who get saddled with the coroner’s company.’