Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

“They are, indeed,” replied MacBeth with satisfaction. “Garban, fetch the servant Segan back here, but do not mention this discovery to him.”

“I understand, noble lord,” Garban said with a grim smile.

Cothromanach the brehon looked thoughtfully at MacBeth. “Did you expect to find the jewels here?”

“As soon as I heard my wife’s explanation-yes. I began to understand how and why this foul deed was done.”

“Explain your deduction, my lord.”

“Not hard. This is what I believe happened: Maybe the prince Malcolm told his servant that he would be receiving the jewels from his sister. Maybe Segan saw the Lady Gruoch come to his master’s chamber and observed her entering with the sack. It was not politics that motivated Segan but greed. He waited until the castle was quiet and then he went to rouse his master by tapping at the door. Malcolm let him into the chamber, half-asleep. Seeing only Segan, a servant he trusted, he turned his back on him. That was when Segan struck. Two swift but fatal stabs in the back. He found the sack of jewels and took them back to his own bedchamber and hid them where we have now discovered them.”

“How then did Segan receive his own injuries?”

“Easy to tell. He had his story ready, that the murderer had stood behind the door and had given him a blow on the head which rendered him unconscious so that he could not recognize who it was. But this was the difficult part. Have you ever tried to give yourself a blow on the back of the head? Nevertheless, he needed some visual sign to show that he had been attacked. In fact, I might not have spotted the flaw in his story had not you realized it.”

“That the injury was in the front?”

“Exactly. He went to the wall and banged his head against it, causing the abrasion. Then he pretended that he had just come round and went to rouse Garban with the news of his attack.”

MacBeth suddenly smiled and pointed to a small bloodstain on the wall. It was shoulder high, where a man might have banged his head to make the abrasion. “I presume we do not have to explain that mark away?”

The brehon sighed. “It is a stupid man who leaves such a trail of clues.”

Just then Segan entered the chamber with Garban close behind him.

He stared from MacBeth to the brehon with a slight flicker of puzzlement in his eyes. Then his glance fell on the bed and the pile of jewelry.

“My lord, this…,” he began, taking a step forward.

Then he froze, his eyes round in surprise. He half twisted and attempted to reach for something at his side. Garban withdrew the six-inch blade from the young man.

He watched dispassionately as the servant fell to the floor.There was no need to examine the body. Segan was dead long before he hit the floor.

“He was reaching for his knife,” Garban explained. “He meant to harm you, noble lord.”

“A pity,” muttered Cothromanach. “Better to have him live awhile and receive his punishment as a warning to all thieves and murderers.”

“Indeed,” MacBeth acknowledged grimly. “Have the body removed, Garban, and have those jewels gathered up and returned to the Lady Gruoch. I will walk a way with you, Cothromanach.”

The brehon glanced at him. “You are still anxious, noble lord?”

“There are still willing tongues to spread rumors. Many will be quick to lay the blame for this at my door.”

“Have no fear. I shall write my account to my fellow brehons throughout the land. They shall know what has transpired here.”

MacBeth smiled in thanks and, hauling his cloak more tightly around his shoulders, turned and made his way back to his bedchamber. Dawn now filled the castle with a gray, cold light.

After the morning meal, while the light was still gray and cold, MacBeth found old Garban on the ramparts of the castle.

He was standing in a quiet corner away from the scrutiny of the guards, leaning with his back to the ramparts. “A close call, noble lord,” observed the old man as he turned and peered over the ramparts, looking down into the rocky ravine below. “I had to kill him.”

“Indeed you did,” agreed MacBeth, pleasantly enough. “Yet the plan was nearly ruined by not clearing away the extra candle stub.”

“It is easy to make a mistake. But all ended well. After Lady Gruoch left her brother, I knocked on the door, and the prince opened it, knowing it was I. The problem was that his falling body was heard by Segan, who came and knocked on the door. Had I not opened, he would have roused the entire castle. So I let him in and gave him a blow on the back of the head. While he lay unconscious, I struck him on the temple, for I knew that this might arouse suspicion.Then I hid the jewels in his bedchamber, in case we needed evidence, and also spread his wall with his blood to make it look as though he had faked his wound by dashing his forehead there. Then, to confuse him over the time the deed was committed, I exchanged the burning candle with a new one, which would put his timing out by an hour or two.”

“That was the mistake you made, in dropping the stub of the first candle on the floor and not taking it with you,” observed MacBeth. “It could have made the brehon suspicious.”

“None of us are perfect, noble lord,” sniffed the old servant.

“True enough.”

“And now you stand one step closer to the throne at Sgain, noble lord. Prince Malcolm is no longer your rival, and the Lady Gruoch is there to support you.”

“True again.”

“You have much to thank me for, noble lord.” Garban smiled. “I trust I will be properly rewarded.”

“That I have and that you shall,” agreed MacBeth, and turning swiftly, he gave the old man a violent push, sending him flying over the rampart. There was scarcely time for Garban to scream as he plummeted downward into the rocky chasm below.

MacBeth turned and, seeing that he was unobserved, allowed a smile of satisfaction to spread over his features.

“It’s a body, Master Constable.”

Master Hardy Drew, Constable of the Bankside Watch, stared in distaste at the wherryman. “I have eyes to see with,” he replied sourly. “Just tell me how you came by it.”

The stocky boatman put a hand to the back of his head and scratched as if this action were necessary to the process of summoning up his memories. “It were just as we turned midriver to the quay here,” the wherryman began. “We’d brought coal up from Greenwich. I was guiding the barge in when we spotted the body in the river, and so we fished it out.”

Master Drew glanced down to the body sprawled in a sodden mess on the dirty deck of the coal barge.

The finding of bodies floating in the Thames was not an unusual occurrence. London was a cesspool of suffering humanity, especially along these banks between London Bridge and Bankside. Master Drew had not been Constable of the Watch for three years without becoming accustomed to bodies being trawled out of this stretch of water whose southern bank came under his policing jurisdiction. Cutthroats, footpads, and all manner of the criminal scum of the city found the river a convenient place to rid themselves of their victims. And it was not just those who had died violent deaths who were disposed of in the river, but also corpses of the poor, sick and diseased, whose relatives couldn’t afford a church burial. The pollution of the water had become so bad that this very year a water reservoir, claimed to be the first of its kind in all Europe, had been opened at Clerkenwell to supply fresh water for the city.

However, what marked this body out for the attention of the constable, among the half-dozen or so that had been fished from the river this particular Saturday morning, was the fact that it was the body of a well-dressed young man. Despite the effects of his immersion, he bore the stamp of a gentleman. In addition, he had not died of drowning, for his throat had been expertly cut-and no more than twelve hours previously, by the condition of the body.