Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

Simon chatted a little longer, to appear polite, but soon he made his excuses, and went back towards the inn.

Ivo watched him go, his smile disappearing. He was only hanging around here because Nicky was here, and he wanted her, but it was impossible even to speak to her while Thomas was in the way, the bastard!

Ivo had always hated him. The fit, healthy one, the one who could enjoy himself, who could do as he wanted, who bedded any woman he fancied. Thomas had an easy time of it, while Ivo, the eldest, must learn his letters and marry the woman his father chose. It was necessary, his father had said. It tied their failing, bankrupt manor to a larger one a mile away. That place had no sons, only one daughter, and her dowry was the manor itself.

But she was a cow, ugly and slow-witted. Thomas had a loving, loyal wife, while Ivo was stuck with her . Oh fine, Ivo also had his estates, two of them, but both had been devastated by famine and murrains. He depended upon his income as Manciple to keep both solvent. His entire life had been spent maintaining the family’s interests, while Thomas flitted from England to France, playing soldier boys and bringing a fancy French wife back with him. It was unfair!

Ivo wanted Nicole, and his conversation with Simon had given him an idea. It would take a certain effort to make Thomas angry enough for it to succeed, but Ivo had managed when they were children and with some luck he could do it again. And that might just seal his younger brother’s fate.

Alexander took a deep breath and gazed about him. The morning’s mist was burning off as the labourers toiled in the fields.

They were as easily guided as oxen, he sometimes thought. He had risen through the ranks of peasantry himself, and was still owned by Lord Hugh de Courtenay, but there the similarity with his neighbours ended. Alexander had his own house, which possessed six rooms as well as the hall. That meant wealth in any man’s terms, and then when you learned that he owned two horses and a full team of oxen as well, not forgetting his flocks… well! You realised you had to tread carefully in his presence. People respected him. They had to.

Except a Coroner and Keeper wouldn’t. They were so much higher up the social scale that they need pay no attention to the likes of Alexander. Damn them both! It was at times like this that he missed the moderating influence of his wife. He still missed her dreadfully, and his boys. It was God’s will, he knew, but it was a cruel fate that took them all when others lost nothing.

Not that all the dead were mourned. Samson wouldn’t be. A rough, untutored thing, the miller. The tavern would be a safer place without him. Still, it was terrible to die like that, to be smashed underwater by the blades of his own wheel and drowned.

Alexander wondered whether the rumours of his assaults on young girls were true. Most people believed that he was guilty of incest with his own daughter, maybe even of raping young Aline, but at least no one had spoken to Swetricus of their suspicions. That was one feature of a vill which was vital, Alexander considered. Everyone knew everyone else’s secrets, but they never discussed them. A man could be cuckolded by a neighbour, and no one would tell him, even though the whole vill knew of it. To tell him could do no good, just as it would have done no good to tell Swetricus that Samson could have violated his daughter. There was no evidence, only conjecture.

Still, even if Samson were the killer, he had paid for it in the manner of his own death, Alexander thought. The idea of water filling his lungs, of choking and retching, then the slamming shock of the paddles pounding into his head made the Reeve wince.

He set off along the back lane again, his eyes flitting hither and thither as he monitored the efforts of the men, women and children in the fields. Some would drop their tools and doze in the sun, or mount their women, or go to the pots of cider cooling in the river, if they didn’t know he was there, keeping an eye on them.

He avoided the top of the lane. That was where she lived, Mad Meg, ‘widow’ of the Purveyor, and he had no desire to be accosted by her again. It was bad enough knowing the mad bitch was up there, without inviting her abuse.

These last days had been terrible. First that blasted girl’s body turning up, then the admission that there had been others, and the questions about the Purveyor… at least that avenue appeared to have been forgotten. Neither the Coroner nor the Keeper had asked about Ansel since Samson’s burial.

Alexander leaned on a gate, with an entirely unaccustomed wave of depression washing over him. Had he made a mistake? Perhaps he had. Maybe he should have sided with the Parson and sent for help when they suspected Athelhard might have been a vampire or cannibal. But at the time it seemed so obvious. Who else could have been the murderer? And then, when two more girls disappeared, Mary and Aline, they knew they had made a grievous mistake. Athelhard had been innocent.

‘Who is it?’ he demanded again. He clenched a fist in quick, futile anger, and slammed it down on the gate. But as always the answer evaded him, and he must return to his hall to catch up with his own work.

The path took him around the back of some little cottages, then through the yard of Thomas Garde, and so out to the road. Thomas regularly complained when people took this short-cut, but he was a foreigner; not someone whose opinions mattered.

Chickens strutted, self-important and stupid, their twitching heads turning this way and that as they attempted to spy out worms and grubs among the thick straw piled all over. Flies swarmed about the manure heap, and the pig was snuffling happily in a wooden trough near the door to the house. It was a scene of pastoral comfort, soothing to a man like Alexander, who enjoyed being reminded of his own roots in a house and yard much like this one. He stood still and gazed about him, a smile on his lips.

There were more flies at the stable, he noted. A thick swarm hung about one particular pile of straw – and then he saw the red pool leaking from beneath it which made his smile disappear and his face become fixed with horror. He ran to the stooks and pulled at them, tugging them away from the small, curled and bloody shape they concealed.

Emma’s body.

‘Who found her here?’ the Coroner rasped as he took in the scene. He had arrived a few minutes after Simon and Baldwin, all three running as the Hue and Cry went up.

‘It was me, sir.’

The Reeve was leaning on his staff like an old man now, his eyes sunken and bruised, his face drawn and anxious. For once, Coroner Roger thought, this was not a man who was scared of the fine he would soon have levied against him; this was a man who could see the ruination of his entire vill because of a crazed murderer.

‘I was walking through here on my way home. I only came this way by chance.’

The Parson was at his side, swaying heavily, his face blotched and sweaty, swallowing and clearing his throat like a man who was about to be sick. Simon took one look at him and, removing Gervase’s paper and reed from him, went and sat down near the Coroner. Parson Gervase shivered convulsively, and then, to Simon’s relief, he staggered away from the hideous sight.

Simon himself felt shaken; exhaustion and nausea washed over him at this fresh corpse. With the death of Samson, they had all hoped that the murders were at an end, and now this poor child had also been slaughtered.

Vin and Serlo had hinted that Samson was probably the guilty man. So had Adam and even William the Taverner. Samson’s death had seemed a suitable marker to show that the deaths were over, that the girls from the vill could live in peace and security. In his mind’s eye he could see Emma chattering and laughing with Joan near the river, and was overwhelmed with a renewed grief.