Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

‘Perhaps,’ said Baldwin. ‘But I would speak with you in private.’

Drogo walked to Vin’s side, then led them away to a fallen tree farther down the hill, where all could sit. He took his seat next to Vin on a heavy bough, while Baldwin and Simon rested upon the trunk. Aylmer wandered away to sniff at a stone wall nearby. Soon he had disappeared in among the furze.

Baldwin eyed Drogo ruminatively. ‘You appear very keen to look after this fellow.’

Vin curled his lip. The man had no idea how harsh Drogo made his life.

‘Someone has to, now his father is dead,’ Drogo replied stiffly.

Baldwin said, ‘You were a friend of his father’s?’

‘He was a good man.’

‘You did not answer my question, Forester,’ Baldwin observed, studying him closely. ‘And I think I begin to comprehend some words of Serlo’s at last. I have been astonishingly foolish! Vincent: I am worried about your efforts in all this. You lived up on the moors when the Purveyor was killed, and you were still there when Denise died?’

‘Yes. Until my father died, in the second year of the famine.’

‘And then you were in your bailiwick when Mary and Aline died.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where were you when Emma died?’

‘At the tavern with Drogo and Adam.’

Baldwin saw Drogo shoot him a quick look, then nod and say, ‘That’s right. At the inn.’

‘Odd, isn’t it,’ Baldwin smiled, ‘how you Foresters share so many things? You all confirm each other’s stories, no matter what you think is going on.’

‘We’re often together, because of our work,’ Vin protested.

Drogo was returning Baldwin’s stare with a narrow, suspicious gaze. ‘What are you driving at, Keeper?’

‘Only this: if you had been prepared to tell the truth and trust to the judgement of the Coroner and me, you would have saved us time, and perhaps saved Emma’s life. You are a fool, Drogo. You sought to protect Vincent here, and for why? Because you didn’t trust him.’

Vincent felt his mouth fall open, and he gawped from Drogo to Baldwin and back again. ‘What’s he mean?’

Drogo broke away from Baldwin’s gaze and stared upwards at the sky. It was bright, clear, and clean-looking, a good day to confess the crime he had committed so long ago. A good day to die, he thought. Glancing down at the vill, he could see a thin smoke rising from several houses as the fires were lit for cooking, could just hear the rumble of the mill. Gunilda and Felicia must have restarted the mechanism.

‘Well?’ Baldwin prompted.

‘What would you do? If he was your son, wouldn’t you have protected him to the limit of your strength?’

‘We had heard that Vincent was the son of your best friend,’ Baldwin said.

‘He was,’ Drogo groaned. ‘She was the best, truest friend a man could wish for. I loved her. I would have married her, but her father wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t trust me, preferred a miner. But before the marriage, she gave herself to me, and she knew two weeks later that Vin was my son.’

‘She died young?’

‘Too young. It was my sin, my crime, which did it. God took her from me.’

‘And you married as well.’

He sighed. ‘Yes. A good woman, who bore me a daughter. I tried to make her happy, and I think I succeeded, but then she died and, during the famine, so did my daughter. My poor little Isabelle. All I had left was Vin. I couldn’t lose him.’

Vin gaped. ‘How can I believe that? My mother wouldn’t have whored for you!’

‘She was no whore, Vin, just a good woman who truly loved me. As I loved her. She raised you as her own, and as her husband’s own, for she grew to hold an affection for him. She did not pin the cuckold’s horns on him. And she loved you.’

‘I don’t believe you! You’re lying!’ Vin declared, stepping away and shaking his head.

‘Vincent,’ Baldwin said sternly. ‘You were out on the nights when the deaths occurred, weren’t you? Were you with Drogo each night?’

‘No. Only when Aline and Mary were killed. And Emma.’

‘You were with Drogo all night long?’

‘Not all night, no. I went to see my woman,’ he admitted.

‘And you thought your son could have killed those girls, didn’t you?’ Baldwin pressed Drogo.

‘I did.’

Vin shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why would I have killed them?’

‘Drogo, could your son have struck down Ansel de Hocsenham?’ Baldwin demanded.

Drogo gave a wintry smile. ‘Ansel? He was a tough bastard, he was, but Vin was a powerful enough fifteen year old; he could have killed him, but I never thought that was Vin’s doing.’

‘He was throttled with a thong like the girls?’

‘Yes. And a slab of meat was carved from his thigh, almost from groin to knee.’

‘What do you have to say, Vincent?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Where were you on the night the Purveyor disappeared?’

‘I was with my girlfriend,’ he said, feeling a certain pride in the words. ‘We were out at the river, and then I heard Samson bellowing, and then he called for her, and I ran. If he had found me with her, he would have torn me limb from limb!’

‘What did he call?’ Simon asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. It was just some shouting. And then he called for Felicia.’

‘So you bolted.’

‘Yes. To the ford, then up along the road, then I headed homewards.’

‘That was the night that Ansel disappeared, then. And it was the next night that you found the body, Drogo?’

‘Yes.’ Drogo didn’t meet his eye. ‘I found the body with Adam and Peter. We were all coming down from the moor, heading for the inn. It had been a long day. And there, under a bush, I saw a cloak and a boot. I sent Adam to fetch the Reeve, and he and I agreed that the crime should be concealed. We swore the others to secrecy, then brought the body up here because the wall had only recently been rebuilt. It was easier to dig there, and no one would notice that the soil had been moved.’

‘Then who killed him?’ Simon grated. ‘It seems that every time we find something new, there’s more damned confusion. Who in God’s name did it?’

‘If I had to guess, it was Samson,’ said Drogo. He shrugged. ‘The body was nearer to Samson’s house than any other.’

‘Why should Samson have harmed him?’ Baldwin enquired pensively.

‘Who knows? It’s a secret he’s taken with him, but Samson was always prone to swing with his fists at the slightest provocation. Maybe Ansel annoyed him?’

‘We have heard that Samson raped girls in the vill.’

‘He did, the devil. Aline was pregnant, and many thought it was Samson. But he had a hold over the girls, he made them fearful. They dared not tell anyone, not even their parents.’

‘Is there any proof of this?’ Simon asked.

‘None. The girls he molested are dead. Unless his daughter or wife could confirm the truth.’

‘Have you anything to add, Vincent?’ Baldwin asked.

Before he could answer, Simon leaned forward eagerly. ‘Wait! You said that Samson called – could he have shouted because he thought someone was attacking his house?’

‘He could have, I suppose. So what?’

‘If a man knew his daughter was outside, and he heard a stranger’s footsteps, wouldn’t he go to make sure his daughter was all right?’

Vincent said heavily, ‘His daughter, yes. Any man would go out to protect her. But Felicia was more than that. She was his lover, too.’

‘Did you hear Gunilda’s words last night?’ Baldwin asked Drogo after a moment.

‘Yes. And I know what you think, that she might have attempted to kill her husband before he was mistakenly buried alive.’

‘It would make sense. She must have hated him for his treatment of her daughter, and perhaps she too thought that he was the murderer. That he killed the Purveyor, then the children.’