Michael JECKS: The Sticklepath Strangler

‘Why should his girl have concealed the rape?’

‘Why should any? From shame, or perhaps from terror. Who can tell what threats or promises Samson used?’

‘He must have been a truly wicked person!’

‘Yes. His daughter, too.’ Baldwin sighed. ‘I blame myself, you know, Jeanne. If I had searched the grave more carefully, if I had noticed what Simon did, I might have made the right connection, found Ansel’s body – perhaps saved Emma’s life.’

‘Do you regret the death of Felicia?’

‘Her? My Heaven, no! She was deep into madness and had to be killed. I only regret that her death was brought about by a young girl… but then again, maybe not. Joan wanted her own revenge for the crime committed against her friend, and the fact that she could execute the killer may have given her some peace of mind, rather than merely hearing Felicia was dead, or even witnessing the hanging. How can I tell?’

Jeanne sat at his side and put her arm about his shoulder. After a moment he put his own about her waist, and they sat staring at the view, listening to the laughter of his peasants in the fields.

‘There is something else, isn’t there?’ she asked after a short while.

‘You know me too well, Wife. Yes. I have received a message from Simon.’

‘Oh?’

‘In it he says he agrees with you that the moors are too dangerous to treat without care. He says that superstition is a useful precaution.’

Jeanne smiled. ‘I am glad you have a nagging friend as well as a wife.’

Richalda gave a great cry from the solar and Jeanne hurried indoors to see to her daughter. When she was gone, Baldwin took out the sheet of paper once more.

According to Coroner Roger, the curse appears to have been laid at last , he read. Drogo and Alexander have escaped the court. They were both riding on the moors last month, illegally, after a fox which had attacked some piglets, when a mist came down and they fell into a bog. Serlo was at his warren and heard their screams. He tried to get to them, but the mist was too thick. He shouted, and they responded, but he could not reach them and had to listen while they drowned. He was very upset – but perhaps this means that Athelhard’s curse has now been fulfilled. Certainly the people of the vill hope so .

‘Superstition!’ Baldwin muttered, gazing at the dark, grim line on the horizon that showed where Dartmoor began. The only evil in Sticklepath came from one family. A father who was perverted, with his lusts for young flesh, a wife who was simple, and a daughter who was insane.

He read on: Gunilda has adopted Meg, and both appear content in each other’s company. Not that many of the vill were happy to learn that Meg had moved into the mill. Some still look upon her with dread, but she and Gunilda seem to have found comfort and Serlo looks in on them regularly, chopping their wood and helping tend to their animals.

The letter ran on, but Baldwin put it away, musing on the violence and cruelty that lay at the heart of the murders: the brutality of Samson not only to Felicia’s victims, but to his daughter as well.

Hearing another cry from the house, he murmured, ‘Keep happy, Richalda. I shall never do anything to cause you such grief. That I swear.’

And then Sir Baldwin Furnshill stood and stretched. The accursed bruises along his flank were healed now, and as he inhaled a deep breath of the shimmering summer air, he decided to take his horse out.

The evil was gone. Life was for the living.