Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

“No, sir.”

“Were you here when this man was found?”

“No, sir. Tanner called me here as soon as he arrived, so as to guard the room and see the girl safe.”

Baldwin raised an eyebrow. “Girl?”

“Yes, sir. She had been found here unconscious. With the man.”

“Man? What man?”

“Putthe, the bottler. He was here too.”

Baldwin closed his eyes a moment, then spoke slowly and deliberately. “Go out to the front gate and tell Tanner to get up here now. You stay there and keep people out. You understand?”

Once the ostler had scurried from the room, Baldwin walked to a large candle standing high on a wall sconce. Taking it, he raised it high over his head to light the room more clearly, peering all about him with care.

There was little to see now, but he could discern areas where the rushes had been scuffed and moved. Before going to them, he bent at the side of the dead man.

He was some seven paces from the door, his head pointing toward the nearest window, one which gave out to the yard at the back of the house, near to the kitchen. The figure lay oddly to Baldwin’s eyes, but the knight knew that dead men often assumed strange or even bizarre postures. Godfrey’s right arm was at his side, while his left was held out, bent at the elbow with the hand up. If he was standing, Baldwin thought, it would look as if he was holding up his hand to tell someone to halt. The strangeness of the pose lay in its very naturalness. If it wasn’t for the hideous wound, Baldwin would have thought the man was merely resting.

The knight squatted, the candle held high once more as he surveyed the body and the surrounding floor. He could see no object lying nearby which could have inflicted such a vicious wound. This was no sudden, mad attack, the man clubbed as he walked across the floor, the weapon then dropped as the killer realized with horror what he had done. And yet, the knight reminded himself, there were plenty of cases where a murderer had slain in hot blood and then rushed off still clutching the implement of death.

While Edgar looked on imperturbably, Baldwin set the candle down and performed a quick investigation. He felt the man’s skin at the top of his torso. It was still warm. Then the knight sniffed at Godfrey’s mouth. There was no sweet, sickly odor of alcohol that he could discern. He probed gently at the quickly clotting wound. Beneath his fingers he could feel the smashed bones moving, and he nodded to himself. He had seen head wounds often enough. This one was certainly adequate to have caused death.

Heaving, he rolled the body over to seek additional wounds, and opened the man’s tunic to check there were no stab wounds. It was all too common for a man to inflict an apparently obvious wound on a corpse after committing a murder in an attempt to throw suspicion onto someone else. But there was nothing to be seen.

He had just hauled the body back into its original position when Tanner entered. Baldwin ignored him. Slowly easing himself up from his knees, which cracked as he came upright, he took hold of the candle and walked to the nearest mark in the rushes.

The constable was a steady man, Baldwin knew. As strongly built as a smith, he had the worn, cragged features of a moorman, with black hair that was becoming grizzled. He moved with a deceptive slowness, as though he had to concentrate to achieve the simplest task, but Baldwin had seen him roused, and knew that Tanner had a ponderous strength and, when he needed it, the speed of a striking adder. The constable waited patiently while the knight crouched at the disturbed flooring.

It was close to the door, but although the knight studied the depression with care, he could see no clues; it was merely a scraped mess at the edges of which the straws had been heaped slightly. There was nothing to be learned here. He rose and went to the other disturbed patch of rushes.

Here he paused. This part was nearer an open window. As Baldwin stood looking down, he gauged the distances. It was close to Godfrey’s body, and pointed toward the window itself, which made the knight frown. Why should someone have opened the window? He walked over to it and stared out at the dark kitchen block. That at least confirmed one thought: the culprit had presumably escaped from here; rather than fleeing from the front door and risking capture in the street, the killer had made off through the back. In the dark, Crediton’s main street wasn’t terribly busy, but there were enough people to notice a man running. It would have been safer for the murderer to nip out through the garden unseen.

“Tanner, you found the man just as he is? You didn’t see anything moved?”

“No, Sir Baldwin. He was lying just as you see him now. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get up again, not with a hole in his head like that.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I was at the inn when the neighbor’s servant came running for me. Well, not really a servant – Coffyn, the man next door, has been nervous recently, and he’s hired some lads to protect his house. They’re all hard types, and this was one of them. I came back with him, and found Godfrey here, as he is now.” He pointed at the marks near Baldwin. “Just there was where his daughter had been. Feet near the door, head pointed at the window. She’d been thumped as well and was taken to her room before I got here.”

“Was she struck on the back of the head like this one?”

“No – punched, I reckon. Her mouth was all bloody. This here,” he said, indicating the flattened area nearer the door, “this here was where Putthe the servant was lying. He was unconscious too. He had been struck on the back of the head like his master.”

“Was anyone else here when you arrived?”

“Only the neighbor, Coffyn. When he’d seen what had happened, he’d sent his man straight for me, as he should, staying here himself to guard the place.”

“Where is this Coffyn now?”

“I let him go home. He was a bit green in the face, sir, and I didn’t want him spewing all over the room. It’s in enough of a mess as it is.”

“And his man?”

“Sent him back too. He’s not a local man, and I didn’t want a foreigner mucking about in here while I waited for you, sir.”

“Good. The two who were hurt, then, the servant and the daughter: are they all right?”

“She should be fine with a rest, sir, and Putthe’s got a head like moorstone. Whoever hit him will be lucky if he can use the same club again. Clobbering Putthe hard enough to knock him out would break most cudgels.”

Baldwin gave a fleeting grin. “We should leave the girl to recover a little, but what about this bottler: do you think he will be ready to answer some questions? Is he up and about yet?”

“He’s come to, sir, but he’s pretty confused.”

“So would I be if I’d been laid out. Anyway, before we see him… That sideboard looks more than a little empty, doesn’t it?”

Tanner glanced at it in some surprise and followed the knight as Baldwin walked over to it.

It was an excellent cupboard, Baldwin saw. This was not made of cheap wood knocked together by a carpenter; this was well constructed by a joiner in good elm. There were four shelves, with doors underneath, and Baldwin gazed at it speculatively for some time. He opened the doors and peered inside. Both sides had pewter pots, jugs and plates stacked neatly, but hardly filled the space given. He shut it up again. On the shelves were some plates, of good quality, four on the bottom shelf and three on each of the others. A solitary jug stood next to a drinking horn of silver. Baldwin picked them up one at a time.

“Good silverwork, this,” he said.

“What is it, sir?” Tanner asked after glancing at Edgar in some confusion.