Michael JECKS - The Crediton Killings

“One of them: Cole,” Sir Hector said between gritted teeth. “Otherwise someone from the town who thought they might be able to make a quick killing.”

Simon shot a glance of loathing at him, but the captain appeared unaware of his pun.

Baldwin repeated, “Cole,” thoughtfully.

Leaning down, Simon saw that the gauze was heavily stained with blood, and the firm imprint of the girl’s body could be clearly perceived: her legs, her hands, her head. But there was a jutting edge in the clots which marred the outline and made him frown.

“Couldn’t he have had an accomplice, waiting outside? Someone he could pass the things to, once he had murdered poor Sarra?” Sir Hector asked.

“I can’t see how. It is the same as before, when we were thinking it was only a theft: anyone trying to get in from the street would have been noticed – this road is busy at all times of the day – and someone loitering on the other side of the window in the stableyard would attract attention from an ostler or one of the other inn-workers. I suppose it’s possible that it was a coincidence that the robbery and killing happened at the same time, but it hardly seems likely. Tell me, you say you liked the girl – are you aware of anyone who could have wanted to kill her? Someone who hated her?”

“Her? She was only a serving-girl from an inn, Sir Baldwin. How could someone hate a creature like that?” Sir Hector spread his hands in astonishment.

Baldwin nodded, his eyes straying back to the body before him. In life she had been pretty, and he was not surprised that the captain had “liked” her, a euphemism which left little to Baldwin’s imagination, but he could understand that the captain would find it hard to comprehend an unimportant young wench might have enemies who could want to kill. The reasons were legion; a jealous lover; a jealous wife disposing of her husband’s lover; a lover discarding his mistress because she had become an embarrassment… and so on. Still, as the man said, it was more probable that Cole had killed her. She must have discovered him taking the silver, and he stabbed her to ensure her silence.

While he ruminated, Simon carefully lifted the cloth by a corner, peering underneath. “Baldwin. Look at this.”

“What? Ah, that is interesting!” Baldwin reached down. Beneath the cloth was a third silver plate. The knight bent and took it out. “There is the proof. The murderer must have been the thief. He killed Sarra because she had seen what was happening. She knew who he was.”

“That bastard!” Sir Hector stepped quickly to Simon’s side and stared at the plate in Baldwin’s hands, tarnished where the blood had marked it. “So he killed her when he stole my silver.”

“Yes,” said Baldwin lugubriously. “Yes, it does look a little like that, doesn’t it?”

There was nothing more to be said. Sir Hector left them a short while later, his face working with emotion, and Simon felt a certain sympathy for him. “He’s mad about this,” he murmured to his friend. “I thought he was angry before when it was only his silver which had gone, but now I bet he would lynch Cole without thinking twice about it. He must have been very fond of the girl.”

Baldwin gave him a dubious look. “Perhaps, although it seems out of character. In any case, whatever Sir Hector does or does not think, we have the rule of English law here, and his suspicions carry no weight with me.”

“Don’t you think it was Cole then?”

“I suppose so, but I still have the same problem I had before. How was the silver removed? And how did he get in here in the first place?”

They left shortly afterward, but waited in the hall while Paul sent a messenger to fetch Hugh and Edgar. When the two men arrived, Baldwin ordered them to guard the storeroom in which the dead girl’s body lay. Nobody was to go in. Baldwin wanted to study the place again in daylight. Then he led the way outside. A few steps along the road he paused, then walked up to the closed outer shutters of the storeroom. Simon heard him mutter a short oath of disgust, for he’d accidentally stepped in a pile of rotting intestines and viscera – a pungent reminder that the butcher was next door. Through cracks in the old, untreated timbers, narrow beams of light escaped, and the knight tried to peer through, his eye close to the wood. Frowning, he walked back through the inn to the yard behind, and repeated the exercise, Simon trailing after him.

“That’s one thing.”

“What?” Simon asked, yawning.

“Whoever stole the plate did not see it through these shutters. This was no random, opportunistic theft. Not that I thought it would be, for who would dare to steal from a mercenary captain and his men? No, nobody could have glanced in and realized that the room held a great store of silver.”

“So?”

“So, old friend, the thief must have been someone who was a member of the company, or was the friend of a member of the company. It would seem to bear out Cole’s guilt – but who was his accomplice?”

The next morning Simon awoke later than usual with a vague sense of gloom. Margaret’s body had left a hollow in the mattress beside him, but the dent was cool to his touch. She must have risen some time before. He sighed and rolled onto his back, an arm flung behind his head.

It hurt him so much to see her suffering – and yet he could not find the words to help her. His own desolation was so vast that he could not think how to bridge the chasm which had suddenly appeared and now separated them as effectively as the deep gorge at Lydford. He had no means of spanning it.

To his surprise, thoughts of the dead girl intruded. Her face, which looked as though it was better used to being happy and carefree, was so violated and shrunken in that meager coffin with the cruel band round her mouth, that he felt anger stirring once more against whoever could have inflicted so demeaning a death on her. No matter how hard Simon tried to put her from his mind, the girl kept returning, as if demanding revenge, staring at him accusingly with his wife’s eyes.

He rose and dressed himself. The hall was along a short corridor, and there he found the table laid. Peter, Baldwin, Margaret and Edith were all present, as was Stapledon. Peter waved him to a seat, but it was the Bishop who spoke.

“Ah, Bailiff. I have just been hearing about the dead girl you found. Sad, very sad. To think a young man could do that – steal another man’s silver, and kill an innocent girl as well. It is horrible to discover how dark a man’s heart can be.” He crammed a thick hunk of bread into his mouth.

Simon nodded and sat beside his wife. Margaret was pale, and her eyes looked red, though whether from lack of sleep or weeping he couldn’t tell. While he gazed at her concentrating on her food, by chance the sun escaped from behind a cloud. From the windows high in the walls, sunlight entered at a steep angle, falling through the apertures like a luminous mist in which dust motes danced and whirled, forming pools of color on the floor. One fell near, and by its light Margaret’s face was suffused with a golden tint which revivified her features, softening and smoothing her wrinkles, and renewing her youth. It made her hair glow, and she looked five years younger. To Simon it was as if the woman he had fallen in love with had returned, unlooked for.

Chewing, Baldwin was about to ask Simon whether he had any fresh thoughts on the dead girl when he saw his friend staring at his wife. She turned to catch sight of his expression, and slowly her taut expression eased into a smile, as though she had almost forgotten how to. To his secret delight, Baldwin saw Simon return it.

“Sir Baldwin,” Stapledon said, waving his knife vaguely, “What do you think the boy has actually done with the silver? Could he have hidden it out on the road before he was captured?”