Michael JECKS - The Crediton Killings

Baldwin knelt and gently eased the hay from the crimson dress. It lifted easily to reveal the body of a young woman. Her eyes were dim as they stared upward through a layer of dust from the hay. A thick coating of the same dust lay upon her, but when he touched the cloth, the tiny particles of grass and seed did not move, for in places the material was quite damp.

“I must have slept right next to her all night,” the mercenary said, with a stricken wonder in his voice.

“More than one night,” Baldwin remarked callously. “This woman has been dead some days.”

Simon met the soldier’s horrified gaze for a moment, and then the man was sick.

Paul brought their ale and stood with them as they stared down at the body. They had put her on the ladder and, using this as a stretcher, had carried her over to the hall. Baldwin had spent some time digging through the hay, but could find nothing else. There was no sign of who might have killed her.

“You are quite sure?”

The innkeeper threw Baldwin a testy glance. “She was my neighbor. Of course I’m sure! This is Mary Butcher, all right.”

“I had to ask. When did you last see her?”

“Oh, Monday, I think. She was outside when Sir Hector left, and they walked off together.”

Baldwin sighed and looked at Simon, “It seems fairly consistent.”

Simon nodded as the landlord walked out. “With Sir Hector having killed her? Yes. Just like the others.”

“The stab-wounds are the same as those which killed Judith. Two cuts in the back.”

“They’re the same as the ones that killed Sarra too. She had two wounds, didn’t she?”

“Yes, but she was stabbed in the chest; from the front.”

“That was because she was in the trunk.”

“Yes. The killer could merely open the lid and thrust down,” Baldwin commented, motioning with his fist, but then he stopped and stared down at the body again.

“Something wrong?”

“Hmm?” Baldwin shook his head. “No. I was just thinking: Judith and this woman were attacked from behind. I daresay the murderer put his hand over her mouth to stop her screams, and then…” His hands performed the actions as if rehearsing the sequence of events which led to her death. He let his hands drop and stared down at the body meditatively. “I wonder why that seems important to me?”

“What I don’t understand,” Simon said thoughtfully, “is who he was waiting for.”

“What?” Baldwin shot him a keen glance.

“The day when we saw him with Judith. We thought he was waiting for someone, and after today, I assumed it must be Mary; but she has been dead for some days.”

“Yes. Certainly she has been dead some time,” Baldwin mused. “Which does seem strange. Unless he was trying to establish an alibi – pretending to be waiting for her when he had killed her. Another thing, the rats were all over the loft, and yet there is hardly a mark on her.”

Simon raised his eyebrows, then peered at her. “You’re right. There’s hardly a mark on her – only at her fingers and toes.”

“I have never known rats to avoid fresh meat.” Baldwin pondered. “I would have expected more damage.”

“More to the point, though, is why on earth Sir Hector would have put her there at all.”

“It is incredible.”

“Incredible? Bizarre. The man has gone from hiding one corpse in a chest, leaving a second lying in an alley, and now he’s deposited this one under a thin layer of hay where his own men were sleeping. It’s bizarre, all right.”

“Yes,” Baldwin agreed, and turned his solemn eyes back to the woman before him. “She cannot have been there in the hay for long, though. Feel her dress – it is damp. She must have been moved to the stable some time after she died. Before that she was stored somewhere else.”

“Why is she damp?” Simon asked as he gingerly touched the cloth.

“It was raining last night. Heavily. Surely it is not difficult to conclude that she had been secreted away somewhere else, and was then moved to her new hiding place last night during the storm.” Even as the knight spoke his eyes were moving over her body, seeking any further hints as to how she came by her death. She would have been an attractive woman in life, he thought. Slim and well-formed, with large blue eyes and thick brown hair. Her wrists were tiny, and her ankles too, and she had a waist so slender he could have encompassed it with both hands. On her front there was no mark, but for the nibbles of the rats at her fingers and toes. Her back too showed little mark, but they could see where the cloth of her dress had been sliced by the blade which had killed her.

He sighed. It was incomprehensible that someone should snuff out the life of such a dainty young woman. Still more so that this should be merely the third in a sequence.

“Where else could she have been stored?”

“When we know that, Simon, we shall know who killed her, and why!”

“Do you think he will confess?” Simon ignored the other’s brief display of irascibility, and dropped onto a seat. Leaning forward, he studied Mary Butcher.

“I see no reason why he should. Do we have any proof that he was the murderer? All we know is that he was seen with her before she died. It is a tenuous link to this corpse. By the same token, almost anyone could be accused of the murder.”

“Maybe so, but surely we have to arrest him. What if it was him, and he goes on to kill others? He’s killed three already; we can’t take the risk he might kill a fourth.”

“Can’t you?”

Simon whirled round. Sir Hector had entered the hall from behind them, taking even Edgar by surprise. The soldier walked slowly and deliberately over to them, his hand resting on his sword, but not in a threatening way. He scarcely glanced at them, but went to the table on which Mary Butcher rested, standing by her and looking down at her with what Simon could only think was sadness.

“Poor Mary. Poor unhappy, dissatisfied Mary,” he murmured, then faced Baldwin. “I did not do this. I could not have dreamed of hurting her. She was my love, the woman I wanted to take with me.”

“She was having an affair with you.” There was no need to ask it as a question; Baldwin stated it as a fact.

“We met years ago,” the captain agreed. “I wanted her to join me then, but she wouldn’t. She knew little about a mercenary’s life, but Mary always enjoyed her comforts. She liked being able to get the choicest cloths, the finest skins and furs, and I would have given her plenty of these things, but she could have them here too, from her husband, without the risks of losing me through fighting, without her needing to travel constantly, without the fear of being hunted by enemies, without constantly wondering whether the allies of the day would turn on us tomorrow and become our foes.”

“She would not go with you.”

“No.” It was said with blank finality.

“So why come back here?”

The captain turned his disconcerting gray eyes onto Baldwin. “Because I have thought about her every day for the last few years. Because I missed her, and wanted her, ever since I last saw her. Because I felt I had lost a part of me since I left her behind. I had to exorcise her from my soul, and I thought if I were to see her again, I might be cured.”

“So that is why you came this way after being refused a contract with the King?”

“Yes. I thought I might have got over her, and even took the servant-girl to divert me… But it was no good. A servant is no more than that, merely a servant. What I wanted was here, in Mary.”

Baldwin nodded, inwardly wondering how a man could take one woman to try to forget another. And if he could, Baldwin reasoned, would it be so great a step to kill the one who could not match the expectation?