Michael JECKS - The Crediton Killings

Henry spoke up sulkily. “John was pretending to be helping Adam. The butcher had sent his apprentice inside to see to the meats there. I passed the things out to John, and he shoved them all into a sack in the back of Adam’s wagon. Adam kept a lookout on the main street and up the hill beside, and John could see up the other way.”

“Why go through the charade of entering to open the shutter, leaving again, and climbing in from the yard? You were inside already, so what was the point?” Simon asked.

Henry threw him an astonished glance. “We went in to see him – we were pretending we thought he was there. How long would it have been before one of the others came in to find out what we were doing if we’d stayed there longer? No, we went in to unlock the shutters, and then we knew we could get in through the yard and spend as long inside as we liked.”

“Weren’t the men in the hall suspicious?” Baldwin asked.

“Well, we don’t speak to them too much. No, they said nothing. Someone sniggered when we came out, sort of thought it was funny we’d been searching for the captain. Later, when the silver was all out, we did the same again. John came round to the back and tapped on the frame when it was all quiet, and I got out. Then we went back pretending to see if Sir Hector had returned yet, and locked the shutters again.”

“Didn’t you fear someone walking along the street and seeing you during this exercise?”

John Smithson smiled slyly. “We’d thought about that. Adam had gutted some calves that morning and left their innards like ropes all over the pavement. Nobody came close, not with the smell of that lot festering in the sun for five hours – even the horses went on the other side of the street.”

“So you cleared out all the plate?”

“Yes, and then Adam took the wagon round to his shed and stored the silver in his hayloft. At the same time Henry climbed out and we went back inside to shut the window again.”

“The girl,” Simon muttered. “What about the girl?”

John looked at Henry, who was pale now, with a light sheen of sweat over his features. “I swear,” he said, and his voice was a croak, “I never killed her.”

“But you knocked her out? And stuffed her into the chest?” Simon said, rising and standing beside Baldwin. “Why?”

“When I climbed inside, through the window, it was empty. Later, I heard her approaching the room. She was calling out, happy. I just had time to nip behind the door, and when she came in I clouted her with my cudgel. She went down like a squirrel shot by a slingshot from a tree. John was at the window by then; I don’t know whether she saw him before she fell. I just trussed her up and dumped her inside the nearest chest. That’s all, and I’ll take my oath on the Bible for it.”

“You may have to,” Baldwin said quietly. “And that in front of a Bishop.”

Henry squared his shoulders. “It’s the truth.”

Glancing at John, Simon saw him purse his lips. “What about you, John?”

“Me?”

“Somebody returned to the body and stabbed Sarra twice. When the lid lifted, she must have thought it was someone coming to free her but, instead, she saw that person thrust down with a knife. She couldn’t even scream, with her mouth gagged. Was it you?”

“I said: I was outside.”

“Yes, but Henry has just pointed out that you were at the window when she came in; she might have seen you.”

“I don’t think so. I…”

“Were you prepared to take the risk? If she had seen you, she could tell her master what you had done, couldn’t she? You couldn’t afford to leave her alive. She was a witness to your theft.”

John stared at Henry. “Was I there on my own for any moment?” he demanded.

“No.” The other’s voice allowed no doubt. “Neither of us were. We were together all the time we were in there.”

“How so? What about when you, Henry, were inside, and John was out? When you had finished passing the plate out and went to the back of the inn, it would have been easy for John to slip inside and murder the girl, wouldn’t it?”

“He couldn’t have, sir,” Henry stated. “I thought he had at first, but he couldn’t. When I left that room, I barred the shutters. The only way in was through the window of the back room or the door. No one could have got in from the front.”

Baldwin stirred. “You realize the difficulty,” he remarked. “You confess to striking the girl, and to putting her into the chest, and then expect us to believe you when you say you had nothing to do with her death. Nobody else knew she was there.”

“One man did,” Henry muttered, and Baldwin groaned as he realized.

“Of course!”

“He was there when I told John about the girl, and he was here in the town after we’d left. I don’t know why you reckon the other girls got killed, but I’d be willing to bet it was him as killed them all.”

Simon met Baldwin’s gaze with a perplexed frown. “The butcher – Adam?”

“He was the only one,” Baldwin said slowly. He wondered why he had not seriously considered the man before.

“But why should he kill them all, though?”

“Because he knew that each of these women had a link to Hector. Every one of them was associated with him in some way – the serving-girl Sarra, Judith because she had been a serving-girl years before, and Mary because she had been his lover. Perhaps he killed her because of jealousy, for no other reason. She had been dead some days. I think he murdered her as soon as he could after finding out about her infidelity. He heard about Sarra from Henry, so he stabbed her…”

“Sir, he couldn’t have,” Henry said.

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t have been able to get into the solar. We could do it only because we were known. A stranger like him would have been stopped at the hall.”

“Sarra got in,” Simon said. “And obviously didn’t leave. The guards didn’t stop her, or look for her when she didn’t come out.”

“That’s different! They all knew she had been sleeping with Sir Hector. They would have assumed she was waiting for him inside. Adam would never have got in.”

“I think you miss a point here,” Baldwin said languidly, sipping from a goblet of watered wine. “You departed by the window, then went back inside to lock it, to make it look as if no one could have got in that way, yes? You had told Adam about the girl already. Right, then. I think he saw a wonderful opportunity. You told him, and went to go inside: through the hall to the solar. Meanwhile, he clambered in through the window to the yard, threw open the lid, stabbed her, dropped the lid, and was out again, before you had gone through the hall.”

“He could have, Henry,” Smithson said in awestruck tones.

“It meets the facts as we know them,” Baldwin asserted. “Except there is still one thing. The man whom you intended to be captured… What happened to Cole?”

All at once Smithson’s eyes shifted nervously, while Henry sighed. When he spoke, it was with a kind of sullen defeat, as if he accepted at last that he was convicted and might as well confess all in the hope of leniency.

“It was me. He’d been asking about us all day, trying to make out we’d killed his brother. We hadn’t, for we were nowhere near him on the day he died. We were on the flanks, while he was with Sir Hector in the center of the troop. But Cole was wary of us, and it seemed to me to be a good thing if we could get rid of him. I waited till he was out alone in the yard, and then kicked over some harness in the stable. He came up quick enough, and as soon as he was inside, I threw some horseshoes over to the other side of the door. When he turned to the noise, I clobbered him. I dragged him over to the back, and then had the idea of putting the blame on him. Nobody in the company would miss him, for he was new to us, so people could be suspicious of him. I tied him, and left him at the back of the stable. Adam brought his cart round, and we hid Cole between two calves’ carcasses, took him out to the south, and left him tied to a tree. Later, me and John walked there. John had fetched a couple of items from our hoard to leave on him, and then we waited. He didn’t wake while we were there.”