The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

He brought his eyes up to meet Hangfield’s again. ‘I was better at treating diseases of the skin that all of them put together – including Giffard, though he was a good physician. But where did it get me? Nowhere! I scratched a living amongst the poor, treating sailors with scurvy, stevedores with sores on their jacks and urchins with ringworm, often for no payment at all. Yet in King Street, all the rich and notable citizens, as well as half the nobles of the county, beat a path to Robert Giffard’s door.’

His head jerked back as a rictus of pain shot through his neck muscles.

‘I was envious of his status, envious of the large fees his rich patients lavished on him! I was even envious of his comely wife, though God knows that, as a widow, she would never have looked twice at me. She was the daughter of a baron and Giffard himself came from a prominent family with high-placed friends in Westminster. What chance did I have of making a name – or even a living – for myself against such competition?’

He jerked again and sweat began glistening on his forehead as he felt a rush of palpitations in his chest. The coroner’s officer now knew that Crote was soon going die, but hoped that it would not happen until he had the complete story of this sorry tale of envy and professional jealousy.

‘And for that, you committed murder?’ he snapped, almost incredulous that a man who spent his life trying to heal the sick could take life so cold-bloodedly.

Erasmus Crote was now flushed and shivering, but quite rational.

‘You as a coroner’s assistant must have known many murderers who killed for gain, whether it be for money, lust, love or hatred. They were no different from my overweening ambition to be looked up to in my profession, just as Giffard was a friend to all in this county who were its leaders. What difference is there between a thief who robs a merchant for his purse, and a doctor who tries to wrest a good practice from another?’

William Hangfield pointed out the obvious fact to him that he had failed. ‘And what good has it done you, even if you had not been caught? Giffard’s widow has just imported another good physician from London and with her lofty social connections, all the grand patients will remain there – especially now that it looks as if she will soon be taken into the bosom of the fitz Hamon family.’

Erasmus seemed to droop in his chair, his inflamed complexion suddenly turning into a deathly pallor.

‘It is the story of my life, sir. Failure at everything, even the attempt to turn my life around. I wanted what Robert Giffard had and a growing obsession made me strive for it, without regard for the consequences. Envy overrode everything else – I was mad with envious ambition and it has brought me nothing, except death!’

‘Was it you who wrote that letter to the mayor, to mislead us by hinting that it was Mistress Giffard’s lover who committed this crime?’

Erasmus nodded, then with a groan, his head flopped on to his chest and his arms dropped to his sides.

‘Is he dead?’ asked one of the soldiers.

Hangfield pulled back Crote’s head by the hair and thumbed up his eyelids to look at his pupils, then placed a hand on his chest.

‘No, not yet, though his heart beats like a kettle-drum played by a madman. Lay him on the floor. There is nothing we can do for him.’

At the castle later that day, the coroner’s officer related the whole sorry episode to Ralph fitz Urse and the sheriff, while Erasmus Crote’s corpse lay in the dead-house and John Black was incarcerated in the cells in the castle undercroft to await his fate in front of the King’s justices when they next came to Bristol.

‘So why did this bloody cook agree to commit murder for the physician?’ demanded the sheriff.

‘Crote paid him money and the greed of John Black overcame any remorse at harming his own master,’ replied William. ‘He said he knew Eramus from often meeting him in an alehouse and eventually, for a bribe, he agreed to put a strong extract of ragwort into Robert Giffard’s food.’

‘Must have been a big bribe to get him to risk his neck for an attempted murder,’ said the coroner.

‘The excuse that Crote gave him was that he only wanted to make Giffard ill for a time, so that he would be unable to look after all his patients and Crote could gain by offering them his own services. However, Giffard going away for several weeks spoiled the plan, as his recovery, then the regime of the strict tasting of his food, restored him to health.’

The sheriff shook his head sadly, deploring of the evil of some men. ‘So then he decided to kill him, I suppose?’

The coroner’s officer nodded. ‘He devised the idea of placing yew poison in his footwear. Being a skin doctor, he knew it could be absorbed in that way, albeit slowly. Giffard again became ill, but the villains did not reckon on the wife and this Edward Stogursey managing to keep the practice going. He gave Black more money, but also threatened to denounce him as his accomplice if he refused to help.’

‘So he was determined to succeed or die, as he would be implicated if the cook was found out,’ summarised Ralph fitz Urse.

There was silence for a while as the sheriff and the coroner thought about this tale of jealousy and frustrated ambition that led to murder.

‘At least I’ll be able to finish the inquest on Giffard that should satisfy all the élite of Somerset,’ said the coroner. ‘A novel verdict, eh? Murder by envy!’

‘Pride, vainglory, that’s the worst. It’s the father of all the other sins,’ the voice from the corner growled. ‘Every wicked deed in this world was sired by pride, by man thinking himself more deserving than his fellows and wiser than God.’

His fellow pilgrims at the table craned round in surprised. Up to now on this journey, they’d not heard Randal utter more than a few words, so that some didn’t even recognise his voice. And now that they had heard it, his tone only confirmed the opinion they’d already formed of the man, for his voice wasn’t a pleasant one, more like shingle being dragged out by the tide.

As usual, Randal had taken his food over to the rickety bench in the far corner and had sat, hunched, eating and drinking alone, as if he was afraid his meats might be snatched from him. Even inside the inn, he kept his hood pulled up over his head, the long points wound round turban-style, seeming ready to leave in an instant should the need arise. And in truth his fellow pilgrims privately wished he would leave. Most of those sitting around the table had hoped he would go on ahead with the other group to Thetford, while those in the group who had braved the rain and travelled on were much relieved he’d elected to stay behind. Randal’s presence unnerved everyone.

On the road, he’d always trailed a little way behind the group or kept well to the side of them, as wary as a stray dog. The others had tried to speak to him, but only received the briefest of answers, which had revealed nothing about the man, and even when he did speak he had the disquieting habit of looking over the shoulder of the person he was addressing, as if there was someone standing just behind them. The look was so intense, people would turn to see what he was staring at, but saw nothing.

There was more than enough to make even the boldest man wary on these roads. Any clump of trees or tall rushes might conceal a band of robbers lying in ambush or the next turn might find you stumbling into the deadly embrace of the pestilence, if the chilling rumours were to be believed. Those were fears enough for any man. They didn’t need the additional anxiety of travelling in the company of a fellow who gazed at things no one else could see. Only the mad or those who commune with ghosts and demons do that. In the large group they could avoid him, but now that they were fewer in number, their unease returned.