The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

Puzzled, Thomas went back to his own bed but lay awake waiting for de Wolfe to return. After a quarter of an hour, there was still silence and he reached out and prodded Gwyn on his large backside. It took several jabs to awaken him, and when he did surface he was irritated by the clerk’s concern.

‘He’s probably gone for a piss or a sit-down in the reredorter!’ growled the officer. ‘Shut up and go to sleep.’

However, after another half-hour went by, Thomas could stand it no longer and got up to shake the Cornishman again. Grumbling, Gwyn stumbled out of bed, still fully dressed, and after a sleepy discussion they decided to go back to the warming room to see if de Wolfe was there. It was deserted, and now the two men were becoming concerned.

‘Let’s try the cloister and the cellarer’s building,’ urged Thomas, leading the way in the gloom, which was relieved only by moonlight and a few guttering torches fixed in brackets. The cloister walk was empty, and only when they went the length of the corridor in the cellarium and went out into the inner courtyard did they see anyone. In the lodge at the inner gate, a night-watchman sat dozing under a tallow dip. He was a lay brother, not the usual monk who kept the gate in daytime, but he denied seeing the coroner or indeed anyone else for the past two hours.

Gwyn and the clerk stood indecisively outside the porter’s lodge, unsure of where to look next.

‘Maybe he’s with the prior?’ suggested Thomas, but Gwyn scoffed at the idea of him visiting anyone at this time of the morning. In the hope that he had returned to his bed, they began retracing their steps and went back into the cellarium corridor.

‘What the hell’s that?’ suddenly demanded Gwyn, as they were passing the inner door to the basement. Thomas cocked his head and heard a muffled thudding. With images of the icy corpse down below still fresh in his mind, he blanched and made to hurry on to the shelter of the dormitory, but Gwyn was made of sterner stuff.

‘Let’s get this damned door open,’ he growled and slid back the bolt, which squealed in rusty protest. Inside the alcove, the thudding was louder and obviously coming from behind the stout oaken door to the vault.

‘Give me a light, Thomas. This is no bloody ghost!’ snapped Gwyn.

The clerk fumbled for some half-used candles in the niche and lit them from the feeble tallow lamp. By their light, the coroner’s officer wrenched back the heavy bolt on the inner door, and as it swung open a tall figure stumbled into his arms. De Wolfe was dishevelled and blood was running from his nose and several grazes on his face. He staggered against the wall and slid to the floor, shivering and blaspheming roundly.

‘I thought I was going to be there until they came for the dead girl in the morning,’ he groaned. ‘They might have had to move two corpses by then!’

His two assistants helped him to his feet, and in the next few minutes they examined his injuries while he told his tale. Thankfully, he had no more than multiple bruises and a few cuts and grazes, though on the upper part of his forehead he had a lump under his hair the size of a pigeon’s egg.

‘Some bastard pushed me down the stairs and locked the door on me!’ he snarled when he had finished cursing. ‘I must have lost my wits, for I was lying on the floor at the bottom when I got my senses back. Jesus, these bruises are tender!’ He winced as he touched the front of his shins.

‘Who did it, Crowner?’ demanded Gwyn angrily. ‘I’ll go this minute and punch his lights out!’

John raised his hand painfully. ‘Cool down, Gwyn. I heard and saw nothing. I’ve no idea who did it; he was behind me – or possibly she! Now help me to my bed. I’ll be recovered by dawn.’

As they helped him hobble down the corridor and supported him up the stairs, Thomas ventured to ask him why he was going to the vault at that time of night, fearing that there was some supernatural reason for him to visit a decaying cadaver. John pointed to the large circular ring of silver that secured one corner of his cloak to the opposite shoulder, bearing a stout pin passing through holes in the material.

‘When I was going to my bed, I found this was missing. The only place I could have lost it was when we all went to that damned cellar.’

‘Couldn’t you have left it until morning?’ grunted Gwyn as they entered the dormitory.

‘It’s valuable – and a certain lady gave it to me many years ago,’ growled John. ‘With God knows who coming to fetch the body tomorrow, I wanted to make sure of it. With my candle out when I came to, I had to crawl and grope on my hands and knees to find it in that bloody cellar.’

Thomas shuddered to think of being in the dark with a dripping corpse-box for company and decided that John de Wolfe must have stronger nerves than anyone he knew. After their master gingerly lowered himself on to his mattress, Thomas went off to the far side of the priory and roused the old infirmarian, who hobbled across with bandages and salve to clean up the coroner’s scrapes and bruises. They told him that de Wolfe had fallen downstairs, but omitted to mention which ones.

‘Shall I rouse the prior as well?’ enquired Gwyn, who was still simmering with anger at this outrage on his master, but John wearily forbade him.

‘No point in hauling him from his bed. I just want to rest now. I’ll see him in the morning.’

‘Perhaps he was the sod who pushed you down the steps,’ muttered Gwyn under his breath.

The day of the funeral dawned with a pale clear sky and an iron-hard frost in place of the snow flurries of previous days. Every drop of water was frozen, even in the jugs in the guest dormitory. Stiff and aching, but otherwise none the worse for his fall, John de Wolfe rose shivering from his pallet and joined Gwyn and Thomas in the refectory downstairs, where hot gruel and warm bread, combined with ale mulled in the kitchen with a red-hot poker, helped them to thaw out.

‘What are we going to do about it, Crowner?’ demanded Gwyn. ‘I reckon it was that bastard Beaumont, trying to put you out of action!’

Thomas nodded excitedly. ‘Perhaps he had been fiddling his share of the estate profits and was scared you would find out. Maybe that was why he killed his ward, to keep his embezzlement secret by hanging on to the lands?’

John paused in his attack on a slab of boiled salt ham and three eggs fried in beef dripping, for his injuries had not blunted his appetite.

‘Don’t get carried away. We’ve not a shred of proof to accuse anyone. I’m off to see the prior after this, Gwyn, but you had better get down to see what’s happening to that corpse.’

Thomas was thankful that this order seemed to exclude him, and he hurried away to yet another service in the church, where he could gossip and question the monks again. When de Wolfe accosted Robert Northam as he returned from Prime, the prior was aghast at being told of the attack during the night.

‘That vault is accursed!’ he said with a vehemence that seemed too extreme for the occasion. ‘I should have it bricked up, but the cellarer is adamant that he needs the space for storage. That place has been nothing but trouble for this house since we were founded.’ He did not enlarge on this, and John was more concerned with discovering who had tried to kill him.

‘I was lucky to receive nothing more than cuts and bruises, though I was knocked senseless for a time.’ He grinned wryly. ‘It proves beyond any doubt that Christina never fell down those stairs, when her lack of injuries are compared with my poor face and legs!’

‘Who could have done such a thing?’ expostulated Robert. ‘Surely not one of my flock!’

‘Then that leaves only your guests, prior,’ observed de Wolfe.