The Medieval Murderers: House of Shadows

‘What about the skulls?’ asked Asprey, shaken in spite of many previous finds of skeletal remains.

‘Nothing wrong with the chap’s head,’ said Mary. ‘But the poor girl has what looks like a massive head injury.’ She pointed to the skull, which lay upside down, in colour and shape like an old coconut. ‘Deep depressed fracture high up above the left ear.’

‘Could it not be damage that occurred long after death?’ objected Julia. ‘We’ve all seen those due to rock falls or even just a stone resting against it for years.’

Another rumble of thunder failed to drown out Mary McGowan’s emphatic denial. ‘Not this one, love! See that crack passing right across the base? That’s a sure giveaway for a whack on the head!’

‘What about those chains?’ asked Asprey, pointing to the rusty links.

‘That’s your department, not mine, Eddie! I’d get ’em photographed straight away, before you try to move them. They’ll disintegrate at a touch.’

She pointed with a pencil towards the corroded iron. ‘Extraordinary! There are shackles around the lower ends of both forearm bones of the fellow, but her ribs are inside his arms…and that other, longer chain passed under the lumbar vertebrae and pelves of both of them.’

‘What does that mean, Dr McGowan?’ asked one of the students respectfully.

The anthropologist rocked back on the heels of her sensible shoes.

‘The bloke’s wrists were chained together around the girl’s back – and another chain must have gone around their waists, so that they were clamped together, face to face. She must already have been dead, with a massive skull fracture like that – but there’s no reason to think he wasn’t still alive!’

There was a shocked silence, broken only by a clap of thunder.

‘Bloody hell!’ whispered Edward. ‘Walled up alive, chained to a corpse!’

Mary McGowan shrugged. ‘This has to be hundreds of years old, by the state of the bones. Those loose rosary beads and that silver cross suggest it goes back at least until before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.’

‘We’ll have to tell the police, surely?’ said Julia.

‘I doubt they’ll be interested in a centuries-old homicide!’ snorted Mary. ‘Neither will the coroner, if he considers it to be older than sixty or seventy years.’

Edward Asprey climbed to his feet. ‘I’ll have to tell our director straight away and see what he says. The press will be all over this when they find out.’

Large spots of rain began to fall and there was a loud clap of thunder and a flash of lightning over towards the river.

‘Let’s get back to the hut and use a phone,’ suggested Julia, and as the rain began to come down in torrents they hurriedly ran for shelter.

Just as they reached their Portakabin, there was a tremendous sizzling flash of lightning that almost blinded them and an almost simultaneous crash of thunder that sounded like the end of the world, as a strike lanced down into the excavation site. A smell of burning assailed them, and a wreath of smoke rose from the cellar pit, as the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

When the sky cleared and they hesitantly returned to the large hole in the ground, they found that the two skeletons had been vaporized and the rusted chains were now blobs of fused, magnetized metal. All that was recognizable at the foot of the ancient wall was a scatter of amber rosary beads.

A small group of historical mystery writers, all members of the Crime Writers’ Association, who promote their work by giving informal talks and discussions at libraries, bookshops and literary festivals.

Bernard Knightis a former Home Office pathologist and professor of forensic medicine who has been publishing novels, non-fiction, radio and television drama and documentaries for more than forty years. He currently writes the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; the eleventh novel of the series, The Noble Outlaw , has recently been published by Simon & Schuster.

Ian Morsonis the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective William Falconer.

Michael Jeckswas a computer salesman before turning to writing. His immensely popular Templar series, set during the confusion and terror of the reign of Edward II, is translated into most continental languages and is published in America. The most recent novels in the series are The Death Ship of Dartmouth and The Malice of Unnatural Death . Michael was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2004-5.

Philip Goodenis the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Elizabethan and Jacobean London, during the time of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The latest titles are Mask of Night and An Honourable Murder . He also produces reference books on language, most recently Faux Pas and Name Dropping .

Susanna Gregoryis the author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of mystery novels, set in fourteenth-century Cambridge, and a brand-new series featuring Thomas Chaloner, a reluctant spy in Restoration London, the second volume of which, Blood on the Strand, has recently been published. She also writes historical mysteries under the name Simon Beaufort.

[1]Saturday 30 November 1324

[2]Monday 22 April 1325

[3]Tuesday 23 April 1325

[4]Wednesday 24 April 1325

[5]18 June 1312

[6]Thursday 25 April 1325

[7]Friday 26 April 1325