John pointed towards the distant men trampling the boggy ground. ‘Is that where he is? When was he found?’
‘Not more than two hours since, sir. A shepherd came across him, face down in a reen.’ This was a local word for one of the ditches that drained the marshland.
‘I’ll keep your dinner hot, never fear,’ called Osanna from the doorway, as if she had already decided that he must go about his business. They followed the constable, who said his name was Roland, along the fast-diminishing lane by the Long Ditch and on to a track that went into a wide area of flat, soggy ground lying between the houses on King Street and distant trees that marked the Oxford Road, at least a mile away. It was poor pasture, fit only for sheep and goats — and that only in dry weather, for the many branches of the Tyburn and the Clowson Brook often overflowed and turned the land into a swamp. The path had been made over a crude causeway of brushwood to keep it above the mud, but this ended after a while and John cursed as his shoes squelched into what looked like black porridge.
‘Only the men herding animals come this way, usually,’ said Roland apologetically, ‘but we’ve not far to go now.’
He shouted and waved at the four men who were scattered over the area ahead of them and they began moving back to one spot, towards which they all converged.
‘Here he is, Crowner, just as he was found.’ The constable used his staff to prod the back of a body lying head down in a ditch filled with brackish water. The searchers came to stand in a half-circle before them, looking with ghoulish interest at the corpse in the reen.
‘Who are these people?’ demanded de Wolfe.
‘Two are servants I called from the abbey gardens — the others are local men who volunteered to help look for the weapon,’ answered Roland. ‘That one is the fellow who found the body.’ He pointed to a toothless grey-haired man dressed in a tattered hessian smock and serge breeches.
De Wolfe beckoned him closer. ‘Was the cadaver just like this when you found him?’
The old shepherd nodded vigorously. ‘The water was bloody when I saw it, Crowner, but the flow in the reen must have washed it away. All I did was lift his head for a moment, to make sure he was dead, sir. Wish now I hadn’t, the state he’s in!’ he added in a quavering voice.
John nodded to Gwyn who, well used to the routine, dragged the dead man’s feet back until the head came up out of the water.
It was all too clearly apparent what had upset the shepherd, for across the forehead, just below a fringe of iron-grey hair, was a deep cut the width of a hand, gaping open to expose the shine of the skull, which had several radiating cracks in the depths of the wound. In addition, the face had been battered so badly that his own mother would not have recognised him. He appeared to be of middle age and wore a short belted tunic, over which was a leather apron, both now blackened by peaty water. There was some dried blood on his temples and back of the neck, but as the shepherd had pointed out, the rest had been washed away.
‘That’s a hell of blow, Crowner,’ observed Gwyn, with professional detachment. ‘What caused it, I wonder?’
De Wolfe glared around at the men standing nearby. ‘You found no weapon when you searched, I take it?’
They shook their heads, but the shepherd spoke up again.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I reckon he wasn’t killed just here. He’s been dragged for a bit, look at those reeds and grass.’
They all turned to look at where the ragged old man was pointing, across the rough ground away from the path and towards the outer fringes of Westminster. John now noticed a faint track of crushed and bent vegetation running intermittently towards them.
With Gwyn close behind, he strode alongside the indistinct marks, cursing as his feet either twisted between lumpy tussocks of long grass or squelched into pools of mud. The proctor’s constable hurried behind them, but a few hundred paces further on, they all came to a halt.
‘Can’t see the trail any more,’ growled Gwyn. ‘The ground has risen a bit and got firmer.’ As they neared the houses on the western side of the village, they had climbed a couple of feet on to what used to be Thorney Island, the gravel bank that was the very reason for Westminster’s existence. By the same token, the grass became shorter and closer cropped by livestock, so that the trail vanished.
John turned around and looked back along the line they had followed, then swivelled and projected the direction ahead of them. ‘The nearest houses are those,’ he snapped, pointing at a row of huts and two-storeyed buildings a few hundred yards away.
‘That’s the top end of Duck Lane,’ said Roland. ‘Comes off Tothill Street, at the back of the abbey.’
‘Then you had better make some enquiries there, to see if anyone’s missing. Get someone to come and look at the corpse.’
They retraced their steps to the body and the constable sent the two abbey labourers back to Duck Lane as the coroner had ordered. ‘What are we to do with the corpse?’ he asked de Wolfe. ‘You’ve viewed it now, so can we shift the poor fellow back to the abbey dead-house?’
John pondered the matter, aware that it was a delicate situation. If the victim was connected with the palace, then he could assume jurisdiction — and even if he was from the abbey, then Abbot Postard had more or less confirmed that he was content for such cases to be handled by the Coroner of the Verge. But if the fellow were neither of these, then those officious bastards from the city would want to elbow him out of their way.
Gwyn virtually read his mind. ‘They’ll never know in London that this ever happened,’ he said, hopefully.
John shook his head stubbornly. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up in another squabble. It was only the day before yesterday that the Justiciar got the mayor and his sheriffs to compromise. We have to stick to the rules now that they’ve been made.’
‘So what do we do with the body?’ persisted the constable. ‘We can hardly leave it here to rot.’
The coroner felt the heat of the noonday sun on his face and came to a decision.
‘Very well, take it to the dead-house. I’ll go back to the palace and make some arrangements.
A rumble from his stomach told him it was dinnertime and he took pity on his ever-hungry officer.
‘You go back to the house, Gwyn, and start eating. Tell Osanna I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
He began squelching his way back to the path and left the others to move the body as best they could.
‘What happened, Crowner? Are we going to deal with this corpse?’ asked Gwyn, looking up from gnawing on a pork knuckle he had lifted from his trencher.
De Wolfe slumped on to the bench opposite and poured himself a pint of ale from a jug on the table.
‘I’m not touching it. Let those people from the city take it over. They should be here later this afternoon.’
As the landlady came in with his bowl of potage and a platter with several meaty pork bones, he explained what had happened.
‘I couldn’t go searching for Thomas, so I got one of the Chancery clerks to write a message for that sheriff fellow, Godard, and sent a royal messenger post-haste to the city, saying that we had a body for them.’
‘What if it turns out to be a palace servant or someone from the abbey?’ objected Gwyn, who seemed reluctant to hand over their business to others. John shook his head as he dipped his spoon, carved from a cow’s horn, into his soup.
‘He isn’t, it seems. By the time those fellows had hauled the corpse to the abbey mortuary, someone had recognised him, even with the face beaten in. His leather apron should have given us an inkling — it was covered in small burns, as he’s an ironmaster and blacksmith from Duck Lane.’
Gwyn seemed faintly disappointed. ‘I was hoping that we had a nice juicy assault and murder to keep us occupied!’