‘What do you expect to find after all this time?’ he grunted, as he handed them to his clerk. To his surprise, Thomas hardly looked at them, but rubbed them between his fingers, then held them to his thin, pointed nose where he sniffed at them like a hound on the scent.
Gwyn gave one of his booming laughs, laced with derision. ‘What in hell are you doing, man? Are you going to track down the robbers by their smell?’
Unfazed, the little priest nodded. ‘Maybe I will, as something is tickling my memory.’
He handed the keys back to the coroner. ‘Feel those again, sire, do they not seem greasy to you? And there is an odour which I have smelt somewhere before.’
John did as he was bid and then handed the keys on to Gwyn, who made a great performance of sticking them under his huge moustache and sniffing loudly.
‘There is something,’ agreed John cautiously. ‘But what use is that to us?’
Thomas stood up. ‘I think that we should go again to that ironmaster’s house in Duck Lane.’
The dwelling and workshop was still empty when they arrived half an hour later. John was prepared to wave his royal warrant at anyone who questioned their right to be there, but it all seemed deserted. Going around to the back, they saw that weeds were already reclaiming the muddied yard, and someone had broken into the house by smashing the temporary repairs that Gwyn had made to the back door. They went in and looked around the gloomy workshop and at the confusion of bits of metal that lay on the dusty benches and earthen floor.
‘If there was anything useful here, it’s been stolen by now,’ Gwyn growled. ‘Good job that the son took away all the tools.’
‘What are we looking for, Thomas?’ demanded de Wolfe.
The clerk scanned the rough shelves above the workplaces and then looked on the floor under the benches. He bent down and picked up something, then reached up to a shelf and took down a rusty metal pot. He sniffed both these unprepossessing objects, then handed them to the coroner.
‘How do these compare with those keys, Crowner?’
John obediently put his nose to them, then passed them to Gwyn.
‘It’s the same smell, like beeswax and turpentine, at a guess.’
The Cornishman grudgingly agreed. ‘So what does it mean?’ he asked.
The clerk held out the object from the floor. ‘I think you noticed this last time we were here, Crowner. A little wooden box, half-filled with the stuff from this pot. It’s a soft wax, that could be used for taking impressions, so that a metal copy could be made by a competent craftsman.’
‘But then it would be the originals that stank of the wax, not the copies!’ objected Gwyn.
Thomas smiled smugly. ‘I feel sure that the copies would have to be repeatedly matched to the wax impression, while the blank wards were being filed down to make sure they were an exact fit.’
Light dawned on de Wolfe. ‘So Canon Basset could have pressed the keys of the chest into the wax, then brought it here for this man Osbert Morel to make copies?’
Thomas nodded energetically. ‘Certainly! The only problem is when would he have access to both keys to allow him to do that?’
They all thought about that for a moment. ‘Both keys are only together when the chest is actually being opened in that deep chamber in the Tower,’ said Gwyn. ‘But the Keeper is always there then, having brought his own key.’
John shrugged. ‘I wonder if he stays all the time when men from the Exchequer are checking and rechecking the contents?’ he said. ‘I suspect old Herbert de Mandeville would have often gone back to his chamber upstairs and left Simon to get on with his boring tasks.’
‘Unless he was in conspiracy with the canon himself,’ suggested Thomas.
John cautiously dipped his finger into the brownish substance in the pot and found it to be as firm as a pat of good butter. His fingertip sank into the surface and left a perfect impression. He repeated the process with the smaller amount in the little box, with the same result.
‘That’s how it was done, then!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Simon Basset, man of God or not, is our culprit. He managed to copy both keys and then when he was in the Tower on one of his legitimate visits to check other boxes, he somehow opened the treasure chest without being seen.’
Gwyn leaned back against a table, making it creak alarmingly.
‘How would he manage that? There was always a guard with him, surely?’
‘Basset was very well known there; he was a senior member of the Exchequer and came regularly to deal with the inventories,’ countered Thomas. ‘I doubt the guards would be watching him like a hawk all the time he was there. They weren’t to know that he wasn’t supposed to open that particular chest.’
De Wolfe nodded. ‘It happened, so that’s how it must have been done, for lack of any other explanation. He could have slid some gold objects under his wide cassock while he was pretending to count the items. Maybe it was done over several sessions, not all at once.’
Back in their chamber in the palace, John put their trophies of the wax box and pot of mixture on his table and regarded them solemnly.
‘There is one big problem with all this,’ he said sadly. ‘If Simon Basset was the perpetrator, why was he murdered?’
There was a silence as the other two contemplated this recurring riddle.
‘He must have had an accomplice,’ said Gwyn. ‘Otherwise, who killed the ironmaster? I can’t see a fat canon committing murder on the marshes, even though it was not far from his house.’
‘And where is the stolen treasure now?’ asked Thomas. ‘There is no trace of it in the canon’s house, so presumably this unknown accomplice has it in his keeping — and perhaps eliminated Simon Basset to avoid having to give him his share.’
De Wolfe peered into the wax pot as if he could find the answer in its rusty depths.
‘Clever though you have been, Thomas — and I give you full credit for it — we are no nearer solving the mystery because of it. We need this second villain — and most of all we need to recover that gold, or we’ll have the wrath of the king and his Council upon us.’
For lack of any other inspiration, the next day John rode into the city to question Herbert de Mandeville about the keys. Gwyn stuck with him like the shadow he had become, but no assailant leapt from a side street to attack him. The Constable of the Tower was not pleased to see the coroner yet again, but given the Justiciar’s overriding authority, he had no choice. The interview was fruitless, as the Constable vehemently denied ever leaving Simon Basset alone with the chests in the strongroom. John did not believe him, as there was something in his voice that was too defensive and it was patently obvious that he could never have admitted to being in dereliction of the rules for opening the boxes. In fact, at first de Mandeville refused to accept that the canon was involved in the theft at all and tried to denigrate John’s evidence that the keys from Simon’s pouch had been pressed into wax for nefarious purposes.
There was nothing to be gained by arguing and de Wolfe left the Tower, unsure of what to do next. As they walked their horses slowly through the crowded, smelly streets, Gwyn ruminated on the litany of events that had brought them to this stage in the investigation, if it could be called that with so little progress.
‘Surely this mystery man is the key — the one who ate with Basset before he was taken ill in the bawdy house,’ he called to the coroner, pushing aside a ragged fellow who ran alongside his mare, trying to sell him a handful of bruised-looking plums.
De Wolfe moved Odin nearer, as there was a hideous racket coming from a quartet of musician-beggars who were performing at the side of the street on pipe and tabor, rebec and bagpipes.
‘So he might be!’ he yelled at his officer. ‘But how are we to find him after all this time?’ They moved on to a less noisome part of Cheapside, riding knee to knee to make conversation easier.