At the back, the passage opened into a yard with several rickety outbuildings. One was the kitchen, another a wash-house and one a pig-sty. Furthest away, against the back fence, was a small shed that acted as the latrine for the whole house. It was built up on several stone steps, a deep privy-pit dug beneath it.
‘He’s in there, Crowner,’ said Thomas, his thin, pointed nose wrinkling in anticipation. De Wolfe loped across to the shed, lit by the moon and the horn-lanterns of several residents who had followed them into the yard. He pulled open the crude door, whose bottom edge grated across the rough flagstones.
‘Bring more lights here,’ he commanded, as he stepped inside. The stench was strong after the cold night air outside, but as everyone had a stinking privy the coroner took no notice.
Gwyn, the Archdeacon and the clerk pushed in alongside him, holding tallow tapers taken from the servants. Along the back wall was a wooden bench with two large holes cut in it, in case more than one resident was taken short at the same time. Beneath it was a four-foot drop into an odorous pit, which was cleared from the rear by the night-soil man, who came around with his donkey and cart once a week.
But their gaze was fixed on a figure hanging in front of the seat, toes all but touching the floor. It was rotating slowly in the draught coming up from the faecal pit. Eerily, the face revolved close to de Wolfe’s, the eyes just level with his, due to the coroner’s greater height. Staring sightlessly ahead, tongue protruding, the corpse slowed down and stopped, then reversed its mindless study of the privy walls as the cord untwisted again.
For a moment there was shocked immobility, broken only by the clerk spasmodically crossing himself.
‘For God’s sake, cut the poor man down!’ muttered the Archdeacon.
Gwyn started forward, pulling a dagger from his belt, but the coroner laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Wait, until I look at his neck.’
Leaving the other three jammed in the doorway, de Wolfe stepped to the side of the dead man and held up his thin tallow candle. He saw that the corpse was a rather slight, elderly man with a rim of white hair around a bald crown. He was dressed in a long robe of thick black wool, similar to a monk’s habit. The thin face was congested and purple, prominent blue eyes glimmering in the flicker of the candle-flame. Even in that poor light, pinpoint bleeding spots could be seen in the whites of the eyes. John grasped a drooping arm as the body turned slowly and stopped the rotation so that he could look at the side of the neck.
‘What type of cord is this, John?’ he asked his priestly namesake.
De Alencon, visibly distressed but keeping a firm grip on his emotions, was glad of the chance to divert his thoughts from the death of a colleague. He looked at the ligature, which was around the neck and vanished into the darkness above. It was a twisted rope of brown and black flax, the thickness of a man’s little finger. ‘It looks like a monk’s waist cord, probably from the habit that covers him.’
‘But a canon isn’t a monk,’ objected de Wolfe. He had little interest in the hierarchy of the Church, but knew that canons, or prebendaries as they were often called, were ordained priests and that Exeter was a secular cathedral, not a monastic house.
‘Many people have a monk’s habit,’ piped up the all-knowing Thomas from behind. ‘I’ve got one myself. They make fine wrappings to get out of bed or go to the privy on a cold morning.’
The Archdeacon shook his head. ‘Poor Robert de Hane had a better claim to one than just the need for a warm robe. In his younger years he was an Augustinian from the house of Holy Trinity in London’s Aldgate. This is probably his habit from his days as a Black Canon.’
Gwyn’s large, shaggy head was peering around the privy. ‘I suppose he stepped off the seat after tying the cord to a rafter.’ Looking up into the gloom, he could just make out where the rope was knotted around one of the rough supports for the thatched roof.
John de Alencon shook his cropped grey head sadly. ‘I cannot believe it. Self-destruction is a mortal sin. What man of the Church, especially a senior canon, would take his own life – and on the eve of the birthday of his Saviour, above all times?’ He passed a hand over his eyes in genuine distress. ‘I just cannot accept it, John.’
The coroner had been silently studying the corpse, his hawk-like face drawn into a scowl of concentration. ‘I don’t think you need accept it, my friend,’ he growled. ‘Gwyn, come and look at this.’ He beckoned his henchman to look more closely in the dim light at the side of the cadaver’s neck. The monk’s girdle-cord cut deeply into the left side under the angle of the jaw, then passed around to the right, where it was pulled sharply upwards and away from the skin in an inverted V-shape to reach a knot placed alongside the ear. From there, the cord stretched tautly up to the roof-beam. ‘We’ll see better when we cut him down, but look here,’ he commanded, pointing a finger at the skin below the ligature.
Gwyn of Polruan put his face closer until his bulbous nose almost touched the corpse. ‘There’s another mark around the neck, lower down.’
The coroner looked grim. ‘It can happen. I remember when King Richard executed all those Moors at Acre, and again at Ascalon, some hanged fellows had two marks. But it’s unusual.’
The Cornishman cast his mind back more than three years to when he had been with de Wolfe at the Third Crusade. At the fall of Acre, hundreds of Saracen prisoners were massacred, most by the sword, lance and mace – but many had been hanged.
‘True, the rope can bite first lower down, then slip up with the weight of the body.’ He sounded reluctant to agree.
The coroner’s finger moved to the back of the cadaver’s neck. ‘But it can’t do this!’ he snapped.
The Archdeacon and his officer craned their necks to look, and Thomas de Peyne was almost jumping up and down behind them to get a better view.
On the nape of the neck, just below the monk’s girdle-cord, the lower ligature mark crossed over itself, two short marks lying above and below the brownish-red line. John de Alencon looked questioningly at de Wolfe, his horror temporarily overtaken by curiosity.
‘He’s been garrotted – the cord was thrown over his head, the two ends crossed and pulled tight,’ grated the coroner. He stepped back and motioned to Gwyn. ‘Cut him down – gently now.’ He pulled the Archdeacon back to the door to make room, while Gwyn sliced through the cord high up and took the weight of the dead priest easily in his other brawny arm. The clerk stood watching in fascination, furiously making the Sign of the Cross.
‘Bring him into the house, where there’s a better light,’ ordered de Wolfe, and strode off ahead to the back door of the canon’s dwelling. Gwyn carried the corpse in his arms like a baby, the head lolling back, the fatal rope trailing on the ground.
With the Archdeacon, Thomas, a few junior priests and some servants following, they went through a door and up a passage into a chamber that had a simple bed as the only furniture, apart from a large wooden crucifix on the wall. The canon’s steward, a fat, middle-aged man with tears streaming from his eyes, stood wringing his hands alongside the bed, as Gwyn gently laid the body upon it.
‘Get more lights, Alfred,’ commanded the Archdeacon, and the steward hurried out, gulping orders at the other servants.
De Wolfe stood at the foot of the narrow bed and laid a consoling hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You knew him well, John?’
The senior cleric nodded. ‘Even before I came from Winchester eight years ago. I had met him in London when he was still at Holy Trinity. A good man, very learned in the history of the Church.’