As they waited for more illumination, John asked more questions. ‘What did he do in the cathedral community?’
‘He was a regular canon and had a prebend, like the rest of us, but held no particular office. Most of his time away from daily worship was spent in the cathedral library. I’m not quite sure what he was doing – you would need to ask Canon Jordan de Brent, the archivist.’
The coroner stroked his long jaw, dark with black stubble. ‘Was he politically active? I mean, in the Church hierarchy. Could he have made enemies?’
De Alencon’s lean face wore a sad smile, in spite of the tragic circumstances. ‘Never! He was quiet and retiring, hardly said a word at the chapter meetings. An unworldly man, his mind was lost in books and manuscripts.’ He waved a hand around the bare room. ‘You see this, a Spartan life, unlike some of our fellows, I’m afraid. Too many canons have forgotten the Rule of St Chrodegang and relish lives of comfort and even luxury. But not poor Robert de Hane here.’
The steward and a servant came back with a three-branched candlestick and a pair of tallow dips, which greatly improved the lighting. De Wolfe seized the candelabrum and advanced to the bed, with Gwyn on the other side. ‘Let’s have a good look at this. How much of the cord did you leave attached to the beam?’
Gwyn held his hands about a yard apart. ‘About this much. Another few inches were sticking out from the double knot around the rafter.’
De Wolfe held up the cut end of the rope that was still around the canon’s neck. ‘Another half yard here. Could he have reached from the privy seat to tie it to the roof?’
The Cornishman pursed his lips under the luxuriant cascade of ginger moustache. ‘He’s not very tall, but perhaps he could just do it on tiptoe.’
De Wolfe turned his attention to the knot in the monkish girdle. It was a pair of simple half-hitches, not a slip-knot. He pulled on the cord and the knot lifted well away from the skin. ‘There’s a gap in the mark under that, as would be expected,’ he muttered, half to himself. The upper mark, tight under the front and right side of the jaw, was a clear groove with a faint spiral pattern corresponding to the twist of the flaxen cord. But slightly lower was a similar, less pronounced mark, with narrow reddened margins, that circled the whole circumference of the neck. As he had pointed out in the privy, near the back of the neck this lower mark showed a blurred blob of abrasion on the skin, from which two short tails projected, one in either direction. He used a bony finger to point it out to the Archdeacon. ‘That’s not a hanging mark, John. Someone has dropped the cord over his head and pulled the two ends tight from behind.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the worried cleric. A dead canon was bad enough, but a murdered one was ten times worse.
‘No doubt about it – it’s almost horizontal and there’s no gap where the rope pulled upward to the roof, like the other false mark. And those red swollen edges mean that it was done during life. They can’t be seen on the upper line, so he was dead when that was caused.’
Thomas was hovering behind like a bumble-bee, stealing glimpses from beneath the larger men’s elbows. He was desperate to be included in the affair and, despite the squint, his sharp eyes could see something in the candlelight. ‘His mouth, Crowner! Surely that’s bruising on the upper lip.’
Gwyn prodded him with a muscular elbow. ‘Leave this to the men, dwarf,’ he grunted, half teasing, half serious.
The coroner, though he often joined with Gwyn in making the disgraced priest the butt of their humour, had learned a sneaking regard for Thomas’s powers of observation. He looked at the florid face of Robert de Hane and confirmed that even within the pinkish-blue hue of the skin, there were a couple of small patches of a deeper shade below the nostrils. Taking the lips in the fingers of each hand, he turned them back to expose the gums and brown, decayed teeth. ‘Ha, the plot thickens!’ he exclaimed.
On the inner surfaces of the upper and lower lips, there were angry red patches and a small tear where the lining had been forced against a jagged front tooth. Under the middle of the upper lip, the little band of membrane that anchored the lip to the gum was ripped and had bled. ‘His mouth was either struck or violently squeezed,’ declared de Wolfe, an authority on injuries after twenty years on a variety of battlefields.
‘Held across the mouth to stop him crying out?’ hazarded the clerk, emboldened by his successful contribution to the investigation.
‘Let’s have a look at the rest of his body, Gwyn,’ commanded the coroner.
Under his black habit, the prebendary wore only a white linen nightshirt and a pair of thick woollen hose. The coroner’s officer began to wrestle off the outer robe, helped ineffectually by Thomas. ‘He’s starting to stiffen up – and he’s cold, except in the armpits,’ observed Gwyn.
De Wolfe nodded. ‘I noticed his jaw was tight when I turned his lips. He’s been dead a few hours.’
Soon they had all the clothes off and the sparely built priest lay pathetically naked on his own bed. Instinctively, John de Alencon reached across and, for the sake of decency, draped the nightshirt across the lower belly and thighs.
The trunk was dead white, but there was a purplish discoloration of the legs below the knees. ‘He’s been hanging for a while, the blood has had time to settle in the lowest parts,’ commented the coroner.
‘So he was hung up soon after death as he still has a little heat left in him,’ reasoned Gwyn.
John turned to the steward, hovering in anguish near the door. ‘When was your master last seen alive, Alfred?’ he snapped.
‘He came back from vespers, sir, at about the fifth bell. He ate his supper in the dining room – I served him myself.’
‘Did he seem his normal self then?’ asked the Archdeacon.
‘Yes, sir, he was reading a small book as he ate.’ Alfred snivelled and wiped an eye. ‘Then he went to bed. As it is Christ Mass, he should have been going to the special service, some two hours earlier than the usual matins at midnight.’
De Alencon looked at the coroner. ‘He was not there. I noticed, as I must keep track of who is absent.’
John de Wolfe grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘He couldn’t have been there as he was dead by then, if the stiffening is coming on now.’ He scowled at Alfred. ‘Did anyone visit him this evening?’
‘Not that I know of, Crowner. Once he retires to this room, he is left in peace to sleep or study. His vicar or the secondaries might know better than I, but I doubt it.’
The ranking of the ecclesiastical community below the twenty-four canons consisted first of the vicars-choral, minor clergy over the age of twenty-four who deputised for their seniors so that their perpetual attendance at services was reduced. Then came the secondaries, adolescents over eighteen training for the priesthood, and below them, the choristers, young boys who might stay on to enter holy orders later.
The coroner turned back to the corpse and leaned over the bed to study it intently.
‘The arms – look there,’ squeaked Thomas.
His master glared at him. ‘I can see for myself, damn you!’ he muttered testily, motioning to Gwyn to lift up the left arm. On the white skin, between the shoulder and the elbow, was a scatter of blue bruises, each half the size of a penny.
‘They’re on the other arm, too,’ volunteered Gwyn. ‘And they look fresh to me.’
De Wolfe gestured to his officer to turn the body over on to its face. ‘Let’s see the back of his neck.’
At the centre of the nape, a deep groove began and passed around the left side of the neck. On the right side of the neck, the groove imprinted by the noose rose towards the ear, then vanished. Below it, another continuous groove passed around the right side to the voice-box in front and joined the common groove on the left.