'That one, Sir John! What about that one?' He pointed with a quivering finger at a worn leather strap about three feet long, which was torn through irregularly at each end and had some short side-straps hanging off it.
'I see it, lad,' said John as patiently as he could, for he had already recognised it as a possible match. Picking it up in both hands, he stretched it out and moved it back and forth lengthwise across the mark on Agnes's neck.
'There!' grunted Gwyn, unnecessarily, as the places where three of the side-straps were stitched to the main one came exactly over the squared marks on the skin.
'Could that be mere chance?' piped up Doubting Thomas.
De Wolfe lowered the strap and curved it around the front of the neck, adjusting it until the marks coincided to within a hair's breadth.
'I don't think so. It's not as if the branches were spaced regularly … there's different distances between them, yet they still match.'
'Good enough for me, by God!' murmured Gwyn. 'Certainly good enough to ask this Alexander a few pointed questions!'
'A pity some skin couldn't have rubbed off on to it — that would clinch it,' observed their still-critical clerk. Then Eustace chipped in once more, for his keen young eyes were better than those of the older men and Thomas's slight squint.
'There's a spot on the back of the strap — look there!' He used a piece of straw from the floor to point out a darker mark on the mottled brown of the old leather. It was half the size of a grain of wheat, but had a glazed shine to it that suggested it. was recent. John picked at it with a dirty fingernail and carefully slid it off on to the back of his other hand.
Then he licked his forefinger and rubbed it across the loosened fleck. Immediately; a tiny crimson streak smeared across the skin below his knuckles.
'Blood, by damn! Must have come from her nose or ear,' he exclaimed triumphantly. Having now destroyed this piece of evidence, the coroner earnestly instructed Thomas to write an exact record on his rolls at the earliest opportunity, naming those present who could vouch for the presence of the blood spot and of the congruence of the strap with the strangulation mark.
'Right, let's go and do the sheriff's work for him!' announced de Wolfe, straightening up and carefully rolling the strap into the pouch on his belt. 'This Alexander Crues has some explaining to do.'
The assistant arrnourers explanations consisted entirely of denials, his slow mind producing nothing but a dull repetition of the fact that he knew nothing of any girl's death, he hadn't done it and he had no recollection of any strap hanging in his room.
The coroner's team had found him sleeping in a corner at the back of the empty forge, in a warm spot near the banked-down furnace. Gwyn interrupted his snores by kicking him with the toe of his boot, but Crues was little more articulate when awake than he was when asleep. Frustrated at the man's stupidity, John hauled out the strap and waved it in his face.
'You used this, damn you — you throttled the poor girl with it! Come on, admit it, we know this was the thing that killed her!'
For the first time, a flicker of fear appeared in Alexander's bovine features, but he continued to shake his head and mutter denials. Gwyn grabbed him by the throat and shook him as a stimulus to his memory. Crues was not as big as the Cornishman, but he was a strong fellow, accustomed to wielding a forge hammer, and he used his strength to pull free of Gwyn and give him a heavy punch in the chest. He found it was like hitting a stone wall — the only effect was to make the officer roar with anger. He seized the armourer by the wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back, at the same time grabbing a handful of his unkempt hair and dragging back his head.
'Confess, damn you, or I'll break your bloody neck!' roared Gwyn, who was very averse to young girls being throttled. There was a large wooden trough near by, filled with dirty water to cool red-hot metal from the anvil. Without a moment's hesitation, Gwyn forced Crues to his knees, then rammed his head under the surface. Struggling violently, the man was helpless in Gwyn's iron grip, though the filthy water splashed over the floor as he thrashed about in an effort to get free.
'You did it, didn't you, you bastard?' yelled Gwyn as he hoisted Alexander's head back by the hair. Amidst the spluttering and retching there was a vehement denial, so Gwyn shoved his head back into the trough and banged his face on the hard bottom for good measure.
John looked on impassively, not bothered by some coercion if it produced results. It was part of his official duties to attend hangings, blindings, mutilation of hands and genitals and the torture of the Ordeal and occasionally the peine forte et dure, so Gwyn's method of persuasion was mild in comparison. Eustace looked on with a mixture of horror and fascination, his previous experiences in his sheltered life having been' rapidly expanded by the things he had seen in the past few days. Thomas, though more used to the brutal reality of law enforcement, looked away as he crossed himself and murmured prayers for the victim, as he fully expected Gwyn to drown Alexander Crues.
Gwyn repeated his dunking and shouting twice more, until de Wolfe came to the same conclusion as Thomas.
'Try not to kill the swine,' he advised his officer. 'He may have some valuable information for us.'
Gwyn hauled Alexander out of the trough and dropped him heavily on to the ground. He lay still, and Thomas thought that perhaps he was already dead. Then he gave a great retch and vomited water, food and mucus, and began to push himself up on his hands, coughing and spluttering to rid himself of the rest of the foul water in his windpipe.
Gwyn grabbed his hair again and bent his head back. 'Ready for another bath, you murdering bastard? Or are you going to tell us the truth?'
Befuddled and half drowned, Crues momentarily forgot that escaping another submersion in the trough by confessing would inevitably lead to a hanging. But as he croaked and gagged his admission, he tried to shift the blame.
'Not me … 'twas Robert!' he gasped. 'He made me help, I swear!'
Gwyn released him and he crawled painfully up on to all fours, then slumped over with his back against the trough, still coughing and spitting out water.
De Wolfe stood over him menacingly, dangling the strap before him.
'You used this for the deed, you evil lout! Did you each pull one end, eh?' he snarled. 'I think you're a liar, Longus had nothing to do with it.'
Alexander shook his head, his sodden hair hanging lankly around his face. 'I tell you it was him. I want to turn approver, Crowner. '
'Time for that later, maybe,' snapped John. 'You'll first have to prove Robert Longus was involved at all. But I think you ravished this Agnes, then killed her either in perverted passion or because she mocked your lack of prowess.'
De Wolfe was deliberately inventing this scenario, as there had been no opportunity yet for a village wise-woman to examine Agnes for any signs of intimate violence. Alexander, now miserably cowed, rocked his head like a dying bull in a baiting-pit.
'It wasn't like that at all. I never laid a finger on her. May God above strike me dead if I lie.'
'He probably will, on the gallows in Magdalen Street,' retorted John. 'But if you claim you didn't ravish her, why should she be throttled?'
Crues leaned forward and retched again, spitting water on to the floor.