‘So, we’re none the wiser, Crowner,’ grumbled his officer. ‘That Robert Cheever was the least obnoxious — too drunk to care what we wanted with him.’ The incumbent of St Petroc was undoubtedly an enthusiastic drinker.
‘I would like it to have been that oily swine Fulk,’ muttered de Wolfe. ‘I’ve had to suffer several years of his prancing and preaching when my wife drags me to St Olave’s. But I can hardly arrest him for being pompous.’
They went over the other futile interviews, including that with Ranulph Burnell at Holy Trinity near the South Gate, who was alleged, on rather tenuous gossip, to have a liking for small boys. Peter Tyler at St Bartholomew’s on the edge of Bretayne was a rather sad individual who openly lived in sin with a woman who looked old enough to be his mother, but he displayed no homicidal tendencies.
De Wolfe was already familiar with his neighbour Edwin of Frome at St Martin’s, but given the nature of his peculiarity, the coroner doubted that either a Jew or a whore had provoked him to murder by disputing the true origin of the Scriptures. Peter de Clancy at St Lawrence, towards the East Gate, was the priest who shouted every word of the Mass and his sermons, but used a normal voice when they interrogated him and showed not a trace of any other idiosyncrasy, apart from resentment at their presence. This also applied to Henry de Feugères at St Paul’s in Goldsmith Street, known far and wide for his violent temper. He was extremely annoyed at their visit and, like Adam of Dol, shouted and raved at the indignity. But de Wolfe felt that these manifestations were of no help at all in eliminating or strengthening any suspicions about any of the priests.
‘What about this one we couldn’t find — Walter le Bai?’ asked Gwyn.
‘He was the only one who isn’t a parish priest,’ ruminated the coroner. ‘A useless vicar to one of the prebendaries — who was it? Hugh de Wilton?’
The Cornishman nodded and kicked the leg of Thomas’s stool. ‘We’ll have to send the ferret here into the cathedral precinct to flush him out like a rabbit.’
‘He lives down in Priest Street with most of the others,’ replied Thomas dully. He had relapsed into his sombre mood again, after the excitements of the morning.
‘Well, dig him out later today and send him up to us. You can tell him that it’s on the orders of the Bishop — that’s not too far from the truth.’
There was another hiatus in the conversation: Gwyn was sucking at his cider-pot and Thomas stared glumly at the bare boards of the table, his lips moving in some silent monologue.
‘D’you have any feeling about any of this morning’s rascals?’ asked Gwyn, when he came up for air.
De Wolfe shook his head slowly. ‘None of them took my fancy as a killer. But whoever he is, he’s a cunning devil, not likely to make a slip easily. All we got from that lot was bluster and outrage, a good enough cover for any guilty manner.’ He turned to his clerk. ‘You say there was nothing in their writing to give you any cause for suspicion?’
Thomas pulled himself back to reality from whatever scenario had been playing within his head and shook his head. ‘The script on that note was heavily disguised, master. Nothing in the registers or on de Capra’s note matched in any way.’
‘So what now, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn.
‘There’s little we can do, other than watch and wait.’
As it turned out, they had not long to wait.
CHAPTER TWELVE
De Wolfe went back to his tall, narrow house for another silent meal with Matilda. He knew that she would not be overtly objectionable until after the Justices’s banqueting sessions, but she was still surly, in spite of his attempts to regale her with details of his priestly interviews. He was careful to censor these, making no mention of the rumpus in St Mary Steps or of the nature of his conversation with her hero Julian Fulk. Her only questions were whether he had yet had official invitations to the celebrations at the Bishop’s Palace and the castle. When he had to admit that he had forgotten to make any enquiries about them, she fell into a glowering sulk.
Long experience of Matilda’s moods ensured that his appetite did not suffer and he did full justice to Mary’s spit-roasted duck with leeks and cabbage, followed by oats boiled in milk with a piece of honeycomb to sweeten it. Washed down with a pewter mugful of watered Anjou wine, he rose from the table as soon as he could and went across to the stables to visit Odin. The previous day his great destrier had suffered a kick on the hind-leg from another horse on the pasture at Bull Mead, just outside the walls.
‘It’s no problem, Crowner,’ Andrew the farrier reassured him. ‘I’ve bathed the cut with witch-hazel and covered it with goose-grease. He’ll be fine in a day or two.’
Unlike the previous month when de Wolfe had spent half his days in the saddle — to the detriment of his lovelife — there had been few distant cases lately, especially now that the north of the county was covered by the newly appointed coroner in Barnstaple.
‘I’ll have to take him out when he’s fit — the old horse’s joints will be rusting up from disuse,’ he told Andrew, a wiry young man with an uncanny rapport with horses. They stood talking about the stallion and the farrier suggested de Wolfe take him hunting, though the lumbering warhorse was not really suitable for dashing through the forest after deer or boar.
As they stood in amiable idleness, a large figure came around the corner of Martin’s Lane from the high street. For once it was not the coroner’s officer, but the portly frame of Brother Rufus, the castle chaplain. He hurried up to them, puffing and red-faced, the twisted cords of his girdle flying from his waist. ‘Sir John, I met your man Gwyn running down Castle Hill and he asked me to fetch you quickly as I was coming this way.’
‘What’s the urgency, Brother? Did he say?’
‘He had one of the burgess’s constables with him, that thin Saxon. Your man said there was another body. He claimed you’d know what he meant.’
Yes, John knew what Gwyn meant, and a cold prickling spread across the back of his neck. ‘Where were they going?’ he snapped.
‘Across the high street and into the lane that goes towards that little almshouse and hospital — St John’s, I think it is.’
Leaving the farrier holding Odin’s bridle, de Wolfe marched off and within seconds had vanished around the corner into the high street. He loped along towards Eastgate, thrusting aside the few Sunday afternoon drifters that got in his way. The Benedictine hurried after him unbidden, almost keeping up with him. Although he was heavily built, much of Rufus’s bulk was muscle rather than fat.
A few hundred paces along the main street, John turned right to dive into Raden Lane, which led to the little priory and hospital of St John. This north-east quadrant of the city was relatively affluent, and most of the houses there were owned by burgesses and merchants. Many had a garden behind high walls and it was outside one of these that the coroner saw Gwyn, waving his arms to attract attention.
‘We’ve got another body, Crowner!’ bellowed his officer, as his master came near. A few curious heads were already poking out of nearby doors and a couple of urchins were dodging Gwyn’s slaps as they tried to see past him through the garden gate. Even before he asked for details, de Wolfe stopped to look at the place. The solid two-storey house of new stone had a round arch over the central front door, with shuttered windows on each side and on the upper floor. The roof was of slate slabs and a chest-high stone wall ran in a rectangle around the sides and back, with a narrow lane on each side separating the house from its neighbours.