‘I told you to slip into the street and look as if you’d just arrived!’ he hissed, in exasperation.
‘That hairy monster that attends you refused to let me out until he’d spoken to you,’ spat de Revelle, as ungrateful as ever, even after John had once again saved his reputation and possibly his life.
The coroner looked his brother-in-law up and down in the gloom. ‘Are you respectable now? If so, we will pretend to examine these rooms together, then go out as if we have been companions here all along.’ For a few moments, they strode about — thankfully, the sparsely furnished rooms were empty of their transient lodgers and fornicating couples. In the meantime Gwyn had understood the subterfuge, and was pushing back the curious crowd loudly demanding that they make way for the coroner and the sheriff. When they came out of the door behind him, John hissed again into Richard’s ear. ‘Just drift away now, back to Rougemont and say nothing. I’m off to see that girl and make sure of her silence. You’d better pray hard that none of this comes out. And there’s probably no need to tell your confessor — Brother Rufus is in the backyard!’
He walked up the lane with de Revelle until they were past the crowd, then left him and came back to Gwyn. ‘Let’s get round to the yard again.’
As they hurried down the side passage, his officer broached a matter that had concerned de Wolfe.
‘Did you notice that smell, Crowner? I can still get a whiff of it even now. It reminds me of that Greek fire that was used in the battle at Acre.’
In the yard, the flames were dying under endless buckets of water from the well, but hissing steam was rising from the blackened wreckage of the balcony. An aromatic pungency hung in the air and both John and his officer sniffed deeply.
‘It’s naphtha, that’s what that smell is!’ said a deep voice behind them. The burly chaplain from the castle was sniffing at his fingertips. ‘I pulled away some of the timber for them to throw water on it and now my hands are stinking of it. They used to use it in flares when I was a chaplain with William Marshal’s troops.’
De Wolfe nodded at this confirmation of Gwyn’s identification.
‘So that means the fire was set deliberately,’ he said. ‘Those stout timbers wouldn’t have caught fire just from a flint and tinder or the light from a candle. Someone has lit a block of naphtha against them.’
The three men stared at each other, trying to make sense of this arson.
‘Why try to burn down a lodging house in a mean street like this?’ asked the priest.
De Wolfe studied his face for any sign of duplicity or sarcasm, but saw none. Yet he wondered if the monk, Richard de Revelle’s chaplain and confessor, had known of his master’s clandestine presence in the house that night.
Gwyn had wandered over to where the neighbours were still pouring water over the sizzling wreckage. There were two shuttered window openings on the ground floor and John saw his officer bend to stare at something on the stone sill of the one furthest from the fire. After a moment’s close scrutiny, Gwyn turned and beckoned to the coroner. ‘Does this mean anything? It looks like writing’
De Wolfe stooped alongside him and Gwyn pointed out a series of fresh scratches in the soft limestone of the window surround. Though shallow, they were clean and distinct, looking as if they had been made with the point of a knife, like the letters on the millstone in Fitz-William’s well.
A growing unease pervaded John’s mind and he cursed that Thomas was not here to offer his usual expertise. ‘It’s writing surely enough, but I can’t read it.’
‘Let me see, then,’ came a voice from behind and there was the ubiquitous Brother Rufus. Somewhat reluctantly, Gwyn moved aside for him and the heavily built priest peered short-sightedly at the sill.
‘Is it another Biblical quotation?’ demanded de Wolfe impatiently. If it was, their killer had radically changed his modus operandi.
‘It is indeed, this time from the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans.’
‘And what does it say, for Christ’s sake?’
‘It was for Christ’s sake, Crowner. But I fear that our scribe has a warped sense of religious faith, for this one is hardly appropriate to an attempt at murder.’ De Wolfe felt like murdering the monk himself, as he seemed as long-winded as Gwyn in getting to the point. But before he could bellow his frustration, the chaplain continued. ‘It reads, “Vengeance is mine — heap coals of fire on his head.” ’
‘That seems apt enough in the circumstances — though it doesn’t tell us why it was done and against whom.’ De Wolfe choked back the fact that the occupants had included a corrupt sheriff, an appropriate target for a self-appointed avenging angel.
Gwyn, insensitive to the careful path his master had to tread, stated the obvious in a loud voice: ‘But there was another bloody harlot there, Crowner! Our killer has done for one already, so he must be having a crusade against loose women.’
De Wolfe reflected that the identity of the girl who had climbed naked down from the balcony must surely have been known to half the men who saw her in the yard, but as long as the sheriff’s presence was kept secret, no harm was done.
‘Why did you say that the quotation is not right for a murder?’ growled Gwyn, who did not take to any priests, apart from Thomas.
‘To the best of my recollection, the full sense of that passage from Romans is that “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,”’ answered Rufus. ‘But it goes on to tell us ordinary mortals not to take the law into our own hands, as the Almighty is quite capable of doing his own work when it comes to retribution.’
‘What about these “coals of fire”?’ demanded John. ‘They seem to fit this scene.’ He waved his hand at the glowing embers and the clouds of smoke still wafting around the yard.
The monk smiled knowingly. ‘But Paul said, “If thine enemy hungers, feed him, and if he thirsts, give him drink — for in doing so, you shall heap coals of fire on his head.” This is hardly such an act of kindness, trying to burn him to death.’
De Wolfe noticed that Rufus said ‘him’ even though only a girl had been seen escaping from the house — but perhaps he had been referring to the ‘enemy’ in the scriptures. However, he had a gut feeling that the nosy priest knew that Richard de Revelle had been inside. ‘How came you to be in this yard so quickly tonight?’ he snapped.
Brother Rufus looked at him guilelessly. ‘I was on my way back to Rougemont from the cathedral, to prepare for Matins in my little chapel. I saw the flames and, being curious, followed these other good men in case I could be of some assistance.’
Waterbeer Street was by no means on a direct route from cathedral to castle and the coroner told him so. The affable monk took no offence at this oblique expression of suspicion. ‘You’ll remember that I have lately come from Bristol and previously had no knowledge of Exeter. So I make a point of varying my path each day, to build up my familiarity with the city.’ The man seemed to have an answer for everything.
De Wolfe turned to Gwyn. ‘Stay here until you have questioned as many people as you can about the start of the fire. Catch some in the street before they leave — and talk to the neighbours. See if they remember any strangers loitering about. Then find the owners and other residents of this place — if there are any who stay longer than it takes to drop their breeches!’ He dipped his hands into a nearby bucket of water and rinsed the soot off them.
‘You’ve got more on your cheeks, and your hair is singed at the front,’ said Gwyn.
As de Wolfe sluiced water over his face, he gave more orders to his officer. ‘Find Thomas and get him up here to check on those words under the window.’ He looked sideways at the priest. ‘I mean no slight on your biblical prowess, Brother, but I have to hold an inquest on all fires in the city, even when there’s no corpse, so my own clerk needs to record any evidence.’
He rubbed his face dry with the sleeve of his tunic. ‘Now I’m going down to the Saracen to see that girl, and then I’m off to Rougemont to talk to the sheriff. He’ll not be pleased that this has happened on the very night the King’s Justices are here.’