No, he must put the thing from his mind. Feeling a pattering on his head, he looked up to see a fine spattering of hail fallingfrom the leaden clouds. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the day, he thought as they reached the door. The keeper of thegate lived in the rooms built into the gateway itself, but the watchman had directed them to a small building to the rightof the roadway, a ramshackle affair that was almost a lean-to shed with a thick roof of thatch sorely in need of patchingor renewal.
Baldwin shot a look about them, and then rapped smartly on the timbers of the door. They were all mis-sized, fitted togetherinexpertly, and would provide little defence against the elements. Just standing outside here, Baldwin was aware of the windthat whipped along the line of the wall from the quay over to the east, and straight over as though using the wall as itsown roadway.
‘Piss off!’
The coroner turned and looked at Baldwin. There was an expression of mild pain on his face. Then he closed his eyes for a moment,and Baldwin was about to knock again and call out his title, when the sound of the Coroner’s deep intake of breath warnedhim, and he took a quick pace backwards.
‘Hoi! You festering piece of dog’s turd, OPEN THIS DOOR IN THE NAME OF THE KING!’
In what was for him a whisper, the coroner added for Baldwin’s benefit, ‘I tend to find that voice works with reluctant witnesses.’
Baldwin was not surprised. Nor was he surprised when a few moments later he saw an eye appear in one of the cracks, an anxiouseye that stared at him for a short while. Shortly thereafter there was the sound of a wooden beam being lifted from its rests,and the door was opened, scraping over the dirt and making an arc in the soil of the floor.
Entering behind the coroner, Baldwin found himself in a small, noisome dwelling, with a mess of dirt on the floor, a singlesmall table and stool, and a filthy palliasse. The smell was a mix of damp dog, urine, and sweat, all mingled in an unwholesomefug. There being no window, the only light came from the doorway through which they had just entered, and in it Baldwin couldsee that the whole of the rear wall was red sandstone like the rest of the city wall, although here it was streaked with greenwhere water was leaking at the junction of the roof and the wall itself. The water puddled at the base of the wall, makingthe floor perpetually damp through the winter. Perhaps in consequence, because it would have been difficult to light a fireand keep it going, instead the watchman made use of a charcoal brazier for his heating. There was one small cauldron for heating water and perhaps making a pottage, but apart from that Baldwin assumed that Will Skinner ate at a pieshop or bought an occasional loaf of bread. There was no sign of any cooking.
‘You remember me from this morning?’ the coroner said, and in the small room it sounded like a bellow.
‘You are the coroner,’ the small man said, and he almost shivered as he spoke. It was plain to Baldwin that the fellow wasentirely unused to being questioned by men of such standing, and he didn’t enjoy it. He had been asleep, from the look ofhis bleary eyes.
‘What do you want with my man, then, eh? You going to try to have him arrested?’
Baldwin and the coroner spun about to find themselves confronted by a woman. In age, she could have been anything from fortyto seventy. Her face was dreadfully scarred, and she was bent like an old crone, but Baldwin had seen a woman like that before- the survivor of a siege who had been engulfed by flames in a final assault.
‘Mistress, you are this man’s wife?’ he asked.
She peered up at him, turning her head sideways to accommodate her bent spine. ‘You guess well, master.’
From nearer, he could feel sympathy for her. Lank hair straggled at either side of a long, thin face pinched with the griefthat was reflected in the eyes. Intelligent, they were red-raw with weeping, and Baldwin had the impression of paleness, asthough all the crying had washed the colour from them. She was an aged peasant woman in shabby clothing, and clearly painand she were long-standing companions.
‘Woman, I am the coroner, and I would speak to him. Pray sit and don’t interrupt,’ Sir Richard said.
To Baldwin’s surprise she made no protest, but walked over and sat down on the stool, one arm on the table while she turned andlistened to the men talking.
‘Now, fellow. This friend of mine here is the Keeper of the King’s Peace, and he has some questions for you. So listen andanswer honestly. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Baldwin was tempted to suggest that they leave the hovel and speak outside, but even as he considered the suggestion therewas a rattling, like gravel thrown at a wall, and when he glanced out he saw that there was a sudden shower of hail. Steelinghimself, he faced Will Skinner.
‘The man you found out there. You found him because there was a hog there?’
‘Yes, it was chewing at something, and I saw the blue and thought to myself that it looked like cloth. So I chased the bruteaway, and saw this fellow’s arm. I thought, “That’s not right,” and pulled at it, and there was the man. So I raised the hueand cry.’
‘Very good. Did you recognise the man? Have you ever seen him before?’
‘Not likely, sir. I’m the night watchman for this area. He’s not the sort of man I’d expect to see down here at night. It’sdrunks or men wanting the stews I tend to see. During the day, I try to sleep,’ he added with a sidelong glance at the coroner.
‘So do I, my man!’ Coroner de Welles said, and laughed long and hard.
‘In the time while you were raising the hue and cry, did you leave the body alone? Could someone have got to it and searchedit?’ Baldwin wondered.
‘You mean, have a look in his pouch? No, I don’t think so. When I found him, I pulled his arm free, and tugged hard enough to know that the whole body was there. Soon as I feltthat, I stopped pulling, and left him instead. If anyone had tried to get into his pouch, they’d have had to clear all themuck away from him. No one had, though. When I got back, he was still just as covered in stuff as when I left him.’
‘Was he absolutely cold when you found him?’
‘Yes. Stone cold. But it gets cold here at night.’
Baldwin nodded, his eyes going to the brazier. ‘Do you keep that going all night, then? Somewhere you know you can come toget a warm-up when you need it through the dark hours?’
‘Well, yes. There’s nothing to say that a watchman has to freeze,’ Will said truculently.
‘No, I was merely wondering how long you have to spend on your patrol, and how long back here indoors to warm up again. Itcould have a bearing on when the man was killed.’
‘I …’
‘Because it is mightily unlikely that he was murdered and dumped in that pile of rubbish during the day, isn’t it, Will?’the coroner added.
‘Why?’
‘Because, my fellow, the damn roadway is full of people during the day, isn’t it?’ the coroner explained testily. ‘How could someone walk round there and happily throttle a man in broad daylight?’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, “Oh”, as you say. So how much time do you spend outside compared with inside?’
Baldwin was struck by the man’s evident nervousness as the questioning continued. He was not the kind of man to impress as a reliable witness.
‘I don’t spend much time indoors — I would lose my position if the city’s receiver thought I wasn’t doing my job.’
Baldwin wondered if that might be a cause of his nervousness: the simple fear of being thrown out from a job like this. Itmight not be lucrative — judging from how the man lived it could scarcely be less so! — but nor was it strenuous, and theman had an easy enough time of it. ‘We will not discuss your strengths or otherwise with the mayor or his men,’ he said briefly.
‘Well, perhaps I do take some breaks when the weather really is bad. Last night it was so cold, I had to keep warming myselfat the brazier. Few nights ago, some men had lit a fire in the street near the bishop’s palace gate, but there was nothingyesterday, and by the time I’d walked up there I was perished.’