The Nightingale Gallery

'Where's the noose?'

'I tossed it away,' the fellow replied triumphantly. 'I see'd him there, I cuts him down, I loosened the noose and it falls in the water.' His face grew solemn, his eyes anxious. 'Why, shouldn't I have done that?'

'You did well, Robert,' Athelstan replied quietly. 'Very well. You found the body?'

'Well, no, my children did. They were playing where they shouldn't, on the starlings under the bridge. You know the wooden barriers around the arches?' He shook his head. 'So many of them. Nine, I have,' he declared. 'Should be ten but the eldest got drunk and fell in the river!'

Cranston stared in utter disbelief at the mannikin's potency.

'So you cut him down?' he asked. 'How did you know it was Vechey?'

'I found coins in his pocket and a piece of parchment. It had his name on it. That and someone else's. Thomas…' he closed his eyes.

'Thomas Springall?'

'That's right. Look, I have it here. There's something else written.'

The little guardian of the great gateway dug into his wallet and brought out a greasy scrap of parchment. Two names were written on it: Theobald Vechey and Sir Thomas Springall. Beneath the latter's name, written in the same hand, was Genesis 3, Verse 1 and the Book of the Apocalypse, 6, Verse 8.

'Here, Monk,' Cranston muttered. 'You are the preacher, what do you make of it?'

'First, Sir John, as I keep saying, I am a friar not a monk. And, secondly, though I have studied the Bible, I can't recollect every verse.'

Cranston smirked.

'Was there anything else?'

The little man bobbed up and down.

'Yes, some rings and some coins, but the sheriffs men took them. I sent one of my boys to the Guildhall, they sent down constables of the ward. That must have been,' he sucked on his finger, 'just after dawn. I heard them say they had sent for you.'

'Well,' Sir John sighed, 'we have a corpse and a scrap of paper, and the sheriffs men have the valuables – and that's the last any one will see of them,' he added bitterly. He looked down. 'The man was just hanging, his hands were free?'

'Oil, yes,' the little fellow replied. 'Just hanging there from one of the beams, swaying as free as a leaf in the wind. Come, I will show you!'

He led Cranston and Athelstan downstairs past the closed chamber where the noise of his large brood sounded like the howling of demons in hell. They went back through the gatehouse, following the line of the river bank down some rough hewn stairs cut into the rock and beneath the bridge.

'Be careful!' the mannikin shouted.

Cranston and Athelstan needed no such warning. The Thames was flowing full and furious, the water greedily lapping their feet as if it would like to catch them and drag them under its swollen black surface. The bridge was built on nineteen great arches. Vechey had decided to hang himself on the last. He'd climbed on to one of the great beams which supported the arch, tied a length of rope round it and, fastening the noose around his neck, simply stepped off the great stone plinth. Part of the rope still swung there, hanging down directly over the water.

'Why should a man hang himself here?' Cranston asked.

'It's been done before,' the gateman replied. 'Hangings, drownings, they always choose the bridge. It seems to attract them!'

'Perhaps its the span which represents the gap between life and death?' Athelstan remarked.

He looked at Cranston. 'Bartholomew the Englishman wrote a famous treatise in which he remarked how strange it was that people chose bridges as their place to die.'

'Give my thanks to Bartholomew the Englishman,' Cranston replied drily, 'but it doesn't explain why a London merchant came down here in the dark, fastened a rope round a beam and hanged himself.'

'Bangtails come here,' the mannikin piped up. 'Bawds! Whores!' he explained. 'They often bring their customers down here.'

'What does Bartholomew the Englishman say about that, Friar?'

'I don't know but, when I do, you will be the first to know!'

They examined the rope again and, satisfied that they had seen everything, climbed the stone steps back on to the track high on the river bank. Cranston thanked the gatekeeper for his pains, quietly slipping some coins into his hands.

'For the children,' he murmured. 'Some pastries, some doucettes.'

'And the corpse?'

Cranston shrugged.

'Send a message to Sir Richard Springall. He has a mansion in Cheapside. Tell him you have Vechey's body. If he does not collect it, the sheriff's men who pocketed poor Vechey's valuables, will find him a pauper's grave!'

'At the crossroads,' the fellow said, eyes rounded.

'What do you mean?'

'He means, Sir John,' Athelstan interrupted, that Vechey was a suicide. Like Brampton, a stake should be driven through his heart and the cadaver buried at the crossroads. They still do that in country parts. They claim it prevents the dead man's troubled soul from walking abroad. But what does it matter? It's only the husk. I will remember poor Vechey at Mass.*

They bade farewell to the little gateman, collected their horses from the urchin and, seeing the busy crowds ahead of them, decided to walk up to Cheapside. The throng was thick, massing like a swarm of bees, the noise and clamour so intense they were unable to hear one another speak. In Cheapside, where the thoroughfare was broader and the houses did not press so close, they relaxed, Athelstan, patting Philomel's nose, stared across at a now perspiring Cranston.

'Why should Vechey kill himself?' he asked.

'Don't bloody ask me!' Cranston retorted crossly, wiping the sweat from his face. 'If it wasn't for that poor bugger, I would be getting as pissed as a bishop's fart in the Crossed Keys and you would be back in your decrepit church feeding that bloody cat or watching your bloody stars! Or trying to save the soul of some evil little sod who would slit your throat as quickly as look at you!'

Athdstan grinned.

'You need refreshment, Sir John. You have had a hard morning. The rigours of office, the exacting duties of coroner – they would break many a lesser man.'

Cranston looked evilly at the friar.

'Thank you, Brother,' he said. 'Your words of comfort soothe my heart.'

'Be at peace, my son,' Athelstan said mockingly and pointed. 'Over there is the Springall mansion. And here,' he turned and gestured to the great garish sign, 'is the tavern of the Holy Lamb of God. The body needs refreshment.' He grinned. 'And your body, great as it is, more than any other!'

Cranston solemnly tapped his bell-like stomach.

'You are correct, Brother.' He sighed. 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is very, very weak.'

And there's a lot of weakness there, thought Athelstan.

'But not now,' he added hastily, catching the gleam in Cranston's eyes. 'Sir Richard Springall awaits us. We must see him.'

Cranston's mouth set in a stubborn line.

"Sir John, we must do it now!' Athelstan insisted.

Cranston nodded, his eyes petulant like those of a child being refused a sweet. They stabled their horses at the Holy Lamb of God and threaded their way across the noisy market place. A figure garbed in black, a white devil's mask on its face, was jumping amongst the stalls, shouting imprecations at the rich and the avaricious. A beadle in his striped gown tried to arrest him but the 'devil' scampered off to the cheers of the crowd. Cranston and Athelstan watched the drama play itself out; the beadle chasing, the 'devil' dodging. The small, fat official was soon lathered in sweat. Another 'devil' appeared, dressed identically to the first, and the crowd burst into roars of laughter. The beadle had been tricked, fooled by two mummers and their game of illusion.