Picot shifted uneasily on his stool. ‘That’s all I have to tell you, but de Courcy and Ferrars, even if they have nothing to hide, would be ill-disposed towards me if they knew I had told you about this.’
The coroner pondered a moment, ‘At the inquest, I can ask them about their movements last night. If they admit being in Canon’s Row at that time, there is no problem. If they deny it, then it’s their word against yours. Two of them to your one. And they might demand to know who challenges their denial.’
Gwyn rose from his seat at the window to ask a question. ‘Can anyone else back up your claim?’
‘I saw no one else at that moment. There was a beggar and a drunk further on, towards Bear Gate, but they would be no help as witnesses, even if they could be found.’
John stood up. ‘I’ll do my best to keep your name out of this, but I can’t promise it, Eric. It depends on what happens at the inquest. You’ll be there, no doubt?’
The wine merchant nodded unhappily. ‘This has released Mabel and we should be overjoyed, but we wouldn’t have had it happen in this unfortunate way, even though he made her life a misery these past few years.’ He replaced his cap and made his way out, promising to be back at the Shire Hall for the inquisition.
After he had gone, Gwyn pulled out the pitcher, which he had replenished that morning, and they sat for a time over a contemplative quart of ale.
‘What about Picot’s claim, Gwyn?’ asked John.
The Cornishman sucked the ale from the whiskers around his mouth before replying. ‘Firstly, is it true? If not, why should he come to tell us a string of lies? And if is true, were Ferrars and de Courcy walking the city at night in innocence or with malice?’
John nodded agreement. ‘So what do we do next?’ he asked rhetorically, as although he always valued his henchman’s unfailing common sense, the responsibility was his alone. He carried on, musingly. ‘The errand Thomas has undertaken includes the city households of the Ferrars and de Courcys. I doubt we need visit their habitations outside Exeter, as any signs of what happened last night must still be within the walls. So let’s wait until our ferrety little clerk returns from his adventures – hopefully with some intelligence for us.’
Late that afternoon, the Shire Hall was again in use, this time for an inquest rather than a trial.
The coroner occupied the centre chair on the dais, but Sheriff de Revelle sat alongside in a nonchalant posture that was aimed at suggesting that he who was presiding and that John de Wolfe was merely an underling.
Thomas de Peyne squatted on a stool slightly behind his master, quill and ink at the ready. Near him were Archdeacon John de Alecon and Thomas de Boterellis. On the floor below the platform, Gwyn of Polruan ambled about, shepherding the witnesses, the jury and the motley crowd of spectators that milled about the back of the hall. A more macabre duty was to guard the body of the dead man, which lay under a sheet on planks laid on trestles, immediately below John’s chair. The jury were legally obliged to view the body, as was the coroner, to examine the wounds visible on the corpse.
Gwyn now called out his summary demand to the effect that all those who had any business before the King’s coroner for the County of Devon, should ‘draw near and give their attendance’. Among those who were giving their attendance were Reginald de Courcy, Hugh Ferrars and his father, Joseph and Edgar of Topsham and Henry Rifford, the Portreeve. Eric Picot stood unobtrusively at the side of the hall, but Mabel, the dead man’s widow, was not to be seen.
These major players were standing at the front, just below the dais, and to their right stood some twenty jurors, those who may have had some personal knowledge of the affair. Most were in clerical garb, comprising several of the junior residents of the canons’ houses in the cathedral Close. The large contingent of vicars and choristers explained the presence of the Archdeacon and the Precentor, who were there jealously to guard their ecclesiastical rights against the secular authorities.
For the first part the inquest followed its usual course. The small boy who had found the mortally injured Fitzosbern was considered too immature to be called, though he stood at the side of the hall in fascination, his mother’s hand grasping him firmly by the collar. The dog still played around his feet. The young vicar told of his first view of the dying man, after which he virtuously described his attempts to raise the hue and cry by rousing most of the occupants of Canon’s Row.
The coroner himself then took up the story. ‘I was summoned myself at that point and can state that the injured man was alive when I saw him, but died shortly afterwards. I took a dying deposition from him about certain matters, but he was unable to say who had attacked him.’
At this a murmuring went around the hall. Everyone was well aware from local gossip that Fitzosbern had confessed to being Adele de Courcy’s lover and the instigator of her miscarriage. They knew equally well that he had denied ravishing Christina Rifford and that Garth, the silversmith’s man, had confessed to that particular crime, but John felt it no part of his inquest to go into those matters.
‘The identity of the cadaver as being Godfrey Fitzosbern is well known and no presentment of Englishry is necessary. The question of a murdrum fine will have to be left to the King’s Justices, unless a culprit is discovered in the meantime.’
The coroner stood up and hovered at the edge of the dais, the sheriff looking up at him, half amused. ‘The jury will now examine the body, as the law demands.’ John stepped down to the floor of beaten earth and advanced towards the crude bier, where Gwyn preceded him to whip off the sheet and expose the body down as far as the belly, leaving the lower part of the cloth in place for decency’s sake.
Thomas humped his stool nearer to the edge of the dais and hunched over his parchment, ready to write down the proceedings.
Hesitantly, the score of junior priests, servants and choristers formed a circle around the bier, as John began to point out the injuries. Fitzosbern lay with his head on a block of wood, face puffy, eyes almost closed by swollen bruises. Purple-red discolouration covered all the left side of his face, with some straight lines of contusion running down the cheek.
John prodded each injury with a long forefinger, in the manner of a pedagogue giving an anatomy lecture. ‘He has been sorely beaten on the face with some long object, maybe a stave or fence-post. See these splits in the skin.’ He poked a fingernail into a long gaping wound running diagonally up the left side of Fitzosbern’s forehead into the thick dark hair. The pallid vicars gaped at the sight and one chorister left the back row to go outside to vomit. ‘On the left side of the neck, there are several of these long straight bruises, but also some small round marks, perhaps from knuckle blows.’
John then turned his attention to the chest, where mottled areas of blue and red bruises showed some lines across the skin. ‘As well as these marks from a rod-like weapon, there are these crescents and large marks over the ribs. I suggest to you that they are from heavy kicks.’
‘What really killed him, Crowner?’ ventured a more robust juror, a servant from a prebendary’s house.
For answer, John pressed a strong hand downwards over the breastbone, showing how the front of the chest caved in. This was accompanied by a gurgling from the dead man’s throat and a crackling of bone upon bone as the broken rib-ends ground together. Another juror slipped outside to be sick, as John explained that stamping and kicking had crushed the front of the chest.