As the crowd stood in silent awe, he dictated a short account to Thomas, then climbed back on to the platform, as Gwyn drew the sheet discreetly up over Godfrey’s face.
‘So there is no doubt how he died,’ continued the coroner. ‘The question is, who caused him to die? Has anyone any information to give me?’ He scowled around the hall, almost as if to challenge anyone to offer information.
There was a silence, broken only by feet shuffling on the rough floor.
‘Did anyone see anything untoward in the cathedral precincts last night?’ he demanded. Strictly speaking, the whole area around the cathedral, apart from the paths, was outside the jurisdiction of the town, coming under ecclesiastical law – but John de Alecon had told him that the bishop had waived any right to challenge the coroner’s warrant where deaths were concerned. There was no answer to his question, neither from Picot nor from the two men he had named.
Never one to mince words, John stared down at Reginald de Courcy and Hugh Ferrars, who stood side by side in the front row. ‘I have had a report that you two gentlemen were abroad in that area last night. Is that true?’
Hugh Ferrars jumped as if stuck in the backside with a pike. ‘What? Do you know what you are saying, Crowner?’
De Wolfe gazed at him steadily. ‘I know what I am saying, sir.’
Hugh looked as if he was about to have a stroke. ‘Tell me what bastard spun you that tale!’ he yelled.
His father was also stung into instant response. ‘De Wolfe, are you mad? What nonsense is this?’ His face went puce, and both father and son marched up to the foot of the dais and confronted the coroner and the sheriff.
Amid the sudden hubbub in the hall, de Courcy added his voice in loud yells of protest and angry denial, as he joined the others below the edge of the platform.
Richard de Revelle, to whom this was equally a surprise, jumped to his feet and rounded on the coroner. ‘You can’t accuse people in public, man!’ he hissed. ‘Who gave you this scurrilous slander?’
John suffered the clamour for a moment, then threw up his hands and yelled, in a voice that could have been heard in St Sidwell’s, ‘Be silent, all of you!’
His outburst was so dramatic that there was momentary silence, into which he snapped out an explanation. ‘I accused no one. But information came my way which I cannot ignore. I asked a simple question, which requires a simple answer. Were you, Reginald de Courcy, and you, Hugh Ferrars, walking in the cathedral Close late last evening?’
Red in the face, the younger Ferrars glared up at him and shouted above the returning babble of voices, ‘No, I bloody well was not, Sir Crowner! You are too fond of baseless accusations. By Christ and Mary, Mother of God, and St Peter – and any number of damned saints you like – I was drinking in half the inns in Exeter last night – and none of those lie in the cathedral Close!’
There was a ripple of ribald laughter at this sally, but John was not amused. ‘And, no doubt, you conveniently walked half the town doing it, eh?’
‘With a dozen witnesses who caroused with me to prove it,’ retorted Hugh angrily.
His father pointed a quivering forefinger at the coroner. ‘You’ll regret this, de Wolfe. Your mouth will be the ruin of you.’
John ignored the threat and turned his gaze on de Courcy, who was similarly flushed with anger. ‘Do you say the same, Sir Reginald? I ask only for a yea or nay, there’s no accusation involved, at this stage.’
De Courcy was almost livid with fury. ‘To settle this once and for all, hear this, Crowner.’ He pulled out his dagger from the sheath on his belt and waved it aloft. Gwyn started forward, thinking he was about to plunge it into the coroner, but instead he grasped it by the blade and held it high above him. ‘By this Sign of the Cross, I swear once – and once only – that I spent the whole evening by my own fireside until I took to my bed.’ He lowered the knife and slid it back into its sheath, then turned on his heel and walked out, his brown surcoat pressed close to his body by the cold wind as he left by the open archway.
As if to emphasise their contempt, the two Ferrars followed him out without a glance at the coroner, stalking away in high dudgeon.
With a poisonous look at his brother-in-law, the sheriff stepped down from the platform and hurried after them.
The rest of the inquest was an anti-climax after the drama. Inevitably the jury returned a verdict of murder by persons unknown and everyone drifted off, including Godfrey Fitzosbern, who was trundled on a handcart across to St John’s Hospital, to await burial in the cathedral Close, where he had met his death.
Chapter Twenty
In which Crowner John discovers the truth
Next morning, the coroner sat, somewhat despondently, in his Spartan chamber within Rougemont Castle. He felt that nothing had been achieved by yesterday’s inquest, apart from further antagonism between himself, the Ferrars, de Courcy and the sheriff. ‘I suppose we’ll have that bunch back this morning, spitting venom at me for daring to ask where they were the night before last,’ he grumbled to Gwyn. They were waiting for Thomas to report on his search around the town for bloodstains and more servants’ gossip, which might give them a lead to Fitzosbern’s killer.
Reluctantly John pulled out the latest Latin lesson given him by his cathedral tutor and half-heartedly began to study it on the table. Gwyn sat quietly on the window-ledge, staring absently at the floor, his brow wrinkled in thought. His unusual silence soon unnerved his master. ‘Are you sick, man? You’re not even drinking ale!’
‘I was thinking about Reginald de Courcy.’
John was immediately attentive. When Gwyn had some deep thoughts, they were always worth considering. ‘What about him?’
‘He was one of those named by Eric Picot, but he couldn’t have struck those blows.’
The coroner threw down his Latin roll and leaned back on his stool. ‘Come, Gwyn, what’s on that great mind of yours?’
‘All the injuries on Fitzosbern were on the left side, both face, neck and chest. If struck by someone in front of him, which he must have been, then de Courcy is exonerated.’
The coroner stared hard at his henchman. Gwyn never said anything without a good reason. ‘Why do you claim that, man?’
‘When he took that oath in the court yesterday, did you notice that he held up his dagger with the left hand? I watched him thereafter and he is undoubtedly left-handed. Even his dagger sheath is on his right hip, instead of on the usual left. And no left-handed man could have caused those injuries from the front.’
John mused over this for a moment and could find no fault in Gwyn’s argument. ‘Right, I give you that he never struck the blows. But he could have gripped Fitzosbern for another to strike him, or otherwise been in conspiracy with Ferrars to kill the man.’
Gwyn shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘True, but at least it’s a bit of knowledge we didn’t have before.’
The conversation was ended by the uneven tip-tap of a lame leg climbing the stairs, then Thomas pushed his way through the hessian hanging over the doorway. His pinched face had a gleam of suppressed excitement, the little dark eyes glittering with pride.
‘Here comes the gnome of Winchester!’ teased Gwyn rudely. ‘What news from the gutters?’
The clerk was too pleased with himself to rise to the bait. ‘Blood, Crowner. I’ve found blood!’ he declared proudly.
With a peremptory jerk of his finger, John got the little ex-priest to sit on the stool before him and tell his story. ‘What blood and where?’ he demanded.
Agog with self-importance, Thomas de Peyne described his adventures of the previous afternoon and early that morning.