‘Was it suicide?’ Ranulf asked. ‘It must have been, surely? We were all in the Guildhall.’
‘The assassin could be someone else,’ Corbett replied evasively.
‘Such as?’
‘Peterkin; Ralph, the miller’s son.’
Ranulf caught his master’s arm. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? Look around, Sir Hugh.’
He gestured across the dark, misty graveyard, the long wet grass, the slanted crosses, chipped head-stones and the dark mass of the church beyond, its door still open, the steps bathed in a small pool of light.
‘Only the dead can hear you,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘You don’t believe Bellen committed suicide, do you?’
‘No,’ Corbett replied, ‘I don’t. Get into the mind of the man, Ranulf. Bellen may have been this and he may have been that but he was still a priest, a man of God. He had a heightened sense of sin: despair and suicide are the greatest sins. Bellen was anxious but self-composed. I think he knew a lot more than he told us.’
‘But he died,’ Ranulf insisted. ‘Burghesh did find him swinging on the end of that bell rope. If Bellen was a man of God, who would regard suicide as a sin, the same is true of murder. He was strong enough; he wouldn’t have gone to his death like a lamb to the slaughter.’
‘Aye.’
Corbett stared at a hummock of grass which almost shrouded a small headstone. For a brief moment he wondered if it really mattered. All living beings on the face of God’s earth ended their lives in places like this. Elizabeth Wheelwright, Sir Roger Chapeleys, all sleeping that eternal dream.
‘It’s cold,’ Corbett declared.
‘I didn’t find Blidscote. He may have had a hand in this.’
‘I doubt it,’ Corbett replied.
He gathered his cloak around him, putting on his gloves. He listened to the lonely hoot of an owl in the trees at the far end of the graveyard.
‘I wager a tun of wine to a tun of wine, Ranulf, that Blidscote is as dead as any that lie here.’
‘Just because I didn’t find him?’
‘I wonder if we ever will. But come, Ranulf, I need to think, sit and plot.’
They went through the lych-gate. Corbett looked down the lonely lane, ghostly in the pale moonlight. He was tempted to go and see Old Mother Crauford and Peterkin but then he heard voices. People were coming up towards the church as the news spread. He needed to impose some order on what he had learnt.
They returned to the Golden Fleece, to be greeted by scowls and unspoken curses. Corbett ignored them as he stood looking around.
‘Whom do you want?’ Matthew the taverner came up.
‘Master Blidscote — I don’t suppose he’s been in tonight?’
‘No, Sir Hugh, he hasn’t.’ The taverner glanced at him sly-eyed. ‘But the news about Curate Robert is known by all. They are calling you the Death Bringer.’
‘I’m not that!’ Corbett snapped. ‘Master taverner. .’ Then he thought better of what he’d been about to say. ‘I’ll be in my chamber if anyone wishes to see me.’
Ranulf stayed, determined not to be bullied by the dark looks and seething hostility of the taproom. Once he was in his chamber, Corbett lit a candle and prepared his writing desk. He took out the scrap of parchment from the curate’s chamber and studied the outline of the triptych.
‘I wonder. .’ he murmured.
He smoothed this out, took a piece of vellum and began to write down everything he had seen, heard or learnt since arriving in Melford. The first afternoon in the crypt; the conversation there; the daubed markings on the grave; the piece of parchment pinned to the gibbet. He wrote down a list of names and, taking each one, carefully recalled how they had looked, what they had said.
An hour passed. Ranulf came up but Corbett was so immersed he simply mumbled good night and went back to his studies. The taproom below emptied. Corbett lay on his bed for a while, thinking, trying to study each person, each death. Blidscote could have helped.
‘That was a mistake,’ Corbett murmured. ‘I should have questioned him before. But, there again, he wouldn’t have told the truth.’
He returned to his writings: slowly but surely a pattern emerged.
‘Let’s take one murder,’ he murmured. ‘Deverell’s. No.’ He shook his head.
He wrote down Molkyn’s name. Molkyn the miller? A drunkard, an oaf, frightened by a verse from Leviticus? Corbett was now certain two assassins were loose in Melford: Molkyn was the bridge between them. He had been specially elected to that jury, therefore he must have been blackmailed. But was he killed to keep his mouth closed? Or executed for his role in Sir Roger’s death? Corbett underscored the word ‘executed’. He sat and reflected, half dozing. He slipped into a dream and woke with a start. For a moment he was back in the cold, stark belfry with that grisly corpse swinging by its neck.
He got up and splashed water over his face. He had his suspicions but who could help? Peterkin? He would have to wait until the morning. Matters, however, were proceeding too fast. The hostility in the taproom might spill over and, as the news of Bellen’s death spread, people would say the murderer had confessed and hanged himself. So, why should this clerk be poking his long nose into other people’s affairs?
Corbett was about to strap on his sword belt and go out but then thought of Maeve, her face pale and anxious, eyes studying him. Her departing words echoed in his mind. She had whispered them as she put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Be careful of the shadows,’ she’d murmured. ‘Remember, if you hunt murderers, they can hunt you.’
Corbett paused, hand on the latch, and changed his mind. Instead he went to sit on the bed and thought of that bell tower, the hanging corpse and those other ropes with the weights at the end. If he could resolve that, he might trap the killer and, with the help of Molkyn’s daughter, bring these deaths in Haceldema to an end.
Corbett returned to his studies. He put Bellen’s murder to one side for the moment and returned to his theory of two murderers loose in Melford.
‘Not Furrell and his wife,’ he murmured — he was now sure of that — so who? He examined, once again, the parchment from Bellen’s chamber and recalled Furrell’s song about the angel and the devil. What else had Sorrel told him? If she was not exacting vengeance then who? There was something about her story? Corbett worked on and, as he did so, the mystery began to unravel.
Chapter 16
‘Who is the Mummer’s Man?’
Corbett sat in Old Mother Crauford’s small, mud-packed earth cottage. It was smoky and dark. The fire in the makeshift hearth was lacklustre, the green logs gently resisting the licking flames. Old Mother Crauford put down the bellows and looked over her shoulder at Peterkin sitting on a three-legged stool. The simpleton was cradling a bowl of leek soup on his lap. He dropped his horn spoon with a clatter, frightened eyes still on Corbett. He slowly put the bowl on the ground beside him.
‘What nonsense is this?’ Old Mother Crauford asked. ‘It’s barely dawn and you come knocking on my door? We have nothing to do with Haceldema.’
‘I know why you call it that, Mother,’ Corbett replied. ‘No, no. .’ Corbett put out a hand.
Peterkin was now staring at the doorway but that was blocked by Ranulf.
‘You mustn’t run,’ Corbett said gently. ‘I’ll only catch you. Hush!’ He held up a hand to fend off more questions from the old woman. ‘Look, Peterkin.’ Corbett held a silver coin between his fingers.
The slack face relaxed. Peterkin smiled, opening his mouth, tongue coming out as if he could already savour the sweetmeat he’d buy.
‘He’s a poor, witless fool,’ Mother Crauford mumbled.
‘He’s not as stupid as you think,’ Corbett retorted. ‘You know that, Mother, and so does he. It’s not really foolish Peterkin, is it? Or simple Peterkin? Or witless Peterkin?’ Corbett caught it — just a shift in the eyes, a gleam, a knowing look. ‘You understand what I am saying, don’t you?’ Corbett continued.