‘The Antlered Stag,’ Parson Warfeld intervened. ‘That’s it.’
‘Buy food, a cask of ale.’
‘And the money?’ Wendover was still impudent.
Corbett pointed at Castledene, then strode into that house of death.
Sweetmead was truly ill named. It was a forbidding place. Its entrance parlour was well furnished, but the dark cloths against the walls and the matching turkey rugs were all sombre-hued, whilst the central staircase of heavy oak swept up into the gloom. It smelt sour despite the pots of freshly pressed flowers and herbs standing in the corners. To his right, through a half-open door, Corbett glimpsed a small hall with a mantled hearth, long trestle tables, painted arras and table screen. To the left lay Sir Rauf’s chamber; its door, snapped clean off the leather hinges, leaned against the wall, the bolts and clasps at both top and bottom twisted or broken. Corbett crouched down and inspected the heavy inside lock. He recognised the subtle, intricate work of a truly skilled craftsman, probably a locksmith from one of the London guilds.
He walked into the chancery room and waited whilst others hastened to pull back shutters, light lamps and tend to the hearth. The chamber was low-ceilinged, its white plaster ribbed by black-painted rafters. The walls, a faint lilac, were draped with heavy cloths interspersed with a crucifix and funereal scenes from the Scriptures. A close, soulless chamber, its shelves were crammed with tagged rolls of vellum. Against the walls stood iron-bound chests and coffers, all secured by chains and locks. A heavy oaken desk, covered in sheets of vellum, quills, parchment knives and inkwells, dominated the room. Corbett crouched down, lifted the cream-coloured turkey rug from the floor and scrutinised the dried bloodstain. Castledene came over to explain how the corpse had lain. Corbett nodded, then left and went up the stairs.
The house was freezing cold, even more so here. Castledene and Lechlade clattered up behind him. Corbett asked for Lady Adelicia’s chamber, and Lechlade pushed past and led him down a small gallery, throwing open a door. Once again Corbett inspected the lock; it was very similar to the one to Sir Rauf’s chamber. He pushed the door open and entered a comfortable bedchamber. Its walls were painted a restful green, and the furniture was unlike that in the rest of the house; its table, chairs and quilted stools were fashioned out of gleaming polished elm. To his right stood a four-poster bed draped with gold-fringed blue curtains; next to that was a large aumbry for clothes. Brightly coloured drapes and vividly painted triptychs gave the room a light, elegant look. Castledene explained where the bloody napkins had been found. Corbett simply nodded, left and clattered back down the stairs and through the door leading to the buttery, scullery and kitchens. The rear door, already unlocked, led out into a derelict wasteland. Once this must have had the makings of a fine garden; despite the snow, ice and blustering bitter-cold breeze, Corbett could still make out the outlines of lawns, tunnelled arbours, turf seats, a broken fountain, a shabby pavilion and broken-down trellises. He heard a sound behind him and smelt Lady Adelicia’s perfume.
‘When you saw Sir Rauf with what you think was a corpse that evening, where did he go?’
Corbett turned. Lady Adelicia stood just within the doorway, her face shrouded against the cold. She pointed to a clump of old cider-apple trees. Corbett led everyone across. The trees clustered together, but a narrow space stretched between them and the wall; it was choked with tangled undergrowth, but Corbett noticed one area, about a yard long and the same across, which was thinned as if recently weeded. He ordered the guards, who’d brought picks and mattocks, to dig in that spot, rejecting Castledene’s protest that the ground would be iron-hard.
‘It may well be,’ Corbett smiled thinly, ‘but this would be a shallow grave. Sir Rauf was an old man; he would not have dug deep. He would never have realised that anyone would come into his garden specifically looking for what he had hidden. Moreover,’ he gestured round, ‘this part of the garden is shrouded by trees and undergrowth; the soil may not be so difficult to break.’ He beckoned the guards forward. ‘Half a mark between you,’ he offered, ‘if we can have what’s buried here within the hour.’
There was no further protest. Corbett walked back into the house, ordering Lady Adelicia to be detained in her own chamber. He asked Ranulf to make a quick search from garret to cellar, and excused Parson Warfeld and Desroches from further attendance but warned them that they must return before sunset.
As they left, the guards arrived from The Antlered Stag with pastries, ale and two covered dishes of diced vegetables. Chanson saw to their distribution while Corbett walked back into Sir Rauf’s chamber, now warmer and better lit. He sat down in the high-backed leather chair in front of the desk and felt the weals in the wood beneath the leather-topped arms. Curbing his own angry frustration, he began to sift through Decontet’s ledgers for the last four years, insisting that the shuffling, ale-reeking Lechlade assist him. Once he’d started, Corbett discovered this to be an easy task. Decontet may have been a merchant, but he was also a clerk to the bone. The ledger entries were all neatly written up for each quarter, both income and expenditure. Corbett quickly learnt of the vast array of Sir Rauf’s wealth: sheep, wool, skins and parchment, wine from Gascony, cereal, timber and furs from the Baltic, as well as loans to various individuals and groups including the King and leading courtiers. Nevertheless, despite such wealth, Decontet was extremely parsimonious, even with his own wife, who was only given meagre amounts. One set of expenditure entries, money sent through trusted merchants to unnamed individuals in the ports of Hainault, Flanders and Brabant, caught Corbett’s eye. No reason was given, nor was the generous income — ‘a certis navibus, from certain ships’ — explained. Corbett smiled to himself. He had worked for many months in the Exchequer of Receipt at Westminster under the eagle eye of Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Treasurer to Edward I: in various ledger accounts seized by the Crown, he had come across similar entries. In truth, Decontet, like other leading merchants in London and Bristol, had engaged in more than a little piracy, secretly funding fighting ships in return for a percentage of their profits, with the Crown turning a blind eye. Was Castledene correct? Had The Waxman been one of Decontet’s investments? After all, Sir Rauf was a Canterbury man, like Blackstock and his half-brother.
‘Sir Hugh?’ Castledene stood stamping his feet in the doorway. ‘Sir Hugh, they have found it.’
Corbett and the others gathered in the kitchen, where the decaying sacks had been laid on the square-paved floor. Corbett paid the half mark to the guards, dismissed them, then undid the folds. The skeleton they concealed was complete, all flesh had long rotted, nor was there any trace of clothing, belt or boots.
‘He, and I think it was a man, must have been buried naked,’ Corbett observed. ‘Flesh rots quickly, leather not so.’ He picked up the skull, still hard but yellowing, turned it and pointed at the shattered bone. ‘Killed by a fierce blow to the back of his head, but who was he and why was he murdered?’ Corbett’s questions, of course, weren’t answered, and he recalled those mysterious entries in the ledger. He had no proof, no evidence, yet he was certain that this unfortunate victim was related to The Waxman or some other nefarious dealings of Sir Rauf. Indeed, he was convinced that all these grisly murders were connected to the capture of Blackstock’s ship.