Bad Money (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 6)

by Jason Vail

“Rather like Bartelot’s.”

  “That thought had occurred to me. Have there been any other mysterious disappearances of silver that you’ve heard of?”

  “Now that you ask, I heard of one theft. But it wasn’t in the town.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was a manor called Bockleton, south of here.”

  “I’ve heard of it. What do you know?”

  “Well, it isn’t much, just what some travelers said in passing. Someone broke into the manor house and made off with the silver while everyone was sleeping. You know, you might ask Will Thumper about it. He’s got his fingers on the pulse of local criminality.”

  “A good idea. Meanwhile, I wanted to ask you something else.”

  “Ask away. I am a font of knowledge, except when I’m not.”

  “If you were going to get up on Sprunt’s roof, how would you do it?”

  “As I have no legs, there is no way I am getting on Sprunt’s roof.”

  “Imagine that you have legs.”

  Harry squinted up the street toward Sprunt’s house. “That’s easy.” He pointed to the town wall above their heads. “If you had half a brain you’d figure it out for yourself.”

  Stephen followed Harry’s finger and saw what he meant. The roof of the nearest house abutted the wall. And going up Broad Street, the houses were built shoulder to shoulder, one roof touching another.

  “Come on, Gilbert,” Stephen said entering the gate tower.

  “What?” Gilbert exclaimed. “You’re not thinking of taking a stroll on the rooftops? That’s insane!”

  “You wanted your other evidence!” Stephen called back. “This is how we must look for it.”

  “I’ve got to see this!” Harry scooted away from his nook as Gilbert reluctantly entered the gate tower and climbed the stairs after Stephen.

  Gilbert sat down on the peak of the roof nearest the town wall and would go no farther. He tried to say something, but his words came out an inarticulate yelp.

  “You are the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” Harry called from the middle of the street.

  Stephen glanced back at Gilbert. He regretted goading Gilbert into coming along. The roofs, which ran back from Broad Street creating a series of peaks and valleys that had to be climbed to reach Sprunt’s, were quite steep. But as long as you stayed in the center, there was no danger of falling off, only perhaps of getting stuck in one of the valleys if you could not manage the climb out. “Stay where you are!” Stephen called to Gilbert.

  Gilbert waved. Then he slid out of view, back to the wall walk, where they had gained the roof in the first place.

  Stephen had broken out into a sweat and was panting with the effort by the time he reached the peak of the fourth house. And he still had quite a way to go. By resting frequently in the valleys, however, he finally managed to reach Sprunt’s.

  He wasn’t sure what he was looking for and stood on the slope of the roof, peering around. There wasn’t much to see: a few loose shingles were the only thing of interest, and it was hard to tell if they meant anything for there had been skewed shingles on the roofs of the houses he had crossed to get here.

  He went to the rear of the house and looked over into the back garden. The boy’s body had been removed and there was no one in the yard but a servant who was chopping wood, one of those chores that was never done like dishes and the making of beds. One of the shingles had what might be a gouge worn in the edge, but that could have been an old mark, an imperfection in the wooden shingle when it had been put up. In any case, it wasn’t directly over the window of the storage room but slightly to the side.

  Stephen sat down to think, hoping that some observation might surface from the muck of his memory and reveal its illuminating importance. He heard voices through the roof: servants discussing the finding of the body. A servant’s room must be straight below. It was not uncommon for the lowest members of the house to be quartered at the top floor, not unlike he was at the inn, for the chamber he inhabited had been a servant’s before he showed up. Pigeons landed on the peak of the roof above Stephen and examined him. He made no sudden moves to frighten them. They flew away.

  Nothing emerged from the muck. After a considerable time, he rose and made his way back to the wall.

  Chapter 4

  Although no one at Sprunt’s had recognized the dead boy, Stephen had arranged for the body to be cleaned and set out at Saint Laurence’s Church. A linen sheet covered him, as the boy’s clothes had been cut off so that his entire skin could be viewed for marks that might have given some indication of the reason for his death. The town bailiffs were ordered to go throughout the town and the suburbs and command everyone to come by during the day to see if they could identify him. This had to be done straightaway, since the body would quickly foul in the warming weather. It was a great deal of effort for what promised to be little return, but Stephen thought it was worth it.

  The body lay on a board stretched between two trestles in the same nook of the church where another victim of an untimely and unfortunate death had lain so that the town could view her. No one this time, however, cried out that the corpse was that of a saint.

  Stephen and Gilbert waited on a bench by the body throughout the afternoon as people came and went, hoping for some exclamation of recognition. But there was none of that, only callous and vulgar jokes at Sprunt’s and the dead boy’s expense. It was boring work, and Stephen was almost crazy with it. Pacing and stretching did not relieve his discomfort.

  Toward sundown, when the stream of visitors had trickled out and there was no one in the church but Stephen and Gilbert, Harry and one of the inn’s servants, the boy Mark, showed up.

  Mark seemed indisposed as he halted before Stephen. “He won’t pay, sir.” Mark had been sent to bring Harry up in a hand cart. No one in town, not even the beggars, were exempt from the view.

  “You won’t?” Stephen asked Harry.

  “This is a waste of time,” Harry said. “I’m sure I don’t know him if nobody else does.”

  “What makes you think nobody does?”

  “Mark said so.”

  “Pay up, Harry. It will include a ride back to the inn, won’t it, Mark.”

  Mark’s feet pawed at the dirt. “Very well, sir. If you insist.”

  “There,” Stephen said.

  Harry dug into his purse and tossed Mark a farthing. Mark bit down on it. Harry said, “You can’t tell good money from bad that way, you idiot.”

  “If you insult me again, you’ll have to crawl back to the inn,” Mark snapped. He stamped toward the door.

  “That boy needs to learn to keep his temper,” Harry said. “Always flying off.” He glanced up at the body on the board. “Well, are you going to bring that thing down to my level, or what? It’s not like I can jump up.”

  “You take one arm, I’ll take the other,” Stephen said to Gilbert.

  “I don’t think my back is up to it,” Gilbert said. “I think I pulled it out with all that climbing around.”

  “You only made it up to one roof,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t call that climbing around.”

  “It was a steep roof, and dangerous,” Gilbert said. But nonetheless he grasped Harry’s right arm and what remained of his thigh while Stephen bent down on the other side.

  “One, two, three!” Stephen said and they hoisted Harry into the air.

  “I would never have thought half a man could be so heavy,” Gilbert grunted, for Harry was much heavier than he looked.

  “It’s me head,” Harry said. “So full of brains, unlike yours which is likely to float off your shoulders.”

  “You know, my grip is weakening,” Gilbert said. “I might drop you upon those brains. I would hate for them to foul this holy place.”

  “Sir Steve!” Harry cried. “You aren’t going to let him get away with that?”

  “With what? Hurry up. Tell us if the boy is familiar. I’m about to lose my grip as well,” Stephen said.

  “No, he don
’t look familiar. Now you can put me down, and be gentle. My noble flesh bruises easily.”

  Stephen and Gilbert were stooping to return Harry to the floor when a familiar voice said behind them, “Well, will you look at that!”

  Stephen glanced back. There stood Will Thumper at the head of his considerable brood: uncles, cousins, a pair of brothers, a sister or two, a wife and at least a dozen children ranging from a babe in arms to Tad, who was thirteen or fourteen, Stephen couldn’t remember which, and who was growing to be as broad and as powerful as his father.

  “Hello, Will,” Stephen said. He had managed to lift Harry up several times in the past, but without anyone seeing. Now it was going to get all over town. He almost burst out crimson at the embarrassment. “Good of you to come, and your lovely family.”

  “What’s this?” Thumper asked, pointing at the dead boy.

  “It’s a dead boy.”

  “I can see that. We heard he fell off Sprunt’s roof.”

  “That’s what we think. Do you know him?”

  “Hmm.” Thumper bent close to the dead boy’s face, pretending to examine it closely. “Don’t think I do. What about you?” he asked his great family and got murmurs of No, Never seen him, and a round of shrugs and head wagging.

  Thumper was about to go when he hooked his thumbs in his belt and regarded Harry. “What’s that brother-in-law of yours been up to these days?”

  “Nothing!” Harry answered quickly. “Nothing at all.”

  “Is he still in the business?”

  “Don’t know what you mean. He’s a servant at Hereford Castle, and has been for years. You know that.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Thumper said, “but I don’t know it. You’re the only person who’s told me that. Not sure I trust you, anyways.” He said to Stephen, “We don’t know him, and have no reason to. He isn’t from around here.”

  “You do business with a lot of people who aren’t from around here,” Stephen said.

  “I don’t like to foul the nest, so to speak,” Thumper said. “Safer that way.”

  “In any case, you won’t mind if I come back with you and have a look at your storeroom.”

  Thumper stroked his chin. “Don’t suppose it matters. You’ve already seen all there’s to see in there anyway.”

  Thumper claimed to be a handyman and day laborer, as did everyone else in his family. Most days they were seen to make their living at odd jobs about the town and countryside, and in the fields at sowing and harvest time. But other days, things were different. Neighbors often witnessed odd comings and goings at the Thumper house, a ramshackle residence east of Lower Galdeford, often involving packhorses and carts, and there was talk of stolen property being kept there for later sale in distant parts. But no one had ever taken the trouble to investigate, for word of these suspicions did not circulate beyond the neighborhood.

  The Thumper brood straggled ahead toward Galdeford Gate while Thumper and Stephen paused at Spicer’s wine shop for a cup on the street at Stephen’s expense.

  “You really don’t know him?” Stephen asked as he put down his empty cup.

  Thumper shook his head.

  “You know about the break in at Sprunt’s,” Stephen said.

  “I heard about it.”

  “And you have no idea who might be involved.”

  Thumper looked at a spot over Stephen’s shoulder. “No idea.”

  “If you hear anything, I want you to tell me about it.”

  “That would be breaking my oath,” Thumper laughed.

  “What oath?”

  “The thieves pledge! Don’t you know!”

  “You admit you’re a thief, then.”

  “Never stole anything in my life. I’m an honest man. But you know I’ve a business to run.”

  “Just so long as it doesn’t involve property missing from around here, as you said.”

  “It don’t. Now, thanks for the cup of wine. You want to see my storeroom, or not?”

  “Just to be certain.”

  They were stepping away from Spicer’s as a cart train rounded the bend at the Beast Market, the wide open spot where Corve, Galdeford, and Old Streets came together.

  The pair and the train approached each other. What was in the carts caught Stephen’s attention as they came together. The carts were not full of goods, but of the bodies of men, some of them wounded, but many clearly dead.

  One of the men in the second cart was Geoffrey Randall, the coroner of northern Herefordshire and Stephen’s employer. His face was slack but did not have the waxy color of the dead. There was a bloody bandage around his head, and one on his thigh.

  “Sir Geoffrey!” Stephen cried. “Are you all right?”

  Randall raised his head and looked at the source of the noise, then let it fall back on the corpse supporting his back without any sign he had recognized Stephen.

  “The army has returned, I see,” Thumper said. “I hope it was victorious.”

  “I shall see about you later,” Stephen said.

  He fell in behind the cart and followed it to the castle, all thoughts of missing silver, lost crosses and dead boys vanished from his head.

  Part Two

  May 1263

  Chapter 5

  “Good God in Heaven!” a voice cried from the privy.

  Harry looked up from his bowl of porridge at Stephen Attebrook, who sat on the bench above him. “I say, that must have been a rewarding experience.”

  “I’d rather not talk about such things at breakfast,” Stephen murmured, stirring his porridge to break up some of the lumps of oats the cook had missed. “It is distasteful.”

  Harry opened his mouth to make some rejoinder, no doubt vulgar and cutting, as Harry dealt in the vulgar and cutting like a skilled swordsman, but the appearance of one of the inn’s guest from round the corner of the stable forestalled any attack on Stephen’s reluctance to address this morning’s first point of interest. The guest, a cloth merchant from Bristol on his way to Carlisle, appeared agitated. He held up his braises with one hand to keep them from falling to his knees, a task any well-mannered person should already have accomplished out of sight in the privy. His lips quivered and the other hand pointed in the privy’s direction.

  “Come on, man, get a grip,” Harry said when the merchants quivering lips delivered inarticulate blubbering. “It can’t have been that wonderful.”

  “There’s a dead man in the privy!” the merchant said to them at last, glad he had someone’s attention. He turned to the inn and shouted loudly enough to be heard at Ludlow Castle, “There’s a dead man in the privy!”

  Stephen shot to his feet. His bowl flew out of his hands, spewing porridge, some of it striking Harry on the face.

  Harry paid no attention to the indignity, for both he and Stephen knew there was a dead man in the privy. He had been there since last autumn, and they both thought they had taken sufficient steps to ensure he would not be discovered.

  “A dead man?” they both gasped at once.

  “There’s a dead man in the privy!” the cloth merchant shouted again, backing into the yard. Now that he had raised the alarm, his pointing finger sank to the drawstring at his braise. He tied them up and pointed again round the side of the stable, where the privy stood between that structure and the kitchen, almost barring the way to the wood pile and back garden.

  “Gilbert burned it out,” Harry muttered. “There shouldn’t be any sign.”

  “Shut up, Harry,” Stephen said, as alarmed at this development as Harry. He paused. “You have porridge on your face.”

  Harry wiped his face. “So I have. Is it raining porridge today as well as dead men?” He glanced from the porridge on his fingers, which he wiped on the stumps of this thighs, to the fallen bowl. “Well, breakfast is ruined, at least for you, eh? Get to work, will you, and clear this up in a way that is satisfactory to all concerned. I love having friends in government. It solves so many of life’s knotty problems.”

  By
that Stephen understood Harry to mean in a way that pointed the finger of suspicion away from those who had any responsibility for the presence of the dead man in the privy, that is, him, Stephen and their landlord, Gilbert Wistwode, the proprietor of their lodgings, the Broken Shield Inn.

  Harry was right, as he often was, although Stephen did not like to make such admissions even to himself. As deputy coroner of this little fold of Herefordshire, it was his duty to take charge immediately. He strode toward the cloth merchant, who was beginning to calm down.

  “A dead man?” Stephen asked with as much nonchalance and unconcern as he could muster. “In the privy? You can’t be serious.”

  By this time, the guests and staff of the inn were spilling into the yard, eager to learn more about this curiosity, a babble of questions and statements of disbelief filling the air, along with some rather vulgar comments and rude jokes. A good portion of the crowd did not bother with the discoverer, but made their way to the privy to see for themselves.

  Stephen hurried to the corner of the stables and ordered: “Get away from there!” but not before two or three forced themselves into the shed covering the privy.

  These lucky few emerged as if scalded, for Stephen had a good command voice, which he had developed during the days, now long gone and never recoverable, when he ordered soldiers around. But they had seen enough, and informed the crowd, “It’s true!”

  Stephen stood at the doorway to the privy, heart pounding, frightened of what he would find, despite the power he had to direct suspicion elsewhere if need be. He’d had one brush with the law as administered by the undersheriff here, Walter Henle, and had come off the poorer for it. He did not wish to repeat the experience.

  Gilbert and Edith came up to Stephen. “A dead man?” Gilbert asked, unable to conceal his worry and concern.

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “Apparently.”

  “What’s he doing there?” Gilbert asked in a voice that he meant to convey innocence but did not sound convincing.