by Paul Doherty
"How much?" he asked.
Corbett smiled. "Ten pounds but don't worry, Master de Guisars, most of it will comeback. It's the King's business. "
The goldsmith nodded in pleasure. With the cup clasped between his hands he looked like some ancient child. "And the business?" he asked hopefully.
Corbett knew that de Guisars would ask that question and had carefully planned his response. "Well, " he answered slowly. "Yes, I can tell you. It's Duket. A member of your guild who hanged himself in Saint Mary Le Bow. I have been asked to investigate… " His voice trailed off as he noticed de Guisars's reaction. Fear? Terror? Even guilt? Corbett could not decide but the transformation in the little merchant was astonishing. His face went white and he became visibly flustered.
De Guisars rose swiftly from his seat and crossed to one of his leather trunks. Within minutes he had counted out Corbett's money and, crossing over, almost threw it into Corbett's hand as if anxious to be rid of him. "Your money, Master Clerk. " He opened the door. "It is late and… " he waved airily towards the back of his house.
Corbett rose, slid the coins into his purse and moved towards the open door. "Goodnight, Master de Guisars, " he murmured. "Perhaps I will be back. "
In the cold, dark street, Corbett heard the door slam behind him, aware that already his commission had stirred troubled waters. He looked up through the narrow gaps between the projecting houses. The sky was clear, the stars distant and very bright. Corbett knew that the night would be freezing cold and began to walk briskly down the almost deserted Cheapside. He saw shadows move in an alleyway so he drew the long dagger from beneath his cloak and the shadows receded into the darkness. Corbett stopped outside a tavern, its long ale stake and the warmth and light beckoning him in. He was cold and hungry, and he suddenly realized how little he had eaten that day, but he looked down Cheapside to the dark mass of St. Mary Le Bow and regretfully decided that the tavern would have to wait.
The church of St. Mary Le Bow stood in its own ground, behind a low stone wall, a little removed from the main thoroughfare of Cheapside. The chancel, broad and sheer, faced the street, its square tower and entrance at the far end behind which lay the cemetery whilst alongside and parallel to the church was what Corbett took to be the clergy house, a half-timbered building, with a thatched roof. Both buildings wore an aspect of wear, decay and dilapidation. There was an eerie sadness about the place, a feeling of quiet but baleful menace which curled the hair on the nape of his neck.
Corbett slowly walked round the church. He noted the main entrance in the square tower and a small entrance into the nave which looked as if it had not been used for years. The windows were shuttered and closed, the main door bolted, barred and immovable. He looked up but only the dripping, evil devil-face of a gargoyle stared back. Corbett scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot and walked over to the clergy house. It looked deserted but, after hammering on the door, he heard the patter of footsteps and the rattle of a bolt being drawn back.
"Who is it?" The voice was harsh but tinged with fear.
"Hugh Corbett, royal clerk, sent down by the King to investigate Lawrence Duket's death. ' The door swung open and a tall, stooped figure carrying a candle drew back to let Corbett enter.
"What is there to investigate?" Corbett looked at the speaker, the thin, emaciated face, glittering eyes, balding head and straggly beard. He immediately disliked this man in his brown, dirty robe but, at the same time, was slightly wary of him.
"I am on the King's business, not yours, " Corbett snapped back, pleased to see the man's claw-like hand grip the candle even tighter. "Who are you, anyway?" he continued.
"I am Roger Bellet, " the man replied. "Rector and priest of the church of Saint Mary Le Bow. " His eyes slid from Corbett like those of a cowed child and he moved to light more candles.
Corbett looked around the hall of a house, a large room with a door at the far end which probably led out to further rooms and offices. He looked up at the fire-blackened beams and moved nearer a glowing charcoal brazier.
The place repelled him with its dirt-beaten floor and filthy rushes. Corbett was cold, colder in this priestly home than he had been outside. Bellet pulled a stool across for him and offered wine but Corbett refused. He did not trust the man, instead he stretched out his hands to the warmth and waited for the priest to seat himself at the other side of the brazier.
"How can I help you, Master Clerk?" The voice was now ingratiary, the priest's lips stretched in a false smile, showing a row of jagged yellow stumps.
"All you know about Lawrence Duket. " Bellet gazed into the glowing heat.
"Very little, " he replied. "On the afternoon of thirteenth January, Lawrence Duket stabbed another merchant, Ralph Crepyn, in Cheapside. He fled to this church seeking sanctuary. Of course, I gave it, the man was confused, exhausted and frightened. I gave him wine, some bread and left him in the sanctuary. I locked the door on the outside, he bolted it from within, and a watch from the local ward mounted a guard. The next morning about Prime, just after dawn, I went back into the church and found that Duket had moved the sanctuary chair over to the window embrasure and hanged himself from an iron bar. I and the watch ward immediately cut the body down and sent for the local coroner who called in witnesses and delivered judgement. The rest you must know. "
Corbett nodded. "Did you lock the church that night? I mean immediately after you left Duket?"
"No, I came back later. Duket was asleep in the chair, only then did I bolt it for the night. " Bellet replied.
"Where did Duket get the rope to hang himself?"
Bellet shrugged. "There is rope in the church, " he answered. "Old rope, new rope. It is constantly being used in the belfry. Duket must have found some and carried out his terrible self-destruction. "
"The belfry is in the tower?" Corbett asked. "At the far end of the church away from the sanctuary?"
Bellet nodded.
"And Duket?" Corbett continued. "What did he have with him?"
The priest bit his lower lip and leaned back on his stool as if the question really puzzled him. "Not much, " he murmured. "The clothes he fled in, his knife and a purse with some money. Why?"
"Nothing, " Corbett smiled back. "Nothing. I simply wondered. Where is the body?" he asked. The priest stared at him.
"Duket's body! Where is it?" he demanded again.
The priest shrugged. "Duket was a suicide and was treated as such. The under-sheriff of the city had the body dragged by the heels on a sheet of ox-hide to a place outside the walls and it was buried in the city ditch. The usual fate for anyone who commits such an act. "
"No one, " Corbett interjected. "No one pleaded for the body?"
"Master Clerk, " Bellet replied, staring at him fixedly across the glowing coals. "Duket was a suicide and the church's teaching on that subject is not a matter for debate!"
Corbett pursed his lips and tried to look baffled about the whole affair. "Can I see inside the church?" The priest pointed out that it was dark and little could be seen. Corbett nodded understandably and promised to return the following day. He then took his leave, glad to be out of that room with its shadowy menace and away from a church which offered little comfort to either the dead or the living.
Corbett wandered back to the tavern that he had passed earlier in the evening and entered its warmth and light. He sat at a trestle table and drank some beefy broth generously garnished with leeks and garlic, as well as a quart of heady ale. He felt warm, relaxed and decided he could not face the journey home so he hired a blanket from the landlord and a space to sleep on the rush-strewn floor. He lay down exhausted but unable to forget that dark church with its sinister priest. Vague memories stirred about stories he had heard or read about St. Mary Le Bow. An unhappy building. But why? Where had he learnt that? His tired brain groped for an answer when he suddenly remembered something disturbing. The priest had expected him, almost as if the King always ordered a high-ranking clerk to investigate every suici
de in the city. Corbett was still puzzling about that as he fell into a deep sleep.
Four
The next morning Corbett was awakened by one of the tavern slatterns. He felt drowsy and thick-headed after the previous evening. He warmed himself at one of the cooking fires whilst he consumed a breakfast of ale and coarse rye bread. He then picked up his belongings and made his way down Cheapside, calling into the open-fronted stall of a barber who shaved his upper lip and chin with consummate skill and, at Corbett's gentle questioning, supplied details about the local coroner who carried out the inquest on Lawrence Duket. He was a physician, Roger Padgett, who plied his trade in one of the side alleyways off Cheapside. After he left the barber's stall, Corbett found the house, a modest two-timbered affair with the huge gilt sign of a bowl and pestle hanging over the door.
Padgett was a garrulous little man inflated with his own self-importance as a doctor and a coroner. A small pretentious figure in his scarlet cloak slashed with blue and lined with taffeta, who carefully inspected Corbett's warrant before inviting him into the lower room of his house which served as his surgery. Corbett did not trust doctors and saw their secret arts as trickery. He looked around the room and supposed Padgett was no different. There was a Zodiac map on the floor, and along the walls shelves full of clay jars and clearly marked 'senna', 'henbane', 'foxglove' or 'eel skin'. A huge wooden bowl stood on the table, full of a fine white dust which made him sneeze and cough until the physician covered it with a damp cloth.
Padgett sat himself on the room's one and only chair and, ignoring Corbett's comfort, abruptly asked. "How can I be of assistance, Master Clerk?"
"By telling me about Lawrence Duket, how and where did you find the body?"
The physician slouched in his chair, his fingers clutching the arms while he looked above Corbett's head and talked as if he was reciting a poem. "Lawrence Duket was found hanged in the church of Saint Mary Le Bow shortly after daybreak on fourteenth January. I believe the Rector, the priest Bellet, found the body. " He looked direct at Corbett. "You have met him?" Corbett nodded and Padgett gave him an odd look before continuing:
"Anyway, Bellet cut the body down, and left it lying in the sanctuary. I and a group of witnesses came to inspect the corpse. There were no marks of violence upon it, no rupture of the skin or any other sign of attack. The only wound was a purple red gash round the neck and a large bruise under the right ear, both of these were caused by the noose and knot of the rope mat Duket tied round his throat when he hanged himself. I then investigated the place of death. A large metal bar which juts out from the side of one of the windows in the sanctuary and the Blessed Chair had been pushed under it. Duket apparently used this to stand on, tied the halter around the bar, fastened the noose about his neck and then simply stepped off the chair. The only extraordinary thing were these black silk threads found around the noose. " He handed them over to Corbett, who studied them for a while before slipping them into his own wallet.
The physician then looked at Corbett and grimaced with his small prim mouth. "That is all. There were the usual signs of a hanged person. The bowels and stomach had emptied, the face had turned a blueish-purple, the tongue was swollen and bitten and the eyes protuberant. "
"Nothing else? No sign whatsoever of any violence?" Corbett impatiently interrupted him.
"It was, " Padgett said slowly, "as I have described for you. I think that Duket killed Crepyn, fled to the church and, through fear or remorse, hanged himself. "
"There were no other signs, no marks on the body?" Corbett persisted and raised a hand to placate the physician's evident annoyance, before continuing: "Of course, your report was very complete. The Lord Chancellor himself commented on that but, was there anything that your professional eye noted but dismissed as having nothing to do with the death?"
"Only one thing, " came the quick smug reply. "Duket had bruises on the upper arms but they were probably only bruises, nothing else. "
Corbett smiled. "Thank you, Master Padgett, and if you remember anything please send it to the chancery. " Before the bemused physician could answer, Corbett was through the door striding up the street back towards Cheapside.
A pale sun had broken through a cloudy sky drawing the usual crowds into Cheapside. Scriveners with their portable trays were ready for business. The stalls were up, the shop fronts down and business was very brisk. There were merchants in Flemish beaver hats and leather boots, lawyers with scrolls under their arms, apprentices in surcoats and hose, women of all kinds and every profession. Haughty ladies in their heavy folded dresses, girdled by low-slung, jewelled belts, their heads adorned with linen wimples and their soft bodies protected by their fur-lined cloaks.
The noise and clamour of the street were all the more strident to Corbett, so used to the quiet serenity of the chancery. Merchants and drapers tried to interest him in velvet, silks or lawn. Food stall-owners and bakers offered hot spiced ribs of beef, eel and meat pies garnished with leeks and onions. Two stall-holders fought over a pile of pewter pots. Corbett saw two pockets picked and held his own purse tightly under his cloak, ever vigilant against the legion of thieves in the capital. A string of hapless, convicted felons were led through the crowd by a group of constables taking them from the Tun to Newgate, and these unfortunates were subject to every abuse possible by those who considered themselves lucky not to be one of them. There were two bawds, naked except for their petticoats, doing penance though their bold eyes, saucy looks, as well as the lewd sniggers of some of the spectators, made it obvious they would soon be back at their trade.
At one time the press of people was so great that Corbett panicked for a while, remembering that fatal press of bodies before the royal pavilion in Wales so many years before. The moment, however, passed and he was through, standing once more before the gate leading to Saint Mary Le Bow. Once again he sensed that feeling of desolation and dread that he had experienced before and tried to remember what he knew about the church but the memory escaped him. The place was deserted except for a few gawking onlookers who promptly disappeared as the black-gowned figure of Bellet strode across to meet Corbett. "Ah, Master Clerk, " the priest proffered a bony hand which Corbett clasped, aware that the priest's white gaunt features and sombre dress only enhanced the sinister fear he had experienced on the previous night.
"I have come to view the church, " Corbett announced more abruptly than he had intended. "Now, in the light of day. "
"All will be revealed!" the priest quietly retorted and
Corbett thought Bellet was more confident than he had sounded the night before but he only nodded his assent and allowed Bellet to escort him up to the main door in the church.
Inside, the entrance was dark and smelt of must and damp. Corbett stopped and looked around, his attention was caught by a narrow iron-studded door on his left. He ignored all else and moved across to open it. "It's locked, " Bellet smugly commented. "It has been for months. It leads up to the belfry and the tower roof but, if you want… " His voice trailed off as if he was bored.
"Yes, " Corbett replied testily, "I want. Open it!"
The priest, his lips pursed in a half-smile, fumbled with a heavy bunch of keys which swung from his belt and eventually he unlocked the door. It creaked open, protesting loudly on its rusty hinges. Corbett brushed past the priest and began to climb the wet, mildewed spiral staircase. The belfry was at the top, its great bronze bells now hanging silent. Corbett gave them a cursory glance and, pulling back the heavy iron bolts, began to push and heave at the thick wooden trapdoor above him until it began to creak and lift upwards.
The wind whipped Corbett's face as he emerged from the trapdoor and stood on the tower roof. He approached the short crenellated wall and stared down to where Cheapside lay dizzily small beneath him. The city stretched out on either side, a row of roofs and houses to the south and the brown soil and snow-covered fields to the north beyond Newgate and the old city wall. Corbett looked round the tower. Someone could have l
urked there and made their way down into the church itself but the trapdoor, as well as the door to the tower, looked as if they had not been used for years and any intruder who used them would have roused Duket, the ward watch and half of Cheapside.
Corbett shook his head and made his way down to where the priest was waiting for him, a sardonic grin on his sallow features.
"Did you find anything, Master Clerk?" Corbett ignored the sarcasm in his voice and stared round the porch. In one corner, bell ropes dangled down from a small aperture in the ceiling; beneath them, coiled in rough heaps, were other pieces of rope. Some of them new, some old and frayed.
"This was where Duket took the rope from?"
The priest nodded. "Yes, " he replied, "he must have come down here to collect the rope and then gone back to the sanctuary. "
"In the dark?" Corbett asked.
"What do you mean?" was the surly reply.
"I mean, " Corbett said slowly, "that Duket sat here in the sanctuary in the dark and then quietly made his way down into the gloom to collect a piece of rope to kill himself?"
"He had a candle, " the priest answered quickly.
"If he did, " Corbett commented, waving his hand round the porch, "then he did not use it. There is no trace of fresh wax on the floor!" He looked at Bellet, pleased to see the sardonic grin disappear from his face. "An agitated man, " Corbett continued, "carrying a candle, stumbling around in the dark. His hand would shake. " Corbett scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot. "There would be more wax here than dirt!"