The Girl in the Ice (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 4)

by Jason Vail

  He had been to enough Masses, though not lately, to know when the end was nearing. He levered himself toward the big double doors. “Be a good lad and open the doors for me, will ya,” he called to a boy of about ten who was loitering with his friends against the walls. He had expected they’d refuse and that he’d have to scoot through when the first parishioners left, but the boy and his friends took the request as a sign that they might escape from the confines of the church, and he was able to slip out as they fled.

  Harry swung down the path dug in the snow for about thirty feet to be clear of the doors, which he expected to put him outside the cluster that would form there. His plan was to catch the stream as parishioners headed toward the gate. He hoped he’d do even better business than before because he stood to be the tollman for the entire congregation rather than only part of it, as he had earlier in the morning.

  The diggers of the path had thrown up the snow into two mounds running from the doors to the gate. The mounds were between knee- and waist-high, except in spots where they had been trampled down, and the thaw was reducing their size so that you could almost see them melting. The spot Harry chose was one of those that children had trampled down in their games and he was able to get almost fully off the path without too much difficulty. He settled in and got out his cup, which was now empty, this morning’s collections having gone into the purse which hung from a thong around his neck under his shirt where it was safe from thieves. It is hard to a cut a man’s purse that is next to his heart.

  He rubbed cold wet hands on his upper thighs, which were all that remained of his legs after his accident. A husband, wife and three young children emerged from the church and headed his way. He put on his best pathetic expression and held out his hand. The family ignored him.

  He hawked in disgust and turned to spit.

  But something in the snow caught his eye. It looked like a smooth, white pebble. But there were no such pebbles in the churchyard as far as Harry remembered. Perhaps it was a lost gem that a supplicant had carelessly dropped on his way into the church.

  He leaned over, the prospect of riches on his mind, and smoothed snow away from the thing.

  What he saw made him swallow the hawk.

  He smoothed away more snow until there could be no doubt what the thing was.

  It was a hand. The slender fingers — which had to belong to a woman — were relaxed and curled as if she was merely asleep, although the palm was covered in crystalline, icy snow. The hand was attached to an arm the disappeared under the mound beside him.

  Harry swallowed again. He called to the boys who had preceded him out the church door. They were engaged in a snowball fight and it took several shouts to get their attention.

  “Hey!” Harry said. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  “What — you want to show us your stumps?” one of the boys mocked.

  “No. Something else, you jackass. Something you won’t see every day.”

  You can’t go broke betting on the curiosity of young boys, and true to type they swaggered over to see the alleged mystery.

  Harry pointed to the hand in the snow.

  “Jesus the merciful!” one of the boys gasped. “Is that real?”

  “You can bet your soul it’s real. Do any of you know the deputy coroner?”

  “No.” There was a round of head shaking in the group. Young boys and crown officials, well, the employee of a crown official to be exact, do not generally run in the same circles.

  “He’s inside. Tall fellow, well set up. Black hair. Green coat, blue and white shirt, red stockings. Carries himself like a soldier. Name of Attebrook. Go fetch him right now.”

  Chapter 2

  Stephen knelt by the hand. He did not touch it. For a few moments, he just looked at it, as what seemed like the entire church congregation drew into a circle around him.

  Impulsively, he said a silent prayer for the soul of the dead person. He had never been especially religious, and had become even less so since Taresa died and taken his happiness with her. But there were moments these days when he unaccountably felt the need to call out to God. This woman was surely beyond his help, but not beyond God’s. At least, he hoped so.

  Then he started clearing the snow away from the body. He began at the hand itself and scooped snow away from the arm. When the snow had first fallen, it had been light and fluffy, but the succession of thaws and freezes had turned it into a blanket consisting of little granules of ice, which made crunching sounds that seemed louder in the silence as he dug, and cut his fingers.

  It took a considerable time to dig out the arm, for it lay under the mound bordering the path, which was about two feet high at this spot. It was a slender and shapely arm, although hard as wood. The smooth texture of the skin, which was as white as ivory, gave the impression that it belonged to a young girl. From what he could see so far of her clothing, she had been a working girl: the sleeve of her gown was brown wool, unfashionably short, and utterly undecorated. Underneath, the hem of a linen undergarment was visible.

  A church servant jostled his way through the crowd. He had a shovel with a wooden blade, which he held out to Stephen. “You might want to use this, sir,” the servant said. “The work’ll go faster.”

  Stephen stood up. The thought of digging down through the snow with the same abandon that one used in digging in the dirt, made him hesitate. He thought about the violence it could do to the poor girl’s body.

  “I’ll do it, sir,” a voice said behind him.

  Stephen turned to see Thomas Tanner’s blunt and homely face. Relieved that he would not have to dig himself, he gave Thomas the shovel. He indicated where he thought the remainder of the girl’s body lay. “Be careful. It’s not like digging out roots.”

  “I understand,” Thomas said.

  It was doubtful that Thomas had ever dug a body out of a snow drift before, but he acted as if he knew exactly what to do. He shaved off layers of snow over the area Stephen had indicated so that an oval flat patch rapidly appeared in the mound which gradually got deeper as Thomas methodically progressed.

  Meanwhile, the crowd did not dissipate. The inner circle, which had the best view, stood quietly and watched. But beyond that thin band, the crowd was turbulent and noisy. If anything, it seemed to be getting larger. Death in the street always seemed to attract a crowd the way dung attracts flies. Here it was Christmas Day. They had Yule feasts to prepare and attend. Stephen wished they would just go away.

  He spotted the undersheriff’s stocky figure in the front row to his left. “My lord!”

  Walter Henle was watching Thomas dig. He had the same mixture of horror and fascination on his mallet-shaped face as almost everyone else. It seemed to take a moment for him to register that Stephen had spoken to him. “What is it . . . uh, Attebrook?”

  The English gentry had honed the practice of insult to a high art. A nonchalant tone, a carefully composed and subtle arch of the brows or turn of the mouth, were designed to cut as well as any sword. Henle had more than enough reason to hate Stephen. Three months ago, Stephen had saved a man that Henle had been intent on hanging. That the man had been innocent of the crime that had sent him to the gallows did not seem to matter much to Henle. Such flouting of authority was hard for a man like Henle to forgive, but it was surprising and distressing that he would let his feelings show publicly.

  Public insults were not to be ignored. Stephen considered how to respond. “Please clear away the rabble, sir,” he said evenly.

  Henle looked around. Beyond the close ring of rather sober onlookers, the part of the crowd making the most disturbance consisted of younger men and boys and not a few girls. Several snowball fights were going on between various sides whose membership it was impossible to determine. One of the snowballs, which must have been more ice than snow, flew astray and shattered a clay pitcher one man had brought into the yard, spilling ale on him and the woman next to him. Someone had broken out a flute and was playing a sau
cy tune Stephen recognized. It was a good thing nobody had tried singing along yet, because the verses were very bawdy. At least a dozen men and girls were dancing to the tune. A fistfight had erupted for some unknown reason and the two boys involved rolled on the ground, the bigger of the pair obtaining the command position on the other’s chest, from which vantage he proceeded to pound the other boy in the head until a third boy grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off.

  “I don’t see that they’re doing any harm,” Henle said. “People must be allowed to have their fun.”

  “Someone has died by the church door,” Stephen said, “and lain here for many weeks. People don’t just drop dead at church doors.”

  “Are you saying you think this was murder? You seem awfully quick to suspect the worse.”

  “The possibility must be taken seriously.”

  “I suppose,” Henle said in a tone that said in fact he supposed not.

  “There may be clues under the snow that will tell us how this girl died.”

  “Over such a wide area as this? I hardly think so.”

  Stephen had to admit that Henle was probably right about that. If this was murder and there were clues hidden in the snow, they were probably close around the body. But his temper had taken control of his tongue. “As the crown’s representative in this matter, I request that you have the crowd cleared away.”

  Henle’s eyes glinted at Stephen’s invocation of his authority. At first, it seemed that he might refuse, which he could very well do. Stephen’s real authority was as threadbare as his clothes. But then Henle said, “Very well. If you insist.” He turned to the church prior, who also was standing nearby. “My lord prior, if you would kindly lend me the use of some of your servants?”

  “Of course, sir,” the prior said with some relief. He was no more comfortable with the disturbances than Stephen.

  Henle gave terse instructions to one of his deputies, who relayed them to the servants, several castle soldiers who were in the vicinity, and two deacons whose curiosity had led them to linger nearby. They formed a cordon that, with some difficulty, began moving the crowd out of the yard. Those in the quiet circle did not think themselves included in the evacuation order, and remained where they were. Stephen would rather they had gone, too, but he said nothing. Many were leading citizens of the town and although in theory Stephen could order them around, in practice is was not a wise thing to do so.

  Gilbert pulled on Stephen’s sleeve until he bent over. “Have you lost your mind?” Gilbert hissed in Stephen’s ear.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “What do you want to antagonize Henle for?”

  “How could such a simple request have made him angry?” Stephen said blandly. “It’s his job to keep the peace.”

  “Humph!” Gilbert crossed his arms and glanced at Stephen, who wore an expression of stony determination. “Well, Christmas dinner will be cold and late — for us, at least.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it will be.”

  Thomas had dug down the depth of a man’s forearm when he came upon the first signs of the body: folds of a brown woolen dress.

  “I think that’s enough, Thomas,” Stephen said, kneeling beside him. “We’ll clear the rest by hand, if you don’t mind.”

  “Right, sir,” Thomas said, putting aside the shovel.

  Stephen and Thomas scraped the remaining layer of icy snow from the body with their hands down to ground level, or what passed for the ground, because underneath the body was a layer of solid ice.

  When they were done, Stephen rocked back on his heels. Despite the cold, he found he was sweating under his woolen jacket.

  The body was indeed that of a young girl just entering her womanhood, fifteen or sixteen years old. She lay on her back as if casually flung down. Her left hand rested beside her head; the right, which Harry had discovered, was thrown out straight to the side. Her left leg was cocked, as if it had been drawn up at the time of her death and then, as life escaped, had subsided to the ground. The other leg lay straight. As Stephen had suspected, she wore a simple brown woolen dress, the sort favored by the poorer maids and servant girls. Beneath the body, lodged in the ice, was a cloak of faded green. Her shoes matched the dress: simple, battered from wear, and cheaply made. Had that been all, there would have been nothing exceptional about her. But that was not all. Even in death, her face still partly covered with snow, it was evident that she had been strikingly beautiful. Gingerly, feeling as if he was trespassing, Stephen smoothed the remaining snow from the girl’s face, including the puddles that had formed on her eyes. The face was almost triangular in shape, the chin sharply pointed. Above it was a small, thin-lipped mouth that was now filled with snow and which Stephen did not disturb. Above that was a nose which was narrow but rather jutting and sharply defined but which went well with her prominent cheekbones. Her eyes, which were slightly open, were green, which formed an odd combination with her hair, a thick, lustrous auburn that seemed to glow in the morning light. It made Stephen’s heart lurch to look at her: so young, so beautiful, and so dead.

  Stephen looked up at the assembly around him. Most of the town’s prominent citizens were in the ring, leaning forward to get a better look.

  “Does anyone know her?” Stephen asked them.

  Nobody did.

  Chapter 3

  When Stephen asked the town jurymen to move the body inside the church, they found it was frozen fast in the underlying layer of ice and could not be budged. Stephen asked the prior to have water heated and brought in buckets to melt the ice. This, he was told, would take the remainder of the morning.

  The pinnacle of excitement having passed with the uncovering of the body, the town luminaries disappeared home. Stephen let the jurymen go as well. There was no point in forcing them to forego the pleasure of their Yule feasts. Even Gilbert, Edith, and their children hurried away, since Gilbert was not needed at the moment. Soon there was no one in the churchyard but Stephen, Harry, and a few starlings, which pecked at the thawing, exposed ground.

  Stephen maneuvered the handcart closer so he could sit on it. He hopped up, his legs dangling. He rested his chin in his hand and regarded the dead girl’s face. A gust of wind carried down College Lane from the north, which made him shiver; at least he thought it was the wind, which was cold here in the western shadow of the stone church. A servant poked his head out the church door, but jerked it back when Stephen glanced at him.

  “How’d you do, Harry,” Stephen asked, not taking his eyes from the girl’s face.

  “How’d I what?” Harry jerked his head around. He had trouble looking anywhere but the girl’s face too. “Oh, how’d I do!” He rummaged with a finger in his begging cup, where there were quarters and eighths of pennies. His mouth moved silently as he counted. “Five and a half pence,” he announced finally.

  “It was a good morning, then,” Stephen said.

  Harry grinned. Somehow he had retained all his teeth. Stephen wondered how he had managed that, given the hard life he led. Harry said, “I’ve told you, you should get yourself a crutch and let ’em see that sundered foot of yours. Pays better than doing that coroner work.”

  “Sometimes I don’t doubt it,” Stephen sighed. His superior, Sir Geoffrey Randall, the actual coroner, was late as usual with his month’s salary. He had hardly any money, and payment on his stabling fee was over due again for his three horses, the finest things he owned. He looked back at the girl. “I wonder what her name was.”

  “Doubt we’ll ever know,” Harry said.

  “You don’t know her either?”

  Harry snorted. “I’d never forget a face like that. Nobody in the county would. Serving girl or no, every man in the shire would be swarming about her and her name would be on the lips of every gossip. I’m surprised she wasn’t married already. Girl like her has the means to marry herself into the best of families.”

  “So she’s probably not from Herefordshire.”

  “Nor Shropshire either,
or at least the south of it.” Ludlow lay at the northern edge of Herefordshire, and many in southern Shropshire did their business here because it was the closest market town.

  “Someone will miss her though.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “But she must be from a long way off, because she’s been lost for a long time and no one’s come here asking after her,” Stephen said.

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “That she’s been missing for a long time?”

  “Well, three weeks at least — since the last big snow.” Stephen said. “Look there. She’s stuck in the ice from the last melt, which was three weeks ago. The last snowfall was right after that. Or is your head so addled that you’ve forgotten already?”

  “You’re the one who’s addled. Three weeks ain’t a long time. Two months is a long time.”

  “All right. Not a long time. But three weeks. She’s been dead three weeks. She has to have died just before the last snow. Otherwise she’d have been discovered.”

  Harry shook his head. “Fancy that. People walked right by her not even knowing she was there.” He suddenly laughed, a short bark. “Old Mistress Bartelott took her fall right here — right where I’m sitting! Close enough to touch the lass! Do you think we ought to tell her?”

  “I reckon she’ll find out soon enough, if she doesn’t know it already. The crows speak to her. I don’t know how she finds out about things. She never seems to leave her window.”

  “Aye, she’s a witch.”

  “What do you know about witches? I’ve met real witches, and she ain’t one.”

  Harry’s eyes narrowed. “In Ludlow you’ve met witches?”

  “I didn’t say that. But as a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Never you mind. It’s none of your business.”