The Sticklepath Strangler (2001)

by Jecks, Michael

  Afterwards, he found himself wandering the streets of Exeter with the money from her purse in his hand. He went to the bridge and stared at the coins, for a while, unsure where they’d come from, and as the memory came back, he had held them out over the water and let them fall slowly, one by one, into the cleansing waters of the Exe. They fell with the small drips of blood where one of her teeth had broken on his knuckle.

  From that day he had never returned to Exeter. Women weren’t for him. He remembered his wife as she had been when she was young, and there was no one who could compare with that memory. He sometimes lusted after young girls, but only because they reminded him of his wife. And it made him jealous that other men should own such perfect youth. He never could again. Not after his crime.

  After hearing Miles Houndestail’s words, Coroner Roger adjourned the inquest, telling the jury to repair to the inn. The girl’s remains were to be taken to the chapel, and given into the Parson’s care.

  As the crowd began to disperse, Baldwin suddenly caught his breath. There, farther up the hill, was the dwarf-like man he had seen yesterday talking to the tall guard by the wall, and with him was the hooded figure Baldwin had seen in the clearing. Both stood silently watching, outsiders who were plainly not included in the jury.

  ‘Who are they?’ Baldwin asked the Reeve.

  ‘That small fellow is Serlo the Warrener, and the one in the hood is Mad Meg. She’s simple.’

  The Reeve evidently considered their conversation to be over, for he turned to follow the Coroner. Glancing back, Baldwin saw the pair drift away among the trees. Somehow he felt sure that they were going to the clearing and he was tempted to follow them, but knew he couldn’t. He must go with Roger and the others.

  Entering the inn, he saw Coroner Roger was already sitting with a jug of ale in his fist. A few workers strolled in, as did one weary traveller, but one glance at the Coroner’s face and the jury standing all about, persuaded them to sit elsewhere. Baldwin thought Roger looked close to exploding, his features were so red, and he saw Jeanne throw him an anxious look. She took her seat at Baldwin’s side, and Edgar took his place behind them while Aylmer sat at Baldwin’s knee.

  Reeve Alexander appeared a few moment later and the Coroner eyed him with a thunderous expression. He did not invite Alexander to sit, but made him stand in front of the jury, next to Miles Houndestail.

  ‘Master Houndestail, you have said that there might have been another case of cannibalism. Why do you suggest that?’

  ‘I don’t live here, sir. It’s not personal knowledge,’ Miles said. ‘But when I reported the skull, I heard people say, “Not another child eaten!” That is why I thought fit to tell you about it.’

  Alexander stood with his head hanging, his cocksure posture quite forgotten.

  ‘Reeve Alexander,’ Coroner Roger said gravely, ‘we have heard that you had another case of cannibalism here. I do not recall any such case. When was this reported?’

  ‘Perhaps it was before your time as Coroner?’

  ‘Perhaps, yet I have been Coroner for more than eight years and in that time I have always discussed strange cases with my colleagues. I think that if they were to have come here and learned of cannibalism, they would have mentioned it to me. What do you think?’

  ‘They might,’ the Reeve stammered, ‘but – but if there were many deaths at the same time, they might have forgotten about it.’

  ‘You lying son of a Winchester whore!’ Coroner Roger burst out. ‘You open your mouth and spew out untruth! When was this body found?’

  ‘It was so long ago . . .’

  ‘Rack your brain, before I have you gaoled.’

  ‘I swear, Coroner, it was so long . . .’

  ‘Perhaps I can prompt your memory, then,’ Coroner Roger said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘After all, I have all the rolls recording every reported death for the last many years. Tell me, do you think it might have been last year? Five years ago? I don’t recall that many deaths being reported from over here, but I dare say my own memory is playing me false.’

  Alexander looked about him as though seeking an escape. ‘My Lord Coroner, if I could have a few moments to consider, to ask other men here when they recall it and—’

  ‘Enough!’ Sir Roger’s patience finally ran out. He turned to Baldwin and brought the flat of his hand down onto the table-top to cut off the Reeve. ‘Sir Baldwin, I want this man held. Could you instruct your man-at-arms to take him into custody and escort him and me to Exeter? We’ll see what the justice thinks of his action. “Long ago”, my arse!’

  ‘My Lord, please, I don’t mean to try your patience,’ Alexander said hurriedly as Edgar stepped forward. The Reeve had paled, as though he was ready to fall to his knees and beg for his continued freedom, but he knew he must speak swiftly for Coroner Roger’s temper would brook no delay.

  ‘Then speak out, you whore’s kitling!’

  ‘It was at the height of the famine,’ Alexander began painfully.

  ‘What? You mean . . .’ The Coroner was lost for words for a space. ‘Christ’s balls, you mean you kept secret a death that happened seven years ago?’

  ‘What else could we do?’ the Reeve returned shrilly. ‘The whole county was being devastated, people falling over almost daily. We couldn’t afford to send someone to fetch the Coroner, and we couldn’t afford to be fined. What would you have done in our position?’

  Roger clenched his fist and slammed it down on the table before him, making the table-top slip sideways on its trestles. ‘Don’t give me that, you shit! You know full well that it’s the duty of all to report any dead body as soon as it’s found. Your duty was to report the body to me, to me! Why didn’t you?’

  Alexander’s face darkened and he lost his fear. ‘Have you forgotten what it was like here seven years ago? We had half the grain we’d expected and then the animals began to die. Horses got rot in their legs and so did the cattle, with the rain and the mud. The sheep got blowflies and they all started to die, eaten from inside by maggots. Our children were fading away, growing weaker daily, and there was nothing we could do about it. Nothing!’ His voice hoarsened. ‘I lost two boys, two good, healthy, strapping sons, just because there wasn’t enough food for them. When there’s a famine, the children die that bit faster; they were falling like stuck pigs. Don’t you remember?’

  Simon took a gulp of his wine. ‘We all remember, Reeve, but why didn’t you report it?’

  ‘How many deaths were reported? When there are so many bodies, you can’t expect people to stick to the normal rules.’

  ‘Such as reporting murder – or cannibalism, I suppose,’ the Coroner sneered.

  ‘Do not be too hard,’ Baldwin said quietly. ‘Extremes can lead to people behaving foolishly.’

  ‘It hardly sounds convincing to me,’ Coroner Roger said grimly. ‘How could any man resort to cannibalism?’

  ‘You have not lived through a siege, Coroner,’ Baldwin said, watching the Reeve.

  ‘No. So?’

  ‘I promise you, when a man or woman is starving, they will do things that would have seemed unimaginable only a short while before. Imagine that you have no food; that you have not eaten for days; that you have no money; that you have no means of obtaining it; that the cost of food is in any case prohibitive. You have not eaten more than a mouthful of grain a day for three weeks, that you have only rancid butter, no meat, no clean water, no ale or wine. Try to imagine how you would feel after three weeks of that. Then picture your children fading away before your eyes; your wife has perhaps died, and you are still having to work. You have no expectation of long life, this is a means of surviving for a short while. It is foul to think of eating a man, but is it worse than death? The boundaries of fear can become blurred.’

  Coroner Roger was about to snort and utter a sarcastic comment, but one look at Baldwin’s face stopped it. ‘You speak from experience?’

  ‘I have never eaten a man,’ Baldwin said, ‘but I know
how terrible a siege can be, and what is famine if not a siege against the whole of mankind?’

  Coroner Roger thanked Sir Baldwin, then turned to stare sternly at the Reeve.

  ‘Normal rules, eh? I shall be sure to report your advice to the King,’ he remarked caustically, ‘but for now, Reeve, you can make amends by telling us all about it. And don’t leave anything out, because if I find you’ve been lying to me, I swear I’ll have you gaoled in Exeter for perjury and waiting for the next Sheriff’s Tourn, and that will be a good year from now.’

  Alexander felt his belly sinking still further. It had been hard enough before, but he knew that he must tell the Coroner at least a few of the facts. He closed his eyes and felt himself swaying on his feet. ‘Very well.’ He sighed, opened his eyes and motioned towards a stool. ‘But may I at least be seated?’

  The Coroner nodded, and Alexander sat primly on the edge like a woman who feared dirtying her skirts.

  ‘I can remember that day perfectly. We had just buried my youngest son and we were out in the churchyard watching the men shovel the soil over his poor little body . . .’

  ‘How did he die?’ Coroner Roger demanded.

  ‘Like my second son, from starvation – early in the year, after Candlemass. We had nothing to eat. The crops had failed, the animals died, and wheat was eight times its usual price. What could we do? Even salt cost too much, so the dead animals we had couldn’t be butchered and salted. The meat rotted quickly and had to be thrown away. We all starved together, men, women and children. Not a dog or a cat lived, all were eaten. I can remember finding a rat,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘We were grateful and ate it in a stew.’

  Coroner Roger curled his lip and Simon grimaced. Baldwin, who had lived through the desperate siege of Acre, nodded understandingly. ‘They can be tough.’

  Alexander shot him a look, expecting sarcasm, and was somewhat confused to see Baldwin was serious.

  ‘Yes, well,’ he continued haltingly, ‘it was a difficult time. My wife and I waited to see the last spadefuls fall on our son’s grave, and then made our way back homewards through the rain. It fell all the time in those years, from the seventh year of our King’s reign to the tenth. Miserable, constant rain. The river flooded out the vill for weeks on end. All the crops – ruined! Three lads from the village were drowned in the four months after Christmas the following year. You can’t imagine what it was like.

  ‘While we walked home, we were told that a body had been found up on the moor. I hurried there immediately, because sometimes a man might think that someone is dead, when they are only wounded. On the moor, people can become so chilled that they seem to have died. So I went up there to see whether he was alive or dead.’

  He paused at the memory, and glanced about him, looking for the Foresters, but none were in sight. Taking a deep breath, he continued, ‘It was one of the girls from the vill here, little Denise, Peter atte Moor’s daughter. She was only ten years old or so. Such a short life.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Coroner Roger asked. He was quieter now that the story was finally being told.

  ‘Throttled. A leather thong was still about her neck, just like the one in the grave,’ Alexander admitted. ‘But we never found all of her. Her thighs, her arms, were missing.’

  Simon’s stomach lurched and he unwillingly recalled Baldwin’s stories of the night before.

  ‘She had been flayed.’

  The jury shuffled their feet and Simon rasped, ‘Who could do such a thing?’

  ‘Many, Simon,’ Baldwin said gently. ‘I know it is difficult to imagine, but if a man’s family is starving, he will go to extremes to save them from death. There were stories of this happening in Kent during the famine, I recall.’

  Simon glanced at Houndestail. He felt queasy at the thought of hearing the details, but seeing Houndestail reminded him of the other thing the Pardoner had said. Although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, he cleared his throat. ‘And what of the curse? This curse of Athelhard, whoever he might be.’

  ‘That’s just superstition,’ Reeve Alexander said, but he had blenched.

  ‘What is this superstition?’ Baldwin asked smoothly.

  ‘If a child dies here, it’s said to be Athelhard’s curse, but there’s nothing to it. It’s a local thing,’ Reeve Alexander said firmly. ‘So many travellers come through here. If one of them does something and flees, people blame Athelhard, a fictional character.’

  Baldwin, watching him closely, was unconvinced, but since Simon had asked the question, and the Reeve seemed to have recovered from his shock, he thought it better to leave the matter for the present.

  ‘Did you raise the Hue?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Of course we did! Her father was a Forester, we could hardly ignore the process of law. I had men hunting all over,’ Alexander said. He felt sick having to recall the murder scene. ‘There was nothing to be learned. No one knew who had done it and our worst trouble was, there had been several travellers at that time, all passing along the Cornwall road. Any one of them could have been the murderer, killing her and then keeping pieces of her in his scrip.’

  He had no need to continue. Simon felt near to vomiting, and even the Coroner was still, considering this fresh evidence of the evil of men. Only Baldwin appeared to be studying him pensively.

  The knight nodded as though to himself. ‘And of course, afterwards you decided to report the matter, but it was already some little while since the girl had been found . . .’

  Alexander looked at him as his voice trailed away. ‘There was nothing to be done. As I said, there had been many people along our road, and any one of them could have been Denise’s killer. In the end, we merely buried her, and hoped that her murderer had moved on or else had met his retribution on the road.’

  Baldwin nodded. ‘Yet you knew that would be illegal. Surely you had some other reason to want to hide her?’

  Alexander threw his hands wide in a gesture of openness. ‘Sir Baldwin, my Lord Coroner, what would you do if the daughter of one of your friends had been not only murdered, but violated in that sort of way? How would you feel if she had been your daughter? For my part, I saw her body on the same day that I buried one of my own sons and I tell you, it is difficult, terribly difficult, to lose a child. I knew this, I know it today; I had to tell Peter that his girl was dead, I had to show him her remains, so that he could see what had happened to her. My God! By Christ’s own wounds, I swear I couldn’t bear to see him hurt more. The idea that someone could eat your child was so hideous, so appalling, that I wanted to do anything I could to save him any further upset.’

  ‘I see,’ Simon said, and he did. It was only three years since he had buried his own son. He found himself in sympathy with the Reeve. ‘So you hid her body.’

  ‘Had she been molested?’ Baldwin asked, then when the man looked blank: ‘Raped?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Alexander confessed.

  ‘Which brings us neatly to the present,’ Baldwin said, ‘and this latest body.’

  ‘It is awful,’ Alexander said. ‘I’d hoped Denise was the sole victim.’

  The Coroner looked at him. ‘Did you hide her too?’

  ‘No!’ Alexander protested. ‘Poor Swet, he’s lost his wife, he’s lost poor Aline, and he has three other daughters to try to bring up.’

  ‘Quite so,’ the Coroner said. ‘But you attempted to keep the murder and the cannibalism from the King’s Coroner. That will mean a significant fine, Reeve. A very significant fine.’

  Alexander hung his head as the Coroner spoke at length about the importance of all sudden deaths being reported. ‘However,’ he finished, ‘I can understand that you might be reluctant to bruit news of this kind abroad. For that reason I won’t impose a fine right now. I shall have to think about it and consider the level to be paid.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord Coroner,’ Alexander said. ‘I didn’t do it to defraud the King, only to prevent further misery to a good, hard-working man.�
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  ‘It wasn’t your choice to make!’ the Coroner snapped. ‘Still, that’s all I shall say for now. You can leave us.’

  ‘Just one more thing before you go,’ Baldwin said. ‘When did Aline disappear?’

  ‘I believe it was close to the feast day of Saint Bartholomew.’

  ‘Oh, late in the year, then. After harvest.’

  Alexander nodded, but as Baldwin leaned forward and tilted his head to one side like an expectant hound, he had a premonition that the knight had learned more than Alexander wanted him to.

  ‘The length of time between the deaths of Aline and Denise shows that they couldn’t have been killed by some traveller. You say this Denise died during the famine? That was the eighth year of the King’s reign, while this poor child died four years ago – that is, the eleventh year of his reign. Two and a half years apart, Reeve. This was not done by a traveller. The murderer lives here. And he may still be alive!’

  Chapter Ten

  Alexander de Belston reached his house in a towering rage. It was ridiculous that he should have been made to feel guilty. It was the Coroner pandering to his own vanity, craven arse that he was! And to make himself feel important he was going to fine Alexander.

  He kicked the door shut and strode through to his hall. At his table, he saw his maid Cecilia bending over a visitor, and stopped dead when he saw that it was Drogo le Criur.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  The leader of the Foresters leaned back in Alexander’s own chair and put his boot on Alexander’s table, all the while holding the Reeve’s gaze. ‘I just wanted to know if you were all right, Alex. We wouldn’t want to learn you’d confessed to something silly and implicated other people.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t we?’ Alexander sneered, but as he spoke he was aware of someone behind him. He made to turn his head, but before he could, he felt the prick of a knife at his neck.