The Tinner's Corpse

by Bernard Knight

  ‘What’s this news he might have about Master Knapman?’ the coroner snapped impatiently.

  For answer, the mill-man stuck his head through the doorway and yelled something unintelligible. A moment later, a boy staggered out, helped by a push from a shadowy female figure inside the dwelling. ‘He’s wary of strangers since he was set on for sport by some soldiers passing on the road,’ explained his father, apologetically. He grabbed the lad by the arm and shouted at him, ‘Come now, Arthur, tell these gentlemen what you said to me last night.’

  The boy was older than he appeared at first sight, probably thirteen or so, but his round, vacant face suggested that his comprehension was that of a child half his age. The tip of his tongue protruded between loose lips as his small eyes roved fearfully across the strangers’ faces. He muttered something that de Wolfe could not catch. ‘What did he say?’ he snapped.

  The father translated and enlarged on his son’s story. ‘On the day the master vanished, Arthur here was herding the pigs in the wood on the other side of the main track, a tidy way up the hill. It must have been some time before noon as he knew he must soon come back here for his dinner.’

  John thought testily that the mill-man was as bad as Gwyn for slowness in coming to the point, but with an effort he held his tongue.

  ‘He says he saw Master Knapman ride up the track from the mill and meet another horseman who came out of the wood. They both stopped then went back into the forest where there is a deer-track.’ He stopped to shake the boy by the shoulder and more indistinct words passed between them. Thomas, a Hampshireman, had not the faintest idea of what they said, so thick was their local accent.

  ‘Was that all he saw? Who was the other man? Does he know?’ demanded the coroner.

  The father shook his head. ‘He knows the master by sight. The other was a stranger.’

  ‘Was that all he saw?’

  ‘No. He says another man, on foot with no horse, came out of the trees lower down the road and followed the two riders into the forest. That was the last he saw of them as he wanted his dinner and came home then.’

  The lad looked from one man to the other as they spoke, his dull eyes striving to make sense of what was going on.

  ‘What were the men like, son?’ asked Gwyn, stooping to the boy and speaking kindly.

  ‘You’ll have to speak up, sir – he’s hard of hearing, too, has been since a babe.’ The father repeated the question in his loud, crude dialect and received some garbled answer from the boy.

  ‘He say he only knew the master – the others were strangers.’

  ‘Were they tall or short? What were they wearing? What sort of horse did the first man ride?’ De Wolfe rapped out a string of questions, but the result was disappointing.

  ‘His eyes are poor too, sir – he was the runt of our litter, as God willed it. He says the man on foot was big, that’s all he knows. The mounted man had a brown horse and wore some brown garment.’

  Five more minutes of fruitless questioning brought forth no more information, but reduced the lad to frightened tears.

  Gwyn, a lover of dogs and children, wagged his head at de Wolfe. ‘We’ll get nothing more from the poor boy now.’ He led him back to the doorway and placed a halved penny in his hand, before gently pushing him inside to his hovering mother.

  ‘Can you show us where this deer-track is?’ grunted de Wolfe to the mill-man. A few moments later, the labourer was indicating a narrow path, half hidden by a bramble bush, leading into the sweep of trees that climbed the hill on the southern side of the road.

  ‘Did the men from Chagford search this path on Tuesday?’ asked Gwyn.

  The man shrugged. ‘I wasn’t here – and maybe they did, but there are many such tracks trodden by animals all along these roads.’

  Dismounting again and leaving their horses with Thomas, de Wolfe and the other two men pushed their way through the undergrowth into the dimness of the trees. Though the leaf canopy had not yet fully opened, there were enough broken green twigs and plants to show where a passage had recently been forced along the path – and underfoot, the prints of shod horses were visible in muddy patches.

  ‘It’s not rained much since that storm, not enough to wipe out all these marks,’ observed Gwyn.

  A hundred yards into the wood, a rocky outcrop made a small clearing in the beeches and oaks. Around it, a ring of grass and scrub alternated with mud washed down by a small stream from higher up the slope. Here there were more confused hoofmarks and some small bushes had been crushed into the mire. The three men examined the ground carefully, but could make little sense of what might have taken place there.

  ‘Several horses have done more than just follow the track,’ observed de Wolfe. ‘They must have moved back and forth in this area, but that’s all that can be said.’

  ‘And there’s nothing special about the hoof-prints – no chance of matching them with any particular beast,’ grumbled Gwyn. He followed the track a little way beyond the clearing, but soon returned to say that there were no signs that horsemen had used it recently. ‘Whoever came here must have returned by the same path,’ he added.

  As they returned to the road, de Wolfe considered the significance of what the boy had seen. ‘To leave the road and go to that clearing would be pointless in itself, so it might be it was used only for an ambush.’

  Gwyn scratched his crotch vigorously as an aid to thought. ‘If Knapman willingly followed a man into the wood, he must surely have known the fellow. What lone traveller would otherwise risk going into the forest with a stranger, in these days when outlaws and trail-bastons abound?’

  De Wolfe agreed with his officer, but neither had any more ideas of what might have happened on that fateful Monday.

  They reached the road and dismissed the mill-man with their thanks. As he loped away down the track, de Wolfe cursed the fact that his idiot son had been unable to remember any better details. ‘He couldn’t even tell us whether that last man carried a staff!’

  Gwyn tried to placate his master. ‘Yet we have far more information now, thanks to the boy. We had nothing at all before. The time and the place fit, and at least the poor child was definite about Knapman’s identity.’

  Frustrated, they abandoned their search and continued their journey, arriving in Chagford in time to hear the noon bell ringing from St Michael’s tower, a reminder of Walter Knapman’s generosity. De Wolfe again battened on the hospitality of the manor lord, Hugh Wibbery, and they went first to his demesne, which was really a large barton rather than a manor house, outside the town on the south-west, where the land rose towards the moor.

  Wibbery reminded de Wolfe of his own brother William – not in appearance, for he was a short, thick-set man with a weatherbeaten red face, but for his single-minded interest in his estate. The Wibberys had been in Chagford for half a century, taking over the tenancy from the Bishop of Coutance after Ralph Pagnell’s family had died out. They were sometimes known as the de Chagfords, but Hugh was more concerned with his fields and sheep than with local politics, keeping out of town affairs as much as possible. Indeed, he envied the nearby de Prouz family at Gidleigh Castle, for they owned most of the land around Chagford, though not the town itself. It was true that he reaped much benefit from market dues and the trade brought in by the tinners and their merchants, but he left most of the administration to his bailiff and steward, preferring to walk his fields and pastures, a farmer at heart.

  The timber house with a shingled roof had a wide stockade around it but, like John’s own home at Stoke-in-Teignhead, this was more of a stock fence than a defensive fortification. The drawbridge over the encircling ditch had not been raised in years, and as the trio entered, the coroner noticed that its outer end had sunk completely into the turf. Wibbery greeted them civilly enough, considering that manor lords often had cause to groan when official visitors claimed accommodation. However, a knight and two servants posed no problem – unlike a passing baron or bishop with a considerabl
e entourage. Then the disruption and cost in entertainment, food and fodder might be considerable. A visit from an itinerant noble, or even the King, could be ruinous.

  The coroner was offered a mattress in a small room off the solar behind the main hall, but graciously declined, saying that he was used to sleeping in far worse places than beside the fire-pit in the hall. Gwyn and Thomas would bed down in the servants’ hut in the bailey outside – but all this was hours hence: de Wolfe had much to do that afternoon and evening.

  Risking a worsening of his clerk’s melancholia, he sent Thomas to call upon the parish priest, knowing from experience that the little man had a gift for worming out confidences, especially from the clergy. As an excuse, Thomas was to enquire about the best site for an inquest the next day and to learn what arrangements had been made for burying the murdered tin-master.

  Gwyn’s own task might also have been predicted: he was to tour the alehouses and inns of Chagford to see what gossip he could pick up. For a small town, there were many such taverns, at least six – but with the influx of tinners for the coinage ceremonies and the frequent arrival of metal merchants both from England and abroad, food, drink and accommodation were in frequent demand.

  As soon as they had eaten at the manor, the three went their separate ways, de Wolfe to Knapman’s house below the church. Harold the steward had already been busy and a large cross of black cloth was nailed to the main door. In the larger room, the shutters were closed and a length of purple velvet was draped over the crucifix hanging on the wall. The maids went on tiptoe and Harold had even ordered the ostlers to muffle the horses’ feet with sacking as they took them across the yard. It seemed to John that this somewhat excessive mourning had been the steward’s idea: none of the family seemed prostrate with grief.

  The widow and her brother-in-law received the coroner in the smaller of the two ground-floor rooms. The other was being kept for Walter’s body when it arrived. Joan wore a black kirtle, of obvious expense and modern style. The gold embroidery around the neckline and hem was matched by a gilt cord wound several times around her slim waist. The gold tassels on its ends almost brushed the ground, as did the tippets of her dangling sleeve-cuffs. As another gesture to bereavement, she had hidden her dark hair under a snowy linen cover-chief, secured by a golden band around her forehead. A wimple of white silk concealed her ears and neck. Altogether the effect was alluring rather than poignant, and the impressionable de Wolfe realised again why young widows rarely stayed unmarried for long.

  When he entered, Joan was standing near the window opening, staring out into the front garden pensively, but she turned and offered him her hand. De Wolfe, uncomfortably aware that his appreciation of her was out of keeping with the morbid circumstances, took her fingers and gave a stiff bow. He made some stilted expressions of sympathy, amid throat-clearings and grunts, then stepped back to acknowledge her mother, Lucy, who sat near the fire. Matthew had risen from his place at the table, where he had been toying with a cup of wine.

  Another man was sitting near Lucy and Joan briefly introduced him. ‘This is my elder brother Roland, a tanner from Ashburton – as was my first husband. He has come to offer our mother and me support in this unhappy time.’ Her voice was low and soft, as her violet eyes looked up at de Wolfe from under long dark lashes. Incongruously he found himself calculating how Chagford compared with Dawlish in the time it would take him to ride from Exeter.

  Roland of Ashburton muttered a grudging acknowledgement of his sister’s introduction. He was a stocky man of about thirty, who looked like an artisan, uncomfortably dressed in his Sunday-best tunic and breeches. He glared at everyone except his mother and sister.

  ‘The carter should be here well before dusk,’ said Matthew, uneasy at the tense atmosphere in the room, which seemed to be due in large part to Roland’s presence. He was unsure how they should start this conversation with the coroner, which he assumed would be some sort of interrogation.

  Joan invited de Wolfe to sit and they joined Matthew at the table, leaving the older woman and her grim-looking son near the hearth. The hovering Harold brought more cups and wine with a small basket of fresh wafers, thin sweet discs of pastry straight from the oven.

  De Wolfe cleared his throat again. ‘I must hold the formal inquest tomorrow – not that in the circumstances it can achieve much,’ he admitted. He told them of the evidence of the lad from the mill, but emphasised that this was not firm enough proof that the death had occurred there, however suggestive it might be.

  ‘Strictly speaking, I should be holding this inquest at Teignmouth, where the body was found, but that would be even more pointless.’

  Lucy’s mother gave a loud sniff, but de Wolfe felt it was more for appearance’s sake than a true expression of grief. Joan remained impassive, and he felt sure that not a tear had been shed down that calm and lovely face all night.

  ‘There is no doubt that Walter was deliberately slain?’ she asked, in a low monotone. ‘Could he not have fallen from his horse?’

  ‘He might have fallen, but he could not have received such a blow across his back. Riding into a low branch would have marked his face or chest but not his back, lady. And the evidence of the boy from the mill strongly suggests that two other men were involved.’

  ‘Did he suffer at the end?’ she persisted.

  John failed to decide whether she was forcing herself to appear concerned or whether she was trying to punish herself from guilt at betraying her late husband. ‘He had a severe injury to the head, madam,’ he answered gruffly, ‘which would have rendered him senseless and unable to feel pain or distress – but I honestly cannot say when that blow was inflicted. It might even have been due to the final fall from his steed on to hard ground.’

  Matthew, flushed from the wine he had been supping through most of the day, slapped his palm on the table. ‘Walter was a fine horseman. I do not recollect him coming off his mount since we were children. He must have been attacked – and by more than one person, for he would never have been taken unawares unless he was distracted by someone else.’

  De Wolfe thought that this probably excluded Matthew as a suspect. No guilty person would pass up the chance of having his crime mistaken for an accident – unless it was a double bluff.

  ‘We know roughly how and where he died, for his body had to be taken to the river and his horse was found in the same vicinity. What we have no idea about is why he was killed.’ He stared directly into the beautiful eyes of the dead man’s wife, then swung round to Knapman’s twin brother. ‘He was a rich and active trader, with a forceful manner. No doubt he had rivals and those who envied him – but would that be enough to encourage his murder?’

  Matthew’s eyes dropped from de Wolfe’s glare, and for the first time the coroner sensed that the tin-merchant had something to hide.

  ‘It must be connected with the tinning, Crowner. I heard what happened at the Great Court the other day. There are those who were for Walter, who wanted him to displace the sheriff as Lord Warden, but there were others who coveted his success.’

  He paused and his eyes came up to meet de Wolfe’s again. ‘Of course, there were also those who were furious that he wished to lead all the tinners as Warden. Not least Richard de Revelle – but some of the tinners strongly favoured other leaders.’

  Lucy cut in from across the room, surprising de Wolfe with her apparent grasp of tinners’ politics: ‘Don’t forget William de Wrotham and Geoffrey Fitz-Peters! They’ve both got their eye on the Wardenship – and William fancies his chances as sheriff, when that rogue de Revelle is dismissed … or hanged, which is more likely.’

  At this, de Wolfe warmed a little to the old harridan. He turned again to the brother. ‘Matthew, do you suspect anyone in particular in all this intrigue?’

  The man from Exeter glanced warily at Joan. ‘I’d not wish to blacken any man’s character without proof, which seems singularly lacking here. But I’m sure the answer lies among the tinners somewhere, unl
ess this was some stray band of forest outlaws or cutpurses who set upon my brother.’

  De Wolfe shook his head abruptly, his thick black hair swinging across his neck. ‘He still had a leather scrip strapped to his belt with ample coin inside. He was not killed for theft.’

  Matthew gestured his incomprehension and took a deep draught of his wine.

  ‘What about this mad old Saxon we heard about at the last inquest, Aethelfrith? Is there any news of him?’ demanded the coroner.

  Matthew knew nothing of him and Joan remained silent, but then a voice from the doorway said, ‘I beg your leave, Crowner, but I heard something yesterday.’

  It was Harold, who was lurking within earshot, like most veteran servants. ‘A man in the Crown Inn, when I was there, said he had heard that Aethelfrith had been seen up on Scorhill Down a few days ago.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked de Wolfe.

  ‘On the edge of the high moor, only a couple of miles from here, above the North Teign stream,’ offered Matthew, who had been raised in Chagford and knew it as well as his brother.

  ‘It seems he was trying to smash the furnace in a small blowing-house, but a couple of tinners arrived and he ran away,’ finished Harold.

  ‘Was it one of ours?’ demanded Matthew, and de Wolfe noted the possessiveness in his tone.

  ‘No, it belonged to Acland,’ said the steward, with a trace of satisfaction in his voice. His eyes slid to the mistress of the house.

  Joan caught the glance and her smooth cheeks reddened, but she took her revenge on the old servant. ‘You may leave us now, Harold. These are private matters. Go and see that some late supper is set out for our guests.’

  The Saxon scowled as he turned to leave, all too conscious that a new regime held sway, now that the master he had served for so long had been replaced by this enigmatic beauty.