Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘Well,’ he said, holding his arms out to show that what he was about to say was obvious, and wasn’t his fault at all. ‘Why would anyone murder Gilder?’

  The Ealdorman looked rather disinterested. ‘Any reason really. He was horrible.’

  ‘Yes, we’d heard that, but is it enough of a reason for murder?’

  ‘Er,’ the Ealdorman thought, ‘yes,’ he concluded. ‘He was really, really horrible. He made enemies like most people make bread, every morning a new one would rise. He cheated, stole and threatened, had people thrown out of houses and off farms and was generally despised by the whole population. You’ve seen how happy everyone is that he’s dead. Could have been anyone.’

  ‘Wanting someone dead and actually making it happen are two very different things,’ said Hermitage. ‘A lot of people wish someone dead now and again. It’s not right, but it happens. Very few of them go out and do the deed. There’s usually a much stronger reason than wishful thinking.’

  ‘Such as?’ the Ealdorman asked.

  Hermitage thought that surely they’d got it by now. ‘Money,’ he said.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Money. And Gilder had a lot of it.’

  ‘He’s had a lot of it for a long time,’ the Ealdorman pointed out, ‘why would someone kill him for it now?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Hermitage replied. ‘Could be that he was about to do something with it that someone didn’t want to happen.’

  ‘Such as give it all to a nunnery?’ Cwen concluded with a fine weight of suspicion in her voice.

  ‘Or, someone was waiting for it and ran out of patience?’ Wat offered.

  ‘The son, Balor?’ the Ealdorman asked, although it sounded like he didn’t believe it.

  ‘Or someone just wanted to get hold of a trunk full of treasure in a very short time,’ Hermitage added.

  ‘Then again,’ said the Ealdorman, ‘maybe someone really had come to hate him enough to do it. Like we said, could have been anyone.’

  They all paused in thought.

  ‘If a killer took the money,’ Hermitage prompted, ‘the nuns wouldn’t get their nunnery. Even if the money’s still here it will probably take an age to untangle from Gilder’s estate. If the man died naturally he might have left a legacy, or the abbess could persuade his son to continue with the building.’ He could see why Mildburgh would not want murder uncovered. If there had been a robbery, if the treasure of Gilder had gone, there would be no convent. If it was just assumed he died, she could go to his son asking for the bequest to be honoured. How deceitful. And she a nun!

  ‘I think that woman could persuade fish to fly,’ said Wat, ‘or throw them around until one of them worked it out.’

  ‘All well and good,’ said Cwen, ‘but we still don’t know Gilder was even murdered in the first place.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Hermitage, brightly. ‘Time to see the body I think.’

  ‘See the body?’ the Ealdorman asked in some disgust.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Hermitage, ‘if we can confirm the murder there may be some evidence to be gathered.’

  The Ealdorman looked at him with a very quizzical look on his face. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’ he asked, clearly thinking it was a very doubtful sort of thing to do.

  ‘Unfortunately, I have been asked to deal with, erm, this sort of thing in the past, yes.’

  ‘A monk?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound right to me. Monks looking into murders? It’ll never catch on. Particularly not in Shrewsbury, it’s such a nice place.’

  ‘Apart from the dead bodies,’ Wat pointed out.

  ‘Your sheriff going to do it, is he?’ Cwen asked.

  The Ealdorman looked at her. ‘Take your point,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ Hermitage prompted, ‘the body?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Ealdorman, and held out an arm to indicate the way back to Gilder’s house. ‘Cost you a shilling,’ he said, as they set off.

  . . .

  ‘Definitely murder then,’ said Wat.

  Cwen was being sick in the fireplace and Hermitage had a hand firmly clamped across his mouth.

  ‘I don’t see how anyone could do that to themselves,’ Wat nodded at the damage done to the back of Gilder’s head. Or rather the place where the back of the head used to be. ‘Where are the bits?’ he asked the Ealdorman.

  Hermitage joined Cwen in the fireplace.

  ‘Probably rats.’ The Ealdorman shrugged. He had clearly seen this horrible sight before but seemed happy to be here again, just to confirm that the centre of their attention had stayed dead.

  Gilder had stayed everything. He had stayed dead, stayed where he was and stayed slowly softening on his bed.

  ‘Has…?’ Hermitage swallowed hard and stayed in the fireplace, talking to Wat and the Ealdorman over his shoulder, ‘has no one moved him since the, erm, event?’ He was horrified that this mortal man appeared to have been simply left where he was killed. No one had dressed the body, or prepared him in any way to meet his maker.

  But there were more horrifying things than this breach of proper behaviour, the most noticeable being Gilder himself.

  ‘Why?’ the Ealdorman said. ‘I told you he was horrible. Everyone hated him, so who would bother?’

  ‘His servants?’

  ‘Gone with anything moveable already,’ the Ealdorman laughed.

  ‘His son, surely,’ said Hermitage.

  The Ealdorman turned to face Hermitage. ‘If people he hardly knew hated him, imagine what it would be like having him as a father.’

  ‘Any sign of a weapon?’ Wat asked, as he looked around the room.

  Hermitage found a fire iron propped in the fireplace and held it up. ‘Could be this?’ he suggested.

  Wat came over and looked at it. Quite closely. ‘Hm,’ he said, ‘can’t see any brains on it.’

  Hermitage turned back to the fireplace quite quickly.

  After a few moments his stomach started to settle and he could manage to examine their surroundings, as long as the bit of the room with the body in it was excluded.

  He saw that it was a fine place, large with thick panelling lining the walls. The great fireplace was so big two people could be sick in it side by side. Two large chairs, hung with fine material were drawn up by the hearth, and the bed itself was big and comfortable. Not at the moment, obviously, but he could see that it would be.

  Looking out over the street, a single window would allow Gilder to empty his night-pot on whoever happened to be passing. A simple screen across one front corner of the room doubtless hid that pot, ready for action.

  Apart from the normal accoutrements of a room there was nothing unusual about the place at all, apart from the obvious. Even the obvious was lying in the middle of the bed, and had clearly been there at the time of the attack.

  The blood was all dried now but there was an awful lot of it, all on the bed. There was no sign that Gilder had been dragged here to die, or had been dealt the deadly blow somewhere else and had staggered to his bed to collapse. The room was in good order and there was no sign of a struggle. There would have been plenty of time to tidy things anyway, Gilder would have been in no condition to object.

  He was fully dressed, which seemed odd, but perhaps he had taken to his bed for a sleep. Hermitage chanced a glance at Gilder and, managing to ignore the bits that were missing, he saw that he was indeed an old man.

  ‘You told Sister Mildburgh that Gilder was killed some time before morning,’ he said to the Ealdorman.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hermitage confirmed. Why would the man forget that? ‘She asked the moot when this happened, and one of you said he was found in the morning.’

  The Ealdorman looked at Wat. ‘He pays attention, doesn’t he?’ he nodded toward Hermitage.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Wat, ‘when he’s in the mood.’

  In the mood? thought Hermitage. What did that have to do with anything?r />
  ‘Could have been morning.’ The Ealdorman shrugged.

  ‘Could have been?’ Hermitage asked. ‘But you told the abbess…’

  ‘I’d tell that woman anything to get her out of the room. Wouldn’t you?’

  Hermitage looked to Wat and Cwen for some guidance in this madness. They were no help.

  ‘So, when did he die?’ Hermitage persisted.

  The Ealdorman looked at the body. ‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you’re the expert but in my opinion I’d say it was just after he was hit on the head.’

  ‘What time of day?’ Hermitage felt his impatience rising. It wasn’t impatience by the standards of regular folk, but it bothered him nonetheless.

  ‘No idea,’ the Ealdorman said. ‘Why does it matter?’

  Hermitage’s patience escaped in a barely audible sigh. ‘Because he is fully dressed, lying on his bed and appears to have been killed there. Why would an old man be on his bed with all his clothes on?’

  ‘Taking a sleep,’ said Cwen, emerging from the fireplace which was staring to smell a bit.

  ‘Could be,’ Hermitage confirmed with a nod. ‘A man of advanced years may well need a sleep in the middle of the day, and he could take to his bed. If it was night time he would surely dress for bed and be under the cover.’

  Hermitage stroked his chin and found that he could now look at Gilder without feeling the need to empty his stomach. The body was a puzzle, not a real person any more. Puzzles were fascinating. Bodies weren’t.

  ‘Exactly when did you first get news of the death then?’ he asked the Ealdorman.

  The man screwed up his face in thought. ‘Would have been day before yesterday.’ He nodded that this estimate was correct.

  Hermitage let a small “tut” escape him that the body had been left for so long.

  ‘First thing, if I recall. Someone sent up hue and cry at dawn so I had to see what on earth was going on. I thought we were being attacked or something. I went out in the street and there was young Hendig, running down the street shouting “he’s dead, he’s dead” at the top of his voice.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hermitage, ‘and who is young Hendig?’

  ‘Just some smith’s apprentice. Probably up all night tending the fire.’

  ‘So how did he know Gilder was dead?’ Hermitage asked.

  ‘It’s not difficult to spot,’ the Ealdorman indicated the body on the bed.

  ‘I mean,’ said Hermitage, ‘how would Hendig come to know that Gilder was here, in this condition, at all?’

  ‘Ask Hendig?’ the Ealdorman suggested.

  ‘I think we had better,’ said Hermitage.

  ‘A smith would have a lot of lumps of metal to hand to do something like this,’ said Cwen.

  ‘We mustn’t leap to conclusions,’ Hermitage cautioned. ‘It could be that this Hendig simply came here to perform some errand, or heard the news himself from one of Gilder’s servants.’

  ‘Still,’ said Cwen, ‘we can add him to the list of everyone who could have killed Gilder.’

  Hermitage found that rather depressing. He looked at the body in sadness. No matter how unpleasant a man was, to depart the world in this manner was awful.

  ‘So,’ said Wat, breaking the silence, ‘sometime before dawn on the day before yesterday, Gilder came to bed for a bit of a lie down. Someone made doubly sure he got a good long nap and then left him here. We probably need to find the last person who saw him alive.’

  ‘The killer, you mean,’ said Cwen, ‘bound to be the last person who saw him alive, I’d have thought.’

  ‘All right, clever crow,’ said Wat, in retort. ‘The last person to see him alive who didn’t also kill him.’

  Hermitage felt that would be very helpful, but had no idea how to go about it.

  ‘But,’ the Ealdorman put in, ‘why is he like that?’ He pointed at Gilder, which really wasn’t necessary as everyone knew where he was.

  ‘Like what?’ Hermitage asked. He could see that this was a dead body, which was enough of a feature in itself, but he couldn’t see anything else.

  ‘Like that,’ the Ealdorman insisted.

  Hermitage, Wat and Cwen looked puzzled.

  ‘Face down. Why would anyone go to bed for a little sleep and lay face down?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hermitage. He had been so busy being ill and then looking at the puzzle of Gilder’s death he had failed to register that the reason they could see the back of the man’s head was missing, was that he was lying on his face.

  ‘Good point,’ said Wat.

  ‘Bad back?’ said Cwen.

  ‘Pardon?’ Hermitage wondered what Cwen’s back had to do with anything.

  ‘Maybe he had a bad back. I knew someone with a bad back once. They had to sleep on their face, otherwise it was agony.’

  ‘Did Gilder have a bad back?’ Hermitage asked.

  ‘Who cares?’ said the Ealdorman. ‘Or rather, who cared? The more pain he was in the better as far as the rest of us were concerned.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ Hermitage complained.

  ‘Could be someone threw him there then,’ said Wat, ‘maybe he didn’t go to bed of his own free will but was taken there and done for.’

  ‘Why on earth would anyone take him to bed to kill him?’ Hermitage asked. ‘To make him more comfortable?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Wat complained. ‘Just trying to help.’

  Hermitage thought about what they knew so far. Which wasn’t actually much more than they knew before they got here. All they had was confirmation that Gilder was murdered.

  ‘We need to talk to young Hendig,’ he concluded. ‘Once we hear his story we will be able to draw further conclusions.’

  ‘And there’s something else that’s key to this,’ said Wat.

  ‘Which is?’ Hermitage asked. Surely he hadn’t missed something else.

  ‘The money? We need to find Gilder’s money. If it’s gone we probably know that’s why he was killed. If it’s still here, then who knows what’s going on. Probably just a personal grudge. There seem to be plenty to go round.’

  The Ealdorman snorted. ‘If you can find Gilder’s money you’re doing a better job than those who went before.’

  ‘Others have tried to take his money?’ Hermitage asked. There was a motive for murder if ever there was one.

  ‘Others have tried to find his money, never mind take it. Every now and then some stranger wanders into town after the Gilder fortune.’

  ‘With no success?’

  ‘They were successfully executed, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Hermitage breathed.

  ‘I told you he was horrible,’ the Ealdorman confirmed.

  ‘We also don’t understand why he was going to use that money to build a nunnery, if he really was,’ said Cwen. ‘If he was as horrible as everyone says, why would he do that? Makes no sense to execute people for going after your money only to give a large portion of it away.’

  ‘Save his soul?’ Hermitage suggested. ‘Sounded like it needed a lot of saving.’

  They all looked at the body, and at the room, and at the body again.

  ‘There are just too many questions,’ said Hermitage. ‘We shall have to answer them one at a time. First, Hendig.’

  ‘That could be enough,’ said Cwen. ‘Hendig comes to do an errand and helps the old man to bed. Gilder is horrible to him one time too many, he pulls out a bar of steel he was working on and bang!’

  ‘Hm.’ Hermitage frowned. ‘I suspect that might be far too easy.’ He considered the other times they had investigated gruesome events like this. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘in the other deaths we have looked into, it’s never been as straightforward as “There’s a body. Did you do it? Yes. The end”. The whole sorry business tends to go on for days. And they all get so convoluted you could make a story out of them.’

  Wat and Cwen both laughed at that ridiculous idea.

  . . .

  Leaving Gilder t
o his resting place, which Hermitage sincerely hoped would not be his last, they exited the house into the warmth of the summer day.

  The two guards, who were still at the door, stood aside to let them pass.

  Hermitage looked at them thoughtfully. ‘Who are the guards?’ he asked the Ealdorman.

  ‘Balor set them.’

  ‘Really?’ said Hermitage. That was interesting. He wasn’t immediately sure why it was interesting but he thought it ought to be. ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because someone suggested that instead of burying Gilder we just burn his house down with him in it. Save us all a lot of trouble.’

  Hermitage was going to have to get used to the awful way the people of this place thought about Gilder. ‘But doesn’t Balor live here as well?’

  ‘With Gilder?’ The Ealdorman sounded shocked. ‘Who’d live with him? No, Balor has his own place down by the town gate.’

  ‘As grand as this?’ Hermitage asked, impressed at Gilder’s obvious wealth.

  ‘Oh, heavens no. Gilder wouldn’t throw money around like that. Humble place, Balor’s. Lots of rats there are, down by the gate. Come swarming out of the river sometimes.’

  That gave Hermitage pause for thought. ‘And Balor stands to inherit Gilder’s wealth.’ He nodded at the significance of this. ‘First Hendig, then Balor, I think.’

  Caput VIII

  Son and Heir

  ‘How many blacksmith’s apprentices are there in Shrewsbury?’ Hermitage said with some despair as they came out of the third smith having been told that Hendig was not their apprentice and they should try master Smith, down the road.

  ‘And it’s not very helpful that they all call themselves Smith,’ said Wat. ‘How are we going to be able to tell people apart if they’re all called Smith?’

  They walked on down the street, back towards the main gate. The Ealdorman had left them, saying both that he had important town business to attend to and that the last thing he was going to spend his day doing was visiting the Smiths.

  The next place, being a bit closer to the gate was busier than the earlier establishments. Where the others seemed to work all manner of metal like hinges, locks and household ware, as well as run of the mill wheels and shoes, this place was built for horses and whatever they were pulling.