For the Love of Old Bones - and other stories (Templar Series) (2 page)

‘That was the last time you saw her until you found her here?’

Ralph scuffed his shoes in the dirt, and Baldwin had to repeat his question before the man would answer, giving me an odd little sidelong glance. ‘No, sir. I saw her again a while later, walking quickly up the hill to this alley. I was clearing up, and when I realised she hadn’t come back again, I just thought I should make sure she was all right.’

‘Did you see anyone else going in there?’

He shook his head, avoiding our gazes. ‘Sorry, but no. No one else that I saw.’

‘When she came into town, did she carry anything? A basket? Did she have a bag of goods to sell?’

‘Nothing much, Sir Baldwin, only a small pack like a traveller would carry.’

‘Then why did you think she was here for the market? Surely she would have brought something to sell? Even if she came here to buy, she would have brought something to carry off her purchases: a basket or a sack at the least.’

‘Why else would she be here?’ I interrupted reasonably.

‘Perhaps when we know that, we’ll know why she died.’

‘Oh, Sir Baldwin!’ I protested. ‘She was obviously murdered by some drunk who met her in the alley, or maybe in the street itself, and who dragged her in here to molest her.’

‘It is rare for a man to hurt, far less kill, a woman he has never met before,’ said Baldwin confidently. ‘I would think it far more likely that she was followed here to Crediton by a man she was trying to evade. He stabbed her in the alley because she wouldn’t do what he wanted. Or perhaps that is the wrong way around, and in reality she was herself searching for a man, and when she found him, he struck her down.’

‘I’m afraid I deal in facts, Sir Baldwin,’ I said, a trifle brusquely I fear. ‘If you want to invent a story, that’s fine, but in the meantime I have to find out what I can for the inquest.’

‘Shall we go and question the other men now, then?’ he asked, and I thought I saw a gleam of amusement in his eye.

‘We should wait until the morning for that,’ I snapped. If we didn’t get back there wouldn’t be anything left to eat or drink.

The next morning I awoke with a head like a lead ball and a belly that roiled and bubbled as strongly as a witch’s cauldron on All-Hallow’s Eve. There was a constant taste of bile in my throat until I slaked my thirst with a pint of good strong wine and ducked my head into the water trough at the back of the Dean’s stable. Then, dried and cleaned, I went to the hall to break my fast. There was cold meat in profusion, and I ate my fill of bread with thick slices of pork before heeding the request of the knight’s servant that I should meet Sir Baldwin near the alley. I confess I didn’t see the need to hurry, and I drank off another pint of wine before making my way to see him.

It was interesting for me to see how the knight worked. Of course, he didn’t have the same position as me, for he was only a Keeper of the King’s Peace, not a Coroner with all the powers that the title confers, but still his reputation was quite daunting. It was always said that criminals avoided his eye because he was so keen-witted and shrewd that he could see through a moorstone wall to a man’s guilt, but rumours like that abound in a desolate little backwater like Crediton, so far from the bright life of court, so remote from civilisation.

‘A good morning to you, Sir Baldwin. I hope I find you well?’

He uttered the usual courtesies, but I could see that his mind was concentrated on the dead girl. Soon we were discussing her.

‘I can only assume she was looking for a means of earning money, if you are right and she didn’t come here to buy or sell.’

He shot me a glance at that. ‘You mean she was prepared to sell her body?’

‘She may well have hoped that she wouldn’t have to,’ I said. I always like to give a young girl the benefit of the doubt, and it was only fair. ‘But on arriving in the town and seeing how busy and bustling it was, no doubt the poor chit realised that any jobs would be filled by those who have always lived here. Who else would wish to employ a stranger? And after that realisation, what else could she do, I ask you? She needed money for food, for board, and to travel on to somewhere else. Maybe to Exeter? What else could she do but try to sell her body? And I fear that her first client saw her and stabbed her.’

We were almost at the door of the alehouse as I spoke, and I looked up at the small uprooted bush that dangled over the door. ‘You want to go in here?’

He grinned at my distaste. ‘I have drunk good ale in here many times before, Coroner. We have to try to discover what happened to the girl when she came in here.’ And so saying, he ducked his head beneath the lintel and entered.

I need hardly say that I was not used to frequenting such low, mean dwellings, and would have protested at the thought of going inside, but with Sir Baldwin’s servant standing behind me, I felt I had little choice. The man was oddly threatening. With a sense of chagrin, I followed Sir Baldwin.

Inside there was already quite a collection of rough, brutish men sitting on benches and supping their first whet of the day. All stared as I stood there, my eyes becoming accustomed to the dim light, which wasn’t easy. The room had a small fire, but this early the air was still so chill that the smoke hung heavily above the hearth, and there was only one window in the opposite wall to permit a tiny shaft of sunlight. I heard a soft scrape of metal, as of a knife easing in its scabbard, but before I could move my hand to my own dagger’s hilt, Sir Baldwin’s servant moved past me, his own blade spinning in the air. He caught it and held it by the tip, ready to throw. When I glanced at his face there was an utter deadness to his eyes. They were as cold and unfeeling as a lizard’s. A snake’s. The room was quiet for an instant, and then the men at their tables began to murmur quietly to each other, studiously ignoring we three strangers.

Sir Baldwin appeared entirely oblivious to the brief tension. He was leaning at the doorway in the farther wall, talking to a tall, grave and lugubrious man.
 

‘Sir Eustace, this is John, who owns this establishment.’

The innkeeper barely acknowledged me, beyond a short nod. His attention was fixed on the knight with, or so I felt, a degree of nervousness as well as respect. ‘She did come in here, sir, yes, quite early in the evening. A right pretty little wench she was, too, not much older than my own. Came here asking for a room. Said she’d already been to the inn, but that they charged too much. I said to her, “This is no place for a gentlewoman,” but she insisted. Had tears in her eyes, she did. Almost thought she’d go down on her knees to me. Said she couldn’t afford another place to stay, and begged me to let her have a room.’

‘You’ll pardon my agreeing that your house is hardly the sort I would expect a girl to beg to stay in,’ Baldwin noted.
 

The dour face cracked a grin. ‘Sir, it’s not the sort of place I’d expect a girl to
look
into, let alone walk in!’

‘How can you be sure she was a gentlewoman and not merely some hussy?’ I asked, and I must admit that I scoffed. His conviction about her status was ludicrous. As far as he knew, she might have been a whore touting for trade in a new tavern.

He kept his eyes on Sir Baldwin as though I hadn’t even spoken, the bastard. ‘Her dress was worn and showed some hard use, but I think the dirt was recent. It was good cloth, and her face and hands were clean. Dust from the road had marked her apron and wimple, but her figure was good and full, not skinny from poor food, and her voice was confident enough. Yes, I’m sure she was well-born. As for her being a slut, well . . . I saw the way she walked in here, like it took all her remaining courage just to enter. She daren’t even shoot the merest look at the men in here, for fear of bursting into tears, just strode up to me and kept her eyes on me, the poor thing. There was nothing brazen about it.’

‘Did she wear a purse?’

‘No, not that I saw, Sir Baldwin. That was why she came here, I think, because she had no money on her to take a room in a better house. I took pity on her and said she could use one, and a meal, for the sake of St Boniface.’

‘Did she take a room?’

‘Yes. The small one behind the hall. It’s near my own chamber, and I thought I could protect her if anyone got amorous overnight. But she left before anything happened.’

‘When was this?’

‘Just as night fell. Before the church bell for the last service.’

Sir Baldwin nodded and thanked him, then stood abruptly and walked out. I found him with his hands hooked in his belt, leaning against a hitching post and glowering at the view.

‘I know how you feel, Sir Baldwin. It’s awful if she truly was a respectable woman, having to beg for a room in a place like this.’

‘Hmm?’ He gazed at me for a moment as if he didn’t recognise me at all. Then a slow smile began to spread over his features. ‘Oh, I see. No, I was just thinking that she must have come from that direction, from the east; if Ralph was right and she came past him, she must have been coming from that way.’

‘So what? Does it really matter?’

‘Perhaps not, Sir Eustace. But it means that she was walking in the wrong direction for Exeter. If she was some girl who had been running away from home, or, to take your example, if she was a whore looking for a new patch to work, she’d surely have been going the other way. No, she came here for a specific reason.’

‘We’re unlikely to discover what it might have been, though.’ To be honest, I was finding his continual inferencing to be more than a little irritating. I was a Coroner, and had better things to do than stand in the street getting hot and dust-blown by passing traffic while my companion guessed at a range of different motives and explanations for how someone he had never known might behave.

‘There is one thing that surprises me,’ he muttered, this time peering over his shoulder westwards, towards the inn. ‘Why should she come to town without money? Is it possible she was robbed on her way here? Or did she have some other reason to come here instead of staying in a decent, clean inn?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Let’s go to the inn and ask Paul.’

If possible the innkeeper looked even more fretful and anxious than he had the night before. He had few enough customers this early, only a small number of tranters and hawkers and a couple of my own men, but insisted on calling his servants and ordering them about for some time as if demonstrating that he had much to do and couldn’t spare a few minutes in idle chatter. Of course, that is often the way of men who are confronted by their Coroner. Our post is so important that it can cause the foolish to lose their tongues, so I didn’t look upon his behaviour as suspicious. I merely waited, casting an interested eye over the women he had in there.

One was a real beauty: fair-headed, well-built under her tunic, from the look of her swelling chest, with a bawdy, excitable look in her bright green eyes. I made a mental note to return to see her when this silly affair was over.
 

When I cast a sidelong glance at Sir Baldwin, I was surprised to see him lounging and staring up at the ceiling. If I had to guess, I’d say he hadn’t noticed the aproned idiot’s play-acting. Sir Baldwin sat patiently until the innkeeper was ready, and then the stupid serf stood in front of us, asking in his whining, troubled voice whether we wanted a drink.
 

By this time I was hungry, and demanded a fresh meat pie. Baldwin seemed astonished by my desire for food, but he shrugged, merely asking for a quart of weak ale. The innkeeper scuttled away happily. It was so like a man of his class to hurry off when given an order by men of a higher standing. They need instruction, folk of his type, or they feel at a loss.

When he was back, and had hesitantly obeyed Sir Baldwin’s next command and seated himself, the knight began his interrogation.

‘The girl in the alley. I understand she was here yesterday afternoon?’

Paul licked his lips and glanced at both of us before studying his hands, clasped in his lap. ‘Yes, sir, but only for a short time.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She came in late in the afternoon and asked for a room, Sir Baldwin. I saw her myself, and I was sure that she was a real gentlewoman.’

‘You were? Yet she came here alone, without a horse or companion. What made you think she was aught but a common vagrant?’

‘Oh, she had a real presence about her, Sir Baldwin,’ he said, looking up at last. ‘And her purse was filled with good money. I asked her whether she had coin on her, and she showed me – it was full.’

‘When we found her body, there was no purse,’ Baldwin commented.

The publican glanced at me and nodded. ‘It must have been stolen,’ he said miserably.

I stirred. ‘All too often these people will steal after they have killed, you know, Sir Baldwin. You and I don’t suffer from want, but common villeins in a neighbourhood like this would slit the throats of their own mothers to win an extra penny.’

He ignored me, which I have to say was damned insulting. His attention was fixed on the man before him. ‘She showed you her purse; then what?’

Paul’s gaze returned to his hands. ‘Sirs, she came in exhausted, demanding a pint of watered wine, pleading a parched throat. I wanted to see her money before I went to fetch it, but when I saw how much she had, I brought her a jug . . .’

‘And how did she appear? Happy, sad, anxious . . . ?’

‘Oh, tired from her journey, but happy enough, I think. Later she got a bit nervy-looking. It was when Edward the Tranter came over and spoke to her. She got all flushed, like she was worried about something.’

‘When was this?’

‘Late afternoon, I suppose.’

‘Did you overhear what Edward said to her?’

‘No, sir. He spoke too quietly, and just after that she dropped some coin on the table and left with him, leaving her small pack on her stool. Later she came back for it, but by then she had this sort of lost look to her. I felt so sorry for her, I offered her a bed over the stables, but she just shook her head – didn’t say a word, just shook her head, staring at me with her eyes all scared and sad, and her mouth a-quiver, like she was going to burst out in tears.’ The innkeeper shook his own head as if in sympathy, studying the rushes at his feet, then looked up at Sir Baldwin. ‘She saw or heard something that devastated her, sir. She thought her life was ended.’