The Sticklepath Strangler (2001) (16 page)

‘But what happened to
him
?’ he said in astonishment.

When the peasant digging gave a shocked curse, Baldwin immediately peered into the grave. The man had exposed the ribs of a skeleton. As Drogo had suggested, this must be an
old corpse.

Baldwin looked up and noticed the three men who had been with Drogo at the inn when he arrived. He nudged the Reeve and pointed. ‘Who are they?’

‘Drogo le Criur’s men, the Foresters. Young Vin, Adam Thorne is the man with the limp and the other one is Peter atte Moor.’

‘Tell them to come here,’ ordered Coroner Roger. ‘They can help this fellow instead of gawping.’

Vincent looked as though he might be sick when he saw the blackened bones protruding from the grave. Even Adam crossed himself as he limped over to it, a sad-looking man with heavily lidded
eyes, but it was Peter atte Moor’s behaviour which struck Baldwin most: he sprang up onto the wall and stood gazing down into the hole almost hungrily. When the three men were in the grave,
they began to tug gently at the fabric and somehow managed to lift the bones from the clinging soil.

‘Hurry up!’ the Reeve called.

Baldwin noted that Alexander de Belston was no longer so languid. In fact, he looked very tense. He appeared almost stunned – but desperate to get the bones out of the grave.

By some miracle the material held until they had the headless corpse out of the hole and were standing before the Coroner; then there was a tearing sound and the cloth ripped, spilling the
discoloured bones in a heap at Roger’s feet.

‘Not an adult, then,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘No, sir. I think it’s a young girl who disappeared a few years ago,’ the Reeve answered.

‘I see,’ Coroner Roger said quietly.

The Reeve’s voice was convincing, and so was the fact that no one in the crowd saw fit to dispute his words. However, there was something that interested Baldwin. ‘You saw that there
was a body and left it covered?’

‘What else could it be when we found the skull,
Keeper
? Yes, I set a guard over it day and night. We are law-abiding folk here.’

Baldwin smiled suavely. The ‘Keeper’ had almost been spat out, as though the Reeve held men like him in low esteem.

Alexander beckoned and one of his men came forward with the skull wrapped in a cloth. He set it down with the bones as though hoping the body might reassemble itself.

Coroner Roger glanced at the Parson, Gervase Colbrook, who was licking his lips and staring at the skeleton. Feeling the Coroner’s eyes on him, he picked up a reed and dipped it in his
ink, ready to take down the details.

‘All right! Silence! Shut that brat up there!’ bawled Roger. ‘I’m the King’s Coroner and this is the inquest into the death of this child. Does anybody know who it
was?’

‘Swetricus,’ the Reeve called. ‘Come forward, man.’

Baldwin watched as a large man shoved his way to the front of the crowd and stood before them all, his head bowed. The knight recognised the shambling gait, the hang-dog stance. Swet’s
demeanour was so like those of Baldwin’s comrades after the destruction of their Order that he felt a pang pull at his heart.

‘This is Swetricus, Coroner.’

‘What do you know of this, good fellow?’ Coroner Roger asked gently.

‘I recognise the cloth. It’s like Aline’s. My daughter.’

The Coroner nodded. Swetricus had a steady, deep voice, but there was a slight tremble in it as his eyes slid down to view the pile of bones that might have been his daughter. ‘When did
you last see her?’

Swetricus looked at Alexander with a pleading expression. ‘Four years ago.’

‘I see. What happened to her?’ Coroner Roger glanced down at the corpse again, wondering how someone could want to hurt a pathetic little bundle like this.

‘Sir, I don’t know. It was the middle of summer. I was out in the fields. She’d been there with her sisters that morn. First I knew was that night, when she didn’t come
home.’

‘Did you search for her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Speak up, you dull-witted son of a whore!’ Alexander grated. ‘The Coroner doesn’t have all day for you to order your brains!’

‘Just answer the question,’ the Coroner said, with a long, cold look at the Reeve.

‘The Hue was raised. Didn’t find nothing.’

‘Really?’ The Coroner’s voice was quieter. ‘How old was she?’

‘Must have been eleven. Maybe twelve.’

That was a relief, Roger thought to himself. So often a father or mother had no idea how old their offspring were. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘She was buried wrapped in that material. Is that how her body was discovered?’

‘As I said, we didn’t uncover all of her,’ the Reeve said. ‘When those wenches Joan and Emma tugged at the scrap of cloth, visible where the wall had crumbled, the skull
fell out. There didn’t seem any point in trying to get at the rest of the body without an official being present, and I didn’t want it to be disturbed by wild animals, so we took the
head to protect it and left the rest.’

‘Who was the First Finder?’ the Coroner called, and Miles Houndestail stepped forward. He answered Coroner Roger’s questions clearly, telling how he had seen the two girls as
they discovered the skull, how he had returned to the vill with Joan, and raised the Hue and Cry, contacting the Reeve and the nearest four houses as the law required. He had insisted that the
Reeve should send for the Coroner.

Belston himself was silent. Of the two villagers, Baldwin considered that the Reeve looked even more depressed than Swetricus. The latter had lost his daughter, true, but now at least he knew
what had happened to her. The Reeve, on the other hand, was responsible for the fines which would be imposed. And they would hurt his pocket considerably.

Yet there was another point. ‘I have heard talk of cannibalism,’ Sir Baldwin said strongly, and the watching crowd gasped. ‘Could this poor child not merely have been raped and
then silenced?’

The Reeve turned to the Coroner as though Baldwin had not spoken. ‘Everyone was hungry. You remember the famine. It was just natural to assume the worst.’

Liar, Baldwin thought. ‘May I take a look?’ he asked.

Receiving the assent of the Coroner, he sprang lightly into the makeshift grave, where he crouched and studied the ground upon which the girl had lain. There were more pieces of material at the
foot, and he saw a fresh piece of bone. Picking it up, he weighed it in his hand a moment, reflecting as he peered about him. In all cases where there was the possibility of murder having been
done, he liked to see the bodies because, as he so often told Simon, the body of a dead person could tell the inquirer so much. Sometimes it was the type of wound which might have killed the
victim, sometimes the position of the body, or the marks of blood. There was often something which the intelligent researcher could learn. Rarely, however, was the evidence so prominent as this. He
bent and picked up a slender loop of leather, much decayed and soiled, but recognisable.

‘A thong,’ he said, holding it up, ‘such as a traveller might use to bind a tunic or tie a roll to a saddle.’

‘We have travellers coming past here all the time,’ Alexander said dismissively. ‘I have no doubt this evil murderer killed her on a whim as he passed through the
vill.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said. It was a possibility, he knew. Except . . . ‘Did no one notice that the field had been dug up?’

‘Eh? Oh, when she was buried, you mean? No. This wall is often collapsing. It did so two or three years before Aline disappeared. This last time, we dug back into this ground a couple of
feet, built the wall, then infilled. It’s worked until now.’

‘I expect it is the steepness of the lane,’ Baldwin acknowledged. ‘So whoever buried her so shallowly must have done so shortly after the wall was rebuilt, or you would have
found her. Someone came up here, either with her already dead, or walked here with her. He could dig down and bury her, and then cover her without anyone noticing . . .’

‘Yes,’ Alexander agreed. His face had eased slightly, as though glad to find that there was a simple explanation.

‘. . . probably,’ Baldwin finished. He passed the thong to Coroner Roger and climbed out of the hole. ‘I am still surprised that a grave wasn’t noticed. You can always
see where a body has been interred in a cemetery.’

‘I don’t know. I expect it was just some tranter or tinker,’ the Reeve said, and there was almost a note of hope in his voice. ‘Perhaps no one came here for a while
afterwards.’

‘A traveller who didn’t know this area – some tranter or pilgrim who was unused to building walls?’ Baldwin mused. ‘Does it sound credible to you? Some fellow who
wasn’t aware that the wall had only recently fallen, who didn’t know that the soil would be easy to dig up – does it seem likely that they would choose this spot? Surely this was
done by someone who lived here, someone who knew about this wall falling, someone who could come here at night and bury her.’

‘How long would it have taken a man to bury her?’ the Reeve wondered.

‘The same time for a local man as for a traveller,’ Baldwin said drily, ‘but a local man would have known where to lay his hands on a shovel. A traveller probably would
not.’

Alexander looked devastated. ‘This is terrible!’

‘And a man who had friends to help him might bury the girl still faster.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I said.’

‘No one here could do such a thing,’ he choked.

‘Really?’ Baldwin looked at him steadily. ‘Tell me, Reeve, what is all this talk of cannibalism?’

Alexander felt as though the ground was moving beneath his feet. ‘I – I . . . Well, what else could it be?’

‘Almost anything!’ Baldwin snapped, allowing a little of his impatience to show. ‘I would have said it could have been rape, anger, perhaps even an accident that someone was
afraid to admit. The very last thing I would have thought of would be cannibalism. This body has no flesh on it: any evidence disappeared long ago, so why did your mind turn to it,
Reeve?’

Alexander opened his mouth but no sound came. He frowned at the body, then down at his feet before looking towards Swetricus and the villagers as though seeking advice or reassurance. ‘I .
. .’ He broke off helplessly, and it was Miles Houndestail who answered for him. Coroner Roger beckoned him forward and he stood at the Reeve’s side.

‘Because they had already had one,’ he stated firmly.

‘One
what
?’ the Reeve demanded irritably.

‘A case of cannibalism.’

Peter could only hold his face still with an effort. He had never cared for that kid Aline, but he had known her dad Swetricus for years.

Swet and he had worked together in the fields as children, and when they grew older, they married within a few months of each other, before both losing their wives during the famine. The only
difference was, Swet still had his family.

Peter tried to keep his bitterness at bay, but it was hard, so hard. His wife had died, and then Denise was gone. Ever after he suffered from the torments of loneliness, but Swet still had his
other three girls. Aline and his wife might have died, but Swet hardly needed them, did he? His life was unchanged, and he could go and enjoy the use of other women. Peter couldn’t. Somehow
they never attracted him, or if they did, as with the whore he’d bought in Exeter two years ago, he could not manage the act.

At the time, he had been ashamed at first. She was just some cheap slattern from a tavern, and she’d taken him to a room at the rear, where a worn and malodorous palliasse showed that she
shared the place with other girls.

He had grabbed her, his blood inflamed by ale, and she had responded eagerly, thrusting her hips at his while she slobbered over his face, whining like a bitch on heat, moaning and pleading that
he should satisfy her. He wanted to, God in Heaven, how he wanted to.

The light was poor, and with the ale coursing through his veins, he almost imagined her to be his wife when they married: young, slender and supple. He closed his eyes as he kissed her, and he
was once more a young man and she his twelve-year-old sweetheart.

But then the whore had shoved her hand at his cods, speaking quietly and filthily about what she wanted him to do for her, what she would do for him, and as she spoke, his vision slipped away,
along with his erection. She wanted him, badly – or so she kept telling him – but he couldn’t do anything.

That was when the anger took hold of him. She wasn’t his wife, she was counterfeit. Just another woman trying to get her hand on his cods and then into his purse. That was all she wanted,
his money.

He had shoved her from him, the bitch. Bitch! Yes, he’d thrust her away, and she’d protested, just like they all did. Claimed he’d torn her tunic, wanted money. Told him he was
a eunuch, that maybe he’d prefer a boy – and that was when he bunched his fists and went for her.

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.