The Unlikely Spy (3 page)

“He would look much worse. I can see that.”
Rhun nodded. “Can you tell how long ago he died?”

“He is very stiff.” She gently lifted one of
the man’s arms, though it didn’t want to move.

“I would have thought soaking in the water
would prevent him from stiffening up,” Rhun said, and then made an
appeasing gesture of his own. “And don’t look at me the way you did
before.”

“How did I look at you before?”

“Pityingly,” Rhun said. “I’m asking
questions because I want to know what you know.”

Gwen looked down at her hands, taking a
moment to compose herself. Then she raised her head. “I apologize,
my lord. I didn’t mean to offend you. And I certainly don’t pity
you. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I’m seeing that I don’t
think about what I’m saying. Truthfully, it is helpful to me for
you to ask these questions because it clarifies what’s in my own
mind.”

Rhun gave a small smile, looking pleased,
and Gwen was hugely relieved to see that she hadn’t offended him,
or at least he wasn’t offended any longer.

She went back to the body. “I would guess
that he died in the early hours of the morning, roughly half a day
ago. Rigor will vary depending on the temperature of the water.
Right now, the water here is about as warm as it ever gets, but it
still isn’t warmer than the air.”

Rhun leaned out and put a hand into the
pond. Shaking the excess water off his fingers, he wiped them on
his breeches. “The river flows down from the mountains. Even with
this heat, the millpond carries a chill.”

“He probably would have decomposed faster
had he not been thrown in.” Then Gwen beckoned to the prince, since
he looked as if he was about to move away, thinking they were done.
“There’s more, my lord.”

“More?”

Gwen held back a smile, knowing he wasn’t
going to like what she was about to do—and opened the man’s eyelids
with her forefinger and thumb. The revulsion on Rhun’s face was
almost comical, and he made an involuntary motion with his hand, as
if to suggest that she shouldn’t have touched the dead man’s
face.

Gwen ignored his reaction. “You can tell a
great deal about how a man died from the condition of the
eyes.”

Rhun swallowed down whatever protest he’d
been about to make and joined her, kneeling in the dirt beside the
body. Beads of sweat dampened the hair at his temples, but another
quick glance at him told Gwen that he’d been telling the truth
earlier: he was hot, as they all were, but he wasn’t squeamish.

“When a man drowns, tiny red or brownish
spots form in the eyes. Gareth thinks the change has something to
do with what happens when a person is deprived of breath. He’s seen
it also in the eyes of men who’ve been strangled. Regardless, this
man doesn’t have those spots.”

Rhun gazed intently into the dead man’s
face. The prince didn’t seem to have anything to say, so Gwen
continued, “Did the monks close his eyes?”

“They did. His eyes were open when he came
out of the water. How did you know?”

“When eyes dry out, a splotchy brown line
forms in the whites,” Gwen said. “I’m not seeing that here. Nor
have his eyes turned opaque. I’m guessing that this man died
somewhere very close by and was put in the water immediately
after.”

As Gwen let go of the dead man’s eyelids,
Rhun reached out a hand and widened them again. His revulsion
seemed to have left him.

“But even without all that, I know the man
didn’t die from drowning.” Intentionally keeping her face
expressionless so Rhun couldn’t see the triumph in her face at her
discovery, Gwen gingerly poked her finger through a slit in the
man’s shirt, right under his left breast. “He was stabbed in the
chest.”

Rhun bent forward, lifting the shirt to show
the wound beneath. “You’re right.” Then he frowned. “Why is there
so little blood on his clothing? The front of his shirt is stained
with mud and blood, but not nearly as much as I might have expected
from a stab wound.”

“That is very observant of you, my lord,”
Gwen said, “and I can explain that too.”

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

Gwen just managed not to smirk at his
sarcasm. “You must have noticed that when you stab a man, if you
keep the blade in his body, blood doesn’t really flow from the
wound until you remove it. The sword—or the arrow—acts as a
plug.”

“I have seen that,” Rhun said. “I may not
know much about murder, but I’ve seen death in battle. Usually men
don’t die quickly, especially from such a small stab wound. And
yet, this man barely bled at all.”

“You’re right,” Gwen said, “but if the
murderer waited until the man was dead to remove the blade, the
blood would hardly have flowed from the wound. The instant the
heart stops, the body stops bleeding. And if he fell on his back,
and the murderer let the body set for a moment, the blood would
have pooled away from the wound. Then he could have put him into
the pond face first. The blood near the wound would have done
little more than seep out the gash, and the water would have washed
most of that away.”

Gwen was glad to see that Rhun was looking
at her with an expression that was closer to awe than horror.
“You’re amazing, Gwen.”

She tsked through her teeth. “Gareth would
have realized he hadn’t drowned within moments of looking at him
too. The blade was thin and narrow, but you can’t hide a death
wound like thi—” She broke off with a gasp she couldn’t suppress as
she bent to study the wound more closely. It very much resembled
one she’d seen before—on the road to Dolwyddelan, three years ago
almost to the day.

“What is it, Gwen? What’s wrong?” Rhun was
looking at her with concern.

She shook herself. “Nothing, my lord. It’s
nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing. You practically jumped
out of your skin,” Rhun said.

Gwen suppressed the impatient growl that
rose to the back of her throat. Rhun might not have much experience
observing the details of murdered men, but he had always been good
at reading people. Gwen traced the line of the wound, her finger a
hair’s-breadth above it because in this instance she didn’t want to
touch the skin if she could help it. “Do you see the way the wound
is ragged here? The blade had a notch in it.”

Rhun leaned closer to look, putting his nose
six inches from the man’s chest. “I see what you mean, though if
you hadn’t shown me, I wouldn’t have noticed.” He paused. “Murder,
like you said.”

“This is definitely murder.” Gwen sat back
on her heels. Hywel wasn’t going to be happy to learn that someone
had been murdered on the eve of his festival, unless he himself had
done it. Her heart sped up a little to think about it.
Please
God, let it not have been him
.

Rhun rose to his feet, and she looked up at
him. “My lord, we need to keep this quiet if we can—for as long as
we can.”

Rhun looked down at her. “The man is dead.
How do we keep that quiet?”

“I didn’t mean his death,” Gwen said. “I
meant that it was murder. Everyone will believe that he drowned,
and for now, it might be better if the murderer didn’t know that we
know that he didn’t.”

Rhun laughed under his breath. Gwen didn’t
know what he was laughing at, so she hurried to explain. “Prince
Hywel taught me to give out as little information as possible. If
someone knows more about the death than he should, he might be the
murderer.”

“If the murderer is here for the festival,
he might have hoped to have been long gone before the body
surfaced.” Rhun said.

Gwen chewed on her lower lip, thinking that
the prince was looking a little too fascinatedly at the body.
Simply because they’d often been called to investigate it, Hywel,
Gwen, and Gareth had learned the ins and outs of murder, but there
had been something wholesome about Rhun’s unfamiliarity with it.
Gwen was starting to regret besmirching Rhun’s innocence with her
long lecture about the differences between a drowned man and a
murdered one. And if Prince Hywel had anything to do with the
murder, it would be best if she could find a way to keep his
brother far, far away from it.

For now, that wasn’t going to be possible,
especially since Prior Rhys appeared at the edge of the trees a
moment later and waved at them.

“Let’s get one of the monks back here to
guard the body,” Prince Rhun said. “It looks like the prior has
something to tell us.”

Rhun

A
lthough Rhun had
participated in several of these investigations at which Hywel
excelled, he’d never been one to trek around in the mud looking for
clues to the killer. As he and Gwen headed around the edge of the
pond, following Prior Rhys, Rhun truly appreciated for the first
time the necessity for speed, discretion, and the careful placement
of feet.

The undergrowth around the pond was thick
and prolific, with vegetation everywhere he looked. This week of
heat had been preceded by a month of rain, and the woodlands were a
long way from drying out. As Rhun stumped through the ferns and
bushes on a well-worn path, Rhun found himself admiring Prior
Rhys’s skill in preventing Teilo and the monks from trampling
whatever evidence might have been left behind. At the same time, he
knew exactly what the prior had done to achieve it: he had a way of
looking at a man that sent shivers down his spine. And if Rhun, a
prince of Gwynedd, felt that way, one would be hard pressed to find
an illiterate peasant who could withstand it for more than a few
heartbeats.

“What have you discovered?” Gwen said when
Prior Rhys stopped in a small open space near the water’s edge.
She, apparently, remained unintimidated.

Prior Rhys indicated the ground in front of
him, giving no indication he objected to Gwen’s straightforward
demand. “Some blood and scuffed earth.”

“What do they tell you?” Gwen said. “It’s
pretty clear from the body that the man was stabbed.”

If Rhun hadn’t known it before, he was
learning it now: when Gwen focused, very little could deter her
from her chosen path. Some might claim that doggedness was a man’s
trait, but Rhun knew quite a few women with that characteristic,
some of whom had far less tact than Gwen. Rhun’s stepmother,
Cristina, came instantly to mind, and half-shuddering, Rhun pushed
away her image.

Hywel had teased Rhun only this morning
about his quest for a wife, wondering how he was going to find one
stuck away in the backwater that was Aberystwyth. What Hywel didn’t
yet know—and Rhun wasn’t going to tell him until things had
progressed much farther than they so far had—was that he was well
on his way to finding his own wife.

Rhun had been spending the summer supporting
his brother’s rule of Ceredigion, and in so doing, Rhun had
traveled multiple times at Hywel’s behest to visit Dinefwr Castle,
the seat of King Cadell of Deheubarth. Relations had been more
cordial than Rhun (or Hywel) might have expected, considering that
Hywel was ruling Ceredigion, which Cadell considered part of
Deheubarth and rightfully under his jurisdiction.

While Rhun had been overtly supporting
Hywel’s agenda, he had also been pursuing his own. Cadell had a
niece, Angharad, who had caught Rhun’s eye. When Cadell had agreed
to attend Hywel’s festival, the king had also promised that
Angharad would accompany him to Aberystwyth.

But even if Gwen had known about Angharad,
Rhun’s romantic prospects were the last thing that she was
concerned about right now. Rhun, however, hoped that this murder
would be cleared up quickly, before Angharad arrived. He didn’t
want anything to distract him from her, even as—almost against his
wishes—he could feel a growing sense of obligation to discover who
had murdered this poor, unnamed peasant.

Prior Rhys seemed to be feeling it too. He
bared his teeth in a silent grimace as he looked through the
overhanging branches, thick with leaves this time of year, to the
millpond. “Stabbed is it? What do you say to the idea that the dead
man and his killer conversed in this small space?” He made a
sweeping motion with his arm to indicate the area under the trees a
dozen feet from the edge of the pond. “They argued, one man stabbed
the other, he fell, and then the murderer dragged the body into the
pond, hoping to wash away the evidence.”

“I can see it,” Prince Rhun said. “He hoped
the body would sink as drowned bodies are supposed to.”

Prior Rhys raised his eyebrows.

“Thus Gwen explained to me just now,” Rhun
added. “The killer would have wanted to put time and space between
him and the body immediately. Hiding the evidence was one way to do
that. He should have buried it instead.”

“It takes time and effort to dig a grave
deep enough to bury a man, time the murderer may not have had,”
Prior Rhys said. “Not to mention a shovel.”

“It would have been difficult to keep quiet
about it this close to the road and the monastery too,” Prince Rhun
agreed. “The millpond must have seemed like an easy solution.”

“Prior.” Teilo was back, ducking his head in
obeisance. “We haven’t found anything else.”

Prior Rhys nodded. “Thank you for your
efforts.” He dismissed the monk to help his brother monk guard the
body. Then he sent Teilo off too, with a warning not to gossip
about what he’d seen. Given Teilo’s bright eyes, Rhun suspected the
warning fell on deaf ears. It was a good thing Teilo hadn’t
witnessed Gwen’s examination of the body because the story he would
tell would be that the man had drowned, just as they wanted.

Prior Rhys looked at Gwen. “If the murderer
left the area, we may never catch him.”

“We can’t think that way,” Gwen said. “Hywel
always tells me to pull on any thread that’s offered and unravel it
to see where it leads. If the murderer has left Aberystwyth, we
will know soon enough.”