The Manor of Death(11)

Widow Makerel sat looking up at the men, her eyes red-rimmed with old tears. She had a piece of rag in her hands, and her fingers continually tore at it as she spoke.

'He was not really a shipman, sirs. The lad wanted to become a clerk, but I could not afford for him to go and learn his letters. He said he would earn enough in a few years to do that and had been apprenticed to a baker in Seaton, but it burnt down a month ago and he had to seek work elsewhere. Since his father was drowned at the fishing, my two sons are our only support. The other one labours in the quarries in Beer. I did not want my boys to suffer the fate of my husband, but Simon was determined to go.'

'So he went to sea recently, madam?' asked John politely. 'But he returned home safely some days ago?'

She nodded, still shredding the rag between her fingers. 'It was but his second voyage, sir. He hated it, but it earned the few pence we sorely needed. In fact, he came back last Thursday with more than we expected. He flung it down on the table and refused to say where it came from. I knew something was very wrong.' She began to sob, and again it was Gwyn who tried to console her. The big, shambling officer placed an arm around her shoulders as he bent over her. 'We need you to look at a body, Edith. Only you can help us in this. Come with us now, across to the church.'

As they all slowly crossed the village street to the church of St Michael, Luke de Casewold murmured to his clerk: 'How did you find her, Hugh?'

'I went around the few ships on that side of the river, but none could - or would - tell me anything. Then I found the reeve of Seaton and he said that Widow Makerel had been searching for her son Simon. I went to see her and it seemed likely that a dark-haired youth of eighteen might be the one we seek.'

In the churchyard, before the procession reached the mortuary shed, Thomas de Peyne and the parish priest, Henry of Cumba, appeared from the ornately carved arch which was the entrance to the church. Hugh Bogge briefly explained to them what was happening, and now the two priests took over from Gwyn as supporters of Edith Makerel. They guided her under the lean-to roof and the identification was short and dramatic.

With a howl, the poor woman fell upon the body as Thomas uncovered the face and lay sobbing across the odorous fish-cart. Her pathetic cries of 'My son, my poor son!' left no doubt as to the identity of the corpse.

An admitted coward in the face of emotional crises, John backed away and left the two priests with the distraught woman. As he walked back to the gate of the churchyard with the Keeper of the Peace and his clerk, he pondered the possible significance of what they had heard.

'Why strangle some young deckhand?' he muttered. 'He was hardly likely to have a heavy purse upon him that could be stolen.'

'What about this money that his mother said he gave her?' asked Luke. 'She seemed surprised and a little suspicious of where it came from. And why did she say there was something amiss with the lad when he returned from the voyage?'

De Wolfe turned to Hugh Bogge as they reached the village street. 'Do you know what vessel he was sailing on? Is it one of those still along the quayside there?'

'No, I asked the widow. She said this was the second voyage her son had made on a cog called The Tiger. He was due to sail on her again for Calais yesterday, but of course he went missing.'

'Damnation! I needed to have called her crew to my inquest tomorrow.' The coroner was irritated that nothing seemed to be going smoothly with this case. 'Is there no one else who knew the boy?'

'There is his brother - and his mother said he has a girl in Seaton whom he hoped to marry.'

'Get them to the inquest in the morning - I will hold it in the churchyard at the tenth hour. My own officer can roust out the rest to form a jury; the bailiff, the portreeve, the priest and a dozen villagers will suffice.'

De Wolfe looked at the Harbour Inn across the road. 'This looks the best tavern in the place. I need to find us a good meal and a mattress each for the night.'





CHAPTER TWO





In which the coroner holds an inquest





Soon after dawn, John de Wolfe roused himself from his bed, which had been a hessian bag stuffed with straw. The accommodation for guests in Axmouth's premier inn was a barn-like building at the back of the tavern, where the upper floor was reached by a ladder. On the bare boards, a dozen such mattresses were spread out, the management providing a coarse blanket as an added luxury, under which the lodgers slept in their clothes, minus boots and headgear. The coroner stood up and looked around the loft in the pale morning light, which squeezed in through several slits in the walls. He saw four or five other men huddled on their pallets, as well as Thomas and Gwyn, the latter snoring like a grampus.

Pulling on his boots, he prodded his officer and clerk with a toecap and, when he was sure that they were groaning themselves awake, went down to the floor below. Here, several other men, all shipmen by their clothing, sat on benches at a long trestle table, slurping gruel from wooden bowls and eating fresh barley bread cut from several loaves lying on the scrubbed boards.