The Manor of Death(14)

Henry of Cumba was called as the First Finder, and John accepted that the parish priest had fulfilled his legal duty by immediately informing the portreeve and bailiff of his discovery of the corpse. Strictly speaking, he should have raised the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households to search for the killer, but as the body had obviously been buried for days and the whole village had rapidly turned out to gossip about the event, de Wolfe refrained from imposing a fine.

Next, the bailiff grudgingly admitted that he had been informed of the death by the priest and had gone with the portreeve to confirm that there was indeed a body behind the hazel bush. Then the Keeper stood forward, even before de Wolfe could ask him, to deliver a self-important and long-winded description of how he had heard of the discovery and had sent his clerk hurrying to Exeter to notify the coroner.

Edith Makerel, the widow from Seaton, was this morning supported by her remaining son and a young woman who John took to be the girlfriend of the dead Simon. Between them, they gently moved the weeping mother forward, where she haltingly confirmed that the body was indeed that of her son.

'He was a good lad, kind to me and gentle, as one would expect for one who wanted to take holy orders,' she said between sobs. 'He should never have gone to sea. The life and the men he was with were too rough for his temperament.'

The coroner, as always uncomfortable with any show of emotion, particularly from women, tried to get her to enlarge on her comment that Simon had been worried or unhappy after returning from his voyage, but she was unable to be more specific. John tried another approach.

'If your son was of a religious nature, might he not have confided something to a priest?'

Edith wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. 'He was a diligent attender at Seaton church, sir, and respected the priest there very much. He might have done, I suppose, but he said nothing about it to me.'

John bent down to Thomas and muttered into his ear: 'We should have got the priest from Seaton over here. Would you be able to get anything out of him if you went over there?'

Thomas, though always anxious to help, looked dubious. 'If it was said in the confessional, he would not divulge it even to me. It seems an unlikely path to follow, master.'

De Wolfe grunted his acceptance of his clerk's opinion and carried on with some questions, but they led nowhere. The brother of the dead man, a sallow fellow probably six years older than Simon, had little to offer.

'As our mother has said, my brother seemed distant in his mind when he returned from his voyage. And he had money, which was unusual.'

Simon's girlfriend, a plain pudding of a wench about sixteen years of age, was equally unhelpful. De Wolfe gained the impression that she was more a dog-like follower of the sailor than his choice of a future mate - which fitted with his ambition to one day enter holy orders.

Then John called the portreeve, mainly to justify his insistence that Elias Palmer must attend the inquest, but, apart from confirming his view of the body and the name of the cog and her master that Simon Makerel had sailed upon, it was a futile exercise.

After scowling around the blank faces of the jurors, he asked if anyone had anything they wished to say that might be relevant, but there was a stony silence. Then Luke de Casewold, to John's smouldering annoyance, spoke up in his harsh, piercing voice.

'Come, someone must know something! This is a small port. Everyone always knows each other's business.' He smacked his palms together, like a schoolmaster warning his pupils. 'Speak up, or it will go badly with you!'

His threatening exhortation fell on deaf ears.

Though there was some muted grumbling and men looked sullenly at each other, no one volunteered a single word. The coroner, though regretting the lack of any progress, was secretly pleased that this interloper's brashness had failed so abjectly.

The last act in this fruitless performance was the exhibition of the body to the jury, which was demanded by the law. Gwyn pulled down the sheet that covered the head and neck, and the score of village men and mariners filed past, as de Wolfe pointed out the marks on the neck, which had become more livid and prominent with the passage of time.

'There seems nothing more to be said, then,' he concluded. 'No verdict can be reached on such thin evidence, so this inquest is adjourned until some later day. That will probably depend upon when the vessel, The Tiger, returns to this harbour.'

He stopped and cleared his throat as he looked at the grieving mother. 'In the meantime, the body of Simon Makerel may be restored to his family for burial.'

Gwyn stood and bellowed out that 'all good men may now depart and take their ease', and the crowd melted away, a substantial proportion going in the direction of the Harbour Inn and other alehouses.