'He was strangled by a rope, held by someone standing behind him!' grated de Wolfe. 'So much for your drowned sailor, portreeve! Keeper, you were right: this is murder!'
Sir Luke de Casewold smiled smugly. 'I knew it from the outset, though the earth prevented me from seeing that strangling mark. But what innocent death ends up in a hole behind a bush, eh?'
De Wolfe rose to his feet, feeling the twinge in his bottom that he had mercifully forgotten for the past few minutes. 'Have you a dead-house or somewhere where we can lay this poor fellow until I hold the inquest?' He directed his question at the whole group of onlookers, but it was the old priest who answered.
'We have a shed in the churchyard where we lay cadavers awaiting burial. Will that suffice, sir?'
Within minutes, a handcart was fetched from the quayside. It stank of fish but was good enough to transport the corpse past the gawping villagers back to St Michael's Church, a sturdy stone edifice that had replaced the earlier wooden chapel of Saxon times. When the body was safely parked in the ramshackle lean-to against the north wall of the building, with a couple of barley sacks thrown over it, John turned to face the men who had trailed behind the cart.
'Now I need to get some sense out of you all!' he rasped, glowering around them, some obviously not disposed to be particularly cooperative.
'What the hell do we know about it?' growled the bailiff. 'He's a stranger here. I've never set eyes upon him before.' Elias Palmer, the lanky portreeve, nodded his agreement, for he seemed to go along with anything Edward Northcote decreed.
'We need to know who he is, as soon as possible,' said de Casewold with an air of authority. 'The coroner here has to enquire into his death without delay.'
Again John was exasperated that the self-important Keeper seemed intent on doing his work for him. 'There are many issues to be settled, apart from his identity, though I admit that is of prior urgency.' He fixed his stony stare on the parish priest. 'Father Henry, you say he is not one of your flock from this village. Have you any other suggestions?'
The cleric rubbed his bald pate as if to stimulate his ancient brain. 'He was buried more than a mile from the river mouth, so is unlikely to have been washed up from the open sea.'
'He showed no signs of being in the water - at least not for more than an hour or two. And he certainly didn't drown!' snapped de Wolfe.
'It suggests that he is from the locality, if he's not a shipwrecked sailor,' mused the priest. 'Yet he wears a seaman's garb'.
Gwyn leant towards his master. 'If he's not from this port, what about those other havens nearby?' he whispered hoarsely.
John nodded at the suggestion. 'What about the village on the other side of the river, almost on the shore?'
The portreeve seemed anxious to keep in favour with all sides of the debate.
'Seaton, you mean, Crowner?' he asked eagerly. 'There are certainly ships and shipmen there, though most are fishermen. He could have come from there, I suppose.'
'And equally from Sidmouth or Budleigh - even from Lyme, in the next county!' countered Northcote, intent on being difficult.
De Wolfe next addressed the Keeper, determined to show him who was in charge here. 'I suggest, Sir Luke, that you send your clerk across the river to enquire if any man has gone missing from there in the past few days. The state of this corpse suggests that he has been dead less than a week, even though cold earth slows down the pace of corruption. '
De Casewold looked slightly affronted at being told what to do by a law officer he considered to be of equal status, but he made no protest and sent Hugh Bogge, with one of the villagers, to find his way across the water to Seaton.
'Meanwhile, I and my officer and clerk need some sustenance after the long ride from Exeter,' declared the coroner. 'Where can we be fed and rested for an hour?'
Normally, a king's officer such as de Wolfe would claim hospitality from the local lord in his castle or manor house - or failing that in an abbey or priory. As Axmouth had none of these, it fell to the bailiff to grudgingly offer his own house for the purpose, rather than suggest one of the many taverns that catered mainly for seafarers. 'I can't offer much. I have no wife to cater for me, only an idle servant,' he warned.
John and his two companions followed him from the church back up the short street that lay within the walls to one of the better buildings in the village. Luke de Casewold attached himself to them without invitation, as did Elias Palmer.
Like most of the other cottages, the bailiff's house was built of cob plastered within stout oak frames, but it was in good condition, with fresh whitewash on the walls and new thatch on the roof. It consisted of one large room, the end partitioned off for his bed, a luxury indicative of his position in the community. In view of the mild weather, only a small fire glowed in the clay-lined pit, ringed with stones, in the centre of the floor. What little smoke there was wafted upwards to find its way out under the eaves, as there was no chimney. No cooking was done here, as there was a separate kitchen-hut behind the house, with a larger fire tended by his servant.