Текст книги "The Crediton Killings"

Автор книги: Michael Jecks

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

His face was white now as he saw his error. It was not the Keeper who was his enemy: it was the Keeper’s friend – the bailiff of Lydford Castle.

Quickly now, he ran through how Simon Puttock must have deliberately misinformed the Keeper. First he must have taken money from the captain, for no one deliberately changed the outcome of a trial for nothing. Sir Hector must have bribed him, then, and the bailiff accepted the money to protect the mercenary. From then on, he would have prompted people to change their evidence, making them think they were helping justice as they tried to please him, lying… no, not necessarily lying. Some of them probably thought the bailiff was right and they had been mistaken. It was so easy for an uneducated man to be confused with legal prattle.

No doubt some had been bribed to lie. That Wat was untrustworthy; he had always thought so. The mercenary looked like a friendly old man, until you stared hard into his eyes, and then you could see how the resentment flickered and burned. Of course, the man was safe from most, but not from someone who understood how dark the soul could be; not from someone who had learned how evil even those whom one had trusted completely might become. For nobody could be trusted; only oneself and one’s dagger were certain.

But what could he do about it? His eyes were haunted as he considered his awful predicament. Clearly the main obstacle to justice was the bailiff. Simon Puttock must be forced to admit his complicity with the captain, or suffer.

Then his mind, with a wonderful clarity of insight, focused on how he might force the duplicitous bailiff to confess his guilt.

And he smiled.

Peter Clifford watched as the two men were helped from their horses. Bound at the wrists, they were uncomfortable and peevish, but though both sulked, neither attempted to deny their guilt. The packmule loaded with its three heavy sacks told its own tale.

Sighing, Peter went back inside to wait. Baldwin and Simon had arrived a little earlier, and the bailiff was out in the garden with his wife and daughter, while Baldwin was ensconced in a large throne-like chair, his fingers steepled together, head bowed as if in prayer.

Hearing the priest enter, he glanced up. “They’re here?”

“Yes.” Peter crossed the room to another seat. He had just settled himself when Stapledon’s men entered with their prisoners. Others trailed along behind and dumped their sacks with a merry clanking that sounded like hundreds of horseshoes clattering on the rush-covered stone floor.

Baldwin studied the two men for a moment, then gestured at the sacks. “Do you deny the theft now?”

Henry looked up sulkily. His eye was blackened, and his hair was matted over his forehead where he had been struck with a cudgel when he tried to make a run for it. He met the Keeper’s gaze with as much dignity as he could muster. “Look at us, sir. We’ve been beaten, bound, and hauled back here against our will, and…”

“Silence! Don’t think you can brazen this out. You were caught with the stolen goods on you, trying to sell them for the best possible price. I am sorely tempted to throw you to your captain for him to mete out justice, for I think he would be keen to exact his own price on you for your disloyalty. Tell me now, what happened on the day you stole all this plate.”

It was at this point that Simon entered. He walked in with Hugh, and they moved quietly along the wall to seat themselves at a bench a little way behind Baldwin.

Simon was surprised at the anger in his friend’s voice. He had often seen Baldwin interrogating people, but never had he witnessed the knight in such a state of complete cold fury. From where he sat he could not see Baldwin’s face, but the chilling tones obviously reflected his temper perfectly.

It was rare for Baldwin to feel like this, and he was himself a little shocked by his mood, but to his way of thinking, the robbery had sparked off the series of murders. He had an urge to blunt his bitter rage at so many pointless killings on the two men who had begun the chain of events.

“Sir, all we have done was take some things from our captain because he owed us money.”

“You robbed a man of his own possessions. And killed a girl, an innocent little girl who had done you no harm…”

“That’s a lie!” John Smithson declared hotly. “We never hurt her. She was just…”

“Shut up, you idiot! Do you want to wear a hemp necklace?” Henry snarled.

“You shut up. I won’t swing for what Hector’s done!”

“Tell us what happened, I am sick to death of the lies and innuendos I have been given by you two and the others in the gang. There have been three deaths now, and I want to know what’s been going on.”

“Three deaths?” Henry repeated. He was quieter now, his eyes wide with horror. “But we’ve had nothing to do with them.” Then, a little bolder, “They must have been after we left. You can’t say we did them.”

“I can say a lot,” Baldwin said pointedly. “I can say that one happened during your robbery, another on the night you left town. We don’t know when the third murder took place, but it was quite likely while you were still here.”

“Who? Who were they?”

“Sarra you know of. The night you left, a poor beggar woman called Judith was murdered in an alleyway, and today we have found the body of Mary Butcher.”

“Why would we kill a load of women we knew nothing about?”

“You knew Sarra,” Simon interjected. “You tried to rape her the night you all got here.”

“That wasn’t rape! We thought she was just a tavern-wench; we never thought she’d be worried. Anyway, we left her alone when Hector told us to.”

“But you wanted her, didn’t you?” Baldwin continued. “And you killed her later – from jealousy, maybe, or perhaps just because she was there and saw you stealing the plate.”

Smithson shot a look at his confederate. “No,” he said wearily. “That’s not how it was.”

His quiet tones were in contrast to Henry’s outraged protestations, and Simon breathed a little easier. While Baldwin had been examining the men, Simon had been unsure as to how the two would react, but John Smithson’s change of temper heralded a change in the wind for the pair.

“That’s not how it was at all,” he said again, his head downcast. “We had nothing to do with the killing. It was like this. We were here five or so years ago, staying in the same inn for a while. Me and Henry met Adam then, and we all got on. He was a bully man, keen on a joke and having fun, and had a good stock of comic tales. It was fine to sit up with a jug of strong ale with him of an evening. Of course, then he had been apprentice to his old master, who still has his shop in the shambles with the other butchers. Adam managed to get his new place three or four years ago.”

“Do you know how he managed to afford it?” Simon interjected.

“No, sir. But I could guess. Adam was never one to quail from risks if the money was good. He was always prepared to take a gamble if he could see profit, and I expect he won the money.”

“Or fooled someone into giving it to him,” Baldwin guessed.

“Maybe, sir. Anyway, Henry and me have been with Sir Hector for many years now. Earlier on it was fine, with good profits and the chance to rule ourselves as we liked, but things have been getting slack recently. Sir Hector’s become too easygoing. He used to be a strong man, able to bend anyone to his will, but times have changed. For the past year we’ve not won a single contract, and the money’s been hard to come by. It was late last year that we decided there was nothing worth doing in Gascony. We’d heard there were good sums to be gained out in Morocco, fighting with the Moors to protect their lands from their Eastern neighbors, but Sir Hector was against the idea, and others backed him up. So we set off to return to England.

“The grumbling began almost as soon as we landed at London. The prices there are insane! It’s a wonder that anyone can afford to live there, the way that the citizens have tied everyone into their guilds and clubs. Anyway, it wasn’t long before we heard about the war in the north, and the King’s new army, so we set off to join him.

“But even the King turned us down. For experience, for training, for determination, he could not ask for better troops, but Edward did not want us.”

“Perhaps,” Baldwin remarked, “he had heard tell that you had changed sides before.”

John stared with open astonishment. “But anyone would do that when his side begins to lose! It’s only common sense.”

Baldwin said nothing, eyeing him grimly, and the man continued defensively: “When Edward’s commissioners rejected us, the complaints became near to outright rebellion. Some of the lads were suggesting that the captain should be chucked. It was his responsibility to keep the men together, his job to find us new contracts, for there is no point to our way of life if we have no one who wants us, no one to pay for us. We might just as well be villeins in another’s army. And the trouble was, we were always seen to be loyal men of Sir Hector’s. None of the others trusted us because they thought we were with him.

“It came to a head some miles from Winchester, on our way back to the coast. We approached Wat to join his side. The last thing we wanted was to be killed for being too loyal to Sir Hector. But he refused to listen – denied any scheme to oust Sir Hector. So it was obvious we no longer had any safety in the company. We thought we’d better run – and the silver would make life easier for us.

“When we got back here, and met with Adam again, the idea of getting away seemed like the best one for us. If we stayed, we would get killed; if we left, we could find another company or do something else. Try farming, make a new assart: anything.

“We saw Adam on the way into town, and later that afternoon, he came to us at the inn and suggested we should meet the next night, when all the men would be a bit quieter. We couldn’t see him that night, because Sir Hector was set for a good banquet. As you know, our captain went out next morning, told us later he’d met with his woman again…”

“Mary Butcher,” Baldwin observed.

“Yes, sir. Like you say, Mary, Adam Butcher’s wife. We were horrified.”

“And you told Adam?”

“God’s blood, no!” The exclamation was too emphatic to be false. “Don’t you know what his temper is like? If we’d done that, Adam would have been in there straight away with a cleaver. No, we didn’t mention her at all.”

“But I suppose your master was pleased to hear you would be drinking with his lover’s husband?”

John bit his lip sheepishly. “He asked us to take Adam away for a bit, said we’d be well rewarded if Adam could be made to have an accident, but we refused.”

Henry butted in. “We wouldn’t just kill a man for another’s passion.”

“No, I daresay you wouldn’t,” said Baldwin pensively. “Not when you could see a way to winning all Sir Hector’s money without risking a rope.”

“We never risked the rope,” Henry declared with passion. “Look, we went out with Adam, and we talked, but he refused to consider it at first. We rode to the old inn toward Sandford, and spent most of the night there, chatting about things, and we raised the idea of taking Sir Hector’s plate, but Adam wouldn’t hear of it. He left us, to return home early in the morning, but changed his mind, and came to meet us, and then we agreed what…”

“He changed his mind?” Baldwin interrupted.

“Yes, sir. He left the inn before us to make his way into town. By the time we were up at the cross on the Barnstaple road, he came haring back. He said he’d been thinking, and that he’d be mad not to accept. It was rare enough that a chance to get hold of so much money came along, and he couldn’t throw over the opportunity.”

“I see. Continue.”

“It was easy,” said John. “Sir Hector was out first thing, and came back in the afternoon, leaving again later on. Our only fear was Wat, because he might have enjoyed seeing us flogged, but Sir Hector had told him to collect the new dress for him. We knew we had plenty of time without interruptions – all we had to do was make sure we were out before Wat came in to fetch the salt for Hector’s meal – so we went to the captain’s rooms, pretending to want to see him. We knew he wasn’t there, but it gave us time to open the shutters to the yard. Then we left; and I kept a lookout while Henry climbed in through the window. He closed the shutters, and I walked out to the front. He started passing things to me there.”

Henry spoke up sulkily. “John was pretending to be helping Adam. The butcher had sent his apprentice inside to see to the meats there. I passed the things out to John, and he shoved them all into a sack in the back of Adam’s wagon. Adam kept a lookout on the main street and up the hill beside, and John could see up the other way.”

“Why go through the charade of entering to open the shutter, leaving again, and climbing in from the yard? You were inside already, so what was the point?” Simon asked.

Henry threw him an astonished glance. “We went in to see him – we were pretending we thought he was there. How long would it have been before one of the others came in to find out what we were doing if we’d stayed there longer? No, we went in to unlock the shutters, and then we knew we could get in through the yard and spend as long inside as we liked.”

“Weren’t the men in the hall suspicious?” Baldwin asked.

“Well, we don’t speak to them too much. No, they said nothing. Someone sniggered when we came out, sort of thought it was funny we’d been searching for the captain. Later, when the silver was all out, we did the same again. John came round to the back and tapped on the frame when it was all quiet, and I got out. Then we went back pretending to see if Sir Hector had returned yet, and locked the shutters again.”

“Didn’t you fear someone walking along the street and seeing you during this exercise?”

John Smithson smiled slyly. “We’d thought about that. Adam had gutted some calves that morning and left their innards like ropes all over the pavement. Nobody came close, not with the smell of that lot festering in the sun for five hours – even the horses went on the other side of the street.”

“So you cleared out all the plate?”

“Yes, and then Adam took the wagon round to his shed and stored the silver in his hayloft. At the same time Henry climbed out and we went back inside to shut the window again.”

“The girl,” Simon muttered. “What about the girl?”

John looked at Henry, who was pale now, with a light sheen of sweat over his features. “I swear,” he said, and his voice was a croak, “I never killed her.”

“But you knocked her out? And stuffed her into the chest?” Simon said, rising and standing beside Baldwin. “Why?”

“When I climbed inside, through the window, it was empty. Later, I heard her approaching the room. She was calling out, happy. I just had time to nip behind the door, and when she came in I clouted her with my cudgel. She went down like a squirrel shot by a slingshot from a tree. John was at the window by then; I don’t know whether she saw him before she fell. I just trussed her up and dumped her inside the nearest chest. That’s all, and I’ll take my oath on the Bible for it.”

“You may have to,” Baldwin said quietly. “And that in front of a Bishop.”

Henry squared his shoulders. “It’s the truth.”

Glancing at John, Simon saw him purse his lips. “What about you, John?”

“Me?”

“Somebody returned to the body and stabbed Sarra twice. When the lid lifted, she must have thought it was someone coming to free her but, instead, she saw that person thrust down with a knife. She couldn’t even scream, with her mouth gagged. Was it you?”

“I said: I was outside.”

“Yes, but Henry has just pointed out that you were at the window when she came in; she might have seen you.”

“I don’t think so. I…”

“Were you prepared to take the risk? If she had seen you, she could tell her master what you had done, couldn’t she? You couldn’t afford to leave her alive. She was a witness to your theft.”

John stared at Henry. “Was I there on my own for any moment?” he demanded.

“No.” The other’s voice allowed no doubt. “Neither of us were. We were together all the time we were in there.”

“How so? What about when you, Henry, were inside, and John was out? When you had finished passing the plate out and went to the back of the inn, it would have been easy for John to slip inside and murder the girl, wouldn’t it?”

“He couldn’t have, sir,” Henry stated. “I thought he had at first, but he couldn’t. When I left that room, I barred the shutters. The only way in was through the window of the back room or the door. No one could have got in from the front.”

Baldwin stirred. “You realize the difficulty,” he remarked. “You confess to striking the girl, and to putting her into the chest, and then expect us to believe you when you say you had nothing to do with her death. Nobody else knew she was there.”

“One man did,” Henry muttered, and Baldwin groaned as he realized.

“Of course!”

“He was there when I told John about the girl, and he was here in the town after we’d left. I don’t know why you reckon the other girls got killed, but I’d be willing to bet it was him as killed them all.”

Simon met Baldwin’s gaze with a perplexed frown. “The butcher – Adam?”

“He was the only one,” Baldwin said slowly. He wondered why he had not seriously considered the man before.

“But why should he kill them all, though?”

“Because he knew that each of these women had a link to Hector. Every one of them was associated with him in some way – the serving-girl Sarra, Judith because she had been a serving-girl years before, and Mary because she had been his lover. Perhaps he killed her because of jealousy, for no other reason. She had been dead some days. I think he murdered her as soon as he could after finding out about her infidelity. He heard about Sarra from Henry, so he stabbed her…”

“Sir, he couldn’t have,” Henry said.

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t have been able to get into the solar. We could do it only because we were known. A stranger like him would have been stopped at the hall.”

“Sarra got in,” Simon said. “And obviously didn’t leave. The guards didn’t stop her, or look for her when she didn’t come out.”

“That’s different! They all knew she had been sleeping with Sir Hector. They would have assumed she was waiting for him inside. Adam would never have got in.”

“I think you miss a point here,” Baldwin said languidly, sipping from a goblet of watered wine. “You departed by the window, then went back inside to lock it, to make it look as if no one could have got in that way, yes? You had told Adam about the girl already. Right, then. I think he saw a wonderful opportunity. You told him, and went to go inside: through the hall to the solar. Meanwhile, he clambered in through the window to the yard, threw open the lid, stabbed her, dropped the lid, and was out again, before you had gone through the hall.”

“He could have, Henry,” Smithson said in awestruck tones.

“It meets the facts as we know them,” Baldwin asserted. “Except there is still one thing. The man whom you intended to be captured… What happened to Cole?”

All at once Smithson’s eyes shifted nervously, while Henry sighed. When he spoke, it was with a kind of sullen defeat, as if he accepted at last that he was convicted and might as well confess all in the hope of leniency.

“It was me. He’d been asking about us all day, trying to make out we’d killed his brother. We hadn’t, for we were nowhere near him on the day he died. We were on the flanks, while he was with Sir Hector in the center of the troop. But Cole was wary of us, and it seemed to me to be a good thing if we could get rid of him. I waited till he was out alone in the yard, and then kicked over some harness in the stable. He came up quick enough, and as soon as he was inside, I threw some horseshoes over to the other side of the door. When he turned to the noise, I clobbered him. I dragged him over to the back, and then had the idea of putting the blame on him. Nobody in the company would miss him, for he was new to us, so people could be suspicious of him. I tied him, and left him at the back of the stable. Adam brought his cart round, and we hid Cole between two calves’ carcasses, took him out to the south, and left him tied to a tree. Later, me and John walked there. John had fetched a couple of items from our hoard to leave on him, and then we waited. He didn’t wake while we were there.”

Baldwin rested his chin on his fist as he looked from one to the other. “I see. Your openness does you some credit, I suppose. At least after this, we now know that Cole can be freed.”

“Yes, and Adam Butcher should be taken at once,” Simon agreed.

“Be careful,” Henry said. “He always was a hard man but now, since he’s learned of what his wife got up to, I think he’s more than a little bit mad.”

“Come, Simon,” Baldwin said, getting up. “Let us visit the butcher and see what he has to say for himself.”

Hugh and Edgar in tow, they made their way to the door, while Stapledon’s men remained with the two prisoners. Baldwin was about to go out through the front when he heard the scream.