House of Shadows Read online

  Brother Ignatius was holding his candle in front of his chest, and when John happened to glance at him the light threw his face into sharp relief. The coroner was momentarily startled to see what looked almost like the mask of a devil, with an expression of loathing amounting to hatred as the monk stared down at the girl on the floor. De Wolfe blinked in surprise and a moment later the image had passed, leaving him to wonder if he had imagined it.

  ‘Are we going to take a look at her, Crowner?’

  Gwyn’s down-to-earth voice brought John back to reality as he heard the doubt in his officer’s tone. This was a high-born young lady, and it was unseemly to make any extensive examination, especially with no woman available to act as a chaperone. At home in Exeter, if any intimate examination was required, especially in suspected rape or miscarriage, he usually called on the services of Dame Madge, a formidable nun from Polsloe Priory, who specialized in the ailments of women.

  ‘We’ll confine it to her head and hands for now. If necessary, we can find a woman to help us later.’ De Wolfe squatted on one side of the corpse, with Gwyn on the other, a routine they had carried out innumerable times in the past eighteen months since he had been appointed coroner. He gently lifted her eyelids and looked at the whites of the flaccid globes, now collapsed so long after death. ‘No blood spots there, no marks on her neck, so she’s not been throttled. The windows of her eyes are clouded over after ten days, ice or no ice.’

  His long, bony fingers then explored her hair, feeling the scalp underneath.

  ‘Lift her a little, Gwyn,’ he commanded, and his hands slid under the back of her head. ‘Ha, what have we here?’ he exclaimed. ‘Pull the lady right up, will you?’

  His officer lifted Christina by the shoulders until she was in a sitting position, her head lolling loosely to one side. The coroner steadied it and let her chin sink to her chest as he felt around the top of her head and then down to the nape of her neck, all covered in the wet, dark hair.

  ‘A boggy swelling, almost on top of her skull,’ he announced in a low voice. ‘I can feel the bone cracked beneath it.’

  Gwyn repeated the palpation, to confirm what his master had said. ‘And her neck must have gone, too, Crowner. Her head wobbles like a bladder on a stick!’ He was likening it to the child’s toy, an inflated pig’s bladder tied to the end of a twig.

  John felt it for himself, flopping the head back and forth in his hands, then motioned to Gwyn to set the cadaver back on the ground. He looked at her hands and arms, visible up to the elbows when he pushed up the wide sleeves of her gown. There was nothing to be seen, and he risked a look at her legs, lifting the skirts as far as her knees, again confirming that there were no visible injuries.

  As Gwyn carefully rearranged her clothing, de Wolfe stood up and contemplated the dead girl lying on the floor in the flickering candlelight. It was Brother Ignatius who first broke the strained silence.

  ‘From what you said, sir, I understand that she has suffered an injury to her head. This is what our infirmarian suspected.’ His tone suggested that he thought it a long and unnecessary journey from distant Devon to confirm what they already knew.

  ‘She has indeed, brother. And her neck is broken.’

  ‘But this is surely what would be expected in a fall down those treacherous stairs?’ persisted the monk.

  ‘We shall see,’ replied de Wolfe enigmatically. ‘Meanwhile, we must place her back in the ice. I will suggest to your prior that arrangements for burial be begun without delay. In spite of the cold, my nose tells me that we cannot arrest the normal course of events much longer.’

  Gwyn lifted the body as if it were a feather and placed it back in the icy slush, which was dripping ever faster through the poor seams of the box. He gently covered her with the linen sheet and stepped back, as Thomas murmured a funereal litany in Latin.

  ‘Where will she be buried?’ asked Gwyn. ‘Will they put her here in that graveyard we saw when we arrived or take her home to this Derby place?’

  There was a low mumble from the chaplain, which John could not catch, but Thomas’s sharp ears picked it up, much to his surprise.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked John sharply.

  Ignatius shook his head. ‘I do not know where, Crowner. I expect the prior will have to consult her guardian before a decision can be made.’

  ‘Well, you had better hurry up about it,’ advised de Wolfe. ‘And keep using that ice for as long as she’s here.’

  They left the crypt-like basement with a feeling of relief, Thomas looking almost fearfully over his shoulder as they made their way back through the barrels and boxes stacked in the rest of the cellar. It seemed warmer – or, rather, less cold – in that area than in the further chamber, where the oppressive atmosphere seemed to bite at the skin and lungs.

  On the way out, John stopped to look again at the area around the foot of the stairs. He tapped the earth with his foot, then scraped at the moist soil with the toe of his riding boot. Looking up, the steep staircase was dimly lit by the tallow dip at the top, revealing the narrow passage between the walls of grey stone and the regular blocks of the same granite that formed the treads.

  He made no comment and led the way up to the door that opened into the courtyard. The snow was now coming down more thickly, though none had yet settled on the ground, and again Thomas shivered, this time from the undoubted cold that permeated his thin body to his very bones.

  As the chaplain closed the door, he noticed the clerk shudder and took pity on him. ‘There is a warming room at the side of the dorter, where a fire is kept going between November and Good Friday. You are welcome to sit there at any time in this inclement weather.’

  Thankfully, they took up the invitation and found the room sandwiched between the frater and the dorter, which joined at right-angles. Other than the prior’s quarters and the kitchens, it was the only place in the priory that was ever heated. There was a chimneyed hearth with a large log fire and a charcoal brazier sitting on a stone slab at the other side of the chamber. There were a number of benches around the walls and several hooded settles, whose wooden sides kept off some of the draught. Two older monks were fast asleep in a couple of these and several more were reading or dozing on the benches.

  ‘If you wait here for a while until the chill leaves you, I will send down when the prior is able to receive you again, Sir John,’ promised Ignatius before he glided silently away.

  ‘I can’t take to that fellow, somehow,’ rumbled Gwyn, as they found themselves a bench to one side of the hearth, out of earshot of the nearest Cluniacs. ‘Not that I’m all that partial to anyone in holy orders!’ he added with a meaningful dig in Thomas’s ribs.

  For once, the clerk failed to rise to the bait, as he leaned nearer to de Wolfe to whisper in a conspiratorial undertone. ‘Crowner, did you catch what he said in the crypt, when you asked where the girl was to be buried?’

  ‘I know he muttered something, but I couldn’t make it out,’ said John.

  ‘He said, “It should be at a crossroads, with a stake through her heart”!’

  ‘I said he was a nasty bastard!’ growled Gwyn, as de Wolfe digested this peculiar piece of information.

  ‘I saw his face at that moment too,’ he said slowly. ‘There is something very wrong in this place, so keep your eyes and ears open and your mouths shut!’

  ‘I trust you are refreshed after your long journey, Sir John,’ said Robert Northam courteously, rising from behind his table to greet the coroner. ‘I also understand that you have visited the scene of this tragedy and…’ He hesitated, at a loss how to phrase his question.

  De Wolfe helped him out without any finesse. ‘Yes, prior, I have also examined the corpse.’

  The priest sank on to his chair. ‘I see you have not brought your two assistants with you?’

  ‘No, I must speak to you alone.’ He looked meaningfully at Ignatius, who was standing in his usual protective position alongside Northam.

  ‘You
may speak freely in front of my secretary, Crowner. He is also my chaplain and my confessor.’

  John shook his head firmly. ‘Some things must be held in total confidence,’ he said. ‘I have strict instructions from the chief justiciar to that effect.’

  This was untrue, but he was quite prepared to lie when he considered it justified. The prior looked surprised but waved at Ignatius, who reluctantly left the chamber and closed the door. John wondered if he was outside, pressing his ear to the panels.

  ‘You have something to tell me?’ asked Northam anxiously as de Wolfe sat in the chair he had occupied previously.

  ‘Christina de Glanville was murdered,’ he said bluntly. ‘Your own instincts were correct. She did not fall down those stairs, alive or dead!’

  Robert’s fingers played agitatedly with the bronze crucifix hanging from a chain around his neck. ‘I suspected as much. But how can you be so certain?’

  ‘As you told me, the fact that her head was near the bottom step and that she was face down makes it a near impossibility for a fall downstairs. If she had pitched forwards, the likelihood would be for her feet to be nearest the step. It would be just possible for her to land on her head and somersault over, but then she would almost certainly land face up.’

  The prior frowned. ‘Is “almost certainly” enough?’ he asked.

  ‘There is more,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘She had a severe injury to the top of the back of her head, which had fractured her skull. Again, it is just possible, though unlikely, that she could land on the back of her head from a fall, but she would have had to twist in mid-air to achieve that. The stairway was so narrow that was almost impossible, and she would have struck the floor with her face first.’

  The prior was following this with quick nods of his head.

  ‘Furthermore, her neck was broken,’ went on de Wolfe. ‘But it was snapped in a backward direction, which is impossible from a heavy fall on the back of the head, which would have forced the chin downwards. The break occurred in the opposite direction, by the head being pulled backwards.’

  There was a pregnant silence. ‘You are absolutely sure of this?’ asked Northam, almost in a whisper.

  ‘She had not a single bruise nor scrape on her legs and arms,’ persisted John. ‘For someone to fall down twenty unyielding granite steps with sufficient force to crack the skull and break the neck, without striking their limbs on the edges, is beyond belief!’

  The prior gave a deep sigh of resignation. ‘So what do you surmise happened, Crowner?’

  ‘Someone struck her a heavy blow on the back of the head with some object. It must have been flat not to rip the skin, but heavy enough to shatter the bone. She would have lost her wits instantly, then the assailant gave her the coup de grâce by breaking her neck.’

  ‘How is that possible?’ wailed Robert Northam.

  John shrugged. ‘Quite easily. I have seen it done in the mêlée of combat. One hand cupped under the chin, the other on the nape of the neck – then a quick jerk backwards.’

  The prior shuddered. ‘We must be looking for a brute with great strength, surely?’

  The coroner shook his head, his jet-black hair bouncing over the collar of his grey tunic. ‘Not at all. Any determined man could do it – or woman, for that matter!’

  The prior crossed himself in horror, reminding John of his clerk’s habit. ‘God preserve us from that! There were several ladies about the poor girl, but none of them could possibly be involved.’

  ‘Who exactly were those ladies?’ demanded the coroner.

  ‘There was Margaret de Courtenay, who was to be the maid of honour at the wedding. She was a friend of Lady Christina, from the time they were in Sempringham together, so I understand.’

  John could feel that Robert Northam was trying to distance himself as much as possible from any close acquaintance with the dramatis personae in this tragic drama.

  ‘Then there was Lady Avisa, who was virtually the mother of Christina, being the wife of her guardian, Roger Beaumont, together with their daughter, Eleanor. And, of course, there were various handmaidens and tirewomen who attended the three ladies,’ he added dismissively.

  ‘Were they all staying here at the priory?’

  ‘They were indeed, as we have ample accommodation since we became so popular with the king and his ministers as a place to safely house their guests in London.’ The prior sounded a little cynical at this demotion of his monastic retreat to an aristocratic lodging-house.

  ‘Where would they stay exactly?’ asked de Wolfe.

  ‘Sir Roger Beaumont and his wife had a parlour and bedroom next to the inner gate, while Christina de Glanville and her bridesmaid Margaret de Courtenay were lodged in a pair of guest-rooms near where you are placed, Crowner. It is at the top of the stairs, but opposite the dormitory, through a locked door.’

  ‘What about their personal servants?’

  ‘They slept on pallets either in a corner of the same room or in an antechamber, in the case of the Beaumonts.’

  John turned this over in his mind for a moment. ‘The bridegroom-to-be, this Jordan de Neville – was he here at any stage?’

  ‘Certainly. He visited almost every day for the week that the party was here. He spent several nights in the guest dormitory, where you yourself are lodged, but did not stay for the few nights before the wedding, as I gather it is unseemly for a groom to be with his bride immediately before the ceremony.’

  He hesitated, as if doubtful whether to continue, then plunged on. ‘However, he was here the night that Christina was last seen. Then he rode back with his squire to Southwark late at night, where he was lodged at an inn.’

  John rose to his feet and thanked the prior for his time and patience. ‘I will have to see everyone concerned before I can hold an inquest. In the circumstances of the long delay that was inevitable for me to get here from Devon, I will not demand the usual requirement that the corpse be viewed during the inquest. In fact, I do not know if the Coroner of the Verge is obliged to adhere to all the usual rules of procedure for common cases.’

  Robert Northam stood to see de Wolfe to the door, and as John reached it he turned before Northam could lift the latch. ‘One matter occurs to me, prior. Is there anything I should know about your chaplain?’

  The priest stared at him, not understanding his meaning. ‘Brother Ignatius? In what regard?’

  ‘Does he have any strong opinions about certain matters? Any obsessions, for instance?’ John felt awkward about asking such questions, but he felt it had to be done.

  Robert Northam cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘He tends to take a very literal view of the Scriptures. One might say that he holds a rather extreme view of certain religious precepts.’ The prior’s tone indicated that he was not going to be more forthcoming than this about his secretary.

  ‘Do you know what his relations with the dead girl might have been?’

  The prior looked somewhat offended. ‘Relations? There were no relations. She was a guest in the priory, as there have been very many others.’

  De Wolfe recognized that Northam was being deliberately evasive, but he felt that this was not the time to pursue the issue. After speaking to other witnesses he might return to it, but for now he was content to take his leave. Outside, Ignatius was ostentatiously standing in the entrance to the small chapel, well away from the door. As he escorted the coroner back to the warming room, John took the opportunity to probe his attitude to the dead girl.

  ‘What did you think of Christina de Glanville?’ he asked.

  ‘I had very little to do with her, sir. The guests are housed in the outer part of the priory and my duties are with the prior and in the church.’

  ‘But you must have met the young lady a number of times! She presumably attended services at least once a day?’

  The chaplain shook his head. ‘No females attend the Holy Offices in our church. It would be against all the tenets of our order.’

  ‘But surely s
he must have gone to Mass with her friends and guardians?

  Brother Ignatius grudgingly admitted that the prior had offered his private chapel for that purpose. ‘I administered the Sacrament to her several times, as part of my duties to the group that she was with. But I knew nothing about her personally and have no opinion about her character.’

  John’s long experience of interrogating witnesses told him that the secretary was holding something back, but the stubborn set of his mouth told him that, like the prior, he would get no further today.

  That evening they ate well in the guest refectory, being joined by half a score of pilgrims from the Welsh marches. A large proportion of Bermondsey’s casual lodgers were pilgrims, either going to or returning from the new shrine to St Thomas at Canterbury, though some were going further afield, a few even to Rome or Santiago de Compostella. They were a cheerful lot and in spite of the cold turned an otherwise sombre meal into a pleasant evening, as they had some wineskins of their own to supplement the ale and cider supplied by the priory.

  When the drinks had been consumed, everyone clambered up to the dormitory and wrapped themselves in every garment they possessed, as well as in the one blanket provided to each of them by Brother Ferdinand, then curled up on their palliasses and tried to ignore the east wind that moaned through the shutters, carrying in an occasional flake of snow.

  The next day de Wolfe found the confinement of the priory oppressive. Though Thomas insisted on attending most of the frequent offices in the church, John borrowed a pair of horses from the stables and took Gwyn for a ride into the surrounding countryside, such as it was, being so close to London. They rode towards the city and reached Southwark to look again at London Bridge, which they had crossed less than a couple of months ago, when they came from Exeter to visit Hubert Walter. This time they stayed on the south bank and visited a nearby tavern for some food and ale, before turning back into the flat heathland, dotted with a few manors with their strip-fields, barren at this time of year.