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Taking the lips in the fingers of each hand, he turned them back to expose the gums and brown, decayed teeth. ‘Ha, the plot thickens!’ he exclaimed.
    On the inner surfaces of the upper and lower lips, there were angry red patches and a small tear where the lining had been forced against a jagged front tooth. Under the middle of the upper lip, the little band of membrane that anchored the lip to the gum was ripped and had bled. ‘His mouth was either struck or violently squeezed,’ declared de Wolfe, an authority on injuries after twenty years on a variety of battlefields.
    ‘Held across the mouth to stop him crying out?’ hazarded the clerk, emboldened by his successful contribution to the investigation.
    ‘Let’s have a look at the rest of his body, Gwyn,’ commanded the coroner.
    Under his black habit, the prebendary wore only a white linen nightshirt and a pair of thick woollen hose. The coroner’s officer began to wrestle off the outer robe, helped ineffectually by Thomas. ‘He’s starting to stiffen up – and he’s cold, except in the armpits,’ observed Gwyn.
    De Wolfe nodded. ‘I noticed his jaw was tight when I turned his lips. He’s been dead a few hours.’
    Soon they had all the clothes off and the sparely built priest lay pathetically naked on his own bed. Instinctively, John de Alencon reached across and, for the sake of decency, draped the nightshirt across the lower belly and thighs.
    The trunk was dead white, but there was a purplish discoloration of the legs below the knees. ‘He’s been hanging for a while, the blood has had time to settle in the lowest parts,’ commented the coroner.
    ‘So he was hung up soon after death as he still has a little heat left in him,’ reasoned Gwyn.
    John turned to the steward, hovering in anguish near the door. ‘When was your master last seen alive, Alfred?’ he snapped.
    ‘He came back from vespers, sir, at about the fifth bell. He ate his supper in the dining room – I served him myself.’
    ‘Did he seem his normal self then?’ asked the Archdeacon.
    ‘Yes, sir, he was reading a small book as he ate.’ Alfred snivelled and wiped an eye. ‘Then he went to bed. As it is Christ Mass, he should have been going to the special service, some two hours earlier than the usual matins at midnight.’
    De Alencon looked at the coroner. ‘He was not there. I noticed, as I must keep track of who is absent.’
    John de Wolfe grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘He couldn’t have been there as he was dead by then, if the stiffening is coming on now.’ He scowled at Alfred. ‘Did anyone visit him this evening?’
    ‘Not that I know of, Crowner. Once he retires to this room, he is left in peace to sleep or study. His vicar or the secondaries might know better than I, but I doubt it.’
    The ranking of the ecclesiastical community below the twenty-four canons consisted first of the vicars-choral, minor clergy over the age of twenty-four who deputised for their seniors so that their perpetual attendance at services was reduced. Then came the secondaries, adolescents over eighteen training for the priesthood, and below them, the choristers, young boys who might stay on to enter holy orders later.
    The coroner turned back to the corpse and leaned over the bed to study it intently.
    ‘The arms – look there,’ squeaked Thomas.
    His master glared at him. ‘I can see for myself, damn you!’ he muttered testily, motioning to Gwyn to lift up the left arm. On the white skin, between the shoulder and the elbow, was a scatter of blue bruises, each half the size of a penny.
    ‘They’re on the other arm, too,’ volunteered Gwyn. ‘And they look fresh to me.’
    De Wolfe gestured to his officer to turn the body over on to its face. ‘Let’s see the back of his neck.’
    At the centre of the nape, a deep groove began and passed around the left side of the neck. On the right side of the neck, the groove imprinted by the noose rose towards the ear, then