Rest Not in Peace Read Online Free PDF Page B

uninterrupted conversation with the sheriff, turning from him occasionally to cast a baleful eye in my direction. I did not see the woman exchange even one word with Lord Gilbert, who sat also beside her.
    To avoid Lady Margery’s hostile gaze I watched other diners. None seemed to have lost his appetite in the past twenty-four hours. Even the youthful squire who had picked at his pike a day earlier consumed his portion of the meal this day. Perhaps he preferred boar over pike.
    ’Twas well we dined before I took Sir Roger to Sir Henry’s corpse and not after, for in the warmth of June the corpse was beginning to bloat, and would in a few days stink, reducing even a stout sheriff’s hunger.
    “Lady Margery believes you at fault in this business,” the sheriff said as we walked the corridor leading to Sir Henry’s chamber. “Lord Gilbert has told her what you found, and that murder was done. She scoffed at that, he said, and claims you seek to turn suspicion from your own malfeasance.”
    “You will see soon enough,” I replied, and led Sir Roger past Walter and Uctred, who had been pressed into the melancholy duty of guarding the corpse in Arthur’s absence. For reasons I could not then explain, I wanted a Bampton Castle man at Sir Henry’s door as well as one of Sir Henry’s retainers.
    Sir Henry lay as I had left him the day before, the dried clot of blood from his ear yet upon the pillow. I pointed to it.
    “That is what I drew from Sir Henry’s ear.”
    “I’m no surgeon,” Sir Roger said. “Is there no other explanation for such a wound?”
    “I know of none. Even if he was taken with a fit in the night, I do not believe blood would issue from his ear.”
    “What of the other ear? If a fit drew blood from one ear, seems likely it would be found in the other as well.”
    “I did not look there, not after finding the injury done to this ear.”
    “Look now.”
    I did. Rigor mortis was beginning to fade, so ’twas no trouble to turn Sir Henry’s head upon the pillow. The light in this chamber, as I have written, was poor, but enough to show that no blood could be seen in the ear. Nevertheless I took the thin blade I had left in the chamber and probed as deeply as I could. I found no crusted blood there.
    “Wouldn’t need to pierce a man’s head through both ears to slay him,” Sir Roger said when I withdrew the scalpel and held it up for him to see the clean blade. “Can you be certain such a thrust took his life?”
    “Not without opening his skull, which I cannot do without Lady Margery’s permission.”
    “Oh… aye. Would not the pain of such a stab cause a man to shriek, even if but for a moment, before he died?”
    “Who can say? Perhaps he was silenced with a pillow over his mouth. Or perhaps my potion had to do with the business.”
    “Your potion? I thought you said it could not harm a man.”
    “I did, and I spoke true. But my thought is this: perhaps Sir Henry was given a larger dose of the pounded lettuce seeds than I advised. It might be that a greater amount could put a man so deeply asleep that he would not awaken when his head was turned and he felt the first prick of the weapon.”
    “You think this possible?” the sheriff asked.
    “It is outside my experience,” I replied. “But yes, I believe it possible. I would like to see the pouch I gave to Sir Henry, to see how much remains of the lettuce seeds.”
    “You shall, and I will speak to Lady Margery. Can you open Sir Henry’s head to learn if a thrust through his ear did this, without disfiguring his visage before burial?”
    “I can.”

L ady Margery would not permit me to open Sir Henry’s skull. This did not surprise me. The woman was convinced, or said she was, that my sleeping draught had taken her husband’s life and had no wish to be proven wrong.
    “Said you wished to mutilate her poor husband to turn suspicion for the death from yourself to some other man,” Sir Roger said.
    Lord Gilbert also