The Manor of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

spattered with ink stains. Most manors had a reeve to organise the farming activities, but in Axmouth it was different, as agriculture played a much smaller part in the village economy. Though it was not a chartered borough, it was important enough by virtue of its harbour to have some officials, and Palmer had been appointed as portreeve by the Priory of Loders, which lay some twenty miles away in Dorset, to supervise all trading in the town. The manor itself was in the charge of the prior's bailiff, the aggressive Edward Northcote, so between them they were the effective rulers of Axmouth.
    The coroner held up his hand to quell the argument developing between them and the Keeper of the Peace. 'I'm here now, so let's settle matters by letting me see the corpse,' he commanded. 'But tell me first the circumstances of its discovery.'
    De Casewold turned and beckoned imperiously to someone in the group of onlookers. 'It's best coming from the First Finder, as is proper!' he brayed, again making John want to kick the man's rump for trying to tell a coroner his business. He was surprised when an elderly man in a long black robe, his grey hair shaved into a clerical tonsure, stepped forward. Completely toothless, his mouth had caved in, his sharp hooked nose pointing down at his chin.
    'Here's one of your lot!' muttered Gwyn into Thomas's ear as the old priest came up to them. The clerk scowled at him for his habitual irreverence, then turned and smiled at the priest and murmured a greeting in Latin.
    'This is Henry of Cumba, the parish priest of St Michael's there,' said Luke, waving a hand towards the church tower. 'It was he who found the body.'
    Father Henry's lined face looked apprehensive as he confronted the forbidding figure of the coroner, and he spoke up in a quavering voice. 'I had an old hound, of which I was very fond, sir,' he began.
    At this apparent irrelevance, John wondered if the aged priest's mind was wandering, but the old man soon made it clear.
    'The poor beast died yesterday, mainly of old age, as I had had him more than a dozen years. Rather than cast his body on to the village midden, I thought I owed it to him to bury him decently, so took a spade and wrapped him in a sack.'
    Gwyn, an ardent dog-lover, nodded his appreciation of the old man's humanity, as Henry carried on with his tale.
    'I went outside the walls - through this very gate, in fact - and sought a place to dig a hole, well beyond those cottages.' He pointed back up the sloping track down which the coroner had approached the village. 'Behind a hazel bush, I began to dig, as I saw a patch of soft earth which would be easier to shift, my old backbone not being as strong as it used to be.'
    'Get to the point, man!' urged the Keeper irritably.  
    'Well, not more than a spade's depth down, I unearthed a foot, and a couple more strokes showed me a whole leg. I stopped digging and uttered a prayer or two to shrive the poor fellow, then went back to the village to tell someone.'
    'What happened to the dog?' asked Gwyn.
    'Oh, I buried him first, twenty paces away,' the priest reassured him.
    The bailiff and portreeve were becoming impatient with this long-winded tale from their rather vague old vicar. 'Why did you not come straight to me?' demanded Edward Northcote belligerently. 'We could have settled the matter quickly and you could have given the man a decent burial in your churchyard, without all this unnecessary fuss with the coroner.'
    Henry of Cumba smiled weakly at the bailiff. 'I intended to seek you out - but I met the Keeper here as I entered the gate and told him instead.'
    'Just as well I happened to be here on my weekly perambulation from Axminster,' said Luke de Casewold breezily. 'From what he told me, it was a clear case for the coroner, not one to be brushed aside for the sake of convenience.'
    'Nonsense! You're just an interfering busybody!' shouted Northcote, his hard features twisted in anger.
    Incensed by this insult, the Keeper