The Manor of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

lifted his head to see his face when I came back with the Keeper,' said the old priest hesitantly. 'But he's not one of my flock, that's for sure.'
    John looked across at Gwyn, who from long experience knew the routine they needed to go through now. The big Cornishman stepped down into the excavation and lifted the corpse as easily as if it was a bag of straw, turning it over on to its back. 'He's a young fellow; I doubt he's reached eighteen summers,' he reported, brushing soil from the face with his fingers.
    The coroner stepped down to join him and they both bent over the dead youth, while Thomas de Peyne, whose task was to record the findings, fumbled in his large shoulder bag to make sure he had his pens, ink-flask and parchments. Gwyn muttered something to de Wolfe and pointed to the half-open eyes. John nodded and prised open the lids with fingers and thumbs to examine the whites.
    'Spotted with blood!' he bellowed. He turned his head to glare at the bailiff and portreeve accusingly 'So much for your damned drowning!' He picked up a hand and wagged it as if shaking hands with the corpse, determining that there was no death stiffness. Staring at the pads of the fingers and the palm, he shouted again. 'Not a sign of washerwoman's skin. He's not been in the water for long, if at all!'
    Meanwhile, Gwyn had been industriously brushing away the remaining dirt from the face and neck, finally cleaning it off with a grubby kerchief that he dragged from a pocket.
    'Look at this, Crowner,' he muttered as he gave a last wipe with his rag. John shifted his gaze from the hands and saw that around the front of the neck across the prominence of the Adam's apple was a livid line the width of his little finger. It passed back under the angles of the jaw and disappeared behind the ears.
    'Turn him back on to his face!' barked the coroner, and when his officer had done so they looked at the back of the neck. When the skin was wiped clean, they saw that the dark lines, which had chafed the skin into brownish grooves, crossed over each other at the nape of the neck.
    'Looks like a thin rope, with a spiral pattern,' observed Gwyn.
    Anticipating his master, he turned the body over yet again and they both studied the face. It was in good condition as far as decay was concerned, as though the weather was mild it was still typically April and together with being buried in cold earth no decomposition had yet set in. The face was puffy and reddish-blue with congested blood, especially the lips. More of the tiny pinpoint bleeding spots that John had seen in the eyes were clustered around the mouth and temples.
    Experts in modes of death from two decades on the battlefield and eighteen months of dealing with the corpses of Devonshire, the coroner and his officer had no doubt how this young man had died. John looked up at the ring of expectant faces looking down into the grave.
    'He was strangled by a rope, held by someone standing behind him!' grated de Wolfe. 'So much for your drowned sailor, portreeve! Keeper, you were right: this is murder!'
    Sir Luke de Casewold smiled smugly. 'I knew it from the outset, though the earth prevented me from seeing that strangling mark. But what innocent death ends up in a hole behind a bush, eh?'
    De Wolfe rose to his feet, feeling the twinge in his bottom that he had mercifully forgotten for the past few minutes. 'Have you a dead-house or somewhere where we can lay this poor fellow until I hold the inquest?' He directed his question at the whole group of onlookers, but it was the old priest who answered.
    'We have a shed in the churchyard where we lay cadavers awaiting burial. Will that suffice, sir?'
    Within minutes, a handcart was fetched from the quayside. It stank of fish but was good enough to transport the corpse past the gawping villagers back to St Michael's Church, a sturdy stone edifice that had replaced the earlier wooden chapel of Saxon times. When the body was safely parked in the ramshackle lean-to