The Renegade Merchant Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
stars, as they’d done for the past week when no more hospitable
circumstance presented itself, rather than stay here.
    Cedric appeared not to notice the smell—but
then, he’d grown up in Shrewsbury and to him the smell of tanning
leather would seem normal. Fortunately the young watchman hurried
them through the central room, out the back entrance, and into the
courtyard behind the main building. “This way.”
    Cedric fetched up at the entrance to a long
low building that at first Gareth had mistaken for a stable. Upon
closer inspection, it bore no real resemblance to one, other than
its three separate doors, which faced into the courtyard and which
Gareth had confused for horse stalls. They were revealed instead to
lead to small but serviceable rooms. Each was furnished with a
narrow bed and a washstand—and was far cleaner than the common room
they’d just left.
    Perhaps the paying guests demanded somewhat
more from the proprietor in the way of amenities than the usual
tavern clientele. Gareth might have been willing to house his
family here after all, if not for the smell and the dead body,
which was located in the last room on the right.
    Gareth and Gwen gazed at the dead man for a
count of five, and then Gwen said into the silence, “Cedric is
right. This isn’t the body we’re looking for.”
    The man had been well-built, of medium
height with reddish-brown hair and beard, approximately in his late
thirties. He lay before them on the floor with his hands folded on
his chest and his eyes closed as if he’d already been washed and
clothed for burial. His face was bloodless, but not because he’d
bled out. He was merely dead. From the wound on his neck, it was
instantly clear as well, as Cedric had asserted, that he had been
strangled. And given the obvious bruises and cuts on his face and
hands, he’d put up a good fight for his life.
    “Who found him?” Gareth said.
    “I did.” A man in his late forties moved out
of the far corner of the room. Of average height but stocky, he
looked like he could hold his own in a fight, and his square jaw
bulged as he spoke.
    Gareth hadn’t noticed him earlier because
the only light available came from the open doorway. Perhaps Gareth
couldn’t be blamed, given that there was a dead body on the floor,
but he nonetheless kicked himself for being so unobservant. That
was a good way to get himself—or worse, Gwen—killed.
    “And you are?” Gareth said.
    “Rob Horn, the proprietor.”
    Gareth gave the man a quick once over,
noting that the backs of Rob’s hands were clean and unmarred and
that he had no wounds showing on his face. Then Gareth crouched by
the dead man’s side and touched him gently here and there, looking
for a less obvious wound that might explain the puddle in the
alley—just to make sure they weren’t wrong about the cause of death
and that this really wasn’t the body they’d been looking for.
    “He wears no purse,” he said to Gwen in an
undertone, speaking in Welsh this time, regardless of whether or
not it was rude or if it excluded Cedric. At other times, Gareth
would have used the next hour as an opportunity to explain to
Cedric how he knew what he knew, but with the innkeeper present, he
felt a need to keep the discovery process of the investigation to
himself for now until he knew the people involved better.
    “He could have been murdered for it.” Gwen
leaned in closer to Gareth, also speaking softly. “Or we were meant
to think so.”
    “It would have been easy enough for a sneak
thief to have seen him in the tavern and followed him to his room,”
Gareth said.
    Gwen tipped her head. “The room is cleaner
than I would have imagined a simple thief would leave it—and look
how this man is laid out east to west.”
    “The whole scene implies that the killer
gave what he’d done some thought. This man’s death may not have
been planned, but the aftermath—” Gareth nodded his head as he went
through in his mind the