The Tinner's Corpse
north coast, please.’
    The previous month, they had made repeated journeys to the most distant part of the county and Thomas was still aching from the days he had suffered in the saddle.
    ‘Only a couple of hours, pansy,’ cut in Gwyn caustically. ‘Just to Chagford this time.’
    The clerk was a Hampshire man and still unfamiliar with much of Devon. ‘Where’s that?’ he demanded suspiciously.
    ‘It’s one of the three Stannary towns, on this side of Dartmoor,’ explained de Wolfe. ‘All the tin from that district of the moor goes there for coinage.’
    ‘But we’re going there to view a headless corpse, Thomas,’ added Gwyn, with ghoulish relish. He knew that, even after six months’ experience, the ex-priest was still upset by macabre sights.
    At the distant sound of bells coming from the cathedral, the coroner threw down Thomas’s rolls and made for the stairway. ‘I’ve got to eat with the sheriff, so whatever Mary cooks today will taste like ashes in my mouth,’ he said. ‘Be at the West Gate before Vespers toll. Put a blanket behind your saddles. I doubt we’ll be back tonight.’
    The three sat eating at one end of the long table in de Wolfe’s sombre hall. He was at the head, with his wife and her brother on either side. Old Simon, the yard servant, had banked up the fire with logs and Mary bustled in and out with dishes and jugs. Brutus lay under the table at John’s feet, waiting hopefully for any scraps his master might drop down to him.
    After some stilted conversation, they got down to the serious business of eating and the champing of jaws and slurping of wine were the only sounds for a quarter of an hour. Matilda, with her usual remarkable appetite, and the two men did justice to Mary’s hare stew and boiled chicken, with onions and cabbage. Instead of the usual trenchers of thick bread, the food was served on platters made of pewter, a snobbish fad of Matilda’s. She never missed a chance to ape the manners of the courtly classes. De Wolfe, who would not have cared if he had to eat his food off his horse’s back, refilled the pottery cups from a stone jar of red Poitou wine. They had a few wine glasses carefully stored in a chest, but he had vetoed their use today, not wishing to risk them merely for a midday meal with his brother-in-law.
    After the meat, Mary brought in a mazer of bread, cut into chunks, with a large slab of hard cheese; there was no fruit at this early part of the year, the remains of last season’s apples having withered away. Courteously, Richard de Revelle used his own dagger to cut some slices of cheese for his sister, which she ate directly from the scrubbed oak boards of the table, washing them down liberally with wine.
    ‘I’ve got to go a-travelling soon,’ growled de Wolfe, ‘so let’s get down to your business here, Richard.’
    The sheriff sipped his wine delicately before answering. ‘It’s quite simple, John. I’m two coroners short of the royal instructions.’
    De Wolfe interrupted him abruptly. ‘What d’you mean, you’re short of two coroners? It’s nothing to do with you. They were instituted by the King’s Council – partly to keep an eye on you sheriffs! Some of you damn well need watching, too.’
    De Revelle reddened, still smarting at the state of probation he had been under since his fall from grace. ‘Well, if you must split hairs, John, so be it – though why we need coroners at all is beyond my understanding. Until last year we had managed without them quite nicely for centuries.’ He never missed an opportunity to needle de Wolfe about his contempt for the new law officers. ‘Since Fitzrogo died, you have had the whole county to deal with – though during the two months you were laid up with that broken leg, Devonshire managed quite well without even one crowner.’
    ‘Get to the point, Richard,’ snapped John, who had tired of de Revelle’s endless sarcasm about his post. ‘You want that useless sot Theobald
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

The Day We Met

Rowan Coleman

Lady Alex's Gamble

Evelyn Richardson

Case One

Chris Ould

Because of Sydney

T.A. Foster

Cherry Blossom Baseball

Jennifer Maruno

Broken Dreams

Nick Quantrill

Beyond Death

Deb McEwan

Platonic

Kate Paddington