there in the hay for long, though. Feel her dress – it is damp. She must have been moved to the stable some time after she died. Before that she was stored somewhere else.”
“Why is she damp?” Simon asked as he gingerly touched the cloth.
“It was raining last night. Heavily. Surely it is not difficult to conclude that she had been secreted away somewhere else, and was then moved to her new hiding place last night during the storm.” Even as the knight spoke his eyes were moving over her body, seeking any further hints as to how she came by her death. She would have been an attractive woman in life, he thought. Slim and well-formed, with large blue eyes and thick brown hair. Her wrists were tiny, and her ankles too, and she had a waist so slender he could have encompassed it with both hands. On her front there was no mark, but for the nibbles of the rats at her fingers and toes. Her back too showed little mark, but they could see where the cloth of her dress had been sliced by the blade which had killed her.
He sighed. It was incomprehensible that someone should snuff out the life of such a dainty young woman. Still more so that this should be merely the third in a sequence.
“Where else could she have been stored?”
“When we know that, Simon, we shall know who killed her, and why!”
“Do you think he will confess?” Simon ignored the other’s brief display of irascibility, and dropped onto a seat. Leaning forward, he studied Mary Butcher.
“I see no reason why he should. Do we have any proof that he was the murderer? All we know is that he was seen with her before she died. It is a tenuous link to this corpse. By the same token, almost anyone could be accused of the murder.”
“Maybe so, but surely we have to arrest him. What if it was him, and he goes on to kill others? He’s killed three already; we can’t take the risk he might kill a fourth.”
“Can’t you?”
Simon whirled round. Sir Hector had entered the hall from behind them, taking even Edgar by surprise. The soldier walked slowly and deliberately over to them, his hand resting on his sword, but not in a threatening way. He scarcely glanced at them, but went to the table on which Mary Butcher rested, standing by her and looking down at her with what Simon could only think was sadness.
“Poor Mary. Poor unhappy, dissatisfied Mary,” he murmured, then faced Baldwin. “I did not do this. I could not have dreamed of hurting her. She was my love, the woman I wanted to take with me.”
“She was having an affair with you.” There was no need to ask it as a question; Baldwin stated it as a fact.
“We met years ago,” the captain agreed. “I wanted her to join me then, but she wouldn’t. She knew little about a mercenary’s life, but Mary always enjoyed her comforts. She liked being able to get the choicest cloths, the finest skins and furs, and I would have given her plenty of these things, but she could have them here too, from her husband, without the risks of losing me through fighting, without her needing to travel constantly, without the fear of being hunted by enemies, without constantly wondering whether the allies of the day would turn on us tomorrow and become our foes.”
“She would not go with you.”
“No.” It was said with blank finality.
“So why come back here?”
The captain turned his disconcerting gray eyes onto Baldwin. “Because I have thought about her every day for the last few years. Because I missed her, and wanted her, ever since I last saw her. Because I felt I had lost a part of me since I left her behind. I had to exorcise her from my soul, and I thought if I were to see her again, I might be cured.”
“So that is why you came this way after being refused a contract with the King?”
“Yes. I thought I might have got over her, and even took the servant-girl to divert me… But it was no good. A servant is no more than that, merely a servant. What I wanted was here, in Mary.”
Baldwin nodded, inwardly wondering how a man could take one woman to try to forget another. And if he could, Baldwin reasoned, would it be so great a step to kill the one who could not match the expectation?
His visage must have betrayed his doubt. The mercenary curled his lip. “You think I would simply have murdered the tavern slut for not being Mary? She was nothing to me! I kill those who harm or threaten me, those who thwart or betray me – the wench did not deserve to die for not being the woman I desired. And I certainly could never have killed my poor Mary, whatever she had done. I loved her with all my heart.”
“When did you last see her?”
“On Monday night. Her servants, and her husband’s apprentice knew I was there, but they didn’t care. They watched me enter her chamber, and they saw me leave in the morning. They all felt I was better for her than her husband.”
Simon doubted that. Any number of servants could be relied on to keep their silence if talking might involve annoying a mercenary captain.
“You are sure that was the last time you saw her?” pressed Baldwin.
“Yes. I tried to many other times… You saw me on one occasion, in the town. I was waiting for her then, that was why I was so irritated by that other slut.”
“Judith?” Baldwin asked.
“Was that her name? The beggar.”
“Did you recall her?”
“Recall her?” Hector’s face showed no emotion, but Simon saw that he had paled.
“Yes, Sir Hector: recall her. She was the woman you took when you last came to Crediton, wasn’t she? Before you met Mary.”
“I… I don’t think so.” He licked his suddenly dry lips.
“You had forgotten her? The woman whom you had enjoyed for a night or more, but whom you evicted from your side once you had met Mary for the first time.”
“No. I… No.”
“And then there is her son, of course. Born a little while later.”
“No!” The captain’s features had paled to wax-like translucency, and he picked at his lower lip as if in an attempt at memory.
“Was he your son?” Baldwin threw out the question swiftly and harshly.
“No, he can’t have been.” The anguish in the captain’s voice was almost tangible.
“I wonder. In any case, Sir Hector, I think I have more than enough reason to suspect you for the murder of these women.”
“Why would I have killed them? What reason could I have had?”
“The first because she stole, you thought, a new dress bought for your lover, the second because she shamed you in the street, telling you she had borne your son.” Baldwin watched the captain narrowly as he guessed at this, and was satisfied to see the dart strike home. Sir Hector flinched. “And then Mary, I assume, because she refused to leave her home and her husband to run away with you.”
“No, that’s not it at all. It’s all wrong, completely wrong.”
“She wouldn’t go with you, would she?”
“If that was all, I’d have killed him, not her! It had nothing to do with…”
“She wouldn’t go away with you, so you decided to kill her instead. You decided that if you couldn’t have her, nobody else would either. Even her husband.”
“That’s nonsense. Why should I do that? I couldn’t have hurt her, not my Mary. I loved her.”
“Yes,” Baldwin said, resting himself against the table and crossing his arms. “But I have to wonder what that word means to you. You are a soldier, Sir Hector. You are used to taking what you want. You wanted Mary Butcher – and you took her. You had no thought for her husband, her reputation, or for anything else. You wanted her, so you had her.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Is it? Do you really understand what the truth is, I wonder? Your whole life is a series of thefts. You agree terms with a lord or baron, and then ravage a whole area. You take what you want – isn’t that how your band survives? And then you come here and try to carry on the same way. A woman here, a woman there. Sarra, and Judith, and Mary. All of them were yours until you became bored with them. And then you killed them. All of them, all stabbed twice, all killed the same way.”
