“Even Mary?” His voice had fallen to an awed horror.
“Even Mary,” Baldwin agreed mercilessly. “You killed them all, didn’t you? Why did you do it?”
Simon watched as the two men confronted each other. Sir Baldwin seemed to grow in stature as he spoke. It was as if he was trying to convince himself that he did not truly believe his own words, that the concept of such hideous crimes was so awful that he could not credit anyone with the ability to commit them. His face was hard with a kind of desperate urgency, like a man who wanted to be proved wrong, but who was convinced nonetheless that his worst imaginings were shortly to be confirmed.
But while they spoke, Baldwin found himself becoming more sympathetic to the captain. It was not that the Keeper was gullible, or that he was prepared to condone the mercenary’s life, but the man appeared to shrink even as Baldwin, alive with a new strength, invigorated with his disgust and revulsion at the crimes, railed at him.
To Simon, Sir Hector looked as if he was shrivelling in on himself, reducing to the scale of one of the hill farmers whom the bailiff saw every week; old beyond his years, worn and ravaged by cares and ill-health. Simon nodded. There was all too often no way to prove who might have committed a particular crime, but in this case he was convinced that he and his friend had caught the correct man, and it gave him a fierce pleasure to see the effect of Baldwin’s words.
There was something in Sir Hector’s haggard visage which made Baldwin study him hard as he spoke. Something about the man’s manner made his voice soften a little. It was not the immediate sympathy which a man felt for another accused of heinous offences, for the Keeper had become hardened to seeing criminals suddenly realize the degree of their crimes as their doom approached. It had often occurred to Baldwin that nothing was better capable of assisting a poor memory and inducing contrition than a rope. But if his sensitivity had become blunted after years of prosecutions, his empathy remained, and with this captain, he was sure that there were signs of his pain.
That itself was no proof of innocence. Baldwin had known of cases where men had killed women they loved: from jealousy, from sudden rage, from any number of reasons. All had expressed their shame, and appeared honestly devastated by their actions. It was not rare. But as he mentioned the name of the latest victim, he was assailed by doubts. The captain stood, head bowed, shoulders sagging, and hands limp by his sides, the very picture of misery. This was not the arrogant warrior-lord, ready to quarrel with anyone, and to back up his argument with the point of his sword; this was a man who had lost everything he held dear. His life, his posture suggested, was at an end. There was nothing more for him.
Baldwin ground to a halt and viewed Sir Hector pensively, his head on one side. The captain made no gesture, spoke no word of denial, gave no statement of outraged innocence, and suddenly the knight was doubtful. His mind ran through the evidence, and he was forced to admit to himself that the only links which connected the captain to the dead women were tenuous.
“Sir Hector, you are free for now, but I demand that you do not leave this inn. I will speak to your men, and make sure that they do not abet you in an escape, but I see no reason to lock you in a cell. You may remain here.”
The man nodded, and walked away, through to the solar, and Baldwin’s keen stare followed him until the door had shut. “Edgar. Fetch me Wat, and the man Will who found this woman today.”
22
Wat walked in with a rolling swagger that put Simon in mind of the sailors he had seen in Plymouth and Exeter. The old mercenary wore a grave expression, but Simon was convinced that a grin of sheer exultation was battling for dominance, and it was no great surprise. He had wanted the leadership of the company, and his master had allowed it to slip from his grasp and fall into Wat’s lap almost unnoticed. It made Simon glower with disapproval, to see a man so pleased by the results of three deaths.
“Wat,” Baldwin said, once the man had entered and Edgar had closed the door behind him, “we are holding your captain here. I place him under your control. Do not you, or any of the other men in the group, try to leave Crediton, or let Sir Hector go. He is your responsibility, and you will answer for it if he escapes. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely clear.”
“Now you,” Baldwin said, and turned to the man called Will, who glared back truculently. “How did you notice the body there today?”
“I told you. I sat down and it felt hard and nobbly, so I tried to see what I was sitting on.”
“And you uncovered her tunic?”
“Yes.”
Baldwin nodded as if to himself. “And that was right where you have been sleeping for how long?”
Swallowing, Will was a little gray-faced as he responded, “All the time we’ve been staying here.”
“So you think you have been sleeping on top of her every night?”
He nodded, aware of the nausea returning.
“I think you did not. If she had been there, you would have felt her,” Baldwin sighed. “It seems to me that someone must have hidden her there only recently. Last night, in fact.”
“Eh?” sputtered Wat with a start. “What do you mean? No one’s going to dump a body like that – it’s asking to be found out. No one would commit murder and then make sure their crime’s found out!”
“Did you leave your bed last night?” Baldwin asked.
The man shot a look at Wat, then gave a shrug. “Yes. I was there until the storm, but then I got up… just as the rain started.”
“When did you return?”
“I didn’t. I… hurt myself, and a couple of the men took me into the hall.”
Baldwin nodded, his eyes going to the wound, and Will reddened.
“This is mad!” Wat burst out.
“Some would say that any man who decides to kill must be mad,” Baldwin said evenly. He had the impression that the mercenary was trying to distract him from his study of the wounded man. “Even if it was for money.”
Wat made a gesture of rejection. “That’s got nothing to do with it. Why should Sir Hector dump the body there? He’d know it’d be found. And when it was, the trail would lead right to him.”
“Perhaps Sir Hector did not put her there.”
“Then who did?”
“That is what we must discover. She was not there at dark last night, I assume, for she was not noticed. If a man could feel her when he sat on her, she would surely have been felt by someone lying on top of her. Her dress is wet in places, too, which tends to show she was being carried around last night.”
Simon stood and paced the room, then stopped and faced Baldwin again. “There are only two explanations why someone should have put her there. One is because another hiding place was unsatisfactory; the other because, as you say, the body was intended to be discovered.”
“Yes. I can see no other reason.”
“But the first is inconceivable.”
“Why?” demanded Wat hotly.
Simon threw him a contemptuous look. “Why? Think, man! If you were to kill someone, would you leave the body in an accessible place?” The mercenary was silent, and Simon suddenly realized that he might well have been in such a situation in his past. “Er – anyway, if somebody murders, they try to hide the corpse far from prying eyes. The last thing they’d do is keep a body in town. They move it out into the country, if they have the chance, and dump it in some quiet spot. Oh, the run-of-the-mill killings, the arguments over ale or gambling, get finished and resolved quickly; two men fight and there’s one dead afterward, and the killer is soon found, but in a case like this, where there would seem to be some kind of plan being followed, to judge by the fact that three are dead, the thought uppermost in the killer’s mind is how to cover his tracks, and that means concealing the death. If a corpse cannot be found, no man can be prosecuted.”
At this, Will gave a puzzled frown. “You think Sir Hector killed her, then moved her to my bed in the hay? He can’t have, he was in his rooms all night.”
