Holding up a hand, Baldwin reassured the panicking servant. “Don’t worry, I’m only trying to see when someone might have come in here last. You say you were here this morning?” The man nodded, but his wary, dark eyes showed no lessening of his fear. “Early morning, or late?”
“It was early,” Sir Hector interrupted. “As soon as I rose.”
“Could anyone else have got in here? And if they did, would they have been seen?” Baldwin questioned, his eyes still on the servant.
“Anybody could have got in, but-” said Sir Hector heavily.
“Sir Hector, do you allow all your men to have access to your private chamber?” Baldwin asked coolly, spurred by the disruption of his questioning.
The captain hesitated. “No, but some of my men who are trusted can always gain admission.”
“Such as?”
“Servants, my officers…a few people.” He spoke reticently.
“And who are these servants and officers?” Baldwin asked suavely.
Simon wandered to the chest while Sir Hector, glowering, listed the men who formed his private guard, the men in whom he placed his highest trust, beginning with Henry the Hurdle and John Smithson.
The bailiff was, for the first time, feeling a prickle of interest. In the past he had found getting involved with murder enquiries distasteful: as an investigator he sometimes felt tainted by the evil of the act. Too often he had been plucked from his comfortable, safe home-life, and tossed headlong into wild and conflicting emotions, for, in his experience, at the root of all murders were passions which, for some reason, suddenly spilled over and became extreme. Such ferocity had always been a mystery to him, for Simon’s life had ever been moderate and relaxed.
However, since Peterkin’s passing, the security and certainty of his whole being seemed ill-founded, as if the sickness which had killed his little boy was now gnawing at the vitality of his entire family. After his son’s burial, Simon’s desire to dispense justice had withered, for he had little concern for others now his own life had been so cruelly wrecked.
But there was a poignancy to this killing. It was not merely the superficial resemblance of Sarra to his wife, it was the manner of the girl’s death. This murder was yet another proof of how unfair and cruel life could be. He had a sense that, if he could resolve it, he might in some way compensate for the unreasonably early death of his son. It would be a cathartic exercise.
Now that Peterkin was gone, Simon could feel the unnecessary death of another more keenly. If this had been a fellow who had died after a drunken brawl, or a man killed while arguing over a woman or a game, he would have remained unmoved, but the combination of the dead girl’s visage and the demeaning cache in which she had been stored fired his anger against whoever might have committed this crime.
Baldwin had returned to his study of Sarra’s body while Simon mused, and the bailiff watched with lackluster eyes as he used his dagger to slice through the cord binding her arms, then listened with half an ear while the knight talked to the captain.
“So we have to assume that this killing was done either by one of your trusted officers, or by a servant from the inn, or by someone who broke in through one of the windows.” He wandered over to a shutter and tested the heavy baulk of timber which held the doors closed. Moving it, he found it was heavy and fitted closely in its rests. “Not easy to shift that,” he muttered.
“It must have been one of the inn’s people,” Sir Hector growled.
“I doubt it.” Turning, Baldwin stared at him. “You have told me that you only permitted your most trusted men into this area. You would not want to have strangers wandering round your private apartments, would you? No, the only people who would have come in here were your men.”
“And her.”
“Her?” Baldwin glanced down at the body. “You allowed her in?”
“Yes. I liked her.” He stopped, looking at Baldwin as if expecting a rebuke.
“Hmm. I see, so she knew the silver was here, too. But unless she talked to someone, the most obvious suspects must be your own men.”
“One of them: Cole,” Sir Hector said between gritted teeth. “Otherwise someone from the town who thought they might be able to make a quick killing.”
Simon shot a glance of loathing at him, but the captain appeared unaware of his pun.
Baldwin repeated, “Cole,” thoughtfully.
Leaning down, Simon saw that the gauze was heavily stained with blood, and the firm imprint of the girl’s body could be clearly perceived: her legs, her hands, her head. But there was a jutting edge in the clots which marred the outline and made him frown.
“Couldn’t he have had an accomplice, waiting outside? Someone he could pass the things to, once he had murdered poor Sarra?” Sir Hector asked.
“I can’t see how. It is the same as before, when we were thinking it was only a theft: anyone trying to get in from the street would have been noticed-this road is busy at all times of the day-and someone loitering on the other side of the window in the stableyard would attract attention from an ostler or one of the other inn-workers. I suppose it’s possible that it was a coincidence that the robbery and killing happened at the same time, but it hardly seems likely. Tell me, you say you liked the girl-are you aware of anyone who could have wanted to kill her? Someone who hated her?”
“Her? She was only a serving-girl from an inn, Sir Baldwin. How could someone hate a creature like that?” Sir Hector spread his hands in astonishment.
Baldwin nodded, his eyes straying back to the body before him. In life she had been pretty, and he was not surprised that the captain had “liked” her, a euphemism which left little to Baldwin’s imagination, but he could understand that the captain would find it hard to comprehend an unimportant young wench might have enemies who could want to kill. The reasons were legion; a jealous lover; a jealous wife disposing of her husband’s lover; a lover discarding his mistress because she had become an embarrassment…and so on. Still, as the man said, it was more probable that Cole had killed her. She must have discovered him taking the silver, and he stabbed her to ensure her silence.
While he ruminated, Simon carefully lifted the cloth by a corner, peering underneath. “Baldwin. Look at this.”
“What? Ah, that is interesting!” Baldwin reached down. Beneath the cloth was a third silver plate. The knight bent and took it out. “There is the proof. The murderer must have been the thief. He killed Sarra because she had seen what was happening. She knew who he was.”
“That bastard!” Sir Hector stepped quickly to Simon’s side and stared at the plate in Baldwin’s hands, tarnished where the blood had marked it. “So he killed her when he stole my silver.”
“Yes,” said Baldwin lugubriously. “Yes, it does look a little like that, doesn’t it?”
There was nothing more to be said. Sir Hector left them a short while later, his face working with emotion, and Simon felt a certain sympathy for him. “He’s mad about this,” he murmured to his friend. “I thought he was angry before when it was only his silver which had gone, but now I bet he would lynch Cole without thinking twice about it. He must have been very fond of the girl.”
Baldwin gave him a dubious look. “Perhaps, although it seems out of character. In any case, whatever Sir Hector does or does not think, we have the rule of English law here, and his suspicions carry no weight with me.”
“Don’t you think it was Cole then?”
“I suppose so, but I still have the same problem I had before. How was the silver removed? And how did he get in here in the first place?”
They left shortly afterward, but waited in the hall while Paul sent a messenger to fetch Hugh and Edgar. When the two men arrived, Baldwin ordered them to guard the storeroom in which the dead girl’s body lay. Nobody was to go in. Baldwin wanted to study the place again in daylight. Then he led the way outside. A few steps along the road he paused, then walked up to the closed outer shutters of the storeroom. Simon heard him mutter a short oath of disgust, for he’d accidentally stepped in a pile of rotting intestines and viscera-a pungent reminder that the butcher was next door. Through cracks in the old, untreated timbers, narrow beams of light escaped, and the knight tried to peer through, his eye close to the wood. Frowning, he walked back through the inn to the yard behind, and repeated the exercise, Simon trailing after him.
