‘There are no obvious stab wounds,’ he said, eyeing the clerk sternly. Hastily the man began scribbling.
‘No, but there are many scars. All healed now, but he must have been severely treated at some point,’ Baldwin noted.
‘Who saw this man last week?’ Coroner Roger called out. ‘Does anyone know what led to this happening to him?’
‘I saw him on the day before the coining.’
Baldwin leaned to his left, peering past a tall red-headed man with a fierce-looking, bristling beard. Behind him was a shorter man with sallow complexion and intensely bright blue eyes in a weather-beaten face.
Roger pointed to him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ivo Cornisshe. I work at the bottom of Misery Tor, not far from Wally’s old place, and I saw him setting off for Tavistock early on the Thursday morning.’
Simon scowled about at the men. ‘Where is Hamelin? He lived nearest, up at Wally’s old place. Why isn’t he here?’
There was no answer from the men arrayed before them.
The coroner nodded to Ivo to continue. ‘How was Wally when you saw him?’
‘Cheery. I asked him why and he said he was looking forward to a good quart of ale. He hadn’t made much money recently, he said, and he was miserable as the Tor itself with the thought of drinking any more water off the moors.’
‘His mining wasn’t successful?’
‘It wasn’t too bad, I suppose,’ Ivo said with transparent honesty. ‘He did well at first, but then he could only just scrape together enough to live on. That was why he tried farming instead.’
‘Near here?’
‘Yes. A mile or so. His rabbits and vegetables kept him fed. At least he didn’t have a family to keep. Trouble is, veg is tough to grow on the moors. Especially if the rabbits get to them,’ he added as an afterthought.
Coroner Roger glared about him to quell the sudden ripple of laughter that spread about the gathering. ‘And he had little money?’
‘None of us have much of that. If a mine is working, then all is well, but it only lasts so long. You dig and dig, wash away the rubbish, dig again, and then you have enough ore to fill a few bags. Melt them, pay the owner of a furnace, carry the ingots to Tavistock and pay your tax, pay your feed bills, have some ale, and suddenly you’ve got nothing left again, and you have to come back to the moors to try to dig out a load more tin or find a new claim.’
Simon interrupted. ‘I have been told that on the day of the coining, he had money aplenty. Where did he get it?’
Ivo shrugged. ‘Maybe he found it?’
There was a quiet comment, a miner suggesting that he could have sold his remaining asset, his body, to one of the rich women who were always passing by here, and some coarse sniggers were silenced only when the coroner barked, ‘Shut up!’
Simon was still listening as the coroner began asking about Wally’s sudden wealth, but standing at the edge of the miners, his eyes ranged over the men. Ivo was known to Simon, but then most of the men here were, by sight if not by name. It was natural that he should recognise them all, for there weren’t all that many miners, especially since the famine years when even places like Hound Tor had been deserted.
He stared fixedly at Hal. The man knew something. It was obvious in the way that he stood with his legs apart, as though preparing for a verbal sparring match. His arms were crossed over his chest, with a long staff hooked in one, and he was perfectly still, as though he was at his ease, but his good eye was sharp and moving swiftly from Baldwin, to the coroner, to Simon, below his black brows.
Seeing the swift flash of Hal’s eye, Simon lifted his eyebrow, and he saw that his guess was correct. Hal looked away so fast, his head actually moved, and immediately the coroner was on him.
‘You! What’s your name?’
Hal’s head dropped lower on his shoulders. He threw Simon a bitter look as though the bailiff had betrayed him, then cleared his throat. ‘Hal Raddych, sir.’
‘You’re a miner as well?’
‘Yes, sir. I protected this body the first night and last as well.’
‘Very good. And tell me, did anyone come here and move the body while you were here?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What of the club that was used to kill him, Hal?’ Simon interjected.
‘The club?’
‘The blood is still there on the bush. It’s obvious that there was something there.’
‘Perhaps it was stolen away, sir.’
Simon stood and hooked his thumbs in his belt. ‘You take me for a fool?’
Hal looked away. ‘No, sir. But I don’t have the club, and I don’t know anyone who does.’
‘You don’t know anyone who does? You mean that your guard yesterday took it?’
‘I don’t know where it could have gone. Maybe a dog took it, or a fox, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was only a lump of timber.’
‘It matters how many nails there were in it,’ Coroner Roger said. ‘We have to know how much it was worth for the deodand.’
Simon smiled. ‘It must have been worth at least two shillings, Coroner, for someone to bother to take it away.’
‘I agree. Unless we find it, I shall Value it at two shillings. Sheriff to come and collect and so on.’ He looked at the clerk. ‘You know the right words to use, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So it comes to this, then,’ the coroner said. ‘We have a dead man, murdered by a man or men unknown, his head bashed in. He was a poor man, yet he somehow had collected money. We don’t know where from, but he splashed it around liberally. We know he was at the coining from what the
