Ivo answered. ‘No, he had nothing but a small wallet on his back. His purse didn’t rattle, either.’
‘Could he have had tin in his wallet?’
‘I suppose, but that much would be worth little. That was why he was so dependent on his rabbits. He used to sell the meat to other miners, the pelts separately. They were good on a winter’s day, those pelts. He knew how to cure them with salt. Took him time, but he was good at it.’
‘And yet he had enough money to buy drink?’ the Coroner asked.
Hal interrupted. ‘He was probably just looking to get some credit with a tradesman in Tavvie.’
Simon watched him closely. Hal looked deeply uncomfortable, as though he was trying to move the conversation on, afraid that something might be discovered.
‘Hmmph,’ the coroner grunted. He was staring at the clerk, and Simon saw that he was taking Hal’s words at face value. He was surprised – then afraid that he really was losing his touch. If he thought that the man’s evidence was so clearly dishonest, perhaps it was because his own judgement was at fault, because Coroner Roger obviously didn’t share his misgivings.
Then he felt a shiver of resentment pass through him. He refused to believe that he was so incompetent that he didn’t understand his own miners. Simon had spent six years getting to know these men, and he’d cut his own cods off if Hal didn’t know more than he was letting on. Simon would speak to him separately. It would show that he still knew a trick or two. Maybe it would teach the abbot that he was trustworthy still. It might even prove to Baldwin that Simon wasn’t burned out and only good for the midden.
There and then Simon determined that he would learn all that Hal knew, and if he could, he would discover the murderer of Wally before anyone else.
Nob belched as he finished the last of his ale and glanced up the road. The kennel was filled with mud and filth, and even as he watched, he heard the familiar bellow of ‘Gardy loo!’ from Tan the cobbler’s place up the road. There followed a minor eruption of green liquid from an upper window, narrowly missing a well-dressed merchant who stopped in the middle of the lane to roar and shake a fist upwards with fury.
This was such a small street, it was no surprise that pedestrians would often get spattered, but there was little choice for housekeepers. They had to empty their pots somewhere.
Ordering another ale, Nob wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and considered the place. It was only a little town, Tavistock. Not like other places he’d been. Mind, some of them weren’t so disorganised as this. The trouble was, Devonshire was so hard to get to. Most towns he’d been to, there was some sort of plan about them before the houses went up. Like Longtown in Herefordshire. Even newer towns in Devonshire had some thought invested in them; he remembered South Zeal as a pleasant place with a good broad road and pleasant plots set out regularly along it.
Tavistock was older, though. It had been a burgh since the days of Abbot Walter, many folk said (although exactly how long that meant Nob didn’t know), and the lanes and streets wound their way untidily about the town. But there were advantages to it. Such as this, the quiet little alehouse not far from his pie-shop, hidden from the main roads by a bend where the lane was forced to curve around the back of Joce Blakemoor’s large house.
It was an imposing property, although Nob himself reckoned it gaudy. Joce was supposed to be a wealthy man, and this was one of the most impressive places in town. The front opened on to the main street, and there you could see that the owner was important. All Blakemoor’s goods were stored in the undercroft, a massive, stone-vaulted chamber that lay under the level of the road. Between the undercroft and the roadway was a large channel, like a moat, which must be traversed by a set of wooden steps, like a drawbridge, which led up to Joce’s shop, where he sold his bolts of cloth, everything from the coarse, cheap dozens to linens and fine wool materials. He even sold silks occasionally, the only cloth merchant to do that this side of Exeter.
Behind the shop itself was Joce’s hall, a high-ceilinged room with doors at the back which gave out to the parlour and service rooms, while a ladder led to the bedchambers at front and rear.
Nob knew the place well. On several occasions he had been instructed to bring pies here and set them out for Joce’s friends, and he and Cissy had been led through to the great hall, its fire roaring in the middle of the floor, then out to the parlour and storerooms beyond. While Cissy went though some final details in the arrangement of the pies, for she was never satisfied, Nob had taken the opportunity to go upstairs and have a look around.
Joce had made a lot of money, that was obvious. The tapestries hanging from the walls, the pewter and silver on his shelves, all spoke of enormous wealth. A merchant selling fine cloths to the men and women of a place like Tavistock could earn himself plenty. Yet the last time Nob had visited, there were fewer plates on the cupboard, less pewter. Joce was obviously selling or pawning his things for cash. He had made more money than Nob ever would from flogging pies, but then, as Nob told himself, he had enough for himself and his family, and that was all a man could
