‘Come on, Hal. What’s this about?’
‘What? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do. That club – what happened to it?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Simon hissed. ‘Look at me, Hal. You’ve known me five or six years now, since I first came out here to the moors. I’ve never treated you badly or given you any problem, have I?’
‘I’d like to help, but…’ His eyes slid over to the coroner. Following his glance, Simon saw that Baldwin was watching them with interest. ‘Don’t worry about them. Anything you tell me will be between us and only us. All right?’
Hal met his gaze.
‘I swear on my oath before God,’ Simon added. ‘Now do you trust me?’
Hal gave a grudging nod. ‘I suppose so. Although I don’t know how much use it’ll be. I was with a group of the lads coming back on the Friday morning. There wasn’t much talk. Wally was ahead of us, and we gradually caught him up. When I saw his face, it made me feel a lot better. He was in a much worse way, poor sod and he’d been in a fight. I gave him a good day, but he only grunted. It didn’t take long to pass him, and we soon left him behind.’ Hal paused. ‘When I reached the Nun’s Cross, I stopped and took a look behind me, just to check if Wally was all right. I could see him coming over the brow of the hill, and this time he wasn’t alone. There was a monk with him.’
‘Which monk?’
‘The tall one, the one with the wound – you know, the scar along his jaw.’
‘Brother Peter!’ Simon breathed.
‘That’s the one. I couldn’t hear what they said. I was heading homewards, and I didn’t want to dither so I left them to it.’
‘Was there anybody else on the moors that day, Hal? Come on, man!’ he expostulated as he saw the miner look away. ‘Wally’s been killed. While his killer is free, he might strike again.’
‘There was a group of travellers out there. Just like the old story,’ Hal said quietly, and there was a shiftiness in his face. ‘Look, Bailiff, you may not believe the legend, eh? But when you live out here on the moors, you get to hear funny things at night, you see strange things you didn’t ought to. Sometimes things happen. If Wally was killed by the devil or one of his black angels, I don’t want to get in his way.’
‘I know what the moors can be like,’ Simon said. ‘But it’s rubbish to think that the devil killed Wally. Why should he? Wally couldn’t have sold his soul to the devil, could he? If he did, he made a poor bargain. I thought the devil offered worldly wealth.’
‘And Wally suddenly had all that money last Thursday.’
‘Bull’s cods!’ Simon said. ‘Why did you take the club away, Hal?’
‘What makes you think I did?’
‘Your friend who guarded the body after you had no interest in it, did he? He didn’t even seem to know there’d ever been one. Where did you put it?’
Hal squinted up at him, then shrugged. ‘I threw it in a bog.’
‘Why?’ Simon asked. ‘What good would that do you?’
‘It was a timber from my mine,’ Hal said gruffly.
Simon caught at his sleeve. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘You saw the marks. They were mine. When I bought it, I scratched my own sign into it. I always do that so others don’t try to steal from me. Someone must have tried to make me look like the murderer; me or my partner, Hamelin, who shares my workings and the timber.’
‘Not necessarily. It could have been someone who merely passed by and took up the first bit of wood he saw. Who could have found this timber and used it?’
‘I left for Tavvie early in the morning before the coining. The timbers were all there at my mine from that morning to the day after the coining, so for two or three days they were left unguarded. Anyone could have helped themselves.’
‘We know that Wally was alive at Nun’s Cross on the Friday – you saw him. Did you see him after that? Or see anyone else?’
‘No. Last time I saw him was breasting that hill with the monk.’
‘But you were heading towards your mine. Could the monk have run ahead, stolen the timber, run back, and stored it ready to kill Wally?’ Simon mused.
‘No, I doubt it. But someone else could have, and left it there for Brother Peter to pick up and use to kill Wally.’
‘It’s all a bit far-fetched. Why should someone try to implicate you?’ Simon considered. ‘Not that they did that very well. After all, I didn’t recognise the marks myself. How many would have?’
‘Any miner who looked during the inquest.’
‘Maybe. In which case perhaps a devious mind thought fit to put the blame on you. But it’s more likely that it was someone else entirely, someone who wanted to kill Wally and who knew that your mine was empty. He could go there, hammer some nails into the timber, bring it up here and do the deed. Perhaps it was someone who lives up here and merely stole timber from you because your works were close or convenient.’
‘Yeah. Could have been. There are plenty of men up here, what with miners, travellers and others.’
‘You saw Peter walking up with Wally. I think that means he can’t have been the killer. Whoever did this must have got to your camp before you, stolen the wood and made a weapon out of it, then made his way back up here. He hid and watched until Brother Peter moved on, then he attacked Wally and killed him.’
‘Maybe.’ Hal shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell exactly what happened.’
But Simon was content with his reasoning. It was not a comfortable thought that a man
