A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel Read Online Free Page A

seemed likely caused by an attack of some wild beast, perhaps a wolf. Her eyes grew wide at this revelation.
    I asked if she knew of any reason why her husband would leave the town on his rounds.
    “Perhaps,” she whispered, “he saw the wolf and tried to drive it away.”
    If indeed a wolf killed the man, that explanation was as good as any I and Hubert Shillside had contrived. I asked if I could see Alan’s shoes. Matilda was no fool.
    “’E wore ’em, din’t he,” she retorted. “’E wan’t daft…t’go ’bout at night w’out shoes. ’Oo knows what a man might step on in the dark?”
    I was properly silenced. But that was the answer I sought and expected. I traded a glance with the coroner. We exchanged raised eyebrows. At such moments I often try to raise but one eyebrow, as does Lord Gilbert Talbot. But I have been unable to master the pose. I am convinced it is an ability to which only the gentry are born.
    “What ’appened to ’im?” she asked.
    There followed a pause as Shillside and I each waited for the other to speak. The coroner looked away, as if he found some unusual event down Catte Street which required his attention. So I told her.
    “We have brought him to you,” I concluded. “He is at your door, in the street. John Holcutt waits there with him. You may make arrangements with Thomas de Bowlegh to bury him tomorrow.”
    The next day was Good Friday, but it would never again be good for Matilda, wife of the beadle. Each year at the remembrance of our Lord’s death she would recall her own loss and the day would be doubly distressing. I recall my own loss each time I see a pear or smell cloves or eat a Christmas feast.
    “I will see him,” she said with some firmness, and turned to walk from the rear to the front of her small house. ’Twas but a few paces. The coroner and I followed.
    John Holcutt stiffened when he heard the front door squeal open on winter-rusted hinges and saw Matilda and the child approach. Matilda stopped, staring at the horse and its burden for long minutes. None dared break the silence. Passers-by averted their eyes, crossed themselves, and silenced their steps.
    Matilda stepped softly to her husband, shifted the child to her hip, and reached out a hand to sweep unruly hair from Alan’s cold forehead. She caressed her senseless husband and bent to whisper in the unhearing ear. I made it my business not to listen.
    The spring sun was now well up over Bampton’s rooftops, shedding bright golden light on the scene. In this brilliance, as she stroked her dark-haired husband, something caught Matilda’s eye. I thought at first she had discovered the dent at the back of Alan’s skull, but this was not so. She parted his locks and drew forth a blue thread.
    “What’s this, then?” she asked, and held the object forth.
    Alan wore nothing blue. His surcoat was brown, his cotehardie yellow and his chauces grey. And no doubt his kirtle was as white as Matilda could make it.
    I took the thread from her. It was a faded blue length of coarse woolen yarn, about as long as a finger. Matilda had plucked it from her husband’s scalp near the place where his head was bruised.
    “Have you a garment of this color?” I asked.
    “Nay…though ’tis common enough.”
    I turned to Hubert Shillside. “Did any of those who found Alan this morning wear blue? I think not, but ’twas not full light yet, and my mind was otherwise occupied.”
    The coroner thought back on the discovery and pursed his lips in concentration. “The plowman who remained in the field with the oxen, did he not wear a blue cotehardie?”
    “I paid him no attention,” I admitted. “If you saw this I will take your word for it.”
    Matilda looked from me to the coroner during this conversation. She held the thread before us between two fingers. “I think, Master Hugh, that all is not as you wish,” she said quietly.
    Shillside gave me a look that said, “Now see what you’ve done!” I could not