The Malice of Unnatural Death: by Michael Jecks Page B

petrified in equal measure.
    ‘We should be there tomorrow,’ Simon said. ‘It’s a longwalk from here. Perhaps forty or fifty miles? And the ground is not so easy as most of the way from Dartmouth to Tavistock. How are your feet?’
    ‘This ground’s fine,’ Rob said. ‘But God’s ballocks, that’s a long way to go.’
    ‘Sooner we get on the sooner we’ll arrive,’ Simon said more curtly, nervously shooting a look at the man who wished to be
abbot.
    As if feeling his eye on him, Busse winked at Simon. ‘I can see that a prayer for the easing of profane comments from the
mouths of children could be a good idea.’
    Rob frowned, then pulled a face that seemed to indicate that his respect for the monk was not increasing. Not that Simon reckoned
it was because Rob was concerned that he might have offended the monk with his language; it was more that Rob hated being
described as a child.

Exeter City
    The messenger had been pulled free of the pile of rubbish and lay face down on the packed earth beside the roadway. When Baldwin
enquired, Coroner de Welles confirmed that he had given the body a cursory inspection. The inquest would be in a day or so
as usual, and the body would be stripped naked and rolled over and over in front of the jury so that they could see and witness
all the wounds. So far, the coroner had merely watched the body being pulled from the rubbish, and briefly glanced at it before
seeking Baldwin, who was kneeling at its side now, examining it carefully.
    He looked up at de Welles. ‘Your conclusion?’
    ‘You can see for yourself. The man had a thong pulled about his throat. Dead fairly quickly, I should think, although it wouldn’t
have been pleasant. He struggled. Lookat the marks on his neck, eh?’
    Baldwin peered frowningly at the thin line about the pale, slightly bluish flesh. ‘Yes. But not a simple leather thong. If
you look closely, you can see that there is a weave in the bruise. I should think that this was either a woven leather cord,
or a hempen one. But very fine. Perhaps it could have been either, although if I were the assassin I should aim for leather
as being stronger and safer. I see what you mean about the marks, though.’
    ‘Yes, he fought back as he might, poor devil.’
    Baldwin nodded. All along the thin line of the bruise left by the ligature there were scratches and scrapes. He had seen them
often enough, as had the coroner: when men were hanged with their hands unbound, they would often struggle to release the
cord in this way, scrabbling with their fingers at the cord, desperate to tug it free and give themselves some air. This man
had tried in his desperation to hook his fingers under the cord and pull it away; his nails had made these sad little futile
scratches. The blood had run heavily to the right side of the neck.
    ‘Look here – this is strange. It is as though blood had been smeared over his throat, for none of the scratches under the
cord could have bled enough for all this.’
    ‘Aye, so perhaps the killer was himself wounded. I wondered whether the poor fellow managed to get a knife out and mark his
assailant. Perhaps he stabbed the man’s hand?’
    ‘Indeed. Yet if he succeeded in that, surely he would have cut the thong that throttled him? A man would not fear a scratch
from a knife compared with strangling, would he? But there is blood.’ His gaze moved over the rest of the body. ‘What else?’
    ‘If you open his tunic, you will see he was stabbed, butonly when he was already dead. Once he was on the ground, the killer thrust a dagger into his breast – I suppose he wanted
to make sure, hey? No other reason for it. The knife was long and thin. I reckon at least nine inches long, because that’s
how far into his body the hole goes, and about an inch at the hilt, from the look of the wound.’
    ‘And he was stabbed after death because the wound did not bleed.’
    ‘Not at all. The man opened his tunic and stabbed him through the