Free The Awful Secret by Bernard Knight Page A

arriving in mid-afternoon. Their clerk was fussing outside the bailiff’s dwelling, hopping about on his lame leg like a black sparrow, marshalling the reluctant crowd of about thirty men and boys whom he had coerced into a jury.
    De Wolfe, conscious that the day was slipping away, led them across to the fish shed where the cadaver lay. ‘Let’s get this over quickly, Gwyn,’ he growled. ‘There’s little we can do today – it will mean at least one other journey back here later.’
    At the shed, he instructed Gwyn to pull out the body into the open, and the jury stood in a wide half-circle in the keen wind, the surf rumbling beyond the harbour and the seagulls wheeling and mewing overhead.
    The Cornishman cut short his usual formal opening of an inquest and merely yelled at the motley throng, ‘Silence for the king’s crowner!’
    With his arms folded across his chest, de Wolfe stood near the head of the corpse and addressed the jury. ‘You men are representing the Hundred in this matter. I have to determine who this man might be and where, when and how he came to his death. The witness who can name him is too ill to attend but was also a member of the crew of that vessel. The name of the dead man was Roger of Bristol, that’s all I know. He was part Saxon, but we cannot prove presentment of Englishry as there are no relatives here nor even the only witness who knew him.’ He glared around the faces of the jury, as if daring them to contradict him. ‘In the circumstances, I am not going to amerce this village as it is plain that he died before reaching your land.’
    There was a murmur of relief from the older men and the few wives who stood listening in the background. At least they would avoid the heavy fine for being unable to prove that the dead man was a Saxon: the Norman laws assumed that, in default of proof, he was of the conquering race – even if that event had taken place well over a century ago.
    ‘This witness I mentioned confirms that the vessel, known as the
Saint Isan
, was attacked by pirates somewhere between here and Lundy Island. We know of this death, and the survivor claims he saw the ship’s master killed, so we assume that the rest of the crew were also killed or drowned.’ He paused to look down at the shrouded figure at his feet. ‘This man, Roger of Bristol, was most certainly murdered.’
    He motioned to Gwyn, who pulled off the canvas and displayed the corpse to the jury. As they shuffled nearer for a better view, the coroner pointed out the deep slash in the belly, livid against the whitened skin. ‘A typical pike wound. There is no explanation other than murder.’
    Again his dark face came up and his eyes slowly ranged across the villagers, brooding on each face in turn. ‘Have any of you here any knowledge of who may have done this thing?’ he boomed. ‘Have you heard tell of any piracy in these waters?’
    There was muttering and whispering and general shaking of heads, and the coroner, not really expecting any useful response, was about to carry on speaking when a quavering voice piped up from the middle of the crowd, ‘I have heard tell, sir, that them Appledore folk are not above a bit of thieving at sea.’
    This provoked a further buzz and another man, dressed in the short blue serge tunic of a sailor or fisherman, called out, ‘I do know they’ve pillaged a wreck last year, afore the lord’s steward could get to it. That was down Clovelly way.’
    John de Wolfe spent a few minutes trying to get more concrete evidence than these rumours, but he ended with the suspicion that there was bad blood between Ilfracombe and Appledore, a small village on the other side of the river from Barnstaple. After he had ended the inquest, with the curt decision that Roger of Bristol had been killed against the king’s peace by persons as yet unknown, he dismissed the ragged jury and turned to Gwyn and Thomas. ‘What d’you think of these Appledore accusations,