Free The Lord Bishop's Clerk by Sarah Hawkswood

cloth.’
    Bradecote nodded. He had seen enough violent death to know how much blood would come from so violent and fatal a blow. He formed a mental picture of the murderer pulling the back of the scapular up to the dead cleric’s shoulders and rolling the body onto its back. Dragging it by the scapular would be easy enough over the stone floor, and would prevent an obvious trail of blood from the scene of the act to the altar.
    ‘That raises two new questions. Where did the murder take place, and was the body left in the penitential pose as a disguise to casual observers, or for a reason?’
    ‘The murder must surely have taken place within the church, my lord, but I couldn’t make a judgement on the second point.’
    ‘No matter. That might come to light later. Let’s hunt around for signs of our victim’s last journey.’
    The pair split up, Catchpoll taking St Eadburga’s chapel in the south transept, and Bradecote turning his attention to the north transept and then the Lady chapel. The serjeant met him there some time later.
    ‘Nothing to be seen on my side, my lord, though I haven’t searched the nave yet. It seemed an unlikely place, and the light is failing.’
    ‘Mm,’ replied Bradecote distractedly. ‘What do you think about this?’ He pointed to a darkened crack between two floor slabs. It too, was losing definition in the deepening gloaming.
    Catchpoll squatted down slowly, and pressed his finger along the crack. It came away with a dark, possibly brown, mark. He sniffed his finger tip, meditatively.
    ‘I suppose it could be blood, but there’s little enough of it. I’d be happier with flecks of blood and suchlike. Whoever killed the clerk smashed him good and hard with something heavy to do that sort of damage to the skull, perhaps more than once, and it was a blunt object, not something slicing. There would assuredly be signs, aye, and ones that a murderer in a hurry would not notice.’
    He sat back on his heels and looked around him. Bradecote was put forcibly in mind of a dog on the scent, and forbore to say anything. Catchpoll certainly had plenty of experience of scenes of crime, and should pick up on things that he, as a complete novice, would miss. Bradecote took stock of the man. ‘Grizzled’ was the best description of him, in both mien and appearance. His hair was greying and straggling almost to shoulder length, and his stubble-beard showed even more white. The thin lips were merely a gash across the beard, and there were deeply etched lines running from his nose, which had been broken in the past, to his mouth. The eyes were deep set beneath sparse but beetling brows, and crows’ feet creased their outer aspect. Everything about him proclaimed the hard bitten professional who knew just how he wanted to go about things, and was not about to change. Hugh Bradecote stroked his own chin meditatively, and realised that he must also present a rough appearance. There was two days’ worth of dark stubble on his cheeks, dried blood from a minor head wound matting the lock of hair that fell forward over his frowning brow, and grime, from a long day in the saddle, all over him.
    After a short while Serjeant Catchpoll grunted again and got up, easing his back as he did so.
    ‘Well then, I’d say we have our place, my lord. If you look carefully at the stone you’ll see a discolouration there.’ He indicated a patch which, to Bradecote, looked no more than a change in the shade of the stone itself. ‘That was noticed by our killer and wiped up. The edge is a smooth sort of line, not jagged from a splash. There’s much smaller marks around and about, as I hoped, but in this light they’re tricky to see.’
    He stopped before the small altar, and his face performed a contortion that Bradecote interpreted as indicating deep thought. Catchpoll, he decided, could convey a remarkable amount without the need for speech.
    ‘The clerk was hit from behind. We know that from the position of the