The Elixir of Death Read Online Free Page B

and picking up his ale jar to wash down the salty fish and the fatty pork.  
    Osbert picked up his tale where he had left off. 'I don't know this crabber's name, but I can find out in the morning. He's from up Bigbury way, I know him by sight. Anyway, he takes me to the high-water mark and shows me this body - and damn me, if there wasn't another one, fifty paces away.' -  
    The bailiff, sitting with a jar alongside the coroner, took up the tale.  
    'When Osbert came back with the news, I went down with two other cottars and searched all along the shore of the bay, this side of the river. We found another dead 'un, then came across the vessel itself, beached fairly high up between the Warren and Sharpland Point.'  
    'Why did you think the ship belonged to Thorgils of Dawlish?' bleated Thomas. 'Could you read the name on its bow?'  
    William Vado shook his head sadly. 'I've got no learning, sir. But when we-found these poor dead shipmen, I sent back for our priest to shrive them. He's the only man hereabouts who knows his letters and he said the cog was called the Mary and Child Jesus .'  
    Osbert piped up again. 'The crabber, who sells his catch and some other fish in Salcombe, says he's seen the vessel berthed there in the past and knew it came from up Dawlish way.' ,  
    De Wolfe nodded, as he knew that Thorgils the Boatman, as he was universally known, called at all the South Devon ports to collect cargo for his endless runs back and forth to Normandy and Brittany.  
    'But this was no ordinary shipwreck, you claim?'  
    Vado shook his blond bullet-head. 'They were knifed, Crowner! No doubt of it, though I make no claim to being either a soldier or an apothecary. That's why I rode straightway to Totnes to ask my lord's steward what was to be done.'  
    'And the bodies and the wreck? You have made them secure?' demanded the coroner.  
    The bailiff nodded virtuously. 'The cadavers are in the church here. We couldn't leave them on the beach till you came. With tides rising with this moon and the wind freshening, they might have been washed back out to sea. Couldn't do anything with the ship until she's lightened of her cargo, but I've set a man and a boy on guard at the head of the beach to keep off any pillagers.' His face darkened as he contemplated the neighbouring villages. 'Those bloody people from Bigbury and Aveton would strip the wreck down to her last dowel-pins, given half a chance.'  
    De Wolfe turned to his officer. 'Gwyn, how many crew does Thorgils usually carry?'  
    'Three or four, besides himself, so there's at least one not accounted for. Was he carrying goods for you on his outbound voyage?'  
    The coroner nodded. 'He took a cargo of wool bales and some finished cloth from Topsham across to Harfleur. I don't know what he was due to bring back. We had no orders for him, but he's hardly likely to have come back empty.'
    John de Wolfe was in partnership with Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter's two portreeves, the leaders of the city burgesses. When John had given up campaigning a couple of years earlier, he had invested the loot he had accumulated in two decades of fighting abroad in a wool exporting business with de Relaga. Though he was only a sleeping partner, he derived a steady profit from the enterprise, more than sufficient to fulfill the legal necessity of a coroner having an income of at least twenty pounds a year. This requirement was in theory a safeguard against corruption, as the King's Council naively thought that anyone with such riches would have no need to embezzle from public funds.  
    When the visitors had finished the food on the table, they pulled their stools around the edge of the fire-pit and sat with the bailiff and a few of the other villagers. Their pots were refilled by the young servants, and as darkness fell outside rush-lamps were lit and set on sconces around the walls, adding a dim light to the flames that flickered from the fire as more wood was stacked on to it. This was