Read Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts for Free Online Page B

quivered: his numerous chins pressed down against the military cloak which swaddled him like a blanket does a baby.
    ‘A good place for justice.’ The young, blond-haired Sir Maurice spoke up. He had thrown his cloak on to the ground and sat slightly forward, tapping his gloves against his knee. He shuffled his feet impatiently as if he expected the royal emissary to hold court there, and then declare his dead father innocent.
    ‘Who built it?’ Corbett asked. He walked round the circular-shaped crypt, stooping to look into the coffin ledges. ‘I have never seen the like of this.’
    ‘There used to be an old Saxon church here,’ Grimstone explained. ‘It was pulled down in the reign of the second Henry. This used to be a burial place. They built the present church over it. The coffins are those of the previous parsons though the practice of burying them here has now stopped.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I will join the rest out in the cemetery.’
    ‘Why did you ask to meet here?’ Burghesh demanded. ‘You can see Parson Grimstone is not well.’
    ‘For two reasons.’ Corbett sat down on a chair. He moved an oil lamp on the ledge behind him and placed his gloves beside it. ‘As you know, I am lodged at the Golden Fleece where, I suspect, the walls have ears.’ He smiled with his lips though his eyes remained hard. ‘Secondly, I wanted to view the corpse. By the way, why is that placed here and not in the church?’
    ‘It’s the custom,’ Grimstone sighed. ‘This is our death house. The poor girl was found last Monday. Her corpse was brought into the church yesterday evening. Tomorrow morning it will be placed before the rood screen. I will sing the Requiem Mass and the burial will take place immediately afterwards.’
    ‘It’s certainly a dour place.’
    Corbett scratched his head. He licked dry lips. He would have preferred to be back at the Golden Fleece. He, Ranulf and their groom, Chanson, had arrived mid-morning, just as the church bells were tolling the Angelus. Blidscote had been waiting in the taproom. Corbett suspected he had drunk more than was good for him. The clerk had insisted on viewing the corpse as well as questioning certain people more closely. He would have preferred Burghesh to be elsewhere but Parson Grimstone was in a dither. He’d insisted that his friend accompany him from the spacious, well-furnished priest’s house behind the church.
    ‘Why has a King’s clerk, the keeper of the Secret Seal,’ Blidscote now spoke carefully, trying to remove the drunken slur from his words, ‘decided to grace this market town?’
    ‘Because the King wants it!’ Corbett snapped. ‘Melford may be a market town, master bailiff, it’s also the haunt of murder - brutal deaths which go back years. What is it today?’ He squinted across the chamber. ‘The Feast of St Edward the Confessor, October the thirteenth, the year of Our Lord 1303. Five years ago,’ he pointed across at Sir Maurice, ‘his father, Lord Roger Chapeleys, was hanged on the common scaffold outside Melford for the murder of those maidens and a rather rich young widow. What was her name?’
    ‘Goodwoman Walmer,’ Sir Maurice replied.
    ‘Ah yes, Goodwoman Walmer. Sir Maurice was only fourteen years of age but, since he reached his sixteenth year,’ Corbett smiled at the young manor lord, ‘he has sent letter after letter into the royal chancery, stoutly maintaining his father’s innocence, that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place. Now the King could do little. Lord Roger was tried by a jury before Louis Tressilyian. Evidence was produced, a verdict of guilty brought. The King could see no grounds for a pardon so sentence was carried out.’
    ‘My father was innocent!’ Sir Maurice shouted. ‘You know that.’ He pointed threateningly at Grimstone.
    ‘How do I know that?’ the parson retorted.
    ‘Before he was hanged,’ Sir Maurice found it difficult to speak, ‘you shrived him. You heard his last