The coroner and Gwyn hurried through the early morning crowds thronging the shops and stalls until they emerged through the West Gate. They took Frog Lane across Exe Island, the swampy ground between the city wall and the river, which curved around to the north where many of the mills were situated. Shacks and shanties were dotted around the edges of the leets and streams, always in danger of being flooded or washed away when the Exe flooded after rainstorms up on Exmoor. But today was dry and cold, and they soon reached the mill which Stephen de Radone had described to them.
The place was a hive of activity. Looking into one of the high, open-fronted sheds, John could imagine that he was on the threshold of Hell. Amidst mounds of ore and charcoal, a bulbous furnace was issuing forth a stream of white-hot iron, around which several foundrymen were capering, holding long rods, guiding the liquid metal into stone and clay moulds. Though fascinated by the sight, John tore himself away and found the ironmaster cloistered with a miserable-looking clerk in a hut that served as their office and countinghouse.
John tersely explained their mission to the master, a prosperous-looking man with a large paunch, and a rim of grey beard around his plump face.
'He's gone,' declared the ironmaster. 'Said he was sick, then just walked out two days ago without a word. He always was an awkward fellow, though he worked hard enough.'
'Did you know about his trouble with the guilds?'
'Of course. Mind you, he brought it on himself, he was a cussed individual, wouldn't take advice.' He explained that Geoffrey Trove refused to offer a conventional object as his master-piece, even though he was a competent craftsman.
'Instead of casting an elegant door knocker or forging a handsome dagger, the damned fool insisted on making some strange device. He claimed it was a miniature crossbow that a man could hang from his belt and use to deter robbers.'
John and Gwyn looked at each other on hearing this apparent confirmation that Trove must have been the culprit
'Was he much incensed at his rejection by the guild masters?' asked John.
'Hard to tell, he was such a surly, close-lipped devil.
I wouldn't have thought he would commit murder over it, but you never can tell with these silent ones.'
Further questioning brought out the fact that Geoffrey Trove was unmarried, so far as anyone knew, though he had come several years ago from Bristol as a journey man and no one knew anything of his past history.
'He lived alone in one of those huts on the island,' said the master, waving a podgy, be-ringed hand down towards the distant Exe bridge, still unfinished after several years' construction. 'Don't ask me which one, someone on Frog Lane will tell you. I have to admit that he looked very poorly when he left here.'
'What was wrong with him?' asked de Wolfe.
'God knows, he would rarely give you the time of day.
But he held one arm stiffly and his face was flushed as if he had a fever. I told him to seek an apothecary.'
Leaving the master to count his profits with his clerk, the two law officers retraced their steps back across the marshes, shivering as a fresh north wind moaned about them, reminding them that once again, snow might not be all that far away. 'Let's hope it keeps off a bit longer,' grumbled Gwyn, thinking of their proposed search of Dartmoor the next day.
Enquiry led them to a cottage that was larger and more substantial than some of the shacks. It was built on the edge of a muddy channel that had been strengthened by stonework, making the cottage safer than some of the mean huts that were literally sliding into the leets.
It was a square box built of cob on a wooden frame and had a thatched roof in fair condition. There were no windows, but a front and back door of oaken planks.
The back door was barred from inside and the front door had a complicated metal lock.
'Probably made it himself,' observed John, rattling the massive padlock in a futile attempt to shake it open.
They hammered on the doors, getting no response.
Gwyn stood back and studied the door with a critical eye. 'That will take some breaking down. Do you really need to get inside, Crowner?'
John nodded, scowling at the barrier of oak that was frustrating them. 'If that device for shooting iron rods is inside, that would clinch his guilt,' he growled.
'Do you want me to try and smash it open?'
John reluctantly shook his head. 'You'd do yourself an injury. There's no great urgency, I'll get Gabriel to bring a couple of men down here later with a length of tree trunk. If there's no answer then, they can batter it open and see if there’s anything incriminating in there.
As they walked back towards the city de Wolfe wondered where Geoffrey Trove might have got to, if he was not in his place of work or at home.
'Let's try St John's Priory, maybe he's sought the ministrations of Brother Saulf in the infirmary, if he really is ill.'
St John's was the only place in Exeter where sick persons could find a bed and have some sympathetic care offered to them. However, this time Brother Sanlf could not help, as no such person as Trove had been to the infirmary and he had never heard of him.
Baffled, de Wolfe and Gwyn returned to Rougemont, where they found Thomas hard at work copying rolls for the next visitation of the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery. But he also had news of a different visitation, one that Hubert Walter had promised.
'The sheriffs clerk asked me to tell you that Sir Walter de Ralegh, together with another justice, will arrive in Exeter one week from now, to hear the case of Nicholas de Arundell,' announced Thomas, with a satisfied smile on his peaky face.
'That makes it all the more urgent to find our Nick o' the Moors,' said the coroner to his officer. As they settled down to their mid-morning ale and bread, John complimented his clerk on his genius in thinking of the iron connection in the murders, which now seemed to have been confirmed beyond any doubt.
'We even know the name of the bastard who's responsible,' he concluded, as Thomas wriggled in self-conscious delight at this rare praise from his master.
'But like de Arundell, we can't find the bugger!' boomed Gwyn. 'They've both vanished into thin air, so if you really are a genius, tell us where we can find them. '
The little priest took him seriously and began to tick off the possibilities on his thin fingers. 'He's not at his work, or his dwelling. Neither is he sick in the infirmary. He's not likely to be in St Nicholas priory, as they don't encourage outsiders to share their sickbeds.' Thomas stopped with three fingers displayed. 'You say he was a stranger in Exeter, having come from Bristol, so he'll have no relatives to stay with, so either he's left the city or he's holed up in some lodging.'
The big Cornishman grunted derisively. 'Doesn't need a genius to come to that conclusion. Which lodging, that's the point?'
At the lodging in question, a young woman stood uncertainly in the centre of the room and looked down at the bed, a hessian bag stuffed with a random mixture of feathers from fowl, geese and ducks.
It was not this primitive mattress that caused the worried look on her face, but the man who lay on it, groaning as he nursed his left arm. Denise had done her best with a pot of salve from an apothecary and a wide strip of linen torn from her only bedsheet. She had anointed the angry slash on Trove's forearm with the green paste and wrapped it with several turns of the cloth, tying it in place with a length of blue ribbon. But the wound had become redder and more swollen, and pink tracks had begun to climb up the skin of his arm towards the shoulder.
'You need better attention than I can give you, Geoffrey,' she exclaimed for the tenth time. 'I'm no leech or Sister of Mercy, what do I know of tending wounds?'
The journeyman gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his arm as he struggled to a sitting position. 'It will pass, woman. Give it time, it was not much more than a scratch.'