Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

turned to look at him, after so long of forgetting his presence: "My sister and her man and the children will tell you I stayed the night over, and left in the dawn. It might be said a family will hold together, however. But I can tell you the names of two or three I said good day to, coming back along the Foregate this morning. They'll bear me out."
    The abbot gave him a startled and preoccupied look, and understood. "Such checks and counter-checks are for the sheriff's men," he said. "But I make no doubt you've told us simple truth. And the rain was over by midnight, you say?"
    "It was, my lord. There's but three miles between, it would surely be much the same here."
    "It fits well," said Cadfael, kneeling over the body. "He must surely have died about six or seven hours ago. And since he came after the rain stopped, when the ground was soft and moist to tread, there should be traces they've left after them. Here they've stamped the ground raw between them, there's nothing clear, but by one way or another they walked in here in the night, and one walked out again."
    He rose from his knees and rubbed his moist palms together. "Hold your places where you stand, and look about you. We may have trampled out something of value ourselves, but at least all of us here but one wear sandals, and so did Eluric. Master Bronzesmith, how did you enter here this morning, when you found him?"
    "Through the house-door," said Niall, nodding in that direction.
    "And when Brother Eluric came each year to fetch the rose, how did he enter?"
    "Through the wicket from the front yard, as we did now. And was very quiet and modest about it."
    "Then this night past, coming with no ill intent, though so secretly, surely he would come as he always came. Let us see," said Cadfael, treading carefully along the grass to the wicket gate in the wall, "if any but sandalled feet came that way."
    The earth path, watered into mud by the rain, and again dried into a smooth, soft surface, had taken all their entering footprints and held them clear to view, three pairs of flat soles, here and there overlaid one on another. Or were there four pairs? With these common sandals size meant nothing very helpful, but Cadfael thought he could detect, among all those prints entering and none leaving, one which had trodden deeper than the rest, having entered here while the ground was wetter than now, and by lucky chance escaped being trodden out of shape with their morning invasion. There was also a broad, sturdy shoe-sole, recent like the sandals, which Niall claimed for his, and showed as much by fitting his foot to it.
    "Whoever the second was," said Cadfael, "I fancy he did not come by the front way, as innocent men do. Nor leave by it, either, having left a dead man behind here. Let us look elsewhere."
    On the eastward side the garden was hemmed in by the wall of the house belonging to Thomas the farrier, on the west by Niall's workshop and dwelling; there was no way out there. But to the rear, on the other side of the north wall, lay a paddock, very easily entered from the fields, and no way overlooked by any building. A few paces along the wall from the mutilated rose-bush there was a vine growing, crabbed and old and seldom fruitful. A part of its twisted trunk had been pulled away from the wall, and when Niall approached it closely he saw that where the trunk turned sidelong and afforded a foothold, a foot had indeed scored it, mounting in panic haste.
    "Here! Here he climbed. The ground is higher outside in the paddock, but leaving he needed a holt on the way."
    They drew close, peering. The climber's boot had scratched the bark and left soil in the scratches. And below, in the exposed earth of the bed, the other foot, the left, had stamped a deep and perfect print as he lunged upward, for he had had to reach high. A booted foot, with a raised heel that had dug deep, but less deep on the outer edge at the back, where the wearer habitually trod his boot down. By the shape his footgear had been well made, but well worn also. There was a fine ridge of earth that crossed from below the great toe diagonally half across the sole, narrowing to vanishing point as it went, left by a crack in the leather. Opposite the downtrodden heel, the toe also had left an imprint shallowing slightly. Whoever the man was, he trod from the left of the heel clean to the right of the toe with this left foot. His spring from the ground had forced the print in deep, but his foot had