Song of a Dark Angel

touched a sensitive spot.
    'Master Monck asked the same questions.' 'He came here?' Corbett asked.
    'Oh, yes,' Father Augustine replied. 'That's why we found the entries so quickly.' The priest's brow furrowed in puzzlement. 'He came, I think, on the second day after his arrival to make the same enquiries as you. Didn't he tell you, Sir Hugh?'
    Corbett smiled wryly. 'Master Monck was a secretive man.'
    'Was?' the priest and reeve chorused together.
    'This morning Master Catchpole brought his corpse in. He was found on the moors, a crossbow bolt deep in his chest.'
    The reeve shuffled his mud-stained boots and looked away.
    Did you kill him? Corbett wondered. He recalled the black looks as he went through the village. Had Monck been murdered as a result of a village conspiracy?
    'Master reeve,' he said quietly. 'You still haven't answered my question.'
    Robert breathed in deeply. 'There are legends all over Norfolk about the old king's treasure. About a false guide called Holcombe whom Sir Richard Gurney hanged on the scaffold on the cliff top. There are also stories that Alan of the Marsh may have been his accomplice.'
    'And how do these stories end?'
    'They say Holcombe was hunted down.'
    'And?'
    'Either Alan of the Marsh was killed by the Gurneys who seized his wealth 'Or?'
    'Or he hid away, trapped himself in a place he couldn't get out of and died of starvation.'
    'Father, have you heard these stories?'
    The priest smiled. 'As Robert says, they are common. But the whereabouts of Alan of the Marsh and the treasure are a mystery.' Father Augustine steepled his fingers together. 'I have even heard' – his long face broke into a grin – 'that the villagers here murdered Alan of the Marsh, seized his treasure and either hid it or distributed it.'
    Robert the reeve made a rude sound with his lips.
    'Did Master Monck examine Adele's grave?'
    'Yes, he did,' the priest said. 'No one knew where it was and it took some time to find it. He even examined the coffin.' He shook his head. 'But there's nothing there.'
    'A final question,' Corbett said.
    'Yes, Sir Hugh?'
    'Master Monck called here on the afternoon he died. Why was that?'
    'He was asking once again about his clerk Cerdic. I couldn't help him. He spent some time here with me, speculating on what had happened to Cerdic.' The priest glanced slyly at Corbett. 'He also said some rather uncharitable things about your arrival and he was in a terrible temper. He left, saying he was going back to the Holy Cross convent.' The priest paused. 'It must have been well after dark. Do you remember, Robert, I called you to the church after making a sick call?'
    'That's right,' the reeve confirmed. 'I was waiting here for Father Augustine when suddenly I heard hoof beats. I ran out of the church and Monck thundered by, riding his horse like the devil. He went through the village, scattering dogs and chickens, stopping neither for man, woman nor child.'
    'Why do you think he was riding so furiously?'
    'God knows. I thought he was going back to the manor or perhaps across the moors to the Pastoureaux.'
    Corbett thanked them and went outside. He unhitched his horse and wondered whether to go to the Holy Cross convent. The day was drawing in. Large, fat raindrops, carried by the driving wind, wetted his face. Damn it, Corbett thought and, turning his horse's head, rode back towards the manor.
    'I don't want to go to the convent and Dame Cecily's supercilious ways,' he murmured to himself. He stared into the gathering darkness. He was also being cautious – if Monck was murdered in an ambush, the same could happen to him.
    Corbett cleared the village and made his way along the track. He glimpsed the scaffold dark against the sky and remembered the decayed flowers he had found there. They looked as if they had been lying there for weeks, so it couldn't be some neighbour of the Fourbours paying a small tribute. Corbett looked out to where the sea rose and fell in a sullen grey mass. The wind whipped his hair and the bracken on either side crackled with the movement of night creatures. Corbett shivered.
    'You are a fool,' he murmured, 'to be out so late at night.' And he urged his horse into a gallop towards the welcoming lights of Mortlake.
    Ranulf and Maltote were waiting for him, their boredom apparent.
    'We found nothing, Master,' Ranulf confessed as Corbett sat on the edge of his bed and removed his riding boots.
    'And I don't think we will,' Corbett said. 'We are finished at