The House of the Red Slayer

so special about Droxford, anyway, Sir John?’
    ‘He’s special, Master Venables, because he’s a murderer, a felon who has stolen over two hundred pounds of his master’s monies, and it looks as if he has got away scot free!’
    Venables took one look at Cranston’s angry face and agreed. Sir John had then stamped off, muttering curses about public officials who didn’t seem to care. Yet, in his heart, Cranston knew he was a hypocrite. The business at the Tower was still shrouded in mystery. The fugitive Droxford, not to mention the easy-going alderman, were the nearest butts for Sir John’s foul temper.
    He turned into the still-deserted Lombard Street and up to the great stocks just before the Poultry. A group of beadles were standing around a beggar who sat imprisoned there, feet and hands tightly clamped, face frozen, eyes open.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Cranston bellowed.
    The beadles shuffled their feet.
    ‘Someone forgot to release him last night,’ one of them shouted. ‘The poor bastard’s frozen to death!’
    ‘Then some bastard will pay!‘ Sir John bellowed back, and continued up the wide thoroughfare, past a group of nightbirds, whores and petty felons now manacled together and being led down to the great iron cage on top of the Conduit. A frightened-looking maid let him in. Sir John suddenly stopped, eyes narrowing. Hadn’t he glimpsed a shadow in the alleyway beside the house? He went back. Nothing. Cranston shook his head and, vowing he would drink less sack, brushed past the anxious-looking maid, down the passageway and into the stone-flagged kitchen. He thanked God Maude wasn’t there, he was tired of their encounters.
    ‘Any messages?’ he barked at a subdued-looking Leif, still sitting in his favourite place in the inglenook of the great fireplace. The one-legged beggar lifted his head from his bowl of vegetables and spiced meat and shook his head.
    ‘No, Sir John,’ he replied. ‘But I have polished the pewter pots.‘
    ‘Good,’ he growled. ‘At least someone in this city is working.’
    Cranston poured himself a generous goblet of wine and seized a small white loaf the cook had left to cool on the kitchen table. The coroner stood snatching mouthfuls of bread and gulping noisily from a goblet whilst he stared angrily at the fire. What should he do? he wondered. Whitton’s and Fitzormonde’s deaths at the Tower were still as unfathomable as ever. He had also failed to find Horne. Sir John knew it would only be a matter of time before his masters at the Guildhall or, worse still, the Regent at the Savoy Palace, asked for an account of his stewardship. He heard a sharp knock at the door.
    ‘Go on, Leif,’ he growled. ‘I’m too bloody cold to answer it.’
    Leif looked self-pityingly at him.
    ‘Go on, you idle bugger!’ Cranston roared. ‘There’s more to this house than sitting on your arse and stuffing your mouth with every bit of food you can lay your sticky little fingers on!‘
    Leif sighed, put down the bowl and hobbled out of the kitchen. Cranston heard the front door open and the man limping slowly back.
    ‘What is it?’ Cranston asked, winking good-humouredly at the maid who had also hurried down to see who was at the door. The girl smiled anxiously back and Cranston quiedy cursed himself. He was frightening everyone with his foul temper. He must take a grip on himself. Perhaps he should ask Athelstan to intervene?‘Well, man?’ he repeated. ‘Who was there?’
    ‘No one, Sir John.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, there was no one there.’ Leif steadied himself against the lintel of the door. ‘Only this.’ He held up a battered, leather bag tied at the neck and stained with watery dark marks around the base. ‘I answered the door,’ Leif ponderously repeated, ‘no one was there, only this bag.’
    ‘Then open it, man!‘ Cranston said testily.
    The coroner turned away to refill his wine cup. He whirled around at Leif‘s horrified cry and the bump as the maid fell in a dead faint to the floor. The beggarman just stood there, eyes wide in horror, mouth slack; in his upraised hand he held by the hair the decapitated head of Adam Horne, alderman and merchant.
    Now Cranston had seen decapitated heads, be they of murdered taverner or some lord executed on Tower Hill, but this was truly gruesome; it was not so much the halfclosed eyes and still blood-dripping neck but the mouth forced open and, thrust inside, the mangled remains of the dead