The Relic Murders

buckets of water from the small well in the courtyard. I dried myself off, collected my belongings and went upstairs for a few hours' proper sleep: it was good preparation for a day of horrors and bloody murder.
    It started well enough. Benjamin kicked me awake. We broke our fast and then made our way along Cripplegate to Oswald's and Imelda's cookshop. It was a bright, clear autumn morning as we passed the traders and merchants preparing for a day's haggling. When we reached the cookshop I rapped on the door but there was no answer.
    'Strange,' Benjamin murmured. 'They should be up, baking fresh pies.'
    We went down the narrow runnel which ran alongside the house, through a small wicket gate into a narrow garden. The door to the scullery was open and we went in. The first corpse was lying there. In life she had been an old, plump, cherry-faced woman. In death, ashen-cheeked, she lay face down in the pool of blood that had gushed from her slashed neck. In the kitchen a young apprentice lay, flung like a rag doll in the corner, the wound to his neck looking like a gaping mouth. Oswald was in the shop, lying slumped in a chair; his wife was in her chamber on the second floor. Both had been killed silently, quickly, with a jagged cut running from ear to ear. A ghastly sight! Nothing else had been disturbed. The sweet smell of baking mixed with that of blood and gore. Benjamin felt the ovens.
    "They were killed either very late last night or early this morning,' he declared. 'No baking has been done for the day and their cadavers are cold.' He chewed the comer of his lip. 'As at Malevel, there is no sign of any resistance or disturbance. It's as if they knew their killer; who waited until they were separated and then struck.' Benjamin walked across and looked down at the tray of pies which had been left unsold from the previous day. He picked one up and looked at it curiously. 'Murder again eh, Master Daunbey?' Benjamin dropped the pie. I spun round. Cornelius and two of the Noctales stood in the doorway. 'Don't you ever sleep?' I snarled. 'No one sleeps, Master Shallot,' Cornelius crouched down and studied the apprentice's face, 'when a mad wolf is on the prowl!' 'Why are you here?' I asked. 'I told you last night: we follow you. I have answered your question.' He got to his feet, wiping his hands on his robe. 'Why are you here?' 'Because nobody went into Malevel Manor except these cooks,' Benjamin replied. 'They must have seen something.' 'Master Daunbey, I don't treat you as a fool,' Cornelius sneered. 'I'd be grateful if you would return the compliment.' Cornelius walked over and sat in a small rocking chair near the hearth, pushing himself gently backwards and forwards. 'We noticed,' he continued, 'the arrows missing from the quiver. Jonathan told me about that. But I can see nothing wrong in Sir Thomas Kempe being informed on what was happening in the manor.' He smiled bleakly. 'After all, Jonathan did the same for me.' 'Did he?' Benjamin asked. Cornelius narrowed his eyes.
    'Did he?' Benjamin persisted. 'You take orders from the Lord Egremont; did Jonathan do so too?'
    Cornelius just waved his hand. 'True, true. However, we also noticed, Master Daunbey, how clean the kitchen and scullery were. Now I don't know about English archers, but it certainly made me wonder why a group of soldiers would spend their evening cleaning the table and washing the blackjacks. Why not just pile them in a heap for someone else to wash? After all, that is why those two cooks were hired. So, I ask you again, why are you here?'
    He turned and said something in German to his companions, who left.
    'What are you looking for?' Benjamin asked. 'I understood something of what you said.'
    'The same as you, my dear Benjamin: Master Oswald's finished accounts.' He waved a hand. 'Not the scrap of paper he gave you but the finished bill that might contain some interesting information.' 'Such as what?' Benjamin asked.
    Cornelius wagged a finger at him. 'I don't know and neither do you, yet there may be something, evidence you might not recognise until you see it.' He sighed and let his hand drop. 'Oh, perhaps you're right, the cooks did notice something untoward? Something which they later remembered.' He breathed out noisily. 'Though God knows what?'
    One of the Noctales came in and whispered into his master's ear.
    'Now, isn't that strange?' Cornelius looked up. "There are no accounts and the strong box containing all these poor people's