Gareth
“What do you mean, who wouldn’t?” Gareth asked this question even though he might have made a good guess on his own, just from the little he’d heard about Roger Carter from John Fletcher. Gareth distinctly remembered John mentioning that, although Roger had achieved a certain stature in the town, he had a temper. For that reason, few had been surprised when Adeline had run away rather than marry him. Gareth, however, wanted to hear Rob say that himself.
Instead, Rob shook his head and looked down at his boots. “I hate to speak ill of the dead.”
This was no time for mincing words. “The man was murdered,” Gareth said. “If we are to find Roger’s killer, we must know the truth about him, and the only way we’re going to find that out is if you, and everyone else, tells it to us.”
Rob still didn’t seem to want to speak, so Gareth turned to Cedric, eyebrows raised.
Cedric wrinkled his nose, his eyes on Rob, and then shrugged. “Rob’s right. Roger had enemies. Many, in fact.”
“Why would that be?” Gareth said, again feigning ignorance.
Cedric cleared his throat and then said very clearly, as if reciting a Latin lesson. “Because he was a son of a bitch and a bastard.” Then he looked sheepishly at Gwen, though she might not have even understood the English profanity, and added, “or so my father says.”
Gareth assumed that Cedric didn’t mean either of those epithets literally and waited patiently for either Cedric or Rob to elaborate.
Finally, Rob sighed. “Cedric’s right. Roger Carter had a cruel streak and a temper. When he was in a foul mood, woe to the man who stood in his way. From what I heard, he beat his apprentice every other day for his mistakes or for not doing exactly as he was told—or maybe even because Roger liked it.”
Cedric nodded. “I heard that Roger was elected to the town council because the other members were afraid of him.”
“He threatened them?” Gareth said.
Rob shrugged. “Maybe not in so many words, but he is rich and influential.”
“Influential with the sheriff?” Gareth said.
Cedric shook his head. “Not him. The Lord of Ludlow thinks highly of him and his work, however.”
“I have to admit, his carts don’t lose wheels often,” Rob said, “and if they do, he fixes them for no charge. He is rigid, but when he says he will do something, he does it.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a man could become rich as a cartwright,” Gwen said.
“It isn’t the carts but the carriages,” Rob said. “When the Lord of Ludlow orders a fine carriage for his wife and Roger makes him one fit for a king, more orders follow. He made one for Robert of Gloucester earlier this year.”
“Robert of Gloucester supports Empress Maud,” Gwen said, “and this city stands for King Stephen.”
Rob quirked an eyebrow. “Money is money, miss. It doesn’t matter who buys a man’s goods as long as someone does. We were for Maud before we were for Stephen, and the Earl is as good as his word and pays well.”
Other than a few dark days nearly ten years ago when Shrewsbury Castle, which had been held for Empress Maud, had fallen to King Stephen and he’d had the garrison slaughtered, this region of England had mostly escaped the war between the royal Norman cousins. This close to Wales, when danger came, half the population would retreat west anyway, waiting for the violence to die down before returning to their homes and livelihoods. Many, John Fletcher among them, had Welsh blood, and those who didn’t might find that friendship with a Welshman for once came in handy.
Upon their return and the appointment of their new sheriff, the allegiance of the townspeople would have changed from Maud to Stephen, but few of the common folk were concerned with who sat on the throne in London.
Rob canted his head. “Besides, once Roger started doing well, he looked for ways to invest his money.”
Gareth’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
Rob shrugged. “If a neighbor had an idea to start a business, Roger would go in with him on it, as a partner. He wouldn’t be the one who would do the work—just someone to put up the money to start it. He had such arrangements all over Shropshire.”
Gareth himself had never thought about wealth in that way. When he saved, he stored coins in a bag and either carried the bag with him, or gave it to Taran, King Owain’s steward, to keep for him. Taran had a ledger where he recorded every transaction. The idea that Gareth could take what he’d saved and invest it in someone else’s business was a completely foreign idea to him. It seemed to make sense to both Rob and Cedric, however.
Gareth pointed with his chin to Rob. “Thank you for your help. If you can think of anything that could assist us in finding Conall, or if you have a thought of the specific name of a man who might want Roger dead, please send word to me at the abbey or to John Fletcher at the castle.”
Gareth was of a mind that he’d pulled everything he could out of Rob for now. John Fletcher might want another go when he arrived, but it wouldn’t be helpful in the long run to overtax an important witness from the start. If he needed to, Gareth could come back.
Rob gestured to Cedric. “If you like, I could let him know if I remember anything else. Cedric’s my cousin’s lad.”
“That would be fine.”
Rob turned to leave the room, but then he hesitated one more time. “What of the body? I’d like to rent the room tonight.”
“Unless something else unforeseen happens, he and we will be gone by then,” Gareth said.
Rob nodded, looking satisfied.
Cedric moved aside to let the innkeeper leave, and then he took Rob’s absence as an opportunity to approach the body for the first time. His eyes were wide, and Gareth just managed to keep a grim smile from his lips. Here was another young man excited by the mystery of a violent death, having little experience with it up until now.
It was Gareth’s thought that all men yearned to be tested and not found wanting. Even in this time of war, not every man could be a soldier, but every young man desired to be one—until the battle actually began. War made old men out of young men in a day, if not an hour.
“Bad luck for Uncle Rob to have this happen in his inn,” Cedric said. “It isn’t good for business.”
“If he’s telling the truth about what happened,” Gwen said.
“Of course he is!” Cedric said.
What Gareth wanted to ask was lad, how long have you been in service to the sheriff? but Gwen took care of that response for him too. “You know your uncle better than we do, but people lie to us all the time, Cedric. We can’t assume anything.”
Cedric deflated. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. Just because he’s my uncle doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t lie to my face if it would save his own skin.”
Gareth raised his eyebrows at Gwen, silently urging her to keep talking. She had a way of getting information out of people simply by being curious. People told her things that they wouldn’t tell Gareth.
“That sounds like a very different person from the uncle you were defending a moment ago,” Gwen said. “Are you speaking from experience?”
Cedric’s expression turned rueful. “My mother doesn’t trust him and doesn’t like me coming around here. Uncle Rob isn’t respectable. He did something a long time ago—not here, somewhere else—that makes my Da almost spit whenever he speaks of him. They’ve never told me what it was.”
It sounded like Cedric’s Da was an opinionated man, given that he appeared to have had a similar reaction to Roger Carter. Gareth had never met Roger, but on the whole, Rob seemed a reasonable man.
“But you like him,” Gwen said, not as a question.
“He always talked to me like I was worthy of respect, even when I was a boy,” Cedric’s brow furrowed. “He isn’t as welcoming to me now that I’m one of the sheriff’s men.”
“How long have you been one?” Gwen said.
“Three weeks. I’m just past my nineteenth birthday.” That made Cedric even younger than Gareth had first thought. Cedric looked down at his toes for a moment. “I don’t want my uncle to be the murderer.”
“It’s important to remember that we know very little at this point. The murderer might not be either Rob or Conall,” Gwen said.
“Conall is Irish,” Cedric said, revealing the English prejudice, though Gareth hadn’t noticed when he’d been in Ireland with Prince Hywel years ago that the Irish committed murder any more or less than any other people.
“There’s more here than simply finding a dead man in your uncle’s inn. Do you notice anything strange about the way the body is lying?” Gwen gestured to the floor. She was speaking to Cedric as she might have to John Fletcher last year—trying to instruct him without seeming to.
Cedric’s brow furrowed. “Is it … because the scene looks arranged? The man wouldn’t have fallen exactly like that.”
“That’s right,” Gareth said. “From the wounds on the man’s face and hands, he had been fighting, but the man who killed him laid out the body carefully. Why do you think he did that?”
Cedric’s brow remained furrowed. “Murder is a crime of passion. Of anger. Wouldn’t he leave the body and run?”
“Sometimes men do panic and run for their lives,” Gareth said, “but in this case, I suspect we’re looking for a thinking man, one who, after the initial shock wore off, wanted to leave us a message about what he’d done.”
“That he was sorry?” Cedric said.
“Or that he wasn’t,” Gwen said.
“I still don’t understand,” Cedric said.
Gwen shared a glance with Gareth before speaking again. “We won’t know the truth until we find him. While the arrangement of the body indicates that the murderer has an organized mind, it looks to me from what else is here that his intent was to clear all traces of himself from the room.”
“So not regret, but thought,” Gareth said.
Gwen made a sweeping motion with one arm to indicate their surroundings. “The room shows no sign of a fight, which has to mean that the wounds on Roger’s face came from earlier in the day or—”
Cedric nodded, seeing where Gwen was going with this, “—or that the murderer cleaned the room, just as he did the body. Which means we won’t find anything,” Cedric concluded glumly.
“Though we must still look,” Gwen said.
Cedric, rightfully, took that statement as his cue to circle the room.
Gwen gestured to the entrance. “You’ll note that the door wasn’t forced.”
Cedric glanced behind him, and when he turned back to Gareth, his eyes had lit again. “Conall invited Roger here!”
“Or at the very least, opened the door to him and welcomed him inside,” Gwen said.
That thought made Gareth frown slightly. The laws of hospitality were as important to the Irish as to the Welsh. It would take a truly compelling circumstance for an Irishman to invite a man into his home and then murder him in it, even if that home was temporary, as this one had been for Conall.
“We need more information, clearly. Others might rush to condemn Conall or Rob, but we shouldn’t.” Gareth crouched again by the body and turned over Roger’s hands to look at his palms. The fingers on his left hand showed deep indentations, which experience told Gareth meant he’d managed at some point to slip his fingers between his throat and the garrote.
Gwen bent forward as she had when they’d first arrived, her hands on her knees—not looking at Roger’s face, but at his clothing. She reached out a hand to feel the softness of the wool that made up his jacket, and then crouched beside Gareth to look closer. “This is finely done, Gareth. Feel it.”
He swept his gaze down the length of Roger’s body. “Everything about him speaks of money. Given what Rob said and that he served on the town council, it should come as no surprise that he was a wealthy man.”
Footfalls came on the cobbled walkway that led from the tavern to the room, and Gareth turned to see John Fletcher standing in the doorway.
“One of the wealthiest, in fact,” John said.