The Renegade Merchant (6 page)

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 much
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 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’s 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 of 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.

Gwen

G
wen could tell that John was shocked by Roger Carter’s death,
but he was containing himself admirably. For such a young man, he’d
lost more people he knew to foul play than most people four times
his age. Though he’d made clear to Gareth when they’d met him last
year in Wales that he was inexperienced in solving murder, he was
certainly growing more experienced with every hour that
passed.

“I’m sorry, John.” And Gwen was—though, even
as she said the words, she found herself puzzled by her detachment.
Usually, when confronted with a murder, she became almost too
emotionally involved. Not today. She’d followed along with Gareth,
curious about what had happened—but she felt neither outrage nor
horror at Roger’s death.

Now, as she outwardly
comforted John, she had to acknowledge that something really was
wrong with her. In the last few hours, she’d stood first over the
puddle of blood, and then Roger’s body, talking about who he was
and how he’d died—and hadn’t taken a single moment to acknowledge
the loss, which meant nothing more to her than a puzzle to be
solved.
When had she become so insensitive
to murder? How could she find justice for a victim when she no
longer cared about him or saw him as a person?

John took a moment to regain his composure,
during which time nobody but Gwen looked at him, and then he said,
“How did Roger’s body get from that alley to here?”

“It didn’t,” Gareth said, and then he
explained that the blood couldn’t be Roger’s because that wasn’t
how Roger had died.

“So we have two incidents in Shrewsbury
today.” John was aghast.

“So it seems,” Gareth said. “What can you
tell me about Roger Carter?”

John spread his hands wide. “He was a worthy
of the town, on the council, and influential. Rich.”

“He was also Adeline’s former betrothed.
Could her death have anything to do with his?” Gareth said.

“Unless Prince Cadwaladr was somehow
involved, I can’t see how.” Then John frowned as he looked between
Gareth and Gwen. “There is another thing that ties the events of
four months ago to today, you know.”

“What is that?” Gareth said.

“You.”

Gwen put her hands on her hips, her unease
put aside in the face of John’s assertion. “You can’t seriously
think that Gareth had anything to do with Roger Carter’s
death?”

John held up both hands defensively as if
staving off an attack. “I didn’t mean that Gareth murdered Roger. I
only meant to suggest that if Roger knew more about Adeline’s death
than he told me, someone might be worried to see you here, Sir
Gareth. The murderer could have acted hastily—killing Roger—in
hopes of preventing Roger from speaking to you.”

Gareth straightened from where he’d been
crouching beside the body. “You imply that my reputation as an
investigator has preceded me.”

“Yes.” John cleared his throat. “I might
have spoken of you a time or two, and certainly the whole town
would know of your arrival by now.”

Gareth closed his eyes briefly as if
gathering his strength, before opening them and speaking again to
John. “With two investigations ongoing, your men are going to be
spread thin, but I would say that Roger Carter’s death takes
precedence over the possible death of someone we haven’t
identified. We need to determine Roger’s whereabouts over the last
day—and we need to break the news of his death to his family.”

John heaved a sigh. “That falls to me.”

“I will come with you, if I may,” Gareth
said. At John’s relieved look, Gareth turned to Gwen. “I can’t send
you out to question townspeople on your own, and I don’t think now
is the time to introduce the woman who looks just like Adeline to
Roger’s soon-to-be grieving family.”

“I will return to the monastery,” Gwen said.
“If you give me a sketch of Conall, I can start showing it
around.”

“And the rosary too.” Gareth handed the
beads to Gwen. Then he pulled out the picture of Conall and
sketched a copy for himself, from which he could make other copies
later when he had time. When he was done, he looked up.
“Cedric?”

“I’ll escort her,” Cedric said, though his
eyes flicked to John as he spoke.

Gwen had the sense that Cedric was torn
between chivalry and wanting to stay with Gareth and John. Gwen
would have relieved him of the duty of escorting her if she could
have, but she understood why Gareth didn’t want her wandering about
Shrewsbury on her own, and that he wouldn’t have liked it even if
her face wasn’t so like Adeline’s. “Come on.” She poked at Cedric’s
arm.