An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters
Author:Ellis Peters
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Detective, Traditional British, Detective and mystery stories, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Monks, Cadfael, Shrewsbury (England), Mystery & Detective - Historical, Great Britain, Brother (Fictitious character), Historical, English, Mystery & Detective - Series, Large type books, General, Herbalists, Mystery & Detective - Traditional British, Fiction
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 1999-10-15T04:00:00+00:00
Walter the cooper had a shop in the hilltop town of Brigge, in a narrow alley no great way from the shadow of the castle walls. His booth was a narrow-fronted cave that drove deep within, and backed on an open, well-lit yard smelling of cut timber, and stacked with his finished and half-finished barrels, butts and pails, and the tools and materials of his craft. Over the low wall the ground fell away by steep, grassy terraces to where the Severn coiled, almost as it coiled at Shrewsbury, close about the foot of the town, broad and placid now at low summer water, with sandy shoals breaking its surface, but ready to wake and rage if sudden rains should come.
Hugh left his sergeants in the alley, and himself dismounted and went in through the dark booth to the yard beyond. A freckled boy of about seventeen was stooped over his jointer, busy bevelling a barrel-stave, and another a year or two younger was carefully paring long bands of willow for binding the staves together when the barrel was set up in its truss hoop. Yet a third boy, perhaps ten years old, was energetically sweeping up shavings and cramming them into bags for firing. It seemed that Walter had a full quiver of helpers in his business, for they were all alike, and all plainly sons of one father, and he the small, spry, dark man who straightened up from his shaving-horse, knife in hand.
“Serve you, sir?”
“Master cooper,” said Hugh, “I’m looking for one Adam Heriet, who I’m told is brother to your wife. They know nothing of his whereabouts at his nephew’s croft at Harpecote, but thought you might be in closer touch with him. If you can tell me where he’s to be found, I shall be grateful.”
There was a silence, sudden and profound. Walter stood gravely staring, and the hand that held the draw-knife with its curved blade sank quite slowly to hang at his side while he thought. Manual dexterity was natural to him, but thought came with deliberation, and slowly. All three boys stood equally mute and stared as their father stared. The eldest, Hugh supposed, must be Adam’s godson, if Edric had the matter aright.
“Sir,” said Walter at length, “I don’t know you. What’s your will with my wife’s kin?”
“You shall know me, Walter,” said Hugh easily. “My name is Hugh Beringar, I am sheriff of this shire, and my business with Adam Heriet is to ask him some questions concerning a matter three years old now, in which I trust he’ll be able to help us do right. If you can bring me to have speech with him, you may be helping him no less than me.”
Even a law-abiding man, in the circumstances, might have his doubts of that, but a law-abiding man with a decent business and a wife and family to look after would also take a careful look all round the matter before denying the sheriff a fair answer. Walter was no fool.
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