The Sticklepath Strangler (2001) by Michael Jecks

you would prefer me to demonstrate how a French wife
would behave when she was being ignored?’
    Hearing the caustic edge to her voice, he tore his gaze from the approaching rider. ‘Sorry, my Lady?’
    ‘Nothing, Husband,’ Jeanne said with poisonous sweetness. ‘I am sure I was only talking nonsense. What interest could it be to you? Who is it on that horse?’
    Baldwin was squinting in his effort to recognise the rider. ‘I can’t quite see.’
    Jeanne cast a quick look over her shoulder, but she need not have worried. Edgar, who had been sergeant to Baldwin in the Order of the Templars, and who took seriously his duty to protect his
master, was already approaching, a long staff in his hands. He stopped a short distance from Sir Baldwin, resting the staff on the ground, gripping it loosely in his right hand, ready to deflect an
attack.
    The rider was a young man, probably not yet twenty, with sandy hair and the thin, pinched features of hunger. He reined in before the door, near to where Baldwin, Jeanne and Edgar waited, and
ducked his head like a man used to being polite to officials. ‘My Lady, God’s blessing on you. I seek Sir Baldwin Furnshill – is he here?’
    Jeanne put out a hand to restrain her husband on his bench, but she was already too late.
    ‘I am,’ Baldwin said, sweeping the cloak away and standing. He studied the rider with a calm gravity. ‘Who sent you?’
    ‘Sir Baldwin, I am glad to have found you so soon. My master, Sir Roger de Gidleigh, asked me to request your help.’
    ‘A murder?’ Baldwin said. Sir Roger was one of the Devonshire Coroners. From the look on the messenger’s face Baldwin realised that his eagerness must have sounded strange, but
he had conducted two enquiries with Sir Roger, the most recent during the Oakhampton tournament in which Baldwin had received his wounds, and he respected his judgement. If Sir Roger was asking for
help, it should prove to be a matter of interest.
    ‘Of a sort, sir, yes.’
    ‘What do you mean, “of a sort”?’ Jeanne demanded.
    The lad looked at her with a sort of weary acceptance that there was no way to ease the impact of his news.
    ‘Madam, I fear Sir Roger is investigating a matter of cannibalism.’
    Felicia could hear the row as she approached the mill, even over the harsh rumbling of the great stones grating over each other as they ground the corn. Her parents were at it
again.
    There was no surprise in it. The whole vill knew about them. Other families were normal, they lived easily with each other, with only the occasional flarings of anger, but not in her home. Her
parents detested each other. The only surprise was that Samson had not yet killed her mother.
    At the mere thought of her father, she shivered. Felicia was a strongly built girl of twenty-one, with thick dark hair swept back under her wimple. Her eyes were large and almost blue; her face
had high cheekbones that could make her look beautiful when she was excited and flushed, but her mouth was thin and severe. When she smiled her features lit up as though with angelic calmness, but
she never smiled when thinking of her father. He aroused too many conflicting feelings in her, ones she couldn’t altogether understand. His large hands were as coarse and rough as moorstone,
far better suited to clenching in anger than to soothing and stroking in love, although some women liked that. Felicia shivered again. That was the trouble. He enjoyed so many females, and
Felicia’s mother Gunilda raged with jealousy. Never, even in their bed, would he turn to her to fulfil their marriage duties, but always sought younger flesh.
    Felicia stood at the door while their voices rose inside, his a hoarse bellow over the constant noise of the stones, hers a petulant whine. She wanted him, although Felicia couldn’t
understand why. The bastard hated her, just as he hated everyone.
    She couldn’t go in. The thought of coping with the pair of them fighting, him striking