The Tinner's Corpse by Bernard Knight

discard the earth and rocks, throwing them on to those waste piles,’ continued Yeo. ‘Then the small stuff gets tossed into the upper end of the trough, where we lead in a stream of water tapped from the torrent as it falls over the upper breast.’ He indicated a narrow leat, a long U-shaped gutter made of narrow planks, which jetted clear water into the top of the trough. ‘Look in here, Crowner. See those laths fixed to the bottom?’
    De Wolfe peered into the swirling muddy water and saw that, at regular intervals, cross-slats nailed to the base of the trough formed a series of low dams that impeded the downward flow of water.
    ‘The tin shode is much heavier than the gangue – the ordinary sand and gravel. Much of it sinks to the bottom of the trough and gets caught behind those slats. What gets past falls into the buddle.’
    ‘What’s a buddle?’ asked the ever-curious Thomas.
    ‘It’s that box at the bottom. Every so often, we stop throwing in new burden and clear out the tin shode from the trough and the buddle. The younger lads then pick out any rubbish that’s still in it, then it’s shovelled into panniers for the ponies to take down to the blowing-house.’
    They had reached the top of the workings and the boy pointed to the upper end of the trough, supported a couple of feet from the ground on a series of rough trestles hammered into the stream bed. ‘Henry was lying there, sir. His head was under the trough – or would have been if he’d had one. The water was running red around him,’ he added, with the morbid relish of the young.
    De Wolfe raised his head as his eyes followed up the leat. Its upper end was pegged into the side of the small waterfall that gushed over the eight-foot bank which formed the upper end of the workings. ‘Is there anything up there?’ he demanded.
    Yeo shook his head. ‘Just the virgin stream going up the valley to the moor. We’re gradually working back as we dig. Every few weeks we have to dismantle this lot and shift it further up, as the breast falls in because we’re hacking the sides away.’
    The coroner jerked his head at Gwyn, and the big man lumbered away to scramble up the sloping bank in a welter of falling stones and gravel. Using the leat as a handhold, he gained the top and vanished from sight.
    All the men were watching now, making no effort to work even though they were losing pay, which partly depended on their output of shode. ‘I sent three of the men up there yesterday to seek the poor fellow’s head,’ grumbled the overman. ‘They found nothing, even though they followed the stream up as far as Fenworthy Circle where the old pagan stones are.’
    ‘No sign of any weapon that could have done the damage?’
    ‘Nothing, Crowner.’
    ‘Could it have been one of your own tools? The blood might have been washed off in the stream.’
    The overman grimaced. ‘We got nothing sharp enough for that. Couldn’t have been a pick, and our shovels are wooden with a iron band nailed to the edge.’
    John began to walk back down the workings, his feet now cold and wet inside his boots. The prospect of a warm fire and food at Waye Barton manor house was rapidly becoming attractive. ‘Have you any feelings as to who might have done this?’ he snapped at Yeo.
    ‘That I have not, sir! It’s beyond my understanding – we never had any trouble of this sort before.’
    ‘No great rivalry between different gangs of tinners?’
    The overman turned up his calloused hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Not at all, Crowner. To start with, most of the gangs here on the Upper Teign belong to Walter Knapman. No point in fighting among the same team. There may be rivalry between the owners, such as Knapman and Stephen Acland, but that’s nothing to do with us tinners in the stream-works.’
    When they reached the hut again, de Wolfe turned round in time to see Gwyn slide down the slope of the breast, then stride towards them, his great legs splashing through the