The third in the series. It is not the same, obviously, reading the early books in a series after you have read the later ones, yet it is something I am beginning to make a habit of. And I rather enjoy it. Here, for instance, we see Simon's daughter aged eight.
Hearing a shrill scream and the thunder of small feet in the screens behind him, Baldwin smiled and groaned, slowly rising to his feet. In a few moments Simon was with him, his daughter clinging to one arm. 'Fetch your poor father some wine, Edith,' he said, carefully depositing her on the grass, and giggling the eight year old ran back into the house. His eyes followed her slight form until she disappeared, then he slumped into his seat with a contented sigh ...
Nice, her clinging to his arm when we have already seen the antagonism that develops between them during her teenage years.
And here in this book you see Simon himself still in charge of the investigation, but Baldwin beginning to take over and become the leading figure he is in the later books. We have the first signs of Simon's slowness to understand , the first indications that he will end up as "the Watson". "Are you being intentionally dense?" Baldwin asks him at one point. And a little later – another example – Simon loses patience with Baldwin's knowing smile:
'All right, then Baldwin. So what do you mean? What do you guess from these two hints?'
'Ah, Simon, later, later, old friend. I see we're heading for both Beauscyr Manor and Smyth's house. Why don't we go to see Thomas Smyth first? It is not far out of our way.'
And he refused to discuss the matter further.
Very Holmesian.
In fact, come to think of it, this story is rather Agatha Christie-ish. Feuding families and lots of suspects when a man is found hanged in a small wood at the edge of the moors. He is a runaway serf, so perhaps his "owner", Sir William Beauscyr, hanged him as an example to other serfs who might be tempted to run away and set up as tinners, and therefore free men, in these troubled times. But Baldwin soon discovers that the man, Peter Bruther, had been garotted with a narrow leather strap before he was transported to the wood and strung up in an attempt to make it look like a hanging. And then it begins to seem that Bruther may not have been just a simple runaway serf after all: what runaway serf would have walking around with him a team of bodyguards, and openly mock Sir William and his two grown-up sons?
