Judicium Dei: Paul Doherty's "The Peacock's Cry" (2016) and "The King's Writ" (2017)

After returning to Paul Doherty's dark, brooding historical mysteries with Hymn to Murder (2020), I turned my eye to a pair of exclusive e-novellas, "The Peacock's Cry" (2016) and "The King's Writ" (2017), published to mark the comeback Sir Hugh Corbett – who "has been absent from royal service for over six years." The Mysterium (2010) ended with Sir Hugh resigning as Keeper of the Secret Seal to spend time with his family and tend to his bees. Things have changed while he was away from the Secret Chancery. 

Edward I, "of blessed memory," died six months before the opening of "The Peacock's Cry" and "his beloved son Edward of Caernarvon succeeding to the throne," but Edward II has thrown the kingdom in turmoil over his "beloved brother," Piers Gaveston. The king loved him so much, he had created him Earl of Cornwall and "told the great earls of the kingdom, led by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, the king's own cousin, to go hang themselves, as he would never give up his Gascon favourite." This is the kind of court politics Sir Hugh tried to escape.

Six years after he resigned, Edward II, Gaveston and the entire royal entourage come to the home of Sir Hugh "to kiss hands and accept the seals of high office." And he's given good reason to return to his old position.

Sir Hugh's former protégé, Ranulf-atta-Newgate, is now a Senior Clerk in the Chancery and had been dispatched to a nunnery in Godstow, Oxfordshire, to investigate the disappearance of novice nun and royal ward, Margaret Beaumont – vanished along with all her belongings ("everything gone, from psalter to slipper"). A disappearance followed by a particularly nasty and brutal murder of Margaret Beaumont's only friend at the convent. Elizabeth Buchan was found "foully raped and barbarously slain" with a crossbow bolt through her forehead at the center of dark, dangerous hedge maze. It was one of Ranulf's crossbow quarrels that had smashed into her forehead.

So the situation is not enviable one for Ranulf. Or, as Sir Hugh sums it up, "in a word, you could become the scapegoat, an ideal one, a royal clerk who has failed his masters." "The Peacock's Cry" really is a character piece to reignite the series as the plot has less substance than the ghost who supposedly haunt the ancient hedge maze. You have to go out of your way to miss the murderer and reason behind both the disappearance and murder. Nothing special is done with the maze. The murder is presented as a quasi-impossible crime as the maze has to have its treacherous paths threaded, before anyone can enter or you could die there. That begs the question how Elizabeth could have found her way to the center of the maze in the dead of night ("a herculean task during the light of day, surely an impossible one when darkness had fallen"). A potentially good solution how the maze could be navigated suggested itself when a character explains to Sir Hugh that the hedge walls started out as hornbeams, but “other species were included” like whitehorn, privet, holly, sycamore and yew "to thicken and repair the walls." So my idea was that a specific species was planted only along "the correct path" from the one and only entrance to the center. Like camouflaged road signs that can only been seen when you know "the secret of the maze." But the solution to the maze-puzzle turned out to be (ROT13) n frperg, haqretebhaq cnffntrjnl.

As mentioned before, "The Peacock's Cry" is a character-piece to restart the series, but, as a historical detective story, it's one of Doherty's weakest stories. Honestly, if "The King's Writ" had not been a return to form, I probably would not have bothered with a review. 

"The King's Writ" is the second exclusive e-novella published as an appetizer to the Devil's Wolf (2017) and take place in the summer 1311 at the Tower of London during a jousting tournament. Sir Hugh Corbett had been sent to the Tower to supervise the tournament between the champions of two powerful Marcher lords, Roger Mortimer of Chirk and Hugh Despenser, who both came forward with identical writs from the late Edward I promising them the rights to the same, much desired, Welsh estate. The writs were "executed in the king's own hand" and "sealed with his personal signet ring," now destroyed, which could result in "a private war being waged along the Welsh March." There's the additional problem of a third, identical writ and claimant, Matthew Aldridge, who "has been placed under house arrest for his own safety in the Tower.'

Edward II persuaded Despenser and Mortimer to submit their quarrel to the judicium Dei, the judgment of God, which took the form of a jousting tournament between their handpicked champions, Robert Ufford and Edmund Pastonal – whoever wins "will have his claim to the valley of Eden upheld." Sir Hugh has to supervise the tournament, but, upon his arrival, Despenser and Mortimer dismissed him as "a mere clerk." So the amusing opening has Sir Hugh prove himself worthy by having a passage of arms with his good friend, Constable Giles Middleton. A grinning Ranulf stands at his side and assures his master he has not bet against him ("I am sure you have placed a wager that I will end up on my arse in the dust").

A jousting tournament under the summer sun is a fantastic setting for a historical mystery and deserves a novel-length treatment as more can be done with it. The tournament eventually takes a backseat when one of the champions is pulled from the bottom of a well, which appears to be an accident, but Sir Hugh is convinced he was foully murdered. Matthew Aldridge vanishes impossibly from his holding room that was "securely locked, the key held by a guard" and "no window, no secret passageway, no tunnel." The solution to this impossibility is period redressing of a trick locked room fanatics have seen before, but it fitted the story perfectly and the result is an interesting addition to that short list of impossible crime stories involving disappearing prisoners mentioned in my review of Edward D. Hoch's "Prisoner of Zerfall' (1985; collected in Funeral in the Fog, 2020). But the who-and why were also a vast improvement over the first novella. You can nitpick about the clueing consisting of hints and nods in the right direction, but Doherty played it fair enough and nothing to spoil my enjoyment. Quite the opposite. "The King's Writ" neutralized the sourness that "The Peacock's Cry" left behind. Very much recommended to fans of historical (locked room) mysteries! 

A note for the curious: Steve, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, wrote in his review of 'The Peacock's Cry" that the story is set between The Poison Maiden (2007) and The Darkening Glass (2009) from the Mathilde of Westminster series and wonders if Mathilde will appear in one of the upcoming new Sir Hugh Corbett mysteries. That crossover has yet to happen (I think), but there's evidence Doherty's detective novels take place in different periods of the same continuity or timeline. The Herald of Hell (2015), a Brother Athelstan mystery, refers to Satan in St. Mary (1986), Sir Hugh Corbett's debut, as something that happened a hundred years ago. The fictitious ruby from Hymn to Murder, the Lacrima Christi, previously appeared in A Maze of Murder (2002) from the Kathryn Swinbrooke series. So all of his characters apparently inhabit the same timeline with some close enough to do a crossover, of sorts. A very young Athelstan could have met Ranulf as an old man and told him stories about Sir Hugh Corbett.