Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Robin descended, brushing his arm. “Men hide things in familiar places. A cordwainer favours a money belt, a crofter a false bottom in a chest, a tailor secret pockets. Millers hide their money in flour. It wouldn’t be in the grain down here, for it’s yet to be milled, so it must be above. The largest heap of sacks belong to the village, those six to his lordship, which leaves three the miller’s fee. Any coin would be in the hardest-to-reach sack. Simple.”

“Simple,” muttered Luther. “Withal, I promised you a sixteenth part, so we needs count it.”

Robin waved a dusty hand. “No need. Send to the alehouse and we’ll be quits.”

“What?” The knight laughed. “Better, dine with me at the hall. It’s not often I entertain such a distinguished — bowyer.”

“Done!” said Robin.

Long Valley Hall was indeed an old Norman hunting lodge, a singlestory stone hall with the kitchen and solar at the back. On benches at a long plank table, Robin and Marian partook of a fine harvest meal: liver from pigs and cows gone to slaughter, a plentitude of rabbits killed by scythes. Many, many pots of dark foamy stout were fetched from the alehouse.

Sir Luther’s wife, Lady Arelina, was cool towards the strangers until Marian whispered that they too were gentry, Sir Robert Locksley and Lady Marian. (She omitted that they were also nobility, the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon.) The two knights soon discovered they had both besieged Acre, and talked long of famine, pestilence, Saracen ambushes and torture, diseased prostitutes, raving madmen, mountains of rotting corpses, sun so strong it seared a man’s hand to touch his own armour. It bemused the women that the men laughed so often.

“This is fine stout.” Robin reached for more drink and missed the pitcher. “It’s got body. But what I meant to tell you, Luther, a long time ago, was... what? Oh, how curious is this mill... miller’s death.” He explained what they’d found poking in the cellar.

Trying to refill Robin’s tankard, Luther emptied the ale on the table. “Oops. I dislike it, Robin. Bits of rope and narrow footprints and bat dung. It seems a lot of mugger-hug — hugmug — hugger-mugger. I found a hole and a dead miller. His footprints in the — what do you call it — flour. It seems very simple, like you finding that — purse.” A servant had to refill their tankards.

“It’s sup-supposed to.” Robin gestured and knocked his tankard into his lap. “Oh my. Someone with narrow feet — tiny little feet — made it look that way. But I’m guessing. I’m wet, too.”

Luther dropped his voice to a slurred whisper. “It’s not fay folk, is it? Good. ’Course not. But who could sunder an oak board by yanking a rope? Not me. And how could they know Hosea, bless him, honest fellow, would fall in the hole? How drunk could a man be to not see a hole at his feet? Too drunk to work. If I had a hole here now, I could see it. Right there, like. And t’weren’t a wide hole. Narrower than his fat belly. He would’a stuck fast. An assas... assas... a killer would needs jump on his shoulders to punch him through.”

Robin waved his pot and almost clopped his wife in the jaw. Marian wrestled it away. “Right-o. I love you so, Marian. You’re so beau’ful it pains to look at you. Hunh? Oh, agreed, agreed. Can’t prove what I didn’t see, or what I did see. But if it was delib — delib — real, who profits by his death? Had he enemies?”

“Doesn’t every miller?” Luther laughed. “They’re all skimmers. Hosea was the worst thievin’ bastard o’ all, bless his soul. But whyn’t ’hey turn the mill upside down after his purse?”

“His wife — widow — interests me,” said Marian suddenly. “ ‘Dimples in the chin, devil within.’ ”

“May married to December,” put in Arelina. “ ‘A man who takes a young wife buys himself a peck of trouble.’ ”

The men gaped as if the women had just descended from Heaven. Robin fumbled with a knife to cut bread, had it taken away. He used a crust to sop ale off the wet table. “Who’s miller now, with the harvest ’pon you?”

Luther waved a hand. “A young scalawag on the Poulter there. Seymour, journeyman to his father. ’E comes often, helps repair and such, carts flour home. We’ve good soil in this old riverbed.”

“Was he around today?” asked Marian.

“Nay, not for weeks. I’d know if he were ’round. Everyone in the valley knows ’im. Speakin’ of which, I better dispatch a rider t’ Carberton t’ fetch him.” He pushed at the table to rise, snagged his heel on the chair leg, crashed back down. “Well, it’s too late anyway.”

Marian persisted. “Would this Seymour know he’s to assume the milling?”

Luther shrugged muzzily. “I s’pose so.”

“Is he young?” asked Marian.

“Aye,” said Arelina. “Handsome in a callow way.”

Robin laughed. “Are you thinking of marrying again, Marian? Marry, Marian marryin’ again!” He and Luther hooted.

“No, but I wonder how big this Seymour’s feet are.”