What Janis Ian said . . .

Ellis Peters makes it seventeen in this old crime fiction 'What you must read' list. 

Will I jump straight into book number eighteen? I'm genuinely not sure. I enjoyed Cadfael so much that I'm tempted to read the next book in the series. 

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters (Macmillan 1979)

 

Cadfael had persuaded every man of the guard to view his unknown, but none of them could identify him. Courcelle had frowned down at the body long  and sombrely, and shaken his head.

“I never saw him before, to my knowledge. What can there possibly have been about a mere young squire like this, to make someone hate him enough to kill?”

“There can be murders without hate,” said Cadfael grimly. “Footpads and forest robbers take their victims as they come, without any feeling of liking or disliking.”

“Why, what can such a youth have had to make him worth killing for gain?”

“Friend,” said Cadfael, “there are those in the world would kill for the few coins a beggar has begged during the day. When they see kings cut down more than ninety in one sweep, whose fault was only to be in arms on the other side, is it much wonder rogues take that for justification? Or at least for licence!” He saw the colour burn high in Courcelle’s face, and a momentary spark of anger in his eye, but the young man made no protest. “Oh, I know you had your orders, and no choice but to obey them. I have been a soldier in my time, and borne the same discipline and done things I would be glad now to think I had not done. That’s one reason I’ve accepted, in the end, another discipline.”

“I doubt,” said Courcelle drily, “if I shall ever come to that.”

“So would I have doubted it, then. But here I am, and would not change again to your calling. Well, we do the best we can with our lives!” And the worst, he thought, viewing the long lines of motionless forms laid out along the ward, with other men’s lives, if we have power.