One Corpse Too Many

Civil war has split England between King Stephen and the Empress Maud. Shrewsbury Castle falls to Stephen's army, and ninety-four of its defenders are hanged as a warning to others.

Brother Cadfael is given the job of laying the dead out for burial. He counts ninety-five bodies. The extra man was strangled, then dressed to pass as one more victim of the hangings.

Cadfael sets out to find the killer in a city held by a conquering army. The trail runs through a missing hoard of treasure and a girl who disguises herself as a boy to stay safe. Hugh Beringar, a watchful young officer in Stephen's service, is working the same puzzle, and he is as much a rival to Cadfael as a help.

This is the second book in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, and it is the one that introduces Hugh Beringar. The medieval mystery leaves the quiet cloisters of the abbey for a town still raw from siege, where the question is who killed a man the executions were meant to hide.