The Monk's Cross
an excerpt

By the time Francois returned to his side, Armand was kneeling beside the body. Francois stepped around it and knelt.

“He appears to be rather well fed, if incredibly dirty,” said Francois as he looked up and down the body. “Itinerate preacher? He had some kind of past by the sounds of your mason.”

“Who knows? There are as many sham men of the cloth now a days as there are blades of grass” said Armand. “Those wounds in his hands and feet were not enough to kill him. Neither are the thorns.”

“If he hung on that cross…”
“No, his weight would tear through the nails and drop him to the ground. Look over there where the cross was. See very much blood?” Armand looked up from the body and watched Francois cross to where the display had been found. Francois brought a candle from the holder closer to the floor and walked around the area. He looked up and back at Armand, shaking his head.

“Very little. What do you make of it?

“He wasn’t killed in here. And there was no dirt on the beams to show it was ever in the earth. Help me turn him, Francois.”

Francois stepped across the monk’s legs and knelt next to Armand on the marble floor. Together they rolled the dead man over.

“And that would be the reason he died”

The back of the monk’s head was smashed in.
(shout out to bride of traveling shovel of death)