This, as well as the buildings and rooms around the hall were the King's government and Corbett's usual place of work but, today, it was different. He caught the eye of one of the Chancellor's clerks, showed him the writ and was then led through the hall and into a small chamber. He immediately dropped to one knee when he recognized the Chancellor, Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells. Small, swathed in red ermine-lined robes, Burnell reminded Hugh of a small cherubim he had seen in a painting in a rich city merchant's house. Yet there was nothing angelic about the large bald head or the hooked nose above thin lips and firm chin, while the narrow, agate-hard eyes were more like those of a hunting dog. These eyes now studied Hugh for a while and then, in a surprisingly soft deep voice, bade him rise and sit on a stool a harassed clerk had brought across before being summarily dismissed from the room.

Once the clerk was gone, closing the door behind him, Burnell rose and sifted through the documents strewn across the table in front of him. Eventually, with a grunt of pleasure, he plucked one from the pile, rolled it up and tossed it over to Hugh. "Read it, " he ordered. "Read it now!" Hugh nodded and unrolled the vellum which he immediately recognized as cheap and the scrawled, badly penned writing as something certainly not produced by clerks trained in the royal chancery. It was the report of a coroner's inquest held in Cheapside at the church of St. Mary Le Bow:

"The findings of Roger Padgett, Coroner called to the church of St. Mary Le Bow on the morning of 14th January 1284 to view, in the presence of witnesses called from the ward, the body of Lawrence Duket, goldsmith. It was established that the said Lawrence Duket had killed Ralph Crepyn in Cheapside and fled to the church for sanctuary in the Blessed Chair. It was also established that the said Lawrence Duket out of fear of what he had done, took his own life by hanging himself from a bar near a window in the sanctuary of the said church. The coroner decided that the said Lawrence Duket was a suicide and should be treated as such. "