They arrived at the convent to find the nuns just finishing a session on the burning issue of whether peas were better served with fish or meat.
‘We spent four times longer on that than on apostolic poverty – a debate that has tied the Church in knots for years,’ smirked Magistra Katherine. ‘We resolved that inconsequential problem in less than an hour!’
‘Fortunately, the conloquium is over tomorrow,’ said Prioress Joan. ‘And we shall waste no more time indoors when we should be riding out in God’s good clean air. How is Dusty?’
‘Quite content,’ replied Michael shortly. ‘Now where is—’
‘Is it true that your town is on the verge of a major battle?’ interrupted Katherine. ‘And if so, should we make arrangements to leave early?’
‘Please do,’ begged Michael. ‘I cannot see the disorder spreading out here, but there is no point in courting trouble. Tell your sisters to start their journeys as soon as possible.’
Katherine inclined her head. ‘Is it because of the peregrini? The town and the University are accusing each other of harbouring French spies?’
‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘But we need to speak to—’
‘I hope no one remembers that we lodged in the Spital,’ said Joan anxiously. ‘They might accuse us of being French-lovers, and I do not want my nuns subjected to any unpleasantness.’
‘Where is Abbess Isabel?’ Michael managed to interject. ‘We need to see her urgently.’
‘So do I,’ said Katherine with a grimace. ‘She borrowed my copy of the Chicken Debate and I want it back. But she went out on Saturday, and no one has seen her since.’
‘She has been missing for two days?’ cried Michael. ‘Why did no one tell me?’
‘Her retinue assure us that she often disappears for extended periods when she wants to pray,’ shrugged Katherine. ‘They were not concerned, so neither were we.’
‘Did she say where she was going to do it?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘No, but she was last seen aiming for the town,’ replied Joan. ‘I was going to look for her myself as soon as the pea issue was resolved – her own nuns may not be worried, but she has been a little odd of late, and I would like to make sure she is safe and well.’
‘Odd in what way?’ demanded Michael.
‘Fearful and unsettled. Probably because she stumbled across that corpse – Paris’s.’
‘Have you searched the priory?’ asked Bartholomew, wondering if the Abbess’s timely disappearance meant a killer had escaped justice.
‘We have, but we will do it again.’ With calm efficiency, Joan issued instructions to the women who had come to listen. Obediently, they hastened to do as they were told.
‘May we see her quarters?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘If her belongings have gone, it means she . . . might have decided to make her own way home.’
He dared not say what he was really thinking, because he was unwilling to waste time on explanations that could come later.
‘You may not!’ objected Katherine, shocked. ‘We do not allow men into our sleeping quarters. It would be unseemly!’
Most of the remaining sisters agreed, but Joan sensed the urgency of the situation and overrode them. She led the way to the tiny cell-like room that Isabel had chosen for herself – an austere, chilly place that showed the Abbess placed scant store in physical comfort. Her only belongings were a spare white habit and a few religious books. In the interests of thoroughness, Bartholomew peered under the bed. Something was there, tucked at the very back, obliging him to lie on the floor to fish it out. It was an ivory comb.
‘That is mine!’ cried Joan, snatching it from him. ‘Or rather Dusty’s. What is it doing in here? I thought Alice had stolen it.’
‘Goda said she had,’ mused Michael, ‘although Alice denied it. Perhaps Alice placed it here in the spiteful hope that Isabel would be accused of its theft.’
‘If she did, she is a fool,’ said Joan in disgust. ‘No one will believe that an abbess – and Isabel in particular – would steal a comb.’
‘There is only one way to find out,’ said Michael. ‘Speak to Alice again. And this time, there will be no games. She will tell us the truth or suffer the consequences.’
He did not say what these might be, and Bartholomew gritted his teeth in agitation. How could they be wasting time on combs when the town was set to explode? Or was Isabel the killer, and the peculiar travels of the comb would throw light on why a saintly nun had turned murderer? Stomach churning, he followed Michael to the cellar, where the errant Alice had spent her last two nights.
Captivity had done nothing to blunt Alice’s haughty defiance. She reclined comfortably on a bed in a room that was considerably larger and better appointed than Isabel’s, and the only thing missing, as far as Bartholomew could tell, was a window. Clearly, nuns had a different view of what should constitute prison than anyone else.
‘I will answer your questions,’ she conceded loftily. ‘But in return, all charges against me will be dropped and I will be reinstated as Prioress of Ickleton.’
Michael ignored the demand. ‘We found the comb you hid in Abbess Isabel’s room. However, your plot to see her accused of theft has failed. The comb was stolen from the Spital, but she has never been there. You have, though.’
Alice was unfazed. ‘I have already told you: I did not take it. You will have to devise another explanation for how it ended up where it did.’
Bartholomew pushed his anxieties about the deteriorating situation in the town to the back of his mind, because a solution was beginning to reveal itself to him at last. He was sure Alice had stolen the comb, but was less certain that she had put it in Isabel’s room to incriminate her, because Joan was right: no one would believe the Abbess would steal, and Alice would know it. The only other explanation was that Alice had given it to Isabel, and the Abbess had secreted it there herself.
‘I believe you,’ he said, speaking slowly to give his thoughts time to settle. ‘You would have chosen a far more imaginative hiding place than under a bed.’
‘Is that where she put it?’ scoffed Alice. ‘What a fool! She should be demoted, so that someone more intelligent can be installed in her place. Someone like me.’
‘So you did give it to her,’ pounced Bartholomew. ‘Why?’
Alice folded her arms. ‘I refuse to say more until you promise me something in return.’
‘Very well,’ said Michael. ‘I promise to recommend clemency when you are sentenced to burn at the stake.’
Alice gaped at him. ‘Burn at the stake? What for?’
‘Buying cursing spells from a witch. Do not deny it, because we have witnesses. So what will it be? Cooperation or incineration?’
Alice’s hubris began to dissolve. ‘You misunderstand, Brother. The spell was only a harmless bit of fun – nothing malicious.’
‘No one will believe you. Now, the comb: why did you steal it?’
Alice looked at Michael’s stern, angry face, and the remaining fight went out of her. ‘Because Isabel charged me to visit the Spital, find the comb and bring it to her. In return, she promised to get me reinstated.’
‘You believed her?’ asked Michael, sure Isabel would have done nothing of the kind.
‘Not at first,’ admitted Alice. ‘But I was desperate, so I decided to take a chance.’
‘Did she say why she wanted it?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘She refused to tell me. And then, when I was accused of theft and needed her to prove my innocence, she denied all knowledge of our arrangement. She betrayed me!’
‘So you bought a cursing spell to teach her a lesson,’ surmised Bartholomew.
‘To make her confess to what she had commissioned me to do. I am not a thief – just the agent of one.’
Michael regarded her in disgust. ‘You lie! If Isabel had told you to steal, you would have trumpeted it from the rooftops when you were accused. But you never did.’
Alice shrugged and looked away. ‘I wanted to
, but I am not stupid – I know who folk would have believed, and challenging Isabel would have done me more harm than good. But I am telling the truth now: she is the dishonest one, not me.’
‘Then how unfortunate for you that she has disappeared,’ said Bartholomew, feeling vaguely tainted by the whole affair, ‘and can never corroborate your tale.’
‘Disappeared?’ asked Alice uneasily. ‘Do you mean she has slunk off to pray in some quiet church? Or that she has run away?’
Michael glanced at Bartholomew. ‘Perhaps Isabel is the killer. She brained Orwel, realised that Clippesby might have witnessed her crime, and rather than claim yet another victim – one who is a real saint in the making – she elected to vanish.’
‘Leaving her possessions behind?’ asked Bartholomew doubtfully, assailed by the sudden sense that their reasoning was flawed, and that pursuing Isabel as a suspect would lead them astray at a time when they could not afford to make mistakes.
‘Leaving her spare habit and a few books behind,’ corrected Michael. ‘None of which are essential to a woman fleeing the law.’ He glared at Alice. ‘Regardless, she is not in a position to help you, so tell us more about your dealings with her.’
‘But I have told you everything already,’ whispered Alice, her plans for vengeance and a triumphant return to power in tatters around her, ‘other than that she was writing a report which she said would cause a stir.’
‘What report?’ demanded Michael. ‘It was not in her room.’
‘I think she left it with the Gilbertines. But do not ask me what it contains, because she refused to let me read it.’ Alice’s small faced turned hard again. ‘However, if it is more evidence of my so-called wrongdoings, it will be a pack of lies.’
‘Of course it will,’ said Michael, regarding her with distaste.
Out in the yard, Joan was waiting to tell them that St Radegund’s had been scoured from top to bottom, but Abbess Isabel was not in it. Michael nodded brisk thanks for her help, declined her offer to look for Isabel in the town, and left the convent at a run. When he and Bartholomew reached the Barnwell Causeway, they saw a smudge of smoke, grey against the blue sky. Was it someone burning old leaves? Or had trouble erupted already?
‘Isabel’s report will be about Alice,’ predicted Bartholomew as they trotted along, ‘because Alice continues to claim that she was unfairly dismissed – that Isabel exaggerated or invented the charges against her. No would-be saint likes being accused of dishonesty, so I suspect Isabel aims to expose Alice’s unsavoury character once and for all.’
‘Alice was asked to steal and lie, and she did,’ mused Michael, ‘proving how easily she can be corrupted. It is possible, I suppose.’
‘Although if Isabel is the killer, why not just dispatch Alice, like she has her other victims? It would have been a lot simpler.’
‘She would have headed our list of murder suspects if she had,’ shrugged Michael, ‘and that sort of allegation is a lot more serious than defaming a nun whom no one likes. Unfortunately, her disappearance has convinced me that she is the culprit. I am sorry for it, as her crime will reflect badly on my Order.’
‘But why would she dispatch Orwel? Or any of the victims, for that matter? It makes no sense.’
‘I had high hopes of answers at St Radegund’s,’ sighed Michael wearily, ‘but we should have stayed home and worked on quelling the trouble instead.’
Bartholomew was inclined to agree, and looked at the plume of smoke again. He tried to determine where it originated, stepping off the road to see if he could identify a church to give him his bearings. It was then that he saw a flash of white deep in the undergrowth. His stomach lurched.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he gulped. ‘It is the Abbess!’
As he and Michael fought their way through the thicket towards the body, Bartholomew noted twin tracks where feet had been dragged backwards along the ground. There were also splashes of blood, suggesting that Isabel had been attacked on the Causeway, then hauled off it, out of sight. She was well hidden, and he would have missed her if he had not left the road to look at the smoke. He crouched next to her and was startled when her eyes flickered open – he had assumed she was dead. Michael dropped to his knees and took her hand in his.
‘Abbess?’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?’
Isabel did not move.
‘Head wound,’ said Bartholomew tersely, wondering how long she been there. Since she had visited Margery two nights before? But no – she could not have survived her injury that long. Moreover, the blood was wet, suggesting a recent assault.
‘And there is the weapon,’ said Michael, nodding at the bloodstained stone that lay next to her. ‘The same as Wyse and Orwel.’
‘So we were wrong about her,’ whispered Bartholomew. ‘She is not their killer.’
‘She is trying to speak! You listen – your ears are sharper. What is she saying?’
Bartholomew did his best, but still only heard half the softly murmured words.
‘She does not know who attacked her,’ he relayed. ‘She heard footsteps behind her, but was hit before she could turn around. The first blow caught her shoulder, so she tried to fight back, but the second knocked her down. Her assailant kept his face hidden the whole time.’
He strained to decipher more, aware that Isabel’s voice was growing fainter as the effort drained her strength. Eventually, he sat back.
‘She wants a priest now. She says she refused to die until God sent her one, as it will help her case . . . her beatification.’
He moved away so Michael could perform last rites. Isabel’s eyes shone with an inner joy when the monk pronounced the final absolution, then it faded and she stopped breathing.
‘Such faith,’ said Michael softly in the silence that followed. ‘I wish I . . . But never mind. What else did she tell you?’
‘That we should go to the Gilbertines, where she has left a full report, and that the comb holds the key to all we need to know about Paris and the others.’
‘What did she mean?’
‘I could not hear that part. She also said that Alice is irredeemably wicked, because even when she was pretending to be her – Isabel’s – friend by “acquiring” the comb, she was still sending her deadly gifts. Her dying wish is for Alice to be excommunicated.’
Michael winced. ‘But she charged Alice to steal, declined to tell the truth when the theft became public knowledge, and was plotting to see Alice ousted from our Order. That is hardly an example of good fellowship.’
‘She did witness Orwel’s murder,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘It frightened her so much that she fled to St Edward’s, where she has been hiding ever since.’
‘Orwel’s body was taken there,’ mused Michael. ‘Its vicar is almost blind, and no one ever attends his services, because he tends to fall asleep in them. By luck, she went to the only church where she could lurk for days without being noticed.’
Bartholomew groaned suddenly. ‘The next morning, I went there to re-examine Orwel, to make sure there was nothing I had missed. I thought I sensed someone watching me.’
‘And you did not go to investigate?’ demanded Michael, unimpressed.
‘No, because I often feel I am not alone when I examine corpses. I assumed it was my imagination or . . . It never occurred to me that it would be a living person.’
Michael shook his head in disgust. ‘We might have had answers days ago if you had bothered to search the place. So what caused Isabel to leave in the end?’
‘Peas,’ said Bartholomew helplessly. ‘She wanted to know if they are better eaten with meat or fish. She was considering her own contribution to the question as she hurried along the Causeway, which is why she failed to notice her attacker until it was too late.’
‘That means he struck not long before we passed this way ourselves,’ said Michael uneasily. ‘I do not suppose she noticed anything to help us catch him?’
‘She claimed it was Satan, wearing handsome boots over his cloven hoofs an
d a fine brooch on his hat. She says she snatched it from him, although I think her mind was wandering at that point.’
‘Are you sure? Because there is something shiny by her hand.’
Bartholomew peered into the grass and saw Michael was right. It was a pilgrim badge, like the one de Wetherset wore. The monk gazed at it in alarm.
‘I hope she is not suggesting that the Chancellor attacked her!’ He flailed around for a better explanation. ‘She mentioned handsome boots. De Wetherset’s are not noticeably fine, but Aynton’s are.’
Bartholomew regarded him soberly. ‘Aynton’s are as ugly as sin – he is not the attacker. It is de Wetherset – he always wears this badge in his hat.’
‘Then someone stole it to incriminate him,’ argued Michael. ‘The killer is trying to lead us astray – and he is succeeding if you think the Chancellor would kill a nun.’
‘Think, Brother! We told de Wetherset that Isabel had witnessed Orwel’s murder and could identify the culprit. But we delayed coming here, because he told you to go to the Jewry first, after which you wanted to release Meadowman. He must have dashed straight to St Radegund’s to prevent Isabel from—’
‘No! The other nuns would have mentioned a visit from the University’s Chancellor.’
‘They did not mention it because he never got that far – he saw Isabel trotting along this road first. He dispatched her in exactly the same way that he killed Orwel and Wyse, with a stone.’
‘You are wrong! De Wetherset would not—’
‘We know a scholar sat in the Griffin and waited for Wyse to leave, because witnesses described a portly man with a good cloak, inky fingers and decent boots. It is de Wetherset!’
‘But why? Why would de Wetherset dispatch a harmless ancient like Wyse?’
‘To stir up trouble between us and the town.’
Michael was becoming exasperated. ‘That is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard! No Chancellor wants his University in flames. What would be the benefit in that?’
‘Because he cannot rule properly as long as you are Senior Proctor – you are too strong and hold too much influence. But you are responsible for law and order, so what better way to discredit you than to create a situation that you cannot handle? He wants everyone to clamour for your dismissal so he can reign alone.’
The Sanctuary Murders: The Twenty Fourth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew Book 24) Page 31