A Masterly Murder хмб-6

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Slit them,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The shoes, I mean, not the children. Give them to me; I will do it for you.’

  ‘You will not,’ said Matilde, snatching the shoe away from him. ‘You are drunk and I do not want you wielding knives in my house. Her husband will do it for her tomorrow.’

  ‘So, which murder are you investigating?’ asked Una, opening her mouth so that Bartholomew could inspect her sore gums. Resting a hand on the wall, he leaned over her, hoping he would not slip and end up in her lap.

  ‘It is not murder,’ said Michael. ‘At least, I do not think so. A scholar fell from the scaffolding surrounding Bene’t College two days ago.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Yolande, disappointed. ‘My husband told me about it – he is one of the carpenters who is working on Bene’t. He told me that Raysoun was so miserly that he was always climbing up the scaffolding to make sure that none of the workmen were slacking. Because Raysoun was no longer young, and because he liked a drink or two – just like you, Doctor Bartholomew – my Robert said it was only a matter of time before he fell.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Michael.

  Yolande gave a grin, revealing yellowed stumps of teeth. ‘Have I helped you, then?’

  ‘You may have done,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘His friend, Wymundham, has just been found dead near the King’s Ditch – in Mayor Horwoode’s garden, to be precise.’

  ‘I am sure the Mayor had nothing to do with it,’ said Yolande immediately. ‘I have visited him every Friday for years and know him well. He is too indecisive to kill anyone.’

  Michael laughed. ‘I have never heard that used as a defence before, but I will bear it in mind. But no more of murder, ladies. It is delightful to sit and enjoy some congenial companionship. I was saying only tonight that Michaelhouse would benefit from a little female company now and again.’

  ‘It certainly would,’ said Matilde fervently. ‘I have seldom seen such an unprepossessing array of people – especially that revolting Runham.’

  ‘Do not speak ill of him,’ said Michael, in tones that suggested they should. ‘Runham was elected Michaelhouse’s new Master this evening. Kenyngham has retired.’

  Matilde regarded Bartholomew in dismay, as though he were responsible for electing Runham single-handed. ‘What possessed you to select a man like that, Matthew? He will be a tyrant.’

  ‘I did not select him,’ said Bartholomew tiredly, straightening up from his inspection of the inflamed gums. ‘Una, there is a rotten tooth that needs to be pulled. Robin of Grantchester specialises in pulling teeth, or I can come to your house and do it tomorrow. You decide.’

  ‘She will think about it,’ said Matilde, before Una could reply.

  ‘She means we will see whether you are sober tomorrow,’ translated Yolande mischievously. ‘But we have a lot of business to discuss, so if you two have finished your wine, perhaps you would allow us to get on with it, or we will be here all night.’

  Matilde opened the door and waited for Michael to extricate himself from the women on the bench. As soon as Michael had levered his bulk into the street and Bartholomew had followed on unsteady legs, she closed the door, plunging them into darkness.

  Michael and Bartholomew began the short walk along the High Street, towards their College. Michael hailed one of his beadles, patrolling to prevent students from causing mischief in the town, to light their way with his lantern. It was raining and the streets gleamed in the faint glow of the lamp. Bartholomew raised his face to the cooling drizzle and wondered when he had last been so drunk. The thick-bellied clouds that slouched overhead seemed to roll and froth before his eyes, and the ground tipped and swayed. He promised himself that he would never touch Widow’s Wine again: it was no good for men used to watered ale.

  ‘You are not in Matilde’s good books,’ said Michael. ‘That will teach you to be remiss in visiting your friends. They do not like to feel that they are second best to spotty students and lancing boils.’

  Michael’s beadle walked next to them, holding his lantern high so that the scholars would not trip in the treacherous potholes and fissures of the High Street.

  ‘All is quiet tonight,’ the beadle reported conversationally to Michael. ‘We had to pay a visit to Bene’t College earlier, though.’

  ‘Bene’t?’ echoed Michael immediately. ‘Why? Not another death, I hope?’

  ‘It might have been,’ said the beadle. ‘But we got there in time. Osmun the porter was fighting with one of the Fellows. We have him in our prison.’

  ‘Osmun!’ said Michael, shaking his head as they turned into St Michael’s Lane. ‘If Bene’t has any sense, they will dismiss the man before he does anything else to disgrace them. He is a lout.’

  The beadle agreed. ‘None of us like him – he drinks in the King’s Head, and is always causing trouble. He is not the kind of man any respectable College would employ.’

  ‘It is difficult to get good staff these days,’ said Michael. ‘Labour has been scarce since the Death took so many people. I suppose Bene’t feels itself lucky to have porters at all.’

  ‘It should not feel itself lucky to be hampered with those porters,’ said the beadle with feeling. ‘They are the most offensive gatekeepers in the town, and no one can match them for rudeness or their love of brawling. But they are loyal, I will grant them that. They challenge anyone who utters the merest criticism of Bene’t. I heard Osmun claimed to be Justus the book-bearer’s cousin. Is that true?’

  ‘Why should it not be?’ asked Bartholomew.

  The beadle peered at him, as if trying to tell whether the question had been asked seriously. He apparently decided it had, and his tone was condescending when he replied. ‘So that he could get Justus’s tunic and dagger. Why else?’

  ‘That would be a risky thing to do,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘He might be given a used tunic and a blunt dagger, but he also might have found himself obliged to bury Justus – and that would cost more than anything he was likely to inherit.’

  ‘Michaelhouse is obliged to do that,’ said the beadle promptly.

  ‘And Osmun’s claim is true anyway,’ said Michael. ‘I checked with the Master of Bene’t, who told me that Osmun brought Justus to him a year ago and asked if he might become a porter.’

  ‘I expect they refused because Justus was not rude enough,’ said the beadle with a chortle.

  ‘Bene’t did not have the funds to take on more staff, according to the Master,’ said Michael. ‘So Justus went to work for Runham at Michaelhouse instead.’

  ‘Working for Runham would lead me to kill myself, too,’ muttered the beadle fervently, as he stepped ahead to light the way over a particularly treacherous section of the road.

  Finally they reached Foul Lane, the muddy runnel on which Michaelhouse’s main gate stood. Bartholomew’s head was pounding, and he wished he had never set eyes on the Widow’s Wine. Michael also did not look well; Bartholomew could see that his face was pale in the dim light of the beadle’s lamp.

  ‘This damned arm,’ muttered Michael, giving it another vigorous scratch. ‘It is driving me insane. I shall be as mad as Clippesby if it does not cease this infernal itching.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Bartholomew, stopping to pull up the monk’s sleeve. He staggered slightly as he tried to focus in the feeble glow from the light.

  ‘Are you sure you are capable?’ asked Michael, stretching out his good arm to steady the physician. ‘I have never seen you so intoxicated.’

  ‘Look what you have done!’ cried Bartholomew in dismay, when he saw the red mess the monk had created with his eager fingernails.

  ‘You should have given me something to alleviate the itching,’ retorted Michael irritably, tugging his arm away. ‘I am not made of marble. No normal man would be able to resist such an agony of itches.’

  ‘If you had let it be, it would not have irritated you so,’ said Bartholomew. He rummaged in his medicine bag for a salve. ‘Let me put this on it – it should help.’ />
  ‘Will you treat me here, in the street?’ asked Michael in amusement. ‘We are only a few steps away from the College gate.’

  ‘I can apply ointment on self-inflicted sores just as easily here as I can in Michaelhouse,’ said Bartholomew tartly, slapping a healthy daub of the soothing plaster of betony on to the inflamed skin.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Michael, stiffening suddenly. Instinctively, he pulled Bartholomew away from the middle of the lane to the scrubby bushes that grew along the College’s east wall. The beadle quickly doused his lamp.

  At first Bartholomew could see nothing. The familiar lane with its tall wall and great gate seemed deserted, and the town was absolutely silent. And then he saw what Michael had spotted. Someone was very slowly and carefully opening the wicket door in Michaelhouse’s front gate from the inside. A curfew was imposed by the University on its scholars, and students were not supposed to be out after dark. Needless to say many of them found inventive ways to avoid being incarcerated for the night, and it seemed Bartholomew and Michael were about to witness one such bid for freedom.

  ‘We are not the only ones who do not want to be in Runham’s new domain tonight,’ whispered Michael, smiling mischievously. ‘Let us hide here and see who it is. Then I will have my beadle pounce on him, and give him the fright of his life!’

  There was not one escaping scholar, but two – dark-cloaked figures bundled up against the rain, who moved silently and furtively as they closed the door behind them.

  ‘Walter must be on duty tonight,’ remarked Bartholomew. ‘He is the one who sleeps, and the students know they can come and go as they please.’

  ‘Who are they, can you see?’ asked Michael, peering down the lane and chuckling to himself.

  Bartholomew could not. His vision was too unsteady, the night was too dark, and all Michaelhouse scholars tended to look the same in black tabards and cloaks with hoods that covered their heads and faces. He shivered, feeling the rain soak through his clothes to form cold patches on his shoulders.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘It is freezing here, and I am tired.’

  ‘Wait,’ instructed Michael, narrowing his eyes as he squinted in the darkness. ‘I want to see who it is.’

  ‘Well, I do not,’ said Bartholomew. ‘You are being unfair, Brother. No scholar in his right mind will want to spend time in Michaelhouse while Runham is still revelling in his new-found power. Those two are only doing what we have done – looking for a way to be elsewhere.’

  ‘But, Matt–’ whispered Michael urgently.

  Bartholomew ignored him and pushed his way out of the bushes, walking openly towards the two figures. When they saw him, they started in alarm, but did not make any attempt to run away. Knowing that they would not be able to recognise him, he pushed back his hood so that they could see his face.

  ‘I have just returned from seeing Father Paul to the–’ he began.

  What happened next was a blur. As soon as he began to speak, one of the figures rushed at him and gave him a hefty shove in the chest that sent him staggering backward, then raced on down the lane before turning towards the river. Startled and indignant that a student should dare to strike a master, Bartholomew grabbed the second man as he made to run past, determined that he should not escape. But the student was stronger than he anticipated, and Bartholomew was uncoordinated. A second shove sent him crashing to the ground. All he could hear were the sounds of running footsteps in the distance.

  ‘Matt!’ Michael’s anxious face hovered above him. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Damn!’ said Bartholomew, sitting up and feeling the thick mud – and worse – that clung to his cloak. ‘I only had this cleaned last week. Did you see who they were?’

  ‘My beadle has gone after them,’ said Michael. ‘But I would not hold out too much hope of an arrest, if I were you. They are young and fast, and he is old and slow.’

  ‘Did you see their faces?’ asked Bartholomew, clinging to Michael for support as he climbed to his feet. ‘They were not Gray and Deynman, I hope.’

  ‘Of course they were not,’ said Michael scornfully. ‘Do you think either of that pair would push you over? But I did not see their faces – I do not even know if they were our students.’

  ‘They were wearing tabards and cloaks,’ said Bartholomew.

  ‘So do lots of men,’ said Michael. He gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Why did you not wait, as I told you? I had a feeling that they were not merely a couple of disgruntled students sneaking out for a night on the town. They did not have the demeanour of lads playing truant, and I had the distinct impression that their business was more important than a jug of ale in the King’s Head.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say,’ said Michael. ‘That there was mischief afoot tonight, and you blundered into it before we could see what it was.’

  Chapter 4

  THE FOLLOWING DAY WAS COLD AND GLOOMY, and a thick pall of mist hung over the town, smothering it in a blanket of dampness that stank of the river and of the filth that lay thick along the High Street. Bartholomew woke with a start when Walter the porter’s cockerel began its croaking call directly outside his window. He threw open the shutters and hurled a glove at it, grumbling under his breath as the animal strutted away. Bartholomew would not have minded if the bird had kept its crows for morning, but it made its unholy racket at any time of the day or night, when the fancy took it.

  Bartholomew’s ill temper at being so rudely awoken was not improved when he became aware that he had a thumping headache. His stomach felt empty and acidic, his throat was dry and sore, and his best cloak was clotted with muck from where he had been pushed into the mud by the fleeing scholars.

  The beadle had returned with a hang-dog expression to report that he had lost his quarry, and Michael dismissed him to warn other patrols to be on the lookout for the black-cloaked pair. Angry, Michael had woken the surly porter to berate him for sleeping while people wandered in and out of the College. Walter’s sullen self-justification was mixed with a sickening sycophancy that Bartholomew found hard to fathom, until the porter revealed that Runham had already sacked a number of College staff, and Walter was afraid he would be next. With curt instructions that he might have a better chance of keeping his job if he did not sleep every night, Michael had abandoned the porter to his guilty anxiety and stalked across the yard to his room.

  The monk was just climbing the stairs to his chamber on the upper floor, when a shadowy figure had emerged from the hallway to demand why it had taken Bartholomew so long to escort Father Paul to the Friary. It was Runham, checking his colleagues’ comings and goings. Bartholomew was too weary to feel indignant, and wanted only to lie down, but Michael was outraged enough for both of them. Bartholomew shoved his way past the new Master, while Michael remained in the hall, telling Runham in ringing tones that must have been audible in the Market Square what he thought of a man who lurked in dark corners in the middle of the night to spy on his Fellows. Bartholomew threw off his damp clothes, dropped on to his bed, and knew no more until his abrupt awakening by Walter’s annoying bird the following day.

  It was Sunday, and Bartholomew’s turn to help officiate at the mass that took place just after dawn in the College church. When he saw that the sky had begun to lighten, he hopped across the icy stones in his bare feet to wash and shave in the cold water that Cynric left for him each night. For the first time in years, however, Cynric had forgotten, and the jug was empty. Tugging on his boots, Bartholomew splashed through the courtyard mire to draw water from the well behind the kitchen, shivering in the chill of early morning.

  Teeth chattering, he doused himself with the freezing water in the dim light from the open window. He groaned when he heard an ominous tear as the clean shirt he hauled over his head stuck to his wet skin, then ripped it more when he did not take the time to dry himself. He grabbed a green woollen jerkin that his sister had given him, and that was definitely not part of the uniform Michaelhou
se scholars were expected to wear, and then covered it with his black tabard. He was late by the time he had finished dressing, so he ran across the yard to the gate, skidding in the slick mud and almost falling.

  Still fastening his cloak pin, he was sprinting across the High Street before he realised that Father Paul was supposed to be conducting the mass that morning – and Paul had been unceremoniously expelled from Michaelhouse the previous night. Bartholomew had taken minor orders, which meant that he could take certain services, but he was certainly not qualified to perform a full Sunday mass. He was about to run back to the College to wake Michael, when he saw that candles were already burning inside St Michael’s Church. Surprised, he pushed open the door and went inside.

  John Runham knelt at the small altar he had erected near his cousin’s tomb. He was red-faced and breathless, and Bartholomew saw he had the altar pulled a little way from the tomb and was cleaning behind it with a bundle of feathers tied on a short pole. Bartholomew felt the anger rising inside him even looking at the tomb and its pompous creator but he forced down his ire as he closed the door and walked towards the high altar.

  St Michael’s Church was a lovely building. It was small and intimate, and had been rebuilt especially for Michaelhouse by the College’s founder. There were fine paintings on the walls, the ceiling was picked out in blue and gold, and the stone tracery in the windows was as intricate as lace. In the midst of all this beauty was the late Master Wilson’s tomb, an edifice that Bartholomew was not alone in considering to be the nastiest creation in Christendom.

  When Thomas Wilson had died during the plague four years before, he had given Bartholomew money to pay for a splendid tomb to house his mortal remains. Bartholomew had been tardy in fulfilling his promise, and by the time he had commissioned a mason to carve the grave, Wilson’s bequest had devalued dramatically. Instead of the glorious affair he had envisaged, Wilson had been incarcerated under a plain slab of black marble with a simple cross carved on the top.