Bartholomew 11 - The Mark Of A Murderer

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘You are very generous,’ said Michael, before Bartholomew could refuse. ‘And you are also right: there is no other solution to this problem. Clippesby should, by rights, answer for his crimes and pay with his life, but the town and the University are too unsettled to have that sort of scandal circulating.’

  ‘You mean you do not want the Archbishop to know that Michaelhouse Fellows attack innocent men with their teeth,’ said Rougham. ‘Well, I happen to concur: I do not want Islip to build his new foundation in Oxford, when it should come here. We must unite on this, because it would be a pity to let Clippesby’s illness deprive our University of what is its right.’

  ‘But to lock a man away for the rest of his life . . .’ said Bartholomew, troubled. He recalled Clippesby’s distress when informed that he was to be incarcerated for a few days, and could not imagine how he would react to being told he would never be free again.

  ‘It is horrible, but necessary,’ said Rougham. ‘Besides, he should be grateful his life is to be spared. You saw what he did to me, and perhaps you inspected the corpse of the man he murdered – this Gonerby. You cannot allow him his liberty.’

  ‘It is settled, then,’ said Michael. ‘We should make arrangements as soon as we can – before the Visitation, if possible. Clippesby wants to see Islip, and I do not want him to escape from Stourbridge and bite the throat of the highest-ranking churchman in the country.’

  ‘I have already sent word to my Norfolk hospital,’ said Rougham. ‘Matilde hired a messenger, and he is riding as we speak. I recommend Clippesby leaves on Monday morning. I would say tomorrow, but it is Sunday, and I do not want to despoil the Sabbath. The Archbishop will not be here until Monday afternoon, so it should work out nicely.’

  ‘Good,’ said Michael. He smiled when Matilde entered the room and handed him a goblet of wine. ‘And when will you be ready to leave, Rougham?’

  Hope flared in Matilde’s eyes, and Bartholomew saw that while Rougham might be enjoying his sojourn now he was well enough to appreciate her lively and erudite company, she was tired of him, and wanted him gone.

  ‘Tomorrow or the day after, God willing,’ replied Rougham. ‘Once I am at Gonville, I can blame my poor health on the journey from Norfolk. No one will question me, because it is common knowledge that travelling is dangerous. Look what happened to poor Henry Okehamptone.’

  Bartholomew regarded him warily. ‘How do you know his name was Henry?’

  ‘We were friends,’ explained Rougham. ‘He wrote to say he was coming, and I invited him to stay at Gonville. I was surprised – and offended – when he elected to remain at Merton Hall instead.’

  ‘You knew Okehamptone?’ asked Bartholomew. He exchanged a glance with Michael.

  Rougham nodded. ‘I went to see him the night he arrived – on Ascension Day eve – but was told he was indisposed, and too ill to receive me. The next day, the poor fellow was dead of fever.’

  ‘Who told you he was indisposed?’ asked Michael. ‘Duraunt?’

  ‘Someone I did not recognise. He was rather rude, given that I had gone to meet an old friend – I was not even invited inside. If I had been admitted, I would have examined Henry, and might even have been able to save him.’ Rougham grimaced. ‘And I would have been occupied with his care, so would have cancelled my appointment with Yolande. A great many things would have turned out differently, had I been allowed to see Henry that night.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ persisted Michael. ‘This man who refused to let you in?’

  ‘Fine clothes. Haughty and officious. He made me feel as though I was a beggar after scraps.’

  ‘Polmorva,’ said Bartholomew immediately.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Rougham looked from Bartholomew to Michael. ‘You seem to think my friendship with Henry is significant in some way. Why? What do you know that makes you glance so meaningfully at each other?’

  Michael rubbed his chin. Since Rougham already knew Gonerby had died from a throat wound, there was no longer a need for secrecy, and he decided to be truthful. When he explained what had happened to Okehamptone, Rougham’s jaw dropped in shock. By the time the monk had finished, tears were rolling down Rougham’s cheeks, and it was some moments before he had regained control of himself.

  ‘How shocking,’ he said eventually. ‘Poor, poor Henry! The killer clearly assumed that no one would inspect the body properly, and that he would get away with his deception. He was lucky it was Paxtone who made the examination, and not Bartholomew, or he would have been exposed immediately. You are always very thorough.’

  ‘Weasenham demanded my services that morning,’ explained Bartholomew. ‘You were already here – and, although you did not ask for me until the afternoon, you were still unavailable to patients.’

  Rougham gazed at him in confusion. ‘Weasenham? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because yesterday I sent a note to Lee asking him to prepare a list of all the summons I have missed during the last two weeks. Matilde persuaded him to provide her with a copy.’

  ‘How did she do that?’ asked Michael, startled. ‘Surely he wanted to know why?’

  Matilde’s eyes sparkled; she loved a challenge. ‘He was drafting it out in St Mary the Great, and I pretended to admire his writing. He gave it to me as a keepsake.’

  The lad was besotted with her, Bartholomew thought, like so many other men. It occurred to him that he might have competition when he asked for her hand in marriage, and that he should place his request as soon as possible. ‘Matilde,’ he began, abandoning his hopes for more intimate circumstances. ‘I have been thinking that you and I …that is to say, have you …?’ His heart was hammering so furiously that it was making him feel light-headed.

  ‘That was clever of you,’ said Michael to Matilde, when Bartholomew’s stuttering sentences seemed to be leading nowhere important. ‘But what does this list have to do with Weasenham?’

  ‘His name is not on it,’ explained Rougham, pulling it from his tunic. ‘Look. You can see for yourselves. He is my wealthiest patient, and I was relieved I had not missed a consultation with him. But now I learn he has changed his allegiance, and favours Bartholomew instead. That is a blow.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘However, it does suggest that Matt was deliberately lured away by someone who knew Paxtone would do a less than perfect job. But who? Weasenham himself?’

  ‘It was a summons under false pretences, too,’ added Bartholomew, dragging his thoughts away from conjugal bliss and supposing there would be another opportunity to propose to Matilde. ‘He only had toothache, and could have gone to the apothecary. He did not need a physician.’

  ‘Interesting,’ mused Michael. ‘We must have words with him about this.’

  ‘It is more than interesting,’ said Rougham angrily. ‘It smacks of a carefully laid plot. Henry was an Austin Canon and, although he did not often wear the prescribed habit, he always favoured clothes that were sober and functional. I never saw him don anything as frivolous as the liripipe you described. If there was a gaudy hood on his body, then someone put it there after he died.’

  ‘To hide the wound,’ surmised Michael. ‘And with my Corpse Examiner otherwise engaged, and a room full of men prepared to swear that Okehamptone had died of a fever, the killer – or killers – had high hopes that the crime would go undetected.’

  ‘It did go undetected,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘But if Clippesby is the killer, it means he put the liripipe on Okehamptone and convinced everyone that the man died of a fever. It also means he persuaded Weasenham to summon me. It sounds too highly organised to be his work.’

  ‘But he knows you are a careful Corpse Examiner,’ argued Rougham. ‘No one from Oxford does. It makes sense that he was the one who sent you on this wild-goose chase with Weasenham.’

  Michael scratched his chin. ‘I wonder whether Polmorva’s refusal to allow Rougham into Merton Hall mean
s Okehamptone was already dead – that he did not die in the night.’

  ‘No, it does not,’ said Rougham softly. ‘The shutters were open on the upper floor, and I could see inside as I left. Henry was sitting in a window. Perhaps he was feverish at that point, but it did not prevent him from chatting merrily to his Oxford cronies. There was no reason for me to have been turned away, and I was hurt.’

  ‘You definitely saw him alive?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Yes. We have known each other ever since we were undergraduate-commoners at Merton, forty years ago. We were boys then, and it was long before you studied there, Bartholomew, but we wrote and met whenever we could. At one point, I was going to marry his sister, but then I embarked on an academic career, and that put paid to thoughts of women – well, to marrying them, at least.’

  ‘And Okehamptone was talking to his Merton friends that night?’ pressed Michael, to be certain.

  Rougham nodded. ‘In the light of his murder, I can only assume this wretch Polmorva declined to tell him I had come a-visiting.’

  Bartholomew rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Which means Polmorva decided in advance that Okehamptone was not to see any friends that night – especially a physician. But why? So no one could later claim he was fit, and had not died of a sudden fever?’

  ‘If so, then it means Polmorva played an active role in the murder,’ said Rougham. ‘Do you think Clippesby put him under his spell, or perhaps threatened to kill him, if he did not do as he was told?’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew immediately. ‘Clippesby is not that forceful.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Matilde, taking part in the discussion for the first time. ‘He is gentle, and abhors violence. And he is far too scatter-brained to have executed such a devilish plot.’

  Michael was unconvinced. ‘But it explains very neatly why he attacked Rougham later the same night – he knew Rougham was Okehamptone’s friend, and did not want him looking too closely into the death that was to occur before the following morning.’

  ‘But why would Clippesby want a stranger – an Austin Canon – dead?’ pressed Bartholomew. ‘Even the insane have their motives, even if they are not ones we understand or accept.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted revenge on the Order he knew would later incarcerate him at Stourbridge,’ suggested Rougham. ‘He claims his animal friends tell him things that will happen in the future, so perhaps he had an inkling that he would soon be locked away.’

  ‘That is weak,’ said Bartholomew doubtfully.

  ‘But not entirely impossible,’ argued Rougham. He shuddered. ‘The sooner I am back at Gonville the better. Will you help me walk there on Monday, after Clippesby leaves for Norfolk? I would like to meet the Archbishop, and I can hardly ask him to visit me here.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Bartholomew harshly, thinking of Matilde’s reputation. ‘You cannot.’

  Bartholomew and Michael left Matilde’s house and started to walk back to Michaelhouse, discussing the difficulties inherent in taking Rougham to Gonville Hall with no one seeing. They considered various options, including disguising him as a leper, hiding him in a cart, and dressing him in one of Michael’s habits. Mention of men in monkish garb reminded Bartholomew of Spryngheuse’s imaginary Benedictine, and he was sorry the Merton scholar had died in such an agony of terror.

  Preparations for the impending Visitation were all around them as they walked along the High Street. The gutters were being scoured yet again, and dung collectors were out in force, gathering as much ordure as they could find, for they had been offered double pay for every cartload they procured. Apprentices scaled unsteady ladders to clean the fronts of their masters’ houses and shops, and the demand for washes to paint over old plaster was at a premium. New shades were springing up everywhere, as the preferred cream and ochre became unavailable. Haralda the Dane’s home was an attractive pastel green, while Robin of Grantchester, the unsavoury surgeon who killed more customers than he saved, had opted to make his own, because it was cheaper. It was a vivid pink, and there were rumours that he had added blood from his patients to colour it.

  Michael stopped walking and regarded the High Street with a critical eye. ‘It is looking quite attractive,’ he admitted eventually, watching the frenetic activities as people tried to finish as much as possible before the Sabbath put an end to their work.

  ‘It is a pity about the river and the King’s Ditch, though,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The dung collectors have amassed such vast quantities over the last two weeks that there is too much to sell for fertiliser. For want of anywhere else to put it, they are dumping it in the waterways, which are now foul.’

  ‘Archbishop Islip will be fêted with sewage-free streets, newly decorated houses, clean churches, and roads devoid of anything with four legs. He cannot expect the river to smell nice, too.’

  ‘I was more concerned with the fact that at some point he will want to wash, and it will be unfortunate if he catches a disease because he dabbles his hands in polluted water.’

  ‘He will be with Chancellor Tynkell for much of the time. And you know what he thinks about cleanliness, so I shall make sure he tells Islip just how dangerous it can be. Besides, he is only staying a week – not long enough for his hands to get dirty.’

  Bartholomew gaped, then saw the monk was laughing at him. He smiled, then turned his thoughts to what Wormynghalle the tanner had said about Okehamptone’s death: that bad water had induced a fatal fever. ‘Okehamptone must have made some complaint about his health that night, because I do not think Duraunt, Polmorva, Spryngheuse, Chesterfelde and the three merchants would lie about it, and they all said he had retired to bed unwell.’

  ‘They did,’ agreed Michael. He was thoughtful. ‘Chesterfelde was snuffling and sneezing the morning I was summoned to deal with Okehamptone’s death, so perhaps Okehamptone had caught something from him. To some men, a summer ague is a minor inconvenience, but to others it is akin to having the plague. Okehamptone may have been one of the latter, and unwittingly provided a way for his killer to conceal his murder.’

  ‘Some people do exaggerate the severity of their afflictions. I helped Paxtone devise a remedy for Dodenho’s constipation last week, and he demanded last rites before he would let us begin.’

  ‘There is something distinctly odd about Dodenho. I find it hard to believe he is so dire a theorist, yet considers himself brilliant. I do not like this affair of the astrolabe, either – his “stolen” property ending up in Eudo’s hoard. Nor do I like the fact that he knew Chesterfelde, but initially denied it.’

  ‘Norton worries me – he reacted peculiarly when we examined Hamecotes. Since he is not here for his education – he cannot attend lectures, because he knows no Latin – I cannot help but wonder what is his real purpose.’

  ‘It may be ensuring that our University does not gain Islip’s patronage,’ said Michael worriedly. ‘Then there is Polmorva, who witnessed Gonerby’s murder but agreed to travel to Cambridge despite knowing that his own life might be in danger if the killer found out about him. I want to know why he refused to let Rougham see Okehamptone, too. And there is John Wormynghalle to consider.’

  ‘There is nothing odd about her,’ said Bartholomew, and immediately winced. Mercifully, Michael did not notice his slip.

  ‘There is,’ he declared. ‘He sometimes misses meals because he is reading.’

  ‘How singular.’

  ‘It is curious that he studied in Oxford, yet only made the acquaintance of his namesake here. That tanner stands out, with his ill-fitting clothes and his garish jewellery, and I imagine he would be highly visible in a small place like Oxford. It makes me wonder whether the merchant is as rich and influential as he pretends. Perhaps you were right to be suspicious of him at our first meeting.’

  ‘He is very recently wealthy, and he is not yet comfortable with it. Not like Eu.’

  ‘Or Abergavenny. I am certain there is more to his smiling diplomacy than meets the eye. But here comes a contingent of
King’s Hall men, all sewn into their best clothes in readiness for the Visitation: boastful Dodenho, bookish Wormynghalle and that reprobate Norton.’

  ‘I have just been reading Ockham’s distinction between kinematic and dynamic problems in relation to inertia,’ said Wormynghalle excitedly when she met Bartholomew. ‘But I think he is wrong: where there is resistance, then surely a purely kinematic treatment will suffice?’

  Bartholomew considered. ‘Ockham was saying that he saw a way – although he does not explain what – of reconciling the law of ratios with movement in a finite time under zero resistance, and—’

  ‘I have already ascertained that in my latest thesis,’ interrupted Dodenho. ‘It is a work containing dynamical considerations.’

  ‘I read it,’ said Wormynghalle shortly. ‘It bears an uncanny resemblance to Bradwardine’s Tractatus de proportionibus velocitatum in motibus.’

  ‘Boring!’ sighed Norton. ‘You scholars are so dull, discussing such nonsense in the street. Why can you not talk about horses, like normal men? Come to the butts with me, Wormynghalle. You have a free afternoon, and I wager you a shilling you will not beat me again.’

  ‘Another time,’ said Wormynghalle, barely glancing at him as she turned her attention back to Bartholomew, the only man present she considered a worthy adversary. ‘But resistance—’

  ‘I would have done better if someone had lent me an astrolabe,’ interrupted Dodenho, resentful that his work should be so summarily dismissed.

  ‘An astrolabe,’ mused Michael. ‘There is a curious thing. You claimed yours was stolen, but later found it and sold it. Then it appears at Merton Hall, where it is owned by Polmorva and then by the tanner. And then it appears among the stolen treasure accrued by Eudo.’ He did not add that it had completed the circle by being offered back to Dodenho by Weasenham, as part of the arrangement for his silence on the whereabouts of the hoard.

  ‘So?’ asked Dodenho furtively. ‘I cannot be held responsible for what happened when it was out of my possession.’