Bartholomew 11 - The Mark Of A Murderer

by Susanna GREGORY

  Clippesby had just reached the edge of the copse when, by forcing a massive burst of speed, Bartholomew managed to catch up with him. He grasped the hem of the Dominican’s flying habit and pulled hard, jerking him from his feet. Clippesby stumbled and Bartholomew dropped on top of him, aiming to hold him down with the weight of his body until he had regained the strength to secure him properly. Then someone grabbed his hair and jerked his head upwards in a motion that made the bones in his neck crick in protest.

  ‘Agatha!’ he gasped. ‘Let go!’

  But he heard Agatha bellowing in the distance, and knew she was still labouring across the uneven ground towards him. He struggled. There was a flash of brightness in the moonlight, and something jabbed at his throat. He threw himself back, towards his attacker, aware of Clippesby wriggling away from under him. His assailant did not lessen his grip, and the metal glittered again as it descended towards his neck. There was a thick, rank smell, too, that made him want to gag.

  Clippesby leapt at them with a wild screech, knocking them both off balance. Bartholomew’s attacker grunted in pain as the full weight of two men landed on top of him. The physician twisted as hard as he could, aiming to break the grip around his throat, but the fellow held on with grim determination.

  He saw a foot swing out and Clippesby reeled, stunned by a kick to the side of his head. Then the attacker turned his full attention to Bartholomew. Yet another flash, and Bartholomew felt something tearing at him. Again, he detected the stench. He wriggled and squirmed with all his might, determined to prevent the blade from landing on his neck. But he was running out of strength, and the vicelike grip was depriving him of air. He became dizzy, and weaker. Stars exploded before his eyes and he flailed around in increasing desperation as he sought to drag breath into his protesting lungs.

  Just when he thought he would lose the battle, there was a thump and a grunt, followed by rapidly receding footsteps. Clippesby stood there with a stone in his hand, while Agatha still lumbered towards them. Bartholomew started to follow his attacker through the trees, but there was no power in his legs, and he knew there was no point in blundering through the undergrowth in the dark. The trees blotted out any light from the moon, and the copse was a tangled mat of vegetation that would make pursuit all but impossible. He dropped to his knees, the craven exhilaration of the chase replaced by a tide of exhaustion that left him shaking and sluggish.

  ‘Who was that?’ gasped Agatha, reaching them at last. ‘What happened?’

  Clippesby crouched next to Bartholomew and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘Do not worry, he has gone now. I hit him hard in the chest with a rock, and he realised he would have no luck here tonight.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Agatha, her face flushed and sweat coursing down her red-veined cheeks. ‘He tried to kill Matthew with something shiny. I saw it sparkling in the moonlight. I will have his guts out for this!’ She wielded the sword in a way that indicated she meant what she said.

  ‘It was him,’ said Clippesby simply. ‘The wolf.’

  ‘That was no wolf,’ said Agatha. A nightjar called, low and hoarse, and in the distance Bartholomew could hear Brother Paul trying to soothe Stourbridge’s inmates, who were alarmed by the commotion Clippesby’s flight had caused. ‘It was a man. I saw him silhouetted against the moonlit sky. It was a man, with something brassy in his hand.’

  ‘Metal teeth,’ said Bartholomew. His skin crawled when he recalled them slashing at him, and he was unable to repress a shudder. ‘That is how he kills his victims. I did not think human fangs could cause such damage, but these were made of steel, and were honed to a vicious sharpness.’

  He put his hand against his neck, half expecting to find it gashed, but the liripipe and its voluminous folds had protected him. He pulled off the garment, and saw it was shredded to ribbons.

  ‘I cannot mend this,’ said Agatha, taking it from him. ‘It is beyond my skills with a needle. Still, it did not suit you anyway; it made you look like a jester.’

  ‘Are you sure he has gone?’ Bartholomew asked, looking around uneasily and wishing he had not dropped his knife in Clippesby’s room.

  Agatha nodded. ‘You were lucky to escape alive – he meant business. I could see it in the way he moved.’

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Bartholomew, climbing unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘It was the wolf,’ said Clippesby again. ‘I have already told you.’

  ‘I was too far away to see his face,’ said Agatha, pursing her lips at Clippesby to warn him to curtail his animal fantasies. ‘But he was as tall as you, Matthew, and he looked strong.’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust, and turned her attention back to the liripipe. ‘That is disgusting! He smeared dog turds on you. He must have done it to spite me.’

  Bartholomew was bewildered. ‘To spite you?’

  ‘Because I will have to wash the thing,’ explained Agatha impatiently. ‘I am a laundress, am I not? He probably knows this sort of stain is not easy to remove.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Bartholomew, thinking that causing inconvenience in the College laundry was probably the last thing on the killer’s mind. ‘At least it is not stained with my blood.’

  ‘Why did he do such a thing?’ asked Clippesby, watching Agatha fling the garment away. ‘What would be the point? To add insult to injury?’

  ‘To make a wound fester,’ explained Bartholomew. ‘A cut with excrement driven into it may kill a victim later, if he survives the immediate injury. He is using it as a form of poison.’

  ‘That must have been what happened to Rougham,’ said Clippesby. ‘His wound went bad, but I saw for myself that the actual injury was not a fatal one.’

  Bartholomew took a few steps towards the woods, not sure what to do next, but unsettled by the knowledge that the murderer was not far away. ‘We cannot let this man go, because he will kill again for certain. We must find him!’

  Agatha grabbed his arm. ‘We could search all night and not succeed. Looking now is worse than hopeless, and he will be long gone, anyway. Tell Sheriff Tulyet to come tomorrow with some of his hunting hounds, and let him track this monster.’

  ‘Do you think Michael will believe me now?’ asked Clippesby. ‘He must see I am innocent, given that you have just had a nasty encounter with the wretch while I was pinned helplessly underneath you.’

  ‘Clippesby saved your life,’ stated Agatha, lest the physician had not realised. ‘I was too far away to help, and that lunatic – and I do not mean Clippesby – would have throttled you long before I arrived. This brave friar drove him off, armed only with a rock.’

  ‘I understand now how the wolf kills,’ said Clippesby, blushing at the compliment. ‘It is not easy to slash a throat with something as unwieldy as teeth – metal ones or your own – so he partially strangles his victims, to subdue them first. That was what he was doing to Rougham when I intervened. Then he rips their necks with his tainted fangs when they are too weak to fight. Nothing is left to chance; he is a thorough executioner.’

  ‘Not thorough enough,’ Agatha pointed out. ‘He did not kill Rougham, and now he has failed with Matthew – twice, if you include the time with the spade in the church.’

  ‘That was not me, either,’ said Clippesby firmly. ‘However, I have been thinking about it – analysing the details you gave me, along with information supplied by Agatha and a crow who happened to be watching – and I have reached a logical conclusion, based on facts.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Bartholomew, not sure whether he could trust the ‘facts’ supplied by the crow.

  ‘The wolf has a very specific way of killing. He claimed three victims – that we know about – before the assault on you. Therefore, we can assume that he is content with his method, and there is no reason for him to change it. By contrast, the man who attacked you on Wednesday morning gave up very easily when he thought he would not succeed, and I think the wolf is more determined than that. It was not easy to drive him off when he hurt Rougham, and
it was not easy tonight. Ergo, the wolf and the man who attacked you with a spade are not one and the same.’

  ‘Two killers on the loose?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily.

  ‘The spade-man did not kill you,’ Clippesby pointed out. ‘And, from what you say, he was clumsy and ill-prepared. He did not have a weapon with him, and was obliged to use a tool he found in the churchyard. He is not a killer, because, as far as we know, he has not yet taken a life.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I think he believed I was Spryngheuse. He stayed his hand only when I said something that indicated he had the wrong man, but I am sure he had intended to kill. But Spryngheuse was dead within two days anyway, terrified into taking his own life.’

  ‘You may be right about that,’ acknowledged Clippesby. ‘But I am right about there being two killers: the wolf and your attacker are not the same man. The wolf would have used his teeth, not a spade.’

  ‘Metal teeth,’ said Bartholomew, his thoughts whirling away in another direction. ‘Polmorva once owned some of those, but Duraunt destroyed them years ago. Does this mean he did not, and that he kept them for future use? Or did Polmorva have another set made, after the originals disappeared?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Agatha, bemused. ‘Are you saying the Oxford men have steel fangs instead of real ones?’

  Bartholomew described Polmorva’s invention. ‘But they disappeared after I accused him of complicity in the sub-prior’s death. He thought I had stolen them while I assumed he had hidden them, ready to hire out again when the fuss had died down. Duraunt confessed to melting them down, although he did not see fit to mention this at the time, and exonerate me from Polmorva’s accusations.’

  ‘So, who is the wolf, then?’ asked Clippesby. ‘Duraunt or Polmorva?’

  ‘Duraunt is too frail to fight me,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Polmorva is not, though.’

  ‘And he hates you,’ agreed Agatha. ‘However, I am told you defeated him with ease when you fought at the cistern, so are you sure he is strong enough?’

  ‘He must be, because otherwise it means the wolf is Duraunt. Duraunt does not want me dead.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Clippesby softly. ‘The Merton Hall chickens heard him telling his friends that he offered you a Fellowship at Oxford, and was deeply hurt when you elected to come here instead. He also thinks you are different from the young student he knew and loved.’

  ‘I grew up,’ said Bartholomew tersely. ‘I became more practical and less idealistic, but so do we all.’

  ‘Not all,’ said Clippesby pointedly. ‘Some of us cling to our naïveté, hoping it will protect us from the horrors of the world. Sometimes it works, but most of the time we are exposed to it regardless. You should not dismiss Duraunt from your list of suspects too readily. The stoat who lives at the Cardinal’s Cap tells me he is belligerent once full of ale. Drunks can be strong.’

  ‘No,’ insisted Bartholomew doggedly. ‘Not Duraunt.’

  ‘He lied about the teeth,’ Agatha pointed out. ‘He said they were destroyed, but they were not. They are here, in Cambridge, being used for a far more sinister purpose than helping old monks gnaw their meat. The wolf must be him.’

  ‘And it was definitely you he was after,’ added Clippesby. ‘He does not perceive me as a threat – he could have come to the hospital any time and dispatched me at his leisure. It was you he wanted, just as he wanted Rougham, not me, the first time I encountered him.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Bartholomew in despair. ‘I do not understand!’

  ‘He thinks you are close to revealing his identity and is determined to stop you,’ said Clippesby. ‘Whatever direction your investigation is taking is obviously the right one.’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew wearily. ‘There must be some other explanation.’

  ‘So you said, but speculating will get us nowhere,’ said Agatha, looking up at the sky. ‘Dawn is not far off, and we should be about our business before anyone finds out what we have been doing: Clippesby escaping, me visiting lunatics, and Matthew stalking College laundresses.’

  ‘I still cannot let you go,’ said Bartholomew to Clippesby, dragging his thoughts away from Duraunt. ‘Especially not now. You have saved my life, and I want to do the same for you.’

  ‘But we have established that the wolf does not have designs on me.’ Clippesby smiled wryly. ‘He probably believes I am too addled, which goes to show a little eccentricity has its advantages.’

  ‘You are more than a little eccentric,’ said Agatha bluntly. ‘You are stark raving mad.’

  ‘I am not worried about the wolf …about the killer harming you,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I am concerned about the Oxford merchants and others who may seize you as a scapegoat. You cannot stay at Stourbridge, though; you are not safe here, either. Not now.’

  ‘Well, if he cannot stay here, and you will not let him escape, then where is left?’ demanded Agatha. ‘He is not a bird, whatever he might think himself, and he cannot fly away.’

  ‘I know somewhere,’ said Bartholomew. ‘No one will think to look there, and he will be safe until this is over.’

  ‘Good,’ said Agatha. ‘Then lead us to it.’

  CHAPTER 11

  It was well past dawn by the time Bartholomew had secured Clippesby in his new hiding place, and he was late for the Monday morning mass. He noticed that the town was waiting in eager anticipation for the Archbishop, and even the beggars had made an attempt to spruce themselves up. He hurried to St Michael’s Church and walked briskly to his place in the chancel. Michael was officiating, but took his mind off his sacred duties long enough to indicate he wanted to speak to the physician. Then he delighted the students and bemused the Fellows by speeding through the rest of the ceremony at a rate that was far from devout.

  ‘I wish all our priests would do it like that,’ remarked Langelee, as he led the procession out of the church and back to Michaelhouse. ‘It would save us a good deal of wasted time.’

  ‘Praying is not wasted time,’ said William, shocked, despite the fact that his masses were usually even faster. He jerked his head at the listening students. ‘And watch what you say when there are impressionable minds listening.’

  ‘Our impressionable minds might be disturbed by witnessing the Master’s hankering for Agatha,’ said Deynman sanctimoniously. ‘The news of that is all over the University.’

  ‘The Master does not hanker after her any longer,’ said William, who had heard the rumours that Langelee had shifted his affections to Alyce Weasenham. ‘That honour now falls to Suttone.’ He guffawed loudly, to indicate he was making a joke.

  ‘Suttone,’ mused Deynman, and Bartholomew saw he had just witnessed the birth of another falsehood that would soon be circulating around the town and paraded as truth.

  Michael snatched Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him out of the procession. ‘Where have you been? You were needed last night, and there was no trace of you. Have you been with a patient?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bartholomew truthfully. ‘Why? What has happened?’

  ‘Matilde’s house was invaded – by the killer, we think.’

  Bartholomew gazed at him in horror, a stab of panic making his breath catch painfully in his throat. ‘She is not …? Is she …?’

  ‘She is unharmed,’ replied Michael. ‘Frightened and angry, but unharmed.’

  Bartholomew closed his eyes in relief. ‘I am going to marry her, Michael,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘I am going to ask her as soon as Rougham has gone and we can be alone.’

  Michael smiled. ‘Good. It is time you acted on this, and I am sure Matilde will think so, too.’

  ‘Do you think she will have me?’

  ‘Probably,’ replied Michael carelessly. ‘It will mean the end of your Fellowship, but I intend to order Tynkell to keep you as our Corpse Examiner. I doubt Rougham will be clamouring for your dismissal, given what you have done for him of late.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘I hope you will be ver
y happy together – and that you will spare the occasional cup of wine for an old friend.’

  ‘Always,’ said Bartholomew. They were silent for a moment, as each considered the enormity of what Bartholomew was about to do. He would have to start hunting for patients who could pay him, and would have no time for his treatise on fevers. Meanwhile, Michael thought about how different life would be for him, too, and realised how much he had come to rely on the physician’s insights and help in all manner of ways.

  ‘Did Matilde see who broke into her house?’ asked Bartholomew, pulling his mind away from the future. ‘And what about Rougham? Did the killer come to complete what he started two weeks ago?’

  ‘I think that is exactly what he was doing,’ said Michael soberly. ‘It happened at midnight precisely, because Matilde heard handbells jangling inside All-Saints-in-the-Jewry. Rougham escaped unharmed, too, although the shock has not been good for him.’

  ‘Lord!’ muttered Bartholomew. ‘The wolf was busy last night. He must have gone directly from Matilde’s house to Stourbridge.’

  ‘The wolf?’ echoed Michael.

  Bartholomew shook his head, impatient with himself. ‘That is what Clippesby calls him. I am sorry, Brother. He used it so often last night that it rubbed off on me.’

  ‘You went to see Clippesby?’ asked Michael warily. ‘In the middle of the night? With a killer on the loose, who may decide you are to be next?’

  Bartholomew described what had happened, leaving out only the fact that he had hidden Clippesby in a place only he and Agatha knew. Michael immediately jumped to the conclusion that Clippesby had been afraid the Oxford merchants would hang him, and had fled the area completely. Bartholomew said nothing to disabuse him of the notion.

  ‘Damn! The Archbishop is due this afternoon, and we shall have to welcome him knowing there is a killer stalking our streets with a metal dentition. I hope to God this wolf does not have designs on Islip, because, if he strikes, our University will be suppressed for certain. I know Canterbury became famous after the murder of Thomas à Becket, but I do not want Cambridge to be known for killing archbishops, too. We do not have a cathedral.’