A Wicked Deed

by Susanna GREGORY

  Tuddenham is a nobleman,’ said Michael. ‘He will not renege on his promise to give us his church simply because we are curious.’

  ‘He might consider doing exactly that if you start investigating a murder he may have committed, or that involves his neighbours or his nephew.’

  ‘So you believe we should start to draw up the deed tonight, then?’ said Michael, nodding thoughtfully. ‘That is prudent thinking, Matt. Once we have it, we can do what we like.’

  ‘That was not what I meant at all,’ sighed Bartholomew. ‘Anyway, if Grundisburgh is as seething with intrigue and murder as you seem to hope, then Michaelhouse should decline anything Tuddenham offers. We do not want the good name of the College besmirched by tainted gifts.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Michael. ‘Most gifts to the University are tainted in some way or another. No one gives out of the goodness of his heart, you know. There is always some catch.’

  ‘The advowson of Barrington church is ours, and that does not have any unpleasant catches,’ said Bartholomew.

  Michael gave a short bark of laughter. ‘In that case, why do you think it took four years for Michaelhouse to get the grant executed once the licence had been issued? Negotiations, Matt! Surely you must have noticed that all the priests we have appointed have been personal friends of the Bishop of Ely, who just happened to decree its appropriation? Or did you consider that pure coincidence?’

  Bartholomew had considered it pure coincidence, and the thought that some nepotistic mechanism was at work behind the scenes had never crossed his mind. ‘Well, the advowson of Cheadle, then,’ he said, thinking of the second of Michaelhouse’s four properties. ‘No friends of the Bishop have been appointed there.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Michael. ‘But some of the income generated by that transaction is “donated” to the Guild of Weavers, the leader of which pressed the lord of Cheadle manor to grant it to us in the first place.’

  ‘And Tittleshall?’ asked Bartholomew weakly. ‘Was that not a simple act of generosity made by a grateful student to his former College, as we are always informed on Founder’s Day?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Michael scornfully. ‘That was given to us because the said student, now a powerful lawyer in Westminster, tampered with one of the nuns at St Radegund’s Priory while he should have been reading his Corpus Juris Civilis. It was the price he had to pay the then Master of Michaelhouse not to make his misdeeds public.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, disgusted and disillusioned, as he often was when he talked to Michael about the affairs of the University and its Colleges.

  ‘The only one of our four advowsons that is straightforward is the one that grants us St Michael’s Church in Cambridge, given to us by our founder. But even that is not entirely without strings – we are obliged to say a set number of masses for his immortal soul each year, and you know what a nuisance that can be when we are busy.’

  ‘So why do you think Tuddenham is granting us Grundisburgh?’ asked Bartholomew doubtfully. ‘Do you believe it is to ensure the health of Isilia’s unborn child, as you asked him, or is there another reason – such as to atone for an incestuous relationship with his mother, or in anticipation of his murder of Deblunville?’

  ‘You have a nasty imagination, Matt,’ said Michael, giving him a sidelong glance. ‘But this advowson is important to us. It will make us the third richest College in Cambridge, with only King’s Hall and Clare above us. Would you sacrifice such power on mere principle?’

  ‘Yes, probably,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And if Tuddenham has his own reasons for granting us the advowson, I would like to know what they are before we accept it. If some of his land is in dispute with his neighbour, this church might not be his to give.’

  ‘I checked that at St Edmundsbury Abbey,’ said Michael comfortably. ‘I saw copies of documents proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Tuddenham is the lawful recipient of the church tithes here. However, I did see deeds that indicate that his claim on the eastern side of his manor – his nephew’s land – is not entirely clear cut.’

  Bartholomew shook his head in awe. ‘So that is why you spent so long closeted away with the Abbot. I should have known you were up to something. William was under the impression you were praying to atone for your greed at the inn the night before. I thought that sounded unlikely.’

  ‘I do not have time to waste on false confessions,’ said Michael loftily. ‘But you are right to ask what prompts Tuddenham to make this offer to Michaelhouse. He has no connection to the College, and it is a most generous gift. However, a country knight like Tuddenham will not best two of the finest legal minds in the country – mine and Alcote’s. Do not look astonished, Matt: Alcote is very astute when it comes to business matters. How do you think he has become so wealthy?’

  ‘So much for leaving intrigue and treachery in Cambridge,’ said Bartholomew with a sigh.

  Michael nodded cheerfully. ‘I was beginning to think I had wasted my time with this journey. Now I hear you voicing your usual complaints about the deception and plotting that comes naturally to most people, and I am beginning to feel quite at home.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bartholomew flatly.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. The sun was hot and red as it sank over the horizon, and he was thirsty from drinking Tuddenham’s warm ale and strong wine. He dismounted, and went to a brook that bubbled along the side of the road for some water. It was clean and clear and tasted of river weed, quite different from the brown-coloured, peaty stuff he drank in Cambridge with its occasionally sulphurous taste that he preferred not to think about.

  A blackbird sang sharply in the tree above his head, while another answered from further away. In the shadows, a kingfisher flitted brilliant blue as it dropped almost silently into the bubbling water and emerged in a flurry of droplets with a minnow in its beak. The wind hissed gently through the trees, twitching the leaves and bending the long grass and nettles that grew along the bank. It smelled sweet, flowers mingled with the earthy scent of rich earth.

  It was peaceful by the stream, and Bartholomew did not feel inclined to leave it in order to go to the body of a man who had probably been murdered. He sat in the grass and waited for his horse to finish drinking, watching it take great mouthfuls of water with loud slurping sounds. The blackbird continued to call, while on the opposite side of the brook a bright male pheasant strutted and pranced, trying to attract the attentions of a dowdy hen.

  Finally, feeling he could delay no longer, he took the reins of his horse and led it up the hill toward the crossroads. Tuddenham and Wauncy stood together, while Michael poked about near the foot of the gibbet in the dying light. From the stony expressions of the knight and the priest, Bartholomew sensed that something was amiss.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Wauncy in a tone that was not entirely friendly. I have heard that the scholars of Cambridge have a reputation for savouring fine wines.’

  ‘Are you implying we were drunk?’ asked Michael coldly, pausing in his prodding to favour the priest with the expression normally reserved for students who tried to lie to him.

  Wauncy clearly was, but he folded his hands together and forced a smile. ‘All I can say is that you must have been mistaken in what you thought you saw. Look around you, Brother. There is no hanged man here now. And from what I can see, there never was.’

  Chapter 3

  I CAN ASSURE YOU, SIR THOMAS, THAT THERE WAS A man hanging at Bond’s Corner yesterday morning,’ said Michael firmly. ‘Someone must have returned after we left, and taken the body away.’

  Tuddenham was clearly sceptical. He gestured to Siric to refill the scholars’ goblets, but Bartholomew noticed that the steward was being more cautious with the portions than he had been the previous day. Michael noticed, too, and was not amused.

  It was the day after the mysterious disappearance of the corpse on the gibbet, and the scholars and Tuddenham’s household were sitting at a large table in
the knight’s handsome two-storey manor house of Wergen Hall, which stood about a mile to the south of the main village. Outside, a moat and two sets of earthen banks provided basic protection against attack, although these had apparently been added when Roland Deblunville moved to the neighbouring village of Burgh, and had nothing to do with the continuing wars with the French.

  Wergen Hall’s main chamber was a pleasant room with brightly painted window shutters that had been thrown open to the golden morning sunlight. Hand-woven tapestries adorned the walls, depicting hunting scenes and a rather alarming vision of Judgement Day in scarlet and emerald, which Isilia told them had been sewn by Dame Eva while her husband was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land many years before. The rafters above it were stained black with decades of smoke from fires burning in the central hearth, while the wooden floor had been liberally sprinkled with dried grass and fragrant herbs.

  Bartholomew considered the oddly empty scaffold of the day before, as Michael continued to try to convince a disbelieving audience that he had not been drunk. With Tuddenham and his priest Wauncy looking on, Bartholomew had knelt in the grass below the gibbet and inspected it closely. Some of the blades were flattened where the body had lain, although with four horses trampling about it was flimsy evidence at best. He had presented Tuddenham with the rope Cynric had cut, but the knight claimed it had been left from the previous hanging. Bartholomew had discovered only one other thing: in the fading light, something had glinted dully, and he saw it was one of the silver studs from the belt the dead man had worn. Tuddenham shrugged, unimpressed, and pointed out that it might have been there for weeks, and provided no incontrovertible evidence that Deblunville had been hanged there earlier that day.

  It had been an uncomfortable ride back to Grundisburgh. Tuddenham was clearly relieved that the scholars had been mistaken, but was not pleased that he had been dragged away from the Pentecost Fair on a wasted errand. His priest, meanwhile, hinted darkly about the widely known penchant of Cambridge scholars for strong wines. As far as Bartholomew was concerned, the timely disappearance of the corpse added credence to his initial claim that the hanged man had been murdered, while Michael fretted about whether the incident would make Tuddenham rethink his intention to grant the advowson to Michaelhouse.

  Michael need not have been concerned. As soon as they entered the grassy courtyard of Wergen Hall, the knight had asked yet again whether they were inclined to begin sifting through the pile of deeds that needed to be read before the advowson could be drafted. Michael pounced on the opportunity – uncharacteristically declining an invitation to attend the villagers’ feast on the green – and summoned Alcote so that they could begin immediately. The rest of the evening was spent painstakingly sorting through the mass of scrolls and deeds that proved Tuddenham’s legal ownership of various plots of land and buildings.

  Michael and Alcote, with William and Bartholomew helping, toiled well into the night, working in the unsteady light of smoking tallow candles. Eventually, eyes stinging from the fumes and from the strain of reading poor handwriting in the gloom, they were obliged to sleep where they sat, hunched over a trestle table piled high with documents, because all the best places by the fire had been taken by Tuddenham’s servants hours before. The scholars were woken, stiff and unrested, before dawn the following morning by Tuddenham himself, eager to know how much progress had been made.

  Later, over a breakfast of hard bread and salted fish, during which the usual topics were aired – it was indeed mild for the time of year, the scholars had heard that the Pope had died the previous December, and food prices had risen alarmingly since the plague – Dame Eva turned the conversation to the mysteriously absent hanged man. Tuddenham pursed his lips, reluctant to resurrect a subject he considered closed, but the old lady persisted, claiming she was concerned that the outlaws on the Old Road might have dipped south on to Tuddenham land.

  As she spoke, Bartholomew wondered how old she was. Although she possessed almost all her long yellow teeth and her eyes were bright and alert, she seemed so small and frail that he thought a gust of wind might blow her away. But elderly though she might be, she was astute and far too wary of her neighbours to make light of the odd disappearance of a corpse on her son’s manor. Given the seemingly precarious state of his relationship with Deblunville, Bartholomew thought her concerns were probably justified, and that Tuddenham would do well to pay heed to her.

  ‘The hanged man was about thirty years of age,’ said Alcote, looking up from where he was prising the bones from his herrings with a delicate silver knife, ‘with brown hair and a red face.’

  ‘He had a red face because he had been suffocated,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘I cannot imagine it was that colour in life.’

  Tuddenham raised silvery eyebrows. ‘It is not much of a description, gentlemen. Can you recall nothing else about him? Did he have any marks or scars?’

  ‘Not that I saw,’ said William. ‘He was just an ordinary sinner.’

  ‘And you are certain he was dead,’ said Walter Wauncy, chewing slowly and deliberately on a piece of bread, as if he imagined his teeth might drop out if he were too vigorous. ‘Because dead men do not cut themselves down from gibbets and walk away.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’ asked Isilia, her green eyes round and sombre as she regarded the cadaverous priest. ‘Strange things have been happening here since the Death.’

  ‘Not that strange!’ said Tuddenham, with a bemused smile. He shook his head at his mother. ‘Have you been telling her silly tales again?’

  ‘Do not mock things you do not understand, Thomas,’ said the old lady sharply. Isilia is right: strange things have happened here since the Death.’

  She exchanged a glance with Isilia, and they instinctively moved closer together as if for protection. Bartholomew noticed that the old lady’s gaudy brooch had been exchanged for a heavy gold cross, which she clutched at with bird-like fingers.

  ‘But dead men do not walk,’ intervened Michael firmly, never a man to exercise patience with superstition. ‘The solution to all this is perfectly clear: someone removed the body after we left.’

  ‘Why would someone do that?’ asked Wauncy, tearing off a fragment of crust with bony fingers and cautiously placing it in his mouth. ‘If the man were dead, why bother to spirit the corpse away?’

  ‘To claim his jewels and dagger, of course,’ said Alcote impatiently. ‘And to steal his clothes.’

  ‘But that does not explain why the whole body disappeared,’ said Michael. ‘A thief would have stripped the corpse where it lay, not removed the whole thing.’

  ‘It is more likely that the body was stolen to prevent an investigation into its death,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is difficult to solve a murder when there is no corpse.’

  ‘True,’ said William, anxious to join in the conversation and demonstrate his deductive skills – skills he hoped Michael would report to the Chancellor when they returned to Cambridge, and that would see him appointed as the University’s Junior Proctor. ‘But it seems that the killer was interrupted before he had finished his business. When Matthew cut the body down, the man was still alive –just for a few moments. We—’

  He jumped suddenly, and leaned down to rub his shin. Michael glared at him, while Bartholomew felt his heart sink.

  ‘You cut down the body of a man who might, for all you knew, have been lawfully executed?’ asked Tuddenham, shocked. Isilia and Dame Eva exchanged a look of horror, and Wauncy shuddered. ‘That is scarcely a wise habit, gentlemen!’

  ‘Professional hangmen do not abandon their victims before they are dead,’ said Bartholomew curtly, deciding there was little point in denying what they had done. ‘It was clear this man had not keen killed legally.’

  ‘Nor do hangmen abandon their victims’ clothing,’ added Michael. ‘They usually consider those part of their payment. As Matt says, there was something peculiar about the man’s death, and we sought only to avert a possible miscarriage of ju
stice. We were right: whoever we saw die was not executed after a fair trial.’

  ‘Perhaps he took his own life,’ said Wauncy, still chewing slowly. ‘And then, when you saved him, he just walked away, seeing his rescue as an act of divine intervention.’

  ‘He was dead,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘I am a physician – I know a corpse when I see one.’

  ‘But there are certain illnesses and potions that make a man appear to be dead when he still lives,’ observed Wauncy. ‘I have heard stories where grieving families were delighted to discover that a loved one was not dead after all.’

  Bartholomew had been wrongly accused of misdiagnosing a dead man in the past, and was not prepared to let it happen again. ‘His neck was broken, so he could not have walked away even had he wanted to. And he was not breathing. The only plausible explanation to all this is that someone took the corpse away, so that it would not be found.’

  Tuddenham scratched his scalp through wiry grey hair, and gave a heavy sigh. ‘I can see this business has distressed you, and I sense you will not give your full attention to my advowson until it has been satisfactorily resolved.’

  ‘That is not true,’ began Alcote hurriedly. ‘This incident is wholly unimportant to us—’

  Tuddenham raised a hand to silence him. ‘I am a fair and law-abiding man, and I shall do all in my power to investigate this affair. I will send my steward, Siric, to Peche Hall later this morning to tell my nephew Hamon to meet me near the river with six armed men.’

  ‘Do not involve that oaf!’ advised Dame Eva with feeling. ‘He will do more harm than good with his short temper and lack of common sense.’

  Tuddenham overrode her. ‘Meanwhile, Master Wauncy can ride to our neighbours – Grosnold at Otley and Bardolf at Clopton – and tell them what has happened. Then, while Master Alcote and Father William remain here to work on my advowson, Doctor Bartholomew and Brother Michael will ride with us to visit Deblunville, so that we can satisfy ourselves, once and for all, that nothing terrible has befallen the man.’