by C. J. Sansom
Barak opened the boxes, revealing the dentures. From the way the dean’s eyes widened and he sat back in his chair I knew my suspicions were right.
‘Let me tell you what I think happened,’ I said quietly. ‘Goddard used to administer dwale, a powerful and dangerous soporific, to render people unconscious for operations. Meanwhile a fashion came in among the rich for wearing false teeth set in wood. The teeth are usually obtained from healthy young people, preferably as a complete set. Master Barak’s wife recently had to have a tooth removed, and the tooth-drawer suggested he pull out the lot, offering to pay her well for them.’
‘Is there some meaning to this story?’ the dean asked angrily. But his eyes kept going back to the boxes.
‘I do not know how often you visit the abandoned parts of the old monastery now, but I have twice encountered a beggar who keeps sneaking into the premises, asking anyone who will listen if they know where his teeth are - he has not a tooth in his head. He is mad, of course, but I wonder what drove him so. Something that was done to him here? Perhaps his teeth were removed, under dwale? Perhaps they were checked for size against one of these boxes we found in Lockley’s chest. One of the reasons the tooth-drawers find it hard to get people to volunteer their teeth, even for high sums, is the pain involved. But destitute folk who came here to have their illnesses treated could be offered a dose of dwale to make the process itself painless.’
There was silence in the room. A loud hammering began somewhere outside, making the dean jump. He took a deep breath. ‘If Goddard and Lockley, and Cantrell for all I know, had some scheme going in the infirmary, I knew nothing of it. And what has that to do with your hunt for the killer?’
‘We need to know all, dean. And from the way you looked at those boxes it is clear this is not news to you.’
A second hammer joined the first. The dean closed his eyes. ‘That noise,’ he said quietly. ‘That endless noise. How am I supposed to be able to think?’ He opened his eyes again. He looked between the three of us, then took a deep breath.
‘I congratulate you, Serjeant Shardlake. Yes, you are right. Back in 1539, four years ago, I learned Goddard was inviting patients in the lay hospital to sell their teeth. The fashion for false teeth was coming in then, and he had made an arrangement with a local barber-surgeon in Westminster. A man called Snethe, at the sign of the Bloody Growth. He buys teeth, and other things as well from what I hear.’ He took another deep breath and then continued. ‘Lockley worked with Goddard. By then, everyone knew the monasteries had no future and many of the monks tried to protect their financial security in various ways. That was the way Goddard chose, so he could preserve his status if the monastery closed. Lockley, I imagine, spent his share on drink.’
‘How did you learn about this?’
‘Young Cantrell told me. He worked in the monks’ infirmary and had little to do with the lay hospital, but he learned what was going on, he heard Goddard and Lockley talking one day. Goddard told him to keep it quiet or he would suffer for it, but Cantrell suspected that one or two of the people Goddard and Lockley renderd unconscious for their teeth never woke up.’
‘Cantrell,’ I said. ‘He was terrified at the mention of Goddard’s name.’
Benson continued: ‘I had been told by Lord Cromwell to seek out any scandals that might be going on, for use if we needed to put pressure on the monks to surrender.’ He looked at us again. ‘Yes, and all of you worked for him too, so you have no cause to be righteous with me. He told me to let what they were doing continue, so that we could spring a trap if need be, make a scandal of it. But his preference was for the monastery to be closed quietly and peacefully, without scandal, because that is what the King wanted. And that is what I achieved.’
‘Did Goddard know Cantrell had informed on him?’
‘No. I never told him I knew.’
‘So more people could have died?’ Harsnet said.
‘Perhaps. I was under the Lord Cromwell’s orders. As all of you know, one did not defy those lightly.’ He leaned forward, regaining confidence now. ‘And the King would not like to hear a scandal about Westminster, even now. I obeyed Lord Cromwell because he had all the power then, though I had no sympathy for his extreme radicalism in religion. But I knew he would go too far and his enemies on the Council would bring him down. Which is what happened. And now we are going back to more sensible ways.’
‘So you swung with the wind,’ Harsnet said.
‘Better swinging with the wind than swinging in the wind, as many have.’ Benson pointed a stubby finger at the coroner. ‘The King knows nothing of this, does he? This killer you are seeking? I have been making soundings - oh, very discreetly, do not worry. The King would not be glad to hear Archbishop Cranmer had been keeping things from him, not at this time when there are so many voices raised against him.’ He turned to me. ‘Your search does not go well, does it? You seem to be caught up in a nasty tangle, master crookback. You would not want to annoy the King a second time.’
Harsnet turned to me, ignoring Benson. ‘Where does this leave us? Is the killer some demented ex-patient of theirs?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘They were poor, helpless folk. Yet there is some link, there has to be.’
‘It’s Goddard,’ Harsnet said. ‘He is choosing victims he knows.’ He looked at the dean. ‘You’ve told us everything?’
‘All, now. On my oath as Dean of Westminster.’
‘I know how much that is worth, sir,’ Harsnet replied, his voice full of contempt.
Benson glared at him, then turned to me ‘Am I safe?’ he asked.
‘I do not think you are at risk,’ I replied. ‘All five victims so far were associated with radical religion and moved away from it. But you, I think, were always a time-server,’ I dared to say.
‘A practical man, as I told you before, master crookback.’
OUTSIDE THE House Harsnet shook his head.
‘We are no further forward,’ I said.
‘At least we know how ruthless, and indeed cruel, both Lockley and Goddard could be. Why could Benson not tell us earlier about that scheme? He knows he is safe,’ he added bitterly.
I did not reply. It occurred to me that the aggressive way Harsnet had tackled the dean from the beginning had not helped. He had been ruled by his dislike of the man. Sometimes dealing with political creatures one must dissemble and pretend friendship, as they do.
‘And why didn’t Cantrell tell us about this either?’ he asked.
‘Too afraid, I should think. It didn’t do him much good telling Benson. We had better go and see what he says now. We can leave the horses here.’ I pointed to the door in the wall, leading to Dean’s Yard. ‘There, that is where he lives. Though “exists” might be a better word.’
We went out and crossed the road to the tumbledown shop. ‘I see no guard,’ Harsnet said.
‘Knowing him, he may have refused to have one.’
‘Then he must be made to.’
‘There I agree.’
We crossed the road and knocked at the door. After a moment Cantrell opened it. ‘It is you, again, sir,’ he said without enthusiasm. He peered at Harsnet through his glasses. ‘Who is this?’
‘I am the London assistant coroner,’ Harsnet said, mildly enough. ‘Master Shardlake is working with me. We wanted to see how you fared. We hoped to see a guard at the house.’
‘He is out the back.’
‘May we come in?’
Cantrell’s shoulders sagged wearily as we followed him down the musty corridor to the parlour, Harsnet leading the way. The place still smelled of unwashed skin and bad food. We went into the dirty little parlour. I saw the window to the yard had been repaired. Outside a burly man wearing a sword sat on an old box, eating bread and cheese. Cantrell gestured at him. ‘He insisted. I don’t want a man in the house. He can stay out there.’
I looked round the parlour. There was a broken dish on the floor by the table, pottage leaking into the floorboards.
‘My dinner,’ Cantrell said gloomily. ‘I dropped it when you knocked. I tried to put it on the table, but missed.’
‘You should get your eyes seen to,’ I said. ‘Remember I said I know a physician who would see you for no fee.’ I would pay Guy’s fee, I decided. If I could do it for Bealknap, I could do it for poor Cantrell.
Cantrell stared at me. I wondered what his eyes looked like exposed, what disease ailed them. He was silent a moment, then said, ‘I am afraid, sir. Afraid he will say I am going blind.’
‘Or he may say new glasses would help you. Let me make an appointment.’
‘How long will I have to have that man here guarding me?’ he asked sullenly.
‘He may be needed for some time yet,’ Harsnet said. ‘I have to tell you that Francis Lockley has disappeared and the woman he was living with has been killed. The man who broke in here - could it possibly have been Lockley?’
Cantrell stared at us, his mouth falling open with surprise. ‘No, it wasn’t Francis. He was short, and the man who broke in here was tall. Dr Goddard was a tall man.’
‘With a large mole on the side of his nose, Serjeant Shardlake said?’
‘Yes.’
‘And with a cut on his head after you thwacked him with that piece of wood,’ Barak added approvingly.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Cantrell said with sudden petulance. ‘Why do you all have to come here, asking me questions? I do not understand what is happening. I just want to be left alone, in peace.’
Harsnet looked at him without speaking for a moment, getting his attention. ‘We have just been to see Dean Benson,’ he said. ‘He told us about the wretched scheme of Goddard and Lockley’s, extracting patients’ teeth under dwale. He told us you reported them to him.’
‘Why did you not tell me?’ I asked.
Cantrell sank down on a stool, a gesture of utter weariness. ‘Is that why Dr Goddard is after me?’ he asked. ‘Because I told?’
‘Dean Benson never told Goddard about that,’ I said. ‘But why did you not tell me?’
‘Much good it did me when I told on him the first time. I always suspected Dr Goddard guessed what I’d done, though he never said anything. His tongue seemed harsher than ever after that.’ The young man sighed deeply. ‘It does no good, trying to do right. It is better to be left alone.’ He looked up at us with those huge swimming eyes behind his glasses. ‘It wasn’t just patients they took teeth from, you know. Word got around among the beggars and pedlars that there was money to be had with no pain for young folks with good teeth. Many healthy folks came to the infirmary.’ I thought suddenly of the attractive young woman I had seen yesterday. ‘Dr Goddard could pick and choose. I was always surprised nobody in authority knew, all the beggars did. But no one takes notice of beggars, do they?’ He relapsed into silence, staring at the floor.
‘I will have a word with the guard.’ Harsnet looked at Cantrell, shook his head, then went out of the back door. He spoke briefly with the guard, then returned.
‘There’s been nothing suspicious while he’s been here. But he’s unhappy at not being allowed into the house. He even has to sleep in the shed which is full of old carpenter’s junk. Why will you not let him in, Goodman Cantrell?’
‘I just want to be left alone,’ Cantrell repeated. I feared he might burst into tears. I put a hand on Harsnet’s arm, and he followed me out of the parlour. I turned in the doorway and spoke to Cantrell. ‘I will speak to my physician friend. I will arrange an appointment for you.’ He did not reply, just sat looking at the floor.
OUTSIDE, HARSNET SHOOK his head again. ‘The smell of that place. Did you see how dirty his clothes were?’
‘Yes, he is in a bad way. Poor creature.’
‘Going the same way as Adam Kite, by the looks of him,’ Barak said.
‘I will help him if I can,’ I said.
‘You would help all the mad folks in London. They will drive you as mad as they.’
‘Serjeant Shardlake merely wishes to help,’ Harsnet said reprovingly. I rubbed my arm at a sudden twinge from my wound. ‘How is your arm?’ Harsnet said. ‘I forgot to ask.’
‘Much better. But I have just had the stitches out. I hope that guard knows his business. I don’t want to lose Cantrell too.’
Harsnet looked at me. I could see that like Barak he thought I was getting too involved in the troubles of the young ex-monk. ‘He’s competent enough. He is the last man I have. If we need any more we will have to rely on Sir Thomas Seymour.’ He sighed heavily. ‘In the end it will be as God wills.’
HARSNET RETURNED To his office at nearby Whitehall, and Barak and I rode home along the Strand. It was late afternoon now and the shadows were lengthening.
‘What the hell happened in that tavern last night?’ Barak asked. ‘Is Lockley the killer, and killing his wife part of his plan? If that were so, surely he would leave her to the end, as the seventh victim, not reveal his identity now?’
‘I cannot see him as the killer. He does not have the fierce, cold intelligence the killer must have. Unless he is a good actor. Guy says the killer must be acting most of the time, to be able to pretend to be normal.’ I shook my head. ‘But how could Lockley know anything about the law, enough to prepare that letter for Roger?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see it being Goddard either, though. It doesn’t feel right, somehow.’
‘I agree. Dr Goddard sounds more and more like a man obsessed with status and money, not with religious feeling.’
Barak grinned sourly. ‘Unlike our pure brother, coroner Harsnet.’ ‘He’s not so bad. He has some good qualities.’
‘He’d like to convert you. Make you a godly man too.’ He snorted. ‘How could anyone believe in a merciful God after what we’ve seen in that tavern?’
‘I suppose some would say that God gives man free will and if he abuses it that is his doing, not God’s.’
‘Try telling that to Mrs Bunce.’
As We Turned into Chancery Lane I remembered that I had agreed to see how Adam Kite was faring. And I must ask Guy to see Cantrell. I could understand the young man’s fear. What if Guy told him he would end wholly blind?
We took the horses round to the stable, then went into the house. As soon as I opened the door, Joan came hurrying down the stairs. ‘Dorothy Elliard’s maid Margaret has been round with a message,’ she said.
‘Has something happened to her?’ My heart was suddenly in my mouth.
‘No. She’s all right. But she has a Master Bealknap in her lodgings. He collapsed on her doorstep. Margaret says he’s at death’s door.’
‘Bealknap?’ I asked incredulously. ‘But he barely knows Dorothy.’
‘That was the message, sir. It came half an hour ago. Margaret asked you to go over there as soon as you returned.’
‘I’ll go now.’
I opened the door and hurried back down the path, walking rapidly round to Lincoln’s Inn, where candles were being lit in the windows as darkness fell. Margaret let me in, her plump face anxious.
‘What is going on?’ I asked.
‘I heard a knocking at the door early this afternoon, sir, and when I answered I found this man in a barrister’s robe collapsed on the doorstep. The mistress got the cook to put him to bed. He said you knew him—’
‘I’m in here,’ Dorothy called from the parlour.
‘I’d better go back to him, sir,’ Margaret said. ‘He’s in a bad way.’ She hurried away with a rustle of skirts. I went into the parlour, where Dorothy was standing by the fire, studying the discoloured section of the wooden frieze.
‘I must get this section redone. It was so poorly repaired, it irritates me now I spend so much time sitting here.’ Her face was pale, and I sensed she was making an effort to stay calm. ‘Thank you for coming, Matthew.’
‘What has happened? Why is Bealknap here?’
‘Margaret found him collapsed on the doorstep. Asking for help. She called me. He was lying there whit
e as a sheet, gasping for air.’ There was a slight tremble in her voice. I realized the sight must have brought back the memory of Roger, lying by the fountain. Damn Bealknap, I thought.
‘Margaret said you’ve put him to bed.’
She spread her hands. ‘What else could I do? He said he was dying, asked for my help. Though I barely knew him, and liked him no better than you did.’
‘He knew a woman would not turn him away.’ I frowned. ‘I will go and deal with him.’
‘Matthew,’ Dorothy said quietly. ‘Do not be too harsh. I think he is very ill.’
‘We’ll see.’
THEY Had PUT Bealknap in a bedroom; from the schoolboy-sized tennis racquet on a wooden chest I guessed it was Samuel’s old room. Margaret was leaning over the bed, trying to get Bealknap to drink something from a cup. He lay in the bed in his shirt. I was shocked by how bad he looked, his face against the pillows as pale as death in the light of the candle on the bedside table. He was conscious, though; he stared at me with wild, terrified eyes.
Margaret turned to me. She looked distressed. She, too, had seen Roger’s corpse. ‘I’m trying to get him to drink some weak beer,’ she said.
‘Leave us,’ I said gently.
She put down the cup and left the room. I looked down at Bealknap. It was a strange thing to see him so close up, and so helpless. His disordered yellow hair was thinning, a large bald patch at the crown. Some of the drink Margaret had given him had spilled around his mouth. He looked utterly helpless, and his frantic stare showed he knew it.
‘Why have you come here?’ I asked quietly. ‘You know what this household has suffered.’
‘I knew - Mistress Elliard - was still here.’ His voice was faint, his breath rasping. ‘I knew she was kind. I have - no one else - to help me.’
‘Anyone would help a fellow barrister in a state of collapse.’
‘Not me. Everyone hates me.’ He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I am finished, Shardlake. I cannot eat, the food just passes through me. Dr Archer said the last purge would wear off, but it has not. And I bleed sometimes, I bleed down there.’