A Wicked Deed mb-5

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘But we have no evidence to connect Eltisley with any of these people,’ said Michael. ‘And I am wearing sandals, and I can feel fur and scrabbling claws all over my feet!’

  ‘The person behind all this must be Isilia,’ said Bartholomew, not wanting to think about scaly rat feet climbing on Michael’s bare toes. ‘No one else would know the child was not Tuddenham’s. All her caring attentions towards him must be an act — he knows this and he does not want her to see he is ill until the deed appointing Michaelhouse as his executor is safely in Cambridge.’

  ‘You are right,’ said Michael, trying to sit with his feet in the air. ‘Well, she had the fooled, too, with her lovely, innocent face and her touching concern for the husband old enough to be her father. She probably did not want to marry him in the first place. And who can blame her? He is like a horse, with all those long teeth.’

  ‘But there is also the father of the child,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He would have an interest in it inheriting over Hamon, and might try to prevent the advowson from being completed.’

  ‘Do you know who that might be?’ asked Michael. ‘It cannot be Hamon, or none of this would be an issue. Is it Grosnold, do you think? Or Wauncy?’

  ‘Or Eltisley?’ asked Bartholomew in distaste.

  ‘Eltisley has killed four times,’ said Cynric. ‘Alice Quy, James Freeman, Deblunville and Alcote. He will not hesitate to do so again.’

  ‘I suspect, with hindsight, that he also tried to poison us with that brown sludge the first night we stayed at the Half Moon, given how insistent he was that we finish the bottle,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He was pleased when he saw the bottle was empty, not knowing that Deynman had spilled it on the floor. Alcote drank a little, and was quite ill.’

  ‘And then, once it became clear that Alcote was the man writing the deed and that the rest of us were mere onlookers, attempts were made on Alcote alone,’ said Michael. ‘He was unwell most of the time he was here, suggesting that some insidious poison was in the food he ate — or in the copious amounts of raisins he devoured — and then there was the attack on him the night before he died.’

  Cynric leapt to his feet and began kicking out furiously. There were several squeals, and something soft thumped into Bartholomew, who thrust it away from him with a shudder.

  ‘Eltisley thinks he is beyond the law,’ said Michael. ‘Sit down, Cynric! You keep kicking these things into my lap. Why Isilia should consider forming an alliance with Eltisley is beyond me. He is likely to kill her, to see if she can be resurrected.’

  ‘I do not see how they are connected, though,’ said Cynric. ‘Isilia and Eltisley. She is sweet and kind, and he is a maniac.’

  ‘Do not let appearances deceive you, Cynric,’ said Michael sagely. ‘Behind that lovely face lies a mind as strong and cunning as a rat trap — which I would give a good deal to have one of right now. She must have paid him to destroy his tavern with Alcote in it, and snatched the copy of the will from me in the churchyard.’

  ‘What if-?’ began Bartholomew. He stopped as a screech from above heralded the opening of the trap-door. There was a flood of light, and the rats slunk away into the shadows.

  Bartholomew saw Cynric braced to pounce and tensed himself, waiting for an opportunity to launch a bid for escape. It never came. More wary this time, one of the surly men immediately kicked out at Cynric’s hands, and the crossbow quarrel went skittering down the steps to the floor below. Michael let out a cry of dismay, while Cynric only gazed at it in horror.

  ‘All is ready,’ said Eltisley pleasantly. ‘I would like you to come out, Brother. I have an elixir I would like you to taste. And that Welshman, too. The monk might prove too fat for what I have in mind, but the servant should do nicely. I will save Bartholomew to help me later — I might be forced to call upon his expertise, if this does not work.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you to try your elixir on yourself?’ asked Michael, as he stepped out of the vault. The landlord seemed surprised by Michael’s hostility.

  ‘I would say that your students and the friar will test it in your stead. At the moment, I am still prepared to let them return to Michaelhouse.’

  ‘You do not have them,’ shouted Bartholomew desperately. ‘They have gone away.’

  ‘To the leper hospital,’ said Eltisley. He beamed at Bartholomew’s shock. ‘I overheard that slow-witted student of yours telling the handsome one where they were headed, as they fled along the Ipswich road yesterday. It was clever of you to try to spirit them away.’

  Bartholomew’s heart sank.

  ‘Well, where are they, then?’ asked Michael.

  Eltisley hesitated. ‘They have not arrived at the leper hospital yet.’ He shrugged absently. ‘Perhaps they have been waylaid. Or lost. That stupid student is capable of getting lost on a straight road, I am sure.’

  Bartholomew was uncertain whether to be relieved they had escaped Eltisley’s clutches, or concerned that they might have fallen into someone else’s. He could only hope that Horsey had realised the danger they were in, and had come up with an alternative plan.

  ‘And we will catch that friar, too,’ said Eltisley. ‘He will not be able to hide from me for long.’

  Bartholomew was confused. Was William hiding from Eltisley? He did not know that he should, and would be under the impression that Stoate, hastily riding towards Ipswich, was the villain of the piece. So where was William, and what was he doing so that Eltisley could not find him? Bartholomew’s heart sank further when he realised that William, headstrong and keen to prove himself, might have decided to tackle Stoate alone. Perhaps he was even now pursuing the killer physician on horseback, or had confronted him and was lying in some roadside bush with a crossbow quarrel in him.

  Eltisley’s attention was on Michael. ‘I have been working on a rather clever idea that you will test for me. You see, not everyone likes the time in which they live, so I have invented a potion that kills temporarily. Then, at a later date, my other elixir — the one that raises people from the dead — can be taken, and the person can be restored to life at a time of his choosing.’

  ‘But that is monstrous!’ exclaimed Michael. ‘The time in which we live is the one granted to us by God, and it is not natural to decide you do not like it, and exchange it for another.’

  ‘People will pay handsomely to do it, monstrous or not,’ said Eltisley, oblivious to Michael’s revulsion. ‘You would be surprised how many men would like to lie low for a few years.’

  ‘Murderers, thieves, rapists, arsonists and a whole host of other felons, I should imagine,’ said Michael scathingly. ‘You have invented an elixir to allow criminals to evade justice.’

  Eltisley’s face hardened. ‘You will take my potion, and you are not a criminal.’

  The slab was slammed shut, almost landing on Bartholomew’s head. On reflection, as the physician crouched in the darkness listening to the rustles as the rats began to move again, he decided that having his brains dashed out might be a better way to die than being eaten alive by rodents, or downing one of Eltisley’s hideous concoctions. Michael’s voice echoed down to him, and he strained to hear what was being said.

  ‘My colleague believes that you killed James Freeman,’ came Michael’s voice conversationally. ‘He thinks you hanged him, so that you could test your potion, and that he was wearing clothes from a bundle you found near the Grundisburgh parish boundary.’

  ‘He is right,’ said Eltisley. ‘Someone had abandoned those clothes — I found them when I was walking and thinking up new theories as we philosophers are wont to do. Since I needed some for James Freeman — to replace the ones I had bloodied to convince people of his death — I gave them to him, and he wore them when I hanged him at Bond’s Corner. Unfortunately, you chose that moment to cut him down.’

  ‘My apologies,’ said Michael.

  Eltisley made an irritable sound. ‘You have no idea how frustrating it was to watch Bartholomew’s attempts to revive him, when I knew a fe
w drops of my potion would work! But I thought that if I made my appearance from the bushes, you would assume I had hanged him.’

  ‘You had,’ Michael pointed out.

  Bartholomew kicked away a rat that was clawing its way up his leg. It landed with a soggy thump on the floor below.

  ‘But not with any intention to kill,’ protested Eltisley. ‘He would have been alive today, had you not come by and interfered. Then I was left with a body to dispose of.’

  ‘Why did you not test your elixir on him after we had gone?’ asked Michael.

  Eltisley sighed.’ I did, but that particular elixir was designed to raise people who had only just died, and the delay caused by your meddling meant it did not work.’

  Bartholomew knew students who always had an excuse as to why they had not completed some task he had set them, or why an experiment he had asked them to undertake was unsuccessful. It was never their fault; someone else was always to blame. Eltisley was just like them.

  ‘Then what did you do?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I could not have James Freeman’s body discovered, or people would be asking me who I had buried in his specially constructed coffin. It was quite a problem for me. Have you ever tried to dispose of a corpse?’

  ‘Not lately,’ replied Michael.

  ‘It is no mean task, I can assure you. I tried to burn it, but it smouldered for days and I was still left with a sizeable chunk. I had to chop it into small pieces, and leave it out for Padfoot — although he did not seem to be very interested.’

  ‘Probably prefers his human corpses raw,’ suggested Michael.

  Eltisley continued. ‘Anyway, after he died, I took the clothes off Freeman, donned them along with some potions to disguise my face and went into Grundisburgh church, intending to have a conversation with Walter Wauncy. My ingenious plan was that Wauncy would say he had seen the hanged man alive and well, and your story would be dismissed as fantasy — drunken scholars reeling from a night in the taverns, claiming to find a dead man who was later seen in a church by our priest. Who would question the word of a priest?’

  ‘But instead of Wauncy, you found Unwin, who was dead,’ said Michael, ‘so you ran away.’

  ‘I tried to give him some of my potion, but in my excitement at finding a subject so unexpectedly, I spilled it. Vapours wafted into my eyes, and I could barely see what I was doing. I decided to abandon the experiment before someone accused me of a murder I did not commit. I ran away across the fields behind the church, although the shoes were too small: they slopped, and made haste difficult.’

  So, Stoate had been telling the truth, thought Bartholomew. He had seen a man running from the church rubbing his eyes. And Norys had seen him wearing Freeman’s shoes and belt — recently stolen from Deblunville by Janelle. Deblunville’s shoes had not fitted Eltisley, and they had slopped, something peculiar enough to lodge in Norys’s mind.

  ‘Norys saw you,’ said Michael. ‘He described the belt and shoes — but not the dagger, because you left that with James Freeman’s body.’

  ‘I was impressed by Norys’s observing powers,’ said Eltisley. ‘Although I was relieved that he did not recognise anything else. For a dreadful moment, I thought he was going to come to help disentangle my cloak from the tree it snagged on. I ripped it pulling myself free.’

  ‘And how did you manage to take the afternoon away from your tavern to conduct your experiments during the Fair?’ asked Michael. ‘Did people not demand to know where you were?’

  ‘I have a wife,’ said Eltisley loftily. ‘I have better things to do with my time than selling ale to peasants. But later I was arrested for the priest’s murder anyway, because of that bloody knife.’

  ‘I suppose the knife was the one you used to kill an animal — to provide the blood you needed to make Freeman’s “death” appear convincing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Eltisley. ‘Ironic, do you not think? But you were kind enough to come to my rescue, and provide evidence that Norys was the culprit, not me, so I was free to continue my work.’

  Bartholomew rested his head against the cool stone and felt sick. He did not stay still for long. Something furry bumped up against his leg, forcing him to push it away. How much longer could he repel the things? Would they get him first, or would Eltisley?

  ‘And who is it who is financing these great experiments of yours?’ asked Michael. ‘Isilia?’

  Bartholomew heard Eltisley clap his hands in delight. ‘At last you have reasoned it out! Mistress Isilia does not want that loutish Hamon to inherit Tuddenham’s estates over her brat, as is likely to be stipulated in Tuddenham’s will. She asked me to relieve her of your presence so that the will cannot be written, and since I was running a little low on funds, I agreed.’

  ‘And is there anyone else who pays you?’ asked Michael. ‘You seem to possess a great deal of equipment and supplies, and Isilia cannot give you that much money — Tuddenham would be suspicious of her spending too much.’

  ‘Many people are interested in my work,’ said Eltisley blithely. ‘Everyone has a loved one they would like to see again. I have even been paid by priests, who want me to raise a saint for them.’

  ‘There is not much left of most saints to raise,’ said Michael. ‘Bones, hair, teeth, nails, fingers and beard have been scattered all over the country as relics.’

  ‘That will be dealt with when the time comes,’ said Eltisley grandly.

  Their voices faded away into silence. In a brief moment of hope, Bartholomew thought they had forgotten to replace the chest that held down the slab, but there was a rumble and a thump, and that was that. He sat with his head resting on his knees, wondering how he had ever become embroiled in the whole mess, and fervently wishing that he had never left Cambridge in the first place. He thought of Unwin, dead because he had been foolish enough to let Stoate bleed him, and Alcote, dead because Isilia did not want Hamon to inherit Tuddenham’s estates. And then he thought about Michael, Cynric, Horsey, Deynman and William — who would go the same way. He was angry enough to beat his fists uselessly on the stone slab to vent his frustration.

  It was not long before the rats intruded into his thoughts. One of them started to scramble up his back, while a scaly tail slid across his arm. He stood and shook them off, hearing them tumble down the stairs. Then it occurred to him that the rats could not possibly have squeezed themselves through the tiny gap around the edges of the trap-door, and that he must have been right in his original assumption, scoffed at by Michael, that there was another way in — and out.

  But he was in almost complete darkness and surrounded by rats. How was he to find it? He groped around on the step, and found Cynric’s tinder. Now all he needed to do was to locate the stub of candle he had dropped when he had stepped on his first rat — assuming they had not already eaten it. It took all his courage and self-control to make his way down the steps in the gloom and feel about among the milling rats on the floor.

  Immediately, he found the crossbow quarrel that Eltisley’s henchman had kicked from Cynric’s hand, and used it to stab randomly while he searched with his other hand for the stub. Expecting to be bitten at any moment, he forced himself to feel around until his cold fingers finally encountered it. It had been chewed, but was still functional. With unsteady hands, he scraped the tinder until it caught, and watched leaping shadows fill the vault. Some of the rats slunk away. But not all of them.

  Hoping that the stub would not sputter into nothing as it burned down, he began his search, watching the rats to see if he could tell whether they were coming or going in any particular direction. The rats, however, seemed as interested in him as he was in them, and their beady eyes were fixed unswervingly on his feet. His first exploration of the vault told him nothing, other than it was solidly built — something he already knew. He poked at every stone near the altar, then paced the floor to see if there were rings in the paving slabs that might lead to another chamber. There was nothing.

  Trying to hold the can
dle still, he next concentrated his attention on the shelves and their sombre contents. As gently as he could, he moved the shrouded shapes to peer at the wall behind, looking for hidden doors. He coughed as the mouldering bodies began to crumble. The ones on the upper shelves released clouds of dust, while those on the lower ones broke apart because they were damp. They smelled of ancient bone and rotting material, and Bartholomew felt himself becoming nauseous from the lack of clean air.

  Just as he was about to give up, the final stack of bodies revealed what he had been looking for. The lords of Barchester had apparently been running out of space for their dead, and the most recent additions to the vault had been placed on shelves that were newer than the rest — and that rested against a blocked door. A rat eased through the rotting wood at the bottom of it even as he watched. He leaned down and grabbed at one of the broken timbers, relieved to feel it break off in his hand as he pulled. But there were three ancient corpses in the way.

  With distaste, he eased the first one out of its niche and laid it on the floor. It was lighter than he had expected and smaller, suggesting it had probably been a child. He reached for another, revolted by the way a skeletal hand dangled out to touch him, some of the little bones clattering to the floor in a puff of dust. Coughing, he laid it next to the first, and reached for the last one. This was large and dense and, as he pulled, its shroud caught fast on the corner of the shelf. He tugged harder, struggling to support its weight. Nothing happened. With growing urgency, he hauled as hard as he could and, with a ripping sound, it tore out of its shroud and landed on top of him, so that its grinning head was no more than the width of his hand away from his face. He gave a yell and tried to thrust it away from him, but it was too heavy. Horrified, Bartholomew saw the mouth opening wider and wider until the jaw dropped clean from the skull.