Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Agatha is making spiced oatcakes this morning,’ he said, confidently anticipating that the mention of food would induce the fat Benedictine to abandon his peculiar fascination with the oily man in the Market Square.

  He was wrong.

  ‘Later,’ said Michael, grabbing his friend’s sleeve with a meaty hand. ‘I need to know what you think about him. Can you see signs of incipient madness in his behaviour? Is there a hint of criminal intent in his movements?’

  Bartholomew shook his head in exasperation before walking away across the graveyard, not deeming either question worthy of an answer. His feet were so cold that they felt as though they belonged to someone else, and he moved unsteadily across the spiky, crisp carpet of snow. Reluctantly, Michael abandoned his ‘hiding’ place and followed, tugging his thick woollen cloak around him. They reached St Mary’s newly completed porch, and Bartholomew paused.

  The University Church seemed to grow grander and more elegant each time the physician studied it. It had recently been renamed ‘St Mary the Great’, because the smaller church of St Peter Without had been rededicated as St Mary the Less. While Bartholomew examined its pleasing lines and handsome tracery, Michael glared back towards the Market Square. His quarry was still visible, the dark cloth of his hat bobbing among the stalls as he made his purchases.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Michael, determined to have an answer and aware that his friend had so far avoided giving one. ‘What do you think? Can I instruct my beadles to arrest him on the grounds that his insanity makes him a danger to himself and to others, and have him evicted from the town?’

  ‘I cannot tell such things from watching someone buy ink, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, reluctant to be party to that kind of activity. ‘We could stalk him all day and still not know the state of his health. I would need to talk to him, ask him specific questions – and even then insanity can be difficult to diagnose. Why do you want to know, anyway?’

  ‘He arrived in Cambridge a week ago,’ replied Michael, his green-eyed glare still firmly fixed on the hapless figure in the Market Square. ‘He says his name is John Harysone, but I am sure he is not telling the truth.’

  ‘Why would he lie?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And why does he warrant this kind of attention from you? Surely, you should let your beadles watch suspicious characters, not crawl around in cold cemeteries to spy for yourself.’

  ‘I am not spying,’ said Michael tartly. ‘I am observing. You think that being Senior Proctor of the University of Cambridge means just counting fines and subduing rowdy undergraduates, but I can assure you I do a good deal more than that. It is my duty to ensure that the town is peaceful and trouble-free.’

  ‘I thought that was the Sheriff’s responsibility,’ remarked Bartholomew. ‘You are responsible for law and order only insofar as it affects the University.’

  ‘If there is unrest in the town, then there is disorder in the University,’ preached Michael. ‘It has been a year since we have had any serious strife – and that is entirely due to me and the way I have organised my beadles. The Sheriff has nothing to do with it. He would not know how to avert a riot to save his life.’

  Bartholomew agreed. ‘Stephen Morice is not the Sheriff that Dick Tulyet was. It is a pity Dick was obliged to resign in order to help with his father’s business.’

  ‘Dick is a good man, and he and I worked well together,’ said Michael gloomily. ‘But Morice uses his office solely to make money for himself.’ He grabbed Bartholomew’s arm in a sudden, vicelike grip that made the physician wince. ‘Harysone is heading towards St Michael’s Church. He is going inside!’

  The horror in Michael’s voice as Harysone walked purposefully towards the small building that belonged to the scholars of Michaelhouse made Bartholomew smile. ‘Visiting a church is not illegal, Brother. But I have lectures to prepare; I cannot spend all day stalking innocent men with you.’

  ‘Harysone is not innocent,’ said Michael with grim determination, watching with narrowed eyes as the man wrestled with the awkward latch on the church door. ‘I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘That is the cold weather,’ said Bartholomew practically. He broke away from Michael and headed for St Michael’s Lane. ‘I am going home. It is too chilly for this kind of thing.’

  ‘Come with me to speak to him,’ ordered Michael peremptorily. ‘I shall only leave when we have assured ourselves that he has no sinister purpose in daring to set foot in St Michael’s. For all you know, he may be planning to steal our silver.’

  ‘He would be hard pressed to do that. We only use it on special occasions, and the rest of the time – like now – it is safely locked away. And anyway, he does not look like a man who needs to steal from churches. He is well dressed and appears to be wealthy.’

  ‘I was at the Trumpington Gate when he arrived,’ said Michael, watching Harysone give the door a vigorous shake in an attempt to open it. He was not successful. ‘He had a cart with him, loaded down with what he claimed were philosophical texts written by himself. He said he was going to sell them here.’ The monk turned to Bartholomew and raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Have you ever heard a less convincing story?’

  Bartholomew had heard a good many less convincing stories, and he told the monk so. It seemed to him that Harysone’s reason for being in Cambridge was a perfectly valid one: if anyone wanted to sell academic texts, then Cambridge and Oxford were good places to be. They were full of scholars hungry for new knowledge and ideas, and Harysone could expect not only that copies would be purchased, but that they would be read and discussed by clever minds. Harysone might even learn ways to improve on his work.

  ‘Well, I do not believe him,’ declared Michael. ‘I know his type. He is one of those men who makes his living by preying on the weak and the trusting. He will cheat widows, orphans and the weak-witted out of their inheritances, and will have every scrap of silver out of our churches before he melts away into the night.’

  Bartholomew gave a startled laugh, astonished by the list of crimes Michael was blithely laying at the door of a man he did not know. ‘Really, Brother! Do you have any evidence to suggest that he is a trickster?’

  ‘Not yet,’ admitted Michael. ‘But I will. I have been watching him for the best part of a week now, and he will make a mistake before long. And then he can enjoy his Yuletide celebrations inside the proctors’ prison!’

  Bartholomew was nonplussed. ‘I do not understand this at all. It is not like you to take a rabid dislike to visitors to our town without cause.’

  ‘I have cause. Harysone disturbs me. I feel with every fibre in my body that there is something sinister about him.’

  ‘That does not sound like you, either,’ said Bartholomew doubtfully. ‘You do not usually give credence to something as insubstantial as a “feeling”. You usually demand solid evidence before judging a man.’

  ‘I cannot explain it,’ replied Michael impatiently. ‘But I have been Senior Proctor for five years now, and I know a rotten apple when I see one. That man is a prince among villains, and I do not want him in my town.’

  Bartholomew could think of nothing to say, but accepted that the Benedictine had gained enough experience to be able to identify potential troublemakers. Still, Michael was not immune to making mistakes, and the physician did not condone persecuting a man on the basis of a mere ‘feeling’.

  Harysone was still tussling with the sticky church door when Tom Meadowman, Michael’s chief beadle, approached them, red faced and slightly breathless. The beadles were the proctors’ private army, a stalwart band of men employed to keep hundreds of unruly and feisty scholars under control, as well as patrolling the taverns to prevent explosive combinations of students, townsfolk and ale from occurring.

  ‘Master Tulyet is looking for you, Brother,’ said Meadowman, addressing Michael. ‘His cousin Norbert has been found dead – murdered, he says – and he wants you to look into it.’

  Richard Tulyet was a small man with a pale, fluffy beard that made
him look like an adolescent. He was intelligent and well organised, and it had been a sad day for the town when he had announced his resignation from the office of Sheriff. His dissolute cousin Norbert was generally acknowledged to be the major factor in this calamity, and it had not earned the sullen youth any friends. It was widely believed that Norbert had deprived Cambridge of the best, fairest and most efficient Sheriff the town had ever had. Few believed that his replacement, Stephen Morice, could emulate him, and it had not been many weeks before people saw that Morice was worse than inefficient: he was corrupt, too.

  Michael, particularly, missed Tulyet. Relations between town and University were invariably strained, and he had enjoyed working with a man whose priority was to create a city that was safe for everyone – scholars included. He had also appreciated the fact that Tulyet had not competed with him for authority, and was happy to let the University deal with its own miscreants. He mourned Tulyet’s resignation, and seldom allowed an opportunity to pass without pointing out that the town was less safe without Dick sitting in his office at the Castle.

  Tulyet was waiting for them in St Michael’s Lane, where snow lay in shoulder-high drifts in places. To the left was the steeply gabled roof of Ovyng Hostel, while the tall stone walls of Michaelhouse stood to the right. Although Michaelhouse owned Ovyng, the hostel functioned as an independent institution with its own rules and regulations. It was not large, and its numbers had declined even further since the plague, but it boasted eight scholars – a principal, his assistant and six undergraduates – with two servants who cooked and cleaned. Five students, with Norbert being the exception, had taken vows with the Franciscan Order, and the hostel was reasonably well behaved by Cambridge standards – or at least Michael was not often obliged to visit it in his capacity of Senior Proctor.

  ‘It is a pity Norbert is – was – not more like his cousin,’ said Michael, as they made their way through the slush to where Tulyet and Nobert’s classmates waited in a disconsolate huddle near Ovyng’s main door.

  ‘Everyone thinks that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘When he came to live here, after the plague took his own family, his uncle immediately assumed he would inherit the family business, since Dick was intent on remaining Sheriff. But I suspect Norbert was never asked what he wanted.’

  ‘Norbert was a nuisance,’ said Michael unsympathetically. ‘He was on his final warning – one more night of drunken debauchery would have seen him banished from the University for ever. Still, it looks as though he will not be troubling us any more now.’

  They reached the knot of people – Tulyet in his fine winter cloak, and the Franciscans shivering in their thin grey robes – and joined them in a wordless inspection of the body that lay, still partly buried, in a mound of snow near the door. Blood had flooded from an injury in the dead man’s back and spread like wings into the snow around him. Bartholomew saw that Tulyet was right to assume his cousin had been murdered: there was no way the man could have inflicted such a wound on himself.

  ‘Norbert might have remained covered until spring, if stray dogs had not sniffed him out,’ said Ovyng’s principal, Father Ailred, gesturing to several yellow mongrels that lurked hopefully nearby. As if the mangy beasts reminded him of his students, he turned and flapped large-knuckled hands at his flock, shooing them back inside the hostel. However, the death of a classmate was an interesting event, and Bartholomew noticed they did not go far. They hovered out of sight, but within earshot, on the other side of the door.

  The physician turned his attention to Ailred. He had known the Franciscan for some years, and saw him almost daily, since Ovyng used St Michael’s Church for its offices, although neither had sought to develop the acquaintance beyond a nod and a polite word when their paths crossed. Ailred was tall, with an ugly, blunt face and a lot of yellowish white showing at the bottom of his eyes. His head was bald, except for a frizzy grey crescent that hugged the back of his skull. He had a reputation for sober, painstaking scholarship that was precise and rarely in error. Bartholomew also knew that he was from Lincoln, and that he never tired of making comparisons between his grand city and the squalor of Cambridge.

  ‘Norbert told me he was going to visit his uncle’s house,’ Ailred was saying, watching Tulyet nervously out of the corner of his eye as he addressed Michael. ‘When he did not return, I assumed he had found somewhere warmer and more comfortable than our hostel.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Michael. ‘Last night?’

  ‘It was not,’ said Tulyet, shooting Ailred a cool glance of reproach. ‘I have just learned that Norbert has not been seen since Tuesday – the day before yesterday. I was not even aware that he was missing.’

  ‘Neither were we,’ objected Ailred miserably. ‘He often left and did not return for days. You know that. I used to report his absences, but you seemed as tired of hearing about them as I was of telling, and I thought we had reached a tacit agreement not to bother each other with his transgressions.’

  ‘I suppose we did,’ said Tulyet with a sigh. ‘But it is unfortunate he was not missed sooner. Then he might have been saved.’

  ‘It would have made no difference,’ said Bartholomew, kneeling to inspect the body. ‘Both injuries are fatal ones, and finding him sooner would not have changed the outcome.’

  ‘Both injuries?’ questioned Michael. ‘I only see a wound to his back.’

  Bartholomew parted Norbert’s hair, frozen like old fur, to reveal an indentation in the skull. ‘It looks as if he was stabbed and tried to run away – there is enough blood to suggest he did not die immediately and that he spent his last moments on the move. His assailant delivered the blow to the head when he reached the hostel door, although the knife wound would have killed him anyway.’

  Tulyet closed his eyes. ‘Horrible! It seems that whoever did this was determined that poor Norbert should die. But I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky to find the body today.’ He cast a mournful glance at the leaden sky. ‘More snow will fall this afternoon, and who knows when it will melt?’

  ‘I have never known such weather,’ agreed Ailred, obviously grateful to discuss something other than the awkward subject of the death of a student in his care. ‘I am certain winters were not so hard when I was a boy in the fair city of Lincoln.’

  ‘Who do you think did this?’ asked Michael of the friar, indicating the corpse with a nod of his head. ‘Norbert made a nuisance of himself with my beadles, and few regarded him as pleasant company – I am sorry, Dick, but it is true – but can you think of anyone who disliked him sufficiently to want him dead?’

  Ailred was startled. ‘Why are you asking me? It is obvious that Norbert visited some tavern, and his drunken tongue landed him in trouble with a townsman.’

  ‘That is not obvious at all,’ said Michael sharply. ‘And I shall be obliged if you keep those kind of thoughts to yourself, Father. We do not want the University rioting because it believes one of its number has been killed by an apprentice – especially now.’

  ‘Why especially now?’ asked Ailred, puzzled.

  Michael made no secret of his exasperation. ‘Because it is only three days before Christmas, when students traditionally elect a Lord of Misrule to lead the festivities for the Twelve Days. Some of these might just as well be called “Lords of Incitement to Riot”, since they urge their fellow students to engage in all sorts of michief against the town. I do not want to give them an excuse to justify violent behaviour.’

  Ailred was disdainful. ‘I had forgotten that unseemly custom. We do not indulge in pagan traditions at Ovyng; we are friars!’

  Michael grimaced, knowing perfectly well that clerics were just as likely to misbehave as secular students, but he declined to argue. ‘Regardless, keep your accusations to yourself until we understand what really happened. For all we know, one of his classmates may be the killer.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Ailred, appalled.

  ‘My suggestion has as much evidence to support it as the solution you propos
ed,’ said Michael crisply. ‘So, I suggest we all refrain from jumping to conclusions before we have the facts. What can you tell me about Norbert?’

  Ailred cleared his throat and glanced at Tulyet, clearly unhappy with the whole situation.

  ‘It is all right, Father,’ said Tulyet wearily. ‘Norbert’s failings were no secret, and we all know what kind of man he was. However, giving him virtues he never possessed will help no one, so you may be honest.’

  ‘If you insist,’ said Ailred reluctantly. He turned to Michael and spread his large hands, as though in apology. ‘Norbert mocked our Order. He did not enjoy lessons, and he disrupted any he attended. He was lazy, disrespectful and selfish, and I do not think any of my students will claim him as a friend.’

  ‘Then why was he tolerated here?’ asked Bartholomew, who imagined that most masters would dismiss a student who was so badly behaved.

  Ailred hesitated again.

  ‘Money,’ supplied Tulyet dryly. ‘My father paid handsomely to have Norbert tutored here, and Ovyng is not a wealthy institution.’ He turned to Michael. ‘I want Norbert’s killer caught, Brother. Since he was a student, his death is a University matter, and must be investigated by proctors rather than the Sheriff.’ Bartholomew was certain he heard Tulyet add ‘thank God’ in an undertone. Tulyet was obviously as unimpressed by his replacement as was the rest of the town.

  ‘I shall do my best,’ said Michael. ‘But this will not be an easy case to solve. Norbert was not popular, and I shall have to sift through all kinds of petty rivalries and dislikes in order to identify who took a fatal dislike to him.’