‘I think it does matter,’ insisted Stanmore. ‘You see, if he was not skating, then it means that someone tied the bones to his shoes – wrongly, as you say – after he was dragged from the water. And that means someone wants us to believe that he died skating when he did not.’
‘Perhaps he was just inept with his laces,’ Bartholomew suggested.
Stanmore waved a dismissive hand. ‘Then what about Gosslinge? You said yourself it is unusual for two members of the same household to die in such rapid succession, and you must see that neither death was exactly normal.’
‘It is winter,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘People do freeze to death and fall through ice at this time of year. It is unfortunate that both are dead, but not necessarily sinister.’
‘“Necessarily”,’ pounced Stanmore. ‘You have already considered the possibility that there is something odd here, and you are right: there is something sinister – to use your word – going on. Think about what Turke muttered as he died. It clearly meant something to Philippa, because she was a different woman afterwards.’
‘That is true,’ acknowledged Michael. ‘But what do you suggest we do about it? I cannot begin an official investigation, because Turke’s death is outside my jurisdiction.’
‘Jurisdiction can be bought these days,’ said Stanmore grimly. ‘Leave Morice to me.’
‘I suppose corruption has its advantages,’ said Michael with a sigh. ‘I was obliged to offer him some money myself recently. His men were trailing my every move while I investigated the death of Norbert, and were making it impossible for me to work. The only way to get rid of them was to pay Morice with coins from William’s fines chest.’
Bartholomew was unhappy that either of them should be involved in bribing one of the King’s officers. He knew such matters had a habit of being raised at later dates – such as when Morice decided he had not been paid enough and demanded more, or when Morice himself was eventually called to explain his dishonesty to the King’s justices. ‘Even if you do buy Morice, Philippa will not want us prying into her business,’ he warned.
‘I do not care,’ said Stanmore. ‘I want you to look into it. You have solved so many cases before that I am sure this one will present you with no problems.’
‘Where do you want us to start?’ asked Michael.
‘With Giles,’ said Stanmore, glancing up the road again, as though he imagined Abigny might be listening. ‘Philippa never leaves the house unescorted – she is a nuisance actually, always wanting someone with her – but Giles is in and out like a bishop in a brothel, despite the pain he is in from his chilblains.’
‘Where does he go?’ asked Michael.
‘Taverns, I imagine. The man lives in Turke’s house, but is clearly discontented. Perhaps that is why he insisted on joining this pilgrimage – to dispose of the brother-in-law he despises, well away from other fishmongers who might ask awkward questions. By killing Turke he has relieved Philippa of a tiresome husband and improved his own lot in the process.’
‘How do you know Philippa regarded Turke as tiresome?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘I thought she seemed fond of him. Even though she was uncomfortable with the notion of Fiscurtune’s cold-blooded murder, she said nothing disloyal about Turke. And anyway, Giles might lose a good deal by dispensing with his brother-in-law. Without Turke to protect him, he may lose his post at the law courts. And he may have condemned Philippa to a life of destitution, if Turke’s sons inherit their father’s wealth and she does not.’
‘Philippa was fond of Turke’s money, not of Turke himself,’ asserted Stanmore dogmatically. ‘She chose an elderly fishmonger over you and, unless she is blind or deranged, she did not make that choice based on looks or character. It was his wealth she loved.’
‘Many people marry for money, but that does not mean they are all biding their time to dispense with their spouses,’ countered Bartholomew.
‘Then prove me wrong,’ urged Stanmore, glancing around him once more. ‘Convince me that the deaths of Turke and Gosslinge are what you say – bizarre and tragic accidents. Look at Giles’s role in the affair. Find out where he goes when he slips away wearing that plumed hat and that dark cloak. But do it soon, Matt. The weather shows no sign of breaking, and Philippa and Giles might be here for weeks. I do not want Edith living under the same roof as ruthless killers until the spring brings a thaw and our unwanted guests transport their victim for burial in London.’
Bartholomew was unsettled by Stanmore’s claims and felt a nagging concern for Edith, despite the fact that he thought Stanmore was over-reacting. He tried to convince himself that he did not seriously believe Philippa or Giles would do anything to harm her, but was aware that no amount of rationalising and reasoning would dispel the unease he felt. He knew he would have to do some probing into the affair, even if it was only to set his and Stanmore’s minds at rest.
Since he had promised to take chilblain ointment to Abigny, he suggested they begin the investigation immediately by accompanying Stanmore home. Michael was willing, so they set off for Stanmore’s business premises on Milne Street, stopping on the way at the apothecary’s shop to purchase the ingredients necessary to make a soothing poultice for the clerk’s painful kibes.
Philippa, Abigny and Edith were in the solar when they arrived. The building was not as comfortable as Stanmore’s hall-house in the nearby village of Trumpington, but it was considerably nicer than Michaelhouse. Woollen hangings covered the plaster walls, and thick wool rugs lay on the floor. A fire blazed in the hearth, sending showers of sparks dancing up the chimney, and the room smelled pleasantly of wood-smoke and the dried flowers that Edith had placed in bowls along the windowsills. The shutters were closed against the chill, even though the windows were glazed, and the room was lit yellow and orange by the fire and the lamps in sconces on the walls.
Abigny was sitting near the hearth with his boots off and his toes extended towards the flames, while Philippa perched next to him, attempting to sew in the unsteady light. The garment was long and white, and Bartholomew saw it was a shroud for her husband to wear on his final journey. She was dressed completely in black, following the current fashion for widows who could afford it. Edith was at the opposite end of the room, sitting at a table as she wrapped small pieces of dried fruit in envelopes of marchpane. Michael went to sit next to her, and it was not long before a fat, white hand was inching surreptitiously towards the sweetmeats.
‘Those are for the apprentices,’ came an admonishing voice from the shadows near the door. Michael almost leapt out of his skin, having forgotten that Cynric had been charged to stay with Edith while Stanmore was out.
‘God’s blood, Cynric!’ muttered the monk, holding a hand to his chest to show he had been given a serious fright. ‘Have a care whom you startle, man!’ He helped himself to a handful of the treats, indicating that he needed them to help him recover from the shock.
‘Did you bring that potion for my feet?’ asked Abigny eagerly of Bartholomew. ‘I long to be relieved of this constant pain. I know you dislike calculating horoscopes, Matt, but I am your friend and my need is very great, so I am sure you will not refuse me. Do you know enough about me already to determine the course of treatment, or are there questions you need answered?’
‘The latter,’ said Michael, not very subtly. ‘He needs to know whether you have spent much time walking in the snow of late.’
‘Of course I have,’ said Abigny, surprised by the question. ‘First there was the journey to Cambridge, and then there have been old friends to see and arrangements to make.’
‘Arrangements?’ asked Michael innocently.
‘Now that Walter is dead I may lose my post,’ replied Abigny, apparently unconcerned by Michael’s brazen curiosity. ‘So, I went to see a Fellow at King’s Hall, who has agreed to provide testimony that I am an honest and responsible citizen. And I have been obliged to visit coffin-makers and embalmers.’ He regarded Bartholomew with innocent blue eyes. ‘Are these the kind of things you
need to know for my stars, Matt?’
His answers came a little too easily, and Bartholomew could not help but conclude he had been thinking about what to say. Abigny continued to talk, regaling them with dull and unimportant details of a meeting he had had with the Warden of King’s Hall, and giving details of various important dates in his life, which Michael pretended to write down so the horoscope could be constructed later.
Meanwhile, Bartholomew inspected Abigny’s feet, wincing when he saw the huge chilblains that plagued the man’s toes and heels. He was not surprised Abigny limped, and set about making a poultice of borage and hops to ease the swelling. He also prescribed a soothing comfrey water that would reduce Abigny’s melancholic humours and restore the balance between hot and cold, and recommended that his friend should avoid foods known to slow the blood. Philippa offered to purchase her brother warmer hose to prevent his feet from becoming chilled in the first place.
She rose from her seat when Bartholomew had finished examining Abigny, and asked to be excused. She was pale, and there were dark smudges under her eyes – as expected in a woman who had recently lost her husband. Before she left, she fixed Bartholomew with a worried frown.
‘You will not disregard my request, will you, Matthew? Walter is dead, and nothing can bring him back. He was not popular and did not always treat people with kindness or fairness. If you ask questions about him you will certainly learn that, even here in Cambridge where he was not well known. But I do not want you to encourage people to speak badly of him. I want him to rest in peace. It is no more than any man deserves.’
‘Men deserve to have their deaths investigated if there are inconsistencies and questions arising,’ said Michael gently. ‘Walter will not lie easy in his grave if these remain unanswered.’
‘There are no questions,’ said Philippa stubbornly, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He drowned. You saw that yourselves.’
‘He died from the cold,’ corrected Bartholomew. ‘The water in his lungs did not—’
Philippa turned angrily on him, and the tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘It does not matter! He died, and whether it was from the cold or by water is irrelevant. This is exactly what I am trying to avoid – pointless speculation that will do nothing but disturb his soul.’
‘If there are questions, then they originated with you,’ Michael pointed out, unmoved by her distress. ‘You were the one who insisted that Walter would not have gone skating.’
She stared at him, tears dripping unheeded. ‘I was distressed and shocked, and I said things I did not mean. Walter was not a man for undignified pursuits, like skating. But then he was not a man who undertook pilgrimages, either – yet that is why we are here. Perhaps the religious nature of his journey made him behave differently, but it does not matter because we will never know what happened. All I can do is console myself that he died in a state of grace, because he was travelling to Walsingham, and pray that God will forgive him for the incident regarding Fiscurtune.’
‘The “incident” would not have led him to take his own life, would it?’ asked Michael, beginning a new line of enquiry. Philippa was right, in that pilgrimages sometimes had odd effects on people and it was not unknown for folk to become so overwhelmed by remorse for what they had done that they killed themselves.
Philippa shook her head. ‘Walter was not a suicide, Brother. The Church condemns suicides, and Walter would not have wanted to be buried in unhallowed ground.’
Bartholomew did not point out that securing a suitable burial place was usually the last thing on a suicide’s mind, but agreed that Turke had not seemed the kind of man to take his own life. He watched her leave the solar, then turned to stare at the flames in the hearth, while Abigny hobbled after her in his bare feet. Was she hiding information about her husband’s death, either something about the way he had died or some aspect of his affairs that led him to his grim demise in the Mill Pool? Was Stanmore right: that Philippa or Abigny – or both – had decided to kill Turke while he was away from his home and his friends? Had Turke been skating, or did someone just want everyone to believe he had?
He reached for his cloak, nodding to Michael that they should leave. Answers would not come from Philippa or her brother, since neither was willing to talk. He and the monk needed to look elsewhere.
That night was bitterly cold, with a frigid wind whistling in from the north that drove hard, grainy flakes of snow before it. The blankets on Bartholomew’s bed were woefully inadequate, and he spent the first half of the evening shivering, curled into a tight ball in an attempt to minimise the amount of heat that was being leached from his body by the icy chill of the room. In the end, genuinely fearing that if he slept in his chamber he might never wake, he grabbed his cloak and ran quickly through the raging blizzard to the main building in the hope that there might be some sparks among the ashes of the fire that he could coax into life.
A number of students were in the hall, wrapped in blankets, cloaks and even rugs as they vied with each other to be nearest the hearth. The door to the conclave was closed and Bartholomew hesitated before opening it, suspecting that Deynman and his cronies would be within, plotting his next move as Lord of Misrule. But an ear pressed against the wood told him no one was talking, so he opened it and entered, tripping over the loose floorboard as he went.
He was surprised to find most of the Fellows there, even the ailing William, who was snoring loudly enough to cause several of his colleagues to toss and turn restlessly. Rolled into blankets or their spare habits, they looked like soldiers in a field camp as they lay close together to draw on each other’s warmth. Michael was nowhere to be seen, and Bartholomew guessed the monk had found a more pleasant place to spend the night than on a hard, stone floor in Michaelhouse.
The physician noted wryly that even in the season of misrule some customs were hard to break: at night, the conclave remained the Fellows’ refuge, while the students used the hall. He was grateful, since the hall was large and draughty.
‘Where have you been, Matthew?’ asked Kenyngham softly. He was sitting at a table, struggling to write in the unsteady light of a candle. ‘Out to tend poor Dunstan? I hear he is suffering sorely in this cold weather.’
‘His lungs are failing. What are you doing, Father? It is too late for work, and you should rest if you intend to say all those masses for Walter Turke tomorrow.’
Kenyngham shuffled together the parchments he had been studying and stuffed them into a pouch. ‘You are right. Earthly matters should not interfere with my ability to say prayers for a man’s soul.’
‘What earthly matters?’ asked Bartholomew, intrigued. The elderly friar should not have had any responsibilities that necessitated writing in the early hours of the morning, especially since he had resigned as Master and was supposed to be enjoying his retirement. ‘Your teaching?’
‘Something like that,’ whispered Kenyngham with a gentle smile. ‘But we are both tired, and it is too late for talking. Sleep – if William’s snoring will let you.’
It was some time before exhaustion finally allowed Bartholomew to ignore William’s roaring. He wedged himself between Wynewyk and Clippesby for warmth, and his last thoughts were for those of his patients whose homes comprised woven twig walls packed with mud, where a fire that burned all night would be an unimaginable extravagance.
‘The river is frozen like a plate of iron!’ exclaimed Deynman, bursting into the conclave before dawn had broken the following day, as the Fellows were just beginning to stir. ‘And it has snowed so hard that the High Street is more than waist deep in drifts!’
‘Go away, Deynman,’ growled William, trying to manoeuvre himself into a position that was comfortable for his splinted leg. ‘It is too early to listen to your cheerful voice.’
William was wearing a handsome grey robe made from soft, thick wool. The sleeves were the correct length and so was the skirt, so that his ankles and wrists no longer protruded in a ridiculous manner. He cursed it soundly, claiming
it was inferior to the one the students had ceremonially burned in the yard, but Bartholomew knew the friar well enough to see he was delighted with his fine new acquisition. However, the physician could not help but notice the garment already bore signs that William owned it – a wine stain on one sleeve and a chain of greasy splatters across the chest.
‘How are you feeling?’ Bartholomew asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he addressed the Franciscan. He shivered. Suttone was stoking up the fire, but it was still cold in the conclave. He stood, trying to stretch the aching chill from muscles that had not enjoyed a night on the floor.
‘I am in pain,’ declared William peevishly. ‘But a cup of wine will ease my discomfort. Wine has a remarkable effect on the body, Matthew. You should recommend it as a tonic for good health. It tastes better than all those foul purges you physicians like to dispense, too.’
‘I am sure it does,’ said Bartholomew, crouching next to him to examine the afflicted leg. ‘Shall I remove the splint today? A few days of immobility may have done you good, but you should not prolong it unnecessarily.’
‘But it is broken,’ argued William in alarm. ‘You cannot remove the splint until it has properly healed or I shall spend the rest of my days as a cripple.’
‘It is not broken,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘I saw you walking on it yesterday, when you thought no one was watching. It is not healthy to bind a limb that does not need it.’
‘It does need it,’ declared William, equally firmly. ‘It is my leg, and I know it is broken. The splint stays where it is – at least until the cold weather has broken.’
‘I see,’ said Bartholomew wryly. ‘That is the real reason for this malingering, is it? You want an excuse to be out of the cold?’ He gave a wicked smile. ‘And it was only on Christmas Eve that you told me you had exonerated the Dominicans of Norbert’s murder, because they are too feeble to set foot outside while the weather is icy. Now I learn a certain Franciscan is doing likewise.’
‘I am not malingering,’ hissed William, glancing around him, afraid someone might have overheard. ‘You saw me fall; you know my injury is genuine. Besides, I would be certain to stumble and do myself far more serious harm if I were to go out in all this snow. My tripping over that loose board was a blessing.’
Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter Page 22