Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Or Giles or Philippa,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But do not forget he knew the Waits. Quenhyth saw them with Gosslinge, and so did Harysone. And the Waits said Gosslinge ate a meal with Harysone – something Harysone admitted, too.’

  ‘I do not see why the Waits should drive him to take his own life – unless they threatened to inflict their juggling on him. But Harysone is another matter. I knew he was up to something when we saw him trying to get into the church, just a short time before we discovered Gosslinge’s corpse.’ Michael’s eyes gleamed with triumph, and Bartholomew saw the monk thought he had a workable theory.

  ‘No one in the Turke household mentioned any malaise or unhappiness on Gosslinge’s part,’ the physician said, still trying to think of reasons why Gosslinge might have killed himself. Some instinct told him that Gosslinge had not intended to die and, because of his earlier negligence, he felt obliged to give the matter his best attention now. He sighed despondently as he considered the scant evidence. ‘Suicide makes no sense. If Gosslinge took his own life, why was he not wearing his livery? And how did he end up among the albs?’

  Although he was too embarrassed to admit it to Michael, Bartholomew was painfully aware that he had not taken the time to assess the nature of the folds that had held Gosslinge in the rotten robes. He knew now that he should have unravelled them slowly, so that he could have seen whether Gosslinge had tied them himself or whether someone else had done it for him. He had been careless and irresponsible, and that knowledge would haunt him for a very long time.

  Michael sighed. ‘It would help, of course, if we knew for certain whether this was a suicide or murder. Are you sure there is nothing lodged in his mouth that may tell us one way or the other?’

  Bartholomew was sure, but his confidence had suffered a serious blow, so he looked again. There was nothing. He tipped Gosslinge’s head back, and peered down the corpse’s throat for so long that Michael began to mutter in exasperation. Eventually, he rummaged in his medical bag and produced a knife, which he placed against Gosslinge’s wind-pipe.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Michael in alarm. He glanced around in agitation. ‘Put that thing away, man! You cannot start carving up Christian men as though they were slabs of meat on a butcher’s stall! I know you enjoy indulging in surgery now and again, but you cannot do it here, and you cannot do it on him. Someone will be sure to notice.’

  ‘But I want to see whether there is anything stuck in his throat,’ objected Bartholomew.

  ‘Then use tweezers, and go to his throat via his mouth. Do not start hacking him about in places where it will show. God’s teeth, Matt! You should not need me to tell you this.’

  Reluctantly, Bartholomew complied, declining to point out that if Michael wanted answers to his questions, then he should not be squeamish about the ways in which those answers were provided. He found a fairly long pair of forceps and inserted them into Gosslinge’s mouth, pushing them as far to the back of the throat as he could.

  ‘There is something here,’ he exclaimed, leaning to one side to gain a better purchase on the object that was lodged just beyond his reach. He pressed harder, hoping Michael did not hear the snap as Gosslinge lost another of his front teeth.

  ‘I sincerely hope you did not submit my husband to this kind of treatment,’ came a cold voice from behind them.

  CHAPTER 8

  BARTHOLOMEW JUMPED SO MUCH WHEN PHILIPPA SPOKE IN the silence of the church that he dropped his tweezers, which clattered across the floor with a sound that was shockingly loud. Stanmore was with her, looking from the dead servant to his brother-in-law with an expression of horror. To hide his consternation, Bartholomew bent down and took his time in retrieving the dropped implement, irrationally hoping that both Philippa and Stanmore would be gone by the time he straightened up. Philippa, meanwhile, waited for a response.

  ‘Matt made you a promise,’ replied Michael suavely, when he saw Bartholomew did not know how to answer her. ‘It is Gosslinge he is examining, not your husband.’

  ‘Did you ram metal objects down Walter’s throat, too?’ asked Philippa icily, addressing Bartholomew. She was too intelligent not to see that Michael had deftly side-stepped the issue.

  ‘I did not,’ replied Bartholomew, standing and thrusting the forceps into his bag.

  Philippa made a grimace of disgust. ‘I thought you kept your clean bandages in there. If you throw things that have been inside corpses on top of them, then it is not surprising your patients sicken and die. I heard about the deaths of the two old men who live by the river; Edith told me.’

  ‘One,’ said Bartholomew defensively. ‘Dunstan is still alive.’

  ‘He was dead this morning,’ said Stanmore, still regarding Bartholomew askance. He started to edge towards the door, deciding that if his brother-in-law had a good explanation for his ghoulish activities then he did not want to hear it. He saw Bartholomew’s distress at the news about Dunstan and stopped. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. ‘Matilde came to tell Edith, Matt. She said she left him asleep but alive shortly after you went home, but he was dead when she returned at dawn.’

  Bartholomew turned away, embarrassed by the sudden pricking of tears at the back of his eyes. He was fond of the two old rivermen, and would miss their cheerful gossip on summer evenings, when he had sat with them outside their hovel. He had known it would not be long before Dunstan followed his brother, but he had not anticipated it would be quite so soon. He wondered what more he could have done to help, and felt grief threaten to overwhelm him.

  ‘I will say his requiem mass,’ said Michael in a voice that was hoarse with emotion. ‘He sang in my choir, and I have known him for many years.’

  Philippa looked from one to the other in sudden consternation. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, sounding contrite. ‘I see they were dear to you. I did not know, and you must forgive me. I would not have broken the news so baldly had I known.’

  Her sympathy was more than Bartholomew could bear. He walked away, saying he was going to wash his hands in water from the jug at the back of the nave. Memories of the old men’s chatter in the summer sunlight returned to him, and it was some time before he was sufficiently in control of himself to rejoin to the others. Michael’s reaction had been much the same. He was in the Stanton Chapel, standing over Athelbald with sad eyes and a downturned mouth.

  Philippa and Stanmore waited together in the nave, standing stiffly side by side, as though neither was comfortable with the other’s company. With a distant part of his mind, Bartholomew wondered whether Philippa knew Stanmore suspected her and Giles of foul play in the deaths of Turke and Gosslinge and resented him for it. Stanmore, meanwhile, was edgy and restless, and looked as though he could not wait to escape from her presence. Eventually, Michael muttered a benediction, then took a deep breath before turning to Bartholomew.

  ‘Obviously there is no more you can do for Dunstan, but I need to make arrangements for him to be buried with his brother.’

  ‘Will you wait a moment while Philippa lights some candles?’ asked Stanmore, abandoning the widow with relief as he headed for the door. ‘I escorted her here, but I have a guild meeting to attend and cannot see her home again. It is on your way – more or less.’

  He had opened the door and left before they had had the chance to reply, transparently grateful to be about his own business. He slammed the door behind him, sending a hollow crash around the building. Bartholomew wished that Stanmore had made as much noise entering the church; then he would not have been caught with a pair of forceps in the throat of a corpse.

  ‘Cambridge is reasonably safe during the day,’ he said, thinking Philippa was being overly sensitive by not wanting to walk alone. ‘You are unlikely to come to harm, and it is not far from here to Milne Street.’

  ‘Actually, Cambridge is a very odd little town,’ she countered. ‘And do not try to convince me otherwise, because I remember it from when I was here during the plague – bodies hidden in attics, Masters burn
ed alive in their rooms, men murdered and their deaths made to appear natural. But my insistence on an escort is not because I am afraid, but because it is not seemly for a recent widow to wander the streets on her own.’

  ‘London manners,’ remarked Michael. ‘No one would condemn unescorted widows here.’

  ‘Perhaps so, but I do not want to abandon my principles just because I am travelling. What are you doing here anyway? Do you not have better things to do than thrusting pincers down dead men’s gullets?’ She turned and flounced into the Stanton Chapel without waiting for a response.

  ‘It is a good thing I did not allow you to slice Gosslinge open,’ muttered Michael, watching her leave. ‘Otherwise she and Oswald would have rushed screaming from the church and we both would have been burned as warlocks in the Market Square. Next time you want to do something so excessively unpleasant, we shall have to remember to lock the door.’

  ‘I am done with bodies, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, covering Gosslinge with the sheet. ‘First I conducted an examination so superficial that I missed important evidence, then I held one so thorough I shocked and dismayed a widow. I do not enjoy it anyway, and you will do better to find someone else.’

  ‘You made a mistake,’ acknowledged Michael. ‘But few of us are perfect, and you will do until someone better comes along. Did you retrieve whatever it was you located in that poor man’s throat? Or do we have to return at midnight with satanic regalia and do it all over again?’

  ‘It is in my bag. It fell on the ground when Philippa made me jump, and I did not want her to see it – that is why I put the tweezers on top of all my clean bandages, not from any habit of poor hygiene. I wanted to keep the thing a secret.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ mused Michael, regarding his friend with interest. ‘Your responses to Philippa are difficult to fathom, Matt. I cannot decide whether she still means something to you, or whether you are just relieved she is not Mistress Bartholomew. And although you balked at examining Turke because she asked you not to, you are suspicious of her contradictory statements about the Waits and her odd reaction to her husband’s death. So, what is she to you: innocent widow or sly trickster?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Bartholomew, sensing that Michael’s assessment was correct: his feelings towards Philippa were definitely ambivalent. His memories of her were pleasant and she represented a happy phase in his life, yet there were things about her now that he did not understand and that he did not want to probe.

  ‘So, you are not still half in love with the woman, then?’ asked Michael nosily.

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew, certain that any spark of passion that he might have harboured was now well and truly extinguished. It was not romantic love that was at the heart of the complex gamut of emotions he felt for her.

  ‘Good. I confess I held hopes that she might be just what you needed when I first heard she was here, but she has changed and I have revised my opinion. You are better off with Matilde.’

  ‘I shall bear it in mind,’ said Bartholomew dryly. ‘

  Be sure you do. Philippa may come after you now she is free, and I do not think you should succumb. Remember that she is no longer the woman you loved. So, tell me why you hid the object you found in Gosslinge’s throat. Do you suspect her of foul play, like Oswald does?’

  ‘No,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I do not know, Michael. I am confused by the fact that she denied knowing the Waits, and Giles has been acting very oddly since he arrived. I think something is going on, but I have no idea what it might be. It could be wholly innocent. I do not know why I felt the need to hide the thing I found in Gosslinge. I acted on instinct.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I do not know that, either. It was too covered in—’

  ‘Tell me later, interrupted Michael hastily. ‘Or even better, do not tell me at all. Just present it nicely cleansed of all signs that it has been residing in a corpse for the last few days. Here is Philippa. Shall we go?’

  Philippa refused Bartholomew’s arm as they left the church, and took Michael’s instead. They started to walk towards Milne Street, their progress slow because of the ice and filth that covered the roads. The deep snow meant the dung carts had been unable to collect, and the festering piles along the edges of the street added a sulphurous stench to the choking palls of smoke from wood and peat fires. Dogs foraged enthusiastically in the sticky brown heaps, gorging themselves on objects that even starving beggars had passed over.

  ‘Did you ignore my wishes and examine my husband’s body anyway?’ asked Philippa, looking briefly at Bartholomew before returning her attention to the demanding task of watching where she placed her prettily clad feet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew bluntly. He imagined she would find out, since the shroud had probably not been replaced exactly as he had found it, and he disliked lying. ‘But I only looked at him. I did not touch him with instruments.’

  ‘Well, that is something, I suppose,’ she said coolly. ‘And did this examination tell you anything you did not already know?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Bartholomew. ‘It told me he had died of the cold, after falling in the river. There were some old scars on his legs, though. Do you know how he came by them?’

  ‘He never told me. They derived from something that happened long before we met. He disliked anyone seeing them – which was why I was careful how I removed his hose when we were stripping off his wet clothes. I did not want him to wake up and find them bared for all to see, because it would have distressed him. What did your gruesome treatment of Gosslinge tell you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Michael, before Bartholomew could reply. ‘But you should not take our investigation amiss. The Sheriff or the proctors examine anyone who dies unexpectedly or suddenly. We would be remiss if we did not ensure there was nothing odd about a death.’

  ‘But there was not – for either of them,’ said Philippa. ‘You just said so.’

  ‘We had to be certain,’ said Michael. ‘It would not do to bury a man, then have his grieving kin arrive months later clamouring there was evidence of murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ asked Philippa in alarm. ‘Who said anything about murder?’

  ‘No one,’ said Michael, startled by her outburst. ‘I was only explaining why these examinations are necessary. Matt did not want to do it, but I insisted.’

  ‘Well, it is done now, and it is a pity to argue,’ said Philippa, giving Bartholomew a reluctant smile. ‘Let us be friends again.’

  ‘Good,’ said Michael, patting her arm. ‘But here comes your brother. Perhaps he can escort you home, so we can go and see what can be done for poor Dunstan. That is where our duty lies this morning.’

  Abigny smiled as he approached, but would have walked past if Michael had not stopped him. The clerk did not want to return the way he had come, and said his feet hurt too much for all but the most essential journeys. Curtly, Philippa informed him that escorting her was essential, since she was a recent widow and in need of such attentions. Abigny offered her his arm in a way that suggested he wanted her delivered home as soon as possible, so he could go about his own errands.

  ‘Since you are both here, perhaps you can answer a few questions while Giles rests his feet,’ said Michael artfully. He drew the picture of the knife from his scrip and held it out to them. ‘Do either of you recognise this?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa, glancing at it without much interest. ‘Why? Have you lost it?’

  ‘It is not mine,’ said Michael. ‘I believe it is the weapon that killed Norbert.’

  ‘Norbert?’ asked Philippa. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The student who was killed outside Ovyng,’ replied Michael. ‘Dick Tulyet’s cousin.’

  Philippa nodded understanding, then looked at the parchment again. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘It is not familiar. I wondered whether it might have been Gosslinge’s, but it is not.’

  ‘It is only a picture, not the real thing,’ pressed Michael eagerly.
‘So there are bound to be errors. Are you sure it did not belong to Gosslinge?’

  ‘It is not the same,’ said Abigny, taking the parchment and turning it this way and that as he assessed it. ‘Gosslinge’s had three glass beads in the hilt, and this only has two.’

  ‘You seem very well acquainted with your servant’s knife,’ remarked Michael curiously.

  Bartholomew agreed, and thought Gosslinge’s dagger and the one in the river sounded remarkably similar. It also occurred to him that while there were only two glass beads when he had seen the weapon, one might well have fallen out after it had been abandoned. He recalled a previous discussion he had had with Abigny about Gosslinge’s knife: when Turke had identified his servant’s body Abigny mentioned that Gosslinge had indeed possessed a knife, and had said it was too large a weapon for him. Michael was right: Abigny did seem well acquainted with the dead man’s personal arsenal.

  Abigny gave a pained smile. ‘I forgot to bring my own dagger on this journey, and I have been obliged to borrow Gosslinge’s – for the dinner table and suchlike. It is embarrassing to be in debt to a servant, especially for something as essential as a knife. Turke was scathing in his criticism, of course.’

  ‘Let us remain with Gosslinge for a moment,’ said Michael, shooting a brief but meaningful glance at Bartholomew to suggest that Abigny’s statements had raised all sorts of questions that would later need to be discussed. ‘Was he of sound mind when you last saw him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Philippa warily. ‘He was not insane, if that is what you are asking. Not like your Clippesby. Gosslinge complained a lot – about the cold, his clothes, the food we ate, his pay. Especially his pay. Is that what you wanted to know?’

  ‘He was very feeble,’ added Giles. ‘I was surprised when Walter chose him to come with us when he had better men at his disposal. But Walter did make odd decisions on occasion.’