The Habit of Murder: The Twenty Third Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew Book 23)

by Susanna Gregory

  Nicholas became flustered. ‘It was both. She was invited to leave the castle, but when God saw she was available, He decided to claim her for Himself.’ Then it was his turn to change the subject. ‘I cannot wait for Tuesday. In just five days, my church will host the Queen of England and the greatest architect in the world.’

  ‘I am looking forward to seeing it in its full glory,’ said Bartholomew keenly. ‘But are you sure all the scaffolding will be down by then?’

  ‘Positive,’ replied Nicholas confidently. ‘Would you like to see the ceiling from the roof space? It is just as impressive, although for a different reason. Come.’

  The door to the stairs that led to the roof was in the new south aisle. Nicholas opened it to reveal a spiral staircase built inside one of the thicker piers. It was dark and narrow, lit only by the occasional slit in the stonework. The climb seemed to go on for ever, until Nicholas reached a second door, which he unlocked with a key that he wore around his neck.

  He flung it open and stepped aside to reveal the roof space – the area between the ceiling and the outside slates. It was indeed impressive, and comprised an intricate system of horizontal beams and vertical struts with the roof arching overhead. The fan vaulting was apparent in the stone domes that bubbled up through the floor. Interspersed between the domes was more scaffolding, a complex mess of planks and ropes that were larger and stronger than the ones in the church below. Nicholas indicated it proudly.

  ‘Cambrug installed all that to prevent the fans from collapsing while they were being assembled,’ he explained. ‘Now they are finished, except for the paintwork, the supports are no longer needed. But we shall leave them where they are for now.’

  ‘Because no one will see them up here anyway,’ surmised Langelee. ‘And you can dismantle them at your leisure, once the Queen and her retinue have gone.’

  ‘Precisely! It is cheating, I suppose, but needs must. Yet the supports have a beauty of their own, and I shall be sorry to see them go. In some ways, they demonstrate Cambrug’s genius more than the fan vaulting, as there are not many who could have devised so clever a system of braces.’

  ‘They are clever,’ acknowledged Bartholomew, surveying them with the eye of a man who understood loads and angles. He pointed. ‘I assume those two central posts took most of the weight until the vaults were self-supporting?’

  ‘Exactly! And what is even more amazing is that we can see everything quite clearly, even though none of us has a lantern. Cambrug left ingenious little gaps, so that the light can filter up from below. Do you know why? So that no one will ever be obliged to come up here with a lamp, thus reducing the risk of fire. He thought of everything.’

  ‘Is that one of his “ingenious little gaps”?’ asked Bartholomew, pointing again. ‘Only it looks like a crack to me. A rather large one.’

  ‘Oh, that is a crack,’ acknowledged Nicholas. ‘It happened early on, but Cambrug said it was just the stone settling into its final position, which is quite normal. We shall fill it with glue once the ceremony is over.’

  ‘Anne said she has been here for a year and a half, and building began some eight weeks after she arrived. That means you have done all this in sixteen months. It is a remarkable achievement.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Nicholas, pleased by the praise. Then he grimaced. ‘Of course, our success is no thanks to Roger the mason, who was a dreadful grumbler. I cannot imagine why Cambrug appointed him as his deputy. I am sorry he is dead, of course, but he was such a malcontent.’

  ‘He did not die in suspicious circumstances, did he?’ asked Bartholomew warily. ‘Like the others you told us about last night?’

  ‘There are some who will tell you so, but the truth is that he was struck by falling scaffolding – an accident. Do you want to see his tomb? It was only finished last week. Go down the stairs and wait at the bottom. I shall join you there as soon as I have locked up here.’

  ‘Why do you need to keep the roof secure?’ asked Langelee, beginning to do as he was told.

  ‘Lest the castle folk come up here for mischief. I would not have invited you, given that you are strangers, but … well, if I cannot rely on two old soldiers to behave, then who can I trust?’

  Bartholomew winced. When he had been in France, searching for Matilde, bad timing had put him near the little town of Poitiers, where a small English force had defeated a much larger French one. He disliked remembering the carnage, but Langelee had run out of stories about his own military achievements the previous night, so had started to invent ones about the physician’s instead, determined to repay the vicar’s hospitality with plenty of gory tales. Now Nicholas laboured under the misapprehension that Bartholomew was a seasoned warrior.

  When the vicar joined them at the bottom of the stairs, he led the way to the tomb that the Swinescroft men had used as a seat the previous day. It comprised a plain chest with a marble top, and its location and height meant it was not only a convenient resting place for elderly legs, but also a handy workbench – the artists were currently using it to mix paint.

  ‘Was Roger unpopular?’ asked Bartholomew, wondering if there was a reason why Cambrug’s second-in-command had been buried below such a functional piece of furniture.

  ‘Very,’ replied Nicholas. ‘He thought the roof should have taken years to build, and refused to admit that he was wrong, right up until the day he died. And he hated the fan vaulting – he considered it too modern.’

  ‘Why did Cambrug choose such a person as his deputy?’

  ‘Because he was local, I suppose,’ shrugged Nicholas. ‘The diplomatic option. Yet I wish Roger was alive. It would have been a delight to watch his resentful face as I officiate at the ceremony that will mark the work’s completion.’

  Nicholas went to speak to Anne at that point, leaving Bartholomew to recall what Michael had said the night before: that Clare had even more suspicious deaths than Cambridge. Then the monk himself arrived, grumbling about the disgraceful spat during Mass.

  ‘If they cannot control themselves, they should not have come,’ he said, tight-lipped with righteous indignation. ‘And if they do it during the ceremony next Tuesday they will be sorry – the royals levy fines for that sort of behaviour.’

  ‘There is Grym,’ said Bartholomew, nodding to where the enormous barber-surgeon was standing with the Mayor, both of them gazing up at the ceiling. ‘I want to ask him about using hemlock for amputations.’

  ‘Not in an accusing way, I hope,’ said Langelee pointedly. ‘He is one of Clare’s richest residents, and thus on my list of potential benefactors.’

  ‘In a medical way,’ Bartholomew assured him. ‘I am always keen to learn new things.’

  ‘Well, just watch your tongue,’ warned Langelee. ‘And remember, even if you do find out that he made an end of the folk who Nicholas claimed were poisoned – Wisbech and Skynere, was it? – we do not have the authority to do anything about it.’

  Bartholomew did not bother to say that he had no intention of delving into the unsavoury business of murder, and went to the rood screen, where Mayor Godeston and Grym peered up at a part of the ceiling that was relatively free of scaffolding. Michael and Langelee followed, although all three held back politely until the two townsmen had finished their discussion.

  ‘It is not a crack,’ Grym was saying. He wore a dark green tunic with frills that, combined with his rotund shape, made him look like a cabbage with legs. ‘It is just a smear of paint.’

  ‘Then someone must go up there and scrub it off,’ declared Godeston irritably, ‘because it spoils the effect. I would do it myself, but I do not think my couch will fit up the steps.’

  He was in his litter as he spoke, lying back to squint upwards. He was again clad entirely in purple, although this time it was gold embroidery, rather than silver, that adorned his sleeves. His bearers wore the same clothes as they had the previous day, including their hats, which they had neglected to remove. Bartholomew suspected it was because their hands
were full of their employer’s litter, but they were still the subject of scowls from three castle knights, who evidently considered it disrespectful.

  ‘I do not think I would fit up them either,’ Grym was saying unhappily. ‘So perhaps one of your lads would go instead.’

  ‘And what happens to me while he messes about up there?’ demanded Godeston testily. ‘Am I to sit on the floor until he comes back?’

  ‘Am I to sit on the floor until he comes back?’ mimicked Langelee, in a disconcertingly accurate imitation of the Mayor’s high-pitched and rather prissy voice that made Bartholomew and Michael regard him askance. He shrugged. ‘I do not like him. He was rude to me yesterday when I mentioned that Michaelhouse is looking for new benefactors.’

  ‘Then we must work to win his good opinion,’ determined Michael, ‘because we cannot have him speaking against us to his wealthy cronies. However, we will not succeed if you make fun of him, so you might want to control your parodying urges.’

  ‘Although you did do it rather well,’ said Bartholomew, winning himself a conspiratorial grin.

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ said Grym cheerfully, turning to smile as the three scholars approached. ‘How are you this fine day?’

  ‘It is not a fine day,’ countered Langelee. ‘It is raining.’

  ‘Every day is a fine day in Clare,’ averred Grym. ‘How could it be otherwise?’

  ‘True,’ acknowledged Godeston. ‘There is no better place in the whole wide world.’

  ‘Nicholas told me that you use hemlock when you amputate,’ said Bartholomew to Grym, launching into a medical debate with an abruptness that made his colleagues wince. ‘Does it work?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by “work”,’ replied the barber cautiously. ‘It certainly stops the patient from thrashing around, especially when combined with a good dose of poppy juice. Unfortunately, they are usually dead by the time I finish.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, not sure he would be so flippant about what sounded to be a rather high failure rate. ‘How long do these procedures normally take you?’

  ‘Oh, not long at all. I do not maintain my princely size for my own benefit, you know – I learned years ago that a surgeon needs a bit of meat on his bones for amputations, or he is forced to saw and hack for ever, which patients tend to dislike. Perhaps you would care for a race later?’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Bartholomew primly, startled by the offer, not to mention the problem of acquiring suitable subjects. ‘Speed is not everything.’

  ‘It is as far as the victim is concerned,’ countered Grym, not unreasonably.

  ‘I understand you are the town’s investigator,’ said Michael, before he could hear something he might wish he had not – he knew from past experience that Bartholomew could be grisly when conversing with fellow medici. ‘And you have explored several suspicious deaths recently.’

  ‘He is not an investigator,’ interposed Mayor Godeston. ‘He just offered to inspect the bodies and give us an official cause of death for our records.’

  ‘Because no one else is qualified,’ explained Grym, and smiled amiably. ‘Although I have something of an aptitude for it, if you want the truth.’ He gestured to the mason’s tomb. ‘Roger was my first. I was able to ascertain that he was killed by a falling plank, but that it was all his own fault for standing in a dangerous place without a proper hat.’

  ‘So it was an accident?’ probed Michael.

  Grym nodded. ‘Next was Talmach from the castle. He was old and frail, but insisted on riding with the hunt to impress his pretty young wife. It was a wet day, so no one was surprised when his horse skidded in mud and threw him. However, it was I who pointed out that he was unlikely to have landed square on his dagger.’

  ‘In other words, he was murdered,’ said the Mayor. ‘Probably by one of his castle cronies.’

  ‘Then Charer the coachman drowned,’ Grym went on. ‘He was a sot, who should not have been walking by the river alone and in the dark, but I am fairly sure he should have been able to pull himself out – which means that someone prevented him from doing so.’

  ‘And Skynere and Wisbech died from swallowing hemlock,’ prompted Bartholomew.

  Grym inclined his head. ‘Wisbech was found dead in the castle chapel—’

  ‘The Lady thinks the town killed him,’ put in Godeston, ‘but she is wrong. One of her minions did, in the hope that the Austins would join their side in the quarrel.’

  ‘I ascertained that there was hemlock in the meal he had eaten in his vestry the previous evening,’ Grym went on. ‘He died during the night, and was discovered the next day. The same thing happened to Skynere – the poison was in his dinner, and Godeston and I found him the following morning, stone dead and still sitting at his table.’

  ‘It was horrible.’ Godeston shuddered and his bearers did likewise, forcing him to grip the litter to avoid being pitched out. ‘He was just sitting there, as if he had fallen asleep. Personally, I suspect the squires did it. They are a wild horde.’

  ‘Hemlock takes time to kill its victims,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So why did Skynere – or Wisbech, for that matter – not summon help?’

  ‘Perhaps they tried, but it was night and they were alone,’ replied Grym, essentially repeating what Nicholas had claimed. He turned to Godeston. ‘Yet I do not think the squires were responsible, as poison seems too artful a modus operandi for brutal fellows like them. My money is on Philip de Jevan. I have never liked him.’

  ‘Who is Philip de Jevan?’ asked Michael.

  ‘A member of the Lady’s council, who comes from London four times a year to give her the benefit of his wisdom.’ Grym pulled a disagreeable face. ‘He is a terrible man.’

  But the Mayor was shaking his head. ‘If it is not the squires, then it will be Stephen Bonde, the Lady’s favourite henchman. Now there is a killer if ever I saw one.’

  ‘A killer, yes, but not a poisoner,’ argued Grym. ‘He is more the kind to use his bare hands. Jevan would use hemlock, though – a sly weapon for a sly man. He reminds me of a rat, slinking about and never stopping to exchange pleasantries.’

  ‘Jevan is all right,’ said Godeston. ‘I asked him to bring me some nice cloth when he next came up from London, and he gave me this.’ He reached into his scrip and produced a length of purple silk so fine that it seemed to float in the air. ‘I have left instructions that it is to be draped over my coffin, should the unlikely day ever come when I might need one.’

  ‘Very pretty,’ said Michael, who was also of the opinion that his own death was optional. ‘Although Jevan did not need to go to London for it. Matt’s sister sells that in Cambridge.’

  ‘Of course, Lichet will be familiar with hemlock,’ mused Godeston, putting the silk away. ‘He calls himself a learned man, but he has the look of the warlock about him. Nicholas calls him the Red Devil, which suits him very well – we all know that red is Lucifer’s favourite colour.’

  ‘I always understood it was black,’ said Michael.

  Godeston raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you really believe that St Benedict would insist on his monks wearing black if it made them attractive to Satan? Of course not! Satan loves crimson, which is why you will never see any habits of that colour.’

  ‘Cardinals wear scarlet,’ Bartholomew pointed out.

  ‘Quite, and what does that tell you?’ retorted Godeston. ‘However, I know for a fact that Satan loves red, because it is the colour of Christ’s blood – something in which he rejoices.’

  ‘I am sure he does not, theologically speaking,’ argued Michael. ‘Because it symbolises eternal salvation and the forgiveness of—’

  ‘Rubbish,’ interrupted Godeston. ‘Lichet is the Devil’s familiar, and if you have any sense, you will stay well away from him and trust nothing he says.’

  ‘We shall bear it in mind,’ said Michael.

  * * *

  Clare Castle boasted two huge baileys, both protected by walls, wet ditches and earthw
orks. The outer one was filled with wooden service buildings – stables, storehouses and quarters for retainers. The inner was marked by four squat towers and a motte with a massive central keep. However, the building that really commanded attention was the handsome palace that stood at the heart of the complex. It had been designed for comfort rather than security, and had large windows to fill it with light and a plethora of fireplaces to keep it warm.

  ‘Oxford, Maiden, Auditor and Constable,’ said Langelee, gazing approvingly at the fortifications – the living quarters did not interest him. He became aware of the bemused glances of his Fellows. ‘Those are the names of the four towers.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘Nicholas told me last night, after you two had retired. After all, only a fool ventures into enemy territory without first learning the lie of the land.’

  ‘We have come to inveigle money, not lay siege to the place,’ said Michael.

  ‘It amounts to much the same,’ shrugged Langelee. ‘Both will involve tactics and strategies.’

  The castle had several entrances, but the main one was at the end of the road called Nethergate. Bartholomew, Michael and Langelee were about to pass through it when they were hailed. They turned to see their University colleagues hurrying towards them. The Clare Hall Fellows wore academic gowns of exquisite quality, while Pulham had his Book of Hours tucked under one arm, and Donwich carried the regalia used for writing. Clearly, they aimed to present themselves as men of learning and refinement.

  By contrast, the Swinescroft trio were scruffy. They had not shaved, their clothes were spattered with mud, and they had not bothered to clean their boots. Roos looked the most disreputable of the three, because he still wore his horrible woollen hat, tugged down so low that Bartholomew wondered how he could see where he was going.

  ‘You should have waited for us, Langelee,’ said Donwich coldly. ‘Or do you aim to impress the Lady’s executors by arriving first? What time is her funeral, by the way?’

  It was Badew who replied, eyes agleam with malice. ‘Mid-morning. Do not worry, Donwich – we have plenty of time before the old witch is dispatched on her journey to Hell.’