The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18)

by Michael Jecks

  Joel looked up at him and in his eyes was a frank honesty. ‘I don’t think this has anything to do with business. Henry tended to pay on time, and he had a good reputation as a craftsman – why should anyone want to hurt him?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Baldwin repeated thoughtfully, observing Joel with his head on one side.

  He was about to speak again when there was some shouting from the shop, and the sound of urgent footsteps. Vince hurried in, a young novice from the Cathedral behind him.

  ‘Master? The Dean has sent for the Keeper to go back to see him,’ he panted. ‘It’s urgent, he said.’

  Baldwin looked at the novice. ‘Well?’

  ‘Sir Baldwin, it’s another body. Someone’s murdered a friar.’

  ‘Christ Jesus, not poor Nick?’ Joel muttered, and Baldwin shot him a look as the novice nodded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘What was the man doing here?’ Baldwin wondered. If his voice was harsher than usual, that was because he felt scaffolding was precarious at the best of times. This lot in particular seemed to wobble alarmingly, and Baldwin was reminded of the story he’d heard that a rock had recently plummeted from the wall, through the scaffolding and crushed a man. He wondered now whether the labourers had put it back together again quite so solidly as they ought.

  The others appeared unconcerned. They were staring at the body on the rough planking. It had lain in a rock enclosure, built as stones were piled at the base of the wall, and to remove it, the Master Mason had pulled it up until it could be lain down on the scaffolding, rather than manhandling it over all the rubble.

  In life, Baldwin reckoned the dead man would have been a humbling sight. His back was badly hunched, his face disfigured by a dreadful scar that had penetrated one eye-socket and ruined the eyeball itself, and his right hand was badly withered. His looks were not improved by the terrible, bloody burnmark that encircled his throat. Baldwin looked more closely. There was a lot of blood, he thought. Usually a man who was hanged would have bruising, perhaps a little blood where the rope had torn the flesh away, but not so much as all this. The fluid had soaked the rope itself, dripping down the man’s neck and running into his old tunic.

  ‘He could have been walking past the site, and when the rope was released to allow a stone to be taken down from the top, maybe he walked into it? The rope encircled his neck, and he couldn’t do anything to get it off, maybe?’

  This was the Annuellar speaking, but he was ignored by the other men. The Master Mason shook his head. ‘This was no accident, I can tell you that much. He was strangled on purpose.’

  ‘How can you be sure of – ah – that?’ the Dean enquired.

  ‘When I knocked off work last night, I came here as usual to take a last turn about the place. I always do, to make sure that there’s no thieving bast— saving your grace, sir, no felons about the place seeing what they can take. It’s been known before now. I once had a pair of anvils stolen from under my nose and … anyway, the fellow wasn’t there then. He was killed later, I’d wager.’

  The friar’s flesh was thin, Baldwin noted. It was possible that a blood vessel had been ripped open when the rope tightened. He leaned down and felt at the greying skin, and then saw the nick under the ropemark. He nodded pensively. ‘This rope. Would it have been up there yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. It’s one we use to bring mortar and tools up from the bottom. The heavy stuff is lifted on a windlass from a separate pulley up there.’

  ‘His body was concealed down there, you say?’

  ‘Yes, he was hidden in among those stones,’ Robert said helpfully, taking Baldwin’s shoulder and pulling him to the edge of a plank, pointing down. Baldwin closed his eyes and tried to quash the desire to knock the Master Mason’s hand from him. It was very tempting to push the man away, even if it would mean his falling to his death many feet below. Swallowing hard, Baldwin peered down.

  ‘There was no one working there last afternoon,’ Robert said, frowning down into the abyss. ‘He could have been throttled and just left down there.’

  Baldwin could see what he meant. There below them was a large gap between slabs of rock. He would have been effectively concealed for as long as no one searched for him, but … Baldwin frowned. Surely the killer would know that the body must soon be spotted in daylight, as soon as someone climbed this scaffold? Had he hidden the body in a hurry, before some passer-by could see what he had done? ‘So he wasn’t hanging when you found him?’

  ‘No. When I got here this morning, I found the rope hanging there for no reason, so I gave it a pull to see what was down there. Got the shock of my life!’

  ‘I can imagine it,’ Baldwin said, stepping back from the brink, he hoped not too hurriedly.

  ‘So what now?’ the Treasurer asked. He watched as Baldwin walked to the ladder and descended.

  Baldwin didn’t answer immediately. He reached the bottom with relief, and paused a moment before walking under the scaffolding to the pile of rocks.

  Each of the rocks was a cube, the faces at least a foot square. There was a large pile of them in a rough horseshoe shape, the open edge facing the old wall. Baldwin squeezed around between the rocks and the wall. It was a tight fit, very tight, and when he was inside, he peered back at the gap thoughtfully for a moment.

  The space in the horseshoe was only some six feet in diameter. Glancing up, he felt a vague sense of disquiet as he realised how high up he had been, standing on those warped planks. A noise behind him told him that Simon had joined him.

  ‘What do you think, Baldwin?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t like the fact that his neck seemed to bleed so much. When I looked, I think there was a cut.’

  ‘Someone had opened his throat?’

  ‘I think so. Just enough to bleed him.’

  ‘Why put the rope about him, then?’

  Baldwin walked to the Cathedral wall again. ‘Could you have dragged a man in through that gap?’

  Simon’s face cleared. ‘Of course. He had to lift the fellow in, so he threw a rope about him and raised him aloft, over the walls of this enclosure.’

  ‘Which means this killer knew something about the works,’ Baldwin said. ‘He had to know that this space existed, and he had to know how to lift a body up and into this space.’

  ‘It was a good hiding place,’ Simon commented. ‘The walls are high enough.’

  ‘Yes, but men are working up there all the time,’ Baldwin said, pointing up at the scaffolding. ‘Why put him here, when the body must soon be seen? And then leave the rope about his neck? Is this killer so stupid that he wanted people to know someone was murdered?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘There’s probably a simple excuse. He was going to slip in here and release the rope, cover the body with rubble or a strip of cloth or something, but then he heard people coming, so he bolted.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Or,’ Simon said, warming to a fresh idea, ‘he couldn’t fit! What if he was large-sized, with a great paunch, and couldn’t physically slip around the wall like you and me?’

  ‘He’d climb over the top,’ Baldwin said scornfully.

  ‘If he was that fat, I doubt it,’ Simon said. ‘Anyway, if this friar’s throat was opened, where is all the blood?’

  ‘No doubt that lies where the friar was murdered,’ Baldwin said with a sigh.

  ‘Well?’ demanded the Treasurer truculently. ‘What have you learned?’

  He and the others had all left the scaffolding and were waiting for Simon and Baldwin in a huddle near the south-west corner of the Cathedral.

  ‘Little enough so far,’ Baldwin said. ‘The friar had his throat cut, I think, Dean. The murder must have happened somewhere nearby. There will be plenty of blood at the spot.’

  ‘So what do you want us to do?’ Treasurer Stephen said more calmly. His face was set, Baldwin noticed. He appeared anxious.

  ‘I would like you to order your lay servants to look for the place where the
friar was killed. Meanwhile we need to know who was the last person to have seen this man. I don’t suppose any of you did so last evening?’ he asked, glancing at the Dean, the Treasurer and Matthew, who stood holding a leather cylinder for a scroll.

  They all shook their heads, the Dean with his customary air of benign bafflement, the Treasurer studiously ignoring the Dean at his side; Matthew looked down at the man and shook his head too, as though reluctantly.

  ‘I shall let you know as soon as we learn anything about either man’s death,’ Baldwin promised, and the Dean took hold of the Treasurer’s arm and led him away a short distance to speak to him. Baldwin watched the two, so apparently at odds, and yet always managing to work together for the good of the Cathedral itself.

  ‘Sir Baldwin, I know this is quite ridiculous, but …’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, facing the man. ‘You are Matthew, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. I am the Warden of the Fabric, the Clerk of the building work. It’s probably nothing, Sir Baldwin, but I did see the friar late yesterday afternoon. He was here with one of the masons, a man called Thomas.’

  ‘Here? Where, exactly? What were they doing?’

  ‘Thomas was at the foot of the wall, and the friar and he spoke together for a while. Then they moved away and I didn’t see anything of them after that.’

  ‘Thomas? That’s interesting,’ Baldwin said. ‘Do you know much of him?’

  ‘Not I, no. I had thought—’ he frowned. ‘But no.’

  ‘You thought what?’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, but I thought he looked familiar.’

  ‘He reminded you of someone?’

  ‘Yes – a man who used to live here in the city many years ago. He too was called Thomas,’ Matthew recollected with a slight frown.

  Baldwin felt his mood lighten. If a man should run away for some forty odd years, and then desire to see the place of his birth again, what better method of doing so than coming to a building site like this? It was enclosed, so he need not face any of his old friends; he could remain locked within the Cathedral’s precinct. If any man saw him, it was so long ago since he had lived here, surely he would be all but unrecognisable.

  Except, should someone here realise who he was, and be afraid lest Tom reveal their part in the murder of the Chaunter, might not that same someone decide to kill in order to keep his secret silent? Baldwin thought he might.

  ‘You say that the two were at the Cathedral wall. Where exactly?’

  ‘There,’ Matthew said.

  Baldwin looked at the corner he indicated, and then found his eyes being pulled westwards again, to the rectangular block of the Charnel Chapel. ‘I think I know where he was killed,’ he said as he set off towards the chapel’s door.

  Simon hurried to join him. Matthew and the Master Mason stood staring at each other for a moment, until Simon glanced back and beckoned to them authoritatively.

  Baldwin stood at the north-eastern wall of the chapel. From here, northwards there was the small circular house that held the conduit; east lay the Cathedral and works. ‘Where did you stand, Matthew, when you saw the two?’

  ‘I was over there at the entrance to the Exchequer.’

  Baldwin looked eastwards. The Exchequer lay beyond the tower of St Paul, the northernmost of the two Cathedral towers. ‘Any man slipping down here would have been invisible to you, then; or a man who went behind the conduit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Baldwin stalked to the conduit. The little building had its door facing east. ‘If they had entered here, you would have seen them?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  Baldwin nodded, and he looked up at the Charnel Chapel once more, a feeling of leaden reluctance entering his bones. ‘He was killed in there, I think.’

  He led the way across the grassed cemetery to the steps descending to the crypt itself. His eyes spotted the tell-tale marks on the stone steps. ‘Blood.’

  He went down the steps into the crypt, pushing the door wide. It moved easily on well-oiled hinges, and Baldwin found himself in a dry, musty-smelling chamber as large as the chapel above: some twenty feet by forty. The floor was flagged, and there were thick pillars supporting heavy arches that formed the floor of the chapel. Baldwin could hear Simon’s breath growing sharper, faster, and usually it would have alleviated his own sombre mood, but not today. Baldwin had a strange feeling that he had been leading up to this moment for a long time, as though the crypt was in some way a culmination.

  However, while Simon’s anxiety was based on the purest of superstitions about bones, Baldwin felt that there was an aura of evil in this specific building. He had felt it generally upstairs in the chapel, but here in the crypt it seemed more potent. I do not like this place, he thought to himself, and even the thought itself felt dangerous, as though the spirit of the building might read his mind.

  ‘Nonsense!’ he muttered aloud, annoyed with himself for allowing the atmosphere to colour his mood. It was ridiculous! He could only assume that his guilt at his treatment of his wife had caused this aberration. With a renewed determination, he marched further into the crypt.

  On either side were piles of bones, skulls nearest the door, thigh and leg bones further on, stretching over to the far wall. The skulls themselves were set somewhat haphazardly, unlike the tidily piled thigh and arm bones. They were stored neatly; respectfully. The skulls were not. Some had fallen from a neat pile, and one had rolled across the floor. Baldwin picked it up, gazing into the empty eye-sockets, wondering what sort of a person had once inhabited these ounces of bone.

  ‘I don’t know how you can do that,’ Simon muttered from behind him.

  Baldwin said nothing, merely set the skull back among the others, then studied the floor nearby. With a grunt, he removed the skull again, and then started taking away all the others too until he had cleared a space. He touched the bare flagged floor and rubbed finger and thumb together.

  ‘He died here.’

  ‘Could you take me to this man Thomas?’ Baldwin asked when they were once more outside.

  ‘My mason?’ Robert asked. ‘The clumsy one? Yes, I can take you to him. He was talking to me only this morning about leaving here and coming with me to another site. Can’t settle.’

  ‘I should be glad to speak with him,’ Baldwin said, walking into the sunshine and taking a deep breath. In the crypt he had felt the onset of claustrophobia, and it was a relief to inhale the fresh air with the sound of birdsong in the trees, the wind soughing in the branches, and people shouting. In his distraction he missed the Master Mason’s reference to clumsiness.

  It took little time for Baldwin to tell the Dean what they had learned. ‘This murderer tempted his second victim into the crypt somehow, and then stabbed him once in the neck. I think that the Coroner will find a stab wound in his throat on the right side. The rope burn was fortuitous, but wasn’t intended to cover the stab, I don’t think. When the man had killed the friar, he carried him over to the works, and put the rope about his neck, lifted him up and had him drop down into the hollow where the Master here found him.’

  The Dean gave a firm instruction that the Master Mason should help Baldwin and Simon in all that they required, and then left, his face grim. The Treasurer went off with Matthew to return to their work in the Exchequer, and Simon and Baldwin followed Robert de Cantebrigge over towards the breadhouse.

  The odour of fresh baked bread was enough to set Simon’s belly rumbling; they had been asking questions of people all morning, and soon they should think of a meal. Simon was used to the old mealtimes – a breakfast very early in the morning, dinner a couple of hours before noon, and a good supper in the mid-afternoon – and he found it hard to travel to places where the mealtimes were different. He knew that the Exeter canons tended to stick to the routine of monks, so they would have their main meal after Nones, or mid-afternoon, while their supper was after Vespers. Through the morning they survived on the odd hunk of bread and a little breakfast of weak po
rridge. It wouldn’t keep him going.

  As they passed around the tower of St Paul, there was an enclosure, and in it was a group of masons working on a huge rock. They were fashioning it into the shape of a column, cutting the top face smooth and setting rounded edges on the sides. A mason with a thick, bushy beard and long hair tied back in a pony-tail, was using a straight-edged stick to ensure that there were no bulges in the uppermost surface, while at his side was a large wooden mould cut into the precise curve that the stone should follow. Men would take this and measure the outer shape of the pillar to ensure that it would fit with all the other sections that would make up this support.

  ‘Thomas!’ Cantebrigge called, and the lead mason glanced at him, nodding. He put down his stick, and then seemed to realise that the Master Mason was not alone. His eyes flitted from Baldwin to Simon and back before he made his way to join them.

  ‘This is Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, this is Bailiff Simon Puttock. They want to speak to you.’

  Baldwin did not bother with any preamble. ‘There has been another murder here last night. A friar was stabbed, and then hanged. Where were you last night?’

  ‘I was in the city earlier in the evening, then I returned here and remained in the Close all night.’

  Thomas was a brawny fellow with a beard as thick as a bramble bush. His deep-set eyes were distrustful and apprehensive, from what Baldwin could see of them, and his age was surely comparable with Henry’s confederates. His heavy brow made him look a little slow of thought, but Baldwin reckoned that there was no dull-wittedness here.

  ‘The dead man was a friar called Nicholas. Did you know him?’

  ‘Why should I? Friars don’t often come here to the Close.’

  ‘You may know him because he was one of the men attacked forty years ago when the Chaunter was murdered here,’ Baldwin said grimly. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’