by Alys Clare
The large group of buildings forming three sides of a square around the cloistered courtyard included, he knew, Abbess Helewise’s small room, and also, he surmised, the refectory and the reformatory. Stables and what looked like workshops and storage rooms had been on his right as he came in through the main gate, and, on his left, had been the porteress’s lodge.
His eyes scanned the remaining buildings. Situated just inside the Abbey’s rear wall, they now rose up to dominate the view in front of him. Both were built to the left of the church and close to it; indeed, one appeared to adjoin it. The other, slightly smaller building, was set apart, in the place where the side and rear walls met to form a corner.
From its position, he guessed that it must be the leper house. If so, then it was from there that the sealed passage led to the part of the church reserved for the exclusive use of the lepers and the sisters who cared for them. It was an area of the foundation which Josse fervently hoped he would not have to investigate.
Satisfied that he now had a mental map of the Abbey buildings, he let his thoughts return to the murder.
His mind reverberated all over again from the Abbess’s new revelation. A rich cross, left at the scene – no, planted at the scene, for it had not belonged to the dead woman – surely could only amount to another attempt to confuse the facts? Make Gunnora’s murder seem like a bungled theft, just as the murderer had tried to make it look like rape?
He could no longer ignore his strong conviction that, whoever had cut her throat, it certainly hadn’t been riff-raff released from the local jail. Unless, that is, the jail had enclosed within its walls someone with a more sophisticated mind than your average poacher, pickpocket, sheep thief, or drunkard who had let his fists get the better of his common sense.
My job here is done, Josse reflected as he and the Abbess reached the convent walls. I could return now to Tonbridge, notify the local officials of my findings, and there would no longer be any question of King Richard’s gesture of humanity having led to brutal death. They would surely accept, as I do, that there is far more to this crime than a casual, spur-of-the-moment assault that went too far.
But he knew he wasn’t going to return to Tonbridge just yet. How much more thoroughly would his task be achieved, how much more praiseworthy it would be, if he were able to say not only who didn’t do the deed, but who did.
Well, if he were going to go through with it – as everything in him was urging – then the next step was clear. Unpleasant – in fact, in view of the continuing heat, extremely unpleasant – but quite obvious.
‘Abbess Helewise?’
Until he himself broke the silence, neither had spoken since they had left the spot where Gunnora had been found. He reflected that a nun made an admirable companion when you had things to run over in your mind. Especially – he turned to look at her – one whose wide brow and penetrating eyes spoke so clearly of intelligence.
‘Yes?’ she replied, acknowledging with a brief dip of her head his courteous gesture of standing back to allow her to go through the gate first.
‘Abbess, I have to ask your permission for a task which I wish were not necessary.’ He paused. Lord, was he right? Was it necessary? He wished, not for the first time, that he had more experience of murder. That this particular case were not his baptism into the art of investigation.
But, even if he was new to investigating brutal crimes, he had his common sense and his logic, both of which told him that what he was about to ask was essential. Before he could change his mind, he said, ‘Madam, I have to see the body.’
She didn’t answer straightaway, but he noticed that she seemed suddenly to be steering their steps towards the church. Above its door, he observed, was a particularly finely carved tympanum. ‘It is two weeks, more or less, since she was found,’ the Abbess remarked.
‘Aye. I know.’
‘And it is July, sir. An unusually hot July.’
‘Aye.’
They stood together at the church door. She was watching him, a hand up to her eyes to shade them from the brilliant light. He returned her stare, resisting the temptation to hang his head as if in shame at being caught out in a salacious thought. He could not read her expression: it was is if her face were smoothed out. The smile which quirked her wide mouth and raised the well-shaped cheeks was absent, and it was only now that it wasn’t there that he realised he was already recognising it as characteristic of her.
He was about to press his request, explain why he was making it, when she reached out and lifted the heavy latch. ‘I will show you the way,’ she said quietly.
He followed her down a short flight of steps into the church. She made her genuflection, which he copied, then walked up the aisle, past what appeared to be a totally enclosed side chapel – the lepers’ chapel? – then, turning to her left some five paces in front of the altar, opened another, much smaller door. This, too, gave on to steps, but in this case not a wide, shallow flight carved of stone, but a narrow and steep little spiral made of wood.
The smell, which he had scarcely noticed in the church, had increased tenfold with the opening of the little door.
She made her careful way down the stairs. Over her shoulder, he saw the soft light of a candle. They emerged into a low crypt, its domed roof supported by massive stone pillars. He had the sudden sense of being buried deep in the earth, accompanied by an alarming recognition of the unbelievable weight of stone above him, pressing down on him. An atavistic dread shot through him, and he felt a slight prickling as the small hairs on the back of his neck and along his spine stood up.
‘It is very cold down in the crypt, even now in high summer.’ The Abbess’s voice was cool, and her matter-of-fact tone brought him back to himself. ‘We thought it best to lay her here, while we await her family’s instructions as to her burial.’
There was no need for her to explain. He, too, would have found it hard to concentrate on his devotions with this silent, malodorous companion. Better – how much better, for his own purpose – that she had been put away in the cold of the crypt.
He swallowed, and took a step nearer to the coffin, on its simple bier. The coffin was made of fairly rough planks, butted and nailed together rather than carefully jointed. The lid was secured with six more nails. He looked around for some sort of implement with which to lever them out – fool, not to have thought of it before! – and was about to announce that he would have to go and find something when the Abbess silently pointed into a corner. Whoever had made the coffin had had wood left over, and had stacked it neatly under the stairs.
Josse selected a stout length of timber – presumably rejected as too thick – and, trying to control his strength so that both coffin and bier didn’t end up being thrown over, banged its thicker end up under the edge of the coffin lid until he had made a wide enough gap to insert the other, thinner end. The Abbess, practical woman, perceived his difficulty and went to stand at the coffin’s head, steadying it.
Now he could put his weight behind the effort. Leaning down on the end of the plank, he heaved as hard as he could. There was an ominous creak, and the plank began to bend; out of the corner of his eye he saw the Abbess take a firmer grip, as if she could predict his next move and was allowing for it. Placing his hands nearer the top of his lever, he took a breath, flexed his shoulder and arm muscles, and pushed down with all his might.
The coffin slewed sideways and all but fell, but the Abbess grabbed at it and saved it. And there was no need to see if he had been successful: the smell told them both that he had.
The Abbess had draped a fold of her wide sleeve across her face, and, taking hold of his arm, she pulled him away to the far side of the crypt. ‘Let the noxious air dissipate for a few moments,’ she said quietly.
It made sense. There seemed to be a good supply of air in the crypt, its slight draught making the candle flame dance. Standing there beside the Abbess, he looked at the coffin. The lid was a hand’s breadth above the base on the side wher
e he had been working; it would be easy, now, to tear it off.
When the smell had lessened – either that, he thought ruefully, or I’m getting used to it – he and Abbess Helewise walked back to the coffin, and he thrust the lid out of the way.
He hadn’t really known what to expect. He had seen dead bodies before, many of them, seen the dreadful mutilations caused by warfare, seen bloated corpses that had lain too long on a sunny battlefield, seen half-putrid flesh crawling with maggots. He had been prepared for all of that.
The body of Gunnora, although clearly in the early stages of decomposition, was still relatively unchanged by death. The white skin of the hands and face, the only visible flesh, had a slight greenish tinge, and on her right hand, placed on top of the left, the main blood vessels were badly discoloured.
Someone had closed her eyelids. But the lower part of her face, still twisted into a rictus of horror, more than compensated for the absence of any expression there might have been in the dead eyes.
‘She died hard,’ he murmured.
‘She did.’ The Abbess, too, spoke softly. ‘You will wish to see the death wound.’
‘Aye.’ Again, her undramatic tone was a help.
He watched as her swift hands folded back the veil and untied the barbette that bound the smooth forehead, revealing the ends of the wimple, neatly fastened on top of the short hair.
She lowered the wimple, laying it across the still chest.
And the great slash that killed Gunnora was revealed.
He felt a moment’s faintness, and the hard stone beneath his feet seemed suddenly a perilously uncertain slope. He made himself relax. She is dead, he told himself firmly. Dead. And the best service I can do her now is to find her killer.
He leaned forward, bending close. The wound ran from ear to ear, a smooth, symmetrical cut that had severed the blood vessels and severely damaged the windpipe. It would, a detached part of his mind thought, be a matter of conjecture whether she died from loss of blood or asphyxia. He studied the ends of the cut. Interesting.
He had seen many men killed or injured by sword cuts, and it could usually be determined whether the attacker had used his left or his right hand, especially to anyone experienced in sword use. A cut was normally deeper at the initial point of incision, where it bore the full weight of the assault.
But this cut on the thin throat of Gunnora was as even, as perfect, as a quarter moon. Somebody had done it very carefully. Artistically, even. What an extraordinary thing to do.
It prompted him to look at her hands. He drew back the wide cuffs, trying to fold them as tidily as the Abbess had dealt with the veil and wimple; he might have ordered this violation of the dead girl’s final peace, but at least he could show respect. He felt the Abbess’s eyes on him, but she did not intervene. Feeling he had been awarded a good mark, he bent over Gunnora’s hands and forearms.
There was a slight scratch on the left wrist, but it looked old; a scab had formed and partly fallen off, which he did not think would have happened had it been done at the time of death. The nails were bitten, and on the right forefinger a torn quick felt unpleasantly squelchy. Other than that, the hands were undamaged.
‘Look, Abbess,’ he said. ‘Look at her hands.’
The Abbess did so. Then said, ‘She did not put up a fight.’
‘No, exactly. Had she struggled, tried to ward off the knife, her hands would show it.’ He frowned, trying to work out what that meant. Either she was unconscious when the attack came – or asleep? – or … Or what?
Or she was assailed by more than one person.
He returned to the sleeves, pushing at them more urgently now, searching the upper arms … finding what he sought.
‘Look.’ He pointed. On the white flesh were small bruises, two on the right arm, four on the left. Without pausing to think if it was appropriate, he hurried round to stand behind the Abbess, holding her arms. ‘You see? She was held, like this, from the rear. Held hard enough for the attacker’s fingers to make those bruises.’
‘Held by one man, whilst another cut her throat,’ the Abbess said, infinite pity in her voice. Standing so close to her, still holding her arms, he felt the slight sagging of her body. Then, as if they had simultaneously realised the unseemliness of their position, he stepped back and she moved forwards. His hands dropped to his sides, and he was about to apologise when she spoke.
‘Do you wish to look at any more of the corpse?’ she asked briskly. Corpse, he noticed. Perhaps it made it easier, to refer to Gunnora as a corpse.
‘I think not. I am content to take the word of your infirmarer as to the contrived evidence of rape.’ He sensed her relief.
He walked slowly round the coffin. There was something else he should check, he was sure. What? Absently he watched the Abbess as she rearranged the dead girl’s clothing, placing the plain wooden crucifix under the crossed hands, smoothing the veil so that it lay in perfect folds …
Yes. That was it.
‘May I look at her feet?’
The enquiry in the Abbess’s eyes was not vocalised. Instead, she turned back the hem of the habit, revealing small feet in narrow leather shoes.
The soles felt cold, and, pushing with a finger, he detected moisture. Yes, she had been out in the middle of the night, hadn’t she? Of course her shoes would be wet with dew. He inspected the feet, then the ankles, but the skin was clean.
‘Would her body have been washed?’ he asked.
‘Naturally. The blood.’
‘Aye, that. I meant her feet, her lower legs.’
The Abbess shrugged. ‘I cannot say for sure. I imagine so.’ Then, although he could sense her reluctance to have to ask, ‘Why?’
‘I’m wondering, Abbess, as I’ve been wondering all along, what a nun was doing out of her dormitory – out of her convent, even – in the middle of the night. I’m thinking, did she go far? She met her death close by, yes, but was she on her way out or on her way back? I ask about her feet and legs because, had she left the track, which she would have had to do had she gone further than the shrine, then she would have been walking through long grass. I would expect to have found the signs on her legs, on the hem of her garments. And her shoes would have been soaked through.’
The Abbess nodded quickly. ‘Yes, yes, I see. You are right – the paths only extend to the shrine and the monks’ house, and to the little pool that forms below the shrine. That track – the one, in fact, on which she was found – is smaller. It is not much used.’
That, then, was one question answered. Whatever mission had taken Gunnora out that night, she had not gone far. But, as seemed increasingly to be the case, one question answered posed more: had she completed what she had set out to do, or had she been killed on the way?
He watched as, again, the Abbess performed her rearranging task.
Then, coming to stand beside him, they both stood in silence, gazing at the dead girl.
He no longer had the feeling that there was more to be learned from her. It was time, finally, to leave her alone. He stepped forward, picked up the coffin lid and replaced it. Then, inserting the tips of the nails back into their holes, he used his baulk of timber to bang them down again.
He resumed his place beside the Abbess. Then, as if they had been waiting for some inaudible sign that they were dismissed, they turned and went back up the spiral staircase.
* * *
‘I have been trying to arrange it that someone usually sits in vigil,’ she said as they left the church, which, as it had been when they went in, was still conspicuously empty. ‘But it has been so long, now. I sensed that my nuns were distressed by the task, that, by continuing to take their turn at sitting with poor Gunnora, this dreadful event was kept in the forefront of their minds.’ She gave a slight shrug. ‘I no longer insist on it.’
‘Wise, if I may be allowed to comment,’ he said. ‘Probably the feeling that she has been abandoned, that no one from her family has come for her, increases the po
ignancy.’
‘It does indeed. My lord d’Acquin, it is strange, is it not, this failure in response? I sent word, of course, as soon as I could, and the family home is but a day’s ride away at most. And I know my message was received, for the bearer reported back to me to that effect.’
‘Did the bearer say how the tidings were greeted? With shock and distress, I’m sure, but—’
‘He – it was one of the lay brothers – did say that the father appeared shocked, yes. But it was peculiar, he said, because the man seemed shocked before the brother had so much as got down from his horse.’
‘He guessed, do you think? Surmised that a rider arriving on a hard-ridden horse from the Abbey where his daughter lives must be bringing bad news?’
‘Perhaps.’ She frowned. ‘Yes, probably no more than that. But it’s odd…’
He waited. ‘Yes?’
Again, the shrug. ‘The brother had the strong impression that the father hardly took in the news. He – the brother – took some pains to repeat his brief account of what had happened, this time in the presence of two of the household servants.’
‘With no more response the second time?’
She gave a half smile, as if even she found it hard to believe what she was suggesting. ‘That’s the strangest thing of all. The father, so the lay brother says, seemed to brush him away. Gave the strong impression that he was preoccupied with something else, that this dire news of his daughter was a distraction.’
‘A distraction,’ Josse echoed. Yes, it was strange. ‘You can trust the word of the lay brother? He is not the sort of man to embellish a tale so as to increase the drama?’