An Order for Death хмб-7

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘It was definitely murder, then?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘There is no possibility it was suicide?’

  ‘His hands were tied behind him,’ said Michael shortly. ‘It was not suicide.’

  ‘Did the Dominicans do it?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘It seems a little brazen to use their own walls as an execution ground.’

  ‘They said it had nothing to do with them, and that the first they knew about it was when Tulyet hammered on their gates and demanded to know why a corpse was dangling from their wall. Prior Morden maintains that the gates have been locked since the fight with the Carmelites.’

  Bartholomew raised his eyebrows. ‘Prior Lincolne claimed the Carmelite Friary doors were shut, and that Faricius could not possibly have left the premises. But Faricius still ended up gutted like a fish in a grimy alley. These locked doors have peculiar properties, it seems.’

  Michael sighed. ‘If I had a groat for every time a scholar claimed he could not have committed a crime because he was locked inside a College or a hostel, when all the time he was as guilty as sin, I would be a rich man.’

  ‘So, do you think the Dominicans killed Walcote, then?’

  Michael rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I have no idea. Walcote was hanged from a drainage pipe that juts out from the top of the wall. Anyone outside the friary could have flung a rope over it and hauled him up by the neck.’

  ‘Walcote was an Austin. Do the Dominicans have a dispute with them?’

  Michael sighed again. ‘The reality is that, at the moment, the Dominicans seem happy to fight anyone – anyone – who is not from their own Order.’

  ‘Then it is not safe for any non-Dominican to be out on the streets,’ said Bartholomew. ‘That is not a healthy state of affairs.’

  ‘You do not need to tell me that,’ said Michael. ‘I thought the town was calm last night, or I would never have allowed you to persuade me to go to Trumpington. Priors Morden and Lincolne promised to keep their students in, and I thought the worst of the trouble was over.’

  ‘So, do you have any idea who might have killed Walcote? Were there any clues with the body?’

  ‘None. He was killed in a secluded spot, probably just after sunset, when no one would have been around. I doubt there are witnesses.’

  ‘So, what will you do?’

  Michael fell into step beside Bartholomew as Langelee led the procession out of the yard and into the street. ‘I must be careful with this case, Matt. I liked Walcote, despite my reservations about his gentleness, and I am in danger of allowing affection to cloud my judgement. If that happens, the killer may go free.’

  ‘Can you delegate the investigation to your beadles?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘I do not trust any of them with something this important. Meadowman shows promise, but he is inexperienced. I need you to help me, Matt.’

  ‘I will examine Walcote’s body for you,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But I am no good at hunting down criminals. And anyway, what about my teaching?’

  ‘It is Holy Week, and you only teach in the mornings,’ said Michael. ‘Walcote’s murder is not only a deep personal blow, it is a strike against the University. The proctors are symbols of authority and order, and killing one of us is a statement of chaos and anarchy.’

  ‘I think you are overstating the case, Brother,’ said Bartholomew reasonably. ‘It may just be that Walcote was alone, and that the attack on him was opportunistic. Or maybe some resentful student – previously arrested or fined by Walcote – saw an opportunity for revenge. His death is not necessarily imbued with a deeper meaning.’

  Michael turned haunted eyes on him. ‘I hope you are right, Matt. But I need your expertise, and I need another sharp mind to assess facts that I may miss. Will you do it?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Bartholomew reluctantly.

  The monk nodded his thanks, and they walked the rest of the way to the church in silence. Bartholomew’s thoughts were full of foreboding when he saw that, yet again, he was about to be sucked into a world of treachery and violence that had already claimed the life of Michael’s deputy. He hoped they would solve the matter quickly, so that his life could return to normal.

  ‘Two murders,’ said Michael, pacing back and forth in his room after breakfast that morning, his black habit swirling around his thick white ankles. A jug on the table wobbled dangerously as his weight rocked the floorboards, and Bartholomew was grateful he was not working in his own room below, attempting to concentrate over the creak of protesting wood.

  Michael had directed his three serious-minded Benedictine students to read part of an essay by Thomas Aquinas, thus neatly abrogating his teaching responsibilities for the rest of the day. Bartholomew’s pack of undergraduates were not quite so easily dealt with, and tended to be rowdy and difficult to control if he were not with them. Surprisingly, when he had learned why Bartholomew wanted to be excused, Langelee had offered to supervise them himself. Like Michael, the Master regarded the death of a Junior Proctor as a serious threat to the University on which he had pinned his personal ambitions.

  ‘Find the man, Bartholomew,’ he instructed. ‘You are relieved of all College responsibilities until you have the culprit under lock and key – except for the mass on Easter Sunday, when all Fellows should be present.’

  ‘I hope it will not take that long,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is only Tuesday.’

  ‘Then you will have to work quickly,’ said Langelee, glancing down the hall, where Bartholomew’s lively students were already beginning to make themselves heard as they waited for their lesson to begin. ‘If people learn that the University’s officers can be easily dispatched and the culprits never found, the town will erupt into chaos.’

  Freed of his teaching, Bartholomew sat at the small table in Michael’s room, and made notes on an oddly shaped piece of parchment from Michael’s supply of scraps. Parchment was expensive, and scholars tended to recycle old documents by rubbing the ink away with sand, and then treating the surface with chalk. The piece Bartholomew had was wafer-thin from previous use, and whoever had last scraped it had done a poor job, because the words were still legible under the layer of chalk. On one side was a summary of payments for Michael’s army of beadles, while on the other Walcote had made a list of items that had apparently been stolen from the Carmelite Friary a few weeks before.

  ‘Two murders,’ repeated Michael, gnawing his lip thoughtfully. ‘Faricius of Abington and Will Walcote.’

  ‘You are not suggesting the two deaths are related, are you?’ asked Bartholomew, as he wrote down the few facts they had about Walcote’s death, chiefly where it had taken place and that it had probably happened after sunset. ‘I can see no reason to link them together.’

  Michael rubbed the dark bristles on his chin. ‘Faricius, a Carmelite, was murdered when the Dominicans went on a rampage. And now Walcote is murdered outside the Dominican Friary. There is your connection, Matt.’

  ‘It may be a connection, but I am not sure it is a meaningful one. There is nothing nearby, other than that drainage pipe on the friary walls, that could be used for a spontaneous hanging. Perhaps that is all your connection means.’

  Michael rubbed his chin harder. ‘But what about all the questions we have regarding Faricius’s murder? What about the fact that his Prior insisted he could not have left the friary? And what about the fact that we know the Carmelites are lying – or at least hiding the truth – about his death?’

  ‘What about them?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘They neither prove nor disprove the connection you are trying to make. I think the best way forward is to treat the two deaths as unrelated events. Then, if we discover evidence to the contrary, we can look at them from a new angle, and try to see whether there are other links. Is that reasonable?’

  Michael sat down so hard on a stool that Bartholomew was sure he saw the legs buckle. The monk rested his elbows on his knees and gave his eyes a vigorous massage. ‘I suppose so. I find this very difficult, Matt. I have never investigated the death of
anyone I liked before.’

  ‘I thought you were dissatisfied with Walcote’s abilities as a proctor.’

  ‘I was, although they seem insignificant now that he is dead. Doubtless I will come to remember him as the best deputy I have ever had. But I liked him well enough. He could be a little secretive at times, but he was a pleasant fellow to work with.’

  ‘We will find his killer,’ said Bartholomew encouragingly, although he was not sure how they would even begin what seemed such an impossible task.

  Michael gave a wan smile and climbed to his feet. ‘I was right to ask you to help me; you have already made me feel more optimistic about our chances of success. Now, where shall we start? Will you look at Walcote’s body? I doubt there is any more you can tell me that I do not already know, but it is as good a place as anywhere to begin.’

  Bartholomew nodded reluctantly. He did not enjoy looking at corpses and, although he had inspected a great many of them, the frequency of the occurrence did not make the task any more attractive. He was a physician, and he considered his work to be with the living rather than the dead.

  ‘And then I suppose we had better ask questions about Walcote himself,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael suspiciously. ‘I do not want to pry into the poor man’s private affairs now that he is not here to defend himself.’

  ‘We need to establish whether his death was a case of an opportunistic slaying, or whether it was a carefully planned attack. We will not know that unless we investigate his personal life, to see whether he had angered someone sufficiently to make them want to kill him.’

  ‘Well, of course he had enemies,’ said Michael impatiently, beginning to pace again. ‘He was a proctor. There are plenty of students who resented spending nights in our cells, and who objected to paying the fine that secured their release.’

  ‘Most students accept the fact that they have been caught, and turn their minds to devising ways to avoid it next time,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And most students do not kill a man over the loss of a groat or two.’

  ‘A groat is a lot of money to people with nothing,’ said Michael. ‘I have had my life threatened on a number of occasions for far less than a groat.’

  ‘You have?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily. ‘Then perhaps you should not go out alone until this is resolved. I do not want to see you hanging from a pipe on the walls of the Dominican Friary – although it would take a lot more than a length of lead piping to hold up the likes of you.’

  ‘There is no need for rudeness, Matt,’ said Michael stiffly. ‘And doubtless I shall lose a lot of weight now that I have all the anxiety associated with solving two murders; that should please you.’

  ‘It did not stop you from making the most of breakfast this morning,’ said Bartholomew critically, not even wanting to remember what the monk had packed away inside his substantial girth after mass that day.

  ‘My meals are my affair,’ said Michael irritably. ‘But we should not be discussing them; we should be trying to find out who killed Walcote and Faricius.’

  He gave a weary sigh as he stared at the piece of parchment on the table with its scanty record of facts. Bartholomew understood his apprehension. The few scraps of information written there seemed a very fragile basis on which to conduct a murder investigation.

  ‘You will be needing my assistance,’ came a booming voice from the door as Bartholomew and Michael sat staring at the parchment. ‘I heard about the death of Walcote and have come to take his place.’

  Bartholomew and Michael jumped. They had not heard Father William climb the wooden stairs that led to Michael’s room, and his sudden appearance startled them. Bartholomew immediately noticed that William had dropped a sizeable blob of his breakfast oatmeal down the front of his habit, making him appear even more dirty and disreputable than usual, a feat the physician had not thought possible.

  ‘It is not my decision who to appoint as Junior Proctor,’ said Michael, quickly and not entirely truthfully. Bartholomew knew perfectly well that his opinions counted for a great deal when it was time for nominations to be considered. ‘I think the Chancellor has someone else in mind.’

  It was not the first time the belligerent Franciscan had offered himself for the post, and it was not the first time Michael had declined. William was an honest enough man, but he seldom admitted he was wrong, and he was always accusing innocent people of heresy. He had spent some time with the inquisition in France, before his superiors had dispatched him to the University in Cambridge because of his over-zealousness. To give William’s bigotry full rein by appointing him Junior Proctor would be in no one’s interests.

  ‘But that is not fair,’ protested William, crestfallen. ‘I have been waiting years to be appointed, and you must appreciate that I would be good at ferreting out criminals, killers and heretics. I am the right man for the task, and you know it!’

  ‘You would make a memorable proctor,’ said Michael ambiguously. ‘I will tell Chancellor Tynkell of your interest. However, it is my understanding that he has promised the position to someone else.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded William. ‘I warrant it will not be someone with my dedication and experience.’

  ‘You are probably right,’ said Michael soothingly.

  William rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then apparently decided to make the best of the situation. ‘But until this person has officially accepted the position, you will need someone to help you,’ he said. ‘It will be good practice for when the new Junior Proctor resigns and I take his place.’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ said Michael hastily. ‘Matt is assisting me, and I need no one else. And anyway, I anticipate that Walcote’s replacement will take up his duties very soon.’

  ‘You need me,’ stated William uncompromisingly. ‘You see, this is not merely a matter of hunting down some criminal who has killed a man – which is all you have done in the past. This is far more complex: it is a case of unmasking a heretic.’

  ‘I see,’ said Michael, as William folded his arms and pursed his lips in the way he always did when he thought he had made an astute revelation. ‘And how have you arrived at this conclusion, pray?’

  ‘It is obvious,’ said William, inserting his solid form through the door and perching on the windowsill when he saw Michael was prepared to listen to him. ‘Walcote was an Austin canon; Austin canons follow the theory of nominalism; nominalism is an heretical notion; heretical notions are upheld by agents of the Devil. Ergo, you need a man like me to discover the Devil’s spawn who killed Walcote.’

  ‘There is a flaw in your logic, Father,’ said Michael. ‘If Walcote were one of these so-called heretics, why would another heretic kill him? Surely, the killer would be more likely to strike at a realist than a nominalist?’

  William’s convictions began to waver. ‘Not necessarily,’ he blustered. ‘Heretics do not think in the same way as you or I. They do not always act logically.’

  ‘And neither do Franciscan fanatics,’ muttered Michael, eyeing the friar in distaste.

  ‘You are a realist, are you?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised that William was prepared to take a stand on an issue that was so complex. Normally the Franciscan had little time for intricate debates that required serious thinking.

  ‘We Franciscans always follow the path of truth,’ announced William. ‘Of course we support realism. You did not think we were nominalists, did you? My Prior told me that the Franciscans supported realism, and I always follow his lead in such matters.’

  Michael gave a low snort of laughter. ‘Only when it suits you. He told you not to fan the flames of dissent between your Order and the Dominicans last summer, and you were brought before him three times for disobeying his instructions.’

  ‘That was different,’ said William haughtily. ‘And anyway, he now recognises that I was right. We should have driven the Dominicans out of Cambridge last year, when I suggested we should.’

  ‘You mean we should suppress anythi
ng we do not agree with, and persecute anyone who holds a different opinion from us?’ asked Bartholomew, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

  ‘That is the most sensible suggestion I have ever heard you make, Matthew,’ said William, oblivious of the fact that the physician had been joking. ‘Then we would eradicate heresy from the face of the Earth.’

  ‘Along with the freedom to think,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But why are the religious Orders laying down such rigid rules regarding the nominalism – realism debate? In the past, they have always permitted individuals to make up their own minds about philosophical issues.’

  ‘Not everyone is equipped with the wits to make a rational decision,’ said William in a superior manner. ‘Like the Dominicans, apparently.’

  ‘And why do you think nominalism is so wrong?’ asked Bartholomew curiously.

  ‘It is wrong because it is heretical,’ said William immediately.

  ‘Yes, but why is it heretical?’ pressed Bartholomew.

  ‘Because it is,’ said William. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ corrected Michael. ‘The Dominicans, my dead Junior Proctor and my own brethren at Ely Hall do not agree – to name but a few people.’

  William stared straight ahead of him, suggesting that he knew he had been bested, but did not want to admit it.

  ‘A group of Carmelites gathered outside the Dominican Friary on Sunday, and were prepared to fight against highly unfavourable odds in support of realism,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But when I asked them what realism was, they could not define it. The debate is simply an excuse for restless students to fight each other.’

  ‘Right,’ said Michael, turning a wicked grin on William. ‘So, tell us what you understand by nominalism, Father. I should like to know.’

  ‘Nominalism is all about giving things names,’ said William, after a few moments of serious thought and throat clearing. ‘The very word “nominalism” comes from the Latin nomen, which means name. It is not right to name things, because God did that when He created everything. It says so in Genesis.’ He shot Michael a triumphant glance, indicating that he thought he had already won the argument.