A Masterly Murder хмб-6

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Tell Master Heltisle I am here to see him,’ he snapped. ‘At once.’

  ‘He is busy,’ growled Osmun, and a clatter from within suggested that the dice were being rolled again. ‘Shove off, or I will break your arms.’

  Bartholomew gazed at the closed door for a moment, debating what to do. He stepped forward and put his hand to the wicket door. It was unlocked, so he pushed it open, stepped across the threshold and started to walk across the courtyard towards the hall, hoping to find a student who would tell him where the Master’s rooms were located.

  ‘Hey, you!’ bellowed Osmun in disbelief, tearing open the door to the porters’ lodge and pounding after him. ‘I told you the College was closed. Now get out, before you regret it.’

  ‘You cannot just close a College,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And I am on University business.’

  ‘I do not care what you want or who you are,’ snarled Osmun, grabbing a handful of Bartholomew’s cloak and beginning to haul him towards the gate. ‘You cannot come in.’

  Before he could be throttled, Bartholomew quickly undid the clasp and slipped out of his cloak, leaving the startled porter with a handful of cloth. More determinedly than ever, he began to walk towards the hall again, aware that several students had emerged from their rooms and were watching the scene in the courtyard with nervous interest.

  ‘I have come to see Master Heltisle,’ he shouted to them. ‘Please fetch him.’

  Osmun lunged, and Bartholomew deftly side-stepped him, so that the burly porter staggered and all but lost his balance. Seeing his comrade in difficulties, a second porter emerged from the lodge. Like Osmun, he was thickset and heavy featured, and wore the ugly striped hose and ridiculous blue cap that were the uniform of the Bene’t servants. Osmun had supplemented his with the peculiarly patterned tunic in which his cousin Justus had died, while at his waist hung Justus’s blunt dagger – although even that could cause a serious injury. The physician began to have second thoughts about his moral stand as the pair of them began to advance on him.

  ‘The Senior Proctor will not be pleased to hear that you laid hands on his agent,’ he blustered, backing away.

  ‘You are on Bene’t property,’ snarled Osmun, snatching at Bartholomew and missing again. ‘What I do to you here is none of the Senior Proctor’s business.’

  ‘And this is how you represent your College, is it?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘By attacking Fellows of the University and disregarding the authority of the Senior Proctor?’

  ‘The Senior Proctor is not here, is he?’ said Osmun with a cold smile. ‘And the authority in Bene’t is me. What I say goes, and those who do not believe me must learn the hard way.’

  ‘Like the Fellow you fought last Saturday?’ asked Bartholomew, recalling Michael’s beadle telling of Osmun’s arrest for riotous behaviour. ‘Is that what you were doing? Teaching him a lesson?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Osmun. ‘I spent a night in the proctors’ prison, but that miserable Henry de Walton learned something of College rules, so it was worthwhile.’

  Bartholomew recalled that it was Henry de Walton whom Adela had described as a ‘snivelling little man’ who complained about the state of his health. The foppish Simeon had not liked him much either.

  None of the students who ringed the courtyard had gone to fetch Heltisle, and Bartholomew realised he had been foolish to enter Bene’t College alone, when it was apparent that at least two of their number had met ends that were far from natural.

  ‘De Walton now does what he is told,’ said the second porter, circling Bartholomew like a dog with a cornered rat. ‘We do not tolerate Fellows who are critical, and who do not put their loyalty to the College above all else.’

  The notion that Fellows at Bene’t were not permitted to express themselves freely sounded sinister to Bartholomew. Was that how Michaelhouse would be under Runham? Would Clippesby be the equivalent of Osmun, listening at doors to see whether his colleagues were voicing discontent, and meting out physical punishment to those who spoke out against him?

  His thoughts had distracted him, and he did not move quickly enough to avoid Osmun’s sudden lunge. With an expression of intense satisfaction, the porter found himself in possession of a handful of the physician’s tabard. Bartholomew tried to struggle free, but Osmun was not about to let him go a second time.

  ‘I have him, Ulfo!’ he shouted, as the second porter darted to his assistance. ‘It does not take two Bene’t porters to rid the College of a worm like this.’

  ‘Osmun! What is all this unseemly skirmishing in our courtyard?’

  With relief, Bartholomew glanced behind him to see the Master of Bene’t College standing there. Heltisle was a tall, handsome scholar with the easy confidence of a man born to power and wealth. He had been a clerk on the King’s Bench before he had forsaken law for academia, and was apparently a man destined for great things in the University, and perhaps beyond. One of his Fellows, a small, sharp-eyed man with stained teeth and a blotched complexion, hovered at his side, watching the spectacle in front of him with disapproval.

  ‘This man was trying to break into our College,’ said Osmun sullenly, before Bartholomew could reply. ‘Me and Ulfo were just throwing him out.’

  ‘His tabard suggests he is a Fellow from Michaelhouse,’ said the Fellow who stood with Heltisle. His voice had the soft burr of a local man. ‘You are right, Osmun: we want none of that filth in Bene’t. Get rid of him.’

  With malicious vindictiveness, Osmun and Ulfo began hauling Bartholomew towards the gate. Bartholomew was not aware of particular ill-feeling between the two Colleges – other than the usual suspicion and rivalry that characterised any relationship between most academic institutions – and did not understand why the mention of Michaelhouse should evoke such a hostile reaction.

  ‘Wait,’ commanded Heltisle, striding forward to inspect Bartholomew as though he were a pig in a market. ‘Do you not recognise this man, Caumpes? He is Matthew Bartholomew, one of the two physicians who attended Raysoun when he fell from the scaffolding …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, trying to pull free of the porters. ‘Osmun summoned me on the advice of Master Lynton. I am sorry I was unable to do anything to save Raysoun.’

  Heltisle regarded him curiously. ‘I am sure you did your best on that score. But you did not allow me to finish what I was going to say. After Raysoun died, both you physicians registered complaints with the Sheriff about the state of our scaffolding. You told him it was dangerous.’

  Lynton had said he would do just that, Bartholomew recalled, and the fact that some of the scaffolding had already been dismantled suggested that Sheriff Tulyet had acted on it. If Heltisle had been informed that two physicians had voiced objections, then Lynton must have added Bartholomew’s name to strengthen his cause.

  ‘At the time, we thought the complaint was made out of concern for us and for public safety,’ Heltisle went on coldly. ‘But now we know the truth, and it has nothing to do with the well-being of anyone except the scholars of Michaelhouse.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘The only reason you complained to the Sheriff was so that you could poach our builders to work for you instead,’ answered Caumpes bitterly.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Bartholomew, horrified. ‘I have poached no builders …’ But Runham might well have done, he realised suddenly. With a shock, he guessed exactly where some of the dismantled scaffolding had been re-erected, and why Michaelhouse’s had such a used look about it. It also explained why Runham was able to recruit so many workmen in such a short period of time – he had simply gone to an existing building site and offered the men wages that they could not afford to decline.

  With a sinking heart, Bartholomew saw he should have guessed how Michaelhouse’s army of builders had been raised. There was Robert de Blaston, the carpenter, for a start. Bartholomew had known he was working for Bene’t, because at Matilde’s house Yolande had related how her husband said Raysoun
was a drunk, given to clambering on the Bene’t scaffolding to seek out shirkers. And then Bartholomew had seen Robert de Blaston at Michaelhouse: it was he who had overheard Clippesby mention the big chest of gold Runham had gathered to pay the workmen’s wages. Blaston had been working at Bene’t, and Michaelhouse had poached him, just as Heltisle and Caumpes were claiming.

  ‘You have no answer, do you?’ asked Heltisle softly, as he hesitated. ‘You know you have done Bene’t a grave disservice, and you have no excuse to make.’

  ‘It was clever of you,’ added Caumpes. ‘First you urge the Sheriff to impose new safety measures on our workforce, hampering the speed of their progress, and irritating and frustrating them so that they are ripe for rebellion; and then you offer them new jobs at higher wages.’

  ‘But I did not speak to the Sheriff about your scaffolding,’ protested Bartholomew. ‘It was dangerous, but I did not mention it to the Sheriff.’

  ‘But you went to his house the very next day,’ said Caumpes. ‘You were not man enough to visit him openly in the Castle, so you sneaked to his home. I saw you myself, shaking the man’s hand on his doorstep.’

  ‘I had been summoned to physick his son,’ said Bartholomew, not liking the way his movements had been watched. ‘Not that it is any business of yours.’

  ‘So, what do you want here?’ asked Heltisle icily. ‘Have you come to offer us compensation for what your College has done to mine?’

  ‘The Senior Proctor asked me to come,’ he said, wishing he had never agreed to become Michael’s menial. ‘He wants me to examine the bodies of Wymundham and Raysoun, to ascertain the precise causes of their deaths.’

  ‘I am sure he does,’ said Caumpes nastily. ‘The Senior Proctor – a Michaelhouse man to the core – is trying to use the deaths of those two unfortunates to bring our College to the brink of ruin.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Heltisle. ‘He wants to start rumours that their accidental deaths were actually murders, so that he can bring Bene’t into disrepute.’

  ‘I can assure you that is not true,’ protested Bartholomew, hoping sincerely that it was not. Michael loved University politics, and would be quite happy to see another College fall from grace if it promoted his own.

  He was wondering how he could extricate himself without acknowledging that Michaelhouse had acted somewhat shabbily – despite his personal opinion of Runham, he did not want to be openly disloyal to his own College – when the sound of horses’ hooves clattering on the cobbles drew attention away from him.

  He was released abruptly, and Bartholomew saw that porters, Fellows and students were all busy bowing so deeply and obsequiously that a good many blue uniforms trailed in the mud. He glanced at the new arrivals, and immediately recognised the portly figure of the Duke of Lancaster.

  The Duke was one of Bene’t College’s most noteworthy benefactors, and was often seen in the town, inspecting progress on the foundation that was costing him a small fortune. Riding with him was his squire, the elegant Simekyn Simeon, who sported hose and tunic of scarlet and a cloak of an impractical corn yellow. His shoes were made of an exquisite soft calfskin that would not last a day in Cambridge’s filthy streets.

  The Duke himself cut a dowdy figure. He wore a mud-brown cloak trimmed with fur that was spiky and stained with rain, and his hose and tunic were a dull moss green. Bartholomew looked from his dour, uncompromising features to the sardonic, amused face of Simeon, and suspected that their arrival would not make his awkward position any easier.

  ‘My lord,’ said Heltisle, and Bartholomew was impressed to see him bow so low that he was bent almost double. ‘It is an honour to have you within our walls once more. May I offer you wine?’

  ‘You may,’ said Lancaster coolly. ‘But I am not here to exchange pleasantries, Heltisle. Simeon informs me that Wymundham and Raysoun are dead. Is this true? And why are there no builders at work and the scaffolding dismantled? My coffers are not bottomless, you know; if Bene’t’s new hall is not completed soon, you will have to look elsewhere for a gullible benefactor.’

  ‘It is not our fault,’ protested Heltisle in alarm. ‘It was all going excellently: the upper floor was almost completed and Raysoun spent most of his time supervising the workers and making sure no one shirked. Then he fell and was killed, and Michaelhouse stole all our labourers. If you want someone to blame for this setback, look to Michaelhouse.’

  As one, every Bene’t scholar’s gaze went from the Duke to Bartholomew, who suspected he cut a sorry figure with his darned and patched tabard and clothes dishevelled from his tussle with the porters.

  ‘This is one of them,’ explained Caumpes to the Duke. ‘He complained to the Sheriff that our scaffolding posed a danger to the public, and then enticed away our labourers while the matter was rectified.’

  ‘Well?’ demanded the Duke, regarding Bartholomew coldly. ‘Have you come to demand money before our craftsmen are reinstated? Speak up!’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I did not even know the men working on Michaelhouse were from Bene’t. I am a physician and I came here at the request of the University’s Senior Proctor to examine the bodies of the two Fellows who died.’

  ‘Well, you are far too late for that,’ said Heltisle with grim satisfaction. ‘They were buried days ago.’

  Chapter 7

  THE DUKE OF LANCASTER HAD NO INTENTION OF standing in Bene’t’s chilly yard in the gathering gloom of dusk to discuss whether or not Michaelhouse had wronged the College into which he had ploughed a good deal of his own money. He tossed his riding gloves to Osmun, ordered Ulfo to stable his horse, and strode to the hall, where more servants flitted around him like moths around a candle.

  Bartholomew, flanked by Heltisle and Caumpes, watched the Duke being made comfortable and thought about the last time he had been in Bene’t’s hall. Although only eight days before, it felt longer. He had been attending Wymundham, fetching him wine from behind the serving screen to calm him after the death of his friend Raysoun.

  Had Wymundham been telling the truth about Raysoun’s last words? And had Wymundham then been killed to prevent him from telling Michael? Adela Tangmer, Matilde and the Stanmores had all told Bartholomew that Bene’t seethed with dissension. Was that why Heltisle had ordered the bodies buried before the Proctors’ office had given permission for them to be released, to prevent Bartholomew from learning the truth about the way they had died? Or was it simply because Michael’s illness had delayed matters too long, and, quite naturally, Bene’t College was reluctant to keep decomposing corpses in the church it used for its daily prayers? They would certainly be within their rights.

  But if Wymundham had been murdered, then how did Mayor Horwoode fit into the plot? Was he an innocent bystander, whose garden was selected at random as a place to dump the body? Or did he and his Guild of St Mary, which had co-founded Bene’t, have something to hide? And was the Duke of Lancaster aware of or involved in the murder? Since the Duke had made his squire a Fellow of Bene’t for the express purpose of keeping an eye on the place, he clearly sensed the College was not all it should be. With a sinking heart, Bartholomew suspected he was about to be drawn into something he would rather avoid.

  ‘Michaelhouse must have been planning this for weeks!’ Caumpes burst out, evidently unable to restrain himself any longer. ‘It is a coincidence, is it not, that all this happens the instant Runham is elected as their new Master?’

  Bartholomew wondered if that were true. It usually took many months for the concept of a building to become reality, and yet Runham had arranged for plans to be drawn up, materials to be delivered, a workforce hired and money to pay for it all within a few days. On reflection, Bartholomew decided that Caumpes’s accusation was undoubtedly true. And if that were the case, then Runham must have been anticipating Kenyngham’s resignation, too, and had been ready to spring into action the moment he, Runham, was elected.

  ‘It would not surprise me to learn that Michaelhouse was responsible fo
r Raysoun’s death,’ Caumpes continued hotly. ‘It certainly seems to have benefited Michaelhouse.’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘That is not true. Michaelhouse has always striven for peaceful relations with its neighbours, whether townsmen or other Colleges.’

  ‘That is a lie!’ Heltisle pounced immediately. ‘Michaelhouse cares nothing for peaceful relations. As a case in point, Runham recently dismissed his College choir, and almost caused a riot by refusing to pay them the bread and ale they were owed.’

  Bartholomew was silent, cursing Runham for his shortsighted actions.

  ‘And worse, we have been subjected to an almost continual stream of unemployed singers hoping to be allowed to join the Bene’t choir,’ Heltisle went on. ‘That none of them has the slightest iota of musical talent seems irrelevant to them. They are not interested in singing, only in whether we can feed them after the Sunday mass.’

  ‘Why did you want to examine the bodies of our scholars?’ the Duke asked of Bartholomew curiously.

  Simekyn Simeon rested his elegantly clad feet on the table, and observed the spectacle that was being played out in front of him, with half-closed eyes. That Simeon declined to acknowledge that it was he who had insisted Michael should conduct a more rigorous enquiry indicated to Bartholomew that his errand had not been on the command of his Master. Simeon, it seemed, had acted independently. Bartholomew wondered whether that was significant.

  He hesitated before he replied to the Duke’s question, not sure that it was wise to mention his suspicions that the two Bene’t Fellows might have been murdered when their killer could be standing in the hall at that very moment. While Simeon might be certain that the killer was not a Bene’t man, Bartholomew wanted to reserve judgement until he knew more about the College that Michaelhouse had wronged.

  ‘He is reluctant to answer you, my lord,’ said Caumpes, when Bartholomew did not respond immediately. ‘Could that be because I am right, and Michaelhouse had them killed, and now it wants to hide any evidence of it?’