A Masterly Murder хмб-6

by Susanna GREGORY

  De Walton shook his head with utter conviction. ‘It will be the last place he will look. He will want to stay as far away from here as possible. Now go.’

  ‘But you have not yet told us what we most want to know,’ said Michael. ‘Is Wymundham’s killer Heltisle or Caumpes?’

  ‘Work it out yourselves,’ whispered de Walton. ‘I do not want to be slain for betraying him.’

  ‘Caumpes,’ said Bartholomew suddenly, as something clicked in his mind. ‘Both Robin of Grantchester and my brother-in-law told me that Caumpes likes boats, and whoever killed Wymundham would have needed a boat to take the body from here to Mayor Horwoode’s garden.’

  De Walton glared defiantly at him, and for a moment Bartholomew thought he would not confirm his reasoning. Then the Bene’t Fellow nodded, lowering his head to look at the lumpy, leprous patches on his hands. ‘Caumpes is the only one of us able to row a boat. Like you, Simeon and I surmised that he took the body downriver and dumped it on Horwoode’s land.’

  ‘Why there?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Because it was dark and secluded, I imagine,’ said de Walton. ‘You do not want to row further than needful when you have a corpse in your boat.’

  ‘And so it is Caumpes you fear,’ said Michael. ‘Not Simeon or those cursed porters?’

  De Walton shook his head miserably. ‘Caumpes is fiercely loyal to Bene’t, and will do anything to protect it. I sympathise with him to a point: it was horrible to see the likes of Wymundham giving us a reputation for quarrelling and slyness, but I cannot condone murder for it.’

  ‘Why did you not tell us this when Wymundham’s body was found?’ demanded Michael irritably. ‘It would have saved a good deal of time – and a good deal of agitation on your part.’

  ‘I was afraid. I hope to God you are able to prove all this and arrest Caumpes, because I am a dead man if you do not.’

  ‘Who else knows he is the culprit?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Only Simeon. He said he would pay Osmun to help me leave Bene’t safely, and then he would seek out more evidence that will confirm Caumpes’s guilt before passing the matter to you. It was he who said that Caumpes will not think to look for me here.’

  ‘Then Simeon was wrong!’ came a sudden yell from outside. There was a crash and a thump, and with horror Bartholomew saw that the door had been slammed shut. He leapt towards it and thudded into it with his shoulder, but the bar had been replaced and all he did was bruise his arm.

  ‘I told you to leave!’ screamed de Walton in terror. ‘Now he will kill us all!’

  ‘He will not kill us,’ snapped Michael impatiently, refusing to yield to the panic that had seized de Walton. ‘If we make enough noise, someone will come and let us out.’

  ‘But they might be too late, Brother,’ said Bartholomew in a soft voice, looking upwards: smoke had began to seep through the loose planks of the roof.

  Suddenly, there was a dull roar, as the pitch that had been used to render the roof watertight caught alight. Bartholomew ducked as burning cinders began to rain down on his head. Then, faster than he would have imagined possible, the whole ceiling was alive with yellow, flickering flames and the air was sharp with the acrid smell of burning.

  ‘We are trapped!’ shrieked de Walton. ‘We are all going to be burned alive!’

  Bartholomew coughed as swirling smoke seared the back of his throat. It billowed downward relentlessly, bathing everything in a dull grey so that he could not even see the candle Michael held in his hand. A burning timber smashed to the ground, just missing him, and immediately the floor began to smoulder. Flames flickered this way and that, running up the tinder-dry walls and licking at the pile of blankets that had covered de Walton.

  De Walton began to scream, so that Bartholomew thought the flames were already consuming him. He snatched up a blanket and groped his way forward, but it was only terror that was making the Bene’t scholar shriek; he crouched in his corner like a hunted animal, wailing and howling. Another timber crashed from the roof with a terrific tearing sound, and de Walton’s yowls of fright grew louder still. Bartholomew groped around the walls, trying to find something he might use to smash open the door.

  ‘Out of the way,’ ordered Michael, hauling him back with a powerful hand. He took a deep breath, crouched down with his shoulder hunched into his side, and ran at one of the walls like an enraged bull. The wooden side of an ancient lean-to provided no obstacle for a man of Michael’s strength, and he was through it and powering out into the fresh air beyond almost as though it did not exist. Bartholomew followed, dragging the hysterical de Walton after him by the scruff of his neck.

  ‘That was impressive!’ gasped Bartholomew, eyes smarting as he glanced back at the hole in the wall, now surrounded by a halo of flames.

  ‘I recognised that voice,’ shouted Michael furiously, gazing around him while Bartholomew bent over de Walton, who sobbed and retched in the grass. ‘It was Caumpes!’ He clutched Bartholomew’s arm and pointed into the darkness. ‘And there he is! After him!’

  Peering through the gloom with watering eyes, Bartholomew could just make out dark shadows moving through the trees on the path that led to the College. Michael was after them in an instant, dragging Bartholomew with him. They ran blindly, barely able to see where they were putting their feet. Bartholomew stumbled over woody cabbages when he strayed from the path, then fell heavily when he lost his footing over the gnarled root of a pear tree.

  ‘Got you!’ he heard Michael yell in triumph.

  He scrambled to his feet, his haste to help Michael making him more clumsy than ever. Someone grabbed him and he struck out, trying to dislodge the grip on his tabard.

  ‘Bartholomew, stop!’ he heard someone yell. ‘It is me! Simekyn Simeon! Stop this flailing before one of us is hurt!’

  Bartholomew could just make out the soft features of the Duke of Lancaster’s squire peering at him. The man Michael had seized with such glee was Heltisle, who was gazing around him in confusion, not understanding why two Michaelhouse men should be attacking him in his own gardens.

  ‘Damn! I thought you were Caumpes,’ panted Michael, releasing the Bene’t Master impatiently and scanning the surrounding trees.

  ‘Caumpes is over there!’ shouted Simeon, pointing to a shadow that was moving quickly and purposefully towards the opposite end of the grounds. ‘And he is escaping!’

  ‘I thought it was Caumpes I saw skulking in the trees,’ snapped Michael, regarding him accusingly. ‘But it was you.’

  ‘We were not skulking,’ objected Heltisle indignantly. ‘This is my College. If anyone was skulking, it was you!’

  ‘We have no time for this,’ said Michael, leaning against a tree with a hand to his heaving chest. ‘Caumpes is getting away. Chase him, Matt, or he will elude us.’

  Wondering why Michael could not pursue his own villains, Bartholomew set off at a run across the grassy swath towards Luthburne Lane, the narrow alley that ran along the back of Bene’t College. The shadow bobbed ahead of him, moving fast because he was on familiar ground.

  Aware of footsteps behind him, Bartholomew glanced round to see Simeon on his heels. He slowed, uneasy with the Duke’s henchman at his back, and certainly not keen on the notion of a knife between his shoulder blades. Caumpes may have ferried Wymundham’s body to Horwoode’s garden, but Bartholomew felt he had no cause to trust any of the Bene’t men yet. The fact that it had been Simeon who had visited Langelee in Michaelhouse before the scaffolding had collapsed and almost killed Michael made Bartholomew far from certain that Caumpes was the only Bene’t man with murderous inclinations.

  Simeon shoved him forward. ‘Do not stop! We can catch him. Quick, climb over the wall.’

  He formed a stirrup of his hands, and Bartholomew found himself projected upward, so that he could grasp the top of the wall that surrounded the College. It was not as high as the one that protected Michaelhouse, nor as thick. He straddled the top, and leaned down to offer Simeon his hand. The c
ourtier grasped it, and scaled the wall in a way that suggested he had not spent all his time playing lutes and writing poetry for the Duchess’s ladies-in-waiting.

  ‘We have lost him,’ said Bartholomew, looking up and down a lane that was still and silent. ‘I cannot see him any more.’

  ‘There!’ yelled Simeon, grabbing Bartholomew’s arm so violently that the physician almost lost his balance. ‘He is heading for the river. Come on!’

  He leapt from the top of the wall and began to run. Reluctantly, Bartholomew followed.

  ‘He will not be able to pass through the town gate,’ he gasped, breathless from the chase. ‘The soldiers will stop him.’

  ‘He will use his boat,’ yelled Simeon. ‘We must prevent him from reaching it. Hurry!’

  The foppish, effeminate scribe suddenly seemed a good deal more energetic than Bartholomew. He led the way along the path that ran parallel to the King’s Ditch, towards where it passed one of the three main entrances to the town – the Trumpington Gate. Ahead, Bartholomew saw a shadowy figure climb the leveed bank of the Ditch and drop down the other side.

  ‘That is where we keep the boat,’ shouted Simeon, running faster. Bartholomew struggled to keep up with him, his heart pounding and the blood roaring in his ears. He scrambled up the bank, feeling his leather-soled shoes slip and slide on the wet grass. He reached the top and saw a dark shape moving into the middle of the canal. Caumpes had found his boat and was about to escape by rowing past the gate to the river beyond.

  ‘I will alert the guards,’ said Bartholomew, tugging on Simeon’s sleeve. ‘They will stop him.’

  ‘They will not listen to you,’ said Simeon. ‘But they know I am the Duke’s man; I will go. You follow him along the canal bank, and grab the boat if it comes close enough.’

  Bartholomew gazed at him in the darkness. ‘I do not think that is very likely …’ he began.

  Simeon gave him a shove that all but sent him into the murky, sluggish waters of the Ditch, then tore off towards the guardhouse, yelling at the top of his lungs. Bartholomew regained his balance and began to trot along the top of the slippery bank, keeping his eyes glued on the dark shape that was being propelled steadily away from him.

  ‘You cannot escape, Caumpes!’ he shouted, knowing that Caumpes was very likely to escape if he reached the river before Simeon roused the guards.

  ‘Damn you, Bartholomew!’ yelled Caumpes, rowing furiously. ‘Everything was beginning to come right until you and that fat monk interfered.’

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Bartholomew. ‘You are a killer and you will not go free.’

  Caumpes’s bitter laughter verged on the hysterical. ‘I am not the man you seek. I have killed no one.’

  ‘But you tried,’ shouted Bartholomew, thinking that if he could engage Caumpes in conversation, the man would have less breath for rowing. He could see Caumpes quite clearly in his boat, which was moving at a brisk walking pace along the still waters of the Ditch. It was only a few feet away from him, and if Bartholomew had not known about the treacherous currents that seethed in the seemingly sluggish waters and of the sucking mud and clinging weeds that lined its bottom, he might have considered leaping in and grabbing the skiff to prevent Caumpes’s escape. ‘That fire almost killed three people.’

  In the faint glow of the lamps from the gatehouse, Bartholomew could see Caumpes close his eyes in an agony of despair. ‘Stupid!’ he muttered. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ called Bartholomew, frantically searching for a topic that would slow Caumpes’s relentless advance towards the freedom of the river. ‘Your whole life is at Bene’t.’

  For a moment, Caumpes faltered, and the rhythmic pull of oars in the water was interrupted.

  ‘Everything I have done was for the good of Bene’t,’ he said, his voice so low as to be all but indiscernible. ‘Tampering with the Michaelhouse scaffolding was for the good of Bene’t, so that the workmen would return to us and not waste their time on Runham’s cheap courtyard. And I became embroiled in all this just so that I could raise the money for our own buildings to be completed.’

  ‘Is that what all this is about?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Money for buildings?’

  ‘Do not judge me, Bartholomew,’ cried Caumpes, agitated. ‘I love my College. I swore a vow of allegiance to it, and if that entails using my skills as a buyer and a seller of goods to greedy town merchants, then so be it.’

  ‘How can killing your colleagues be good for Bene’t?’

  ‘You are wrong about that,’ said Caumpes. ‘You will have to look elsewhere for your murderer.’

  ‘I do not believe you,’ said Bartholomew, but something in Caumpes’s quiet conviction disturbed him. He felt as though all the answers he and Michael had reasoned out were slipping away from him, and that there was a darker, more ruthless plan than Caumpes’s desperate attempts to protect a College whose petty rivalries and quarrels were tearing it apart.

  They had almost reached the Trumpington Gate, and Bartholomew could hear Simeon’s exasperated yells as he argued with soldiers loath to leave their warm guardhouse on some wild-goose chase thought up by scholars. Bartholomew saw that Caumpes was going to slip past them, and that would be that. Once he was on the river, he would be free: he could head north to the mysterious, impenetrable wilderness of the Fens, or he could travel south towards London. Or he could just disappear into the myriad ancient ditches and waterways that surrounded the town and lie low for a day or two until the hue and cry had died down.

  Bartholomew gazed at the little skiff with a feeling of helplessness. He glanced around quickly, to see if there were another boat he could use to give chase. There was nothing except a length of rope that lay coiled on the bank. He snatched it up and, keeping a grip on one end, hurled the other as hard as he could towards Caumpes. It landed squarely on the Bene’t man’s head before slithering harmlessly to the bottom of the boat. Contemptuously, Caumpes shoved it away from him, and then began rowing for all he was worth.

  He was already past the guardhouse, and the infuriatingly slow figures that walked sedately towards the bridge would never stop him. Bartholomew hurled the rope a second time, feeling it catch on something. He heard Caumpes swear and scramble about to try to disentangle it. Bartholomew hauled with all his might, then stumbled backward as Caumpes managed to free it. Bartholomew threw it a third time, putting every last fibre of strength into hurling it as hard as he could, while the little boat bobbed farther and farther away from him.

  Caumpes was ready, and caught the rope as it snaked towards him. Then, while Bartholomew was still off balance from the force of the throw, he jerked hard on his end, and the physician went tumbling down the bank and into the fetid waters of the Ditch below.

  Bartholomew heard the exploding splash and felt the agonising chill of the Ditch as it soaked through his clothes. He spat the vile-tasting water from his mouth in disgust, kicking and struggling against the clinging mud and weeds that closed around his feet and legs. In the distance, he saw Caumpes’s boat move a little faster as it neared the stronger current of the river, and then it was gone.

  ‘Take my hand,’ instructed Simeon, slithering down the bank of the King’s Ditch to Bartholomew, who floundered and flapped like a landed fish. ‘Do not struggle, or we will never get you out. I saw a sheep drown here only last week.’

  Bartholomew stopped struggling and reached out to grab Simeon’s hand, trying not to snatch at it and pull the Duke’s man into the water with him. The mincing courtier had surprising strength, and it was not long before Bartholomew was extricated from the weeds and mud of the King’s Ditch to stand dripping on the bank. For the second time that day, Bartholomew stank like a sewer.

  ‘When I said you should stop Caumpes, I did not mean you to dive in after him,’ said Simeon dryly. ‘He is not that important.’

  ‘He is a killer,’ said Bartholomew, teeth chattering uncontrollably.

  ‘Yes, he probably is,’ agreed Simeo
n. ‘But even so, it was foolish of you to jump into the water to stop him. I will track him down anyway.’

  Bartholomew spat again, trying to clear his mouth of the revolting taste of sewage and refuse. He wondered whether he would fall victim to the intestinal diseases that plagued those of his patients who drank from it. The sulphurous taste made him think that people who preferred it to walking a short distance to one of the town’s wells were probably insane, and beyond anything he could do for them.

  ‘We should go back to Bene’t before you take a chill,’ said Simeon, unfastening his cloak and draping it around Bartholomew’s shoulders. ‘Come on. A brisk walk should warm you.’

  He led the way at a cracking pace along the High Street to Bene’t College. Osmun answered his hammering, furious because the new porter Walter was nowhere to be found.

  ‘I will wring his neck when I find him,’ Osmun vowed, his face a dark mask of fury. ‘He was paid a week in advance, and he still owes us two nights. I will kill him!’

  Bartholomew made a mental note to tell Walter to repay the outstanding sum unless he wanted Osmun to claim it back in blood and broken bones. Simeon shot the enraged porter a cool glance of dislike before taking Bartholomew across the courtyard to where Michael and Heltisle waited in the hall.

  ‘Caumpes escaped, then?’ said Michael, eyeing Bartholomew’s wet clothes. His evident disappointment was tempered by amusement that the physician had once again muddied himself in the King’s Ditch, although he could scarcely reveal to Simeon that it was Bartholomew who had overheard his conversation with Heytesbury earlier that day.

  ‘It was the fault of those soldiers,’ muttered Simeon angrily. ‘It was like trying to rouse the dead. They were so agonisingly sluggish – putting on their helmets and buckling their swords before they would leave the comfort of their little guardhouse – that by the time they reached the bridge, all we could see was Caumpes rounding the corner on his way to freedom. I will have words with the Sheriff about that band of worthless ne’er-do-wells.’

  ‘I do not believe this,’ said Heltisle miserably. ‘I have known Caumpes for years. He has never struck me as a murderer. And now he has fled, and will continue to damage my poor College from afar.’