The Ely Testament

by Philip Gooden

  He pushed himself up from the bed and made for the door. Mute went after him. He closed the door behind them. Tomlinson did not think to lock it. They left the hotel by the same route, down the narrow stairs, through the stable yard and out into Market Street. Mute’s plan was to steer Tomlinson away to an open area of town, perhaps to the meadows and parkland below the cathedral, but it did not seem as though there’d be time for that.

  The light was beginning to go and the mist to gather. They passed the front of the Lion and then struck off at a diagonal towards Palace Green. Luck was still with Mute. The rawness of the afternoon meant that there was almost no one to be seen, despite the fact that Evensong must soon be starting in the cathedral.

  ‘My throat is burning,’ said Tomlinson. ‘That is a fiery liquor in your flask.’

  Mute peered urgently through the gloom, looking for somewhere secluded. There were a few trees on one side of the green, together with a couple of elegant houses, while on the other side stretched the wall of the bishop’s palace. Not a living thing was visible on the green apart from a handful of ducks sitting, incongruously and innocently, on the grass. Almost in the centre of the open area was positioned a cannon which, Mute thought, had been captured at Sebastopol.

  He was walking beside Tomlinson, close enough to grasp him. He kept glancing sideways as if fearful that the other man might suddenly topple over.

  ‘Do you want me to die?’ said Tomlinson. His voice was loud but strained, as if it cost him an effort to speak.

  ‘No,’ said Mute.

  ‘Lie,’ said Tomlinson.

  His companion said nothing.

  ‘I think I’m going to shoot the cat,’ said Tomlinson.

  For an instant, Mute thought he meant the words literally before realizing that Tomlinson was announcing he was about to vomit. He did not move away, and after a moment Tomlinson brought himself back under control. They were still walking, slowly, and by now were in front of the cannon. They stopped by its black mouth, and faced each other. Mute’s eyes darted about. There were a few people at the western entrance to the cathedral but they were dozens of yards away and the light was fading.

  ‘What have you done to me, Mute old chap?’

  ‘Nothing, Tomlinson. I swear it.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ repeated the other. ‘You have done something. I cannot feel my feet.’

  ‘I expect it’s the drink. You keep away from me!’

  Tomlinson was staggering towards Mute, his arms stretched out in front of him and the fingers of his hands crooked as if he were going to seize the other round the throat. Mute raised his stick, fumbled with the ivory handle and a six-inch spike shot out from the bulbous tip of the thing. He pointed the stick in Tomlinson’s direction. Mute had not handled the flick stick in anger (or fear) before, but he had frequently practised with it since purchasing the implement earlier in the year from a swordsmith’s in Hanover Street.

  He was still frightened of Tomlinson, even of a dying Tomlinson, and he wielded the stick more to ward off the other than to injure him. He was panicky and oblivious to witnesses now. By a lucky stroke he caught Charles Tomlinson across his brow, and blood began to well up from the deep gash almost straightaway. Tomlinson may not even have been aware of the injury until the blood was dripping into his eyes. He raised a hand and inadvertently smeared it down his face, then he looked at his reddened palm in confusion. Again Mute jabbed at his old friend with the tip of the flick stick, and then for a third and fourth time.

  But these blows were partly warded off by Tomlinson’s waving arms and Mute succeeded in inflicting only small wounds in the region of Tomlinson’s neck. The blows were sufficient to keep him at bay, though, before he abruptly sat down on the grass and then started to scrabble his way under the barrel of the cannon, frantically using his elbows and heels. It was as if he were seeking shelter.

  Tomlinson came to a stop when the back of his head struck the crosspiece of the undercarriage of the cannon. Gurgling sounds emerged from his throat, and his legs twitched. Mute stood, stooping slightly and watching him for a few more moments. He glanced up towards the western face of the cathedral. There were still a handful of people around the porch. Were they looking in his direction? Had they heard any sounds? Had there been any sounds to hear, apart from the dying man’s gurgles which were now shifting into wheezes? Mute was in such an agitated state that he could not be certain whether these bystanders were aware of what was happening or not.

  What was certain was that he couldn’t stay here. He believed that Charles Tomlinson was done for; he thought he must be done for. Mute twisted the bulbous end of the flick stick so that the spike retracted. Then he took off, going at a fair lick, in the reverse direction from the one he’d walked with Tomlinson only a few minutes earlier. He needed to get back to the Lion Hotel and up to Tomlinson’s room before a general alarm was raised. He needed to get his hands on the Ely testament which, he was sure, was in the table drawer. He remembered also the key that Tomlinson had been brandishing.

  What about the others though? The others who, like the pseudonymous Mute, had gone to Ely that Sunday afternoon in search of Charles Tomlinson? Any one of them might have killed him, if he or she had had the means and been ready to seize the moment. Someone taking a bird’s-eye view over the town centre and able to penetrate the gathering mist might have seen Bella Chase making her way into the cathedral via the western entrance, at the moment when the man she had briefly fantasized about as a lover was breathing his last under the Sebastopol cannon. The same bird – not one of the ducks still squatting on the Palace Green but perhaps one of the gulls that haunted Ely docks – might almost simultaneously have glimpsed Ernest Lye as he walked, almost unaware of his surroundings, through the Dean’s Meadow. At one point, Lye scraped his hand against a rusted gate and the blood that came as a result left a stain on his cuff.

  As for the other two suspects, they were out of sight, invisible to any bird. Cyrus Chase was in the workshop at the bottom of his garden. He was contemplating his security coffin. He was wondering whether there’d be any response from Willow & Son to the letter which he had written pointing out – in quite moderate tones, he thought – that Charles Tomlinson was not the creator of the coffin-bird but that he had purloined the idea from him, Cyrus Chase. Cyrus’ mood was not, in fact, quite as grim as it might have been. Already his thoughts were moving beyond the coffin-bird to another more advanced device that would be a safeguard against premature burial.

  The third man who had cause to hate Tomlinson, and who had actually ridden over to Ely with the intention of confronting him, was George Eames, the perpetual curate of St Ethelwine’s. He too was out of sight, tucked away at the back of St Mary’s and on his knees, in prayer. His actions that afternoon were exactly as he’d described them to Inspector Francis. He had gone through a change of heart. He had been directed by his better angel and abstained from a terrible sin. Once he finished a lengthy period of prayer and contemplation he sought out the most obscure, the lowest area of the town and took lodgings for the night with the landlady who had reddish hair.

  And Lydia Lye? She had no motive to hate her cousin Charles, none at all. She enjoyed his company and, like almost everyone else, had been diverted by his traveller’s tales. She might even have entertained dreams that he could relieve her of the boredom of her life with Ernest in Upper Fen. While her husband was wandering about the town, she remained behind in the warmth and comfort of the Lion Hotel, ignorant of the death of her cousin a few hundred yards away. There is no reason to include her in the list of suspects except that it sometimes happens in this sort of thing that the least likely person has done it.

  So not one of these five – Mr and Mrs Lye, Mr and Mrs Chase, the Reverend Eames – had any part in Tomlinson’s murder. The responsibility and the guilt belonged solely to Mute, at present scurrying back through the gloom, his flick stick at his side.

  Summer, 1645

  Alarmed by the smoke and
the shouting, the guards and Trafford and Mr Martin and the strangers from Ely came running out of the little office, and Loyer came in their wake. Seizing his opportunity – they had not bound him or tried to constrain him in any way, perhaps out of some residual respect for what they believed was his royal status – he broke away and darted across the hall. Anne was by the front door, where she’d retreated after starting the fire. Swathes of smoke billowed across the hall. She was terrified by what she had done. Some of the household were already attempting to put out the flames in the priest-hole, with blankets, buckets of water. It was all confusion.

  Loyer saw Anne by the door, and hesitated. She gestured towards the dark outside.

  ‘Run!’ she mouthed.

  But Loyer fumbled at the locket about his neck and pressed something into her hand.

  ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘The King gave it to me but I have no use for it now.’

  He slipped through the door, cloak flapping behind him, hat on head. Mary stumbled down the stairs. By this time the other soldiers were alerted and they set off in pursuit of Loyer. The fugitive was making for the church, or the outline of its tower on this fading summer evening. He scrambled over the drystone wall into the churchyard. But another group of armed men, by now familiar with the lay of the land, had circled round and were ready to intercept him by the church gate.

  Loyer hesitated and turned back. Too late. He was encircled by the men. It was the lank-haired Trafford who finally cut him down, stabbing at him repeatedly with a pike. Loyer staggered away, hoping for sanctuary in the church, but the whole band entered St Ethelwine’s and finished him off on that sacred ground. Anne and Mary stood, petrified with horror, watching the spectacle. Behind them smoke issued from their home.

  The Murderer’s Story, Part Three (Monday, 20th October)

  Early on the afternoon of his death, Eric Fort called on Mute in his little rented house in the little side street in Cambridge. At this point Fort had no idea of Tomlinson’s fate. The last time he’d seen that gentleman was in the St Ethelwine’s crypt, from which Tomlinson emerged dusty, frustrated and empty-handed. Then the undertaker’s man underwent his change of heart during the long night in the crypt before making his ‘confession’ to George Eames. Now he was fulfilling his obligations towards Mute. He was doing so with reluctance because the only report he was bringing was of a failed search.

  As we know, the columnist for Funereal Matters, growing tired of waiting for Fort to bring him news on the previous day, had gone off to see (and murder) Tomlinson for himself. So he was already aware that the search of the crypt had been fruitless. But, after committing his first murder, Mute got hold of the so-called Ely testament from Tomlinson’s room in the Lion Hotel. The little leather-bound volume was in the drawer of the table. He had also picked up from the floor where the drunken Tomlinson had dropped it the padlock key to Chase’s workshop. He wasn’t sure why he’d taken the key. Perhaps he was curious to see for himself the coffin-bird to which he had made reference in one of his columns.

  Eric Fort was relieved that Mute was not angry or particularly despondent over the news that Tomlinson retrieved nothing from the crypt. It was almost, he thought, as if the other man already had the information. Encouraged, he raised the subject of payment.

  ‘What for?’ said Mute. ‘You haven’t brought me any good news.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to go on keeping an eye on Mr and Mrs Ansell?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘The fact is,’ said Fort, ‘I am in need of a little cash and cannot wait.’

  ‘Then go and see my uncle, as they say. You must have something to put in pawn.’

  Sensing he would get no further on the money front, Fort explained to Mute that he was resolved to live a better life in future and that he really wanted nothing more to do with Tomlinson. He also meant that he wanted nothing more to do with Mute, though he didn’t quite have the nerve to say this to the man’s face.

  ‘I don’t think you will be having anything more to do with Charles Tomlinson.’

  ‘Has something occurred?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mute quickly. ‘Not that I am aware of.’

  ‘I have received a request from our London friends at Willow & Son,’ said Fort. ‘They have asked me to visit a Mr Chase in Prickwillow Road in Ely. He has made a complaint that involves our mutual friend, Tomlinson. It seems that I cannot get away from the man.’

  ‘Is the complaint to do with a mechanical bird and a security coffin?’

  ‘Why, yes, it is. You are a veritable mind-reader.’

  ‘I am familiar with the situation, Mr Fort.’

  ‘Are you sure that nothing’s happened to Mr Tomlinson?’

  ‘Would you be sorry if it had?’

  ‘Not altogether.’

  ‘Well then, we can rest easy.’

  The two men were silent for a moment. They were sitting in the shadows in the front room of the little terraced house. The curtains were drawn so that only a narrow gap was left in the middle. This was not to ward off the sun or to protect the meagre furniture – it was overcast – but because in his present mood Mute apparently preferred the gloom. It was cold inside the room as well. It seemed to Fort that there was something different about Mute. He wondered whether, like himself, the other had experienced some sort of change of heart. If so, it might not be a change of heart for the better.

  Fort was no fool. He was aware that something undesirable had probably happened and that it involved Charles Tomlinson. At once, he wanted to get away from Mute. He stood up.

  ‘Where do you think you are going?’

  ‘I told you. I am going to Ely to see this man Chase and to hear from him the exact nature of his complaint.’

  ‘I’ll say goodbye to you then.’

  Mute accompanied him into the narrow hallway. He picked up his stick from the hallstand as if he was intending to go outside with Fort. He toyed with the ivory handle and seemed about

  to say something further but, in the end, he simply stood aside to allow Fort to open the front door and go.

  Once Eric Fort had gone, Mute remained in the hall. Several times he twisted the handle of the flick stick and, by the light that came through the smeared fanlight, observed the satisfyingly prompt emergence of the spike. It was soundless and deadly, a beautiful mechanism, as the Hanover Street swordsmith had promised him. It amazed Mute that less than twenty-four hours previously the spike had helped in the killing of a man. The spike and the hip flask together. These facts amazed him but they did not frighten or oppress him.

  Mute was not suffering from any pangs of conscience. When he finally returned to the little house on the previous evening, with the Ely testament in his pocket, he even had the appetite to prepare a small supper for himself. After eating, he slept soundly. He woke up at his usual time and it took a moment before it occurred to him that on the day before he had killed a man.

  Now he was asking himself whether a second murder might be necessary. Putting on his hat and coat and tucking his stick under his arm, he left the house. There was only one direction Eric Fort could have gone in if he was heading for the railway station and, sure enough, when Mute reached the main road he saw the figure of the undertaker’s man in the distance. Yet Fort did not turn right at the junction which led to the station but continued walking towards the centre of town.

  Mute took care to stay at a distance. As they drew nearer the heart of Cambridge, the streets grew more crowded. At one point, Fort came to a stop outside a pawnbroker’s and gazed fixedly at the window. Mute noted that he’d taken the advice to visit his uncle. He observed him from afar. Despite the gap separating them, and the passing people and traffic, he could sense the other man’s reluctance and hesitation. Indeed, after a few moments, Eric Fort walked on without entering the pawnshop. Mute trailed him for another few hundred yards. They were in the older and grander area of the city now, among the great colleges with their noble chapels and spacious l
awns. All at once Mute saw a woman he recognized on the other side of the street. She was walking with a man. He ducked into the lodge of the nearest college. He thought for an instant. Then he emerged, almost with a spring in his step. He practically ran across the road.

  ‘Mrs Ansell! Mrs Ansell!’ he cried.

  Introductions followed. He said, ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Ansell. You are a toiler in the snares of the law, I believe?’

  Less than two hours later, Mute (or Arthur Arnett, to give him his full and proper name) was waiting on the platform of the Cambridge railway station. Like the Ansells, he was expecting the Ely train. He was at one end of the platform, his coat collar turned up and his top hat tilted down so as to conceal as much of his face as possible. He had removed the tinted spectacles which he wore as Arthur Arnett, editor – he liked the academic, slightly mysterious look that they provided – but which his eyes did not require. In addition, Mute must have found the imminent arrival of the Ely train a fascinating prospect for he kept his gaze turned away from the station buildings and down the track on which it was due to appear.

  Meanwhile Tom and Helen Ansell and Eric Fort were talking together. Or rather Mrs Ansell and Fort were talking, and Mr Ansell was listening like a dutiful husband. The principal thing was that they were unaware of his presence, and therefore they were not asking themselves why he, Mute or Arthur Arnett, was about to board the same train. When the train came in, Mute climbed into the last carriage, a third-class one, while the other three got into a second-class nearer the front. He had deliberately chosen to ride third-class.

  After meeting the Ansells on King’s Parade, Mute had almost come to the decision not to murder Eric Fort. He changed his mind again when he happened to pass the coffee-house where he had talked with Mrs Ansell. Now he spotted the three of them inside – the Ansells and Eric Fort – in earnest conversation. At once he became afraid that Fort was somehow going to betray him, to reveal their mutual links with Tomlinson.