by C. J. Sansom
'I am the London assistant coroner,' Harsnet said, mildly enough. 'Master Shardlake is working with me. We wanted to see how you fared. We hoped to see a guard at the house.'
'He is out the back.'
'May we come in?'
Cantrell's shoulders sagged wearily as we followed him down the musty corridor to the parlour, Harsnet leading the way. The place still smelled of unwashed skin and bad food. We went into the dirty little parlour. I saw the window to the yard had been repaired. Outside a burly man wearing a sword sat on an old box, eating bread and cheese. Cantrell gestured at him. 'He insisted. I don't want a man in the house. He can stay out there.'
I looked round the parlour. There was a broken dish on the floor by the table, pottage leaking into the floorboards.
'My dinner,' Cantrell said gloomily. 'I dropped it when you knocked. I tried to put it on the table, but missed.'
'You should get your eyes seen to,' I said. 'Remember I said I know a physician who would see you for no fee.' I would pay Guy's fee, I decided. If I could do it for Bealknap, I could do it for poor Cantrell.
Cantrell stared at me. I wondered what his eyes looked like exposed, what disease ailed them. He was silent a moment, then said, 'I am afraid, sir. Afraid he will say I am going blind.'
'Or he may say new glasses would help you. Let me make an appointment.'
'How long will I have to have that man here guarding me?' he asked sullenly.
'He may be needed for some time yet,' Harsnet said. 'I have to tell you that Francis Lockley has disappeared and the woman he was living with has been killed. The man who broke in here — could it possibly have been Lockley?'
Cantrell stared at us, his mouth falling open with surprise. 'No, it wasn't Francis. He was short, and the man who broke in here was tall. Dr Goddard was a tall man.'
'With a large mole on the side of his nose, Serjeant Shardlake said?'
'Yes.'
'And with a cut on his head after you thwacked him with that piece of wood,' Barak added approvingly.
'I don't know, I don't know,' Cantrell said with sudden petulance. 'Why do you all have to come here, asking me questions? I do not understand what is happening. I just want to be left alone, in peace.'
Harsnet looked at him without speaking for a moment, getting his attention. 'We have just been to see Dean Benson,' he said. 'He told us about the wretched scheme of Goddard and Lockley's, extracting patients' teeth under dwale. He told us you reported them to him.'
'Why did you not tell me?' I asked.
Cantrell sank down on a stool, a gesture of utter weariness. Ts that why Dr Goddard is after me?' he asked. 'Because I told?'
'Dean Benson never told Goddard about that,' I said. 'But why did you not tell me?'
'Much good it did me when I told on him the first time. I always suspected Dr Goddard guessed what I'd done, though he never said anything. His tongue seemed harsher than ever after that.' The young man sighed deeply. 'It does no good, trying to do right. It is better to be left alone.' He looked up at us with those huge swimming eyes behind his glasses. 'It wasn't just patients they took teeth from, you know. Word got around among the beggars and pedlars that there was money to be had with no pain for young folks with good teeth. Many healthy folks came to the infirmary.' I thought suddenly of the attractive young woman I had seen yesterday. 'Dr Goddard could pick and choose. I was always surprised nobody in authority knew, all the beggars did. But no one takes notice of beggars, do they?' He relapsed into silence, staring at the floor.
'I will have a word with the guard.' Harsnet looked at Cantrell, shook his head, then went out of the back door. He spoke briefly with the guard, then returned.
'There's been nothing suspicious while he's been here. But he's unhappy at not being allowed into the house. He even has to sleep in the shed which is full of old carpenter's junk. Why will you not let him in, Goodman Cantrell?'
'I just want to be left alone,' Cantrell repeated. I feared he might burst into tears. I put a hand on Harsnet's arm, and he followed me out of the parlour. I turned in the doorway and spoke to Cantrell. 'I will speak to my physician friend. I will arrange an appointment for you.' He did not reply, just sat looking at the floor.
OUTSIDE, HARSNET SHOOK his head again. 'The smell of that place. Did you see how dirty his clothes were?'
'Yes, he is in a bad way. Poor creature.'
'Going the same way as Adam Kite, by the looks of him,' Barak said.
'I will help him if I can,' I said.
'You would help all the mad folks in London. They will drive you as mad as they.'
'Serjeant Shardlake merely wishes to help,' Harsnet said reprove ingly. I rubbed my arm at a sudden twinge from my wound. 'How is your arm?' Harsnet said. 'I forgot to ask.'
'Much better. But I have just had the stitches out. I hope that guard knows his business. I don't want to lose Cantrell too.'
Harsnet looked at me. I could see that like Barak he thought I was getting too involved in the troubles of the young ex-monk. 'He's competent enough. He is the last man I have. If we need any more we will have to rely on Sir Thomas Seymour.' He sighed heavily. 'In the end it will be as God wills.'
HARSNET RETURNED TO his office at nearby Whitehall, and Barak and I rode home along the Strand. It was late afternoon now and the shadows were lengthening.
'What the hell happened in that tavern last night?' Barak asked. 'Is Lockley the killer, and killing his wife part of his plan? If that were so, surely he would leave her to the end, as the seventh victim, not reveal his identity now?'
'I cannot see him as the killer. He does not have the fierce, cold intelligence the killer must have. Unless he is a good actor. Guy says the killer must be acting most of the time, to be able to pretend to be normal.' I shook my head. 'But how could Lockley know anything about the law, enough to prepare that letter for Roger?'
'I don't know. I can't see it being Goddard either, though. It doesn't feel right, somehow.'
'I agree. Dr Goddard sounds more and more like a man obsessed with status and money, not with religious feeling.'
Barak grinned sourly. 'Unlike our pure brother, coroner Harsnet.'
'He's not so bad. He has some good qualities.'
'He'd like to convert you. Make you a godly man too.' He snorted. 'How could anyone believe in a merciful God after what we've seen in that tavern?'
'I suppose some would say that God gives man free will and if he abuses it that is his doing, not God's.'
'Try telling that to Mrs Bunce.'
AS WE TURNED into Chancery Lane I remembered that I had agreed to see how Adam Kite was faring. And I must ask Guy to see Cantrell. I could understand the young man's fear. What if Guy told him he would end wholly blind;
We took the horses round to the stable, then went into the house. As soon as I opened the door, Joan came hurrying down the stairs. 'Dorothy Elliard's maid Margaret has been round with a message,' she said.
'Has something happened to her;' My heart was suddenly in my mouth.
'No. She's all right. But she has a Master Bealknap in her lodgings. He collapsed on her doorstep. Margaret says he's at death's door.'
'Bealknap;' I asked incredulously. 'But he barely knows Dorothy.'
'That was the message, sir. It came half an hour ago. Margaret asked you to go over there as soon as you returned.'
'I'll go now.'
I opened the door and hurried back down the path, walking rapidly round to Lincoln's Inn, where candles were being lit in the windows as darkness fell. Margaret let me in, her plump face anxious.
'What is going on?' I asked.
'I heard a knocking at the door early this afternoon, sir, and when I answered I found this man in a barrister's robe collapsed on the doorstep. The mistress got the cook to put him to bed. He said you knew him—'
'I'm in here,' Dorothy called from the parlour.
'I'd better go back to him, sir,' Margaret said. 'He's in a bad way.' She hurried away with a rustle of skirts. I went into
the parlour, where Dorothy was standing by the fire, studying the discoloured section of the wooden frieze.
'I must get this section redone. It was so poorly repaired, it irritates me now I spend so much time sitting here.' Her face was pale, and I sensed she was making an effort to stay calm. 'Thank you for coming, Matthew.'
'What has happened? Why is Bealknap here?'
'Margaret found him collapsed on the doorstep. Asking for help. She called me. He was lying there white as a sheet, gasping for air.' There was a slight tremble in her voice. I realized the sight must have brought back the memory of Roger, lying by the fountain. Damn Bealknap, I thought.
'Margaret said you've put him to bed.'
She spread her hands. 'What else could I do? He said he was dying, asked for my help. Though I barely knew him, and liked him no better than you did.'
'He knew a woman would not turn him away.' I frowned. 'I will go and deal with him.'
'Matthew,' Dorothy said quietly. 'Do not be too harsh. I think he is very ill.'
'We'll see.'
THEY HAD PUT Bealknap in a bedroom; from the schoolboy-sized tennis racquet on a wooden chest I guessed it was Samuel's old room. Margaret was leaning over the bed, trying to get Bealknap to drink something from a cup. He lay in the bed in his shirt. I was shocked by how bad he looked, his face against the pillows as pale as death in the light of the candle on the bedside table. He was conscious, though; he stared at me with wild, terrified eyes.
Margaret turned to me. She looked distressed. She, too, had seen Roger's corpse. 'I'm trying to get him to drink some weak beer,' she said.
'Leave us,' I said gently.
She put down the cup and left the room. I looked down at Bealknap. It was a strange thing to see him so close up, and so helpless. His disordered yellow hair was thinning, a large bald patch at the crown. Some of the drink Margaret had given him had spilled around his mouth. He looked utterly helpless, and his frantic stare showed he knew it.
'Why have you come here?' I asked quietly. 'You know what this household has suffered.'
'I knew — Mistress Elliard - was still here.' His voice was faint, his breath rasping. 'I knew she was kind. I have — no one else — to help me.'
'Anyone would help a fellow barrister in a state of collapse.'
'Not me. Everyone hates me.' He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment. 'I am finished, Shardlake. I cannot eat, the food just passes through me. Dr Archer said the last purge would wear off, but it has not. And I bleed sometimes, I bleed down there.'
I sighed. 'I will arrange for Dr Malton to come and see you here.'
'I think it is too late. My vision blurs, I feel faint all the time.' With a great effort, he pulled a skinny hand from beneath the covers and grasped my wrist. I tried not to flinch at the unexpected gesture. 'I have never believed in God,' he whispered, still fixing me with his agonized gaze. 'Not since I was a child. The world is a battleground, predators and prey. The rules and conventions of the law only disguise the fact. But now I am frightened. The Catholics say if you confess your sins and repent at the end, God will receive you into Heaven. I need a priest, one of the old type.'
I took a deep breath. 'I will have Dr Malton fetched now, and he may know a priest who will confess you. But I think, Bealknap, with proper treatment you may come round. I will send Margaret back in.' I tried to rise, but he still held me fast by the wrist, his grip surprisingly strong.
'You believe, don't you?' he asked.
I hesitated. 'I have no — certainty. I have not had for some time.'
He looked surprised. 'I always thought you did. All your concern for rules and ethics, the way you always looked down on me, I thought you were one of the godly folk.'
'No.'
'Then why help me now? When you hate me? I have done some hard things to you. Because you looked down on me as though I were a louse, not a man.' A brief flash of anger in the pale eyes.
'You are still a fellow human being.'
Bealknap seemed to think for a moment. He bit his lip, showing long yellow teeth. Then he said, 'The priest may not come — in time. At least I can tell you about one sin, tell you what I did. Though I do not know why he asked—'
'What do you mean, Bealknap? You are making no sense.'
He closed his eyes. 'Near two weeks ago. After you lost me the case involving that marsh cottar. The next day a man called at my Chambers. His name is Colin Felday.' He paused for breath. 'He is a solicitor, he hangs around the Westminster Sanctuary looking for clients and I am one of the barristers he brings them to. Not a — respectable man, one of those you would disapprove of.' He tried to laugh, but the cracking sound turned into a cough. He opened his eyes again, full of fear and pain. 'He said he had a client who would pay good money for information I could give him about you.'
'What sort of information;'
'Anything I could give. About your work habits, where you lived. Even about what sort of man you were. About your man Barak. I told him you were a starchy prig, bitter about your fate as a hunchback. I said you were a persistent lawyer. Like a damned terrier dog. And no fool.' He tried to laugh again. 'Oh, no, never that.'
I stared down at him. This was the killer, it must be. This was how he had found out about me; this solicitor had perhaps written to Roger at his instruction. 'Who is Felday's client;' I asked sharply. 'What is his name;'
'He said he could not tell me that. Only that he wished you no good. That was enough for me.' His eyes were full of anger now. This might be a confession, but I saw there was no real contrition. Only terrible fear at the prospect of death.
'I think Felday's client has killed five people,' I said. 'I have been hunting him. And he has been hunting me. He sliced my arm open, and hurt Barak's wife badly.'
Bealknap's eyes slid away. 'I didn't know that. No one can blame me for that.' I smiled wryly at the reappearance of the old Bealknap; somehow I knew then he would survive.
'Where does Felday live;' I asked.
'Some cheap lodgings by the cathedral. Addle Hill.'
'I will have Guy fetched here,' I said quietly. 'And I will ask about a priest.' Bealknap nodded weakly, but did not open his eyes. His confession had exhausted him, or perhaps he could not meet my eye now. I left him, closing the door quietly behind me.
DOROTHY WAS sitting in her chair by the fire, Margaret on a stool opposite her. They both looked drained. 'Margaret,' I said. 'Could you bear to go back and sit with him? I think if he gets some liquid into him that would be good.'
'Is he going to die?' Dorothy asked bluntly after Margaret left the room.
'I do not know. He thinks he is. I am going to have Guy fetched here. Bealknap wants a priest too, one who can confess him.'
She gave a mirthless laugh. 'Bealknap never struck me as a believer in the old ways. Or in anything save lining his pockets.'
'I think for him it is a sort of insurance.' I shook my head. 'He is a strange man. It is known he has a massive chest of gold locked away in his chambers. But no wife, nor friends, only enemies. What drove him to be so?'
Dorothy shook her head. 'Who can say? Well, I hope he lives. I would not want another death here. Thank you for coming, Matthew.' She smiled. 'Margaret and I — we did not know what to do. Somehow we could not think.'
'That is hardly surprising in the circumstances.'
She got up. 'At least let me give you some supper. I'll wager you have not had any.'
'No. There is something I must do urgently.'
About these killings?'
'Yes. A possible lead.'
She came over to me, and took my hand. She looked down at it. 'You have been through so much. You look more tired than ever.'
'I think we may be near the end of the trail.'
'Seeing that man Bealknap lying on the doorstep, so white, it brought everything back. When I first saw Roger's body.' Suddenly she burst into tears, bringing her hands up to her face. I forgot myself, and took her in my arms.
'Oh Dorothy,
poor Dorothy . . .'
She looked up at me with her tear-streaked face. Looked into my eyes. And I felt if I kissed her now, she would respond. But then she blinked and took a step back. She smiled sadly. 'Poor Matthew,' she said quickly. 'Running from pillar to post to help me.'
'Whatever I can do, at any time.'
'I know,' she answered quietly.
I bowed and went out. On the front doorstep I paused, suddenly overcome with emotion. She did feel something for me, I felt that now. I looked out over Gatehouse Court. It was dark, only a few lights at the windows. I took a deep breath, and began walking briskly homeward. I would send Peter to fetch Guy. Barak and I had another mission now, to find Felday. My heart, already beating fast, beat harder and my legs shook a little at the thought that perhaps at last we had found our route to the killer.
Chapter Thirty-three
I WALKED RAPIDLY back to the house. As I stepped inside I felt suddenly faint. I stood with my back against the door for a moment, taking deep breaths. Then I climbed the stairs to Barak and Tamasin's room. I knocked, and Barak's voice bade me enter.
They made, at first sight, a peaceful domestic scene. Tamasin was sitting at the table, sewing; Barak was lying on the bed. He looked relaxed, but then I noticed a slight frown on his brow, and one foot jiggled up and down.
'Jack,' I said, 'I am afraid I need you for a while.'
'Not another,' he said, his eyes widening.
'No.' Tamasin looked at us with anxious eyes. I smiled reassure ingly. 'It is all right. We need to go on an errand.'
'What's happened?' Barak asked as we walked back down the stairs. He seemed glad to be called to action now he knew we were not going to gaze at another tortured victim. I told him about Bealknap's confession about the solicitor Felday. 'You go drink- ing with some of the jobbing solicitors,' I said. 'Do you know him?'
'I've had him pointed out to me,' Barak answered. 'Thin, sharp- faced fellow. Gets most of his clients from the Westminster Sanctuary, he's well known down there.' He looked at me seriously. 'My friends said he will do anything for money. And they're no angels.'
I paused at the bottom of the stairs. 'We must go and see him now. If this client of his is the killer — and who else would be asking questions like that about us? — we can identify him at last.' I hesitated in the doorway. 'I wonder, should we fetch Harsnet?'
