A Deadly Brew

by Susanna GREGORY

  Bartholomew had never been good at ascertaining whether people were telling the truth, but Bingham was convincing. It would have been difficult for him to pass a poisoned bottle to Grene without having it intercepted or seen by another person – unless he had an accomplice, of course. But then, surely the accomplice would be working to quell the allegations that Bingham was the murderer – for his own sake as much as Bingham’s – and yet no one was speaking in Bingham’s defence. The tall, willowy figure of Eligius sprung into Bartholomew’s mind again. But what was his motive? Eligius did not want to be Master, so why should he want Bingham convicted of Grene’s murder? Was it to promote the relic in some bizarre way – slaying one of its proponents to make people believe it was worth dying for?

  A commotion in the bailey drew Tulyet over to the narrow window. He threw open the shutter and leaned out.

  ‘Let him in,’ he yelled to the sergeant on the gates. Moments later, feet pounded on the newel stair, and Cynric burst breathlessly into the room.

  ‘Thought I would find you here,’ he gasped, ignoring the Sheriff and addressing Bartholomew. ‘Master Colton of Gonville asks that you come immediately. Father Philius is dead!’

  Chapter 8

  Although the death of a scholar was not the concern of the Sheriff, Tulyet went with Bartholomew and Michael as they hurried down Castle Hill towards Gonville Hall.

  ‘You seem to have most of your soldiers out in the Fens, Dick,’ said Michael. ‘Given that the outlaws have started to attack places in the town itself – the Round Church and poor little St Clement’s Hostel to name but two – perhaps you would be better advised to keep a few back to patrol the streets.’

  ‘Damn these villains!’ spat Tulyet in sudden anger. ‘What am I supposed to do? It is like looking for a needle in a haystack! Do I concentrate my searches on the Fens, or do I withdraw men, as you suggest, and look for them here? Your descriptions will help, but names would have been better.’

  ‘I think we can provide you with some of those,’ said Michael comfortably. ‘I have an informant who knows the identities of several of these smugglers. The attack I was investigating on St Clement’s Hostel distracted me – I should have told you before now.’

  Tulyet stopped walking abruptly, and seized the fat monk’s sleeve. ‘How have you come by such information?’ He shook his head quickly. ‘Never mind. Just give me the names.’

  ‘A nun has all the information you need,’ said Michael. ‘We brought her with us from Denny.’

  ‘Well, where is she? Can I speak with her now?’

  ‘I thought she would have passed this information to you on the way back from Denny,’ said Bartholomew, reluctant for a well-known public figure like the Sheriff to visit Matilde’s house and alert the outlaws to Dame Pelagia’s whereabouts. ‘She had plenty of time.’

  ‘Of course she did not,’ said Michael, treating Bartholomew to the kind of look that he normally reserved for students who made exceptionally stupid observations. ‘First, it would not have been wise to discuss such matters on an open trackway – who knows who might have been listening from among the bushes at the roadside? Second, the fewer the people privy to this kind of information, the better – what one does not know, one cannot be forced to tell – and, anyway, Julianna was with us a good deal of the way, and I did not want her knowing more than she already does. And, third, Dame Pelagia is an old lady and needed all her energy for walking. She did not have excess breath to be chattering with me.’

  Bartholomew’s recollections of their journey suggested that it was probably Michael who had needed all his breath for walking, while Dame Pelagia had remained very sprightly, even at the end of the walk.

  Tulyet made an impatient sound at their digression. ‘Never mind all that. I want to speak with her immediately!’

  Michael shook his head. ‘I do not want anyone to know her whereabouts because I believe her to be in grave danger from these outlaws. I will ask her for the information and pass it to you as soon as we have finished with Father Philius.’

  ‘No,’ said Tulyet, hauling on Michael’s sleeve as he made to walk on. He gestured up at the sky. ‘If you tell me now, I can set about hunting these rogues immediately, while there is enough daylight. If you tell me later, I will have to wait until tomorrow, and by then who knows what might have happened? Go now. I will accompany Matt to see about Father Philius.’

  Michael made as if to demur, but Tulyet stood firm. The Sheriff was right: the sooner the outlaws were rounded up, the sooner he, Bartholomew and Dame Pelagia would be safe. Michael nodded acquiescence, and headed off towards The Jewry. After a moment of hesitation, Cynric slipped away after him, and Bartholomew was reminded, yet again, what a dangerous position they were in.

  A student was waiting outside Gonville Hall to conduct them to Father Philius’s room. In it, Master Colton paced back and forth, pulling at his beard in agitation, while Bartholomew stopped dead in his tracks and stared. Philius’s room looked as though a fierce wind had blown through it. Parchments were scattered everywhere, and the table and several stools had been overturned. The collection of fine crucifixes had gone, too – the hooks where they had hung were empty. As Bartholomew recovered himself, and walked towards the body that lay on the bed, glass and pottery crunched under his feet from the bottles and cups that had been shattered.

  He knelt on the floor, and eased the dead scholar over onto his back. Philius’s eyes were wide open, there were traces of blood around his white lips, and his face revealed an expression of profound shock. Tulyet leaned over Bartholomew’s shoulder to look, and crossed himself hurriedly.

  ‘It seems to me that the evil humours, for which you treated Philius recently, must have burst from him,’ said Colton from the doorway as he watched. He gestured around the room. ‘He must have done all this in his death throes. We decided we should leave everything as we found it, so that you could be certain it was these evil humours that killed him. I cannot have lies circulating that Philius died in suspicious circumstances, not so soon after the rumours that he was poisoned by his own book-bearer. What will people think of us?’

  Bartholomew stood up, and turned to face Colton.

  ‘But I think Father Philius has been murdered,’ he said quietly. He looked around the room. ‘And it seems he put up quite a fight.’

  ‘Murdered?’ echoed Colton nervously. ‘But that cannot be so! The porter heard and saw nothing, and these days – with the outlaws at large – we keep our gates locked during the day as well as the night.’

  ‘But he must have heard something,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Surely the sound of that table falling would have been audible from the porter’s lodge?’

  ‘Send for him,’ ordered Tulyet. ‘We shall see.’

  With a long-suffering sigh, Colton hailed a passing student, and instructed him to fetch the porter.

  ‘We might know what happened for certain once I have looked more closely at Philius’s body,’ said Bartholomew. He crouched next to the dead Franciscan, and inspected his face. Colton reached past him and hauled the bed-cover up, so that it covered the body. Bartholomew twisted round to gaze at the Master of Gonville Hall in astonishment.

  Colton shook his head firmly. ‘I am sorry, Bartholomew, but I cannot permit this. I will not have it put about that a murder has taken place in my College in the wake of this nasty affair of the poisoned wine. If I had thought you would try to prove Philius had been murdered, I would never have allowed you to come here. I expected you simply to confirm that Philius died as a result of his earlier affliction.’

  ‘Did you ask me to come because you want to know what really happened, or because you want me to say what you hope to be true?’ asked Bartholomew quietly. ‘Because I will not lie for you.’

  Colton looked angry. ‘Philius could not have been murdered! I ate breakfast with him this morning! He had been very careful about his personal safety after Isaac’s death: he locked his room at all times, even when he was in it. You are m
istaken if you suspect foul play. I tell you, poor Philius had an attack of the same evil humours that struck him before.’

  Bartholomew disagreed. ‘He seemed to have recovered from that.’

  ‘Seemed, yes,’ insisted Colton. ‘But you know diseases appear to be healed and then return with greater vigour. You must have seen how that happened with the Death?’

  That was true. Bartholomew had seen many plague victims who seemed to be mending, but promptly died just as their family and friends were giving thanks for their deliverance. But he was certain that was not what had happened to Philius. He looked reappraisingly at Gonville Hall’s Master. Did he have something more to hide than a desire to suppress rumours that might damage his College’s reputation? Colton had been present in his College when Isaac was murdered and now, it seemed, he had seen Philius at breakfast – a matter of hours before the man had been dispatched. And Colton had been at the feast where Grene had died.

  ‘If the humours had burst forth from his body as you suggest,’ said Bartholomew, ‘then we would see signs of it. He would have vomited, or had some other kind of flux, and there would be a recurrence of the small blisters I saw earlier.’

  ‘What are you saying, Matt? That someone forced his way in and killed him?’ asked Tulyet.

  Bartholomew nodded slowly.

  ‘That is ridiculous!’ snapped Colton dismissively. ‘I have told you already that Philius has been careful since Isaac’s death. He kept his door locked at all times, and allowed few people in. And you are asking me to believe that someone entered the College, and killed him in broad daylight? As I told you, I saw him fit and well at breakfast when I joined him here, in this very room, this morning.’

  ‘If he had been fit and well at breakfast, why should he suddenly die a couple of hours later?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘If his humours were unbalanced, he would have complained about it then.’

  ‘Perhaps it came upon him all of a sudden,’ said Colton, exasperated. ‘And how could a murderer gain access to his room? The door was locked.’

  ‘Was it locked when you found his body?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘With him dead inside?’

  Colton considered. ‘Well, no. It was unlocked when I found him like this, but he might have opened it as these evil humours burst forth in an attempt to call for help.’

  ‘Then why did he not die outside in the yard?’ persisted Bartholomew. ‘Unless you moved the body?’

  ‘I have touched nothing!’ said Colton angrily, enunciating each word. ‘And the reason I have touched nothing is so that we might quell any vicious rumours that Philius’s death was anything but natural. I did not want you claiming that I have tampered with evidence. And, anyway, see reason, man! You are reading far too much into all this. Philius died, purely and simply, of a surplus of the evil humours that sickened him a few days ago.’

  ‘Why do you keep saying Philius’s last illness was caused by evil humours?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘We both know very well that he was poisoned with the same substance that killed Grene and Armel.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort!’ retorted Colton. ‘I suggested to Philius, only this morning, that his ailment a few nights ago was a case of an overly acidic purge. He was not poisoned.’

  Bartholomew stared at Colton in disbelief. ‘Really? And I suppose this new diagnosis has nothing to do with the fact that you do not want your College associated with the murder of University scholars? Did you and Philius sit down together and discuss how you might best protect Gonville Hall from unseemly rumours?’

  Or, he thought, perhaps it was more sinister than that, and Colton had ensured Philius would not live to spread tales of tainted purges and slain book-bearers.

  Colton flushed furiously. ‘I resent that implication, Bartholomew. You are accusing me, and one of your own medical colleagues, of plotting to tell the most atrocious lies!’

  Bartholomew sighed, weary of argument. ‘But even you must see there are problems with your conviction that Philius’s illness and subsequent death were natural, Master Colton – such as why did Philius display the same symptoms of poisoning as did Armel and Grene, if his ailment was caused by an excess of bad humours? And why was Philius so careful to lock his door, if he had nothing to fear?’

  Colton said nothing, but glowered at Bartholomew, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  ‘You said Philius secured his door,’ Bartholomew continued relentlessly, ‘but why was his room unlocked when you discovered his body? The answer to that is because his killer did not latch it when he left.’

  ‘That is dangerous, unfounded speculation!’ hissed Colton. ‘How can all this be true? Philius would hardly unlock the door and allow a killer in his room!’

  ‘He probably did not know this person was a killer when he admitted him,’ said Bartholomew, with more patience than he felt Colton deserved, ‘but it is clear from the state of the room that they struggled.’

  Colton shook his head angrily, and gestured at Philius. ‘There is no blood to suggest a wound, and his head is not caved in. There are no marks on his corpse at all. You should have evidence before you make such horrible assertions.’

  ‘Give me a few moments to inspect the body, and I might be able to provide you with some,’ said Bartholomew, fighting not to lose his temper. He felt vulnerable in the room where Philius had probably been murdered, even with Tulyet standing behind him, and Colton’s unsettling attitude was not making him feel any better. He considered giving in to Colton’s demands, just to ensure measures were not taken to ensure his silence over Gonville’s precious reputation. He had not wanted to become involved in the investigation of the suspicious deaths in the first place, and bitterly resented the fact that it seemed to have placed him in such a dangerous position.

  Colton scowled at him, but then, to Bartholomew’s surprise, he yielded. ‘Very well, then. I suppose that unless you satisfy yourself that poor Philius died of a flux of bad humours, rumours will follow that Gonville is seeking to hide the truth. But, be assured, Bartholomew, I will ask Doctor Lynton from Peterhouse to verify anything you find. I will not have my College dragged through the mire because you are unwilling to admit that you misdiagnosed Philius’s illness the first time.’

  He walked to the other end of the room so he would not have to watch, and began to pare his nails with a small knife in the light from the window.

  Bartholomew bit back several scathing remarks that flooded into his mind, and bent to inspect Philius once again. It appeared that the Franciscan had prepared himself for bed when he was struck down – wary of over-exerting himself following his close brush with death a few days before – because he wore a long brown nightgown with a silk robe over the top. His feet were bare, so perhaps he had already been asleep. Bartholomew felt carefully around the friar’s head, but Colton was right in saying there was no wound. Then he looked at the dead man’s neck, but there was no bruising and no marks to suggest throttling. Finally, he drew the gown up, and looked for puncture wounds. With Tulyet’s help, he turned the body over, but there was nothing to be seen.

  Perhaps he had been wrong after all, he mused, and the internal damage sustained from the poison Philius had swallowed earlier had killed him. Bartholomew had worried about the long-term effects of the poison when he first attended the friar. But the expression on Philius’s face did not seem right somehow. Bartholomew knew this was insufficient evidence on its own, but it set bells of warning jangling in his mind. He turned the corpse onto its back, and stared down at it, perplexed. And then a tiny glitter caught his eye.

  On the left side of Philius’s chest, a sliver of metal was embedded, all but invisible among the hair. Bartholomew leaned closer and saw that only the merest fraction protruded. Someone had clearly forced it in as far as it would go to hide it from view. Bartholomew took it between thumb and forefinger, and drew it out with some difficulty. Tulyet edged closer to watch, while Colton abandoned his manicure and stood next to him, his mouth agape with horror. The metal obje
ct was a nail, as long as Bartholomew’s hand was wide, and whoever had used it had known exactly where to strike to bring about almost instant death.

  ‘It penetrated his heart,’ explained Bartholomew, holding it up for Colton to inspect. Colton’s eyes were wide in a face that was suddenly bloodless. ‘He would have died quickly and, as you can see, the wound did not bleed much. My interpretation of what happened is that Philius was asleep, but was roused by a knock at his door. The killer forced his way in and Philius began to fight – hence the scattered parchments and the upturned furniture. The killer then must have thrust the nail into Philius’s chest. If you look here, you can see a little hole in his gown, and there is a small bloodstain that barely shows because of the dark colour.’

  ‘There must have been two of them, Matt,’ said Tulyet, putting both hands firmly behind his back as Bartholomew offered him the nail to examine. ‘Philius would hardly stand still while someone stabbed him. One must have held him while the other drove the nail into him.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Bartholomew. He stood behind Tulyet, and wrapped an arm around his throat to demonstrate. ‘Philius was not a large man. His assailant might have managed to grab him from behind, and hold him still, like this, and the rest would be easy.’ He made a quick, downwards motion with the nail in his hand to illustrate his point, making Colton flinch.

  ‘This nail,’ said Colton, unable to drag his eyes from the grisly object. ‘Why did the killer not take it back?’

  ‘Probably because it prevented the wound from bleeding,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And because it was virtually invisible anyway. The gown Philius is wearing will do well enough as a shroud, and I imagine the killer did not anticipate anyone taking it off to conduct a more rigorous investigation. You were meant to believe he died naturally. As indeed you have been suggesting.’

  Colton slumped down on a stool, and clasped unsteady hands together. ‘This is dreadful! We said a mass yesterday to give thanks for his recovery. Afterwards, he and I went for a walk to the Franciscan Friary.’ He gazed at Philius’s body, swallowed hard, and looked up at Bartholomew. ‘Are you certain this nail killed him? Could it not have been there some time before today?’