Bartholomew 10 - The Hand of Justice

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘I added laudanum,’ snapped Rougham. ‘It is said to make people more amenable.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, disgusted. ‘You hoped this potion would make your three colleagues see the “wisdom” of your plans to have Thorpe and the Hand of Justice at Gonville.’

  ‘You dosed them with strong physic in an attempt to make them stay?’ asked Pulham, aghast.

  Rougham rounded on him. ‘We need Thorpe and we need the Hand. And we need Ufford, Despenser and Thompson, too, if we are ever to finish our chapel. Once we have the Hand, we can claim the bones of the sainted Bateman, too. He was poisoned and is therefore a martyr. Then we shall have plenty of relics to attract pilgrims, and our College will prosper.’

  ‘So, that is it,’ said Michael. ‘You want to establish Gonville as a shrine. But Bateman was not a saint – he was a good man, but not a holy one – and murder is not necessarily grounds for a beatification anyway. Which is just as well, considering how many we have around here.’

  ‘We could never claim Bateman’s bones regardless,’ said Pulham, addressing his colleague and looking as though he was seeing him for the first time. ‘Dame Pelagia told me he asked to be buried before the High Altar at Avignon.’

  ‘Lies!’ cried Rougham. ‘He wanted to be here, with his friends.’

  ‘Not if he thought we intended to profit from his death,’ said Pulham firmly. ‘He was not that kind of man, and no one here will allow you to defile his memory in so despicable a manner.’

  ‘Giving folk potions to make them open to your ideas is hardly ethical, either,’ said Bartholomew, more concerned with the way Rougham practised medicine than with his penchant for relics. ‘You might have harmed someone.’

  ‘Well, I did not,’ snapped Rougham. ‘Ufford, Despenser and Thompson swallowed their potions – which I told them would cleanse their bowels and make them better able to learn – but they were not rendered pliable at all.’ He appealed to Pulham. ‘You must see I did it for our chapel! I cannot allow it to remain foundations in the grass for the next hundred years.’

  ‘Then we will pray for help,’ said Pulham sternly. ‘We will not resort to using illicit medicines on our friends – or demanding the bones of our founders when they want to be left in peace.’

  ‘Water of Snails was not all you bought from Lavenham recently,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He says you also purchased a large amount of henbane.’

  ‘You did not … Warde … ?’ stammered Pulham, eyeing Rougham uneasily.

  ‘No! I did not poison anyone. I did buy henbane, but it was for Deschalers.’

  ‘You poisoned Deschalers?’ Pulham was appalled.

  ‘Of course not!’ cried Rougham, becoming agitated. ‘He did not want it for himself.’

  ‘Paxtone said you refused to prescribe strong medicine for Deschalers’s sickness,’ said Bartholomew, wondering whether the grocer had believed the toxin might help him with his pain. ‘You argued about it with him and Lynton.’

  ‘Deschalers was beyond any potion I could give him,’ said Rougham. ‘So I decided not to waste his money on “cures” that would not work. But I did not purchase the henbane for his sickness. He asked me to make him a poison for the rats in his house. He paid me sixpence for it.’

  ‘Rats?’ asked Bartholomew. Perhaps Deschalers’s role in the murders needed further assessment after all, he thought. ‘Do you mean human ones?’

  ‘Do not be ridiculous,’ snapped Rougham. ‘I mean rodents. Being a grocer, with plenty of food on his premises, he had problems with them. He showed me one he had caught – and it was the size of a cat. I made him a poison that would be fatal to any rat coming within an arm’s length of it.’

  ‘How?’ asked Bartholomew sceptically.

  ‘I mixed the henbane with hog grease and cat urine to ensure it stank. One sniff will kill the most robust of pests. Deschalers contacted me a day later and said it was working.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, not sure Deschalers had been entirely honest with Rougham. Had the grocer murdered Bottisham after all, then killed himself to hide the fact? ‘We should go,’ he said, heading abruptly for the door. He was aware of the others’ startled faces, but he did not stop. ‘Thank you for your time.’

  ‘Is that it?’ hissed Michael, trying to slow the physician’s rapid progress across Gonville’s yard. ‘Rougham has just confessed to buying and dispensing poisons. Who knows what more he might have said had we probed deeper?’

  ‘He would have said nothing,’ said Bartholomew, ‘because he is not our killer. I was wrong. I have been wrong about a number of things. We initially assumed Deschalers and Bottisham died in an identical manner, because of the nails. But that is not what happened. Bottisham probably died from being stabbed in the palate, but I think Deschalers was poisoned first.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Michael, grabbing his arm. He steered the physician into the cemetery surrounding St Michael’s Church, where he sat on a tomb with his arms folded, waiting for an explanation. ‘Well?’

  ‘Rougham does not know how to use henbane,’ said Bartholomew, pacing back and forth.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Michael was unconvinced.

  ‘Because he thinks the smell alone will kill rats. It will not – it needs to be ingested.’

  ‘But our only other suspect for the henbane killings is Paxtone,’ said Michael unhappily.

  ‘He is not guilty, either. Paxtone and I also discussed henbane, and he has no more idea about how to use it effectively than does Rougham. In fact, he had to send a student to a library to look up the symptoms of henbane poisoning after Bess died.’

  ‘Then what about the Water of Snails?’ asked Michael. ‘We know the phials Rougham gave Ufford, Despenser and Thompson contained no henbane – or they would be dead – but the ones swallowed by Bess and Warde did.’

  ‘Rougham had four phials and they are all accounted for – we can ask Ufford, Despenser and Thompson, but I am sure they will confirm his story. He was telling the truth.’

  ‘Then we must look at the three men who bought the other six between them: Morice, Cheney and Bernarde. You have always been suspicious of them.’

  ‘I have. But I do not think their Water of Snails was the culprit, either. When we visited Bernarde at his mill once, he confessed to being plagued with a sore head and told us two doses of Lavenham’s strong medicine had not eased his pain. I suspect he took what he bought himself. Meanwhile, Cheney and Morice said much the same. They claimed to have aching heads and backs induced by worry over Edward Mortimer’s foray into commerce, and they also said they took Lavenham’s medicine to cure themselves.’

  ‘Then we are out of suspects – unless the Water of Snails is irrelevant, and has led us astray.’

  Bartholomew gazed up at the sky, and thought about all they had learned. Whoever killed Bess and Warde had probably used the remaining phials from Lavenham’s batch of thirteen. But because the apothecary’s shop was a pile of smouldering rubble, they would never be able to prove the last three phials were missing – stolen from the cupboard the man was careless about locking. He thought about people who might know about henbane and its effects. The killer was not only someone with a knowledge of herbs and cures, but someone who was ambitious and greedy. Then he wondered whether that ambition and greed had led him to steal the Hand, too.

  He started to think about the stuffed glove, which the thief had wrapped in satin in the hope that William would not notice the real one was missing. The item had been stuffed with fur. Bartholomew recalled Dickon’s fur-covered rat, and smiled at the memory of the boy’s outrage when it had been destroyed. Then his amusement faded. The skills used to fashion a toy from an old cloak and sticks, and to make a glove look like a relic, were very similar.

  ‘We are not out of suspects,’ he said in a low, quiet voice. ‘We have just overlooked him.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Michael, who could think of no one.

  ‘Quenhyth. He is our killer.’

  ‘Qu
enhyth?’ asked Michael in astonishment, gazing at the physician in disbelief. ‘How did he come to be in your equations?’

  ‘It is falling into place,’ said Bartholomew as he paced back and forth. ‘I see it now. Quenhyth knows about poisons like henbane, because I have taught him about them.’

  ‘But you teach all your students the same things,’ objected Michael. ‘It could be any of them – Deynman, Redmeadow, and any of the thirty or so others. Poor Quenhyth. He is not a killer.’

  ‘I talked about henbane with Quenhyth, but no one else,’ said Bartholomew, remembering the discussion the two of them had had on their way to Isnard’s house the previous week while Redmeadow and Deynman lagged behind. ‘It was also Quenhyth who “helped” me test Warde’s Water of Snails – and he destroyed it all in the process. I see now that was no accident or carelessness. He poisoned Warde, and then he destroyed the evidence that might have led back to him.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael with calm reason. ‘He had no reason to kill Warde.’

  ‘He wanted Rougham blamed for a suspicious death,’ said Bartholomew, rubbing a hand through his hair as more became clear to him. ‘The day after Warde’s death, he suggested that we should examine the medicine Rougham prescribed. He did not overtly tell me to analyse it – he is not stupid, and that might have led to awkward questions – but he certainly put the idea into my mind. And Matilde’s. He told her his “suspicions” too.’

  ‘And he knows you listen to her,’ mused Michael. ‘Clever.’

  ‘Quenhyth hates Rougham because Rougham humiliated him in the High Street over blackcurrants. He is a proud young man, and does not take such things in his stride. It will have festered. He wrote a note purporting to be from Rougham and sent it with the poisoned phial to Warde. He writes beautifully, and mimicking Rougham’s script would not be difficult for him. You said yourself there were differences between the note Warde received and Rougham’s own hand.’

  ‘But this still does not make sense, Matt,’ warned Michael. ‘If he wanted Rougham blamed for Warde’s murder, then why did he destroy the potion he pretended Rougham had sent? Why not keep the phial and its contents, to let you prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was poison?’

  ‘Because he used henbane, and he was afraid I might remember that he had asked me about it. He was just being cautious, hoping that I would not care which poison was used – just that the medicine was toxic. He basically said as much after he had destroyed it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Michael. ‘I accept that Quenhyth killed Warde in order to have Rougham discredited, but what about the others? If he killed Warde, then he must also have killed Bess.’

  ‘The answers to some of our questions lie with Deschalers’s chest,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘Quenhyth knew it was going to be bequeathed to him – and indeed it was. It is in my room as we speak. But that was only true of the will Deschalers made a month ago. He made a later one, in which there were two beneficiaries – Julianna and Bottisham. No mention was made of a scribe inheriting a chest in the later document. We know this, because we have read it.’

  ‘But how could Quenhyth know what was in these deeds?’ demanded Michael. ‘No one saw the later will, because Pulham stole it the night Deschalers died.’

  Bartholomew sighed. ‘Quenhyth wrote it – he wrote both of them. He was Deschalers’s scribe, remember? He killed Deschalers, so the later document could never be legal – Deschalers died before it was sealed and, as Pulham told us, it is worthless in a court of law. Quenhyth knew it would never be legal, and that is why he wrote it in a scribble, not in his usual careful hand.’

  ‘Quenhyth murdered Deschalers because he wanted a box?’ Michael sounded dubious.

  ‘He is a lad who puts great store by possessions, and who is short of funds at the moment. Also, he has a resentful temper, and would be furious to learn he had been disinherited, no matter how small the bequest. Think about the burglary the night Deschalers died.’

  ‘The night Pulham made off with the unsealed will?’

  Bartholomew nodded. ‘Pulham said there was a second burglar in the house, and Una’s story confirms that. She saw Pulham leave through the front door, and it was Quenhyth who escaped with great agility out of the back window. We know exactly why he was there: Quenhyth wanted the later will, too, because it deprived him of his chest.’

  Michael rubbed his chin. ‘This cannot be right, Matt. Quenhyth may be temporarily impoverished, but he is scarcely a pauper.’

  ‘He likes the notion of locking his belongings away,’ pressed Bartholomew. ‘He is always accusing Redmeadow of stealing.’

  ‘He may have known that Deschalers planned to meet Bottisham in the King’s Mill, too,’ said Michael thoughtfully, slowly coming around to Bartholomew’s point of view. ‘As scribe, he probably penned the note from Deschalers to Bottisham, suggesting a time and place. So, what do you think happened? Quenhyth followed Deschalers to the mill, aware that if Bottisham made up with Deschalers, he would lose his chest? Then what?’

  ‘I suspect he gave Deschalers the same poison he later used on Warde and Bess. We found an empty phial beneath the mill’s sacks. Three phials were in that insecure cupboard in Lavenham’s shop and we have three cases of poison: Deschalers, Warde and Bess.’

  ‘So, did Quenhyth hide the phial we found in the King’s Mill? He buried it under the sacks?’ Michael answered his own question. ‘No. If he had wanted to hide it, then he would have thrown it in the river. He either forgot about it, or it rolled away during the confusion. So, we can conclude that he poisoned Deschalers. How?’

  ‘Deschalers was in agony with his illness, and Rougham would not prescribe proper pain-killing medicines. I imagine Deschalers was only too grateful when a medical student arrived and proffered a substance he claimed would help. Quenhyth is a studious, precise sort of lad, and Deschalers would have no reason to doubt his competence.’

  ‘So,’ said Michael, ‘Deschalers lay dead, and suddenly Bottisham arrived. Quenhyth stabbed him with a nail – his medical knowledge would tell him such a wound would be fatal. Then he pierced Deschalers’s corpse with another nail to confuse us. You trained him well, Matt: it worked perfectly.’

  ‘Then he engaged the waterwheel and threw the bodies into the machinery to muddy the waters even further. But how did he escape without being seen by Bernarde? Or do you think Bernarde did see him, but declined to mention the fact? We will never know, now he is dead.’

  ‘But we know why he is dead,’ said Michael. ‘Quenhyth burned him to ensure he never told. It had nothing to do with the meeting of the King’s Commissioners, as everyone has assumed.’

  ‘The fire allowed him to kill Bernarde and prevent us from proving that three phials of Water of Snails and some henbane were stolen from Lavenham’s shop,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I doubt Quenhyth bought them, because Lavenham would have mentioned it last night. Besides, Quenhyth has no money.’

  ‘And we must not forget what Dick Tulyet told us, either,’ said Michael. ‘After the fire started, only one person was running in the opposite direction – someone in a scholar’s tabard.’

  ‘I thought he meant Wynewyk or Paxtone,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But it was Quenhyth. We know the fire was started using wood that Lavenham had been collecting. Quenhyth was with me the day I heard Isobel complaining about it, so he knew there was convenient kindling to hand. And, of course he killed Bess.’

  ‘Why? She was a lunatic.’

  ‘But she was a lunatic who had some connection to Quenhyth. I should have seen this days ago.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because of his reluctance to attend her requiem mass, for a start. And the way he did not want me to go near her, and kept drawing attention to the fact that she spoke nonsense – so I would not believe anything she said. When I pulled her away from the Great Bridge once, she addressed her questions to him, not to me. I thought she was simply deranged. But she was speaking to a man she thought might give her answers. He must h
ave murdered Bosel, too.’

  ‘Because Bosel haunted the same places as Bess?’ suggested Michael. ‘She confided her story to him, and he threatened to tell? We know Bosel enjoyed blackmailing folk when he could.’

  ‘It was good luck for Quenhyth that Bosel was a witness to Lenne’s accident. We all assumed Thomas Mortimer had killed him. But Thomas had nothing to do with it, just as Constantine said.’

  ‘We have been pondering and floundering for days, and yet, within a few moments, we have many of our questions answered,’ said Michael wonderingly. ‘How has that come about?’

  ‘Because of an act of kindness to a child,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The rat Quenhyth made Dickon was covered in old fur, similar to that used to fill the glove masquerading as the Hand. It suggested to me that Quenhyth stole the relic. And the rest just … came together.’

  ‘Let us hope you are right this time,’ said Michael, standing up and preparing for a confrontation. ‘We do not want to accuse everyone of these crimes before we snare our culprit.’

  Knowing that the Lavenhams did not intend to linger in Cambridge long, and sensing they might make a bid for escape sooner than they had promised, Bartholomew and Michael left the churchyard and headed straight for St Mary the Great. Father William was with Chancellor Tynkell in the room below, and waved to indicate they were to climb to the upper room without him. Lavenham and Isobel were still there, but they wore riding cloaks and brimmed hats that would hide their faces, and their saddlebags were packed. They were leaving.

  ‘It is not just the loss of your shop and the vengeful Mortimers driving you away, is it?’ asked Michael, leaning against the door jamb and presenting a formidable obstacle to their departure. ‘You have been careless, and you are afraid you will be held accountable for the consequences. Warde, Bosel and Bess are dead of poison, and that poison came from you.’

  ‘No!’ cried Lavenham. ‘We always careful in keys and locks.’

  ‘But you are not,’ said Bartholomew coldly. ‘I saw you pretend to unlock a cupboard that had been left open myself. You are not as cautious with dangerous substances as you should be.’ He recalled Dame Pelagia making off with something, too, to demonstrate how easily it might be done. It had not taken the old lady long to identify Lavenham’s laxness.