‘It is my fault,’ said Isobel in a tight, strangled voice. ‘But he seemed a nice fellow, and I have a soft spot for pretty young men.’
‘Quenhyth,’ said Bartholomew flatly. ‘What happened?’
‘He was interested in our work and, since he was going to be a physician, I showed him our workshop. It was only later that we missed a quantity of henbane and some concentrated poppy juice. At first I thought I was mistaken, and put the matter from my mind, but then I heard about Warde and I guessed what had happened.’
‘Then why did you not tell me?’ demanded Michael angrily.
‘We was feared,’ said Lavenham hoarsely, while Isobel started to cry. ‘We feared still. Quenhyth steal henbane. He use it in Water of Snails which he also steal. He care nothing that Isobel blamed.’
‘Why did he poison Bess?’ asked Michael, sounding disgusted. ‘Did she see him doing something to Deschalers, and was murdered for her silence?’
‘She was killed too long after Deschalers’s murder for that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘We have already said her death may hold the key to the mystery. I still think it does.’
‘Quenhyth knew her,’ said Isobel tearfully. ‘From home.’
‘Quenhyth comes from Chepe,’ said Bartholomew, ‘and Bess came from London, of which Chepe is a part. Were they lovers once? Matilde said she thought Quenhyth had been crossed in love.’
‘Then why did he kill her?’ asked Michael. ‘That is no way to deal with old flames.’
‘He always acted oddly around her,’ said Bartholomew, frowning. ‘And I would say, with the benefit of hindsight, that there was a vague recognition in her behaviour towards him. But it does not tell us why he might have killed her.’
‘We shall have to ask him ourselves,’ said Michael grimly.
They walked to Michaelhouse, with Michael urging Bartholomew to hurry so they could question Quenhyth before anyone else died, but the physician dragged his heels, loath to learn for a fact that he had harboured a killer. When they arrived at the College, Redmeadow was strolling in the yard with the Franciscan students, Ulfrid and Zebedee. Michael asked whether they had seen Quenhyth, but the three exchanged looks of disgust and said they would not willingly spend free time in his company, when all he did was accuse folk of stealing.
Redmeadow was not wearing his tabard, and his tunic was exposed. Bartholomew saw yet again the ingrained white substance on it, and recalled Matilde telling him that Redmeadow had appeared white and ghostly the morning after the murders in the mills. The student had told her the mess was the result of a practical joke. Then Bartholomew remembered how much flour dust had been caught in his own clothes when he had searched the mill for clues, and felt a sudden lurching sickness. Whoever killed Deschalers and Bottisham would also have been covered in dust. He pointed to the stains.
‘How did that happen?’ he asked flatly, wondering if all his reasoning had been wrong, and Quenhyth was innocent after all.
Ulfrid answered before Redmeadow could speak. ‘Do not start him off, Doctor. We heard nothing but gripes about the ruin of his favourite tunic all last week. He was furious that Quenhyth borrowed it without asking, and then returned it in such a state.’
‘Two Sundays ago,’ added Redmeadow angrily. ‘Agatha has been able to do nothing with it, and Quenhyth will not even admit that he was to blame! I cannot imagine what he did to it. Lady Matilde saw me in it the next day, so I fabricated a story blaming a practical joke – she caught me by surprise with her blunt question, so I said the first thing that came to my mind. I could see she did not believe me, and I felt a proper fool.’
Bartholomew supposed that Quenhyth had anticipated dust as he embarked on his killing spree, and had prepared himself by wearing his friend’s clothes. ‘Why did you not tell me?’ he asked.
Redmeadow was surprised. ‘Because you are far too busy to bother with something stupid like this.’
‘How do you know it was Quenhyth who dirtied the tunic?’ asked Bartholomew unhappily.
‘Because only he and you have access to our room.’ Redmeadow regarded his teacher uneasily. ‘Do not tell me it was you! You were at the King’s Mill that night – where there is flour dust.’
‘It would be too small for me,’ said Bartholomew, pushing past him to reach his room.
He opened the door with Michael behind him, dreading the confrontation that was about to occur. But when he stepped inside, Quenhyth was on the floor. The student’s face was sheened with sweat and his breathing was laboured. It did not take a physician to see there was something badly wrong.
‘Help me!’ Quenhyth wheezed. ‘I have been poisoned!’
Bartholomew rushed to Quenhyth’s side and began to measure the speed of his pulse, while his mind raced in confusion. Had he been wrong? Was the killer Redmeadow after all, with his incriminating tunic and fiery temper?
‘How did this happen?’ asked Michael, bemused.
‘I do not know,’ said Quenhyth weakly. ‘But my mouth and fingers burn, and I cannot move.’
Michael went to the window to pour a goblet of wine for the lad. He rolled his eyes, to indicate he thought Quenhyth was exaggerating the seriousness of his condition, but Bartholomew pushed the cup away. ‘Do not give him wine.’
Michael regarded him askance. ‘You mean he really is poisoned?’
‘Very definitely. By Deschalers, I suspect.’
‘Deschalers is dead,’ said Michael, bewildered.
‘But the chest he gave his scribe is still here – the scribe he admired for his punctuality, but whom Julianna told us he did not like. And I think I know why. Deschalers was not being generous with his benefaction: he had a score to settle – something to do with Bess.’
‘Bess,’ mused Michael, watching Bartholomew soak a rag in water and wipe the student’s face. ‘We know Deschalers gave her money, despite the fact that he had no use for prostitutes. He was not paying her for her services, but for some other reason. What was it, Quenhyth?’
‘Never mind her,’ groaned the student. ‘She was nothing but a faithless whore who deserved to die. Help me. I am still alive. Close the window, the light hurts my eyes.’
‘Rougham made a henbane-based substance for Deschalers’s rats,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He added pig grease and cat urine, and claimed it would slaughter any rodent that so much as sniffed it. There is plenty of oil on the chest you inherited from Deschalers, and we have all noticed how it stinks. He wanted his henbane to kill more than rats.’
He leaned close to the lock and sniffed it cautiously. It reeked of urine and rancid fat, overlain with the now-familiar odour of henbane. He remembered the odd clause Deschalers had put in his will – that Quenhyth was to keep the box for a year and a day before selling it. Now it was obvious why he had stipulated such a thing: he had wanted to ensure the poison had plenty of time to act.
‘But Quenhyth does not open the chest with his teeth,’ reasoned Michael. ‘And you said henbane needs to be ingested to do its work. How did the poison go from the lock to his innards?’
Bartholomew gestured to Quenhyth’s hands. ‘He bites his nails. The poison went from the chest to his hand, then into his mouth when he chewed his fingers. You can see the stains on them now. And he has started to store his personal food supplies in the box – to keep them safe from you.’
Quenhyth was beginning to shake, although his skin was burning. ‘I have been feeling unwell since Julianna first insisted I took the box from her, but I became far worse after I tried to clean the excess oil from the lock. How will you save me? Will you give me charcoal, to counteract the acidity? Or will a purge expel the sickness from within? Give me a clyster! That heals most ills.’
His pulse was dangerously fast, and he was rapidly losing control of his muscles. Bartholomew knew no clyster, purge or medicine could help now that the poison had worked so deeply into his body. He lifted him from the floor and placed him on the bed, making him comfortable with cushions and blankets.
�
��Drink this,’ he said, mixing wine with laudanum and chalk for want of anything else to do. ‘It will ease the burning in your mouth.’
‘But it will not cure me?’ asked Quenhyth in an appalled, breathless voice. His face was shiny with sweat, and deadly pale. ‘I will die?’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, who was never good at lying. ‘The wine will only ease your passing.’
‘You have committed grave crimes,’ said Michael, pulling chrism and holy water from his scrip, ready to give last rites. ‘You murdered Deschalers, Bottisham, Bosel, Warde, Bess and Bernarde.’
‘I did not mean to kill Bernarde,’ said Quenhyth tearfully. ‘When I set the fire I wanted Lavenham to die and his shop to be destroyed, so no one would associate me with the missing Water of Snails and henbane. Tulyet saw me as I ran away, but I know he did not recognise me.’
‘And Warde?’
‘Because I wanted Rougham to suffer. Everyone knew Warde was ill with his cough, and that Rougham was his physician. It was too good an opportunity to overlook and Rougham deserved it. He should not have embarrassed me and Redmeadow in public. Nor should he have slandered you.’
‘What about Bosel?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Blackmail,’ whispered Quenhyth. ‘He heard Bess’s tale and threatened to tell, unless I paid him lots of money. But I do not have lots of money. I offered him a skin of wine as down-payment.’
‘And it contained quicklime or some such thing?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘It was horrible,’ breathed Quenhyth, tears coursing down his face. ‘And noisy. I decided not to use such a substance again. But you keep your poisons locked away, so I had to go to Isobel instead.’
‘You hurt Bess in some way, and it made Deschalers angry. He asked Rougham to prepare something for his “rats”, but he had a change of heart as he became more ill, and decided to reprieve you. Julianna said he intended to clean the chest, presumably to remove the poison. But you murdered him before he could do so, and brought about your own death in the process.’
‘So, what did Bess tell him?’ asked Michael. ‘That you and she were lovers?’
‘We should have been lovers,’ said Quenhyth feebly. ‘I adored her for years. But she met a messenger called Josse, and fell in love. Josse came to Cambridge to deliver some missive and never returned, so she came to look for him. But grief had turned her wits.’
‘Josse,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘The man under the snowdrift.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked Bartholomew. But he had already guessed. ‘I suppose you were arguing when the snow dropped on him? And then you walked away, leaving him to suffocate?’
Quenhyth swallowed with difficulty. ‘It was an act of God, nothing to do with me. Besides, there was the danger of another fall. I did not want be buried as well.’
Bartholomew looked away, not caring to imagine what Josse must have gone through as he had died, knowing the only man who could help him was Quenhyth – and Quenhyth bore a grudge. ‘I suppose Bess recognised you, and drew her own conclusions. What did she do? Confront you in front of Deschalers?’
Quenhyth nodded. ‘I thought he did not believe her, because he gave her money and sent her on her way – and he dictated the deed leaving me the chest the same night. But he was a changed man in the days before he died – making another will to help Bottisham, giving more coins to Bess and being generous to the poor.’
‘Dying can do that to a man,’ remarked Michael. He glanced at Quenhyth. ‘To some men.’
‘She was comely once,’ said Quenhyth with the ghost of a smile. ‘I did not love her as you knew her – filthy, addled and full of lice. Deschalers said she reminded him of someone called Katherine.’
‘But you did not kill Bess until two days ago,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Why wait so long, when she had already told Bosel and Deschalers her story, and might have confided in others?’
‘I did not want to hurt her. I am not a bad man, and she became less inclined to gabble after her first couple of days here. I hoped she would just move on, but then Sheriff Tulyet showed her Josse’s hat, and she came after me again. I had to kill her then.’
‘Tell me about Deschalers,’ said Michael. ‘You followed him to the King’s Mill and found him in agony, waiting for Bottisham to arrive. Then what?’
Quenhyth closed his eyes. ‘I had given him pain-dulling potions before – because that bastard Rougham would not. I stole some from Isobel.’
‘I thought someone had taken pity on him,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He could not have ridden his horse that Saturday if someone had not stepped in to do what Rougham should have done.’
‘He was so grateful for my sudden appearance in the mill that night that he did not even ask why I happened to be there. He died within moments.’
‘And Bottisham caught you with the body, I suppose?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘He came early and started to screech. I did not know what to do, so I grabbed a nail from the floor and jerked it upwards as I came to my feet. He was leaning over me, and I ended up stabbing him in the mouth. I did not mean to hit him there, but it was effective.’
‘Then you stabbed Deschalers, to make the deaths appear identical. You did not want us to know he had been poisoned, lest we connect you with what had been stolen from Isobel. You dropped both bodies into the machinery, in the hope that the resulting mess would confound us. But there is one thing I do not understand: how did you escape from the mill without Bernarde seeing?’
Quenhyth looked at Michael. ‘I need absolution. Will you hear my confession?’
Michael nodded, and indicated that Bartholomew should leave. The monk was busy for a long time, and the physician began to wonder what other crimes Quenhyth had on his conscience. He went to the fallen tree in the orchard and sat, waiting for Michael to come and tell him it was all over.
He thought about the people who had died, and why. Bottisham had perished because he was willing to extend the hand of peace to a dying enemy. Bess had died because she guessed her man had been left to freeze in the winter snows, and Bosel because he had attempted to blackmail a killer. Deschalers had been murdered because he had rescinded on a promise to give Quenhyth a chest and because Bess had confided her secret to him – and because a madwoman had borne such a close resemblance to the lady he had loved that he had been prepared to listen to her. Warde had been dispatched because Quenhyth intended to teach Rougham a lesson. And Bernarde had been incinerated because Quenhyth wanted Lavenham and his workshop destroyed.
None of the deaths were connected to the King’s Commission or the mill dispute, and Rougham, the Mortimers and Thorpe were innocent of everything except offensive behaviour. Thomas was gone, too, killed because he was too drunk to understand the dangers of looting burning houses. And Paxtone and Wynewyk were guilty only of curious meetings and perhaps the theft of a book or two – although Bartholomew was careful not to think about Paxtone’s confession to Wynewyk that Rougham ‘foiled’ him at every turn. He did not want to know what the two men were plotting against the unpleasant Gonville physician.
‘He is dead,’ said Michael, coming to sit next to his friend at last. He sighed wearily as he leaned forward and rested his head on his hands. ‘His confession chilled me, Matt. His selfish righteousness will haunt my dreams for a long time.’
‘But it is over,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He cannot harm anyone else now.’
Bartholomew woke the next morning with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it was a moment before he understood why. Then the events of the last two weeks came flooding back to him, and he felt like turning over and going back to sleep, so he could blot it from his mind for a little longer. It hurt to think that someone so close to him had committed such wicked crimes, and for such paltry reasons.
‘It was not your fault,’ came Redmeadow’s voice from the other side of the room. He had heard his teacher moving, and knew he was awake. Bartholomew assumed that he had also spent a restless night, reflecting on wha
t Quenhyth had done. ‘Or mine. We had no idea what kind of man he was.’
‘I should have been alerted by the fact that he was so ready to kill the cat and Bird.’
Redmeadow nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps. Shall we return his chest to Julianna this morning? I do not want it in here.’
‘I do not think so!’ said Bartholomew, heaving himself out of his bed and rubbing his eyes. ‘Edward might claim we are trying to kill his wife by giving her a poisoned box. We will burn it.’
Just then, a piercing scream rent the air. They regarded each other in alarm, before dashing into the yard to see what had happened. Deynman was standing near the porter’s lodge with something under his arm. Walter was with him, and the surly porter’s face was split with a grin of savage delight. Bartholomew saw bright blue-green feathers trailing from the bundle Deynman held.
‘Deynman felt sorry for Walter when Quenhyth killed Bird,’ whispered Redmeadow. ‘And he promised to buy him a replacement. It is not a cockerel, though. I do not know what it is. I have never seen its like before.’
‘It is a peacock,’ said Bartholomew heavily. ‘They are rare in England, although common in the East. They are very expensive.’ Another shrill shriek rent the air as the peacock made its presence known. Scholars were beginning to emerge from their rooms in a panic, wondering what was making such an unholy racket. ‘And noisy,’ he added.
‘Walter will like it, then,’ said Redmeadow. ‘He only loved Bird because the thing caused so much aggravation. Let me help you carry the chest outside, so we can burn it before we go to church.’
A number of scholars followed Bartholomew and Redmeadow as they hauled the unwieldy object into the orchard. Bartholomew insisted the fire should be at the very end of the garden, where no stray sparks could fly into the air and cause trouble in the town. He wrapped the chest with straw from the stables, and set about making a fire. Several students exchanged amused glances when Walter’s peacock screeched again, although Bartholomew suspected they would not find it funny for very long.
Bartholomew 10 - The Hand of Justice Page 49
