Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter

by Susanna GREGORY

  Trying not to rush, just because he wanted to return to Michaelhouse and huddle near the fire, he sat back on his heels and studied what lay in front of him. He realised that thicker clouds must have massed outside, because the church was so dark he could barely see the body, let alone examine it. Michael fetched the candle from the altar, but its cheap tallow did little to help, and its main contribution to the task was to release an oily, pungent odour that competed valiantly with the stench of rotting cloth.

  Bartholomew leaned close to the corpse in a vain attempt to inspect it. The man had not been wealthy: his clothes were frayed, patched and woefully inadequate for the rigours of a Fenland winter. His hands were soft, however, and notably uncalloused, suggesting that his ill fortunes had not forced him into manual labour to earn his bread. One thumb was missing, but the wound had healed long ago, and Bartholomew supposed some ancient accident had robbed him of it.

  Satisfied he had learned all he could by looking, he began his physical examination, suspecting this would reveal little more and that he was lingering in the church for nothing. The corpse felt icy cold, but Bartholomew’s own hands were not much warmer, and he decided the temperature of the body would tell him little about when the man had died. Struggling to see, he checked quickly for wounds, then inspected the neck to see whether the man had been strangled. His brief examination revealed nothing. He stood, trying to rub the ache from his knees, and shrugged helplessly at Michael.

  ‘I do not know what killed him, Brother, but I am guessing it was the cold. I cannot tell you when, though. It is so chilly that the usual methods for estimating time of death – body coolness, stiffness, decay and so on – are useless. He might have crept in here this morning, but could equally as easily have been here for a couple of days.’

  Michael grimaced. ‘That is an unpleasant notion, Matt. I do not like the thought of saying my prayers while corpses peer at me from decaying albs.’

  ‘I imagine there are few who would. But all I can tell you is that this man was poor and that he probably suffered miserably from the weather. There is no injury that I can detect, so I doubt that your friend Harysone had anything to do with his demise.’

  ‘What about poison?’ suggested Michael hopefully.

  ‘There are no lesions or bleeding in the mouth. He did not scratch or claw at his throat. I suppose he might have been given something soporific, but I really do not see why anyone would kill a beggar using potions that are usually expensive.’

  ‘And there is nothing on his body to tell us who he is?’

  ‘As you see,’ said Bartholomew, indicating the sad remains that lay in front of them. ‘He owned no purse – or none that is with him now.’

  ‘I will ask my beadles to make some enquiries,’ said Michael. He cocked his head. ‘But the bells are ringing to announce the midday meal. Meadowman can deal with this poor fellow’s remains, and this afternoon I shall set about trying to discover what happened to Norbert.’

  ‘And what about Harysone?’ asked Bartholomew archly. ‘Has he been granted a reprieve now that you have Norbert’s murder and identifying the beggar to take up your time?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Michael haughtily. ‘Master Harysone has not heard the last of me yet.’

  After the midday meal, Bartholomew went to prepare the lecture he was to give that afternoon, while Michael delegated a student to read part of Duns Scotus’s Ordinatio to his small group of sombre, erudite Benedictines. The monk rubbed his chin as he left Michaelhouse, wondering whether to concentrate his attention on the violent murder of Norbert or on discovering the identity of the beggar who had died in the church. Duty told him he should go to Ovyng and speak to Norbert’s classmates, but the unsettled, albeit irrational, feeling he had experienced ever since he had first set eyes on Harysone made him more inclined to look into the death of the beggar, since a nagging suspicion told him that Harysone was involved.

  Michael was not normally a man given to wild and unfounded prejudices against people he barely knew, but he liked to think he had developed an ability to single out at least some folk whose intentions were not entirely honourable. And all his instincts screamed at him that Harysone’s presence in the town was one he could do without. Bartholomew might have been unable to prove that the beggar had come to harm at Harysone’s hands, but Michael knew there were ways to kill that defied detection, and some deep, feral instinct convinced him that Harysone had not been tussling with the sticky door merely to admire St Michael’s dented pewter.

  He pondered for a moment more before turning left and striding up St Michael’s Lane towards the High Street. Norbert’s murder would be difficult to solve, given that the fellow had so many enemies in the town, and the investigation did not appeal to Michael in the slightest. He decided to leave Norbert until the following day and interview Harysone instead: Norbert was dead and nothing could change that, but Harysone represented crimes to be committed in the future – and they might be prevented.

  Harysone, however, was not at his lodgings in the King’s Head, nor was he browsing among the stalls in the Market Square. Michael scratched his head thoughtfully, then began a systematic trawl of the town’s taverns, becoming more determined to find the man with each unsuccessful enquiry. When he met Meadowman near the Brazen George, the beadle informed him that Harysone had been in the Hall of Valence Marie, selling copies of his manuscript.

  ‘He is doing what?’ spluttered Michael, outraged. ‘Peddling his inferior scholarship to some of the greatest minds in the country?’

  ‘I do not know about that,’ said Meadowman stoically. ‘But he sold Valence Marie two copies of his treatise, and then went to Bene’t College.’

  ‘And what would this “treatise” be about?’ demanded Michael archly. ‘Harysone was never a student here, and I doubt even Oxford would accept the likes of him into their midst.’

  ‘Valence Marie’s porter told me it was about fish,’ said Meadowman. ‘And suchlike.’

  ‘Fish?’ echoed Michael in astonishment. ‘Harysone told me it was a philosophical tract. And what do you mean by “and suchlike”?’

  Meadowman shrugged, glancing up the High Street to where he could see two undergraduates emerging nonchalantly from the Brazen George. If he caught them, he could fine them fourpence, and he itched to be away after them.

  ‘You will have to read it yourself,’ he said. ‘You know I am not a man for words.’

  ‘I shall never read it,’ vowed Michael, abandoning his beadle and heading purposefully towards Bene’t, which was all but hidden behind a vast bank of snow. A great mass of icy slush had sloughed from its roof ten days before, and the mound had grown even more when snow shovelled from the street had been added to it by students who were too lazy to haul the stuff away.

  But by the time Michael reached Bene’t, Harysone had already left, taking with him four marks from scholars interested in reading the treatise and leaving two copies of his work behind. No one knew where the man intended to go next, and Michael was forced to admit defeat. Midwinter Day was looming, and the few hours between dawn at eight and dusk at four passed far too quickly. Michael was running out of daylight. He decided to return to Michaelhouse for the evening, to sit by the fire and allow a cup of mulled wine to banish the chill from his limbs.

  The following morning, Ralph de Langelee, Master of Michaelhouse, made a decision that was very popular with most of his students. Because there were only two days left before Christmas, he declared that lectures would be limited to mornings only, while afternoons were to be spent in preparations for the festivities to come. Some undergraduates were dispatched to gather firewood, so that the scholars could relax in rooms that had at least had the chill taken out of them, while others were sent to barter for special foods in the Market Square. Most were delighted by the unexpected reprieve, and Langelee was generally declared to be the best Master since Michaelhouse’s foundation.

  Bartholomew was both pleased and frustrated by the enforce
d break. The two free afternoons would allow him to work on his treatise on fevers and visit his family, but there was a huge amount that his students needed to know if they wanted to be decent physicians, and he hated wasting time. Ever since the plague, there had been a chronic shortage of trained medical men, and Bartholomew was working hard to redress the balance. Teaching was suspended altogether during the Twelve Days, and he fretted that his students were being deprived of too much valuable learning time.

  He attended morning mass in the church, although his mind bounced between worrying about his students’ poor grasp of Maimonides and considering the beggar he had found the previous day. He wondered who the man could be, and why he had chosen frigid St Michael’s in which to die. Michael said that Meadowman’s enquiries among the town’s other beggars had so far revealed nothing, so it seemed that the fellow would be buried in a pauper’s grave and be forgotten for ever if no one came forward to claim him as kin.

  Bartholomew glanced across to the south aisle, where the body lay under a sheet, and then started to think about whether there would be enough ready-dug graves to last the winter. Digging frozen ground was almost impossible, and he had taken it upon himself to arrange for each church to prepare a few holes before the weather turned bad that year. If there were many more cases like the beggar’s, then they would soon run out.

  After breakfast, he had planned to lecture his students on the part of Roger Bacon’s Antidotarium that dealt with mint, but Michael had other ideas. The monk had reluctantly conceded that he needed to forget Harysone for a while and begin his investigation into Norbert’s murder, but he wanted Bartholomew with him when he interviewed the students at Ovyng. Although he was a skilled investigator, it always helped when the physician was there to gauge reactions and observe suspicious behaviour. Michael believed Ovyng represented his best chance of catching Norbert’s killer, and hoped to discover that one of Norbert’s classmates had tired of his cruel tongue and dissolute behaviour, and done away with him. With luck, the case would be resolved quickly and without the need for a complex investigation that would give rise to rumours and speculation about whether a townsman was responsible. Michael did not want Norbert’s murder to spark fights or ill feeling between the University and the town during a volatile period like the Twelve Days.

  It had snowed again during the night, but the fall had been light, and many feet had already trodden a groove between the ice-cliffs along St Michael’s Lane. The wind sucked dried pellets of ice from the ground and hurled them in the scholars’ faces as they walked, causing Michael to claim that a more severe winter had not been experienced since the Creation. Bartholomew argued that there was no way to tell, and they were still debating the issue when they arrived at the hostel.

  Ovyng was a large house that had been bought for Michaelhouse in 1329, using funds left over from the founder’s will. Michaelhouse could have used the building as accommodation for its own members, but numbers had been low since the plague, and instead Langelee leased it to Ailred for a modest fee. Ovyng was a pleasant place, with a large chamber on the ground floor that served as lecture hall and dining room, and two attic rooms that were used as dormitories.

  When Bartholomew and Michael arrived, they found the five students sitting on wooden benches, listening to a lecture given by Ailred himself. It was on Thomas Aquinas’s Sermones, and was a careful exegesis of one of the more difficult sections. It was solid scholarship, but not exciting, and the students looked bored. Three gazed out of the window at the lumpy white blanket that smothered the vegetable patch, while the other two sat bolt upright in an effort to stop themselves from falling asleep. Ailred’s assistant slouched at the back of the class, checking logic exercises that had been scratched into wax-covered tablets.

  ‘You know why I am here,’ said Michael, as Ailred faltered into silence and the students regarded the monk expectantly. ‘Norbert.’

  ‘We did not kill him,’ said Ailred’s assistant immediately. He was a large, raw-boned fellow with a ruddy face and teeth that had been chipped into irregular points. He was not much older than his charges, and Bartholomew supposed he had been hired because his youth and inexperience meant that he was cheap. ‘We did not like him, but we did not touch him.’

  ‘I am accusing no one,’ said Michael, although the cool green gaze that rested on the face of each Franciscan in turn suggested otherwise. ‘I merely want the truth. Does anyone know anything that may help us find the perpetrator of this dreadful crime?’

  ‘Not really,’ said the assistant. ‘He was not one of us, you see.’

  ‘Godric means that he was not a Franciscan,’ elaborated Ailred, when the monk’s face indicated that there were several ways this comment could be interpreted, all of them incriminating.

  ‘It was not just that,’ persisted Godric. ‘He never even tried to be friendly, and he slept more nights away than here.’

  ‘Godric!’ whispered Ailred in exasperation, closing his eyes and giving them a hearty massage. He looked exhausted, as though the murder of his student had deprived him of sleep. Bartholomew wondered whether the friar’s tiredness derived from the fact that Norbert’s death represented a sizeable loss of income, or whether there were deeper, more sinister reasons for it. ‘When I said we should answer the Senior Proctor’s questions truthfully, I did not mean that you had to betray every one of Norbert’s misdemeanours.’

  ‘Betray away,’ said Michael, beaming at Godric. ‘A catalogue of Norbert’s indiscretions may prove very useful.’

  ‘I do not see how,’ said Ailred. ‘But Godric is right about Norbert’s sleeping habits: he was not often found in his own bed. In fact, his repeated absences were one of the reasons why he was not missed for two days. He often stayed away – sometimes with whores, sometimes in taverns and sometimes at his uncle’s house.’

  ‘I knew he flouted the rules,’ said Michael. ‘But I did not realise he did so on such a regular basis. Why did you not tell me this before?’

  Ailred shot him a pained glance. ‘The fees paid by his family were important to us. We did not want him dismissed, although God knows he had no business here. As long as we kept him, the Tulyets would continue paying for his tuition.’

  The other Franciscans had been talking among themselves while the exchange between Ailred and Michael took place; now they seemed to have reached a consensus. They nodded encouragingly at Godric, who was evidently their spokesman.

  ‘Unfortunately, we have little to tell that will help you catch your culprit,’ he began apologetically. ‘Norbert was unfriendly, lazy and refused to comply with our rules. He made offensive remarks about our Order and he stole our ink and parchment. We think he took them in order to write to Dympna.’

  ‘Dympna?’ asked Michael, puzzled. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘She,’ corrected Godric. He glanced at his colleagues, suddenly unsure. ‘Well, we assume it was a she. She sent him notes, which we sometimes saw. She always asked him to meet her in the same place.’

  ‘I do not see how this is relevant,’ said Ailred impatiently. ‘Norbert liked women – ask any of the town’s whores – but I do not see how investigating a particular one will lead you to his killer.’

  ‘I am not so sure,’ said Michael thoughtfully. He turned to Godric. ‘When did this woman last write to Norbert?’

  Godric ignored the pained expression on his principal’s face. ‘He had a letter from her the evening he disappeared.’

  Ailred sighed. ‘This kind of speculation is dangerous, Godric. It may lead the good brother along the wrong road entirely, and cause him to waste time and effort.’

  Godric turned apologetically to Michael. ‘I am only trying to help. Dympna did send him a message that afternoon, and he did go out soon after he read it, but perhaps I should not have assumed the two were connected.’

  ‘Do you still have this letter?’ asked Michael. ‘It might help if we were to see it.’

  Godric shook his head. ‘He either took it with him o
r threw it away. We have searched his belongings, but it is not there – not that note or any of the others.’

  ‘Was this relationship with Dympna a recent affair?’ asked Michael. ‘Or one that had been going on for some time?’

  ‘I think recent,’ replied Godric. ‘We first saw a note about a week ago, but there could have been others before that.’ He smiled suddenly, so that his loutish face softened and became almost attractive. ‘You are wondering why we pried so unashamedly into Norbert’s personal life, Brother. Being friars, none of us receive notes from young ladies, and we were naturally curious about a man who does.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Michael expressionlessly. ‘Did you meet this woman, or see Norbert with her?’

  ‘We saw him with women,’ replied Godric precisely. ‘But since we do not know what Dympna looks like, we do not know which one of them was her. However, I doubt whether any of the rough ladies he courted openly was Dympna. I think he only ever met her in secret.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Michael curiously. ‘You have just said you do not know what she looks like, so she could be any of the prostitutes Norbert enjoyed. God knows, he was fined enough times for that.’

  Godric’s expression was earnest. ‘I think she is better than the others. She wrote to him – on parchment, using a pen!’

  Parchment was expensive, and while some people could read, far fewer extended their education to the more skilled process of writing. The very act of putting pen to parchment suggested a woman who was a cut above the average.

  ‘Did you read these personal notes?’ asked Bartholomew of Godric. ‘You know what was in them and who they were from, so you must have done.’

  ‘Really, Godric!’ exclaimed Ailred in horror. ‘I thought you had more honour. Did no one ever teach you that it is wrong to pry into the personal missives of others?’

  ‘I am sorry, Father,’ muttered Godric, red-faced with embarrassment. ‘We meant no harm. We were just curious.’