‘Where is he?’ asked Bartholomew, wondering whether the corpse might yield clues that would explain Turke’s aberrant behaviour. ‘Perhaps he was not skating, but walking along the river bank when he fell.’
‘I do not want you touching him,’ cried Philippa, standing to confront her former fiancé. ‘I have seen how you treat corpses, and it is not respectful. I will not have you mauling Walter!’
Bartholomew stepped away from her, his hands raised in apology. ‘I am sorry; I did not mean to cause you distress. Of course I will not touch him, if you do not want me to.’
‘Good,’ said Abigny, speaking for the first time. ‘Walter’s corpse has been through enough indignities. We shall take him back to London and have him buried in St James’s Church on Garlicke Hythe. That is where all the important fishmongers are interred. Perhaps you can suggest someone who will embalm him for us?’
Philippa gave a shriek of grief, and Edith glowered at Abigny, warning him to watch what he said. Abigny grimaced, and his expression became unreadable again. Bartholomew frowned. Why had Abigny seemed pleased Turke’s body was not to be examined? Was it because he knew an examination might reveal some clue as to why the pompous fishmonger had decided to skate on dangerous ice – perhaps something concealed in his clothing or in his scrip? Or was he afraid the evidence might suggest Turke had not skated at all – that someone had coaxed him on to unsafe ice to bring about his death?
‘Turke died at the Mill Pool, near the Small Bridges,’ said Stanmore in the silence that followed Abigny’s remarks. ‘The current is more slack there than in the rest of the river, so it is usually the first part to freeze.’
‘Was he wearing skates?’ asked Bartholomew.
Stanmore gazed at his brother-in-law as though he were insane. ‘Of course he was wearing skates, Matt! How do you think we know he went skating? They were tied to his feet with thongs.’
‘I would like to see,’ said Michael. ‘I might recognise who made them, and then perhaps whoever sold them to Turke might tell us more about—’
‘Hateful things!’ sobbed Philippa bitterly. ‘Take them from his poor body before I see it. Will you do that, Giles?’
‘Walter’s death does not come under your jurisdiction, Brother,’ said Abigny, ignoring her as he fixed the monk with a steady gaze. ‘Walter was not a member of the University, and he did not die on University property. This matter belongs to the Sheriff, and he is sure to want to make his own enquiries.’
‘Summon him, then,’ said Michael impatiently. ‘I am not questioning anyone’s authority; I am merely trying to help.’
‘I have already sent Morice a message,’ said Stanmore, disapproval thick in his voice. ‘But he says he cannot come until later, so we shall have to wait before we remove Turke to St Botolph’s.’
‘St Michael’s, not St Botolph’s,’ said Philippa in a low voice. ‘The Michaelhouse priests I met yesterday – Kenyngham, Clippesby and Suttone – will give me their prayers. They are decent men, and I would rather have them than people I do not know.’
‘Kenyngham will arrange a vigil,’ said Bartholomew, thinking the officious, selfish fishmonger would need the prayers of a saintly friar like Kenyngham, if he was ever to escape Purgatory. He was surprised Turke’s body was still at the Mill Pool, but understood that Stanmore would not want to remove it before the Sheriff had given his permission. However, Michael pointed out that bodies should not be left lying around until the secular courts deigned to find time to examine them, and suggested they remove him to the church themselves.
‘Morice is a curious fellow,’ said Stanmore, marching down Milne Street towards the Small Bridges with Bartholomew and Michael at his heels. Abigny and Edith had been left to comfort Philippa. ‘He has been after Turke like a lovesick duck ever since he arrived in the town, but now the man is dead, Morice cannot even be bothered to inspect the body.’
‘Not so curious,’ said Bartholomew, who thought the Sheriff’s behaviour was painfully transparent. ‘Turke alive was able to dispense monetary favours; Turke dead is not a source of income, and so not worth the effort. Morice is interested only in events and people that might result in financial rewards for himself.’
‘There is always Philippa,’ said Stanmore. ‘A wealthy widow is easier prey than a miserly fishmonger who was used to sycophants and corrupt officials.’
‘Philippa will not be wealthy until the courts grant her Turke’s fortune,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘You know what lawyers are like. It could take months, by which time Philippa will be back in London and Morice will not be in a position to benefit. And how do you know Turke left Philippa his wealth, anyway? She said he had sons from a previous marriage; they may inherit everything, and she may be destitute.’
‘You could be right,’ admitted Stanmore. ‘But I am unsettled by her claim that Turke was not a man for skating. What is she saying, do you think? That she believes someone killed him?’
‘I thought at first that grief was speaking,’ said Michael. ‘You know how people sometimes deny something terrible has happened by snatching at straws. But now I am not sure. She is right: Turke did not seem the kind of man to grab a pair of skates and go dancing on the river.’
‘And there is Gosslinge’s death,’ added Bartholomew.
Michael’s eyes narrowed. ‘You said he died of the cold.’
‘I believe he did. But do you not think it odd that a servant and his master should die so soon after each other?’
‘It is a pity Philippa ordered you to stay away from Turke’s body,’ said Michael soberly. ‘I would like to know what you think of it.’
‘Giles would not,’ said Bartholomew, recalling the reaction of his old room-mate when the physician had agreed to comply with Philippa’s wishes. He had been pleased, almost relieved, and had immediately initiated a discussion about how to transport the body away from Cambridge.
They reached the Mill Pool, where people had gathered to stare at the body. It was covered with a sheet, and a group of boys wearing the livery of Stanmore’s household formed a knot on one side of it, while two of Morice’s soldiers stood on the other. A row of heads peered from the bridge above, braving the cold winds to have a tale to tell over the fire that night. Christmas was a time for stories, after all.
When the boys saw Stanmore, one of them darted up to him. Bartholomew recalled that his name was Harold, a lad of about fourteen years with a freckled face and wide, guileless eyes. He looked angelic. Bartholomew knew he was not.
‘We thought we should wait here until you came back, sir,’ said the boy in a breathlessly childish voice. ‘The soldiers had a poke at him, but no one else has been near.’
‘Thank you, Harold,’ said Stanmore. ‘But go home now and take the others with you. This is no weather to be out loitering. Tell Cynric to hurry up with the stretcher, and we shall remove Turke to the church ourselves.’
‘But—’ began Harold, glancing around at his fellows.
‘Now,’ said Stanmore firmly.
‘I saw—’
‘Go!’ said Stanmore, giving the boy a gentle shove. ‘Your hands are blue, and you are not wearing your cloak. An apprentice with frost-eaten fingers will be no good to me, so home you go. That goes for all of you.’
Reluctantly, the boy walked away, casting resentful glances over his shoulder as he went. Bartholomew did not blame him for wanting to stay. It was not every day that a guest of his master’s died in odd circumstances, and Harold, like most lads of his age, had a ghoulish curiosity.
‘Poor Turke,’ said Stanmore. ‘He died without atoning for his sin – although he never seemed particularly sorry to have taken a knife to one of his colleagues, as far as I could tell.’
‘Dead as a nail,’ said one of the soldiers, approaching Stanmore with a confident swagger and indicating the body with a jerk of a grubby thumb. ‘It is a pity, since the Sheriff had hopes that he might donate a little something for the town. But these things happen. He should not hav
e been skating anyway. The ice is thin, like parchment.’
Bartholomew looked to where he pointed and saw the jagged hole in the centre of the Mill Pool, made by Turke crashing through it. The surrounding ice was cracked and scratched, as though Turke had fought hard to escape, while the snow on the river bank was scuffed and churned where his would-be rescuers had milled around, unable to help him in time. A piece of rope lay nearby, and parallel lines on the ice indicated where Turke had finally been pulled free. The soldier was right: the ice in the middle of the pond was far too thin for safe skating.
‘What do you think, Matt?’ asked Michael, pulling the cloth away to reveal the blue features of the fishmonger underneath.
‘I think he is still alive,’ said Bartholomew in horror, noting the slight puff of the lips as the man breathed.
‘I was told he was dead!’ said Stanmore indignantly, struggling to lift one end of Turke’s stretcher, while Michael grabbed the other. Sheepishly, trying to make amends for their mistake, Sheriff Morice’s henchmen stepped forward to seize a corner each, leaving Bartholomew to take the middle. ‘He certainly looked dead – blue and chilled.’
‘That is because he was in cold water,’ said Bartholomew, noting that crystals of ice were forming in Turke’s sodden clothes. He wondered whether he would be able to snatch the man back from the brink of death or whether it was already too late. ‘Hurry!’
He did not want to jostle Turke by ferrying him up the narrow stairs that led to Stanmore’s solar, so they took him to the ground-floor room that Cynric and his wife shared, where the physician knew there would be a fire and space to work. Rachel was startled by the sudden and unannounced appearance of a ‘corpse’ in her home, but fetched blankets and bowls of hot water quickly and without needless questions. Everyone – Philippa, Abigny, Stanmore, Edith, Michael, the two soldiers, Cynric and Rachel – crammed into the chamber to watch, advise or help.
Bartholomew knew it was important to warm his victim as soon as possible, so that vital organs could begin their normal functions again. He also knew that heating a frozen person too quickly would place excessive strain on the heart, which would then stop beating. It was a fine line between one and the other, and he was not entirely sure of the limits of either. It was not uncommon for people to fall through rotten ice in the winter, and so it was an operation he had been called upon to perform on several occasions in the past. Sometimes he was successful, and sometimes he was not.
Watched intently by a distraught Philippa, he removed wet clothes and replaced them with heated strips of linen. He concentrated on the torso first; the limbs were less urgent. When he came to remove the unconscious man’s knee-high hose, Philippa stopped him, and, with an odd sense of decorum, she whisked them off under a sheet. It seemed a peculiar thing to do when the rest of him had been so brutally exposed to view, but the physician supposed she imagined she was doing her bit to preserve her husband’s dignity.
Some of the blueness faded from Turke’s face, and Bartholomew began to hope there might be a chance. Philippa insisted on touching her husband, stroking his brow and murmuring to him. She was often in the way, but Bartholomew hoped her voice might work its own magic and pull the man back from the brink of death. Meanwhile, Abigny watched from the door, an anxious expression on his face, although who the anxiety was for – Philippa, Turke or himself – was impossible to say.
After a while, Turke’s eyelids fluttered and he muttered something incomprehensible. Philippa seized his hand and her soft calls rose to a crescendo as she pleaded with him to speak to her. Turke’s eyes opened a second time, and he stared at the ceiling.
‘I am here, Walter,’ Philippa shouted. ‘Come back to me!’
Turke turned his head very slightly in her direction, and his eyes appeared to focus on her face. He swallowed, then spoke. He uttered two words in a low, hoarse voice that had everyone straining to hear him. And then he died.
Bartholomew spent a long time frantically pushing on Turke’s chest in a futile effort to make the heart beat again, but he knew the situation was hopeless. Eventually, he stopped, rubbing a hand across his face as he did so. It was hot in the room, and his attempts to revive his patient had been vigorous. Sweat stung his eyes and he could feel rivulets running down his back under his clothes.
‘Just like the Death,’ said Philippa softly. ‘Medicine could not help people then, either.’
Bartholomew spread his hands helplessly. ‘I am sorry, Philippa. I did all I could.’
She touched him on the cheek as tears began to spill from her eyes. ‘It is not your fault. You did your best.’
‘We will have to tell Sheriff Morice what has happened,’ said one of the soldiers nervously. ‘But it should make no difference, should it, whether Turke died now or earlier?’ There was an almost desperate appeal in his eyes.
‘Are you asking whether Morice will be angry with you for sending him word that Turke was dead when he was still alive?’ asked Michael archly. ‘I would not want to be so grossly misled by any of my beadles, but then my approach to these matters is infinitely more professional.’
‘But Turke died anyway,’ insisted the soldier. ‘There was nothing Morice could have done had he been here himself. Was there?’
‘No,’ said Stanmore, evidently wanting the men gone from his house and deciding that telling them what they wanted to hear was the best way to do it. ‘You saw for yourselves he was barely conscious.’
‘We did,’ said the soldier, relieved. ‘We should go and make our report, then.’
‘Will you or Morice be investigating further?’ Edith asked, catching the soldier’s arm as he prepared to escape.
He was puzzled by her question. ‘We have investigated, lady. He was skating and the ice was thin. What else is there to say? It was an accident.’
‘I agree,’ agreed Abigny, a little too keenly for Bartholomew’s comfort. ‘All we can do now is take him home and give him a decent burial.’
‘Very well,’ said Stanmore, nodding to the soldiers to indicate they should be on their way. ‘But tell Morice I expect him to pay his respects to Mistress Turke today. I do not want her to return to London claiming Cambridge men have no manners.’
‘What did Turke’s dying words mean?’ asked Michael curiously after the soldiers had gone. ‘They made no sense to me.’
‘Nor to me,’ said Philippa, straightening her head-dress. This time her grief was controlled. She was the dignified fishmonger’s widow, bearing her lot with grace and stoicism. By contrast, Bartholomew felt drained physically and mentally, and all he wanted was to return to Michaelhouse and lie down. ‘I must buy some black cloth for mourning clothes,’ Philippa added as the physician moved towards the door.
‘I have plenty,’ offered Stanmore. ‘I always keep a good supply of black, because so many scholars and clerics need it and, combined with this new fashion for black clothes to symbolise grief, there is always a demand for it.’
‘I will arrange to have your husband taken to St Michael’s Church,’ said Michael. ‘That is what we agreed before …’ He trailed off, not liking to dwell on the fact that they had discussed Turke’s funeral arrangements while he had still lived.
Philippa nodded. ‘And Matt will ask his friends to say masses for Walter’s soul. I think I will bury him here. I should continue the pilgrimage at the soonest opportunity, and Walter’s corpse will slow us down.’
‘But you must return to London, so that we can inter him at Garlicke Hythe,’ said Abigny, horrified by her plans. ‘You know that is what he would have wanted.’
‘He would have wanted me to complete the pilgrimage for him,’ insisted Philippa stubbornly. ‘His immortal soul is more important than his mortal remains. We cannot go all the way to Walsingham and back to London with him. It would not be practical.’
‘Then we should settle for taking him home,’ argued Abigny.
‘I want to go to Walsingham,’ said Philippa, becoming tearful again. ‘I made prom
ises to saints that I would go, and I do not want to break them, or I may never have a child.’
‘Would you like me to do anything?’ offered Michael kindly, not pointing out that with Turke dead she was free to take a man who might not need divine intervention to produce a baby. ‘It seems Morice’s men regard the matter as closed, but I could make some enquiries, since you had questions earlier about his death. Perhaps I can learn why he was near the river, or discover his state of mind. Sometimes having answers makes a loss easier to bear.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Philippa flatly. ‘Walter is dead, and that is the end of the matter. I do not want you or the Sheriff to look into his personal affairs. I want his memory respected.’
‘Michael would be respectful,’ said Bartholomew, surprised by her sudden change of attitude. ‘But it was you who told us that Walter would not have gone skating. Are you not curious to learn more about that?’
‘No,’ said Philippa firmly. She pointed to two sheep bones that had been tied to Turke’s expensive shoes with pieces of leather. Now they lay on the floor in a sodden heap with the rest of his clothes. ‘I can see he was wearing skates, and so my initial claim was obviously wrong. Please respect my wishes and leave him alone.’
‘She is right,’ agreed Abigny. ‘No amount of questioning will bring him back, and there is no point in causing distress by prolonging the incident. I shall arrange for him to be prepared for his journey to London.’
Philippa stared angrily at her brother for a moment, then took Edith’s arm and strode from the room. Abigny scurried after her, and Bartholomew could hear them arguing as they crossed the yard and climbed the stairs that led to Stanmore’s solar.
‘How strange,’ said Stanmore, watching them in puzzlement. ‘It was not many moments ago that she was so distraught with grief she could barely speak. Now she seems almost cold.’
‘Poor choice of words,’ said Michael, indicating the corpse. ‘But I know what you mean. What can you tell from the body, Matt?’
Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter Page 15
