Bartholomew 06 - A Masterly Murder

by Susanna GREGORY

  She stalked away, leaving Bartholomew the reluctant owner of a dead rabbit. He thought Michael must be growing desperate indeed, to use the unsubtle Agatha to spy on Bene’t.

  ‘I did not take you for a hunting man, Matthew,’ came Suttone’s amused voice at his side, as he gestured to the rabbit. ‘Or is that how your patients pay you these days?’

  Bartholomew smiled. ‘Agatha gave it to me.’

  ‘I miss her,’ said Suttone. He saw Bartholomew’s doubtful expression and gave a grin. ‘I do. Your University is full of intriguers and liars, and her blunt honesty is a refreshing change.’

  ‘Well, perhaps she will return now that Runham has gone,’ said Bartholomew vaguely.

  ‘Are you really certain that Runham was murdered?’ asked Suttone, suddenly earnest. ‘So many people wanted him dead that it seems inevitable that one of them should have succeeded in killing him. But that logic worries me. Are you certain you are not jumping to conclusions? Perhaps he died naturally. He almost gave himself a seizure the other day when he became so enraged with William. Maybe he did the same again.’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘There is no doubt.’

  Suttone sighed. ‘What a pity. But we must set about rectifying some of the wrongs he perpetrated over the last week – it may help his soul escape from Purgatory that much sooner. We should set about reinstating the choir as soon as possible. Brother Michael tells me that the bread and ale are important to those folk.’

  ‘We must see whether we can pay for it first. And we must ensure we have enough for the workmen.’

  ‘There were some coins and a few scraps of jewellery left in the chest. Use that.’

  ‘We cannot give away our resources while we have debts,’ said Bartholomew reasonably. While he sympathised with Suttone’s point of view, he did not think the builders would be happy to see Michaelhouse feeding the poor while refusing to pay their wages. They would have the townsfolk up in arms in an instant, and Michaelhouse would be attacked. And that would do no one any good.

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ said Suttone reluctantly. ‘What a vile mess that man has left us to sort out!’

  After Suttone had returned to Michaelhouse, Bartholomew wandered around the Market Square, thinking about the disbanded choir and the death of Runham. As he was buying a pie from a baker with some of the blackest and most rotten teeth Bartholomew had ever seen – which the physician hoped had not resulted from consuming his own wares – he spotted Caumpes. The Fellow of Bene’t College was striding briskly towards the goldsmith’s premises, which stood in an alleyway behind St Mary’s Church. Bartholomew watched him stop outside the home of Harold of Haslingfield, glance around in a way that made it perfectly clear he did not want anyone to see him, and slip inside. Bartholomew sat on the low wall that marked the boundary of St Mary’s churchyard and ate his pie, his attention half on Michaelhouse’s financial travails and half on Caumpes’s suspicious behaviour.

  He was just brushing the crumbs from his hands when Caumpes emerged from the goldsmith’s shop, first poking his head around the door to peer up and down the alleyway to see whether anyone was watching. Bartholomew pretended to be looking up at the church tower, and Caumpes, apparently satisfied that he was unobserved, walked quickly across the Market Square in the direction of Bene’t College.

  Harold of Haslingfield was one of Bartholomew’s patients, treated regularly for a wheeziness in the lungs susanna gregorythat the physician thought might be caused by years of inhaling the fine dust that tended to accompany working with hot metals. Bartholomew had recently acquired some myrrh from a pedlar, and had developed a balsam with Jonas the Poisoner that they hoped would ease shortness of breath in people with Harold’s complaint. He decided to visit Harold, to tell him about the new medicine and to see whether he could ascertain what Caumpes had been doing so furtively.

  He pushed open the sturdy wooden door and stepped into the dim, acrid-smelling shop. Harold was stoking up a small furnace that produced waves of heat so intense that Bartholomew’s eyes watered, and was busy setting up the equipment he used for melting gold. Lying on the bench next to him were two bracelets of a heavy Celtic design.

  ‘Those are pretty,’ said Bartholomew, wondering whether Caumpes’s visit and the bracelets were connected. He recalled Stanmore mentioning that Caumpes dabbled in the black market, and that he often sold things to the town’s merchants. ‘May I see them?’

  Carelessly, Harold picked up one of the pieces and tossed it to him. ‘Actually, they are rather ugly. There is not much call for Celtic work these days, and I will never be able to sell them as they are. I am about to melt them down and use the metal to make something more appealing.’

  Other merchants might have seen Bartholomew as a potential customer, but Harold had known him for a long time and was aware that the physician did not have the resources to buy gold bracelets.

  ‘Did Thomas Caumpes sell them to you?’ asked Bartholomew, deciding to take a blunt approach.

  Harold regarded him warily. ‘Yes, why? I hope you are not going to tell me they are stolen. I bought them from Master Caumpes in good faith, and he has never sold me anything illegal before.’

  ‘He sells items like this to you regularly?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harold. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I just saw him coming out of your shop a few moments ago, and I wondered what scholar could afford to buy jewellery from the best goldsmith in the town.’

  Harold smiled. ‘You would be surprised, Doctor. Not all your colleagues are as penniless as you. But Caumpes brings me items to sell or to melt down occasionally, and has done for years. I admit I was wary at first – we gold merchants are often offered pilfered goods, and I would lose my licence if my Guild thought I was doing anything illicit. I took what he had offered me to Sheriff Tulyet and to other members of the Guild, but nothing was identifiable as stolen.’

  ‘Does that mean they are not?’

  Harold smiled again at Bartholomew’s forthright question. ‘No, but I told Caumpes exactly what I was going to do, and he was quite happy for me to check them before making my purchase. Had they been dishonestly obtained, he would have demanded them back and approached another merchant.’

  ‘How much gold has he offered you?’

  ‘I do not think I should tell you Caumpes’s secrets, Doctor,’ said Harold. ‘But I have been doing business with him for years – since he decided to abandon his own career as a merchant and become a scholar instead. You know that the University does not pay well, and its scholars need something more than their stipends to keep body and soul together. Caumpes comes to me when and if he has items he thinks I might want. He trades spices to Master Mortimer the baker, too.’

  ‘Spices?’

  Harold shrugged. ‘Pepper, cinnamon, saffron and so on. But over the last few days, it has been gold and pieces of jewellery that he has had to sell.’

  Bartholomew was puzzled. How did Caumpes have access to such items? Had they belonged to Wymundham or Raysoun, and Bene’t was selling them and keeping the profits, rather than passing the dead scholars’ possessions to their next of kin? Unlike Harold, Bartholomew was certain Caumpes’s business could not be entirely honest, because of the furtive way he had approached and left the shop. Bartholomew decided he would pass the information to Michael, and then they could discuss how it fitted in with the Bene’t scholars’ deaths – if indeed it did.

  He told Harold about the new medicine for his lungs, left him to his gold fumes, and started to walk back to Michaelhouse to resume work on his treatise on fevers. On the way, he met Matilde, who smiled shyly at him.

  ‘Did you read my message?’ he asked anxiously. ‘For some reason known only to herself, Adela Tangmer has announced that we are to marry, even though she did not see fit to ask me first.’

  ‘And I take it you would not have accepted her offer, if she had?’ asked Matilde.

  Bartholomew laughed. ‘I
do not think so! And I suspect she would not take me anyway. I do not know enough about horses to interest her.’

  ‘Well, I am glad. I confess I was shocked when I heard the news.’ She hesitated. ‘I do not suppose you still have my green ribbon, do you? It was extremely rude of me to hurl it at you after you had given it to me. I am sorry, and I would like it back.’

  ‘I gave it to Robert de Blaston for Yolande,’ said Bartholomew apologetically. ‘He said it would cheer her.’

  ‘It would,’ agreed Matilde, although disappointment was clear in her face. ‘Never mind. How are your various investigations proceeding: Brother Patrick of Ovyng Hostel, Wymundham and Raysoun of Bene’t College, and now Runham of Michaelhouse?’

  ‘Put like that, they form quite a list,’ he said. ‘And they are Brother Michael’s cases, not mine.’

  ‘But you always help him in such matters. He would not be nearly so successful without your help, despite the high opinion he holds of his own abilities.’

  ‘You have heard about Runham’s death, then?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘How did he die? There are rumours that he died by his own hand, that he was so delighted with his ever-growing coffers that he had a fatal seizure, and that one of the scholars did away with him. Which is true?’

  ‘We do not know,’ he said, looking down at his feet so that she would not see he was lying.

  ‘Murdered, then,’ she said immediately.

  ‘We think so,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But please do not feed that into your information network just yet – at least not until we can narrow our list of suspects from virtually every man, woman and child in Cambridge.’

  ‘Runham was just as unpopular as his nasty cousin, Master Wilson,’ observed Matilde. ‘Did you know that during the Death, Wilson used to sneak out of Michaelhouse every night to visit his mistress, the Prioress of St Radegund’s Convent?’

  ‘I did know,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It was how he came to catch the plague in the first place. During the day he stayed in his room and refused to see anyone, but at night he must have believed the sickness lost some of its potency, because he visited the Prioress regularly.’

  ‘He was a strange man,’ said Matilde. ‘One night, I remember coming back very late from sitting with one of the sisters who was ill, and I saw him gliding through the streets like the Grim Reaper. Someone cried out to him, begging him to give last rites – Wilson was an ordained priest and he was wearing his priest’s habit.’

  ‘But he ignored the plea and continued on his way to his lover?’ asked Bartholomew, knowing Wilson to have been a man devoid of compassion, particularly where it posed a risk to himself.

  To his surprise, Matilde shook her head. ‘The dying man was a rich merchant, who had been abandoned by his terrified family. He said Wilson could have all he could carry from the house, if he would grant absolution.’

  ‘And Wilson agreed?’ asked Bartholomew in astonishment. ‘After skulking in his room all day to avoid contamination, he then went into the house of a sick man who offered him money?’

  Matilde nodded. ‘I was intrigued, and so I hid in the shadows to watch. Moments later – Wilson must have furnished a very fast absolution – he came out, so loaded down with silver plates and gold cups that he could barely walk. Then he staggered off in the direction of Michaelhouse.’

  Bartholomew shook his head in disbelief. ‘I have always wondered how Wilson managed to contract the disease. I assumed he would have run through the streets to reach the convent, and declined contact with anyone. So now I know.’

  ‘According to the sisters, that was not the only time. You know what it was like – people were terrified of dying unabsolved, and were prepared to give a willing priest all they owned in this world to help them safely into the next. By all accounts, Wilson made a tidy profit from the sick, because he helped people like Adela Tangmer’s mother, Sheriff Tulyet’s sisters, and Mayor Horwoode’s first wife, who were all wealthy citizens.’

  ‘And Wilson then gave it to me to pay for his own tomb,’ mused Bartholomew. ‘How ironic!’

  ‘But enough of Wilson,’ said Matilde with a shudder. ‘Even now I find him a repellent character. What about these more recent deaths?’

  ‘Wymundham and Raysoun are buried, and although I know Wymundham’s death was no accident, I have no idea whether the same was true of Raysoun’s. Michael’s beadles have been visiting taverns every night to see what they might learn – about Patrick as well as the Bene’t men – but they have heard nothing.’

  ‘But I told you Patrick was a shameless gossip. You should investigate the people he gossiped about,’ suggested Matilde.

  ‘I tried doing that at his hostel,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But it led nowhere. Perhaps the beadles will have better luck.’

  ‘Are these dead scholars associated in any way?’ asked Matilde. ‘Both Wymundham and Patrick were men who loved to tell tales and peddle information. Perhaps they were killed to ensure their silence regarding the same rumour.’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The only connection, as far as I can see, is that they were University men. There is doubtless a link between the murder of Wymundham and the death of Raysoun – who were at the same College – but not with Patrick.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ pressed Matilde.

  Bartholomew regarded her curiously. ‘As certain as I can be, given that we have very little information about them. Why? Do you know differently?’

  ‘No,’ said Matilde. ‘I have had the sisters asking questions in all sorts of places to see what they might discover for you, but they have revealed nothing useful, other than what I have already passed on.’

  ‘It is good of you to be going to so much effort,’ said Bartholomew sincerely.

  She smiled and touched his cheek affectionately. ‘It is because I am concerned for you. I do not like the way Brother Michael drags you into these affairs.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Bartholomew vehemently. ‘I would rather concentrate on my teaching and visiting my patients.’

  ‘And seeing your friends?’ asked Matilde softly. ‘Is that important to you, too?’

  ‘You know it is,’ said Bartholomew, a little confused by her question.

  She stood on tiptoe, quickly kissed his cheek and then was gone, stepping lightly over the muddy ruts of the High Street as she walked towards her home. He smiled suddenly, and thought that Michaelhouse, Bene’t and their various troubles were not so important after all. Briskly he walked back to the College, where he wrote an inspired description of the symptoms of quartan fever before falling asleep on the table.

  The dull ache of cold feet woke him two hours later. He glanced out of the window to see that it was late afternoon, and that candles already burned in some scholars’ rooms. He straightened, wincing at his stiff shoulders and back, and rubbed his face, trying to dispel the peculiar light-headed sensation that he always experienced when woken from a deep sleep in the middle of the day. He was about to walk to the conclave to see whether anyone had lit the fire so that he could doze in front of it, when he recalled that he had an assignation with his self-proclaimed fiancée at sunset.

  He seriously considered not going to meet Adela in the Church of the Holy Trinity, but suspected that it would be wiser to thrust his head into the lion’s mouth and address the issue of her rumour-spreading directly.

  In the back of his mind was the uneasy suspicion that unless he confronted her soon about her decision to marry him, she might very well assume his compliance and take matters a stage further by inviting people to their nuptial celebrations.

  Still fastening his cloak, he set off up St Michael’s Lane, crossed the High Street and walked down Shoemaker Row to the church Adela had selected for their rendezvous. The sun was low in the sky, huddled behind a band of clouds, and the market people were beginning to pack away their wares as the shadows lengthened and the afternoon dulled. The air rang with the increasingly strident yells of vendors wanting to sell the
last of their perishable goods, while horses and carts cluttered the streets as the others began to make their way home. Bartholomew bought an apple pie from a baker at a ridiculously low price. It was surprisingly good, so he bought one for Michael, too.

  The Church of the Holy Trinity on the edge of the Market Square was a honey-coloured stone building with fine traceried windows. Bartholomew pushed open the great wooden door and stepped inside, feeling the temperature immediately drop and the air become chill and damp. It was also gloomy. The sun was too low to provide much light, and there were no candles lit except for the one on the altar, which was kept burning day and night as a symbol of the perpetual presence of God.

  Three Cluniac monks knelt in the chancel, and their low voices whispered through the darkness as they recited their offices. At the back of the nave, a scruffy clerk yawned as he packed away his pens and parchment, while in one of the aisles a vagrant snored and snuffled on a wall bench as he slept off an afternoon of drinking. The church smelled rather strongly of cat, which all but masked the perfume of cheap incense, and Bartholomew saw at least six amber eyes gleaming at him from the shadows.

  The effects of a night without sleep were beginning to tell, and as soon as he sat on one of the benches near the wall, his eyes began to close. From nowhere, a voice hissed at his elbow.

  ‘Want to buy some wine?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Bartholomew. The man who had spoken was a scruffy individual with a heavily whiskered face and the kind of purple nose that suggested he liked a drop to drink himself. He sighed impatiently. ‘Are you here for wine?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Bartholomew, puzzled. ‘Why would I come to a church for wine?’

  The man looked hurt. ‘Because it is known all over town that I sell the cheapest wine in Cambridge, and that I can usually be found here late of an afternoon. I thought all scholars were aware of that.’

  The selling of smuggled goods was not uncommon in Cambridge. Its location on the edge of the Fens meant it was easy to spirit contraband down the myriad of ditches and waterways without paying the heavy taxes imposed by the King to finance his wars with France. But Bartholomew had not been aware that Holy Trinity Church was the place to come for wines. He assured the man that he wanted nothing to drink, and watched him melt away into the shadows.