Bartholomew 06 - A Masterly Murder

by Susanna GREGORY

  Eventually, they reached Bene’t, a dark edifice laced with scaffolding, as though some skeletal hand had reached down from the sky and had seized it. Bartholomew shuddered, and tried to push such fanciful images from his mind.

  ‘We are early,’ whispered Michael. ‘The bells have not chimed midnight yet. We should hide in St Bene’t’s churchyard and wait, or Walter might not be ready for us.’

  ‘I hate this,’ complained Bartholomew as he followed Michael through the long, wet grass of the cemetery. ‘It is not normal for two respectable Fellows to be skulking among graves in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It is no good leaving it until tomorrow,’ said Michael. ‘By then, Simeon may have killed de Walton, and I am not sure if we can rely on Walter to help us again. It is now or never. And do not tell me you would rather it was never. Do you not want to see the killer of Raysoun, Wymundham and Brother Patrick brought to justice?’

  Bartholomew sighed. ‘There is the midnight bell. Let us get this over with, so that we can go home and solve the murder in our own College.’

  They walked stealthily back to Bene’t’s main gate and tapped softly on the wicket wood. Immediately Walter’s white face peered out.

  ‘I do not like this at all,’ he whispered fearfully.

  ‘You are not alone,’ muttered Bartholomew. ‘So, where is this hut in which Simeon is supposed to have de Walton secreted away? We need to release him, and take him back to Michaelhouse as quickly as possible.’

  ‘But he has leprosy,’ objected Walter in horror. ‘You cannot take lepers to Michaelhouse! He will kill everyone he sets eyes on!’

  ‘Leprosy does not spread quite like that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘As far as I can tell, it is passed—’

  ‘Nevertheless, Walter is right,’ interrupted Michael quickly, before the physician could deliver a lecture. He rubbed his chin, making a soft rasping sound in the darkness. ‘We cannot take a leper back to Michaelhouse.’

  ‘Why did you not think of this before?’ asked Bartholomew in exasperation. ‘You have been considering this plan all evening.’

  ‘I cannot think of everything,’ snapped Michael. ‘You are the physician – you should have raised the point.’

  ‘We will take him to the hospital near the Barnwell Priory,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But let us get on with this business before my nerve fails me and I go home.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Walter, pulling them inside and closing the door. He led the way through the gatehouse, and peered carefully all around the courtyard before turning back to them. ‘You must cut across to the south-east door – I made sure it is open – and then take the path that runs through the vegetable garden to the orchard. Right at the bottom of the orchard, surrounded by nettles, is an old lean-to that is used for storing apples. De Walton is in there.’

  ‘Will you not show us the way?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘No fear!’ said Walter. ‘That was not part of the arrangement. I will leave the main gate open so that you will be able to get out, but I am off right now. I will spend the rest of the night in Michaelhouse, thank you.’

  He was gone before either scholar could object, scurrying out through the gate at an impressive pace and with evident terror.

  ‘Come on, Matt,’ whispered Michael. ‘Follow me. We will keep to the shadows at the edge of the court – that is what Cynric would have done.’

  ‘I wish he were here,’ muttered Bartholomew, trying to walk softly as they moved across the slippery cobbles. A rat scuttled in front of him and he took a sharp intake of breath that made Michael regard him in weary exasperation.

  The gate that led to the grounds behind the College was ajar, as Walter had promised. Wincing at the croaking squeak that sounded very loud in the silence, Michael eased it further open and stepped through, waiting for Bartholomew to follow. Once away from the half-finished buildings where the scholars slept, Bartholomew began to relax a little, thinking that he and Michael could always run to the end of the garden and scramble over the wall to Luthburne Lane should they be followed and challenged. It was also not so necessary to remain quiet, and they were well concealed from any sleepless Bene’t scholar by the trees and fruit bushes that lined the path.

  ‘There it is,’ whispered Michael, pointing to a dark shape that huddled against the back wall. ‘That is the hut Walter described.’

  He started to move forward, but Bartholomew pulled him back, listening intently to ensure that they had not been led into a trap. There was nothing. Cautiously, he edged towards the hut, wincing as nettles stung his hand. A sturdy bar had been placed across the door; Bartholomew removed it quickly and pressed his ear to the wood. There was no sound, and he began to wonder whether the leprous de Walton was not secured inside it at all. He pulled at the door, but it would not budge.

  ‘It is locked,’ he whispered to Michael, pointing to the chain that had been looped through two iron rungs. The metal shone dimly, and Bartholomew supposed it had been placed there relatively recently.

  ‘Break the chain,’ whispered Michael back.

  ‘How?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘I would need an axe, and we are trying to be quiet.’

  Michael gave an impatient sigh. ‘Give me those birthing forceps you have in your bag.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Bartholomew angrily. ‘My forceps are delicate, and you will damage them.’

  ‘Delicate!’ spat Michael. ‘They are about the sturdiest weapon I have ever seen. I will be more likely to damage the door than to put so much as a scratch on them. Give them to me, Matt. There may be a sick man inside this hut, and it is your duty as a physician to help him.’

  Feeling as though Michael had scored a cheap hit, Bartholomew handed him the heavy instrument, and watched him insert one of its arms through the rung and begin to twist. With a sharp snap, the rung popped loose, and Michael removed the chain that secured the door. Carefully, he pushed it open and peered into the darkness within.

  The inside of the hut was pitch black, and Bartholomew could make out nothing other than one or two rotten apples that lay on the floor near his foot. To one side, he heard the scrape of tinder as Michael lit a candle. Careful to shield the light from draughts with his cupped hands, the monk stepped into the shed.

  A man lay on the rough wooden planking of the floor, heaped with blankets and with an unnatural pallor to his face. At first, Bartholomew thought that de Walton was already dead, but the man’s eyelids flickered open. Bartholomew moved forward reassuringly, but the man struggled away from the blankets and regarded the dark shapes that stood over him with naked terror.

  ‘No!’ he shrieked loudly, making Bartholomew leap out of his skin and startling some roosting birds so that their agitated flapping added to the sudden disturbance. ‘No! I will not tell!’

  ‘Quiet!’ hissed Michael urgently. ‘I am the Senior Proctor, and I am here to rescue you.’

  ‘Rescue me?’ squeaked de Walton, in an unsteady, confused voice. He tried to stand, and Bartholomew could see the fading bruise on his face that Osmun had inflicted.

  ‘Can you walk?’ asked Bartholomew gently. ‘I do not think we should stay here any longer than we have to.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Michael sardonically. ‘Especially after that unholy screech. He has probably woken the entire town.’

  ‘But I do not want to leave,’ whispered de Walton in alarm. ‘I want to stay here, where I am safe.’

  ‘You are not safe here,’ Michael pointed out impatiently. ‘You are in a freezing shack, locked in by a man who means you harm.’

  ‘I will not go with you,’ sobbed de Walton, leaning back against the wall and hugging his blankets to him. ‘You cannot make me.’

  ‘Is his illness making him deranged?’ asked Michael curtly of Bartholomew. ‘Give him something to make him see sense, Matt. We do not have time to argue.’

  Bartholomew slipped an arm under de Walton’s shoulders and tried to pull him to his feet, but de Walton gave another screech and began t
o pummel the physician with his puny fists.

  ‘I have leprosy!’ he wailed. ‘Touch me and you will catch it, too.’

  Bartholomew, like Master Lynton before him, had observed the faint lumps and blemishes that characterised the disease’s early onset, but knew that leprosy was not as contagious as was popularly believed, especially the type that afflicted de Walton. ‘Let me take you to the hospital near Barnwell Priory,’ he said kindly. ‘You will be well looked after there.’

  ‘But I will not be safe,’ said de Walton, trying to push Bartholomew away. ‘I do not want to go.’

  Exasperated, Bartholomew released him. ‘But why? Simeon and Osmun have imprisoned you here against your will. Why will you not let us help you to escape?’

  De Walton gazed at him. ‘They did not imprison me; they put me here with my consent, so that I would be safe from the rest of them.’

  ‘The rest of who?’ asked Michael, confused and impatient. He went to the door and peered out into the darkness to check that no Osmun was bearing down on them. ‘Who are you afraid of?’

  ‘Go away,’ said de Walton desperately. ‘You reveal by your questions that you know nothing about what is happening in my College, and your meddling will only make things worse.’

  ‘If I do not understand what is going on, it is only because your colleagues have spun me such a web of lies that I am unable to see the truth,’ snapped Michael. ‘Tell me what is happening, and then I will decide whether to leave you alone or whether to remove you to the proctors’ prison.’

  De Walton began to shake. ‘Prison? But you said you would take me to Barnwell.’

  ‘That,’ said Michael harshly, ‘depends on how cooperative you are.’

  ‘Then ask Simeon,’ said de Walton, casting an anguished glance towards the door. ‘He understands the details better than I do.’

  ‘Details?’ demanded Michael. ‘Is that how you describe the murders of Raysoun, Wymundham and poor Brother Patrick?’

  ‘Who is Brother Patrick?’ wailed de Walton in terror. ‘And Raysoun was not murdered: he fell from the scaffolding, because he was drunk and the planking was unsafe. He liked to spy on the workmen, to make sure none of them slacked. He was a mean and miserly person.’

  ‘Mean and miserly or not, Wymundham heard him whisper with his dying breath that he had been pushed,’ said Michael. ‘What have you to say about that?’

  ‘Then Wymundham was lying,’ protested de Walton. ‘He was often untruthful, and you should not have believed anything he told you. He was using Raysoun’s death to fan the flames of dissent among his colleagues.’

  ‘Perhaps. But Wymundham himself was most definitely murdered,’ said Michael. ‘Why would he be killed if his claims regarding Raysoun’s death were false?’

  De Walton was so white with fear it seemed he was almost beyond caring. ‘There are at least two very good reasons why Wymundham might have been murdered. Firstly, to prevent him from spreading lies about our College – such as that Raysoun was dispatched by one of his colleagues when he was not. And secondly, because he often pried into our personal affairs and threatened to expose us unless we paid him to keep silent.’

  ‘You mean Wymundham was a blackmailer? Why has no one mentioned this to me before?’ demanded Michael angrily.

  ‘I imagine because no one wants you to find out what we paid Wymundham to conceal,’ replied de Walton heavily. ‘Perhaps someone decided Wymundham should not be allowed to continue his life of extortion.’

  ‘And who is this “someone”, who decided to kill, rather than risk his nasty little secrets being made public?’ asked Michael. ‘Simeon? He seems to be that kind of man.’

  De Walton pressed himself further into the corner and remained silent, tears welling in his eyes. Bartholomew suspected that even the formidable figure of the Senior Proctor was insufficient to frighten the Bene’t Fellow into telling them more, and was inclined to abandon de Walton to his dirty hut and his leprosy, and leave while he was still able. But Michael scratched his head, determined to persist.

  ‘I do not understand any of this. You say Raysoun’s death was as it initially appeared – an accident. Can you prove it?’

  ‘Ask the workmen,’ said de Walton in a small, tired voice, evidently sensing that the Senior Proctor was not a man to be easily deterred when in interrogation mode.

  ‘They will tell you that Raysoun was a drunkard and that the scaffolding was unstable. It was only a matter of time before he missed his footing and plunged to his death.’

  ‘Let us be logical about this,’ said Michael, infuriatingly pedantic. Both Bartholomew and de Walton glanced nervously at the door, anticipating some enraged killer plunging in from the dark while Michael calmly tried to clarify the twists and turns of de Walton’s information in his mind. ‘You say Raysoun’s death was an accident, so we will dispense with that for now. But someone definitely killed Wymundham, and my suspects are you, Heltisle, Caumpes, Simeon and the two porters, Osmun and Ulfo.’

  De Walton laughed bitterly. ‘Me? If only I could! Do you think a leper could overcome a healthy man like Wymundham and smother him?’

  Michael and Bartholomew exchanged a glance. The fact that de Walton was aware that Wymundham had been smothered suggested that he knew more about the death than an innocent man should have done. Yet Bartholomew believed that he was right about his physical limitations: Wymundham had been small, but certainly not weak, and it was obvious that de Walton was a very sick, frail man.

  ‘And Osmun and Ulfo were busy with College duties the night Wymundham disappeared,’ de Walton continued. ‘Ask any of the students. I would love to see Osmun and Ulfo hang for murder, but Wymundham did not meet his death by their hands.’

  ‘Whose then?’ pressed Michael.

  ‘Ask the others,’ pleaded de Walton. ‘Leave me alone! I do not want to be accused of telling tales and punished for it. Just go away and leave me be!’

  ‘We will question the others,’ said Michael with quiet determination. ‘But now I am speaking to you. I am left with Caumpes, Heltisle and Simeon. One of them is the killer.’

  ‘Simeon brought me here for safety,’ said de Walton. ‘He did not smother Wymundham.’

  ‘Then it must be Heltisle,’ reasoned Bartholomew, ‘because Adela Tangmer told me that Caumpes was not present when she saw Wymundham’s corpse in Holy Trinity Church. Caumpes was not one of the five who tried to conceal Wymundham’s leg from her.’

  De Walton gazed at him aghast. ‘What?’ he cried, shaking his head and almost weeping in his agitation. ‘You think that Wymundham died in Holy Trinity? Thank God I did not leave this hiding place when you demanded! You know nothing, and I would be no more safe with you than I would in an open field!’

  ‘Explain what happened in the church, then,’ ordered Michael tersely.

  De Walton swallowed hard. ‘I thought we had succeeded in hiding Wymundham when Adela Tangmer burst in on us unexpectedly. But it was no corpse she saw in the church that day: what she saw was Wymundham drunk.’

  ‘She saw a leg—’ began Michael.

  ‘She very well may have done,’ interrupted de Walton. ‘The man was in a terrible state – clothes dishevelled, wine spilled all over himself, and virtually insensible.’

  ‘And what had driven him to make such a spectacle of himself?’ asked Michael, unconvinced.

  De Walton gave what was almost a smile. ‘Heltisle. He had just paid Wymundham a handsome fee to encourage him to tell the truth about Raysoun’s death – that the man had fallen. Wymundham took the money and bought himself enough wine to float a ship. Simeon spotted him going into Holy Trinity Church, and ran to fetch the rest of us before he could shame the College with his disgraceful behaviour.’

  Bartholomew realised that de Walton was telling the truth. He knew that it was possible to buy cheap wine in Holy Trinity – he had been offered some there himself. Wymundham must have consumed his wine in the church, away from the disapproving stares of his Bene�
�t colleagues.

  ‘And what did you do?’ asked Michael. ‘Smother Wymundham while he lay insensible?’

  De Walton sighed. ‘Of course not. We bundled him up in a cloak and carried him home, telling anyone who asked that he was faint with grief for Raysoun. I do not think many believed us, given the terrible stench of wine that wafted from him. It was all very embarrassing.’

  ‘But if Wymundham did not die in the church, where was he killed?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And who stabbed Brother Patrick?’

  ‘I know of no Brother Patrick, but I know where Wymundham met his end.’ De Walton reached out and tossed a filthy cushion at Michael. ‘That is what killed him. He died here, in this shed, just as I will, if you do not leave!’

  Bartholomew took the cushion and inspected it in the candlelight. It was stained with something that might have been saliva, and there was a small tear surrounded by a brownish mark. He poked at it, and felt something hard embedded in the filling. More prodding with his surgical knife produced a small square of ivory. It was a broken tooth. He gazed from it to de Walton, and then flung tooth and cushion from him in revulsion. He recalled telling Michael that whoever had smothered Wymundham had pressed down so hard that one of the front teeth had snapped. It seemed de Walton was telling the truth.

  ‘Were you present when this vile deed was done?’ demanded Michael.

  De Walton shuddered. ‘No! But Simeon and I examined this shed when we realised it was the last place any of us had seen Wymundham alive – he used it as a venue to meet with the people he was going to blackmail. Simeon and I saw him wandering with feigned nonchalance – the way he always walked when he knew he had some hapless victim awaiting his extortions here – down the path the day before his body was found.’

  ‘And?’ pressed Michael, when de Walton paused.

  ‘And the evidence of his death was here: the stains on the cushion, broken pots that suggested a struggle, and Wymundham’s ring left on the floor. And now I have told you all I know, so please leave me alone. Your blundering investigations have not revealed my hiding place to the killer yet, so go, before it is too late.’