A Masterly Murder (53 page)

‘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.’

‘Do you really feel safe here?’ asked Bartholomew, glancing around uneasily, noting that some of the smashed pots still lay
on the ground. ‘What if the killer returns to the scene of his crime?’

De Walton shook his head with utter conviction. ‘It will be the last place he will look. He will want to stay as far away
from here as possible. Now go.’

‘But you have not yet told us what we most want to know,’ said Michael. ‘Is Wymundham’s killer Heltisle or Caumpes?’

‘Work it out yourselves,’ whispered de Walton. ‘I do not want to be slain for betraying him.’

‘Caumpes,’ said Bartholomew suddenly, as something clicked in his mind. ‘Both Robin of Grantchester and my brother-in-law
told me that Caumpes likes boats, and whoever killed Wymundham would have needed a boat to take the body from here to Mayor
Horwoode’s garden.’

De Walton glared defiantly at him, and for a moment
Bartholomew thought he would not confirm his reasoning. Then the Bene’t Fellow nodded, lowering his head to look at the lumpy,
leprous patches on his hands. ‘Caumpes is the only one of us able to row a boat. Like you, Simeon and I surmised that he took
the body downriver and dumped it on Horwoode’s land.’

‘Why there?’ asked Michael.

‘Because it was dark and secluded, I imagine,’ said de Walton. ‘You do not want to row further
than needful when you have a corpse in your boat.’

‘And so it is Caumpes you fear,’ said Michael. ‘Not Simeon or those cursed porters?’

De Walton shook his head miserably. ‘Caumpes is fiercely loyal to Bene’t, and will do anything to protect it. I sympathise
with him to a point: it was horrible to see the likes of Wymundham giving us a reputation for quarrelling and slyness, but
I cannot condone murder for it.’

‘Why did you not tell us this when Wymundham’s body was found?’ demanded Michael irritably. ‘It would have saved a good deal
of time – and a good deal of agitation on your part.’

‘I was afraid. I hope to God you are able to prove all this and arrest Caumpes, because I am a dead man if you do not.’

‘Who else knows he is the culprit?’ asked Michael.

‘Only Simeon. He said he would pay Osmun to help me leave Bene’t safely,
and then he would seek out more evidence that will confirm Caumpes’s guilt before passing the matter to you. It was he who
said that Caumpes will not think to look for me here.’

‘Then Simeon was wrong!’ came a sudden yell from outside. There was a crash and a thump, and with horror Bartholomew saw that
the door had been slammed shut. He leapt towards it and thudded into it with his shoulder,
but the bar had been replaced and all he did was bruise his arm.

‘I told you to leave!’ screamed de Walton in terror. ‘Now he will kill us all!’

‘He will not kill us,’ snapped Michael impatiently, refusing to yield to the panic that had seized de Walton. ‘If we make
enough noise, someone will come and let us out.’

‘But they might be too late, Brother,’ said Bartholomew in a soft voice, looking upwards: smoke had began to seep through
the loose planks of the roof.

Suddenly, there was a dull roar, as the pitch that had been used to render the roof watertight caught alight. Bartholomew
ducked as burning cinders began to rain down on his head. Then, faster than he would have imagined possible, the whole ceiling
was alive with yellow, flickering flames and the air was sharp with the acrid smell of burning.

‘We are trapped!’ shrieked de Walton. ‘We are all going to be burned alive!’

Bartholomew coughed as swirling smoke seared the back of his throat. It billowed downward relentlessly, bathing everything
in a dull grey so that he could not even see the candle Michael held in his hand. A burning timber smashed to the ground,
just missing him, and immediately the floor began to smoulder. Flames flickered this way and that, running up the tinder-dry
walls and licking at the pile of blankets that had covered de Walton.

De Walton began to scream, so that Bartholomew thought the flames were already consuming him. He snatched up a blanket and
groped his way forward, but it was only terror that was making the Bene’t scholar shriek; he crouched in his corner like a
hunted animal, wailing and howling. Another timber crashed from the
roof with a terrific tearing sound, and de Walton’s yowls of fright grew louder still. Bartholomew groped around the walls,
trying to find something he might use to smash open the door.

‘Out of the way,’ ordered Michael, hauling him back with a powerful hand. He took a deep breath, crouched down with his shoulder
hunched into his side, and ran at one of the walls like an enraged bull. The wooden side of an ancient lean-to provided no
obstacle for a man of Michael’s strength, and he was through it and powering out into the fresh air beyond almost as though
it did not exist. Bartholomew followed, dragging the hysterical de Walton after him by the scruff of his neck.

‘That was impressive!’ gasped Bartholomew, eyes smarting as he glanced back at the hole in the wall, now surrounded by a halo
of flames.

‘I recognised that voice,’ shouted Michael furiously, gazing around him while Bartholomew bent over de Walton, who sobbed
and retched in the grass. ‘It was Caumpes!’ He clutched Bartholomew’s arm and pointed into the darkness. ‘And there he is!
After him!’

Peering through the gloom with watering eyes, Bartholomew could just make out dark shadows moving through the trees on the
path that led to the College. Michael was after them in an instant, dragging Bartholomew with him. They ran blindly, barely
able to see where they were putting their feet. Bartholomew stumbled over woody cabbages when he strayed from the path, then
fell heavily when he lost his footing over the gnarled root of a pear tree.

‘Got you!’ he heard Michael yell in triumph.