A Wicked Deed (36 page)
Authors: Susanna Gregory
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #blt, #rt, #Cambridge, #England, #Medieval, #Clergy
‘That is not the point,’ said Stoate. ‘The legend says
nothing about how it feels, sounds or smells, or even tastes. It says that anyone who sets eyes on it will die within a few days.’
‘You speak almost as if you believe it,’ said Bartholomew.
Stoate finished his wine and stood. ‘I do. I learned years ago not to mock local customs and stories. There is nearly always some grain of sense behind them that should not be dismissed too lightly.’ He tapped Bartholomew on the shoulder as he left. ‘Do not close your mind without fully investigating the issue, my friend.’
Having devoured another monumental meal at Tuddenham’s expense, Michael was in no state to accompany Bartholomew to the Freemans’ house, and was forced to retire to the bedchamber to lie down. Bartholomew took William with him instead. He left the friar at the tanner’s home – against Bartholomew’s pleas for clemency, the petrified tanner had replaced Eltisley in Tuddehham’s cellar – while he walked along the river until he reached the butcher’s property. It was deserted and silent, almost like the wooden hovels at Barchester. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Seldom had he seen so much blood in one place. It had splattered the walls, splashed on to the ceiling, and pooled on the floor. In fact, there was enough of it to make Bartholomew wonder whether Alice Freeman was the only person to have had her throat cut there. The blotches of dark red, now turning to black, were obscene in the little house. The Freemans had not been wealthy but they had evidently taken some pride in their home. The wooden stools and table were lovingly crafted, while the coarse woollen blankets, now strewn carelessly about the room, were edged with yellow ribbons in a spirited attempt to make them more attractive.
On the windowsill was a small vase containing flowers, now drooping and brown, while the shelves held pewter dishes and two clay goblets. The table had been overturned, and smashed pottery crunched under Bartholomew’s feet as he walked. Something else cracked, too, and Bartholomew saw that one of the bowls that lay upended on the ground had contained shellfish. Poor Alice Freeman had apparently dined on mussels before she had died, and the empty shells were now scattered all over the room.
To test Michael’s claim that Alice Freeman’s screams for help could not be heard from the tanner’s cottage, he took a deep breath and called William’s name. After several moments, when William did not appear, he shouted again, a little louder. Finally, he yelled at the top of his lungs. When William still did not come, he went outside and waved to him.
‘I heard nothing,’ said William, walking down the lane. ‘If she screamed, then it could not have been heard from the tanner’s cottage. How many times did you shout?’
‘Three,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Is Norys’s the only house near here?’
William nodded, and peered through the Freemans’ door to the room beyond. ‘Good God! It is like a slaughterhouse in there.’
Bartholomew frowned thoughtfully. ‘A slaughterhouse. Freeman was a butcher.’
‘Norys will swing for this, and that is certain,’ said William. ‘Look, there is even blood on the doorstep and along the path. The poor woman must have dragged herself out, looking for help as she died.’
Bartholomew looked to where William pointed. The stains were not mere drips, but huge splatters that coloured the grass a reddish brown. Something else caught his eye. To one side of the path, partly concealed under a rosemary
bush, was the body of a cat. Bartholomew touched it, but it was cold and motionless.
He walked back into the house, and crouched to inspect the dry pools of blood that were scattered around the room, noting thick, black clots in most of them. Finally, he went to the butcher’s workshop further down the garden. The door was ajar, so he pushed it open.
The stinking body of a pig lay on a bench, waiting in vain to be dismembered and returned to its owner in manageable portions. It had the veins in its neck slit, and its intestines removed. The buzz of flies and the stench of decay made Bartholomew feel sick, but he forced himself to complete his inspection. To one side of the pig there was a large vat in which blood was collected, before being made into puddings or used to thicken soups. The vat was almost empty, and a dark dribble on the floor showed that some of its contents had been spilled.
‘We cannot blame this on Norys,’ said William, sounding almost resentful as he watched Bartholomew stare at a bowl that was stained almost black with blood. ‘I know from my questioning of the villagers that Hamon ordered a pig killed two Saturdays ago – apparently he wanted to make blood pudding as a gift for the harlot Janelle, now Deblunville’s wife.’
‘But he did not know she was Deblunville’s wife until last Sunday.’
‘Quite,’ said William. ‘That is why the pig lies unclaimed. The pudding was to be a token of his devotion, but even the insensitive Hamon balked at the notion of sending a fine blood pudding to another man’s wife.’
‘I would not send one to anybody,’ said Bartholomew, who found the notion of blood puddings repellent. Still, he thought, at least he now understood Hamon’s odd comment about not wanting to slaughter any more of his pigs. Perhaps the young knight would have been more successful in his
courtship of the lovely Janelle had he plied her with more appealing gifts – such as a ring made of his first wife’s coffin handle.
William looked around him. ‘When Freeman died, his wife took over his business. It must have been she who slaughtered the pig.’
‘But Norys did not slaughter her,’ said Bartholomew, meeting his eyes. ‘In fact, I think we will find that no one did.’
F
ATHER WILLIAM STOOD AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH
to keep watch, while Michael stamped furiously down the nave after Bartholomew toward Mistress Freeman’s corpse in the chancel. The two thick candles that burned at the head of the coffin were almost invisible in the brilliance of the setting sun, and the skeletal Walter Wauncy knelt in prayer at her feet, his words whispering around the shadowy building like a voice from the grave. A butterfly flicked through a window in a flash of red, and was gone again, while outside a robin sang piercingly from one of the elms.
‘Master Alcote asks if you would join him at Wergen Hall,’ said Michael, as the priest glanced up. ‘He is having difficulties with one document. I will continue the vigil for Mistress Freeman.’
Wauncy looked puzzled. ‘Alcote professes himself very proficient with these affairs; I cannot see why he should request my help. And anyway, I have been paid for this mass. Would you have me share the fee with you?’
‘I would not dream of taking it,’ said Michael, offended that Wauncy should regard him as the kind of man to haggle over a dead woman’s fourpence.
‘Well, in that case,’ said Wauncy, climbing to his feet with an ease that suggested he had not been on his knees for long, ‘I shall go. He asked for me particularly, you say?’
‘He did,’ Michael confirmed, and the flattered Wauncy made his way towards the door, nodding genially to William
as he left. Michael watched him leave, then turned to Bartholomew, his green eyes sceptical.
‘So, your latest theory is that Alice Freeman was not murdered, but that someone doused her house with pig’s blood to make it look as though she had been?’
‘It is a theory based on fact,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The slaughterhouse vat should have been filled with blood from the dead pig, but it was virtually empty. There was a bowl hidden behind it, suggesting to me that someone had scooped the blood out of the vat and taken it to the Freemans’ cottage. And basically, there is far too much of it in the house to have come from one person.’
‘But we have both seen what a mess even a little blood can make,’ protested Michael. ‘A goblet of it spread around can look as though an entire herd of cows has been massacred.’
‘Look,’ said Bartholomew, easing aside the piece of linen that hid the wound in the dead woman’s throat. ‘This is a vicious slash that would have caused massive bleeding instantly.’
‘So?’ asked Michael. ‘Massive bleeding is what we have.’
‘With this wound, she would not have had the strength to spread blood all over her home and garden. I think she would have taken one or two steps, and then collapsed and died where she fell.’
‘She did,’ said Michael. ‘I found her lying in the middle of the floor with all the furniture overturned and smashed.’
‘Then how did the blood get into the garden?’
‘Perhaps it fell from Norys as he rushed away from the scene of the crime. The clothes we found on his roof tell us that he was drenched in the stuff.’
‘There was far too much of it to have merely dripped from a man’s clothes – these are large splashes, Brother, not a few drops. I think they spilled from the bowl as someone carried the pig’s blood from the slaughterhouse to throw around the house.’
‘No,’ said Michael firmly. ‘Mistress Freeman probably left these splatters as she staggered around, reeling from her injury.’
‘Someone with a wound like this does not wander all over the place,’ persisted Bartholomew. ‘And anyway, I told you, there was too much blood to have come from one person.’
Michael frowned. ‘I do not really understand what you are concluding from all this. Do you think someone else died there with her? That Norys claimed not one victim, but two?’
‘No,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I am suggesting that no one was killed.’
Michael folded his arms and regarded his friend with wary eyes. ‘Well, come on. Explain.’
‘I saw lots of mussel shells in Mistress Freeman’s house. I think bad shellfish killed her.’
‘Mussels?’ asked Michael, confused. ‘Where would she find mussels?’
‘Ipswich has a fish market, and so does Woodbridge, both of which are only a few miles away. Many people die from eating shellfish, particularly mussels, and especially between May and October, so it is not improbable to suppose she ate some bad ones. And her cat.’
‘Cat?’ queried Michael, startled. ‘How does her cat fit into all this?’
‘There was a dead cat in her garden. I think she fed it some of the mussels and it died, too.’
Michael raised one finger in triumph. ‘Your theory has a fatal flaw. Mother Goodman told us that Mistress Freeman did not like cats – which was why Will Norys did not offer her the honour of his hand in marriage. So Mistress Freeman would not have fed a cat mussels – good ones or bad.’
Bartholomew ran a hand through his hair, and stared at the woman in
the
coffin. After a moment he leaned down toward her mouth and sniffed. Michael looked away, revolted.
‘Well, she vomited before she died, which I doubt she would have done had her throat been cut. So, there are three possibilities: she may have eaten bad shellfish and died accidentally; she may have been given bad shellfish by someone who knew they would kill her, and she was therefore murdered; or she may have kept them until she was certain eating them would make her fatally ill.’
‘So what you are saying is that you have no idea whether her death was an accident, suicide or murder?’ asked Michael. ‘Well, that is helpful!’
‘Those are the possibilities,’ said Bartholomew. ‘She ate the bad mussels and died – whether deliberately or accidentally we may never know – and then someone slit her throat after she was dead. Her hands and arms were slashed, too, to make it appear as though there was a struggle.’
‘But what for?’ cried Michael exasperated, his voice ringing around the church and making William start from his position at the door. ‘What could anyone gain from such an obscene act?’
‘It means Norys no longer has an alibi for the time of Unwin’s murder.’
Michael rubbed a flabby cheek with a pallid forefinger. ‘You think someone desecrated her corpse, so that Norys would be found guilty of Unwin’s murder?’
‘It worked. It is exactly what you told Tuddenham – that Norys needed a false alibi from her, she refused, and so he killed her.’
‘I told Tuddenham that, because that is what I am sure happened,’ said Michael. ‘And we have Norys’s bloodstained clothes hidden on his roof to prove that he did it.’
‘Norys’s uncle says those clothes are not his.’
‘Well, he would,’ snapped Michael. ‘People lie to us all the time, Matt, and you should know better than to believe them – particularly when they have very good cause to be dishonest.’
‘So, are you saying Norys used these same clothes to kill Unwin, too?’ demanded Bartholomew, becoming angry in his turn. ‘Do you think he keeps them on his roof so that he can use them again and again, and not spoil more than one set with bloodstains?’
‘He might,’ said Michael harshly. ‘Perhaps that is why Mistress Freeman put up such a fight – she opened the door, anticipating a neighbourly visit, and saw Norys standing there in his murdering gear.’
‘That would mean he knew in advance she would not lie for him about the alibi,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Or your theory would have him arriving at her house dressed in blood-drenched clothes, holding a sharp knife at the ready, and calmly asking her if she would mind telling everyone she had enjoyed a pleasant stroll with him around the church while he was killing Unwin.’
‘So what is your explanation?’ demanded Michael irritably.
Bartholomew considered. ‘I think Norys may have been with Mistress Freeman when she died. Since, as you pointed out, Mistress Freeman is unlikely to have shared her dinner with a cat, Norys probably did so. He loved cats, and I do not think he would have poisoned one with bad shellfish deliberately. So, I think he is probably dead, too.’
Michael made an exasperated noise at the back of his throat. ‘This nonsense is getting us nowhere. Put the poor woman back as you found her, and leave her in peace. This is a case of simple murder: Norys killed Unwin for his purse, killed Mistress Freeman for not lying for him, and threw the bloody clothes on to his roof where he hoped they would never be found.’
‘But Norys is not a foolish man,’ persisted Bartholomew. ‘Why did he choose to hide them on his own roof when their discovery would be so incriminating?’
‘Perhaps because he intends to use them again,’ said
Michael. ‘And he put them somewhere where he would be able to get at them.’
‘And what about all the other things that have happened?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘What about the attack on Cynric and me in Barchester? What about Grosnold being seen talking to Unwin shortly before his death? What about the fact that Unwin, Mistress Freeman’s husband and Alice Quy saw this white dog, and all three are now dead? What about Deblunville’s suspicion that Tuddenham has his villagers out looking for this lost golden calf in the depths of the night? Finding a thing of such value might well make people resort to evil deeds. And what about this poor man we found hanged wearing Deblunville’s clothes that no one has bothered about?’
‘Irrelevant,’ said Michael promptly. ‘Our only interest in – and our only jurisdiction over – this affair is to find Unwin’s killer. That is Norys, and Tuddenham will soon have him under lock and key. The rest is not our concern.’
‘It is our concern if something sinister is going on that might affect the advowson.’
‘Wrong. The relevance to the advowson is not that there is something untoward going on, but that someone at the University might discover what it is. Alcote has been very meticulous on that score: he has uncovered nothing.’
‘So, you are saying that it is perfectly all right for the advowson to be steeped in filth and treachery as long as none of the other Colleges find out?’
Michael smiled. ‘Basically. And it will be well worth the trouble: there will be a post for a Michaelhouse man at Grundisburgh in perpetuity, and most of the tithes will come the way of the College. You might even be offered the post yourself one day, when you are too old and drooling to teach medicine, or if you continue to disgrace yourself by lusting after prostitutes.’
‘So, Michaelhouse is to provide Grundisburgh men who
are either too old to be of any use, or who have embarrassed the College in some way? That is a fine way to treat Tuddenham’s generosity!’
‘I have already told you that this has nothing to do with generosity, Matt. Tuddenham will have a reason for relinquishing some of his personal fortune to a distant College to which he has no affiliation. Alcote has been bribing the servants to gossip about their master, and I have been developing friendships with his cooks. However, neither of us has discovered his motive yet.’
Bartholomew shook his head in disgust. ‘That is horrible, Brother. What will Tuddenham say if he finds out you are encouraging his people to betray him?’
‘Probably the same thing I said when Horsey told me he had been offered a new pair of sandals for information about us, or when I discovered Deynman’s handsome ivory dice were a gift from Hamon in exchange for a cosy chat.’
Bartholomew was aghast. ‘You mean Deynman was bribed to tell tales about us?’
‘Of course,’ said Michael, smiling at the physician’s shock. ‘There was no harm done – that lad thinks very highly of you for some reason, and seems to have informed Hamon that you are only a little short of sainthood. But we should let William say mass for this poor woman’s soul. Hopefully, Alcote will complete the advowson in the next couple of days, and we can be on our way. Then you can go back to your diseases and wounds and contagions, and be happy again.’
Bartholomew was disappointed at Michael’s reaction to his discoveries and suppositions, but not entirely surprised. The monk had taken a hostile dislike to the vanished pardoner purely because he hated the profession with all his heart. Hearing that pardoners were selling their wares in Cambridge was one of the few things that could disturb
the usually self-composed monk’s equanimity and reduce him to a state of quivering rage. There was little that would please him more than being able to indict one for the crime of murder.
Bartholomew wandered outside the church feeling exhausted. Cynric had slept badly the previous night, crying out in his dreams several times, and waking everyone, including Eltisley and his wife. After the third time, Bartholomew had caught Eltisley trying to persuade Cynric to drink some potion that he insisted would bring dreamless sleep. Bartholomew had snatched it away even as Cynric was lifting it to his lips, horrified to detect the odour of dog mercury in it, a powerful and wholly inappropriate herb for sleeplessness. He had given Cynric a sleeping draught of his own, and placed a mattress against the door to prevent Eltisley entering uninvited again.
While Michael returned to the tavern, Bartholomew sat on the village green under a willow that shaded him from the fading evening sun. Its graceful branches swept down to trail in the stream, and the duck, her cluster of young in tow, approached him, nervous, but hopeful for scraps. The sandy bottom of the stream showed crystal clear through the swiftly running water, occasionally marred by swirls of silt as a cart or an animal plodded across one of the fords upstream. It was peaceful, with little to disturb him but the squabbling rooks in the churchyard elms, and the gentle tapping at his leg by the hungry duck. Her young chirruped and pipped, falling over each other as they poked about in the grass for seeds.
If he listened very hard, he could hear Father William’s stentorian voice booming from the church as he rattled through the requiem mass for Mistress Freeman, making up in volume and speed what he lacked in concentration.