An Unholy Alliance (3 page)

Bartholomew turned his attention back to the body on the floor. It was a man in his fifties with a neatly cut tonsure. His friar’s robe was threadbare and stained.

Bartholomew began to try to establish why he had died.

He could see no obvious signs, no blows to the head or stab wounds. He sat back perplexed. Had the man committed suicide somehow after lying in the chest?

‘Do you know him?’ he asked, looking around at

the others.

Jonstan shook his head. ‘No. We can check at the Friary, though. The poor devils were so decimated by the Death that one of their number missing will be very apparent’

Bartholomew frowned. “I do not think he was at the Friary,’ he said. ‘His appearance and robes are dirty, and the new Prior seems very particular about that. I think he may have been sleeping rough for a few days before he died.’

‘Well, who is he then? And what did he want from the chest? And how did he die?’ demanded the Chancellor from across the room.

Bartholomew shrugged. “I have no idea. I need more time. Do you want me to examine him here or in the chapel? I will need to remove his robes.’

The Chancellor looked at Bartholomew in disgust.

‘Will it make a mess?’

‘No,’ Bartholomew replied, startled. “I do not believe so.’

‘Then do it here, away from prying eyes. I will post Gilbert at the bottom of the stairs to make sure you are not disturbed. Father Cuthbert, perhaps you would assist him?’ He turned to Bartholomew and Michael. ‘If you have no objections, I will not stay to watch.’ De Wetherset brandished the handful of documents. “I must put these in another secure place.’

‘Another secure place?’ quizzed Michael under his breath to Bartholomew.

De Wetherset narrowed his eyes, detecting Michael’s tone, if not his words. ‘Please report to me the moment you have finished,’ he said. He beckoned for Harling and Jonstan to follow him, and left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Bartholomew ran a hand through his unruly hair.

‘Not again!’ he said to Michael. “I want to teach and to heal my patients. I do not want to become embroiled in University politics!’

Michael’s face softened, and he patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘You are the University’s most senior physician since the Death. The fact that you have been asked here to help means no more than that. You are not being recruited into the University’s secret service!’

“I should hope not,’ said Bartholomew with feeling.

‘If I thought that were the case, I would leave Cambridge immediately, and set up practice somewhere I would never be found. Come on. Help me get this over with.

Then we can report to de Wetherset and that will be an end to it.’

He began to remove the dead man’s robe. The stiffness meant that he was forced to cut it with a knife. Once the robe lay in a bundle on the floor, Bartholomew began to conduct a more rigorous examination of the body.

There was no sign of violence, no bruises or cuts, and no puncture marks except for a cut on the left hand that was so small that Bartholomew almost missed it. He inspected the fingernails to see if there were any fibres trapped there, but there was only a layer of black dirt. The hands were soft, which implied that the man had been unused to physical labour, and a small ink-stain on his right thumb suggested that he could write. Bartholomew turned the hand to catch the light from the window, and the small callus on the thumb confirmed that the man had been a habitual scribe.

Bartholomew leaned close to the man’s mouth and

carefully smelled it, ignoring Michael’s snort of disgust.

There was nothing to suggest he had taken poison. He prised the man’s mouth open and peered in, looking for discoloration of the tongue or gums, or other signs of damage. There was nothing. The man had several small ulcers on one side of his tongue, but Bartholomew thought that they were probably more likely caused by a period of poor nutrition than by any subtle poisons.

He turned his attention to the man’s throat, but there was nothing to imply strangulation and no neck bones were broken. He looked at one of the man’s hands again.

If he had died because his heart had seized up, his fingernails, nose and mouth should show some blueness.

The man’s fingernails were an unhealthy waxy-white, but certainly not blue. His lips, too, were white.

Eventually, Bartholomew sat back on his heels. “I have no idea why he died,’ he said, perplexed. ‘Perhaps he came here to steal and the excitement burst some vital organ. Perhaps he was already ill when he came here.

Perhaps he was already dead.’

‘What?’ said Michael, his eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Are you suggesting that someone brought a corpse up here in the middle of the night and left it?’

Bartholomew grinned at him. ‘No. I am merely

following the rules of the deceased Master Wilson and trying to solve the problem logically.’

‘Well, that suggestion, my dear doctor, has less logic than Wilson’s crumbling bones could present,’ said Michael. ‘How could someone smuggle a corpse into the church and leave it here? I can accept that someone might hide below and then sneak up here after all was secured for the night, but not someone carrying a corpse!’

‘So, the friar hides in the church, picks three locks to reach this room, picks three locks to open the chest, lies face-down in it, and dies. Master Wilson would not have been impressed with your logic, either,’ retorted Bartholomew.

‘Perhaps the friar came up here as you suggested and died suddenly,’ said Michael.

‘And closed the lid afterwards?’ asked Bartholomew, raising his eyebrows. ‘De Wetherset said it was closed with the friar inside. I think it unlikely that he closed it himself.’

‘You think another person was here?’ asked Michael, gesturing round. ‘What evidence do you have for such a claim?’

‘None that I can see,’ replied Bartholomew. He went to sit on one of the benches and Michael followed him, settling himself comfortably with his hands across his stomach.

‘Let us think about what we do know,’ the monk said.

‘First. It is likely that this man hid in the church and then made his way up to the tower after the church had been secured. We can ask the sexton what his procedures are for locking up.’

‘Second,’ said Bartholomew, “I think this man was a clerk or a friar, as he appears, and that he has been sleeping rough for a few nights as attested by his dirty clothes. Perhaps he had undertaken a journey of several days’ duration, or perhaps he had spent some time watching the church in preparation for his burglary.’

‘Third,’ Michael continued, ‘you say he appears to have suffered no violence. He may have died of natural causes, perhaps brought on by the stress of his nocturnal activities.’

Bartholomew nodded slowly. ‘And fourth,’ he concluded, ‘the locks seem to have been picked with

great skill.’

‘But there are no tools,’ said Michael. ‘He must have needed a piece of wire at the very least to pick a lock.’

Bartholomew went to the chest and rummaged

around, but there was nothing. ‘So either he hid the tools before he died, or someone took them.’

‘If there was another person here with him to take the tools and close the lid, that person could have killed him,’ said Michael.

‘But there is no evidence he was murdered,’ said Bartholomew.

They sat in silence for a while, mulling over what they had deduced.

‘And there is the question of the Chancellor’s scribe, Nicholas of York,’ said Bartholomew. ‘De Wetherset says he is now suspicious of his death - a death that appeared to be natural, but now seems too timely. Two deaths that seem natural, connected with the University chest?’ He frowned and drummed on the bench with his fingers.

Michael looked at him hard. ‘What do you mean?’

he said.

‘Although I can find nothing that caused the death of this man, I am reluctant to say it was natural. I suppose it is possible he could have suffered a fatal seizure, fell in the chest, and the lid slammed shut. But what of the missing tools? And anyway, people who have such seizures usually show some evidence of it, and I can see no such evidence here.’

‘So what you are saying,’ said Michael, beginning to be frustrated, ‘is that the friar does not seem to have been killed, but he did not die naturally. Marvellous!

Where does that leave us?’

Bartholomew shrugged. “I have just never seen a man die of natural causes and his body look like the friar’s.’

‘So what do we tell the Chancellor?’ said Michael.

Bartholomew leaned his head back against the whitewashed wall and studied the ceiling. ‘What we know,’ he said. ‘That the man was probably an itinerant friar, that he probably had some considerable skill as a picker of locks, that he died from causes unknown, and that there was probably another person here.’

‘That will not satisfy de Wetherset,’ said Michael, ‘nor will it satisfy the Bishop.’

‘Well, what would you have us do, Michael? Lie?’ asked Bartholomew, also beginning to be frustrated. He closed his eyes and racked his brain for causes of death that would turn a man’s skin waxy white.

‘Of course we should not lie!’ said Michael crossly.

‘But the explanation we have now is inadequate.’

‘Then what do you suggest we do?’ demanded

Bartholomew. He watched Michael gnaw at his thumbnail as he turned the problem over in his mind. It gave him an idea, and he went to look at the tiny cut on the friar’s thumb. He sat cross-legged on the floor and inspected it closely. It was little more than a scratch, but it broke the skin nevertheless. He let the hand fall and sat pondering the chest. It suddenly took on a sinister air as his attention was drawn to the locks.

He reached across the body to the middle lock.

Protruding from the top of it was a minuscule blade, less than the length of his little fingernail. He took one of his surgical knives and pressed gently on it. under the pressure, it began to slide back into the lock. When he moved his knife, the small blade sprang back up again.

Michael watched him curiously, and stretched out a hand to touch it.

‘No!’ Bartholomew slapped Michael’s hand away. “I think the lock has its own precaution against intruders,’

he said, looking down at the dead friar. “I think it bears a poison.’

The Chancellor looked in horror at the lock that lay on his table, the little blade coated with its deadly poison protruding from the top.

‘A true Italian lock,’ he said in hushed tones. He picked up a quill and poked the lock further away from him, as though he was afraid that it might poison him from where he sat, and exchanged a look of revulsion with his clerk, who stood behind him.

‘Did you know that the lock had the capacity to kill?’

asked Bartholomew. Michael gave him a warning elbow in the ribs. The head of the University was not a man of whom to ask such a question.

De Wetherset looked aghast. “I most certainly did not!’

he said, standing and walking to the opposite side of the room, still eyeing the lock with deep suspicion. “I unlocked it myself many times!’ The thought of a possible narrow escape suddenly dawned on him and he turned paler still.

‘Are you sure that the lock has not been changed since you last saw it?’ said Michael.

The Chancellor thought for a moment, his eyes

involuntarily swinging back to the lock on the table.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It is the same size, the same colour, and has the same general appearance, but in a court of law I could not swear that this lock was the one that was there yesterday. It probably was, but I could not be certain. What would you say, Gilbert?’

‘It looks the same to me,’ said his clerk, leaning down and examining it minutely.

‘Father Cuthbert?’ asked Bartholomew of the fat

priest.

Cuthbert put up his hands defensively. “I am priest only of the church. The tower is beyond my jurisdiction and belongs to the University. I know nothing of poisoned locks.’

‘Who else might know?’ said Bartholomew.

‘My deputy, Evrard Buckley, is the only person other than me who is permitted access to the chest. Even Gilbert does not touch it,’ said de Wetherset. ‘And the only person other than me to have keys is the Bishop.

He keeps a spare set in Ely Cathedral, but we have had no cause to use those for years.’

‘Are you the only person actually to use the keys?’

asked Bartholomew. ‘Do you ever give them to a clerk or your deputy to open the locks?’

De Wetherset pulled on a cord tied around his neck.

“I keep my keys here and I only remove them when I hand them to Buckley to lock or unlock the chest. The keys are never out of my sight, and, outside the chamber where the chest is kept, I never remove them from round my neck.’

‘Not even when you bathe?’ pressed Bartholomew.

‘Bathe? You mean swim in the river?’ said the Chancellor with a look of horror.

‘No, I mean take a bath,’ said Bartholomew.

‘A bath would mean that I had to remove all my

clothes,’ said the Chancellor distastefully, ‘and I do not consider such an action healthy for a man in his fifties.’ He held up a hand as if to quell any objection Bartholomew might make. “I am aware of your odd beliefs in this area, Doctor,’ he said, referring to

Bartholomew’s well-known insistence on cleanliness.

“I cannot think why Master Kenyngham allows you to entertain such peculiar notions, and while I suppose they may have a measure of success on the labourers you physic, I do not believe they will apply equally to me.’

‘All men are equal before God, Chancellor,’ said Bartholomew, taken aback by de Wetherset’s statement.

He ignored Michael’s smirk. ‘And all men are more likely to contract certain sicknesses if they do not keep themselves clean.’

De Wetherset looked sharply at him. ‘Do not try to lure me into a debate on physic,’ he said. ‘The Bible does not say those who do not bathe will become ill.

And it also does not recommend against drinking from God’s rivers as I have heard you do. Now, we have more important matters to discuss.’