The Assassin's Riddle (2 page)

Drayton, like Chapler, tried to pray but all he could think of were the words from the Gospel, about the rich man who had filled his barns and looked forward to a life of feasting and merriment. ‘Fool!’ God had thundered back, ‘Dost thou not know that the demand has been made for thy soul?’ Drayton murmured a prayer. He had time to ask God’s forgiveness but what about the other crime? Drayton moved to one side. With all his failing strength he tried to crawl to the far wall, to touch it. Yes, if he could touch it he could ask forgiveness. He had moved only a few paces before the pain became too much. A coldness swept up his body and Bartholomew Drayton gave up his soul.

Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city of London, perched his portly frame on a stool, pushed back his beaver hat and mopped his red, glistening face. He would have loved to draw out the miraculous wineskin from beneath his cloak but he was not too sure about the mood of his secretarius, the Dominican, Brother Athelstan, who sat across the chamber. Athelstan was quiet, even more so than usual. His narrow, olive-skinned face under the black tonsured hair was impassive, his usually smiling eyes were now rather stern. He sat, hands up the sleeves of his white gown, chewing on the corner of his lip.

He doesn’t want to be here, Cranston thought. He wants to be back across the river at St Erconwald’s with his bloody parishioners. He studied his friend’s face carefully. Athelstan had not even had time to shave or break his fast. He’d just finished morning Mass when Cranston had called.

‘You’ve got to come, Brother,’ the coroner had insisted. He pointed to the huge tomcat which followed Athelstan in and out of church. ‘Leave Bonaventure to guard St Erconwald’s. Throw some hay at old Philomel. I want to reveal a mystery which will tax even your brain: it certainly baffles mine.’

Athelstan had followed quick and quiet. They strode across London Bridge up through the crowd to the house of the usurer, Bartholomew Drayton, in Ratcat Lane.

‘Tell us again.’ Cranston gestured at Henry Flaxwith, his principal bailiff.

The fellow breathed out noisily.

‘I know, I know,’ Cranston added sweetly. ‘But Brother Athelstan needs to be told all the facts. We could all be elsewhere. However, Drayton is murdered and a great deal of silver is gone.’

‘It’s like this, Sir John,’ Flaxwith began. ‘This morning, long before the bells for Matins rang, I and Samson . . .’

‘Bugger him!’ Cranston intervened. ‘I don’t want to hear about your bloody dog!’

‘I and my dog,’ Flaxwith continued remorselessly, ‘were doing my tour of duty. Now Samson,’ he winked at Athelstan, ‘now Samson,’ he intoned, ignoring Cranston’s sigh of exasperation, ‘always walks slowly, he likes to stop, sniff and cock his leg. I’d bought an eel pie because I hadn’t broken my fast Cranston closed his eyes. O God, give me patience, he prayed. Flaxwith was as lugubrious as he looked but he was honest and meticulous, with a sharp eye for detail.

‘I had just finished the pie,’ Flaxwith continued, ‘when we came into Ratcat Lane. Two young men, Drayton’s clerks, Philip Stablegate and James Flinstead, stood pounding on the door of their master’s house.’

‘These are the two lovelies upstairs?’

‘Precisely, Sir John. Anyway, I asked what the matter was.’ Flaxwith lifted his podgy face. ‘I really should see how Samson is doing . . .’

‘Samson’s fine,’ Cranston cooed. ‘I found a sausage in the scullery, he’s eating it as if there’s no tomorrow.’

‘Anyway, I ask them what the matter be. They told me they had rung the bell and pounded on the door but Master Drayton had not answered. Now, you have seen the front door, Sir John, thick as a Frenchman’s head. So we went round the outside. All the windows were boarded and shuttered up.’

‘Is there a back entrance?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, but the door’s like that at the front, hard as oak. We would have needed a siege machine from the Tower to break them both down.’

Cranston could stand it no longer but helped himself to a quick mouthful of claret from his wineskin. He offered it to Athelstan who just shook his head.

‘So, we break in. Master Philip climbs on Master James’s shoulders. He uses a knife and prises open the shutters. Behind them is one of those small gate windows. He breaks the glass and lifts the handle.’

‘You are sure of that?’ Athelstan interrupted.

‘Of course I am,’ Flaxwith replied. ‘You could see it yourself, the wood’s all broken, the bars scored. Indeed, it looks as if it hasn’t been opened for years. In gets Master Stablegate. He unbolts the front door, turns the lock and we enter the house.’

‘How was it?’ Cranston asked.

‘Dark as night. Smelly and musty. No candles, no torchlight.’ Flaxwith’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Quiet as a tomb, Sir John, it was.’

‘Go on!’ Cranston barked.

‘Well, all the rooms were empty. Just like this one.’

Athelstan broke from his reverie and stared round. He thought of the verse from the Gospels:
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he suffers the loss of his immortal soul?
Drayton, though one of the city’s principal moneylenders, must have also been a miser. The chamber was shabby, with only a few sticks of furniture, whilst the rushes on the floor looked as if they hadn’t been changed for years. The walls were greasy, the whitewash blotchy and peeling. Athelstan was sure he’d heard the squeak of rats along the passageway.

‘Am I going too fast?’ Flaxwith asked.

Cranston just smiled.

‘We reached the strongroom,’ the bailiff gabbled on. ‘We knocked and we knocked, fair to raise the dead. There was no sound.’

‘You checked the upstairs chambers?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, nothing, so we knew Master Drayton must be in his counting house. Now you’ve seen the door, Sir John, heavy oak, steel hinges, embossed with steel bolts on the outside. By now I was afeared. I went out to the street. I paid a penny to four dung-collectors to come in. We found a chopping block in the garden and used that to smash the door down.’

‘That would be impossible,’ Athelstan asked, ‘if you say the door was as heavy as it was?’

‘You are right, Father,’ Flaxwith replied. ‘But one of the dung-collectors had served as a soldier, knocking down doors in France. He told us to concentrate on the hinges, so we did. Fair smashed them loose and the door gave way. Inside we found Drayton on the floor. We haven’t moved the corpse, a crossbow bolt deep in his chest and the silver’s gone.’

‘How much silver?’

‘According to the ledger, at least five thousand good pounds sterling.’

Cranston whistled through his teeth. ‘Good Lord, what else have you learnt?’

‘Well, the two clerks, Stablegate and Flinstead, left the house, as they always did, just before Vespers last night. Once they had gone, Master Drayton locked and bolted the doors: that was well known, Sir John, he let no one in and no one ever came out.’

Athelstan rose and played with the wooden cross hanging on a cord round his neck.

‘So, Master Flaxwith.’ He smiled at the bailiff. ‘According to you, here is a man who bolted and locked himself in his treasure house but he never went out and would allow no one in. In the morning the doors and windows are still bolted and shuttered. Downstairs the strongroom is still locked and secure but, inside, our moneylender is dead and his silver gone.’

‘In a word, yes.’

‘And there are no secret entrances, passageways or postern gates?’

‘None whatsoever, Father. You’ve seen the house, it’s built of stone, one of the few houses round here that are: that’s why Drayton bought it.’

‘And the strongroom?’

‘See for yourself, Father,’ Flaxwith retorted. ‘It’s a square of stone. The ceilings are plaster but that’s unbroken, the walls are of pure stone as is the floor. If Drayton wanted fresh air he’d simply open the door. Father, I know house-breakers. They go through a window as quickly as a priest into a brothel . . .’ He abruptly stopped. ‘I mean a ferret down a hole: it would take a nightwalker hours to break into that strongroom.’

‘Then let’s see it.’

Flaxwith rose and led them out of the chamber. Cranston grasped Athelstan by the arm. ‘Brother, you are well?’

‘Why, of course, Sir John. Rather sleepy, I . . .’

‘You never slept last night, did you?’ Cranston accused. ‘You were on that tower studying your bloody stars again, weren’t you?’

Athelstan smiled apologetically. ‘Yes, Sir John, I was.’

‘It’s nothing else, is it?’ Cranston asked. ‘I mean Father Prior has not written to you about relieving you of your duties at St Erconwald’s and sending you to the Halls of Oxford?’

Athelstan seized Cranston’s huge podgy hand and squeezed it. ‘Sir John, Father Prior asked me a month ago if I would like such a move. I replied I would not.’

Cranston hid his relief. He loved his wife, Lady Maude, his twin sons, the ‘poppets’, his dogs Gog and Magog, but especially this gentle friar with his sharp brain and dry sense of humour. Cranston had served as a soldier, as well as a coroner, for many a year. He’d met many men but, as he told the Lady Maude, ‘I can number my friends on one hand and still have enough fingers left to make a rude gesture at the Regent. Athelstan’s my friend.’ Cranston stared mournfully at the friar.

‘You won’t go to Oxford, will you, Brother?’

‘No, Sir John. I am going down to the strongroom.’

Athelstan stared round the paltry parlour. ‘This is a subtle murder, Sir John, but why are you here?’ He added, ‘Why are you so anxious about it?’

‘Drayton usually kept his money with the Lombards,’ Cranston replied. ‘The Frescobaldi and the Bardi brothers in Leadenhall Street. He drew most of it out: he was about to give our most noble Regent, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a loan of five thousand pounds silver.’

Athelstan sighed.

‘So you see, Brother, Gaunt couldn’t give a fig if Drayton is in heaven or hell. He wants that silver, particularly now as Drayton has no heirs and he won’t have to pay it back. He also wants the thief captured. As you know, my dear monk . . .’

‘Friar, Sir John!’

‘As you know, my dear friar, no one upsets our Regent and walks away scot-free.’ Cranston paused as he heard Flaxwith calling. ‘We’d best go, Brother.’

They went out into the passageway, dingy and gloomy, smelling of tallow fat, boiled oil and other unsavoury odours.

‘Flaxwith found the chamber pot upstairs full of stools,’ Cranston whispered. ‘Drayton was as dirty as he was mean.’

At the top of the steps Flaxwith was waiting with a cresset torch. ‘Sir John, what about Samson?’ the bailiff pleaded.

‘Bugger that!’ Cranston retorted. ‘Henry, your dog will live for eternity, which is more than I can say for myself if we don’t get this silver back.’

Flaxwith shrugged and led them down the narrow stone steps. At the bottom, the huge door he had described was leaning against the wall. Flaxwith led them into the counting house and put the torch in a cresset holder.

Athelstan stared down at the corpse sprawled on the stone floor. A pool of blood had seeped out, and now ran in rivulets down the paving stones. He crouched down and stared pityingly at Drayton’s scrawny features: the eyes closed in death, the blood-encrusted mouth sagging. He felt the neck; the skin was cold and clammy. Athelstan closed his eyes; he prayed that Christ, in His infinite compassion, would have mercy on this man who had lived beneath his dignity and died like a dog. He turned the body over. Drayton was dressed in a shabby jerkin and hose. The battered boots looked rather pathetic on his spindly legs; he had no chain round his neck nor rings on his fingers. Athelstan wondered what pleasure this man had ever found in life.

‘Was he a bachelor?’ he asked.

‘He was married once,’ Flaxwith replied. ‘But many years ago, after the peace of Bretigny with France, his wife upped and left him. Who can blame her? He had no other family or kinsfolk.’

Athelstan examined the wound inflicted by the crossbow bolt: the quarrel had entered deep into Drayton’s skinny, narrow chest. He then sat back and studied the bloodstain further down the room near the door. He hitched his robe and edged along the paving stones.

‘What’s the matter, brother?’

Athelstan pointed to the doorway. ‘The blood begins at least a foot from that: this is where Drayton first fell.’ He turned and pointed to the far wall. ‘Now, here’s a man who is dying, the door is bolted and locked, yes?’

Flaxwith agreed.

‘Over there,’ Athelstan pointed, ‘is Drayton’s desk, the place where he did all his business. Where he’d sit and marvel at the wealth he had amassed.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Cranston breathed. ‘But he doesn’t try and go towards the door or his desk but to the far wall. Why?’

He walked across and, pulling out his dagger, tapped at the whitewashed bricks. ‘They sound solid enough to me,’ he declared. ‘Listen, Athelstan.’

Cranston tapped the wall again, up and down; the only response was a dull thud. ‘There’s no secret passageway,’ he asserted, resheathing his dagger.

‘Perhaps Drayton was delirious?’ Flaxwith commented.

‘It does prove one thing,’ Athelstan remarked. ‘The door must have been still locked and bolted, otherwise the poor man would have crawled towards it.’ He got up, wiping his hand on the black mantle over his white robe. He stared round the chamber. ‘You are correct, Master Flaxwith, a square of pure stone and plaster.’

Athelstan walked around: there was the counting desk against one wall and a boxed chair with cushions. On the desk were weighing scales, scraps of parchment, quills, inkhorns and a coffer, its clasp broken. Athelstan studied this and realised it must have been so for years. Inside there was nothing but strips of wax and more quills. The rest of the room was bare and gaunt.

‘Not even a crucifix,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘Drayton must have been a very close and narrow soul.’

For a while all three searched the square musty chamber.

‘Not even a rat could break in here,’ Cranston declared, mopping his brow and taking another swig from his miraculous wineskin.

‘Except through the door,’ Athelstan pronounced. ‘It’s time we examined it.’