The Lord Bishop's Clerk (8 page)

Isabelle d’Achelie watched de Grismont appreciatively and with a thrilling sense of illicit possessiveness. He was tall and dark, almost swarthy, with a mane of near black hair. His features were strong, with a wide mouth, aquiline nose and deep-set, storm-grey eyes beneath heavy black brows. There was a dangerous, lupine quality to the man, which had always attracted rather than repulsed her. After years wedded to Hamo, who had been very reliable, moderately kind and remarkably sickly, Isabelle found the idea of taming a wolf irresistible. Watching him made her throat tighten so much she could barely make the responses.

Standing behind the high-born widow, for Bradecote assumed from her garb that that was her state, was the third lady who had been present in the cloister. She was partially concealed by the widow, but he could see enough to distinguish a woman who at least showed no shocked pallor at the event. Remarkably calm, thought the sheriff’s new man, but that could easily be put down to her being the practical and phlegmatic type.

Mistress Weaver was indeed of such a disposition and sniffed disdainfully at what she took to be a display of aristocratic sensibilities when Isabelle d’Achelie kept her eyes from the body. A murder in such a place was a shock, but death was part of life, as the priest where she worshipped in Winchester so often reminded his flock. This particular death was certainly no loss to the world, though it would undoubtedly be so to the lord Bishop of Winchester himself. Margery Weaver concealed the pleasure at that thought behind her attitude of prayer.

The fair youth standing next to de Grismont was trying, none too successfully, to look worldly-wise. His chin was unshaven, but sprouted nothing that resembled a beard. He stared boldly before him, head held high, announcing to the world as clearly as if he had shouted it, that he was unmoved by the sight of a murdered man in the church. Unfortunately for him, with the exception of Bradecote, the other members of the congregation took no notice of him at all, and the acting under-sheriff could barely repress a smile.

At the conclusion of the office the silent congregation trooped out the way they had entered, with the enclave’s inhabitants moving into the soft evening light of the cloister, now casting long distorting shadows on its eastern wall. Bradecote and Catchpoll brought up the rear. The song of a blackbird, an everyday, innocent sound, sweetened the air, but was cut short by Bradecote’s voice, raised so that all might hear him.

‘None shall leave the enclave until the murderer has been taken. The clerk to the lord Bishop of Winchester lies dead, and be assured I mean to find out by whose hand. I will wish to speak to you all, individually, in the morning.’

A murmur of dissent rose, as he had expected, from his listeners. People had business to be done, the king’s grace to supplicate. Above this there came the sound of hysterical giggling.

Catchpoll and Bradecote exchanged surprised glances. A reaction was to have been expected from the auditors, but they had looked to hear only complaint at such restraint put upon them. They gazed, stupefied, at the source of the laughter. It was the nervous lady with the pale face and fidgety hands. She was twisting them now in her cloak, but was definitely smiling.

‘What is it that you find humorous, lady?’ asked Bradecote severely, his dark brows drawn into a frown.

‘“By whose hand”, you said.’ Her voice was brittle and unnaturally high. ‘By none here, my lord. That evil little man was taken by the hand of God.’

There was a stunned, almost embarrassed, silence. The giggling became laughter, jarring, ragged and humourless. Some looked away, not wishing to be connected with what might seem a blasphemous statement. The abbot stood agape, like a landed fish, his mouth working silently as he tried to conjure up a reply. Nothing came. After a few moments of awkward silence, broken only by the unlikely laugh, the elder of the nuns went to the lady’s side, and took her arm, firmly but gently. She spoke to her barely above a whisper, but with obvious authority. The unnatural noise ceased with a whimper, and the nun, summoning the other sister with a small movement of her head, began to lead the lady to the guest quarters. The retainer followed in their wake. She made a nodded acknowledgement to the abbot and fixed Bradecote with a cool, almost challenging stare for a moment, as the little party passed him.

Their departure was an unspoken signal for everyone else to disperse. Only lady d’Achelie hung back. She approached the sheriff’s men, hands clasped demurely before her, eyes downcast as chastely as any nun professed, but with a faintly provocative smile on her lips. When she did raise her glance, it was to look Bradecote full in the face. Catchpoll was eyeing her appreciatively.

‘Of course you must do your duty, my lord.’ Her voice was pitched low; artificially so, Bradecote thought, but it was soft and persuasive. ‘But my business is with the king himself, and in such times it would be unwise of me to trail across the kingdom more than is needful. I have heard he means to depart to the north in the next sennight. I have nothing to do with such a deed as this, and,’ her shapely hand fluttered in the direction of the church, indicative of her feminine fragility of body and will, ‘I would ask you to take pity upon my situation.’ She flashed him a stunning smile, which wavered in the face of his inscrutability.

‘I am loth to inconvenience you, my lady, but there will be no exceptions.’

Bradecote thought he detected surprise in her eyes, before she veiled them with their lids. Men rarely refused Isabelle d’Achelie anything. Well, this time was different. She made a small pouting gesture, and shrugged.

‘As you decree, my lord, but I protest it is harsh of you.’

She turned with a swish of her skirts, and walked away with a very conscious grace, knowing male eyes followed every swing of her hips. She would have been less than pleased to know that they belonged to Serjeant Catchpoll, and especially so had she seen the lascivious leer on his face.

‘Mayhap the lady will try and persuade me next time.’ He looked as if he would enjoy the experience.

Bradecote’s face remained expressionless, and his tone unamused. ‘I doubt it, Catchpoll. I doubt it very much indeed.’ There was a pause. ‘Come on then, let us view the body.’

Serjeant Catchpoll grunted, his momentary pleasure disappearing with the lady, replaced with his more usual grim cynicism. It had been a long day, and he was being held from getting back to the comforts of hearth and home. To cap it all, this lord, whom the sheriff had delegated to deal with the killing on a whim, had obviously decided to play law officer and take more than a nominal role in the proceedings. Catchpoll had noted the use of ‘I’ in Bradecote’s announcement to the assembly. He heaved a heavy sigh. The serjeant had only known Bradecote by sight before the venture on Bredon Hill, as one of de Beauchamp’s vassal lords who did his service, and although the last few days had left Catchpoll in no doubt of his ability as a soldier, he was clearly a novice when it came to delving into crime. He might be a man you would feel confident to have beside you in a scrap, for his sword arm was strong, and his actions decisive, but it did not mean he was welcome to interfere in serjeanting business. It was with deeply uncharitable thoughts that Catchpoll accompanied Hugh Bradecote back into the silence of the abbey church.

The body, a shapeless mass beneath the dark cloth that had hidden its horrors from the worshippers, lay incongruous in the tidy splendour of the choir; it was a thing of no worth, discarded in haste. Serjeant Catchpoll uncovered the corpse. It was both repellent and impersonal, lying as it did face down. There were no staring, accusing eyes, but the remains of the back of the head were a grim mess of splintered pale bone, blood and brain matter. The two sheriff’s men stood gazing thoughtfully for some time at what had so recently been Henri de Blois’s clerk, each drawing his own conclusions. Neither was squeamish. Bradecote squatted down on his haunches and disturbed the tatters of vellum with a finger.

‘What do you make of these, Serjeant?’

‘Charred vellum, my lord,’ answered the older man, woodenly.

‘Don’t try my patience, Catchpoll. I am as tired as you are, and did not ask for this task. However, I will do my best, and expect no less from you.’ He paused. ‘Do I make myself clear, Serjeant?’ The tone brooked no argument.

‘Aye, my lord, very clear.’ Unspoken animosity crackled between them.

‘Well, then. What does the charred vellum tell us?’

‘Either the clerk was killed in the process of burning some very private material, using the candle which I extinguished when I covered the body,’ he pointed to the solitary candle on the altar steps, ‘not wishing to burn both the blanket and corpse together, or he was killed so that the material could be destroyed. The second reason is, of course, the answer.’

‘Why?’ Bradecote stood up, frowning, and Catchpoll, noticing the expression, smiled unpleasantly.

‘Firstly, because the documents have been totally burnt, not removed. Secondly, because a man does not read or burn letters while lying face down on the floor, and thirdly,’ Catchpoll paused for a moment for effect, ‘because he did not die here.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Bradecote equably, thus successfully ruining Catchpoll’s moment of triumph. ‘The murderer may have read the documents and then decided to destroy them, rather than risk being found with them, but I agree that it seems unlikely that the clerk burnt them himself. It does tell us something about the murderer, of course.’

Catchpoll looked mildly interested, but said nothing.

‘The murderer can read, Catchpoll.’

Serjeant Catchpoll sniffed. ‘That may well be so, my lord, although they could have been sent to commit the murder and told to burn any documents, even if they could not tell what was in them. In some ways it is a cleverer thing to do, for if caught, the killer can reveal nothing of what was written. Very handy if it implicated someone in dark dealings.’

It was a fair point, and Bradecote acknowledged it. ‘And I assume that you think the body was moved because of the stains on the scapular?’

Catchpoll regarded Bradecote with narrowed eyes. The man was quicker than he had expected. This fact did not necessarily please him.

‘As you say, my lord.’ Catchpoll knelt beside the corpse, grunting as his ageing muscles complained, and lifted the back of the scapular, which was marked some way from the top by a large, dark and drying stain. He shook his head slowly, and spoke almost to himself.

‘The blow which broke the skull could not have marked the cloth so far down the back like this, nor with little trace above.’ Catchpoll outlined the limit of the stain upon the stone slabs with his finger. ‘You can see the way the blood has gathered on the floor, and not as much as if it happened here, nor with the splashes you’d expect. No, this man was killed somewhere else and dragged here on his own scapular. The stain matches. I’d swear he was not long dead, though, because of the amount of blood soaked in the cloth.’

Bradecote nodded. He had seen enough violent death to know how much blood would come from so violent and fatal a blow. He formed a mental picture of the murderer pulling the back of the scapular up to the dead cleric’s shoulders and rolling the body onto its back. Dragging it by the scapular would be easy enough over the stone floor, and would prevent an obvious trail of blood from the scene of the act to the altar.

‘That raises two new questions. Where did the murder take place, and was the body left in the penitential pose as a disguise to casual observers, or for a reason?’

‘The murder must surely have taken place within the church, my lord, but I couldn’t make a judgement on the second point.’

‘No matter. That might come to light later. Let’s hunt around for signs of our victim’s last journey.’

The pair split up, Catchpoll taking St Eadburga’s chapel in the south transept, and Bradecote turning his attention to the north transept and then the Lady chapel. The serjeant met him there some time later.

‘Nothing to be seen on my side, my lord, though I haven’t searched the nave yet. It seemed an unlikely place, and the light is failing.’

‘Mm,’ replied Bradecote distractedly. ‘What do you think about this?’ He pointed to a darkened crack between two floor slabs. It too, was losing definition in the deepening gloaming.

Catchpoll squatted down slowly, and pressed his finger along the crack. It came away with a dark, possibly brown, mark. He sniffed his finger tip, meditatively.

‘I suppose it could be blood, but there’s little enough of it. I’d be happier with flecks of blood and suchlike. Whoever killed the clerk smashed him good and hard with something heavy to do that sort of damage to the skull, perhaps more than once, and it was a blunt object, not something slicing. There would assuredly be signs, aye, and ones that a murderer in a hurry would not notice.’

He sat back on his heels and looked around him. Bradecote was put forcibly in mind of a dog on the scent, and forbore to say anything. Catchpoll certainly had plenty of experience of scenes of crime, and should pick up on things that he, as a complete novice, would miss. Bradecote took stock of the man. ‘Grizzled’ was the best description of him, in both mien and appearance. His hair was greying and straggling almost to shoulder length, and his stubble-beard showed even more white. The thin lips were merely a gash across the beard, and there were deeply etched lines running from his nose, which had been broken in the past, to his mouth. The eyes were deep set beneath sparse but beetling brows, and crows’ feet creased their outer aspect. Everything about him proclaimed the hard bitten professional who knew just how he wanted to go about things, and was not about to change. Hugh Bradecote stroked his own chin meditatively, and realised that he must also present a rough appearance. There was two days’ worth of dark stubble on his cheeks, dried blood from a minor head wound matting the lock of hair that fell forward over his frowning brow, and grime, from a long day in the saddle, all over him.