The Mark of a Murderer (41 page)

‘They were in his writing,’ said Wormynghalle in a muffled voice. She took a deep breath and entered the shed again, Paxtone
and Dodenho following. ‘You can see them, if you like. I retained them because I intended to scrape the parchment and reuse
it later. Perhaps I will keep them now, to remind me of his friendship.’

‘I wonder if he wrote them before he left, as a ruse,’ mused Michael. ‘That would have given him a few free
days to go about his business – whatever that was. Was he with Wolf, do you think, looking after him at Stourbridge?’

‘Possibly,’ replied Paxtone. ‘But Wolf was reasonably fit when I saw him a few days before he went missing himself – he had
a summer chill, but we all suffer those from time to time. He stayed a day or two at the hospital, but he was malingering,
medically speaking.’

‘No sign of the pox, then?’ asked Michael bluntly.

Paxtone did not like his supposedly celibate colleagues being accused of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. ‘No,’
he said shortly.

Michael turned back to the body, forcing himself to look at it. ‘So, how did Hamecotes come to be in this building? Who found
him?’

‘I did,’ said Dodenho hoarsely. ‘I like to practise my lectures here, because it is more private than my room. I came on Tuesday
evening – he was not here then – and I found his body today. Therefore, he must have brought himself here during the last
two and a half days.’

‘He did not come under his own power,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He has been dead too long.’

‘I told you that,’ said Paxtone to Dodenho, rather pompously for someone who knew so little about the dead. ‘He was
put
here: he did not walk to this building on his own.’

‘But who would do such a thing?’ asked Wormynghalle in a small voice. ‘And how did he die? Did he drown? I see from his clothes
that he has been wet, and I know he cannot swim.’

‘He may have been in the river,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But that is not what killed him. This is.’ He eased away Hamecotes’s liripipe
to reveal a slashing gape across the throat, ragged and uneven, as if some blunt, crude implement had been used to inflict
the damage.

Dodenho shot from the room, pushing past Wormynghalle and almost knocking her off her feet.
Paxtone reeled back with his hand to his mouth, while Michael inhaled sharply at the sight.

‘And that is not all,’ said Bartholomew softly. ‘This is the man whose body was in the cistern in Merton Hall.’

Michael gazed at Bartholomew in the darkness of the dilapidated stables. The physician could hear Dodenho retching outside,
while Wormynghalle and Paxtone stood well back, so they were not obliged to see the horror on the table. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I recognise the shape of his nose and the moss-coloured liripipe.’

‘He often wore that,’ said Wormynghalle in a cracked voice. ‘He liked green clothes.’

‘You told me that when I wrote Dodenho’s prescription, and you gave me his emerald ink to use by mistake,’ recalled Bartholomew.
‘I should have put the facts together sooner, because I remember this garment quite clearly from the well.’

‘But how did he come to be here?’ demanded Michael.

No one could answer, and Bartholomew went back to his examination. He quickly established for certain that the throat wound
was the cause of death, and ascertained from the state of the body that it had been immersed in water for some time. There
was only one other thing that was pertinent: a rope around the corpse’s feet, which had been cut. He supposed it had been
attached to stones and used to weight Hamecotes down, to prevent him from floating. It explained why the body had been so
heavy when he had pulled it to the surface in the belief that it was Michael. He realised it would have remained hidden indefinitely,
had Michael not had the misfortune to fall in with it. He told the others his conclusions.

‘But Sheriff Tulyet said there was no body in the cistern,’ said Paxtone, bewildered.

‘Obviously, it was moved before he conducted his search,’ replied Michael impatiently. ‘And now we know where it went, although
I cannot imagine why. Did Hamecotes know Eudo or Boltone?’

‘Not as far as I am aware,’ replied Paxtone. ‘But Boltone is sometimes obliged to travel to Oxford to present his accounts,
and Hamecotes has …had friends there. Perhaps they had mutual acquaintances. It was because of his Oxford connections
that we were not surprised when Hamecotes wrote to say he had gone there – we were annoyed and inconvenienced, but not worried.’

‘He did know Boltone,’ said Wormynghalle. She rubbed her mouth on her sleeve and Bartholomew saw that her hands were shaking.
‘Boltone’s brother was bailiff on a manor owned by Hamecotes’s sister, or some such thing. They were not friends, but they
passed the time of day when they met by chance on the street.’

‘Boltone,’ said Michael in satisfaction. ‘This explains a good deal. It tells us why he tried to beat our brains out when
we ventured too near the place where he had hidden Hamecotes’s body. And Eudo must have helped him – either with the murder
itself, or with disposing of the corpse.’

‘Hamecotes died in exactly the same way as Okehamptone,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Do you see these indentations? They are tooth
marks. I saw similar damage on Okehamptone’s neck. Also, note the way the flesh is torn here, which is indicative of a puncture
caused by a sharp canine . . .’

He trailed off. Was his analysis correct? Were the faint bruises caused by human fangs, or had he allowed Rougham’s claims
of being gnawed by Clippesby to influence his conclusions? He found he was not sure. Then he became aware that Paxtone was
regarding him with some shock.

‘But Okehamptone died of a fever. I saw the body myself.’

‘You did not,’ said Michael tartly. ‘You prayed over it, but you did not
examine
it. You missed the fact that there was a wound on Okehamptone’s throat that was identical to this one.’

Paxtone was appalled. ‘But Okehamptone was pale and waxen, not at all like Hamecotes, who is black and bloated.’

‘That is because Hamecotes has been submerged in water for God knows how long,’ said Michael impatiently. ‘Of course they
do not look the same now.’

‘But how do you know Okehamptone had a wound in his throat?’ asked Paxtone, regarding Bartholomew uneasily. ‘You did not exhume
him, did you? Like the medical men in Italy are said to do? I will not condone that sort of activity, Matthew. It is not right!’

‘Okehamptone was not buried,’ said Michael briskly. ‘Which is just as well, given what we now know about him. No one wants
his tortured soul roaming the streets of Cambridge, screaming for vengeance and haunting those who let him down, so you should
be grateful for what Matt did.’

‘We especially do not want him at large when the Archbishop is here,’ agreed Dodenho. ‘It would mean our suppression for certain.
Perhaps I should offer my services to Polmorva, so he will take me with him to Winchester or Haverhill when he establishes
his new school.’

‘Yes, go and see him today,’ encouraged Wormynghalle. She fixed Paxtone with accusing eyes. ‘It sounds as though you almost
allowed a killer to go free. How could you have missed a terrible injury like this on a man’s body?’

‘I am a physician, whose duty is to the living,’ replied Paxtone angrily. ‘I know there are men who learn anatomy from cadavers,
but I am not one of them – I do not even touch them, if I can help it. That is why I did not see
Hamecotes’s neck when Dodenho summoned me earlier, either.’

‘No harm has been done,’ said Dodenho, seeing Wormynghalle look angry at their colleague’s negligence. ‘Paxtone made a mistake,
but Bartholomew has corrected it. Lesser mortals are prone to errors, and few of us are perfect.’

‘True,’ agreed Michael, evidently putting himself in the latter category. ‘So, we shall say no more about it. What we will
discuss, however, is what we can learn about Hamecotes’s death now. Matt?’

‘He and Okehamptone have similar wounds, so they must have been killed by the same person or people.’

‘Boltone is as good a suspect as any,’ said Michael. ‘He knew Hamecotes, and may have met Okehamptone when he visited Oxford
to present his accounts. Okehamptone died in Merton Hall, and Hamecotes’s body was concealed in Merton Hall – where Boltone
lives. Eudo probably helped him.’

‘But why?’ wondered Bartholomew. ‘Why would they kill these two men?’

‘We will ask them when they are caught,’ said Michael. ‘I wonder why they moved Hamecotes from the cistern to here.’

‘Because they did not want his body found?’ suggested Paxtone. ‘Tulyet made no secret of the fact that he intended to dredge
the pit, so they were obliged to hide their victim a second time.’

‘This does not make sense,’ said Bartholomew. ‘If they fished the body from the well, why did they not grab their sack of
treasure at the same time?’

‘Perhaps they intended to go back for it when they finished dealing with Hamecotes, but ran out of time,’ said Michael with
a dismissive wave of a fat white hand to indicate the point was unimportant. ‘The question I want
answered is why did they bring Hamecotes here, where he would be so easily discovered?’

‘They probably did not know he would be “easily discovered”,’ said Paxtone. ‘I had no idea Dodenho uses this abandoned shed
to practise his lectures, and I am sure the killers did not, either. What do you think, Wormynghalle?’

‘I saw Dodenho here once or twice,’ recalled Wormynghalle thoughtfully. ‘But I assumed he was meeting a woman, so of course
I said nothing. We men must turn a blind eye to each other’s dalliances from time to time.’ She did not look at Bartholomew.

‘I shall not come here again, though,’ vowed Dodenho. ‘I prefer my audiences alive. Perhaps I will leave Cambridge and go
to Oxford instead.
They
do not have rotting cadavers in deserted huts.’

‘Everything about this case points to Oxford,’ mused Michael. ‘We now have five men dead – Gonerby, Okehamptone, Chesterfelde,
Spryngheuse and Hamecotes – all with links to the place.’ He was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘Let us review
what we know of these deaths chronologically. Gonerby died first, in February, during the riots. But who was next? Okehamptone
died about two weeks ago, which is roughly the time you say Hamecotes left King’s Hall.’

‘Hamecotes did not kill Okehamptone,’ said Wormynghalle, immediately defensive of her room-mate. ‘Why would he do such a
thing? They probably did not even know each other.’

‘You cannot be sure of that,’ argued Michael. ‘You said yourself that Hamecotes had “friends” in Oxford. And Okehamptone may
have killed Hamecotes, anyway, not the other way around. We have no idea who died first, because Matt refuses to be more precise
about times of death.’

‘I do not think either is guilty,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Their
throat wounds are virtually identical, and I doubt one killed the other, and then was slain in the same way by a third person.
That is unlikely, to say the least.’

‘I am not sure I agree with your assessment of bites,’ said Paxtone, reluctantly inspecting the wound and clearly finding
it distasteful. ‘I acknowledge this rough gash was not made with a knife – even a blunt one – but teeth . . .’ He shuddered
at the notion.

Bartholomew pointed again to the marks still visible in the darkening skin. ‘You can see their impression. It looks as if
someone grabbed the throat with his teeth and pulled at it. Like this.’

Paxtone turned away with a gasp of revulsion, while Wormynghalle and Michael studiously refused to look until they were sure
he had finished. Dodenho witnessed the demonstration, but only because he was too shocked to close his eyes.

‘That was singularly nasty,’ Dodenho said eventually, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. His fingers shook violently.
‘What are you trying to do? Unnerve us into having nightmares, with visions of human wolves tearing at the necks of their
innocent victims?’

‘Speaking of wolves, what do you think happened to Wolf?’ asked Michael. ‘We have ascertained that Hamecotes was not where
you thought he should be, so what about your other absent colleague?’

‘We do not know,’ said Wormynghalle weakly. ‘Paxtone says he does not have the pox, and I do not think he is Rougham’s lover,
because both men prefer ladies – as I do. Perhaps Norton is right, and he has absconded because he owes the College so much
money. But I do not think he is the killer. Do you?’ She addressed her question to Dodenho, his room-mate.

Dodenho considered carefully. ‘No. He does not have the teeth, for a start. His are decayed, and biting something
like a throat would probably make most of them snap off.’

‘This is preposterous!’ exclaimed Paxtone, suddenly angry. ‘You must be mistaken, Matthew. People simply do not die in this
way! I have been a physician for twenty-seven years, and I have never heard even the merest whisper of someone bitten to death
by another person. I can see there are marks that
may
have been caused by fangs, but they must belong to a dog or a wild beast.’

‘It is possible,’ conceded Bartholomew, relieved that someone had suggested an alternative. ‘Perhaps someone trained an animal
to kill.’

Michael spoke in a low voice when the King’s Hall men began a debate about which creatures might be trained for killing: Paxtone
said only dogs were so inclined, while Wormynghalle opted for a bear and Dodenho elected a ferret. ‘Or perhaps someone is
so deranged that he
thinks
he is an animal. Do not forget Rougham, Matt – even I could tell a man had gnawed him. If I bit myself on the arm right now,
I would see the same thing that I saw on
his
shoulder: a parabolic curve with oblong dents for choppers, and square ones for grinders.’

Bartholomew nodded, staring down at the body. ‘The problem with Hamecotes – and Okehamptone, too – is that they have been
dead too long. The skin has rotted and changed its texture, so the marks are distorted. There may be a parabolic curve here,
and these marks may be molars and incisors. But it is impossible to be sure.’