Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

‘It was a good hiding place,’ Simon commented. ‘The walls are high enough.’

‘Yes, but men are working up there all the time,’ Baldwin said, pointing up at the scaffolding. ‘Why put him here, when the body must soon be seen? And then leave the rope about his neck? Is this killer so stupid that he wanted people to know someone was murdered?’

Simon shrugged. ‘There’s probably a simple excuse. He was going to slip in here and release the rope, cover the body with rubble or a strip of cloth or something, but then he heard people coming, so he bolted.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said.

‘Or,’ Simon said, warming to a fresh idea, ‘he couldn’t fit! What if he was large-sized, with a great paunch, and couldn’t physically slip around the wall like you and me?’

‘He’d climb over the top,’ Baldwin said scornfully.

‘If he was that fat, I doubt it,’ Simon said. ‘Anyway, if this friar’s throat was opened, where is all the blood?’

‘No doubt that lies where the friar was murdered,’ Baldwin said with a sigh.

‘Well?’ demanded the Treasurer truculently. ‘What have you learned?’

He and the others had all left the scaffolding and were waiting for Simon and Baldwin in a huddle near the south-west corner of the Cathedral.

‘Little enough so far,’ Baldwin said. ‘The friar had his throat cut, I think, Dean. The murder must have happened somewhere nearby. There will be plenty of blood at the spot.’

‘So what do you want us to do?’ Treasurer Stephen said more calmly. His face was set, Baldwin noticed. He appeared anxious.

‘I would like you to order your lay servants to look for the place where the friar was killed. Meanwhile we need to know who was the last person to have seen this man. I don’t suppose any of you did so last evening?’ he asked, glancing at the Dean, the Treasurer and Matthew, who stood holding a leather cylinder for a scroll.

They all shook their heads, the Dean with his customary air of benign bafflement, the Treasurer studiously ignoring the Dean at his side; Matthew looked down at the man and shook his head too, as though reluctantly.

‘I shall let you know as soon as we learn anything about either man’s death,’ Baldwin promised, and the Dean took hold of the Treasurer’s arm and led him away a short distance to speak to him. Baldwin watched the two, so apparently at odds, and yet always managing to work together for the good of the Cathedral itself.

‘Sir Baldwin, I know this is quite ridiculous, but …’

‘What is it?’ he asked, facing the man. ‘You are Matthew, I believe?’

‘Yes. I am the Warden of the Fabric, the Clerk of the building work. It’s probably nothing, Sir Baldwin, but I did see the friar late yesterday afternoon. He was here with one of the masons, a man called Thomas.’

‘Here? Where, exactly? What were they doing?’

‘Thomas was at the foot of the wall, and the friar and he spoke together for a while. Then they moved away and I didn’t see anything of them after that.’

‘Thomas? That’s interesting,’ Baldwin said. ‘Do you know much of him?’

‘Not I, no. I had thought-’ he frowned. ‘But no.’

‘You thought what?’

‘It’s ridiculous, but I thought he looked familiar.’

‘He reminded you of someone?’

‘Yes — a man who used to live here in the city many years ago. He too was called Thomas,’ Matthew recollected with a slight frown.

Baldwin felt his mood lighten. If a man should run away for some forty odd years, and then desire to see the place of his birth again, what better method of doing so than coming to a building site like this? It was enclosed, so he need not face any of his old friends; he could remain locked within the Cathedral’s precinct. If any man saw him, it was so long ago since he had lived here, surely he would be all but unrecognisable.

Except, should someone here realise who he was, and be afraid lest Tom reveal their part in the murder of the Chaunter, might not that same someone decide to kill in order to keep his secret silent? Baldwin thought he might.

‘You say that the two were at the Cathedral wall. Where exactly?’

‘There,’ Matthew said.

Baldwin looked at the corner he indicated, and then found his eyes being pulled westwards again, to the rectangular block of the Charnel Chapel. ‘I think I know where he was killed,’ he said as he set off towards the chapel’s door.

Simon hurried to join him. Matthew and the Master Mason stood staring at each other for a moment, until Simon glanced back and beckoned to them authoritatively.

Baldwin stood at the north-eastern wall of the chapel. From here, northwards there was the small circular house that held the conduit; east lay the Cathedral and works. ‘Where did you stand, Matthew, when you saw the two?’

‘I was over there at the entrance to the Exchequer.’

Baldwin looked eastwards. The Exchequer lay beyond the tower of St Paul, the northernmost of the two Cathedral towers. ‘Any man slipping down here would have been invisible to you, then; or a man who went behind the conduit?’

‘Yes.’

Baldwin stalked to the conduit. The little building had its door facing east. ‘If they had entered here, you would have seen them?’

‘I think so, yes.’

Baldwin nodded, and he looked up at the Charnel Chapel once more, a feeling of leaden reluctance entering his bones. ‘He was killed in there, I think.’

He led the way across the grassed cemetery to the steps descending to the crypt itself. His eyes spotted the tell-tale marks on the stone steps. ‘Blood.’

He went down the steps into the crypt, pushing the door wide. It moved easily on well-oiled hinges, and Baldwin found himself in a dry, musty-smelling chamber as large as the chapel above: some twenty feet by forty. The floor was flagged, and there were thick pillars supporting heavy arches that formed the floor of the chapel. Baldwin could hear Simon’s breath growing sharper, faster, and usually it would have alleviated his own sombre mood, but not today. Baldwin had a strange feeling that he had been leading up to this moment for a long time, as though the crypt was in some way a culmination.

However, while Simon’s anxiety was based on the purest of superstitions about bones, Baldwin felt that there was an aura of evil in this specific building. He had felt it generally upstairs in the chapel, but here in the crypt it seemed more potent. I do not like this place, he thought to himself, and even the thought itself felt dangerous, as though the spirit of the building might read his mind.

‘Nonsense!’ he muttered aloud, annoyed with himself for allowing the atmosphere to colour his mood. It was ridiculous! He could only assume that his guilt at his treatment of his wife had caused this aberration. With a renewed determination, he marched further into the crypt.

On either side were piles of bones, skulls nearest the door, thigh and leg bones further on, stretching over to the far wall. The skulls themselves were set somewhat haphazardly, unlike the tidily piled thigh and arm bones. They were stored neatly; respectfully. The skulls were not. Some had fallen from a neat pile, and one had rolled across the floor. Baldwin picked it up, gazing into the empty eye-sockets, wondering what sort of a person had once inhabited these ounces of bone.

‘I don’t know how you can do that,’ Simon muttered from behind him.

Baldwin said nothing, merely set the skull back among the others, then studied the floor nearby. With a grunt, he removed the skull again, and then started taking away all the others too until he had cleared a space. He touched the bare flagged floor and rubbed finger and thumb together.

‘He died here.’