Susanna GREGORY - Mystery in the Minster

The relief in his voice was so apparent that Bartholomew regarded him closely. ‘That surprises you! You thought Cave was guilty.’

‘No,’ stated Ellis, although his eyes said otherwise.

Bartholomew pointed to the body in the mound. ‘This is murder, Sub-Chanter Ellis. Murder! You cannot conceal what you know about it.’

Ellis licked his lips, and when he spoke, it was in a mumble. ‘Cave said he had lost his purse in Huntington, and returned the next day to look for it. I confess I may have wondered since then whether he had done something to Cotyngham…’

‘And you told no one?’ demanded Michael.

Ellis spread his hands. ‘I had no proof, and he is one of my vicars. But once we learned that Cotyngham was in the infirmary, he was very vocal in urging me to claim Huntington at once…’

Bartholomew rounded angrily on Michael. ‘You said discussing Cotyngham would help us find Cynric, but all we have done is waste time.’

The monk nodded towards the body. ‘Examine him, and tell us exactly how he died.’

‘Why?’ exploded Bartholomew. ‘We already know that Cave killed–’

‘Cave is almost certainly irrelevant,’ Michael flared back. ‘Cynric was digging here when Marmaduke took him prisoner. Hence Marmaduke objected to what he was about to find, which tells us that Marmaduke knew what was buried. If you want to help Cynric, look at the body.’

Bartholomew had reached the door before accepting that Michael might have a point, and that Cotyngham might hold clues to help Cynric. He hurried back to the plaque mound, scraped the rest of the soil from the corpse, and crouched next to it. This time, Ellis was silent. The physician’s hands shook as he reached out to touch Cotyngham, a combination of cold and strain.

‘It is difficult to tell after so much time,’ he said at last. ‘But his skull is broken. Had he been alive when it happened, the wound would certainly have killed him.’

‘Good,’ said Michael encouragingly. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing else!’ cried Bartholomew in despair. ‘He has been dead too long.’

‘Easy,’ said Michael. ‘Remember that you are helping Cynric by doing this. Now take a deep breath, and look again.’

Bartholomew did as he was told, struggling to quell his rising panic. He stared at Cotyngham, but his thoughts were full of what Marmaduke might be doing to his old friend while they squandered precious moments. Suddenly something occurred to him, although it was nothing to give him any comfort.

‘Marmaduke!’ he whispered. He gazed at Michael with a stricken expression. ‘We know he can use a bow, because he had one during the riot outside Holy Trinity. And if he is familiar enough with this church to take Cynric prisoner here, then there is nothing to say that he is not the archer who shot Sir William.’

‘It is possible,’ conceded Michael. ‘Moreover, he told us himself that his eyesight is poor, and we have considered from the start that the culprit might not have been aiming at William, but at you – a scholar from the College that intends to have Huntington from the vicars.’

‘No!’ cried Ellis angrily. ‘If Marmaduke did try to kill Bartholomew, it was not on our orders. Besides, when we first met you, we thought Bartholomew was a servant, because he was hatless. We did not know he was a scholar until later.’

‘Hats!’ exclaimed Bartholomew, as understanding dawned. ‘The first time we met Dalfeld, he was livid because his hat and cloak had been stolen…’

‘You think the intended target was Dalfeld now?’ asked Michael in confusion.

‘Bartholomew and Dalfeld are the same height, and both have black curly hair,’ mused Ellis. ‘Moreover, although Dalfeld is usually elegant, his gipon was stained and ripped that day, because a robber had pushed him over. I can see how they might have been mistaken from a distance, especially by a man with bad eyesight, and when visibility was poor because of the rain.’

‘I had no hat and was carrying my cloak because Cave had lobbed dirt at me,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It made a mess, so Sir William told me to take it off. My tunic was travel stained – it might have appeared muddy from afar.’

Michael was thoughtful. ‘I suppose it is possible that Marmaduke was expecting Dalfeld to come from the direction of the abbey, so when he saw you with William–’

‘He made a mistake,’ finished Bartholomew. ‘Or rather, two mistakes: he identified the wrong victim, and he overestimated his skill. It was windy that day, and neither the bow he stole from the city butts nor the hen-feather arrow were of decent quality. All this affected his aim.’

‘And we found the remains of bread and cheese,’ mused Michael. ‘Exactly the kind of meal that might be eaten by an ex-priest without much money – and left by a man who had waited some time for his victim to appear. I was never happy with Langelee’s contention that the would-be assassin might have enjoyed a hurried meal.’

‘But why would Marmaduke want to kill Dalfeld?’ asked Ellis, then he rubbed his chin and answered the question himself. ‘Recently, Dalfeld has been saying that there was more to Marmaduke’s defrocking than the peddling of false relics. And he has a point: the Church does not usually oust members for that sort of crime.’

‘So why did it happen?’ asked Michael, while Bartholomew made an agitated sound that said he thought the discussion irrelevant to Cynric.

Ellis shrugged. ‘Probably because he irritated Zouche’s other executors over his obsession with the chantry – he kept pestering them about it. They were powerful men, and I suspect some of them encouraged Thoresby to defrock him, so they would have an excuse to ignore his nagging. But this cannot be a reason for Marmaduke wanting Dalfeld dead. Dalfeld is not an executor.’

‘Listen!’ Bartholomew cocked his head suddenly. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’ asked Michael. ‘There is nothing–’

‘A crash.’ Bartholomew looked around wildly. ‘It came from below us. Is there a crypt?’

‘There was,’ replied Ellis. ‘But it became unstable during the Great Pestilence, which is why none of the plague-dead were taken down there. I imagine it will have collapsed by now. But even if it has not, I would not recommend going–’

‘Where is the door?’ demanded Bartholomew, wishing he had thought of it sooner.

When Ellis hesitated, Bartholomew lunged towards him, and there was something in his eyes that warned the sub-chanter to provide a reply, because he pointed quickly to the remains of a metal gate, rusted and twisted. Beyond it were several steps that looked as though they were blocked by rubble, but when Bartholomew inspected them more carefully he saw they actually curved around a corner. And beyond them was a stone door on an elaborate system of tracks.

‘St Mary ad Valvas !’ breathed Michael. ‘I knew the dedication must bear some reference to a sliding door, and there it is.’

Bartholomew was about to suggest they arm themselves, when there was a sudden groan and the door rolled open. Then everything happened very fast.

He felt an arrow slice past his face and the shock of it made him jerk backwards, so he lost his footing. At the same time, something thudded into Ellis, who promptly collapsed on top of him. This was followed by an explosion of shouting and hammering footsteps, which stopped almost as soon as it had started.

The sub-chanter’s blood was gushing all over Bartholomew, whose first instinct was to fight away from the warm, sticky flow. But some innate sense of self-preservation warned him to feign death when hands came to turn him over.