Paul Doherty - The Devil's Hunt

‘Ah!’ Lady Mathilda sniffed, folding back the voluminous cuffs of her robe. ‘There’s so much nonsense written about de Montfort. When my beloved brother came here and founded the Hall and bought the tenements opposite for the hostelry, a widow woman with a child lived in the wine cellars across the lane. She was quite fair but something of a madcap; apparently her husband had been one of de Montfort’s councillors. My brother, God bless him, had to ask her to leave. He offered her alternative dwellings but she refused them.’ Lady Mathilda ran her finger round the rim of her cup. ‘To cut a long story short, Sir Hugh, the woman took to wandering the streets with her boy, until one winter’s night he died. She brought his little corpse down to the lane. She had a hand-bell and began to ring it. A crowd assembled, my brother and myself included. Then she lit a candle, fashioned, so she claimed, from the fat of a hanged man, and she cursed both my brother and Sparrow Hall. She vowed that one day the Bellman would come and wreak revenge, both for her and for the so-called glorious memory of Earl Simon.’

‘What happened to her?’ Corbett asked.

Lady Mathilda grinned; in the flickering candlelight she reminded Corbett of a cat, with narrowed eyes, the skin of her face drawn tight, one hand curled like a claw on the table.

‘Now that’s a coincidence, Sir Hugh. She entered the nunnery at Godstowe but, because of her extravagances, left there. She is now an anchorite at St Michael’s Church. Oh yes! The same place in which Passerel was poisoned.’

‘Why the Bellman?’ Maltote, usually quiet but now emboldened by drink, spoke up. ‘Why did the anchorite refer to the Bellman?’

‘Because,’ Tripham intervened quickly, ‘in London, the Bellman stands outside the Fleet and Newgate prisons on the night before execution day. He warns the prisoners in the condemned cell that they are about to die.’

‘It’s not only that,’ Langton spoke up shyly. ‘Sir Hugh, many years ago when I was a mere stripling, I was an apprentice to a scrivener near St Paul’s. When de Montfort raised the banner of rebellion against the King, the trained bands of London were summoned by his herald, who called himself the Bellman.’

Corbett smiled his agreement but secretly wondered how many at Sparrow Hall had fought or supported the dead earl.

‘So, you know nothing,’ he asked, ‘about the present Bellman or these gruesome deaths amongst the beggars?’

‘Come, come!’ Churchley tapped the table. ‘Sir Hugh, Sir Hugh! Why should any man here want to take the heads of such destitute people?’

‘Oxford is full of covens and groups,’ Appleston spoke up. ‘The young dabble in strange rites and practices. We have men from the eastern marches whose Christianity, to put it bluntly, is wafer thin.’

‘Let us return to more familiar domestic matters,’ Corbett replied. ‘Master John Copsale’s death?’

‘He had a weak heart,’ Churchley declared. ‘I often made him a concoction of digitalis to temper the heat and make the blood flow more evenly. Sir Hugh, I was Copsale’s physician. He could have died at any time: when I dressed his corpse for burial, I noticed nothing amiss!’

‘Where was he buried?’ Corbett asked.

‘In the churchyard of St Mary’s. Passerel will also be buried there. The Hall owns a plot of land adjoining the cemetery.’

‘Did Passerel say anything?’ Ranulf spoke up from the end of the table. ‘Anything at all to explain why Ascham should write his name, or most of it, on a piece of parchment?’

‘He hotly denied any blame,’ Norreys replied. ‘Every time he came over to check on the stores or sign the accounts, the poor fellow would begin a speech in his own defence.’

‘We all agreed with him,’ Tripham said. ‘The day Ascham was killed, Passerel was travelling back from Abingdon.’

‘Ascham’s corpse must have been cold,’ Churchley spoke up, ‘when Passerel arrived back about five o’clock. It was he who initiated the search for poor Robert, and when we forced the door Ascham was as cold as ice.’

‘What time do you think he died?’ Corbett asked.

‘We know,’ Tripham replied. ‘He went into the library — oh, between one and two o’clock in the afternoon. He locked and bolted the library door behind him. He must have been searching for something but exactly what he never mentioned. Now, for some of that afternoon, I was with Lady Mathilda discussing the Hall’s revenues.’ He glared meaningfully to his right. ‘We then went down to the buttery. Passerel burst in, saying the library was locked and he could get no answer from Ascham.’

‘And where were the rest of you?’

The mumbled replies told him little. Norreys had been across in the hostelry doing his accounts: the rest had been in their chambers before going down to the buttery.

‘I ordered the door to be broken down,’ Tripham declared. ‘When we went in, Ascham was lying in a pool of blood, the letter beside him; the candle was burnt down and the garden window was shuttered.’

‘I examined him,’ Churchley spoke up. ‘It was just after five o’clock in the evening when we broke in. He must have been dead for about an hour.’

‘And what happened on the day Passerel fled to St Michael’s?’ Corbett asked.

‘The scholars,’ Tripham replied, ‘loved old Ascham. On the day in question, a mob gathered threatening violence.’

‘Couldn’t you have sent to the Sheriff for help?’

‘Aye, and we’d still be waiting,’ Appelston replied. ‘I told Passerel to flee: it seemed the best course of action.’

‘We thought it wise to let hot blood cool,’ Tripham added. ‘The following morning, I would have petitioned for help.’ He tapped the table cloth. ‘In the circumstances, it’s difficult to blame the students.’

Corbett pushed his wine cup away. At the far end of the table Maltote and Ranulf looked at him expectantly. Maltote was completely bemused. Ranulf was grinning, running his tongue round his lips. As he often whispered to Maltote, ‘I love to see old Master Long Face get to the questioning. A true lawyer he is, with those sharp, hooded eyes. He sits and questions and then he’ll go away and brood.’ Ranulf took great pleasure in what was happening. Apart from Norreys, the rest of the Masters had ignored him as if he did not exist. Suddenly a screech owl called outside and Ranulf shivered. Wasn’t Uncle Morgan always saying that a screech owl’s call was the harbinger of death?

Corbett sat in silence. He studied his wine cup, a trick he often used to force others to speak. This time he was disappointed. Lady Mathilda and the rest just stared back expectantly.

Corbett began his questioning again. ‘Did Ascham ever say anything untoward? If the Bellman killed him there can only be one reason for that: Ascham must have begun to suspect his identity.’ He clasped his hands together on the table. ‘Now students are not allowed to come into the Hall, are they?’

‘No,’ Tripham retorted. ‘They are not.’

‘Or walk in the garden?’

‘No.’

‘Therefore Ascham’s killer must have been in the Hall itself, either one of you or one of the servants. So, I ask you again, did Ascham ever say anything about the Bellman or his possible identity?’

‘He did to me,’ Langton declared, rather embarrassed by his own outspokenness. ‘I asked who he thought the Bellman could be.’ He continued in a rush, ‘But Ascham only replied with that quotation from St Paul: “We see through a glass darkly”.’

‘He said as much to me,’ Churchley spoke up. ‘Once I met him in the buttery. He looked worried, so I asked him what was the matter? He replied that appearances were deceptive: there was something not right at Sparrow Hall. I asked him what he meant but he refused to answer.’