Susanna GREGORY - The Mark of a Murderer

‘How did she do that?’ asked Michael, startled. ‘Surely he wanted to know why?’

Matilde’s eyes sparkled; she loved a challenge. ‘He was drafting it out in St Mary the Great, and I pretended to admire his writing. He gave it to me as a keepsake.’

The lad was besotted with her, Bartholomew thought, like so many other men. It occurred to him that he might have competition when he asked for her hand in marriage, and that he should place his request as soon as possible. ‘Matilde,’ he began, abandoning his hopes for more intimate circumstances. ‘I have been thinking that you and I …that is to say, have you …?’ His heart was hammering so furiously that it was making him feel light-headed.

‘That was clever of you,’ said Michael to Matilde, when Bartholomew’s stuttering sentences seemed to be leading nowhere important. ‘But what does this list have to do with Weasenham?’

‘His name is not on it,’ explained Rougham, pulling it from his tunic. ‘Look. You can see for yourselves. He is my wealthiest patient, and I was relieved I had not missed a consultation with him. But now I learn he has changed his allegiance, and favours Bartholomew instead. That is a blow.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘However, it does suggest that Matt was deliberately lured away by someone who knew Paxtone would do a less than perfect job. But who? Weasenham himself?’

‘It was a summons under false pretences, too,’ added Bartholomew, dragging his thoughts away from conjugal bliss and supposing there would be another opportunity to propose to Matilde. ‘He only had toothache, and could have gone to the apothecary. He did not need a physician.’

‘Interesting,’ mused Michael. ‘We must have words with him about this.’

‘It is more than interesting,’ said Rougham angrily. ‘It smacks of a carefully laid plot. Henry was an Austin Canon and, although he did not often wear the prescribed habit, he always favoured clothes that were sober and functional. I never saw him don anything as frivolous as the liripipe you described. If there was a gaudy hood on his body, then someone put it there after he died.’

‘To hide the wound,’ surmised Michael. ‘And with my Corpse Examiner otherwise engaged, and a room full of men prepared to swear that Okehamptone had died of a fever, the killer – or killers – had high hopes that the crime would go undetected.’

‘It did go undetected,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘But if Clippesby is the killer, it means he put the liripipe on Okehamptone and convinced everyone that the man died of a fever. It also means he persuaded Weasenham to summon me. It sounds too highly organised to be his work.’

‘But he knows you are a careful Corpse Examiner,’ argued Rougham. ‘No one from Oxford does. It makes sense that he was the one who sent you on this wild-goose chase with Weasenham.’

Michael scratched his chin. ‘I wonder whether Polmorva’s refusal to allow Rougham into Merton Hall means Okehamptone was already dead – that he did not die in the night.’

‘No, it does not,’ said Rougham softly. ‘The shutters were open on the upper floor, and I could see inside as I left. Henry was sitting in a window. Perhaps he was feverish at that point, but it did not prevent him from chatting merrily to his Oxford cronies. There was no reason for me to have been turned away, and I was hurt.’

‘You definitely saw him alive?’ asked Michael.

‘Yes. We have known each other ever since we were undergraduate-commoners at Merton, forty years ago. We were boys then, and it was long before you studied there, Bartholomew, but we wrote and met whenever we could. At one point, I was going to marry his sister, but then I embarked on an academic career, and that put paid to thoughts of women – well, to marrying them, at least.’

‘And Okehamptone was talking to his Merton friends that night?’ pressed Michael, to be certain.

Rougham nodded. ‘In the light of his murder, I can only assume this wretch Polmorva declined to tell him I had come a-visiting.’

Bartholomew rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Which means Polmorva decided in advance that Okehamptone was not to see any friends that night – especially a physician. But why? So no one could later claim he was fit, and had not died of a sudden fever?’

‘If so, then it means Polmorva played an active role in the murder,’ said Rougham. ‘Do you think Clippesby put him under his spell, or perhaps threatened to kill him, if he did not do as he was told?’

‘No,’ said Bartholomew immediately. ‘Clippesby is not that forceful.’

‘I agree,’ said Matilde, taking part in the discussion for the first time. ‘He is gentle, and abhors violence. And he is far too scatter-brained to have executed such a devilish plot.’

Michael was unconvinced. ‘But it explains very neatly why he attacked Rougham later the same night – he knew Rougham was Okehamptone’s friend, and did not want him looking too closely into the death that was to occur before the following morning.’

‘But why would Clippesby want a stranger – an Austin Canon – dead?’ pressed Bartholomew. ‘Even the insane have their motives, even if they are not ones we understand or accept.’

‘Perhaps he wanted revenge on the Order he knew would later incarcerate him at Stourbridge,’ suggested Rougham. ‘He claims his animal friends tell him things that will happen in the future, so perhaps he had an inkling that he would soon be locked away.’

‘That is weak,’ said Bartholomew doubtfully.

‘But not entirely impossible,’ argued Rougham. He shuddered. ‘The sooner I am back at Gonville the better. Will you help me walk there on Monday, after Clippesby leaves for Norfolk? I would like to meet the Archbishop, and I can hardly ask him to visit me here.’

‘No,’ agreed Bartholomew harshly, thinking of Matilde’s reputation. ‘You cannot.’

Bartholomew and Michael left Matilde’s house and started to walk back to Michaelhouse, discussing the difficulties inherent in taking Rougham to Gonville Hall with no one seeing. They considered various options, including disguising him as a leper, hiding him in a cart, and dressing him in one of Michael’s habits. Mention of men in monkish garb reminded Bartholomew of Spryngheuse’s imaginary Benedictine, and he was sorry the Merton scholar had died in such an agony of terror.

Preparations for the impending Visitation were all around them as they walked along the High Street. The gutters were being scoured yet again, and dung collectors were out in force, gathering as much ordure as they could find, for they had been offered double pay for every cartload they procured. Apprentices scaled unsteady ladders to clean the fronts of their masters’ houses and shops, and the demand for washes to paint over old plaster was at a premium. New shades were springing up everywhere, as the preferred cream and ochre became unavailable. Haralda the Dane’s home was an attractive pastel green, while Robin of Grantchester, the unsavoury surgeon who killed more customers than he saved, had opted to make his own, because it was cheaper. It was a vivid pink, and there were rumours that he had added blood from his patients to colour it.

Michael stopped walking and regarded the High Street with a critical eye. ‘It is looking quite attractive,’ he admitted eventually, watching the frenetic activities as people tried to finish as much as possible before the Sabbath put an end to their work.

‘It is a pity about the river and the King’s Ditch, though,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The dung collectors have amassed such vast quantities over the last two weeks that there is too much to sell for fertiliser. For want of anywhere else to put it, they are dumping it in the waterways, which are now foul.’