Susanna GREGORY - A Killer in Winter

‘I thought Fiscurtune’s son had drowned himself,’ said Bartholomew, recalling a story Quenhyth had spun.

‘His rescuers should have let him die when he hurled himself into the Thames,’ said Frith, turning angrily on him. ‘Uncle John deserved better than that ungrateful wretch – he should have been disowned and I made heir in his place. I would have made Uncle John proud.’

‘By playing the pipe and tabor?’ asked Michael archly. ‘However, although you may not have killed Turke, two other men have died in suspicious circumstances: Norbert and Gosslinge are connected to the chain of events that led you to help Ailred collect his lost pledges.’

‘We had nothing to do with either of them,’ said Jestyn furiously. He turned accusingly to Frith. ‘You see? I told you they would blame us if we became involved in the mess your uncle created with his box of gold. Now they think we have committed murder!’

‘Well, we did not,’ said Frith shortly. Bartholomew found his denial unconvincing and, judging by the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of Jestyn and Makejoy, so did they. ‘This is all Turke’s fault. If he had kept control of his temper, Uncle John would still be alive and we would be enjoying a continuation of our success in Chepe.’

‘We should not be here,’ agreed Jestyn. He glanced around him disparagingly. ‘I do not like these religious institutions. They are full of fanatics and lunatics. We are not safe.’

‘We would have managed in Chepe without Fiscurtune, Frith,’ said Makejoy, bitterly. ‘But Jestyn is right: we should not have come and we should stay here no longer. I want to leave now.’

‘In a moment,’ said Frith, indicating Yna with a nod of his head and giving Makejoy a meaningful look. Yna was still unsteady on her feet, and Frith wanted to give her more time to recover before making what would probably be a dramatic escape.

‘What was Fiscurtune like?’ asked Bartholomew, taking advantage of the fact that the Waits were predisposed to talk. It occurred to him that the Fiscurtune described by Tulyet, Giles and Philippa did not seem the kind of character to inspire others to great loyalty. ‘You were ready to avenge him, and yet others claim he was … less worthy.’

‘I suppose you spoke to Abigny and Turke’s wife,’ said Frith with a sneer. ‘Of course they would not like Uncle John. He could be rude, and the early loss of his teeth did not improve his looks. But, nevertheless, he was hurt when Philippa rejected him as a suitor.’

‘Turke and Fiscurtune were both courting her,’ said Bartholomew, recalling that Philippa had chosen Turke on the basis of his roofed latrine.

‘My uncle was better off without her,’ declared Frith vehemently. ‘Later, he invented a new method for salting fish, but Turke would not give him permission to develop it, despite the fact that it would have made the finished product cheaper to buy. My uncle was an imaginative man.’

‘So, you travelled to Cambridge after his murder, where you met Ailred and agreed to do two things,’ surmised Bartholomew. ‘First, you would ensure that Turke never finished his pilgrimage; and second, you offered to help Ailred extricate himself from the mess he had created with Dympna. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view – Turke died naturally before you could do anything about the first. But you have been very active as regards the second.’

Frith looked away. ‘Ailred is not dishonest, just weak. I think he enjoyed the power to make people’s wishes come true. He is just a man who cannot say no – even to someone like Norbert.’

‘But he – with your help – intends to do something dishonest now,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘Once Dympna has gone, it will never help needy souls again.’

‘Right,’ agreed Frith. ‘But its disappearance also means that the amount outstanding from Ailred’s bad loans will be irrelevant, and he will be free from the whole nasty mess.’

Makejoy cleared her throat noisily, giving Frith the kind of look that indicated she thought he was making a grave mistake by telling the scholars all their secrets. Bartholomew felt his hopes rise. Makejoy would not be concerned about such matters if she believed the encounter would end with their deaths. Meanwhile, Yna was recovering fast.

‘Is that why you killed Norbert?’ asked Michael. ‘Because he did not pay what he owed?’

‘We have killed no one!’ shouted Jestyn, becoming distressed by the repeated accusations. ‘We occasionally relieve folk of baubles, but we have not committed murder!’

‘Baubles like our salt dish and Wynewyk’s inkpot?’ asked Michael. ‘And Ulfrid’s knife, which led me to wonder whether he had stabbed Harysone? And Quenhyth’s scrip?’

‘We would not touch anything of Quenhyth’s,’ said Makejoy in distaste. ‘He hates us, because we made him look foolish over the “theft” of a chalice. He blamed us, but it later transpired that his father had sold the cup in order to pay for the wedding we were hired to perform at. He had not wanted anyone to know he was short of funds, and was furious when his son drew attention to his missing silver. It created a breach between them that has never healed.’

Bartholomew noted Makejoy had only denied stealing the scrip, and assumed they had indeed taken the other items. ‘You took Gosslinge’s clothes,’ he said, thinking their light fingers probably explained other mysteries, too.

‘He did not need them,’ replied Frith. ‘And I did not see why we should leave them for Turke to reclaim.’ He spat into the rushes on the floor.

‘If it was not you,’ said Michael, ‘then who killed Norbert?’

‘Turke,’ said Frith flatly. ‘He was the sort of man who enjoyed taking the lives of the innocent – as poor Uncle John could tell you.’

‘Can you prove that?’ asked Bartholomew. He had suggested this particular solution earlier, but had discounted the possibility because he could not think of a plausible motive.

Frith sneered, in a way that suggested he could not.

‘Gosslinge, then,’ said Michael. ‘Did you kill him by stuffing vellum into his throat?’

‘We did not!’ denied Jestyn hotly, the knife even more unsteady in his sweating hand. ‘What kind of folk do you think we are? We have killed no one!’

‘We have not,’ agreed Frith. ‘Indeed, I even tried to save Gosslinge when he started to choke, but the vellum was lodged too deeply inside him. It later occurred to me that his corpse was being kept above ground for an unnaturally long period of time, and I thought the physician here might be planning to dissect him for some anatomy lesson. I was afraid he might find the vellum, and associate Gosslinge with Uncle Ailred and Dympna …’

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Michael. ‘So you were the intruders in St Michael’s Church that night.’

‘But we did not do anything,’ said Jestyn in a voice that shook with tension. ‘Those priests arrived before we could have a proper look for the thing, and as soon as they left we heard a commotion outside. We saw we were going to have no peace, so we escaped while we could.’

‘I searched your room the night that blizzard raged,’ said Frith to Bartholomew, gloating at the appalled expression on the physician’s face when he realised that he had slept through the invasion. ‘But when I saw what had become of the vellum after a week in a corpse, I could not bring myself to touch it. However, I was fairly certain that nothing would be legible, anyway.’

‘But we killed no one,’ said Jestyn, returning to a theme that was clearly important to him. He stepped forward and brandished his knife in a way that made Bartholomew think it would not be long before the juggler claimed his first victim. ‘No one.’