Susanna GREGORY - A Killer in Winter

‘That is the cold weather,’ said Bartholomew practically. He broke away from Michael and headed for St Michael’s Lane. ‘I am going home. It is too chilly for this kind of thing.’

‘Come with me to speak to him,’ ordered Michael peremptorily. ‘I shall only leave when we have assured ourselves that he has no sinister purpose in daring to set foot in St Michael’s. For all you know, he may be planning to steal our silver.’

‘He would be hard pressed to do that. We only use it on special occasions, and the rest of the time – like now – it is safely locked away. And anyway, he does not look like a man who needs to steal from churches. He is well dressed and appears to be wealthy.’

‘I was at the Trumpington Gate when he arrived,’ said Michael, watching Harysone give the door a vigorous shake in an attempt to open it. He was not successful. ‘He had a cart with him, loaded down with what he claimed were philosophical texts written by himself. He said he was going to sell them here.’ The monk turned to Bartholomew and raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Have you ever heard a less convincing story?’

Bartholomew had heard a good many less convincing stories, and he told the monk so. It seemed to him that Harysone’s reason for being in Cambridge was a perfectly valid one: if anyone wanted to sell academic texts, then Cambridge and Oxford were good places to be. They were full of scholars hungry for new knowledge and ideas, and Harysone could expect not only that copies would be purchased, but that they would be read and discussed by clever minds. Harysone might even learn ways to improve on his work.

‘Well, I do not believe him,’ declared Michael. ‘I know his type. He is one of those men who makes his living by preying on the weak and the trusting. He will cheat widows, orphans and the weak-witted out of their inheritances, and will have every scrap of silver out of our churches before he melts away into the night.’

Bartholomew gave a startled laugh, astonished by the list of crimes Michael was blithely laying at the door of a man he did not know. ‘Really, Brother! Do you have any evidence to suggest that he is a trickster?’

‘Not yet,’ admitted Michael. ‘But I will. I have been watching him for the best part of a week now, and he will make a mistake before long. And then he can enjoy his Yuletide celebrations inside the proctors’ prison!’

Bartholomew was nonplussed. ‘I do not understand this at all. It is not like you to take a rabid dislike to visitors to our town without cause.’

‘I have cause. Harysone disturbs me. I feel with every fibre in my body that there is something sinister about him.’

‘That does not sound like you, either,’ said Bartholomew doubtfully. ‘You do not usually give credence to something as insubstantial as a “feeling”. You usually demand solid evidence before judging a man.’

‘I cannot explain it,’ replied Michael impatiently. ‘But I have been Senior Proctor for five years now, and I know a rotten apple when I see one. That man is a prince among villains, and I do not want him in my town.’

Bartholomew could think of nothing to say, but accepted that the Benedictine had gained enough experience to be able to identify potential troublemakers. Still, Michael was not immune to making mistakes, and the physician did not condone persecuting a man on the basis of a mere ‘feeling’.

Harysone was still tussling with the sticky church door when Tom Meadowman, Michael’s chief beadle, approached them, red faced and slightly breathless. The beadles were the proctors’ private army, a stalwart band of men employed to keep hundreds of unruly and feisty scholars under control, as well as patrolling the taverns to prevent explosive combinations of students, townsfolk and ale from occurring.

‘Master Tulyet is looking for you, Brother,’ said Meadowman, addressing Michael. ‘His cousin Norbert has been found dead – murdered, he says – and he wants you to look into it.’

Richard Tulyet was a small man with a pale, fluffy beard that made him look like an adolescent. He was intelligent and well organised, and it had been a sad day for the town when he had announced his resignation from the office of Sheriff. His dissolute cousin Norbert was generally acknowledged to be the major factor in this calamity, and it had not earned the sullen youth any friends. It was widely believed that Norbert had deprived Cambridge of the best, fairest and most efficient Sheriff the town had ever had. Few believed that his replacement, Stephen Morice, could emulate him, and it had not been many weeks before people saw that Morice was worse than inefficient: he was corrupt, too.

Michael, particularly, missed Tulyet. Relations between town and University were invariably strained, and he had enjoyed working with a man whose priority was to create a city that was safe for everyone – scholars included. He had also appreciated the fact that Tulyet had not competed with him for authority, and was happy to let the University deal with its own miscreants. He mourned Tulyet’s resignation, and seldom allowed an opportunity to pass without pointing out that the town was less safe without Dick sitting in his office at the Castle.

Tulyet was waiting for them in St Michael’s Lane, where snow lay in shoulder-high drifts in places. To the left was the steeply gabled roof of Ovyng Hostel, while the tall stone walls of Michaelhouse stood to the right. Although Michaelhouse owned Ovyng, the hostel functioned as an independent institution with its own rules and regulations. It was not large, and its numbers had declined even further since the plague, but it boasted eight scholars – a principal, his assistant and six undergraduates – with two servants who cooked and cleaned. Five students, with Norbert being the exception, had taken vows with the Franciscan Order, and the hostel was reasonably well behaved by Cambridge standards – or at least Michael was not often obliged to visit it in his capacity of Senior Proctor.

‘It is a pity Norbert is – was – not more like his cousin,’ said Michael, as they made their way through the slush to where Tulyet and Nobert’s classmates waited in a disconsolate huddle near Ovyng’s main door.

‘Everyone thinks that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘When he came to live here, after the plague took his own family, his uncle immediately assumed he would inherit the family business, since Dick was intent on remaining Sheriff. But I suspect Norbert was never asked what he wanted.’

‘Norbert was a nuisance,’ said Michael unsympathetically. ‘He was on his final warning – one more night of drunken debauchery would have seen him banished from the University for ever. Still, it looks as though he will not be troubling us any more now.’

They reached the knot of people – Tulyet in his fine winter cloak, and the Franciscans shivering in their thin grey robes – and joined them in a wordless inspection of the body that lay, still partly buried, in a mound of snow near the door. Blood had flooded from an injury in the dead man’s back and spread like wings into the snow around him. Bartholomew saw that Tulyet was right to assume his cousin had been murdered: there was no way the man could have inflicted such a wound on himself.

‘Norbert might have remained covered until spring, if stray dogs had not sniffed him out,’ said Ovyng’s principal, Father Ailred, gesturing to several yellow mongrels that lurked hopefully nearby. As if the mangy beasts reminded him of his students, he turned and flapped large-knuckled hands at his flock, shooing them back inside the hostel. However, the death of a classmate was an interesting event, and Bartholomew noticed they did not go far. They hovered out of sight, but within earshot, on the other side of the door.