Susanna GREGORY - A Bone of Contention

Now Stanmore shook his head. ‘His body was found a year later. And anyway, he was too young – four or five years old. There was that dirty lad whom Matt befriended, who told us he was a travelling musician, and led the local boys astray for a few weeks.’ He turned to Edith. ‘It may well be him; he would have been about twelve. He set the tithe barn alight and then ran away. What was his name?’

‘Norbert,’ said Edith, promptly and rather primly, her mouth turning down at the corners in disapproval.

‘I remember him well. We had only just arrived in Trumpington, and Matt immediately struck up a friendship with that horrible boy. It hardly created a good impression with my new neighbours.’

Stanmore gave her hand an affectionate squeeze, and spoke to Michael. ‘After the barn fire, we locked this Norbert in our house, so that the Sheriff could talk to him about it the next day. But somehow he escaped during the night.’

‘Poor Norbert!’ said Bartholomew, coming up silently behind them, making them all jump. ‘Still blamed for burning the tithe barn, even though he had nothing to do with it.’

‘So you insisted at the time. But he fled the scene of the crime, and that was tantamount to admitting his guilt,’ said Stanmore, recovering his composure quickly.

‘He fled because he knew that no one would believe his innocence,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And because I let him go.’

There was a short silence as his words sank in. Michael smothered a grin, and folded his arms to watch what promised to be an entertaining scene.

‘Matt!’ exclaimed Edith, shocked. ‘What dreadful secrets have you been harbouring all this time?’

Bartholomew did not reply immediately, frowning slightly as he tried to recall events from years before. ‘I had all but forgotten Norbert’s alleged crime.’

‘Alleged?’ spluttered Stanmore. ‘The boy was as guilty as sin!’

‘That was what everyone was quick to assume,’ said Bartholomew. ‘No one bothered to ask his side of the story and then make a balanced judgement. That was why I helped him to escape.’

‘But we locked the priest with him in the solar!’ said Stanmore, regarding Bartholomew with patent disbelief.

He turned to Michael, who quickly assumed an air of gravity to hide his amusement. ‘Norbert was only a child, and even though he had committed a grave crime, we did not want to frighten him out of his wits. We also thought the priest might wring a confession from him.’

He swung back to Bartholomew, still uncertain whether to believe his brother-in-law’s claim. ‘How could you let him out without the priest seeing you?’

‘The priest was drunk,’ said Bartholomew, smiling. ‘So much so, that the cracked bells of Trumpington Church and their unholy din could not have roused him. I waited until everyone was asleep, took the solar key from the shelf outside, and let Norbert out. After, I relocked the door, and Norbert disappeared into the night to go to his sister, who was a kitchen maid at Dover Castle.’

‘But this is outrageous!’ said Stanmore, aghast. ‘How could you do such a thing? You abused my trust in you! And those bells are not cracked, I can assure you. They just need tuning.’

Edith suddenly roared with laughter, and some of the outrage went out of her husband. ‘All these years and you kept your secret!’ she said. She reached up and ruffled her brother’s hair as she had done when he was young. ‘Whatever possessed you to risk making my husband look foolish in front of his neighbours?’

Bartholomew looked at Stanmore thoughtfully for a moment before answering. ‘I am not the only one who knows Norbert was innocent. I suppose I still should not tell, but it was such a long time ago that it cannot matter any more. It was not Norbert who fired the tithe barn: it was Thomas Lydgate.’

‘Thomas Lydgate? The Principal of Godwinsson Hostel?’ said Michael, halfway between merriment and horror.

Bartholomew nodded, smiling at the monk’s reaction. ‘I suspect he did not set the building alight deliberately, but you know how fast dry wood burns. I suppose he had no wish to own up to a crime that might make him a marked man for the rest of his life, and Norbert was an ideal candidate to take the blame, since he was an outsider, and had no one to speak for him.’

‘But how do you know this?’ asked Stanmore, still indignant about the wrong that had been perpetrated against him in his own house. ‘Why are you so certain that Norbert did not commit the crime and Lydgate did?’

‘Because Norbert and I saw Lydgate enter the barn when we were swimming nearby; we saw smoke billowing from it a few moments later and someone came tearing out. Naturally curious, we crept through the trees to see who it was. We came across Lydgate, complete with singed shirt, breathing heavily after his run, and looking as though he had seen the Devil himself. If you recall, it was Lydgate who raised the alarm, and Lydgate who first blamed Norbert.’

‘But what if Lydgate followed Norbert and killed him to ensure he would never tell what he had seen?’ mused Michael, suddenly serious. ‘It is perfectly possible that the bones in the Ditch belong to your Norbert. From what you say, he was the right age, and all this appears to have happened about twenty-five years ago.’

‘Impossible!’ said Bartholomew. ‘I received letters from Norbert in Dover a few weeks later to tell me that he had joined his sister, and he wrote to me several times after that, until I went to study in Paris. He has made a success of his life, which is more than could be said had the Trumpington witch-hunters laid their vindictive hands on him.’

‘And how could you receive letters without my knowledge?’ demanded Stanmore imperiously. ‘This is nonsense! How could you have paid whoever brought these messages, and how is it that my steward never mentioned mysterious missives from Dover? Not much slips past his eagle eyes!’

Edith shuffled her feet, and looked uncomfortable.

‘Letters from Dover, you say?’ she asked. ‘From someone called Celinia?’

Stanmore rounded on her. ‘Edith! Do not tell me you were a party to all this trickery, too!’

‘Not exactly,’ said Edith guiltily, looking from her husband to her brother.

‘Not at all,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘Norbert’s sister was called Celinia. I imagine she wrote the letters, since Norbert was illiterate, and she signed her own name so that no one would know the letters were from him. Celinia is an unusual name, and Norbert knew I would guess that the letters were from him if she signed them. Edith simply assumed I had found myself a young lady. She did not ask me about it, so I did not tell her.’

‘Extraordinary!’ said Michael gleefully. ‘All this subterfuge in such a respectable household!’

‘Really!’ said Stanmore, still annoyed. ‘And in my own house! The villagers were not pleased that Norbert had evaded justice while in my safekeeping, and neither was the Sheriff when he found he had made the journey for nothing. Thank God Norbert was not caught later to reveal your part in his escape, Matt!’

‘Well I never!’ drawled Michael facetiously, nudging Bartholomew in the ribs. ‘You interfering with the course of justice, and Lydgate an arsonist! Did you confront him with what you had seen?’

‘Are you serious?’ queried Bartholomew. ‘Since Lydgate was not above allowing a child to take the blame for his crime – for which Norbert might well have been hanged – it would have been extremely foolish for me to have let him know that I had witnessed his guilty act. No, Brother. I have carried Lydgate’s secret for twenty-five years and none have known it until now except Norbert.’

‘I still cannot believe you took the law into your own hands in my house in such a way,’ said Stanmore, eyeing his brother-in-law dubiously. ‘What else have you done that will shock me?’