Michael JECKS - Belladonna at Belstone

Constance shook her head weakly. She had the services to attend, the daily round of work to get on with, she couldn’t just sit here and drink the day away. Looking up at Hugh she saw the kindness in his eyes.

It was so like Elias’s expression when they had first met, she thought, and with that, to Hugh’s consternation, she began to sob.

Simon and the Bishop arrived at the door to the nuns’ cloister. Here Jonathan smiled nervously and proposed that they should wait while he went to warn his prioress, so that she could welcome Stapledon in a proper manner.

“You can go and tell her, yes,” Stapledon stated coldly, “but I shall be two paces behind you.”

“My Lord, wouldn’t you prefer that…” Jonathan began, but Stapledon waved him aside.

“You have the choice, Canon, of being there before me or after me, but do not again presume to try to alter my mind. Open this door!”

Shaking, Jonathan inserted his key and Stapledon sailed through, Jonathan skittering after him.

Simon, grinning, watched the bishop cross the nave of the church and stand at the door to the nuns’ cloister, tapping his foot until Jonathan realised that the bishop was waiting for him. Darting forward, muttering his apologies, Jonathan tugged the door wide. Stapledon and his staff-bearer instantly passed through, and Simon went after them, while Jonathan leaned against the opened door like a man who has seen a demon.

“My Lord Bishop! It is an honour, and what a relief to see you once more at our humble convent.”

As the Lady Elizabeth crouched before him, kissing his ring, Stapledon peered shortsightedly around the garth, sketching a cross over her head. “Take me to your chapterhouse, Lady Elizabeth. We need to speak.”

Simon was about to follow, but he knew that the chapterhouse was one place he would not be welcome. It was the hall where any important matters for the community would be discussed, and such things were best hidden from laymen. Instead he set off for the dorter, thinking to see his friend, but as he approached the door, he recalled the screams which had issued from the infirmary. The idea of seeing Cecily’s mangled body was not appealing, and unconsciously Simon bent his steps towards the frater.

Denise sat inside, alone apart from her regular companion, the jug of wine. She raised her pot to him, but then returned to her grim contemplation of the far wall. “Right there,” she said. “That’s where I saw Agnes’s shadow, there on that wall; just like Margherita’s before.”

“Was anyone with her?” Simon asked.

“No, she was all alone. And then there was that scream!” Her eyes closed in apparent revulsion at the memory.

“Where were you when Elias ran through here?”

She put a hand to her mouth as she burped. “In the buttery. Getting more wine.”

He himself wished to go to the buttery for an ale; turning on his heel, he went outside into the yard. Something made him cross the yard to the room where Agnes’s body had been found. It already felt like days ago.

The room was open. A sow was snuffling at the thick gouts of clotted blood on the straw of the floor where Agnes had lain. Simon angrily kicked the big animal out. It was incredible that so many deaths could have occurred one after the other. In a town like Crediton there would not have been so many in so short a space. And now Cecily would likely die as well.

Simon turned to go back to the buttery, when his eye caught a glimpse of something. Crouching, he picked at a thread lying on the ground. It was snapped, but Simon could see that each end was securely tied, one to a hinge, the other to a protruding nail in the doorframe, both a little over a foot above the threshold. At just the height to trip someone, he realised.

Deep in thought he made his way back to the frater and fetched a cup and jug of ale. He was alone now – Denise had gone. Thank God, he thought fervently. The last thing he wanted was her chatter.

Pouring, he drank deeply, staring across at the wall opposite, where Denise had seen Margherita when Moll died – and Agnes last night.

At first Simon thought it odd that Denise hadn’t seen Agnes being followed. Surely the same light which had illuminated the novice’s form should likewise have lit up her attacker? Then he shrugged. Agnes’s attacker was already in the room and had stabbed her without Denise seeing. The tripwire showed that: surely the killer had been hiding in the room, and when his victim tripped the killer stabbed.

Could it have been Luke? Elias confirmed that he had taken the alley along the church’s wall towards the garden. From there he would have circled around the claustral buildings and come to the yard. He could have stabbed Agnes and withdrawn, but if he had, he would have been able to get to the church before the alarm was raised, and finding the communicating door closed, would have gone elsewhere to hide, surely?

Luke said it was his own cry that had alerted the nunnery, and Simon was inclined to believe him.

What about Margherita? It was easy to suspect her. Except she had denied the murders on the Bible.

Elias was a possibility: what if he had lied? Couldn’t he have gone through and stabbed Agnes, then returned later? If he had, it meant he must have set the tripwire when he was last in the convent, and there was nothing to suggest he had been earlier, nor that he knew about the chamber. Who did?

Thoughtfully Simon went back to the yard. The alleyway beckoned, and he walked out along it. At the far side it gave out to a new yard, next to which was the herb garden beneath the infirmary’s window, where Elias had said he would throw pebbles to waken Constance. Simon studied the ground, seeking the knife which had been used to murder Agnes, but could see no sign of it; if the killer had been here, the easiest means of concealing it was the wall – anyone could have thrown it over into the farmyard beyond. Simon retraced his steps and stood once more outside the room in which Agnes had died.

He couldn’t help but keep returning to the same negative thoughts: there was no reason for Elias to have hurt Agnes so far as he knew. The man had no motive – if he’d stabbed in hot blood or fear, thinking she might report finding him there, he would not have remained with her body to ease her soul’s passage. And then there was the cord: how could Elias have known Agnes would enter that room?

Luke had no reason to hurt her; what reason could he have for murdering his lover?

That left Denise, a woman prone to sitting up late in the frater.

Elias and Luke had seen Denise in the cloister. Both had said that she was there when they came out from the church. And Luke was in the cloister before Elias. Could Denise have hurried from the cloister to the yard, killed the girl, and then dashed back to the frater in the time it took Elias… Simon’s brow furrowed. Elias had said he ran through the frater when he heard Agnes cry out. Surely, if Denise had been there, he would have said? Yet where else could the sacrist have been?

Simon recalled the very first time he had met Denise. When Baldwin had been questioning her about the first murder, the death of Moll, hadn’t she expressed her disgust with the novices for their unholy attitudes and lack of commitment?

When Katerine had died, Denise had been in the frater, so she claimed. But she had said that while she had a novice with her, sitting beside her – Agnes, the last novice to have died. What if Agnes knew something about Katerine’s death – that Denise had left the hall, for example? Could Agnes have kept quiet about something incriminating?

What could have made Denise want to kill the three girls? Simon’s mind kept returning to the expression of disgust on the sacrist’s face when she had spoken of the novices after they had inspected Moll’s body. Denise had said that they had only an outward show of piety, that she would have had them thrashed; she implied that Moll was almost deserving of her end.