Paul Doherty: The Assassin's riddle

Cranston could stand it no longer but helped himself to a quick mouthful of claret from his wineskin. He offered it to Athelstan who just shook his head.

‘So, we break in. Master Philip climbs on Master James’s shoulders. He uses a knife and prises open the shutters. Behind them is one of those small gate windows. He breaks the glass and lifts the handle.’

‘You are sure of that?’ Athelstan interrupted.

‘Of course I am,’ Flaxwith replied. ‘You could see it yourself, the wood’s all broken, the bars scored. Indeed, it looks as if it hasn’t been opened for years. In gets Master Stablegate. He unbolts the front door, turns the lock and we enter the house.’

‘How was it?’ Cranston asked.

‘Dark as night. Smelly and musty. No candles, no torchlight.’ Flaxwith’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Quiet as a tomb, Sir John, it was.’

‘Go on!’ Cranston barked.

‘Well, all the rooms were empty. Just like this one.’

Athelstan broke from his reverie and stared round. He thought of the verse from the Gospels: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he suffers the loss of his immortal soul? Drayton, though one of the city’s principal moneylenders, must have also been a miser. The chamber was shabby, with only a few sticks of furniture, whilst the rushes on the floor looked as if they hadn’t been changed for years. The walls were greasy, the whitewash blotchy and peeling. Athelstan was sure he’d heard the squeak of rats along the passageway.

‘Am I going too fast?’ Flaxwith asked.

Cranston just smiled.

‘We reached the strongroom,’ the bailiff gabbled on. ‘We knocked and we knocked, fair to raise the dead. There was no sound.’

‘You checked the upstairs chambers?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, nothing, so we knew Master Drayton must be in his counting house. Now you’ve seen the door, Sir John, heavy oak, steel hinges, embossed with steel bolts on the outside. By now I was afeared. I went out to the street. I paid a penny to four dung-collectors to come in. We found a chopping block in the garden and used that to smash the door down.’

‘That would be impossible,’ Athelstan asked, ‘if you say the door was as heavy as it was?’

‘You are right, Father,’ Flaxwith replied. ‘But one of the dung-collectors had served as a soldier, knocking down doors in France. He told us to concentrate on the hinges, so we did. Fair smashed them loose and the door gave way. Inside we found Drayton on the floor. We haven’t moved the corpse, a crossbow bolt deep in his chest and the silver’s gone.’

‘How much silver?’

‘According to the ledger, at least five thousand good pounds sterling.’

Cranston whistled through his teeth. ‘Good Lord, what else have you learnt?’

‘Well, the two clerks, Stablegate and Flinstead, left the house, as they always did, just before Vespers last night. Once they had gone, Master Drayton locked and bolted the doors: that was well known, Sir John, he let no one in and no one ever came out.’

Athelstan rose and played with the wooden cross hanging on a cord round his neck.

‘So, Master Flaxwith.’ He smiled at the bailiff. ‘According to you, here is a man who bolted and locked himself in his treasure house but he never went out and would allow no one in. In the morning the doors and windows are still bolted and shuttered. Downstairs the strongroom is still locked and secure but, inside, our moneylender is dead and his silver gone.’

‘In a word, yes.’

‘And there are no secret entrances, passageways or postern gates?’

‘None whatsoever, Father. You’ve seen the house, it’s built of stone, one of the few houses round here that are: that’s why Drayton bought it.’

‘And the strongroom?’

‘See for yourself, Father,’ Flaxwith retorted. ‘It’s a square of stone. The ceilings are plaster but that’s unbroken, the walls are of pure stone as is the floor. If Drayton wanted fresh air he’d simply open the door. Father, I know house-breakers. They go through a window as quickly as a priest into a brothel…’ He abruptly stopped. ‘I mean a ferret down a hole: it would take a nightwalker hours to break into that strongroom.’

‘Then let’s see it.’

Flaxwith rose and led them out of the chamber. Cranston grasped Athelstan by the arm. ‘Brother, you are well?’

‘Why, of course, Sir John. Rather sleepy, I…’

‘You never slept last night, did you?’ Cranston accused. ‘You were on that tower studying your bloody stars again, weren’t you?’

Athelstan smiled apologetically. ‘Yes, Sir John, I was.’

‘It’s nothing else, is it?’ Cranston asked. ‘I mean Father Prior has not written to you about relieving you of your duties at St Erconwald’s and sending you to the Halls of Oxford?’

Athelstan seized Cranston’s huge podgy hand and squeezed it. ‘Sir John, Father Prior asked me a month ago if I would like such a move. I replied I would not.’

Cranston hid his relief. He loved his wife, Lady Maude, his twin sons, the ‘poppets’, his dogs Gog and Magog, but especially this gentle friar with his sharp brain and dry sense of humour. Cranston had served as a soldier, as well as a coroner, for many a year. He’d met many men but, as he told the Lady Maude, ‘I can number my friends on one hand and still have enough fingers left to make a rude gesture at the Regent. Athelstan’s my friend.’ Cranston stared mournfully at the friar.

‘You won’t go to Oxford, will you, Brother?’

‘No, Sir John. I am going down to the strongroom.’

Athelstan stared round the paltry parlour. ‘This is a subtle murder, Sir John, but why are you here?’ He added, ‘Why are you so anxious about it?’

‘Drayton usually kept his money with the Lombards,’ Cranston replied. ‘The Frescobaldi and the Bardi brothers in Leadenhall Street. He drew most of it out: he was about to give our most noble Regent, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a loan of five thousand pounds silver.’

Athelstan sighed.

‘So you see, Brother, Gaunt couldn’t give a fig if Drayton is in heaven or hell. He wants that silver, particularly now as Drayton has no heirs and he won’t have to pay it back. He also wants the thief captured. As you know, my dear monk…’

‘Friar, Sir John!’

‘As you know, my dear friar, no one upsets our Regent and walks away scot-free.’ Cranston paused as he heard Flaxwith calling. ‘We’d best go, Brother.’

They went out into the passageway, dingy and gloomy, smelling of tallow fat, boiled oil and other unsavoury odours.

‘Flaxwith found the chamber pot upstairs full of stools,’ Cranston whispered. ‘Drayton was as dirty as he was mean.’

At the top of the steps Flaxwith was waiting with a cresset torch. ‘Sir John, what about Samson?’ the bailiff pleaded.

‘Bugger that!’ Cranston retorted. ‘Henry, your dog will live for eternity, which is more than I can say for myself if we don’t get this silver back.’

Flaxwith shrugged and led them down the narrow stone steps. At the bottom, the huge door he had described was leaning against the wall. Flaxwith led them into the counting house and put the torch in a cresset holder.

Athelstan stared down at the corpse sprawled on the stone floor. A pool of blood had seeped out, and now ran in rivulets down the paving stones. He crouched down and stared pityingly at Drayton’s scrawny features: the eyes closed in death, the blood-encrusted mouth sagging. He felt the neck; the skin was cold and clammy. Athelstan closed his eyes; he prayed that Christ, in His infinite compassion, would have mercy on this man who had lived beneath his dignity and died like a dog. He turned the body over. Drayton was dressed in a shabby jerkin and hose. The battered boots looked rather pathetic on his spindly legs; he had no chain round his neck nor rings on his fingers. Athelstan wondered what pleasure this man had ever found in life.