The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

Though the centre of the roof was now groaning and ceiling plaster falling like snowflakes in anticipation of a further collapse, Peter turned and hurried back to the stage end as fast as his gammy leg would allow. He was alone, as the last of the geriatric visitors had left for the shelter.

‘Loftus!’ he yelled as he hauled his heavy surgical boot up the steps to the platform. He knew who it was, as Maltravers had worn a pair of Clark’s open-toed sandals on his bare feet, to imitate Abel’s antediluvian footwear.

‘Loftus, are you all right?’ Even in such fraught circumstances, Peter realised what an inane question this was. The victim would hardly be lying in a burning disaster zone out of choice!

He limped across to the heap of curtains and debris, feeling the heat from the rapidly increasing fire a couple of yards away, which was avidly devouring more of the cardboard, plywood and fabric substance of the stage set. Pulling off some shattered rafters to reach the mound of black fabric, he found Loftus lying on his back, gasping and blue in the face, in the throes of a severe acute asthmatic attack.

‘Are you hurt, old chap?’ Peter asked urgently, kneeling and lifting the victim into a sitting position. Afraid that he had been struck by a falling beam, Peter rapidly scanned Loftus’s body, but saw nothing sinister, and between his wheezing paroxysms Loftus managed to shake his head.

‘We’d better get you out of here pronto, chum! There’s a bit of a fire starting upstage.’

His own leg defect made it difficult, but he managed to drag the other man to the edge of the platform and then stumbled down the steps himself to grab Loftus in a clumsy fireman’s lift and stagger halfway back down the hall, just in time to avoid the collapse of another section of roof. Running out of strength, he was forced to lay Loftus on the floor and bend panting over him until he got his own breath back.

By this time, several of the staff who had escaped to the air-raid shelter had noticed that Peter and Loftus were missing and had returned to look for them. Hieronymus Drabble pattered along behind them and soon was organising everyone, but by then Peter Partridge had delved into Loftus’s pockets and found his asthma inhaler. A few puffs began to improve his breathing and colour, but as soon as the Auxiliary Fire Service and Red Cross ambulance arrived, Peter insisted that he be shipped off to hospital for more effective treatment, along with a few others who had minor injuries, mostly from flying glass.

A few minutes later, Agatha Wood-Turner stood with Christina Ullswater, watching as Peter climbed into the back of the ambulance with his colleague. The two women were both shaken, but unhurt and unbowed by the afternoon’s events. The blonde postgraduate stared after the retreating ambulance as it left the college.

‘Well, looks as if the prior’s curse has struck again, after eight hundred years!’ she said uneasily. ‘Yet Cain and Abel seem to have made up their differences in a rather dramatic fashion.’

The wise old Agatha nodded. ‘Young lady, I think that possibly this may at last have lifted that stigma from The Play of Adam .’

Christina looked enquiringly at Agatha. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘You asked me not long ago why Peter and Loftus always seemed at odds with each other. Well, I happen to know why, because I was there. When Peter applied for the lecturer’s post here, Loftus, as a senior lecturer, was on the appointment committee and it was his vote that swung it. Paradoxically, Peter has always resented that, feeling that he should have been appointed solely on merit, not by a favour, and since then he’s always been difficult with the very man that got him the job.’

Christina looked puzzled as she used her handkerchief to dab away a smear of blood from a small glass cut on the older woman’s cheek. ‘I don’t understand why Loftus should have been shown him such partiality, Agatha.’

The expert on religious art smiled at her knowingly.

‘Because I happen to know that although Peter and Loftus had different fathers, they had the same mother! So they really are brothers – at least, half-brothers. Though Peter felt guilty about this bit of nepotism, being siblings, they were well cast as Cain and Abel. Now that at last a performance of The Play of Adam has had a happy result, maybe it always will!’

Historical note

The V-1 terror offensive against Britain began a week after D-Day in June 1944 and continued until October, when Allied troops overran the launching sites in France, though the last one to reach England was as late as March 1945. A total of over nine thousand of these jet-engined missiles were launched at South-East England, up to a hundred a day, though many never reached their targets. The 2,419 that exploded, killed over 6,000 people and injured over 17,000.

After the French sites were captured, the offensive was directed at Antwerp then in Allied hands, at which 2,448 V-1s were launched, with great loss of life.

Following the V-1 campaign, the Germans used the large V-2 rockets, which were far more destructive. Over 3,000 were launched, killing over 7,000 victims.

After the war, these were the basis of both US and Soviet intercontinental missiles and space programmes.

A small group of historical mystery writers, all members of the Crime Writers’ Association, who promote their work by giving informal talks and discussions at libraries, bookshops and literary festivals.

Bernard Knightis a former Home Office pathologist and professor of forensic medicine who has been publishing novels, non-fiction, radio and television drama and documentaries for more than forty years. He is author of the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; and of the Dr Richard Pryor series.

Ian Morsonis the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective, William Falconer, and a brand-new series featuring Venetian crime solver, Nick Zuliani.

Philip Goodenis the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Shakespearean London, including Sleep of Death and Death of Kings , and also writes 19th century mysteries, most recently The Ely Testament. The author of various non-fiction books on English, his newest title is Idiomantics , and he blogs on language at www.philipgooden.com. Philip was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007-8.

Susanna Gregoryis the author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of mystery novels, set in fourteenth-century Cambridge, the most recent of which are Mystery in the Minster and Murder by the Book . In addition, she writes a series set in Restoration London, featuring Thomas Chaloner; the most recent book is The Piccadilly Plot. She also writes historical mysteries under the name of Simon Beaufort.