Ellis Peters - Monk's Hood

“Last time,” said Mark thoughtfully, “we were looking for something we hoped would not be a bottle. Pity we did not find it.”

“True, but this time it should be a bottle, if the omen of Beringar’s coming instead of Prestcote means anything. And I’ll tell you where.” And so he did, pointing the significance of a window open to the south, even in light frost, on a bright day.

“I’m gone,” said Brother Mark. “And you may sleep the noon away with a good conscience. My eyes are younger than yours.”

“Mind, take a napkin, and if you find it, wrap it loosely, and touch only as you must. I need to see how the oil has run and dried.”

It was when the afternoon light was dimming that Brother Mark came back. There was half an hour yet before Vespers, but from this time on any search for a small thing in a narrow slope of grass would have been a blind and hopeless quest. Winter days begin so late and end so early, like the dwindling span of life past three score.

Cadfael had taken Brother Mark at his word, and dozed the afternoon away. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do here, no work needing his efforts. But suddenly he started out of a doze, and there was Brother Mark, a meagre but erect and austere figure, standing over him with a benign smile on the ageless, priestly face Cadfael had seen in him ever since his scared, resentful, childish entry within these walls. The voice, soft, significant, delighted, rolled the years back; he was still eighteen, and a young eighteen at that.

“Wake up! I have something for you!”

Like a child coming on a father’s birthday: “Look! I made it for you myself!”

The carefully folded white napkin was lowered gently into Cadfael’s lap. Brother Mark delicately turned back the folds, and exposed the contents with a gesture of such shy triumph that the analogy was complete. There it lay to be seen, a small, slightly misshapen vial of greenish glass, coloured somewhat differently all down one side, where yellowish brown coated the green, from a residue of liquid that still moved very sluggishly within.

“Light me that lamp!” said Cadfael, gathering the napkin in both hands to raise the prize nearer his eyes. Brother Mark laboured industriously with flint and tinder, and struck a spark into the wick of the little oil-lamp in its clay saucer, but the conflict of light, within and without, hardly bettered the view. There was a stopper made of a small plug of wood wrapped in a twist of wool cloth. Cadfael sniffed eagerly at the cloth on the side that was coloured brown. The odour was there, faint but unmistakable, his nose knew it well. Frost had dulled but still retained it. There was a long trail of thin, crusted oil, long dried, down the outside of the vial.

“Is it right? Have I brought you what you wanted?” Brother Mark hovered, pleased and anxious.

“Lad, you have indeed! This little thing carried death in it, and, see, it can be hidden within a man’s hand. It lay thus, on its side, as you found it? Where the residue has gathered and dried the length of the vial within? And without, too … It was stoppered and thrust out of sight in haste, surely about someone’s person, and if he has not the mark of it somewhere about him still, this long ooze of oil from the leaking neck is a great deceiver. Now sit down here and tell me where and how you found it, for much depends on that. And can you find the exact spot again, without fail?”

“I can, for I marked it.” Flushed with pleasure at having pleased, Brother Mark sat down, leaning eagerly against Cadfael’s sleeve. “You know the houses there have a strip of garden going down almost to the water, there is only a narrow footpath along the edge of the pond below. I did not quite like to invent a reason for entering the gardens, and besides, they are narrow and steep. It would not be difficult to throw something of any weight from the house right to the edge of the water, and beyond—even for a woman, or a man in a hurry. So I went first along the path, the whole stretch of it that falls within reach from the kitchen window, the one you said was open that day. But it was not there I found it.”

“It was not?”

“No, but beyond. There’s a fringe of ice round the edge of the pond now, but the current from the millrace keeps all the middle clear. I found the bottle on my way back, after I’d searched all the grass and bushes there, and thought to look on the other side of the path, along the rim of the water. And it was there, on its side half under the ice, held fast. I’ve driven a hazel twig into the ground opposite the place, and the hole I prised it from will say unless we have a thaw. I think the bottle was thrown clear of whatever ice there may have been then, but not far enough out to be taken away by the mill current, and because the stopper was in it, it floated, and drifted back to be caught in the next frost. But, Cadfael, it couldn’t have been thrown from the kitchen window, it was too far along the path.”

“You’re sure of that? Then where? Is it the distance that seems too great?”

“No, but the direction. It’s much too far to the right, and there’s a bank of bushes between. The ground lies wrong for it. If a man threw it from the kitchen window it would not go where I found it, it could not. But from the window of the other room it very well could. Do you remember, Cadfael, was that window unshuttered, too? The room where they were dining?”

Cadfael thought back to the scene within the house, when Richildis met him and ushered him desperately through to the bedchamber, past the disordered table laid with three trenchers. “It was, it was!—the shutter was set open, for the midday sun came in there.” From that room Edwin had rushed in indignant offence, and out through the kitchen, where he was thought to have committed his crime and rid himself of the evidence later. But not for a moment had he been alone in that inner room; only in his precipitate flight had he been out of sight of all the household.

“You see, Mark, what this means? From what you say, this vial was either thrown from the window of the inner room, or else someone walked along that path and threw it into the pond. And neither of those things could Edwin have done. He might, as they suppose, have halted for a moment in the kitchen, but he certainly did not go along the path by the pond before making for the bridge, or Aelfric would have overtaken him. No, he would have been ahead of him, or met him at the gate! Nor did he have the opportunity, at any time afterwards, to dispose of the vial there. He hid with his bitter mood until Edwy found him, and from then on they were both in hiding until they came to me. This small thing, Mark, is proof that Edwin is as clear of guilt as you or I.”

“But it does not prove who the guilty man is,” said Mark.

“It does not. But if the bottle was indeed thrown from the window of that inner room, then it was done long after the death, for I doubt if anyone was alone in there for a moment until after the sergeant had come and gone. And if the one responsible carried this somewhere on him all that time, as ill-stoppered as it is now, then the marks of it will be on him. He might try to scrub the stain away, but it will not be easily removed. And who can afford to discard cotte or gown? No, the signs will be there to be found.”

“But what if it was someone else, not of the household, who did the deed, and flung the vial from the pathway? Once you did wonder, about the cook and the scullions …

“I won’t say it’s impossible. But is it likely? From the path a man could make very sure the vial went into the mid-current and the deep of the pool, and even if it did not sink—though he would have had time in that case to ensure that it did!—it would be carried away back to the brook and the river. But you see it fell short, and lay for us to find.”