Paul Doherty - Candle Flame

‘And the money?’ Thorne broke in. ‘How was I supposed to-’

‘I wondered about that, Master Thorne, I really did. It was far too dangerous to carry a clinking sack across the Palisade and into the tavern. For a while I suspected you concealed it in the piggery or somewhere along the Palisade, but that would be highly dangerous. You suspected Thibault and others might come hunting for the lost treasure. If it was found outside the Barbican, somewhere in your tavern or the land around it, suspicion would naturally fall on you. So I concluded that the treasure is still in the Barbican.’

‘Nonsense! The fire …’ Thorne fell quiet, almost squirming in the chair.

‘Oh, Master Thorne, what did you just nearly say? That you wouldn’t hide your plunder in a place you tried to burn?’

‘You are tricking me. You trip me up with words.’

‘No, Thorne, you stumble over your own lies. You started that fire. I saw the scorch marks against the wall where it began. I smelt the oil. I asked myself then who could so easily bring oil into the Barbican?’

‘Someone coming in from the river. Many people wander here, trespassers on tavern land. Anyone of these could have brought in the oil.’

‘But you did realize that the fire was deliberately started by oil being poured?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Well, yes.’

‘But on the afternoon when the fire occurred, when I escaped and came here into the Dark Parlour, you claimed it must have been an accident.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘But even then, as owner of the Barbican, you must have wondered what caused a fire to rage so violently.’ Thorne just glared back. ‘Anyway,’ Athelstan continued serenely, ‘you must have searched the Barbican after the fire and, like me, smelt the oil?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you, the owner, must have realized that there was no oil in the Barbican to begin with. I certainly didn’t see any. It must have been specially brought in, so the fire was no accident but an attempt to murder me.’ Thorne just blinked, wetting his lips.

‘In which case,’ Athelstan spread his hands, ‘why didn’t you inform me, send an urgent message to St Erconwald’s or to Sir John at the Guildhall? After all, you did assure me it was probably an accident, then you discovered that the opposite was the case.’

‘I am sorry, I made a mistake.’ Thorne blinked. ‘I am not too sure whether I really did know it was oil.’

‘Master Thorne, your attempt to murder me was a terrible mistake. You didn’t think it through, or perhaps you did but wagered I would never survive to question you. I will go back to the beginning. You must have gone into the Barbican to satisfy your own curiosity about why your property had been burnt. In fact, you did more than that; a great deal of the wreckage had been removed.’

‘I hired la-labourers,’ Thorne stammered.

‘Which labourers?’ Cranston roared as the realization dawned on the coroner that the accused had almost murdered his beloved Athelstan. ‘Which labourers, Thorne, and I want every detail!’

‘I forget, I forget,’ Thorne mumbled. He sat, head down, and, when he glanced up, Athelstan caught the man’s sheer desperation. ‘Brother Athelstan, Sir John, I am confused. If I, as you allege, stole Marsen’s treasure and hid it in the Barbican, where, according you, it still remains hidden, then why should I deliberately start a fire in the same place?’

‘Oh, for many reasons. Never mind my murder, you deliberately made the Barbican a ruin, derelict, a place of little use to anyone. After the fire, who would go there? Which is why you insisted on clearing the wreckage yourself. You didn’t bring in any labourers, Mooncalf has informed me of that and Mooncalf would dare not lie to me. Oh, before the fire you allowed the likes of Paston and Brother Marcel to climb to the top of the tower to view the river.’ Athelstan pulled a face. ‘To try and stop them would have created suspicion, but of course,’ Athelstan lowered his voice, ‘I was different. You resented my snooping, my prying and, above all, me going anywhere near the Barbican, where the gold and silver you stole, held in a leather sack, has been pushed deep into that latrine, the ancient sewer beneath the garderobe.’

‘But the fire?’

‘The fire did not reach it. The bag is thrust down deep in a pit, sunk amongst the most filthy refuse. No one would think of searching for it there, especially now after the Barbican has been reduced to a ruin. Time would pass and, when all was quiet and memories faded, you would dig deep and remove what you had stolen.’ Athelstan stared at the taverner, who now kept glancing over his shoulder at the door. The friar had wondered if Eleanor Thorne was implicated but he concluded that she was not, which is why Thorne had told her the tale about searching for the intruder in the stables. However, did Eleanor herself secretly suspect her husband?

‘No one will come here, Master Thorne,’ Athelstan declared softly. ‘We have no need, as yet, to question your wife, so let us return to the Barbican the night you committed these murders. All your victims lay dead; both chambers left in chaos, the proclamation has been pinned, the gold and silver hidden away. Now you prepare to leave. You ensure that you have everything with you – you return to the lower chamber to check for the final time. The door is locked and bolted. You take the ladder into the upper storey, you secure the trapdoor and move swiftly. All lights are doused as you prepare to leave through the window.’ Athelstan held up a hand at a knocking at the door. He rose, crossed and opened it. Burley stood there holding a crossbow, three small quarrels and a wristguard. The knight put the quarrels and wristguard on the floor and held up the arbalest.

‘Found in Friar Roger’s chamber,’ he declared. ‘But very clever, look.’ The knight banneret swiftly unpinned the apparatus on the crossbow: the hand-drawn chord and the studs which held everything in place, the metal groove and release clasps could all be taken off. Burley did this swiftly and Athelstan smiled. The hand-held arbalest was no longer a deadly weapon but a Tau, the symbol beloved of the Franciscan order: a T-shaped cross which took its name from the Greek letter ‘Tau’, the symbol used by St Francis Assisi to sign his letters.

‘It can be assembled very swiftly,’ Burley explained, ‘and then just as speedily be stripped of all its war-like paraphernalia.’

‘And the quarrels?’

‘Found in his chamber. Again very cunning. All three can be taken apart, watch.’ Burley picked up one of the quarrels, removed the metal clasp with the miniature stiffened feathers which served as its flight, then the barbed steel tip. ‘All three were kept separate,’ Burley explained, ‘and unless you knew what you were looking for, it would be very difficult to realize that hidden amongst clothing, manuscripts, beads and other items, were these different pieces which, when brought together, would form a deadly hand-held arbalest and crossbow bolts.’ Athelstan took the flight and studied it carefully. He was certain that a similar bolt or quarrel had killed Thibault’s henchman. He recalled leaning over Lascelles to administer the last rites; the crossbow quarrels were the same and, more importantly, that could be proved. Lascelles’ corpse had been removed for burial; the quarrels, as the law laid down, would be stored away as evidence. It would be enough to despatch Brother Roger to the gallows, if he had not been a cleric.

‘Brother?’ Athelstan looked up at Burley’s lean, saturnine face.

‘You told me,’ the knight banneret declared, ‘to search his possessions but to forget that he was a friar and more probably a very skilled assassin. Everything we found we laid out on the floor of the chamber. It was like a puzzle, deciding which pieces would go together. I suspect when he travelled, as he was apparently preparing to do, the weapon would be dismantled. At other times, and it’s only a hand-held one, the arbalest would be readied, primed and hidden away.’