A Wicked Deed (52 page)

‘Then who is it?’ asked Michael.

‘James Freeman.’

‘You mean the husband of the poor woman Stoate poisoned with his neighbourly dish of mussels? The man who died of a slit throat two weeks before we arrived in the village? How in God’s name did you come up with that?’

‘Mother Goodman told me that one of the first people at the scene of James Freeman’s death was Eltisley, and Eltisley later bragged about that fact himself – he went into some detail about the box he had designed to carry Freeman to his grave. But no one
saw
the body except Eltisley, not even Mother Goodman, who usually lays out the dead. All anyone saw were bloodstained clothes.’

‘But Dame Eva found the body. Obviously she saw it.’

‘I doubt she stayed long and studied it,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Anyway, she is old and frail. She probably glimpsed someone lying there all covered in blood – probably one of Eltisley’s henchmen playing dead – and made the assumption that it was Freeman, because he was in Freeman’s home.’

Michael scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Eltisley did make a good deal of fuss about the coffin he produced – telling us how he designed it specially for the occasion.’

‘Quite,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And he designed it so that it would leak blood, and that would be what everyone would remember. No one would ask to look inside the coffin with that stuff dribbling out all over the place. And there is another thing: corpses do not bleed. So, Freeman’s body should not have been bleeding at all, gaping throat wound or no.’

‘But why should Freeman be the hanged man, as opposed to some lone traveller who stumbled on Eltisley’s evil empire by mistake?’

‘So, you are saying that there was never a body with a slit throat, and that the blood dripping from Eltisley’s box had nothing to do with a corpse?’ asked Michael. Bartholomew nodded, but the monk was not convinced. ‘But why was the hanged man – Freeman – wearing Deblunville’s clothes?’ He kicked out at a rat, braver than the rest, that was edging upwards.

‘Oh, that is easy. Janelle said she stole them from Deblunville for her father. She left them near the Grundisburgh parish boundary, but someone else found them before they could be collected. Since Freeman’s clothes had been soaked in blood to convince everyone he had died a gruesome death, Eltisley would have needed another set. Doubtless he or one of his henchmen found Janelle’s bundle, and gave them to Freeman to wear while they kept him prisoner.’

‘But Norys told us that whoever ran from the church was wearing Deblunville’s clothes,’ Michael pointed out. ‘How do you explain that?’

Bartholomew scratched his head. ‘I do not know, but the dagger we saw on the hanged man was the same as the one under the smouldering corpse in the shepherd’s hut.’

‘God’s blood, Matt!’ said Michael. ‘These rats are climbing the stairs.’

Bartholomew swallowed. ‘They will become bolder the longer we stay here. Kick them away.’

Michael gripped Bartholomew’s arm and flailed about with his legs. ‘There,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘That should make them think twice about tangling with me.’

‘They will be back,’ said Cynric.

‘Think of something else,’ said Bartholomew. ‘James Freeman had to die because he claimed he had seen Padfoot – no one lives who has set eyes on Padfoot. It was the same with Alice Quy, dead of childbirth fever six months after having her last child. I will wager you anything you like that both had been out on one of Hamon’s nocturnal expeditions, looking for the golden calf. Either by design or by chance, they ended up at Barchester and encountered Mad Megin and her dog, who were guarding the village for Eltisley.’

‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘You are right. And we were foolish, you know. We allowed ourselves to be misled by Deblunville’s false assumptions – that it was Tuddenham who was promoting the Padfoot legend to provide an excuse for his people trespassing on his neighbours’ land while searching for buried treasure.’

Bartholomew nodded slowly. ‘But, of course, had we really drought about that, we would have seen it made no sense: the only two people to have availed themselves of this excuse – James Freeman and Alice Quy – were killed almost immediately. Why go to all the trouble of inventing an excuse if you plan to kill anyone who uses it? Eltisley, not Tuddenham, killed the two villagers.’

‘Mother Goodman told you that Eltisley had sent Alice Quy a harmless potion because she could not pay Master Stoate’s inflated prices for medicine.’ Michael tried to ease higher up the stairs.

‘It was supposed to contain feverfew and honeyed wine,’ said Bartholomew, ‘an appropriate remedy for such disorders. But, of course, all that was wrong with her was fear, because she had set eyes on this so-called phantom. By the time she had taken a few draughts of Eltisley’s potion, her fate was sealed. Her death proved to the villagers that no one sets eyes on Padfoot and lives.’

‘Grosnold’s man told me that Padfoot had been heard sniffing around Wergen Hall, but that people were too afraid to open the window to look. It was probably a fox, but you can see how Eltisley has the whole village terrified over this Padfoot nonsense.’

‘And it has worked brilliantly. You said that even Grosnold took the path that leads around the edge of the village, not through the middle, and he is a knight.’

‘We walked through it the first time,’ said Cynric. ‘Nothing happened to us then – except for Unwin seeing the white dog.’

‘Eltisley must have been delighted with the story that Unwin saw that thing,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘Stoate unwittingly gave credence to the lie that all who see Padfoot die.’

‘And to the same end, Eltisley made a flagrant attack on Cynric when he felt he was under the same curse,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He tried to give him dog mercury.’

Cynric said nothing, but made a stabbing motion with the crossbow quarrel, and there was a sharp squeal. He shook it in disgust, and they heard the soft thump of a body as it landed somewhere on the floor. There was an immediate and ominous scurry.

‘Maybe,’ said Cynric cautiously, in such a way that Bartholomew was sure the Welshman remained convinced that Padfoot was real.

‘We saw a light the night we were attacked,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘I thought it was a traveller seeking shelter, but no traveller would ever stay – be allowed to stay – in Barchester. That was Eltisley working over his potions.’

Michael sighed. ‘Eltisley might believe he is a veritable genius, and that he has intellectual powers to rival the likes of Roger Bacon, but he is sadly mistaken. Someone else is involved in all this – someone who has enough money to buy Eltisley all he needs for his experiments, and someone who does not want us to have our advowson.’

‘Somehow, the deed seems to pale into insignificance when all this is considered,’ said Bartholomew, jerking backward as something nosed at his hand.

‘But someone stole it from me in
the
churchyard. It is important. It must be something to do with the fact that someone in Tuddenham’s family does not want a representative from Michaelhouse to be the executor of his will.’

‘I forgot about the will,’ said Bartholomew, not very interested, but wanting to keep Michael talking so that they would not be sitting in silence in the tomb with only the rustle of rats for company. ‘That was one of the terms Alcote agreed with Tuddenham, was it not?’

‘Why should there be unpleasantness?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘The line of inheritance is clear: if Isilia’s child is a boy, he will inherit; if it is a girl, Hamon will inherit.’

‘There will only be difficulties if Tuddenham dies before the child is born,’ said Michael, ‘because his will stipulates that no child born after his death can inherit. But this is all irrelevant since Tuddenham is in good health.’

Bartholomew gazed at him in the darkness. He considered keeping his silence, but the promise had been to keep the knight’s illness from his family, not from Michael. ‘But Tuddenham has a mortal illness, and will not live to see himself a father again.’

Michael let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘Why did you not mention this before? Now it begins to make sense. Now I understand why Tuddenham is so desperate to have the advowson signed and sealed before we go. He wants Hamon to inherit, not his unborn child.’

‘But he could stipulate that in his will anyway,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He does not need Michaelhouse’s help to do that.’

‘But Michaelhouse will see his wishes fulfilled in a way that few other executors will be able to do. We have no vested interest in who inherits and who does not – the living of the church is ours whatever happens – and we have the power of the Church behind us, not to mention some of the best legal minds in the country. The real issue is that there are ancient laws that might override Tuddenham’s choice of heirs – a son is a son. Even Henry the Second was obliged to leave his kingdom to his hated oldest son, and not his favourite younger child. Hamon will need our expertise if he is to inherit Tuddenham’s estates.’

‘Unless what, Matt?’ asked Michael. ‘I beg you, if you have any more information, please do not keep it to yourself. Small things that seem unimportant to you might make a great deal of difference to the law.’

Bartholomew took a deep breath. ‘It is probably not his child that Isilia is carrying.’

Bartholomew could imagine the expression on the monk’s sardonic face. ‘And how are you party to that intimate little detail?’

‘The disease he has tends to take away the ability to father children. I was surprised by the fact that Isilia was pregnant when I first learned of his illness, but he probably knows Isilia’s child is not his. Do you think that would give him cause enough to insist so vehemently that we finish our business here, and leave with the documents that will allow Hamon to inherit?’

‘I do indeed,’ said Michael. ‘And it would give Hamon good reason for wanting the advowson signed quickly, too. But who would oppose it?’

‘Isilia, for one,’ said Bartholomew. He drew his hand up with a sharp intake of breath, when something grazed it with what felt like teeth. He continued, somewhat unsteadily, rubbing his wrist. ‘Also, Dame Eva does not seem to like Hamon very much, while Wauncy might not approve of Hamon inheriting over Isilia’s offspring.’

‘But we have no evidence to connect Eltisley with any of these people,’ said Michael. ‘And I am wearing sandals, and I can feel fur and scrabbling claws all over my feet!’

‘You are right,’ said Michael, trying to sit with his feet in the air. ‘Well, she had the fooled, too, with her lovely, innocent face and her touching concern for the husband old enough to be her father. She probably did not want to marry him in the first place. And who can blame her? He is like a horse, with all those long teeth.’

‘But there is also the father of the child,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He would have an interest in it inheriting over Hamon, and might try to prevent the advowson from being completed.’

‘Do you know who that might be?’ asked Michael. ‘It cannot be Hamon, or none of this would be an issue. Is it Grosnold, do you think? Or Wauncy?’

‘Or Eltisley?’ asked Bartholomew in distaste.

‘Eltisley has killed four times,’ said Cynric. ‘Alice Quy, James Freeman, Deblunville and Alcote. He will not hesitate to do so again.’

‘I suspect, with hindsight, that he also tried to poison us with that brown sludge the first night we stayed at the Half Moon, given how insistent he was that we finish the bottle,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He was pleased when he saw the bottle was empty, not knowing that Deynman had spilled it on the floor. Alcote drank a little, and was quite ill.’

‘And then, once it became clear that Alcote was the man writing the deed and that the rest of us were mere onlookers, attempts were made on Alcote alone,’ said Michael. ‘He was unwell most of the time he was here, suggesting that some insidious poison was in the food he ate – or in the copious amounts of raisins he devoured – and then there was the attack on him the night before he died.’