The Lord Bishop's Clerk (11 page)

‘Didn’t make anything at all, my lord,’ responded Elias, looking blankly at him. ‘I was just concerned at having found a dead man in the church. Aye, and one who could not have taken his own life. The man who did it could have been close by, so I had no wish to linger. That would be a foolish thing, even though I would say I was a man who could take care of himself. I headed straight out as the Compline bell rang.’

‘Did you see or hear anyone else in the church while you were there?’

This was easier. ‘No, my lord. And it’s not likely I would have heard anyone while I was in the workshop.’ He paused. ‘There now, I almost forgot. There was someone, someone in St Eadburga’s chapel when I came in. I couldn’t say who, but I could hear whispering, like one at prayer. Perhaps that was that clerk, before he was killed.’ He smiled at Bradecote as if expecting recognition for his feat of memory.

The acting under-sheriff did not smile, but nodded an acknowledgment. ‘Is there anything else you think might be useful?’ Bradecote had no expectation of a reply and was surprised at the master mason’s answer.

‘Well, nothing directly so, my lord, but I was thinking that if you wanted to know more about the dead man you might try asking Brother Remigius, the sub-prior here. He used to be at Winchester, see, and yesterday, while I was speaking with him, the lord bishop’s clerk approached and spoke to him. What he said was none of my concern, and I did not pry, but I tell you true, Brother Remigius looked about as happy as a man who’s had a fox in his coop.’

‘Thank you, Master Elias, for your help. You may return to your labours.’

The big man stood up from the chair, looked from Catchpoll to Bradecote and made for the door. As he reached it, Bradecote halted him with a final question, thrown as an afterthought.

‘Your work must involve much calculation and planning. I take it you are a lettered man?’

Elias smiled proudly. ‘That I am, my lord. Taught to read by the brothers in St Edmondsbury when I was a lad. My mother, God rest her, thought I would take the cowl,’ he chuckled, ‘but I was more interested in the building than the life of contemplation. Not for me, the tonsure.’

He left, looking cheerful.

‘What do you think then, Catchpoll? Would a man like that seek to avoid a possible threat, or would he have been intrigued enough to see if any of the vellum was readable?’

Catchpoll sneered. ‘He wasn’t afraid of anyone else being present, not him. I don’t see him being perturbed at the thought, just alert. Not the simple soul he would have us believe, is Master Elias, and observant too. His work means he looks carefully. If anything was still to be seen, he would have seen it.’

‘Or been the one to set it aflame.’

‘Oh, aye. The person who “discovers” the victim must be the killer, my lord?’ Catchpoll shrugged. ‘It is certainly common enough, but you have to watch what is common.’

‘Perhaps, though, he could be one without the other.’ Bradecote ignored the implied criticism.

Catchpoll was dismissive. ‘If he read what was there, but was not the killer, it would be a strange coincidence if it turned out to be something he would wish to destroy.’

Bradecote agreed. He realised, with no little surprise, that he was suddenly becoming unnaturally suspicious, and, Heaven help him, like the serjeant.

‘He could still be our man. We know of no motive, but he was in the right place, and is easily strong enough to have dragged the body.’

‘So do we ferret around in the masons’ workshop or work through the list of unaccounted for brethren, my lord?’

The younger man ran his long fingers through his dark hair and sighed. ‘I have no doubt everything is now as it should be there, and nothing of significance will remain, but yes, we ferret, Catchpoll. And we pray for a sign.’ He pulled a wry face.

‘Not a sign,’ muttered Catchpoll, under his breath. ‘Priests wants signs. I wants evidence.’

The lord Sheriff of Worcester saw his serjeant and newly appointed acting under-sheriff emerge from the abbot’s lodgings as he himself sought out Abbot William to take his leave. He noted the disgruntled expression of Serjeant Catchpoll, and the frown furrowing Bradecote’s brow. Taking it seriously was he? Well, all to the good.

Bradecote noticed the sheriff and abandoned his original intention of visiting the masons’ workshop, heading instead to his superior. Catchpoll lengthened his stride to make sure he reached the sheriff at the same time.

‘Good to see you both hard at work,’ said the sheriff, cheerily. ‘I hear de Grismont is one of the visitors in the guest hall. Seeing how he takes being left swinging his heels, while you get about the business, almost makes me wish I could stay.’

He shook his head in mock sorrow. In fact, what would be entertaining was watching Serjeant Catchpoll and Hugh Bradecote establishing their positions. Catchpoll, de Beauchamp knew from long experience, did not think very much of his lords and masters, insubordinate and contrary bastard that he was. His under-sheriff, de Crespignac, grumbled persistently and craved his removal in a half-hearted way, but the wily old fox was too good a man not to use to the full, and the sheriff had a sneaking respect for him, though he would not admit it out loud. How Bradecote would rub up against him would be very interesting; no fool was Hugh Bradecote.

‘However, if I don’t get the corpses back to Worcester today they’ll be too far gone to string up properly, and besides, I don’t like travelling with half the flies in the shire trailing in my wake like mourners.’

Bradecote and Catchpoll made vague noises indicating agreement.

‘Right, then. I will make my farewells to the Father Abbot and be away. From experience, Bradecote, if you have got nowhere after a week, then you had best let everyone be about their business. I’d normally just leave the death unsolved. It happens that way sometimes. But in this case I would suggest you give out that it was a motiveless killing by a madman unknown in Pershore. It will give the Abbot of Pershore an answer to the Bishop of Winchester’s questions, which is what he will need most. Otherwise I may end up returning to investigate the murder of my own men by those kept in the enclave, and de Grismont would be top of my list of suspects.’ He laughed at his own joke, and nodded his dismissal. ‘Good luck.’

De Beauchamp did not think Abbot William would like the ‘unknown madman’ to feature in his letter to Henri de Blois. It was so obvious as a cover for ‘we could not find out who did it’. On the other hand, clerics were inclined to get very squeamish over hangings and retribution. Whichever the outcome, he was not going to be a happy man, but the lord Sheriff of Worcester was not there to make people happy.

As Bradecote and Catchpoll had feared, the wooden workshop was clean and tidy. Most of the men were up amongst the lashed poles of scaffolding, ropes and winches. A couple of the most senior carvers were working on blocks of stone, and Bradecote could see how Elias regarded the work as drawing out something from within. They worked deftly, though the muscles in their dust-covered forearms showed power as well as skill. They spared the two intruders barely a glance as they entered and began their search. It was a waste of time, thought Bradecote, merely a case of saying that they had checked. Serjeant Catchpoll, he noted with irritation, was hardly bothering to search at all, and was instead engrossed in the study of an angel’s head emerging from the efforts of chisel and mallet.

‘Ah, it’s a mystery to me how you can create a thing of such life from a dead lump of stone.’ Catchpoll sounded enthralled and admiring. ‘A rare gift, indeed.’

His superior blinked. Catchpoll was not a man he would have seen as having a single fibre in his body that could appreciate the artistic.

‘Aye, some has the gift and some hasn’t, but each to his own, my friend.’ The mason smiled slowly, keeping his eye on his work.

‘The mallets vary in size according to the delicacy of the work?’ The answer was obvious, but Catchpoll put the question nonetheless.

‘Bless you, of course they do, and to match the chisels also.’

‘I heard there was quite an outburst from Master Elias when one of them was out of place last night.’ Catchpoll was fingering the smooth, hard surface of a mallet next to the craftsman, who chuckled, and then coughed as he took the pale dust into his lungs.

‘Oh aye, the master likes everything in its place. Poor Arnulf swore blind he had left all as it should be, but it didn’t save him from a hiding. No harm done, mind. If apprentices weren’t shown their errors with a clout, occasional like, how would they learn? Now when I was first apprenticed in the craft …’

Bradecote had at last comprehended what Catchpoll was doing, and marvelled at the skill of it. He did not say a word, much as he wished to be involved, for fear of ruining the whole, but folded his arms and stood back, observing a master at work, as Catchpoll steered the mason from reminiscences of youth to the events of the previous evening.

‘A mallet was left out and the bench was dirty, as was told.’

‘That one there.’ The mason jerked his head to one adjacent to the gap in the rack where the mallet in his hand would fit. ‘And ’tis a mite odd, the dust, because nobody was actually working here yesterday afternoon. Edwin here was up top.’ He nodded towards his neighbour.

‘That I was, and have a hot red neck as a result of it.’ Edwin set a finger gingerly to the back of his neck.

Catchpoll took the mallet from its place, handling it as if it were a fragile item of great beauty, turning it in his hands and inspecting it carefully. His brow was furrowed with concentration, and Bradecote was conscious of a desire to hold his breath. After a short while Serjeant Catchpoll’s brow cleared, and he inhaled slowly and contentedly. He looked across at Bradecote and nodded very slightly.

‘I think we need not disturb you further in your work,’ he announced brightly to the two stonemasons. ‘Shall we continue, my lord?’

‘Er, yes indeed, Serjeant Catchpoll.’

Bradecote did not need any encouragement. The pair stepped back into the peace of the church and headed for the cloister. There, where there were no echoes to betray soft words, Catchpoll confirmed what Bradecote knew he must have discovered.

‘That mallet was what dashed the man’s brains, no doubt of it. It was hefty enough and the right size. Besides which, there was a dark line where head met handle. Whoever returned the mallet tried to remove any sign of blood or brains, and probably used stone dust as a final disguise.’ Catchpoll was jubilant.

‘Which accounts for the dust on the bench.’

‘Which accounts for the dust on the bench, yes. And for Arnulf getting a beating for laziness, which he did not deserve. We progress with the cwisker ruby.’

‘The what?’ Bradecote looked baffled.

‘It’s Latin, my lord.’ Catchpoll beamed, clearly proud to show knowledge over ignorance. ‘Something I have learned from the lord sheriff himself. Always seek the answers to the cwisker ruby, oh, and the cweemodo. Who, why …’

‘Where and how.’ Realisation dawned on the sheriff’s newest officer. He smiled. ‘Of course.
Quis
,
cur
,
ubi et qui modo
.’

‘As I said, my lord. We know the where and the how. We now proceed with the why and, most importantly, the who.’

Bradecote was silent for a moment, slotting the information about the mallet into place in his brain, and then spoke, almost to himself.

‘This also means that the time during which the murder could have taken place is reduced, and that the murderer was afraid of discovery. He certainly did not think to return the mallet to its place. He could not have expected Master Elias, but when he did hear him in the transept he would have been trapped in the workshop.’

‘You forget the door to the outside, my lord.’ Catchpoll shook his head, and sighed, as a craftsman might at the cumbersome attempts of his apprentice. ‘The murderer, who need not be “he”, could have slipped out and returned through the main gate, innocent as you please.’

It was a blow, but Bradecote recovered himself. If the murderer had gone out by that route, Brother Porter would have seen them as they passed his gate, and it was quite possible that Master Elias, who was careful with his property, would have barred the door, and would have been certain to notice if it was unbarred when he entered.

‘He was keen enough to tell us about the other things he found out of place. Had the door been unbarred, he would have added that to the list of reasons to clout his apprentice.’

Serjeant Catchpoll accepted Bradecote’s theories calmly, and, if he was in any way impressed, he concealed it perfectly. Not wishing to recall the master mason too soon, which might be interpreted either as having failed to ask an important question in the first place, or holding him as chief suspect, Bradecote and Catchpoll divided the interviews of the monks between them. It was unlikely that any could be serious suspects, but they might have incidental information.

Brother Porter was adamant that he had not left his duties even for a moment between Vespers and Compline, and had admitted none but the sheriff and his party, excepting one of the lord de Grismont’s men, who had taken his lordship’s horse out for exercise in the cooler air. The horse had become cantankerous in the stable, had kicked a hole in a partition, and he certainly looked mettlesome and in need of a gallop to work off his ill humour, or so said the groom.