An Order for Death (13 page)

Considering that the Fellows of Michaelhouse comprised a Benedictine, a Dominican, a Franciscan, a Carmelite and a Gilbertine,
the College was remarkably strife-free. Bartholomew sincerely hoped it would continue, and that his colleagues would not be
drawn into the rivalries and disputes in which the religious Orders indulged. William posed the greatest threat, with his
naked hatred of Dominicans, but, fortunately, Clippesby was not sufficiently sane to provide him with a satisfactory target.
Sometimes he objected to the hail of abuse the Franciscan directed towards him, but most of the time he seemed unaware that
there was a problem.

Thinking of the unease between the Orders reminded Bartholomew of why Michael had left Edith’s house early the previous night.
He glanced at the monk, noting again that he looked exhausted and out of sorts.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, brushing mud from his tabard as they waited for the procession to move off. ‘Sergeant Orwelle
told me how he found the body.’

Michael shook his head slowly. ‘Walcote was a good man, despite my complaints that he was too gentle. I shall catch whoever
did this, and string them up, just as they did to him.’

‘It was definitely murder, then?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘There is no possibility it was suicide?’

‘His hands were tied behind him,’ said Michael shortly. ‘It was not suicide.’

‘Did the Dominicans do it?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘It seems a little brazen to use their own walls as an execution ground.’

‘They said it had nothing to do with them, and that the
first they knew about it was when Tulyet hammered on their gates and demanded to know why a corpse was dangling from their
wall. Prior Morden maintains that the gates have been locked since the fight with the Carmelites.’

Bartholomew raised his eyebrows. ‘Prior Lincolne claimed the Carmelite Friary doors were shut, and that Faricius could not
possibly have left the premises. But Faricius still ended up gutted like a fish in a grimy alley. These locked doors have
peculiar properties, it seems.’

Michael sighed. ‘If I had a groat for every time a scholar claimed he could not have committed a crime because he was locked
inside a College or a hostel, when all the time he was as guilty as sin, I would be a rich man.’

‘So, do you think the Dominicans killed Walcote, then?’

Michael rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I have no idea. Walcote was hanged from a drainage pipe that juts out from the top of the
wall. Anyone outside the friary could have flung a rope over it and hauled him up by the neck.’

‘Walcote was an Austin. Do the Dominicans have a dispute with them?’

Michael sighed again. ‘The reality is that, at the moment, the Dominicans seem happy to fight anyone –
anyone
– who is not from their own Order.’

‘Then it is not safe for any non-Dominican to be out on the streets,’ said Bartholomew. ‘That is not a healthy state of affairs.’

‘You do not need to tell me that,’ said Michael. ‘I thought the town was calm last night, or I would never have allowed you
to persuade me to go to Trumpington. Priors Morden and Lincolne promised to keep their students in, and I thought the worst
of the trouble was over.’

‘So, do you have any idea who might have killed Walcote? Were there any clues with the body?’

‘None. He was killed in a secluded spot, probably just after sunset, when no one would have been around. I doubt there are
witnesses.’

‘So, what will you do?’

Michael fell into step beside Bartholomew as Langelee led the procession out of the yard and into the street. ‘I must be careful
with this case, Matt. I liked Walcote, despite my reservations about his gentleness, and I am in danger of allowing affection
to cloud my judgement. If that happens, the killer may go free.’

‘Can you delegate the investigation to your beadles?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘I do not trust any of them with something this important. Meadowman shows promise, but he is inexperienced. I need you to
help me, Matt.’

‘I will examine Walcote’s body for you,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But I am no good at hunting down criminals. And anyway, what about
my teaching?’

‘It is Holy Week, and you only teach in the mornings,’ said Michael. ‘Walcote’s murder is not only a deep personal blow, it
is a strike against the University. The proctors are symbols of authority and order, and killing one of us is a statement
of chaos and anarchy.’

‘I think you are overstating the case, Brother,’ said Bartholomew reasonably. ‘It may just be that Walcote was alone, and
that the attack on him was opportunistic. Or maybe some resentful student – previously arrested or fined by Walcote – saw
an opportunity for revenge. His death is not necessarily imbued with a deeper meaning.’

Michael turned haunted eyes on him. ‘I hope you are right, Matt. But I need your expertise, and I need another sharp mind
to assess facts that I may miss. Will you do it?’

‘Very well,’ said Bartholomew reluctantly.

The monk nodded his thanks, and they walked the rest of the way to the church in silence. Bartholomew’s thoughts were full
of foreboding when he saw that, yet again, he was about to be sucked into a world of treachery and violence that had already
claimed the life of Michael’s deputy. He hoped they would solve the matter quickly, so that his life could return to normal.

*   *   *

‘Two murders,’ said Michael, pacing back and forth in his room after breakfast that morning, his black habit swirling around
his thick white ankles. A jug on the table wobbled dangerously as his weight rocked the floorboards, and Bartholomew was grateful
he was not working in his own room below, attempting to concentrate over the creak of protesting wood.

Michael had directed his three serious-minded Benedictine students to read part of an essay by Thomas Aquinas, thus neatly
abrogating his teaching responsibilities for the rest of the day. Bartholomew’s pack of undergraduates were not quite so easily
dealt with, and tended to be rowdy and difficult to control if he were not with them. Surprisingly, when he had learned why
Bartholomew wanted to be excused, Langelee had offered to supervise them himself. Like Michael, the Master regarded the death
of a Junior Proctor as a serious threat to the University on which he had pinned his personal ambitions.

‘Find the man, Bartholomew,’ he instructed. ‘You are relieved of all College responsibilities until you have the culprit under
lock and key – except for the mass on Easter Sunday, when all Fellows should be present.’

‘I hope it will not take that long,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is only Tuesday.’

‘Then you will have to work quickly,’ said Langelee, glancing down the hall, where Bartholomew’s lively students were already
beginning to make themselves heard as they waited for their lesson to begin. ‘If people learn that the University’s officers
can be easily dispatched and the culprits never found, the town will erupt into chaos.’

Freed of his teaching, Bartholomew sat at the small table in Michael’s room, and made notes on an oddly shaped piece of parchment
from Michael’s supply of scraps. Parchment was expensive, and scholars tended to recycle old documents by rubbing the ink
away with sand, and then treating the surface with chalk. The piece Bartholomew had was wafer-thin from previous use, and
whoever had last
scraped it had done a poor job, because the words were still legible under the layer of chalk. On one side was a summary
of payments for Michael’s army of beadles, while on the other Walcote had made a list of items that had apparently been stolen
from the Carmelite Friary a few weeks before.

‘Two murders,’ repeated Michael, gnawing his lip thoughtfully. ‘Faricius of Abington and Will Walcote.’

‘You are not suggesting the two deaths are related, are you?’ asked Bartholomew, as he wrote down the few facts they had about
Walcote’s death, chiefly where it had taken place and that it had probably happened after sunset. ‘I can see no reason to
link them together.’

Michael rubbed the dark bristles on his chin. ‘Faricius, a Carmelite, was murdered when the
Dominicans
went on a rampage. And now Walcote is murdered outside the
Dominican
Friary. There is your connection, Matt.’

‘It may be a connection, but I am not sure it is a meaningful one. There is nothing nearby, other than that drainage pipe
on the friary walls, that could be used for a spontaneous hanging. Perhaps that is all your connection means.’

Michael rubbed his chin harder. ‘But what about all the questions we have regarding Faricius’s murder? What about the fact
that his Prior insisted he could not have left the friary? And what about the fact that we know the Carmelites are lying –
or at least hiding the truth – about his death?’

‘What about them?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘They neither prove nor disprove the connection you are trying to make. I think the
best way forward is to treat the two deaths as unrelated events. Then, if we discover evidence to the contrary, we can look
at them from a new angle, and try to see whether there are other links. Is that reasonable?’

Michael sat down so hard on a stool that Bartholomew was sure he saw the legs buckle. The monk rested his elbows on his knees
and gave his eyes a vigorous massage. ‘I suppose
so. I find this very difficult, Matt. I have never investigated

the death of anyone I liked before.’

‘I thought you were dissatisfied with Walcote’s abilities as a proctor.’

‘I was, although they seem insignificant now that he is dead. Doubtless I will come to remember him as the best deputy I have
ever had. But I liked him well enough. He could be a little secretive at times, but he was a pleasant fellow to work with.’

‘We will find his killer,’ said Bartholomew encouragingly, although he was not sure how they would even begin what seemed
such an impossible task.

Michael gave a wan smile and climbed to his feet. ‘I was right to ask you to help me; you have already made me feel more optimistic
about our chances of success. Now, where shall we start? Will you look at Walcote’s body? I doubt there is any more you can
tell me that I do not already know, but it is as good a place as anywhere to begin.’

Bartholomew nodded reluctantly. He did not enjoy looking at corpses and, although he had inspected a great many of them, the
frequency of the occurrence did not make the task any more attractive. He was a physician, and he considered his work to be
with the living rather than the dead.

‘And then I suppose we had better ask questions about Walcote himself,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael suspiciously. ‘I do not want to pry into the poor man’s private affairs now that he is not
here to defend himself.’

‘We need to establish whether his death was a case of an opportunistic slaying, or whether it was a carefully planned attack.
We will not know that unless we investigate his personal life, to see whether he had angered someone sufficiently to make
them want to kill him.’

‘Well, of course he had enemies,’ said Michael impatiently, beginning to pace again. ‘He was a proctor. There are plenty of
students who resented spending nights in our
cells, and who objected to paying the fine that secured their release.’

‘Most students accept the fact that they have been caught, and turn their minds to devising ways to avoid it next time,’ said
Bartholomew. ‘And most students do not kill a man over the loss of a groat or two.’

‘A groat is a lot of money to people with nothing,’ said Michael. ‘I have had my life threatened on a number of occasions
for far less than a groat.’

‘You have?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily. ‘Then perhaps you should not go out alone until this is resolved. I do not want to
see you hanging from a pipe on the walls of the Dominican Friary – although it would take a lot more than a length of lead
piping to hold up the likes of you.’

‘There is no need for rudeness, Matt,’ said Michael stiffly. ‘And doubtless I shall lose a lot of weight now that I have all
the anxiety associated with solving two murders; that should please you.’

‘It did not stop you from making the most of breakfast this morning,’ said Bartholomew critically, not even wanting to remember
what the monk had packed away inside his substantial girth after mass that day.

‘My meals are my affair,’ said Michael irritably. ‘But we should not be discussing them; we should be trying to find out who
killed Walcote and Faricius.’

He gave a weary sigh as he stared at the piece of parchment on the table with its scanty record of facts. Bartholomew understood
his apprehension. The few scraps of information written there seemed a very fragile basis on which to conduct a murder investigation.

‘You will be needing my assistance,’ came a booming voice from the door as Bartholomew and Michael sat staring at the parchment.
‘I heard about the death of Walcote and have come to take his place.’

Bartholomew and Michael jumped. They had not heard Father William climb the wooden stairs that led to Michael’s
room, and his sudden appearance startled them. Bartholomew immediately noticed that William had dropped a sizeable blob of
his breakfast oatmeal down the front of his habit, making him appear even more dirty and disreputable than usual, a feat the
physician had not thought possible.

‘It is not my decision who to appoint as Junior Proctor,’ said Michael, quickly and not entirely truthfully. Bartholomew knew
perfectly well that his opinions counted for a great deal when it was time for nominations to be considered. ‘I think the
Chancellor has someone else in mind.’

It was not the first time the belligerent Franciscan had offered himself for the post, and it was not the first time Michael
had declined. William was an honest enough man, but he seldom admitted he was wrong, and he was always accusing innocent people
of heresy. He had spent some time with the inquisition in France, before his superiors had dispatched him to the University
in Cambridge because of his over-zealousness. To give William’s bigotry full rein by appointing him Junior Proctor would be
in no one’s interests.