A Summer of Discontent (14 page)

‘She would,’ said Henry. ‘Haywarde cannot have been an easy man to live with.’

‘A brute,’ agreed Thomas wholeheartedly, gnawing the remnants of cheese from a rind. ‘And I, for one, am glad he is dead.
He will not be mourned in the town for a moment.’

Bartholomew gazed at him, astonished to hear such sentiments from a monk.

‘Our visiting physician should be about his business,’ said Robert, watching his reaction critically and showing that he thought
it high time the outspoken interloper was gone.

‘True,’ said Thomas. ‘There are three bodies awaiting his attention, after all.’

‘Three,’ mused William thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps Father John is right to be concerned.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Robert, regarding the hosteller with open hatred. ‘I have already pointed out that it is not
unusual for men to die.’

‘To die, no,’ said William smoothly. ‘But it is unusual for three to drown within such a short time. You should beware, Robert,
because I have a hunch that it will only be a matter of time before a
monk
is found face-down in the river.’

‘That was unpleasant,’ said Bartholomew, as he followed Michael out of the refectory towards the Steeple Gate, where he could
see the priest still waiting. ‘Was William threatening Robert?’

‘Lord knows,’ sighed Michael. ‘It would not surprise me. Robert and William have loathed each other for as long as I can remember.’

‘Neither of them are especially appealing characters,’ remarked Bartholomew, trying to determine whether he was more repelled
by the superior, unreadable William or the vicious-tongued Robert. And the sub-prior was not much
better, either. ‘I cannot say that I am impressed with your Benedictine brethren, Michael.’

‘Not those particular ones. But Henry is a kindly soul, and so is Alan.’

‘I am not so sure about Alan,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He seems gentle and good, but he permits this silly feud with Father John,
and he does nothing to curb the excesses of his monks. Robert, William and Thomas would benefit if he did not allow them so
much freedom.’

‘Alan really
is
a good man, but thwarted ambition has made him careless.’

‘You mean because he should have been Bishop and the Pope selected de Lisle instead?’

Michael rummaged in his scrip and presented Bartholomew with the food he had taken. ‘You should not poke around with corpses
on an empty stomach, Matt. I should have grabbed you some ham, too, but that greedy Thomas wolfed most of it before I could
act.’

Bartholomew took the offering, a little warily: Michael was not a man who readily parted with food, and the physician wondered
whether there was something wrong with it. ‘Are you not hungry?’

‘Breakfast is always a tawdry affair on Mondays,’ said Michael carelessly. He is probably full, thought Bartholomew. ‘But
I shall survive until we find a tavern, and you need sustenance, since you are about to meddle in de Lisle’s affairs on my
behalf. How did you persuade the priest to let you examine the others?’

‘He asked me. But these other two deaths put a different complexion on matters, do you not think? They mean that unless de
Lisle also murdered them, then he is unlikely to have killed Glovere.’

Michael gave a grim smile. ‘You are underestimating de Lisle, Matt. He is quite capable of deducing that the presence of two
other corpses might exonerate him from the murder of the first. And you are assuming that these corpses are all related in
some way. Robert is right: the waters in
the Fens can be dangerous, and it is not unusual for men to die while fishing or fowling or cutting reeds.’

‘I suppose there is only one way to find out,’ said Bartholomew reluctantly, watching with heavy resignation as Father John
came to lead them to the corpses.

The two bodies lay in St Mary’s Church, an attractive building with a spire, which overlooked the village green. John explained
that the monks refused to allow corpses in the cathedral while they awaited burial, and so the parishioners of Holy Cross
were obliged to pay St Mary’s to store them until a requiem mass could be arranged. The priest of St Mary’s was well satisfied
with the arrangement, and John informed Bartholomew and Michael that the twopence per day for each body went directly into
the man’s own purse.

‘The monks should provide that twopence,’ John muttered bitterly. ‘Why should my parishioners pay, just because the priory
refuses to allow them proper use of our parish church?’

‘But it is primarily the priory’s cathedral,’ Michael pointed out. ‘And it is the seat of the Bishop of Ely. Thomas de Lisle
will not want to be falling over corpses each time he enters his own church, either.’

‘You make it sound as though we have dozens of them,’ said John accusingly. ‘There are only two. Prior Alan put Glovere in
the Bone House.’

‘Why not store the others there, too?’ asked Bartholomew.

John explained patiently, ‘Since Glovere is a retainer of Lady Blanche he is technically not my parishioner, and I refused
to find the twopence for him. Rather than pay himself, Alan made the Bone House available. But I could not avoid financing
Chaloner and Haywarde.’

‘The River Ouse can be dangerous,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Why do you think the deaths of these two men are anything more than
tragic accidents?’

‘I do not, actually,’ admitted John. ‘The river
is
dangerous,
and these fellows liked a drink. But there is a rumour that they killed themselves, and if that is true, then I cannot bury
them in consecrated ground.’

‘God’s blood!’ swore Michael, backing away as John opened the door to the Church of St Mary. ‘This place smells almost as
foul as Glovere in the Bone House.’

‘It is summer, Brother,’ said John. ‘Of course there will be some odour.’

‘No wonder you
pay
for the privilege of storing your dead here,’ said Michael, removing his pomander from his scrip and shoving it against his
nose and mouth. ‘It is the only way you would ever persuade a priest to allow you to do it.’

The bodies lay in open coffins in the Lady Chapel, covered with grimy blankets that were liberally scattered with horse hairs.
Under each coffin, Bartholomew saw that the floor had been stained by water dripping from the bodies; he had noted a similar
phenomenon on the floor around Glovere. Since neither John nor Michael made a move to help, he went over to the first corpse.
He presumed it was Chaloner, who he knew had died a couple of days after Glovere, because the face was blackened and there
was a whitish mass in the eyes and mouth, indicating that flies had been at work. It would not be long before Chaloner had
a cloud of insects buzzing around him, just as Glovere had done.

‘Why have you waited so long to bury this man?’ asked Bartholomew, beginning his examination.

‘He has no family to arrange matters,’ said John, as if that explained everything. ‘His wife died in childbirth some weeks
ago.’

‘Then why does the parish not pay?’ demanded Michael. ‘It is not seemly to keep the dead above ground for so long.’

John looked resentful. ‘How can I bury them when I do not know where they might be laid to rest? I must know whether either
or both are suicides or died by accident.’ He drew himself up to his full height and did his best to look pious. ‘I will not
see anyone consigned to unconsecrated ground if I can help it.’

‘Better unconsecrated ground than no ground at all,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And you can always exhume them later and rebury them
in the churchyard, if you are uncertain.’

John glared at him. ‘A final resting place is just that. I do not hold with tearing men from their graves once they have been
interred. That is why I brought
you
here, so that you can determine where they should go.’

Bartholomew looked at the pair of corpses, hoping that he would be able to deduce enough to allow the removal of the bodies
from a public place. While the remains of executed criminals often adorned the gates of cities or were abandoned at gibbets
for weeks on end, leaving them in a building that people were obliged to use regularly was a wholly different matter.

‘What happened to Chaloner?’ asked Michael, while Bartholomew began his examination. ‘Was he drunk?’

‘He enjoyed an ale in the Lamb and left after sunset. The next time anyone saw him, it was the following day in the river.
He was floating face-down in the water, opposite the Monks’ Hythe.’

‘Did he drink heavily?’ asked Michael.

John shrugged. ‘On occasion, when he had the money.’

Bartholomew listened while he worked. He saw that while the parish had stretched itself to provide a blanket, it had done
little else. Chaloner appeared to be in exactly the same condition as when he had been pulled from the river, and no one had
made any attempt to clean him. Mud still streaked his arms, and there was river weed caught in his hair and beard. No one
had even washed his face and hands, and they were thick with dirt.

However, the fact that the body had not been touched provided Bartholomew with some clues. Chaloner’s fingers were deeply
caked in mud, which was also ingrained under his nails. That it had not washed away was a sign that he had probably not died
in deep, fast-running water, but somewhere sheltered and boggy. He might have clawed at the banks in an attempt to pull himself
out. But Bartholomew
knew it was possible to drown in very shallow water, and the evidence on the hands alone did not allow him to ascertain whether
Chaloner’s death had been accidental or deliberate. It did imply, however, that he had probably known what was happening to
him, which suggested that he had not wandered into the river in his cups.

Beginning at the head, Bartholomew made a careful inspection of the body, paying special attention to the neck. He said nothing
when he had finished, and moved on to the next corpse.

‘That is Haywarde,’ explained John. ‘He was found dead on Saturday. Like Chaloner and Glovere, he went to the Lamb for a drink
before going home. He left the inn after dark, and—’

‘Let me guess,’ interrupted Michael. ‘He was found the following morning floating face-down in the river opposite the Monks’
Hythe.’

John nodded. ‘All three were. So, what do you think, Doctor? Can we bury them in the churchyard? Or are they are suicides?’

‘You can bury them in the churchyard,’ said Bartholomew soberly, straightening from his examination of the second body. ‘They
have both been murdered.’

Michael gazed at Bartholomew in the soft shadows of St Mary’s Church. Somewhere outside a dog barked and a child gave a brief
shriek of laughter, and then it was silent again, except for the buzzing of flies. The sun had broken through the morning
clouds and was blazing hotly through the windows. St Mary’s did not boast much stained glass, but it had a little, and light
pooled in occasional multicoloured splatters on the nave floor.

‘Are you sure, Matt?’ Michael asked. ‘Both murdered?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Bartholomew. ‘They were killed very carefully, using an unusual method, but the signs are there for anyone
to see. Had you examined the corpses yourself, you would have drawn the same conclusion.’

‘I
did
examine the corpses,’ said John indignantly. ‘But I found nothing to help me one way or another.’

‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew, not certain what else to say. He was astonished that anyone could have missed the clues that he thought
were so obvious, even to the casual observer.

‘Did they die in the same way as Glovere?’ asked Michael.

‘What?’ asked John in sudden horror. ‘You think Glovere, Chaloner and Haywarde were killed by the same person?’

‘I cannot tell you that,’ said Bartholomew pedantically. ‘But I can tell you that they were all killed in an identical manner.’

‘Explain,’ ordered John. ‘I want to know exactly what you have learned. Use Haywarde to illustrate your points. We will move
away from Chaloner: he is too ripe for my stomach.’

‘All three bodies have traces of mud on them,’ began Bartholomew, pointing to smears of dirt on the inside of Haywarde’s left
ear. Someone had given his body a superficial wash, but it was insufficient to hide the fact that he had died out in the open.

‘Of course they are less than pristine,’ interrupted John. ‘They were found in the river.’

‘The river is not especially dirty in Ely,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And it is low at the moment and the banks are baked dry, because
it is high summer and it has not rained for a while. I would not expect the bodies to be covered in mud.’

‘But they are not covered in mud,’ objected John. ‘Haywarde has the merest trace of dirt in his ear, and you are using it
to claim the man was murdered! I can see I made a mistake in securing your services for an honest verdict!’

‘If you listen to him, and do not insist on interrupting with your own facile observations, you will learn why he considers
the mud to be important,’ snapped Michael. ‘Matt and I have solved more murders than you could possibly imagine, and I can
assure you that he has a lot more experience of what is and what is not important in these cases than you do.’

‘Very well,’ said John sullenly. ‘Explain, then.’

‘The first point to note is that you said the bodies were floating in the river near the Monks’ Hythe,’ replied Bartholomew.
‘They were waterlogged, if the stains under the coffins are anything to go by, and they probably continued to drip for some
time after being brought here.’

‘They did,’ agreed John reluctantly. ‘I had to pay St Mary’s thieving parish priest another penny, because he claimed they
were fouling his church.’

‘But this soaking failed to wash away the mud in their ears,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘Why should their ears be muddy, if they
were found in the middle of a fairly large river?’

‘It came from when they were pulled out, I imagine,’ suggested Michael. ‘Dirt caught in the ears when they were dragged up
the bank.’

‘No,’ said John, thoughtfully. ‘In each case, Mackerell the fisherman took his boat to fetch the bodies back to dry land.
And it would have been disrespectful to drag them across the mud anyway – regardless of the fact that all three were miserable
sinners who will not be missed. The bodies were taken from the boat, laid on a bier and brought here.’