The Anger of God (17 page)

‘I can do that with no fee,’ Athelstan answered, getting to his feet.

Ranulf crowed with delight and clapped his hands whilst his children, catching his good humour, danced round Athelstan as if he was their patron saint. He glimpsed a trap hanging on the wall and suddenly thought of Cranston’s poor friend Oliver Ingham.

‘Tell me, Ranulf, have you ever heard of a rat gnawing a corpse?’

‘Oh yes, Father, they’ll eat anything.’

‘And you kill them with traps or ferrets?’

‘Aye, and sometimes with poisons such as belladonna or nightshade, if they are really cunning.’

Athelstan smiled his thanks and walked to the door.

‘Father!’

Athelstan turned. ‘No, Ranulf, before you ask – Bonaventure is not for sale. But we can always enrol him as a member of your Guild.’

Athelstan took leave of Ranulf and his family. He was half-way down the alleyway, his mind full of rats, poisons, traps and ferrets, when suddenly he stopped, mouth gaping at the idea which had occurred to him. He smiled and looked up at the brightening sky.

‘O Lord, blessed are you,’ he whispered. ‘And your ways are most wonderful to behold.’

He almost ran back to the rat-catcher’s house and hammered on the door. Ranulf appeared quite agitated as Athelstan grasped him by the shoulder.

‘Father, what is it?’

‘You must come with me. Now, Ranulf! You must come with me now to see Sir John! Ranulf, please, I need your help!’

The rat-catcher needed no second bidding. He went back indoors, shouted instructions at his daughter, kissed each of his children and, with Ferox firmly penned in a small cage, allowed Athelstan to hurry him through the streets of Southwark down to London Bridge.

Rosamund Ingham paled as she answered Sir John’s insistent knocking. She stood with the door half-open and glared at the Coroner then at Athelstan, with Ranulf standing behind him. ‘What’s the matter, Mistress?’ Cranston greeted her. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost!’

‘What do you want?’

‘You asked me last night to remove the seals from your dead husband’s room and that’s why I am here.’ He pushed the door further open. ‘We can come in, can’t we? Thank you so much.’

He glimpsed Albric standing further up the stone-flagged passageway and, from where he stood, Cranston could see the young fop was visibly frightened.

‘I’d best take you up to the room.’ Rosamund recovered her composure quickly, her pert face showing some of its old icy hardness.

Athelstan waved her on. ‘If you would, Mistress.’

Cranston winked at him.

‘For a monk, Brother, you are as sharp as a new pin.’

‘Friar!’ Athelstan hissed.

‘Well, even better,’ Cranston whispered back as they climbed the stairs.

Athelstan lowered his eyes so as not to glance at Mistress Ingham’s swaying hips. A born flirt, he thought, and knew Cranston would use a cruder word. He glanced at his fat friend walking just behind him. Although the Coroner had a smile on his lips, his light blue eyes were hard with fury. They reached the top of the stairs. Cranston removed the seals and pushed the door open.

‘Why are they here?’ Rosamund pointed a dainty finger at Athelstan and Ranulf.

‘First, because they are fellow officers!’ Cranston snapped. ‘And, second, Mistress, because I want them here. You have no objection surely?’ Rosamund moved herself in between Sir John and the open door.

‘You have removed the seals,’ she snapped. ‘Now, get out!’

‘Oh, didn’t you know?’ Cranston raised his eyebrows. ‘When the King’s Coroner unseals a room, he has to ensure, to his own satisfaction, that the chamber is as he left it. Surely you have no objections?’

The woman’s lips tightened and Cranston gave up all pretence.

‘I am not here because I am the late Sir Oliver’s friend,’ he muttered, glancing at Rosamund’s black dress. ‘I suppose the requiem was both short and sweet?’

‘It finished an hour ago.’

Cranston shoved her aside, ‘I am the King’s Coroner,’ he declared, ‘I wish to see this room, and I should be grateful, Mistress, if you and that thing downstairs would make yourselves available to answer certain questions.’

Rosamund flounced away, though Athelstan saw the fear in her face and knew that Sir John was right. She was a killer and undoubtedly responsible for the previous night’s murderous assault on the Coroner. As he followed Cranston into the chamber, Athelstan quietly prayed that both Rosamund and her weak-willed lover would fall into the trap prepared for them and that Ranulf would justify their expectations.

Cranston stared round the bed chamber, quiet and sombre, the dust motes dancing in the sunlight pouring through a glazed window. He opened the shutters of another, took a swig from his wineskin and, in an act of outstanding generosity, allowed Ranulf a drink as well.

‘Right, my lad.’ Cranston clapped the rat-catcher on the shoulder. ‘How would you like the right to be appointed chief rat-catcher in the city wards of Castle Baynard, Queenshithe and the Vintry?’

Ranulf beamed his pleasure.

‘In time, my lad, perhaps. But now, find me some rats – preferably dead ones.’

Ranulf brought Ferox out of his little cage from beneath his cloak. Cranston stepped back immediately.

‘You know what we are looking for, just keep that bloody thing away from me! I have a horror of ferrets. I knew a man once who allowed one to get inside his hose. He ended up being castrated!’

Ranulf grinned as he stroked the inquisitive ferret between the ears. The ferret gazed unblinkingly at Cranston.

‘Oh, bloody hell!’ the Coroner said.

‘Sir John, if you are really afeared,’ Ranulf replied, pointing to a small bench, ‘perhaps it’s best if you stand on that.’

Cranston gazed suspiciously at him but Ranulf remained sombre-faced.

‘Lord Coroner, I always advise nervous patrons to do that.’

‘You’d best do as he says, Sir John,’ Athetstan added with a smile. ‘You know how Bonaventure loves you. Ferox may be of the same ilk.’

Cranston needed no second bidding but stood like a Colossus on the small bench. He leaned his back against the wall, fortifying himself with generous mouthfuls from the miraculous wineskin. Ranulf held Ferox to his lips and whispered in his ear.

‘What are you doing?’ Cranston bellowed.

‘Telling him what to do.’

‘Oh, don’t be bloody stupid, man!’

Ranulf carefully put Ferox down on the floor boards. For a few minutes the ferret sniffed before darting like an arrow beneath the great four-poster bed. Athelstan went across to the small table and picked up the unstoppered earthenware jug.

‘You say this contained the foxglove?’

Cranston, his eyes intent on the bed, just nodded.

‘And you say it was found knocked over and the medicine drained?’

‘Yes, yes, Brother, but leave that. What’s that bloody ferret up to?’

Cranston got his answer. Suddenly there was a violent scuffle under the bed and Ferox emerged, his small snout bloodied as he dragged a fat, long-tailed, brown rat out into the open.

‘Good boy!’ Ranulf whispered.

‘The bloody thing’s as stupid as you are, Ranulf!’

Cranston roared. ‘He’s not here to kill bloody rats but find dead ones!’ Ranulf picked up the dead rat, opened the window and tossed it into the street. Again Ferox went hunting. The minutes passed. Athelstan watched the industrious little ferret and tried not to look at Cranston who, having taken so many swigs from the wineskin, was beginning to sway rather dangerously on the bench. Ranulf kept picking the ferret up and putting it under cupboards and behind chests. Sometimes the ferret would return, other times there would be an eerie scuffling, a heart-stopping scream, and he would re-emerge with a rat. Athelstan had to look away as Cranston began to bellow imprecations. On one occasion Rosamund came and rapped on the door. Cranston roared at her to bugger off and instructed his ‘grinning monk’, as he called Athelstan, to bolt the door.

At last Ranulf was finished. Ferox was put back in his cage. Cranston came down from his perch and all three began to move the bed and bits of furniture, Ranulf even lifting floor boards, but they could find nothing. Eventually, all three went, red-faced and perspiring, to stand in the centre of the room. Cranston’s elation was obvious. He clapped both Athelstan and Ranulf on the shoulder and apologized for bellowing at Ranulf.

‘I’ll buy you the best claret in London!’ he swore. ‘And a drink for your little friend.’

‘He likes malmsey, Sir John.’

‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, he can have a bloody bath in it! But you are sure?’

Ranulf nodded.

‘In which case, we should try the jar.’

He went across, took up the small jug and, using his wineskin, filled the jug to the brim, then raised it to his lips.

‘Sir John, are you certain?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Athelstan, I am about to find out.’ He drank from the jug, draining every drop from it. ‘
Alea jacta!
’ he declared. ‘The die is cast! Let’s see the bitch downstairs.’

They all trooped down to the solar where a tight-faced Rosamund and a much more nervous Albric sat waiting for them.

‘Sir John.’ The woman got to her feet. ‘You have been a good hour in my house. Now get out!’

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he snapped, advancing within a few inches of her.

‘Why, what else do you want? These ridiculous allegations!’

Cranston breathed in deeply. ‘Rosamund Ingham, and you Albric Totnes, I, Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner in the city, do arrest you for murder and treason!’

Rosamund went white and gaped. Albric slumped wet-eyed and slack-jawed. Athelstan recognized him as an easier quarry. ‘O, Lord,’ he reflected, quoting from the psalms,

‘Stretch out your hand and show your justice.’

Rosamund soon regained her composure.

‘Murder? Treason? What nonsense is this?’

‘You know full well, Mistress.’ Cranston produced from his voluminous sleeve the small jug which he had taken from the chamber above. ‘You agree, Mistress, in the presence of witnesses, that this is the jug containing your late husband’s medicine, an infusion of foxglove or digitalis? A medicine, I understand, which can strengthen the heart if taken in small doses?’

‘Yes, it is. What are you going to say, Sir John, that my husband took too much? He insisted on pouring it himself. No one else was allowed to touch it.’

Cranston nodded. ‘And would you agree, in the presence of witnesses, that this is the jug that was left in your husband’s chamber when I sealed it, and that in your husband’s death throes he knocked it over?’

‘Yes, yes!’

Cranston turned at a sound near the door and summoned over the old manservant.

‘Just in time, me lad!’ he boomed. ‘I could do with another witness. Tell me, Mistress.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Have you ever tasted foxglove?’

‘Of course not! Sir John, you have been drinking!’

‘Yes. Yes, I have. I even drank from this jug.’

Athelstan gazed quickly at AIbric, who might be a coward but, by the look on his face, had already guessed the direction of Cranston’s interrogation. It seemed only to increase his terror.

‘Well,’ Cranston continued evenly, ‘foxglove is fairly tasteless. And that’s how you murdered your husband. He kept the main supply of the potion in a stoppered flask in the buttery. What he didn’t know is that, perhaps a month before his death, you poured the potion away and replaced it with nothing more harmful than water.’

‘Don’t be stupid, my husband would have noticed!’

Cranston smiled. ‘Where is that flask?’

‘I’ve thrown it away!’ Rosamund stammered.

‘Well, well,’ Cranston snapped. ‘Why should you do that?’

‘It wasn’t needed!’

‘Rubbish. You wished to hide the evidence! It would never have occurred to him. After all,’ Cranston continued, ‘we see what we expect to see. I understand from my medical friends that foxglove in its liquid form is both clear and tasteless. Perhaps you added something to thicken it a little? What do we have, woman, eh? A man with a weak heart, worried sick about his faithless wife, being deprived for weeks of a life-giving medicine. Oh, yes, Sir Oliver, God rest him, died of a heart seizure – but one brought about by you. Now, Brother Athelstan here is a theologian.’ Cranston glanced quickly at Albric who sat slumped in his chair, arms crossed tightly over his chest. ‘Athelstan will tell you that there are two types of sin. The first is an act, the second an omission. Albric, do you know what omission means?’

The young fop shook his head.

‘It means, you treacherous little turd, that you commit evil by not doing something. You can kill a man by throwing him into the river. You can also kill him by refusing to help him out.’

‘What proof do you have?’ Rosamund demanded.

‘Enough to hang you,’ Cranston answered sharply, coming forward. ‘You see, as your husband died, in the middle of his seizure, his hand flailed out and he knocked over the medicine jar, allowing the liquid to spill out. Now, this house is plagued by rats, hungry and inquisitive.’ Cranston was so furious he found it hard to speak.

‘What My Lord Coroner is saying,’ Athelstan intervened

quietly, ‘is that if a rat would gnaw a dead man’s body, it would certainly drink any liquid left lying about. I have looked at that table,’ he lied. ‘As has the professional rat-catcher here. There are signs of rats on that table. Their tracks, as well as their dung, are all over the chamber.’ He glanced quickly at Ranulf who nodded wisely. ‘More importantly,’ he continued, ‘as my good friend here will swear, any rat who drank foxglove would soon die but we discovered no dead rat in that chamber.’ Athelstan schooled his features. He was bluffing and no Justice would convict anyone on the evidence they had produced. His heart skipped a beat as he heard Albric moan. The young man uncrossed his arms and made to rise.

‘This is nonsense!’ Rosamund snapped, a gleam of triumph in her eyes. ‘First the rat could slink away to die anywhere and we have found dead rats in the house, haven’t we, Albric?’ The young man, white-faced, just nodded.

‘That’s impossible!’ Ranulf, entering the spirit of the occasion, now spoke up. ‘Foxglove would kill a rat immediately. I would swear to that. Indeed, I could show you.’