The Butcher of Avignon (33 page)

She remembered the suggestion that he was working alone. But why? Was it really the dagger he wanted? What use was it to him? Did he know it contained poison? She wondered how Grizac felt about finding him there. His feelings had been impossible to gauge.

Maybe he saw Maurice’s presence in such a place as a betrayal of trust. Or was Grizac the mastermind behind the theft, his tears ones of shock that everything had gone so disastrously wrong? He would have known how dangerous it would be to make an attempt on such a valuable hoard. Perhaps his tears were of regret.

Another failure to add to the list.

She considered his long life playing second fiddle, first to his brother, Pope Urban V, and then to his contemporary Clement VII. To be Bishop of Avignon was poor reward for a lifetime with such promising connections. He was a man of qualities, everyone agreed, a scholar of repute, compassionate, piously living up to his vows, a sagacious and respected member of the College of Cardinals.

That is, if a suspicion of murder were discounted.

But then if it was a case of Grizac guilty in the treasury, what about Grizac guilty on the bridge? What about Grizac in her own cell, murdering an innocent nun?

A knife ripping across the tender throat of a lamb came to mind.

Blood.

Then Carlotta, blood on her chin from the carcase of meat, blood on her knife. The sign of squirrel’s paws under the bed. A blood stain on the nun’s mattress.

Blood everywhere.

She turned her deliberations to the death of Taillefer. Somehow she could not see Grizac entering the debauched darkness under the bridge.

If what she had been told were to be believed, he had crossed over, taking his time, arriving at the other side long after the others. He had been alone. Even so, he started with the others. The sentry had said so twice, once to herself and once, independently, to Edmund.

After the others crossed he would have had time to kill Taillefer on the bridge and then stop at the chapel to make confession.

It was the ferryman who had told her he heard an argument coming from the direction of the bridge. His testimony had persuaded her to look there. The priest confirmed the sound of an argument. Voices raised in anger above the howling wind, a knife in the darkness, a body splashing into the black waters of the Rhone.

It was the priest who had mentioned the bell for lauds, said he heard the voices before he rang the bell. But Hubert, Fondi and presumably the others stayed on for lauds because it wasn’t worth crossing from Villeneuve twice in such a violent storm.

The murderer could not have attended lauds. There would have been no way he could have been on the bridge shortly before the bell and then in attendance inside the palace.

It was a good fifteen minutes’ walk down the lane and then the complicated access to get into the chapel, another ten minutes at least. She saw the priest’s expression as he mentioned the bell and felt there was something evasive about it.

Was he confident that he had in fact rung the bell at the time he claimed? I sleep fitfully, he had told her. Had he woken earlier than he thought he had? Did he ring the bell long before lauds took place in the palace?

First the voices, then the murder, then the bell giving the murderer time to get back to the palace and into the office for lauds? Alibi intact. Grizac could have done it with time to spare.

It was a theory at least.

**

She went to find Hubert. He was in the Tinel with his two supporters.

Before she could speak he said, ‘I was just finishing my bread and water before coming to find you. I have something to tell you. But first, I trust your new chamber is satisfactory?’

‘Very,’ she replied. ‘I’m most grateful for your string-pulling on my behalf.’

‘No point in being a cardinal in waiting if I can’t help my friends,’ he announced dryly.

Gregory and Egbert chuckled.

‘You first then,’ he said. ‘You have something to say?’

She shot a swift glance at the two monks. They both beamed. They were clearly going to listen in.

Turning to Hubert she said, ‘It’s about that night when you crossed the bridge, when Taillefer was murdered.’

The two monks leaned forward with interest. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away. When Gregory spoke the matter had evidently been discussed with Hubert because he said, ‘Have you found new evidence, domina?’

‘Not really.’ She gave Hubert a helpless glance.

‘Have no worries. They know as much or as little as I do and whatever they hear will go no further.’

With no choice, she explained the problem so far.

Egbert looked interested. ‘So the murder took place on the bridge after an argument and around the time of the bell for lauds, thereby giving an alibi to any of us who were in the palace at that time. Well,’ he said, sitting back, ‘that’s a relief, eh, Hubert?’

Hubert smiled in acknowledgement. ‘But what Hildegard is saying is that the innkeeper at
le Coq d’or
told her the fellow who was trying to sell the dagger - probably the same one who stole it from the mortuary - went rushing out in pursuit of Taillefer as soon as he found out it’d been taken from his pack. Hence voices not on the bridge but in the lane outside the inn.’

‘But Taillefer was found on the temporary dam that had built up underneath the bridge with his clothes still partly dry.’

‘Meaning that he must have fallen from the bridge?’

‘Yes.’

Gregory frowned. ‘Were there any witnesses to this racket of shouting we understand to have taken place outside the inn?’

‘Plenty, apparently,’ Hildegard replied. ‘The stranger woke everybody up with his ranting. He chased Taillefer down the lane towards the bridge then returned a few minutes later complaining that the thief had got away. After that he gathered his things and left, to vanish into the night.’

‘And did he leave by means of the bridge?’

‘If so the sentries must have seen him go over.’

‘The sentry said nobody but the cardinals and Hubert crossed the bridge that night. But he heard no argument because of the storm.’

‘You believe him?’ Gregory’s eyes were sharp.

‘I see no reason for him to lie about it.’

‘Not unless he’s complicit with the murderer.’ Gregory frowned.

‘He means it could have been the sentry who murdered Taillefer,’ Egbert interpreted.

‘It could have been anyone,’ she admitted glumly.

‘Storm, argument, bell, theft, murder. Is it one of those puzzles destined to remain forever unsolved?’ Egbert shared her gloom.

‘Let’s look at it from another angle,’ Hubert suggested. ‘How did this second thief get hold of the dagger? Did somebody inside the palace pass it to him to sell at the highest price or was he working from inside the palace himself?’

‘There is a way somebody from outside could get into the palace,’ she mentioned hesitantly, wondering if she was breaking faith with her informant. ‘I was told in confidence that a certain postern is left unlocked some nights. If the fellow trying to sell the dagger knew about that he could easily have got inside - ’

‘Entered the mortuary - ’

‘And stolen the dagger.’

‘And then,’ added Hubert, ‘he could have found his way out to
le Coq d’or?
’

‘Easily.’

‘And the rest follows.’

‘Taillefer, knowing he would not be allowed onto the bridge, fled underneath the arch where the whores usually worked and was killed there.’

‘Except,’ Hildegard interrupted, ‘Taillefer’s garments were almost dry.’

‘So our version of events doesn’t answer the question how he got onto the raft without getting thoroughly soaked to the skin.’

‘And another yawning hole in all this is that no-one saw him under the arch.’ Hildegard frowned.

What seemed much more likely was that Taillefer had met the cardinal at the steps leading onto the bridge. Grizac was a figure of authority who could take him across, but then a quarrel, the raised voices, the knife across the throat, the body over the parapet, falling, to the cardinal’s ill luck, onto a floating raft of debris instead of into the water where he should have been swept away, the current taking with his lifeless body all clues to his murder.

She could not accuse one of the cardinals in front of these three men. Their allegiance was to Clement. They would close ranks against her.

There was a silence but then Gregory got up and went over to one of the servers. When he returned he had a flagon of something that when it was poured out into four beakers was definitely not water.

‘The flaw is that this boy, Taillefer, was not seen to go onto the bridge and it’s equally true that he wasn’t seen to run under the arch. Even if he had done so without being noticed - in all the rage of wind and rain that wouldn’t have been unlikely - he couldn’t have got onto the dam unless he had swum across from the bank. And that was impossible in the given conditions.’

Hildegard sighed with frustration. ‘Thank you, Hubert. That sums it up.’

‘There’s no escaping the fact that Taillefer had to have fallen from the bridge?’

‘That’s the only way to account for his garments being wet on the outside and relatively dry on the inside, something that’d have been impossible if he’d been immersed in water for the time it would have taken to swim across to what he imagined would be safety.’

‘The river was treacherous anyway,’ Gregory pointed out. ‘Surely it’s doubtful whether anyone could have swum across, even when driven by the terror of being pursued.’

‘He couldn’t have jumped?’

‘Fifteen feet from a slippery, shelving bank?’

‘Round and round.’ Gregory tapped impatiently with his finger nails on the table top until he saw Egbert’s glance. ‘Sorry. Bad habit.’ He pushed his hands inside his sleeves.

Back to Grizac. He was on the bridge. Fact. If the bell was rung early he could have hurried back in time for lauds. Hildegard almost blurted out his name but decided at the last minute to hold her tongue.

Even Grizac did not solve all questions. What grudge could he have against the esquire to kill him? Why the quarrel? It made no sense.

Was it because Grizac suspected that Taillefer knew about Maurice’s intended theft? Did he fear what else the esquire had been told? Did Taillefer need to be silenced? That would assume Grizac was the brains behind the whole thing. And a man who could kill without a qualm. Grizac? He seemed so devout, a man with a kindly manner. Like Peterkin she felt guilty even to entertain such heinous suspicions. Rather than the extreme response of murdering Taillefer, Grizac would surely have tried to bribe him or frighten him into handing over the dagger if he was so desperate to get his hands on it? And, anyway, how could he know Taillefer had the dagger that night unless somebody had told him?

Was it possible that Grizac overheard the commotion from the inn himself as he arrived at the bridge?

The inn keeper admitted he had gone bellowing out after the stranger who was also by all accounts yelling
stop thief
at the top of his voice.

It might have been that Grizac, miraculously reaching the bridge at the same moment as all this happened, again miraculously guessing what dagger the stranger was shouting about, enticed Taillefer onto the bridge, drew his knife, and…wrong place, wrong time.

Or, Taillefer, running away from his pursuer meets Grizac, begs him to save him, is taken onto the bridge, to safety, as he imagines…and then.

Supposition. Nor did Hildegard believe in miracles. It was all too coincidental. Nor did Hubert’s earlier theory of an assassin murdering all three persuade her either. Where was this assassin? Who was he? What possible link could there be between the two youths and an elderly Scottish nun?

The flagon seemed to have been emptied as they talked and Egbert got up to have it refilled.

While he was doing that Hildegard turned to Hubert. ‘You can confirm that Cardinal Grizac was in lauds at the palace with you?’

‘I can vouch for it.’

‘Me too,’ added Gregory. ‘And Fondi, Bellefort and Montjoie. I can promise you, domina, they all left together, groaning about the weather and how lucky Brother Egbert and I were to be staying behind in the palace guest quarters. Montjoie was livid.’

Egbert returning and catching the end of the conversation, tilted the contents of the flagon into their cups. ‘There’s one of Montjoie’s pages over there.’

They all looked across the refectory to where he pointed.

Hubert rose to his feet and went over.

After a few minutes he returned. ‘What you said about Montjoie reminded me of something. According to his page they accidentally tipped him out when they were on the bridge and got the full brunt of one of his tirades.’

‘His rages are quite unbridled,’ murmured Gregory.

‘Was that the argument on the bridge?’

‘Could be.’

‘Believe me,’ observed Egbert. ‘Once he gets going you can hear him berate those poor servants of his from one end of Avignon to the other.’

‘But the argument happened just before the lauds bell,’ Hildegard pointed out.

‘How reliable is that old priest?’

‘Sleeping fitfully, waking in the night? Who can ever tell what the time is?’ Egbert asked.

**

After leaving the Tinel and the men with their fresh flagon, Hildegard went down to the main courtyard. The guards were used to seeing her come and go by now and scarcely raised their heads.

Down by the river the flood was receding, leaving a rim of brown sludge above the waterline. Lower down the slope on his small hillock the ferryman had got his boat back. It lay upside down in the mud.

As she approached she saw other things lying around. A broken pitcher. A few rags of some sort. A stool with one leg missing.

She hurried up to the door and peered inside.

The shutters were half open, swinging on their hinges with a desolate, repetitive sound. In the drizzle of light she noticed more broken pots scattered on the earth floor. No fire brightened the hearth, instead there was a pile of ashes where the logs had been allowed to burn away.

She heard a groan and stepped through the door without knocking. The ferryman was lying stretched out in his chair with his hands to his head.