The Ely Testament (32 page)

Unaware of any of this, Tomlinson lowered the flask and tucked it back in his pocket. He wiped his hand across his mouth. The bed was low and he sat slumped while Mute perched in the chair a few feet away and with his back to the wall. Because he was slightly higher up, and because of the broken-down state of the other man, Mute experienced something that was very unusual in his dealings with Charles Tomlinson: a sense of superiority.

‘So you've come for your investments, Mute. I must say it is good to see you again. Where'd we last meet? Up the Monument, wasn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Mute, remembering that that was the occasion when Tomlinson said he was paying for his company and his conversation. The memory reinforced his cold anger against the man on the narrow bed. Aloud, he said, ‘Where is Mr Fort?'

‘Who? Oh, little Mr Fort. 'Course, I forgot you know him too. Where is he? I don't know.'

‘He was with you last night.'

‘How'd you know about that? Well, yes, he was with me. But where he's got to since, I do not know.'

‘Where is the treasure you were after last night, in company with Eric Fort?'

Tomlinson put both his hands on his knees and looked at Mute. The light in the little room was poor but, even so, Mute was conscious of the other's dark stare.

‘You're well informed.'

‘I have been keeping an eye on you.'

‘Do you know what, Mute? I am almost tempted to think of you with an ounce of respect.'

‘Remember, Tomlinson, you promised me a share in whatever you found.'

‘You're welcome to a share of nothing. How much of it would you like?'

Mute hadn't expected anything different. He did not disbelieve Tomlinson. There was dejection, there was failure, written in the other man's posture. If Charles genuinely had unearthed anything in the St Ethelwine's crypt he would most likely still be drunk, but there'd be more than the usual swagger and confidence to him.

‘You found nothing then?'

‘How slowly do I have to speak in order for you to understand, my dear Mute? Yes, I found nothing, yes, I came away empty-handed.'

‘What about the Ely testament?'

‘Oh that,' said Tomlinson. ‘I should have left it where I found it.'

‘Where did you find it?'

‘Fossicking around the old quarters of an old house, in a place where no one had ever looked. It doesn't matter anyway. It is nothing. A female fantasy.'

‘That's not how you talked about it before.'

‘Well, that's how I talk about it now.'

The only item of furniture in the room apart from the bed and chair was a little table on which stood a water jug and a bowl for washing and shaving. The table, which stood near the window, was fitted with a drawer. Mute noticed Tomlinson's eyes several times darting towards the table, and the area of the drawer, while he referred to the Ely testament. He guessed that the drawer was where the item, the Ely testament, was tucked away.

‘Still, all is not lost,' said Tomlinson. ‘I have some other irons in the fire here in Ely. I say, did you mention you had a flask with you? In your pocket.'

Mute said nothing but shook his head. He wasn't ready yet.

‘There is a man who shares our interest in all things funereal,' continued Charles Tomlinson after a moment. ‘A fellow called Chase. He lives near here, in Prickwillow Road. A house called
Mon Repos
. He has a wife who . . . well, never mind. Anyway, he has invented a device for a security coffin, a sort of spinning bird – what's the matter?'

‘I've mentioned it in my column,' said Mute. ‘I didn't realize you were involved, Tomlinson.'

‘I'm not involved, not directly, although I may have referred to the coffin-bird on one of my visits to Willow & Son. Perhaps I gave the impression it was my own idea. But I do have access to the device. At the bottom of his garden this fellow has a workshop, and the workshop has a door, and the door has a padlock, and I have the key to it.'

Tomlinson fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a key and held it up for Mute to see. Then he looked at it as though wondering what it was he was holding before attempting to return the key to his waistcoat. It fell from his fingers and on to the floor. Tomlinson paid no attention but extracted the hip flask once more, shook it helplessly and looked at Mute.

This time Mute took out his own flask and passed it to Tomlinson. The other weighed it in his hand for a moment, pleased to realize that it was full or nearly so. He unscrewed the cap and took a good swallow, then a second and a third. He tried to replace the cap, gave up and passed the flask back to Mute, less readily than he'd taken it.

‘Aren't you thirsty?'

‘I want to keep a clear head,' said Mute.

‘Why the devil do you want a clear head?'

‘Because it is such a complicated story you're spinning.'

‘Let's go for a walk,' said Tomlinson.

‘No,' said Mute. ‘Stay here.'

‘You do what you like, but I'm going. It is very close in here.'

He pushed himself up from the bed and made for the door. Mute went after him. He closed the door behind them. Tomlinson did not think to lock it. They left the hotel by the same route, down the narrow stairs, through the stable yard and out into Market Street. Mute's plan was to steer Tomlinson away to an open area of town, perhaps to the meadows and parkland below the cathedral, but it did not seem as though there'd be time for that.

The light was beginning to go and the mist to gather. They passed the front of the Lion and then struck off at a diagonal towards Palace Green. Luck was still with Mute. The rawness of the afternoon meant that there was almost no one to be seen, despite the fact that Evensong must soon be starting in the cathedral.

‘My throat is burning,' said Tomlinson. ‘That is a fiery liquor in your flask.'

Mute peered urgently through the gloom, looking for somewhere secluded. There were a few trees on one side of the green, together with a couple of elegant houses, while on the other side stretched the wall of the bishop's palace. Not a living thing was visible on the green apart from a handful of ducks sitting, incongruously and innocently, on the grass. Almost in the centre of the open area was positioned a cannon which, Mute thought, had been captured at Sebastopol.

He was walking beside Tomlinson, close enough to grasp him. He kept glancing sideways as if fearful that the other man might suddenly topple over.

‘Do you want me to die?' said Tomlinson. His voice was loud but strained, as if it cost him an effort to speak.

‘No,' said Mute.

‘Lie,' said Tomlinson.

His companion said nothing.

‘I think I'm going to shoot the cat,' said Tomlinson.

For an instant, Mute thought he meant the words literally before realizing that Tomlinson was announcing he was about to vomit. He did not move away, and after a moment Tomlinson brought himself back under control. They were still walking, slowly, and by now were in front of the cannon. They stopped by its black mouth, and faced each other. Mute's eyes darted about. There were a few people at the western entrance to the cathedral but they were dozens of yards away and the light was fading.

‘What have you done to me, Mute old chap?'

‘Nothing, Tomlinson. I swear it.'

‘That's a lie,' repeated the other. ‘You have done something. I cannot feel my feet.'

‘I expect it's the drink. You keep away from me!'

Tomlinson was staggering towards Mute, his arms stretched out in front of him and the fingers of his hands crooked as if he were going to seize the other round the throat. Mute raised his stick, fumbled with the ivory handle and a six-inch spike shot out from the bulbous tip of the thing. He pointed the stick in Tomlinson's direction. Mute had not handled the flick stick in anger (or fear) before, but he had frequently practised with it since purchasing the implement earlier in the year from a swordsmith's in Hanover Street.

He was still frightened of Tomlinson, even of a dying Tomlinson, and he wielded the stick more to ward off the other than to injure him. He was panicky and oblivious to witnesses now. By a lucky stroke he caught Charles Tomlinson across his brow, and blood began to well up from the deep gash almost straightaway. Tomlinson may not even have been aware of the injury until the blood was dripping into his eyes. He raised a hand and inadvertently smeared it down his face, then he looked at his reddened palm in confusion. Again Mute jabbed at his old friend with the tip of the flick stick, and then for a third and fourth time.

But these blows were partly warded off by Tomlinson's waving arms and Mute succeeded in inflicting only small wounds in the region of Tomlinson's neck. The blows were sufficient to keep him at bay, though, before he abruptly sat down on the grass and then started to scrabble his way under the barrel of the cannon, frantically using his elbows and heels. It was as if he were seeking shelter.

Tomlinson came to a stop when the back of his head struck the crosspiece of the undercarriage of the cannon. Gurgling sounds emerged from his throat, and his legs twitched. Mute stood, stooping slightly and watching him for a few more moments. He glanced up towards the western face of the cathedral. There were still a handful of people around the porch. Were they looking in his direction? Had they heard any sounds? Had there been any sounds to hear, apart from the dying man's gurgles which were now shifting into wheezes? Mute was in such an agitated state that he could not be certain whether these bystanders were aware of what was happening or not.

What was certain was that he couldn't stay here. He believed that Charles Tomlinson was done for; he thought he must be done for. Mute twisted the bulbous end of the flick stick so that the spike retracted. Then he took off, going at a fair lick, in the reverse direction from the one he'd walked with Tomlinson only a few minutes earlier. He needed to get back to the Lion Hotel and up to Tomlinson's room before a general alarm was raised. He needed to get his hands on the Ely testament which, he was sure, was in the table drawer. He remembered also the key that Tomlinson had been brandishing.

What about the others though? The others who, like the pseudonymous Mute, had gone to Ely that Sunday afternoon in search of Charles Tomlinson? Any one of them might have killed him, if he or she had had the means and been ready to seize the moment. Someone taking a bird's-eye view over the town centre and able to penetrate the gathering mist might have seen Bella Chase making her way into the cathedral via the western entrance, at the moment when the man she had briefly fantasized about as a lover was breathing his last under the Sebastopol cannon. The same bird – not one of the ducks still squatting on the Palace Green but perhaps one of the gulls that haunted Ely docks – might almost simultaneously have glimpsed Ernest Lye as he walked, almost unaware of his surroundings, through the Dean's Meadow. At one point, Lye scraped his hand against a rusted gate and the blood that came as a result left a stain on his cuff.

As for the other two suspects, they were out of sight, invisible to any bird. Cyrus Chase was in the workshop at the bottom of his garden. He was contemplating his security coffin. He was wondering whether there'd be any response from Willow & Son to the letter which he had written pointing out – in quite moderate tones, he thought – that Charles Tomlinson was not the creator of the coffin-bird but that he had purloined the idea from him, Cyrus Chase. Cyrus' mood was not, in fact, quite as grim as it might have been. Already his thoughts were moving beyond the coffin-bird to another more advanced device that would be a safeguard against premature burial.

The third man who had cause to hate Tomlinson, and who had actually ridden over to Ely with the intention of confronting him, was George Eames, the perpetual curate of St Ethelwine's. He too was out of sight, tucked away at the back of St Mary's and on his knees, in prayer. His actions that afternoon were exactly as he'd described them to Inspector Francis. He had gone through a change of heart. He had been directed by his better angel and abstained from a terrible sin. Once he finished a lengthy period of prayer and contemplation he sought out the most obscure, the lowest area of the town and took lodgings for the night with the landlady who had reddish hair.

And Lydia Lye? She had no motive to hate her cousin Charles, none at all. She enjoyed his company and, like almost everyone else, had been diverted by his traveller's tales. She might even have entertained dreams that he could relieve her of the boredom of her life with Ernest in Upper Fen. While her husband was wandering about the town, she remained behind in the warmth and comfort of the Lion Hotel, ignorant of the death of her cousin a few hundred yards away. There is no reason to include her in the list of suspects except that it sometimes happens in this sort of thing that the least likely person has done it.

So not one of these five – Mr and Mrs Lye, Mr and Mrs Chase, the Reverend Eames – had any part in Tomlinson's murder. The responsibility and the guilt belonged solely to Mute, at present scurrying back through the gloom, his flick stick at his side.

Summer, 1645

A
larmed by the smoke and the shouting, the guards and Trafford and Mr Martin and the strangers from Ely came running out of the little office, and Loyer came in their wake. Seizing his opportunity – they had not bound him or tried to constrain him in any way, perhaps out of some residual respect for what they believed was his royal status – he broke away and darted across the hall. Anne was by the front door, where she'd retreated after starting the fire. Swathes of smoke billowed across the hall. She was terrified by what she had done. Some of the household were already attempting to put out the flames in the priest-hole, with blankets, buckets of water. It was all confusion.

Loyer saw Anne by the door, and hesitated. She gestured towards the dark outside.