Michael tapped him smartly on the arm. ‘You could not have prevented Philius’s death, Matt. How were you – or any of us – to know that his asking questions about a kind of poison in his own Friary would make someone want to kill him?’
‘We misjudged Colton, too,’ said Bartholomew, facts coming together in his mind. ‘I was certain his determination to suppress knowledge of Philius’s murder was a sign of guilty involvement. Now I see his suspicious behaviour was nothing more than a desire to keep the Sheriff well away from his College and its activities while he was indulging himself in a little smuggling.’
‘Of course,’ said Michael, nodding. ‘That explains why he was so nervous, and why he tried to claim his College could not be connected to the poisoned wine and the deaths of Grene and Armel – he did not want me or the Sheriff to start digging too deeply into Gonville’s affairs given that the cellars are probably well stocked with all sorts of contraband.’
‘But why would someone kill Philius for asking about the poison?’ asked Tulyet. ‘Its nature is no secret – half the town saw Grene die.’
‘It seems a curious substance to me,’ said Bartholomew, kneeling to look more closely at Katherine’s body. ‘It killed Grene, Will Harper, Armel and now Katherine almost instantly, but it only made Philius ill. And it killed the rat, but the cat which I saw drinking it escaped unscathed.’
‘You and that wretched cat!’ exclaimed Michael, exasperated. ‘You must have been mistaken about it. The wine has certainly killed Katherine stone dead.’
Bartholomew continued to inspect the corpse. Her husband still held one of her hands and gaped at her in stunned disbelief, while the sergeant muttered meaningless and trite words of comfort in his ear and attempted to make him stand up. On Katherine’s other hand was a burn where the wine had attacked her skin as she had opened the bottle, like the ones on Isaac and the porter at Valence Marie.
The sergeant finally succeeded in prising the baker from his wife’s side and led him into the house, leaving two of his men to cover Katherine with a cloak and carry her inside. The soldiers treated the body with an exaggerated care that had nothing to do with respect for the dead and a good deal to do with their respect for the poison. Bartholomew helped them, protecting his own hands with the gloves Katherine herself had given him just a few days before.
‘I suppose we can assume he is innocent in all this?’ asked Tulyet, watching Mortimer stumbling through the door to his house with the sergeant behind him.
‘He certainly acted as though he were,’ said Michael. ‘His unbearable arrogance and temper must have led his wife and son to plot against him. She was quite happy for him to take the blame for owning the poisoned wine.’
‘But Mortimer was right – we had no real evidence against her,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I am sure what we have reasoned is correct, but she must have seen we had no proof.’
‘I have known Constantine Mortimer for many years,’ said Tulyet with a sigh. ‘I can see he would have given his wife no peace over this – whether your accusations were unproven or not. He kept her on a short rein, and she was never allowed out unless he or Edward were with her. I am sure she knew her chances of running away from him were remote, and so she must have decided to drink the wine when she realised her future was bleak.’
‘You mean just saying what we did induced her to take her own life?’ asked Bartholomew, horrified. ‘I sincerely hope you are wrong.’
‘She killed herself because she knew we had her measure, and that it would be only a matter of time before we had the proof of it,’ said Michael firmly. ‘We are not responsible for her death.’
Bartholomew looked at Cheney’s barrel, his scrutiny of which seemed to have tipped her to drinking the poisoned wine in the first place. Was there proof of her guilt concealed within it? ‘Perhaps she has more of this wine stored there. Or perhaps …’
His voice trailed away as he regarded the barrel. Gradually, as realisation dawned on him, it went from being a simple container to something sinister, and he was certain that whatever it contained, it was not salt. He walked slowly towards it and borrowed a dagger from one of Tulyet’s men to prise off the lid.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Cheney crossly, trying to snatch the weapon away from him. ‘That is finest sea salt from Hunstanton and it will be no good if it gets wet. Sheriff Tulyet! Stop this man at once!’
‘Perhaps you should allow one of my soldiers to do this,’ said Tulyet without conviction, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, making no attempt to prevent Bartholomew from levering at the lid, but watching with interest. ‘Master Cheney does not seem to like it.’
‘I most certainly do not!’ shouted Cheney. ‘If water spoils that salt, I shall expect you to pay for it. You have no right to force your way on to my property and take liberties with my barrels.’
The lid came off with a creaking pop and Bartholomew glanced inside. Immediately, he backed away coughing. Cheney elbowed him out of the way and looked himself. He gave a gasp of horror, hands flying to his mouth as he saw what was in it, the blood draining from his face.
Crouched in the barrel was the body of a small man wearing rough, homespun clothes, while on his lap lay Egil’s decapitated head. The stench was overpowering, a sickly, sulphurous reek of decay mingled with salt and rotting wood. Cheney regained the use of his legs and backed away hurriedly, colliding with Michael as he did so.
‘It is Sacks,’ said Tulyet, looking down at the thief and wrinkling his nose at the smell. ‘Sacks and someone else’s head.’
‘Egil’s head,’ said Michael, after a very cursory glance. ‘Hacked from his shoulders after we left his body for Oswald Stanmore to collect from the Fens. We wondered what had happened to it.’
‘And we wondered what had happened to Sacks,’ said Tulyet’s sergeant, emerging from Mortimer’s house and peering over Michael’s shoulder into the barrel. He showed no particular emotion at the grisly sight, not even surprise: he had seen a good deal worse as a soldier during the King’s wars in France. ‘When we realised we had not seen him for a few days, we assumed he had decided to move away from Cambridge after his spell in our prison, to try his skills where he was less well known.’
‘His hands have red marks,’ said Bartholomew, pointing to blisters on the thief’s fingers. ‘The Bernard’s students said there was something wrong with his skin. He must have been burned by one of the bottles.’
He leaned in and poked around, digging into the coarse-grained salt in search of more evidence. After a moment he found it.
‘Here are Egil’s hands,’ he said, drawing one out and holding it up. Tulyet slapped his arm down, aware that a curious crowd was beginning to gather, and that their mood was uneasy. While Katherine Mortimer dropping stone dead in Milne Street might not be cause for more than a passing glance, dismembered corpses in spice barrels were another matter entirely. Cheney gave another stifled exclamation of horror and swallowed hard.
‘I suppose I will not be able to use that lovely salt now,’ he said shakily. ‘No one will buy it if they know where it has been.’
‘You should dispose of it quickly, then,’ said Bartholomew, aware that if the spice-merchant did not rid himself of the tainted salt while the vile memories were fresh in his mind, he might have second thoughts about throwing it away. Apart from one or two patches that were stained black, it certainly appeared to be clean enough, and could easily be stored until the time was right to sell it.
‘My sergeant will relieve you of it now,’ said Tulyet, apparently thinking along the same lines. ‘He will throw it in the King’s Ditch and have the barrel scoured out with boiling water for you.’