‘It looks that way, Brother.’
‘You do not think these marks – I hesitate to call them injuries, since they are so minor – were caused by Gosslinge himself in his death throes?’
‘There is no way to tell, but I would imagine not. I think it more likely someone harmed him – but I could be wrong.’
‘Perhaps he was lonely,’ suggested Michael, reluctant to abandon the suicide theory. ‘Perhaps he did not want to go to Walsingham. Perhaps Turke drove him to take his own life. Gosslinge knew no one else here, so if anyone drove him to suicide, it must have been his master.’
‘Or Giles or Philippa,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But do not forget he knew the Waits. Quenhyth saw them with Gosslinge, and so did Harysone. And the Waits said Gosslinge ate a meal with Harysone – something Harysone admitted, too.’
‘I do not see why the Waits should drive him to take his own life – unless they threatened to inflict their juggling on him. But Harysone is another matter. I knew he was up to something when we saw him trying to get into the church, just a short time before we discovered Gosslinge’s corpse.’ Michael’s eyes gleamed with triumph, and Bartholomew saw the monk thought he had a workable theory.
‘No one in the Turke household mentioned any malaise or unhappiness on Gosslinge’s part,’ the physician said, still trying to think of reasons why Gosslinge might have killed himself. Some instinct told him that Gosslinge had not intended to die and, because of his earlier negligence, he felt obliged to give the matter his best attention now. He sighed despondently as he considered the scant evidence. ‘Suicide makes no sense. If Gosslinge took his own life, why was he not wearing his livery? And how did he end up among the albs?’
Although he was too embarrassed to admit it to Michael, Bartholomew was painfully aware that he had not taken the time to assess the nature of the folds that had held Gosslinge in the rotten robes. He knew now that he should have unravelled them slowly, so that he could have seen whether Gosslinge had tied them himself or whether someone else had done it for him. He had been careless and irresponsible, and that knowledge would haunt him for a very long time.
Michael sighed. ‘It would help, of course, if we knew for certain whether this was a suicide or murder. Are you sure there is nothing lodged in his mouth that may tell us one way or the other?’
Bartholomew was sure, but his confidence had suffered a serious blow, so he looked again. There was nothing. He tipped Gosslinge’s head back, and peered down the corpse’s throat for so long that Michael began to mutter in exasperation. Eventually, he rummaged in his medical bag and produced a knife, which he placed against Gosslinge’s wind-pipe.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Michael in alarm. He glanced around in agitation. ‘Put that thing away, man! You cannot start carving up Christian men as though they were slabs of meat on a butcher’s stall! I know you enjoy indulging in surgery now and again, but you cannot do it here, and you cannot do it on him. Someone will be sure to notice.’
‘But I want to see whether there is anything stuck in his throat,’ objected Bartholomew.
‘Then use tweezers, and go to his throat via his mouth. Do not start hacking him about in places where it will show. God’s teeth, Matt! You should not need me to tell you this.’
Reluctantly, Bartholomew complied, declining to point out that if Michael wanted answers to his questions, then he should not be squeamish about the ways in which those answers were provided. He found a fairly long pair of forceps and inserted them into Gosslinge’s mouth, pushing them as far to the back of the throat as he could.
‘There is something here,’ he exclaimed, leaning to one side to gain a better purchase on the object that was lodged just beyond his reach. He pressed harder, hoping Michael did not hear the snap as Gosslinge lost another of his front teeth.
‘I sincerely hope you did not submit my husband to this kind of treatment,’ came a cold voice from behind them.
CHAPTER 8
Bartholomew jumped so much when Philippa spoke in the silence of the church that he dropped his tweezers, which clattered across the floor with a sound that was shockingly loud. Stanmore was with her, looking from the dead servant to his brother-in-law with an expression of horror. To hide his consternation, Bartholomew bent down and took his time in retrieving the dropped implement, irrationally hoping that both Philippa and Stanmore would be gone by the time he straightened up. Philippa, meanwhile, waited for a response.
‘Matt made you a promise,’ replied Michael suavely, when he saw Bartholomew did not know how to answer her. ‘It is Gosslinge he is examining, not your husband.’
‘Did you ram metal objects down Walter’s throat, too?’ asked Philippa icily, addressing Bartholomew. She was too intelligent not to see that Michael had deftly side-stepped the issue.
‘I did not,’ replied Bartholomew, standing and thrusting the forceps into his bag.
Philippa made a grimace of disgust. ‘I thought you kept your clean bandages in there. If you throw things that have been inside corpses on top of them, then it is not surprising your patients sicken and die. I heard about the deaths of the two old men who live by the river; Edith told me.’
‘One,’ said Bartholomew defensively. ‘Dunstan is still alive.’
‘He was dead this morning,’ said Stanmore, still regarding Bartholomew askance. He started to edge towards the door, deciding that if his brother-in-law had a good explanation for his ghoulish activities then he did not want to hear it. He saw Bartholomew’s distress at the news about Dunstan and stopped. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. ‘Matilde came to tell Edith, Matt. She said she left him asleep but alive shortly after you went home, but he was dead when she returned at dawn.’
Bartholomew turned away, embarrassed by the sudden pricking of tears at the back of his eyes. He was fond of the two old rivermen, and would miss their cheerful gossip on summer evenings, when he had sat with them outside their hovel. He had known it would not be long before Dunstan followed his brother, but he had not anticipated it would be quite so soon. He wondered what more he could have done to help, and felt grief threaten to overwhelm him.
‘I will say his requiem mass,’ said Michael in a voice that was hoarse with emotion. ‘He sang in my choir, and I have known him for many years.’
Philippa looked from one to the other in sudden consternation. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, sounding contrite. ‘I see they were dear to you. I did not know, and you must forgive me. I would not have broken the news so baldly had I known.’
Her sympathy was more than Bartholomew could bear. He walked away, saying he was going to wash his hands in water from the jug at the back of the nave. Memories of the old men’s chatter in the summer sunlight returned to him, and it was some time before he was sufficiently in control of himself to rejoin to the others. Michael’s reaction had been much the same. He was in the Stanton Chapel, standing over Athelbald with sad eyes and a downturned mouth.
Philippa and Stanmore waited together in the nave, standing stiffly side by side, as though neither was comfortable with the other’s company. With a distant part of his mind, Bartholomew wondered whether Philippa knew Stanmore suspected her and Giles of foul play in the deaths of Turke and Gosslinge and resented him for it. Stanmore, meanwhile, was edgy and restless, and looked as though he could not wait to escape from her presence. Eventually, Michael muttered a benediction, then took a deep breath before turning to Bartholomew.