‘You are no judge of such things,’ said Cynric rudely. ‘He was not so skilled, or he would have dispatched you with ease, and not allowed you to jump all over him as he did.’
‘Would you believe that one of those louts had the audacity to hit me with the spade he had been using to excavate Unwin’s grave?’ said Michael, indignantly.
‘Is that what were they doing?’ asked Bartholomew, repelled. ‘Are you sure?’
‘See for yourself,’ said Michael. There was a scrape of tinder, and light from a candle cast a dim circle around them. Something glinted in the grass, and Cynric stooped to retrieve it. It was the coffin ring.
‘You would not want to lose that,’ he said, handing it back to Bartholomew.
Unwin’s grave was partly uncovered. The earth had been carefully piled to one side, almost as if the culprits were intending to fill it in again. Bartholomew took the candle and looked more closely, leaning into the shallow hole to brush away some of the soil.
‘They were not digging up Unwin, Brother,’ he said, looking at the fat monk in dismay. ‘They were providing him with a little company. Because here is Norys – your absconded pardoner.’
Chapter 11
In the gloom of the church, partly illuminated by five tallow candles, Bartholomew leaned over Norys’s body and began his examination. The parish coffin was already in use for what remained of Alcote, so Norys was relegated to a table borrowed from Walter Wauncy’s kitchen – for a price. Horsey watched in horror as yet another body was laid out in the chancel, and Bartholomew sent him back to Wergen Hall with Cynric, who was also to inform Tuddenham that Norys had been found.
From the state of the corpse, Bartholomew judged that Norys had been dead for days, perhaps even since the Wednesday when he had last been seen. Whether Norys had first travelled to Ipswich, and then returned to visit Mistress Freeman and secure his alibi, was impossible to tell. Norys might have died on the Wednesday, but he might equally well have died a day or two later. The body smelled powerfully of decay, and gas swelled the stomach under the mud-stained clothes.
‘His lips,’ said Michael with a shudder. ‘They are green.’
Bartholomew studied them closely. ‘How curious. Perhaps it is something to do with where the body has been kept hidden all this time.’
‘You mean in Unwin’s grave?’
‘No – he is too clean to have been buried there for long. It looks to me as though he has been stored somewhere, until he could be disposed of permanently.’
‘I expect he killed Unwin and Mistress Freeman, and then dispatched himself in a fit of remorse,’ said Michael, looking down at the remains dispassionately.
‘I expect so,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Then he hired those three louts to bury him several days later, in the churchyard on top of one of his victims.’
‘How did he die? Can you tell?’ asked Michael, ignoring Bartholomew’s facetiousness.
Bartholomew shook his head. ‘There is no wound that I can see. He was not hanged, stabbed, strangled or hit over the head.’
‘Poisoned?’ asked Michael. ‘A coward such as Norys might well prefer poison as a painless way to launch himself down to the fires and brimstone of hell.’
‘You sound like William,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And you should not jump to conclusions. Norys may not have killed himself at all – someone else may have done it.’
‘How?’ demanded Michael. ‘You say there are no wounds, and he looks as though he may have died in his sleep.’
Bartholomew prised open Norys’s mouth, and peered inside. ‘Hold the candle closer,’ he instructed. ‘I cannot see.’
Michael looked away in revulsion as Bartholomew leaned towards the dead man’s mouth. When the physician put his fingers inside it and began to feel around, Michael felt sick.
‘Look at this,’ said Bartholomew, sounding interested.
‘No,’ said Michael, studiously staring in the opposite direction. ‘I do not want to see whatever it is. You can just tell me about it.’
‘It is a piece of food that was trapped between his teeth,’ said Bartholomew. Michael looked round in surprise, and saw a fairly large strand of something yellowish between the physician’s fingers. Michael turned away quickly, feeling his gorge rise.
‘So?’ he asked, trying to dispel the image from his mind.
‘I cannot be certain – it is too mangled and decayed – but it looks and smells like shellfish.’
Michael dropped the candle and charged outside. When Bartholomew found him, he was sitting on the wall of the churchyard looking off into the silent night.
‘What is the matter with you? You are not so squeamish when you demand that I examine bodies in Cambridge.’
‘That is not true,’ said Michael unsteadily. ‘I find the whole business repellent wherever we happen to be. But fishing bits of half-eaten food from the mouth of a rotting corpse is an impressively revolting thing to do, even for you.’
‘But you realise what this means?’ asked Bartholomew, holding the fragment of food up in the darkness. ‘If this is indeed shellfish, it implies that Norys enjoyed a meal of mussels with Mistress Freeman before she died – before they died.’
‘That sounds a little far-fetched,’ objected Michael.
‘It isn’t, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, certain facts coming together in his mind. ‘I told you at the time that I thought Mistress Freeman might have died because she ate tainted mussels – I could smell vomit in her mouth, and I suggested that someone came after she was dead and cut her throat. Now we have Will Norys, dead from no obvious cause, but there is a strand of what looks to be mussel in his mouth. And then there was the dead cat in her garden.’
‘I do not see the point you are trying to make,’ said Michael irritably.
‘The point is that Norys and Mistress Freeman ate mussels together, and that Norys had brought one of his cats – or, more likely, the cat followed him there. He gave it some, as owners of much-loved animals are wont to do – and so the cat died, too.’
‘So?’ asked Michael after a moment. ‘This tells us nothing that we had not already considered.’
‘It does,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It tells us that Mistress Freeman probably did not commit suicide, and that Norys probably did not kill her.’
‘How in God’s name do you deduce that?’ asked Michael tiredly.
‘If Mistress Freeman had planned to poison herself with bad shellfish, she would not have given any to Norys. And if Norys had wanted to kill her with them, he would not have eaten any himself or given them to his pet.’
Michael shook his head. ‘He may have brought the shellfish as a means to inveigle his way into her house. He may have planned to kill her after they had eaten – if his transparent attempts to ingratiate himself and force her to lie for him about his alibi failed.’
‘In that case, Mistress Freeman, Norys and the cat ate the mussels unaware that they were tainted, and all three died in or near the house. The only logical conclusion from this is that someone else found them before you ever discovered Mistress Freeman’s body, and tried to make her death appear as murder. This same person must therefore have removed Norys, intending to dispose of him later in a place he would never be found – namely Unwin’s grave. And finally, this person must have put the bloodstained clothes and Unwin’s empty purse on Norys’s roof, knowing that you would find them there and be convinced that it was Norys who killed Unwin.’
‘I see,’ said Michael flatly. ‘And who might this cunning someone be?’
‘It could be Eltisley,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Perhaps his murder of Alcote yesterday made him realise that he needed to destroy the evidence of his other crimes, and so forced him to dispose of Norys’s corpse quickly. What better hiding place than in the tomb of the man Norys is accused of killing?’