‘So, it has gone?’ he asked with a sinking heart. ‘We will have to start all over again?’
‘It has gone,’ confirmed Michael. He gave a sudden smile in the darkness, revealing small yellow teeth. ‘But it will do them little good, eh, Cynric?’
Cynric grinned back, while Bartholomew looked from one to the other in confusion. Michael’s demeanour had changed from outrage to the smug complacency he always oozed when he thought he had done something clever.
‘I hid the spare copy, just as you told me,’ Cynric said to Michael. ‘It is in a place where no one will think to look – not even you.’
So that was what Michael had been arranging with Cynric as they had left Wergen Hall to relieve Horsey’s vigil, Bartholomew thought. Meanwhile, Michael looked intrigued. ‘We will see about that, Cynric. This might prove an interesting diversion for my powers of deduction. Do not tell me where you hid it, I will guess.’
‘You will not,’ said Cynric with equal conviction.
‘Matt’s medicine bag?’ asked Michael immediately.
Cynric shook his head.
‘You were expecting something like this to happen,’ Bartholomew said slowly. ‘You made a point of mentioning that the deed could be completed in front of the whole Tuddenham household, specifically to pre-empt an attack on you, so that you would have a chance to ascertain whether Alcote was killed for the advowson or killed by accident. That was what you meant when you said you had a plan to solve the mystery.’
‘More or less,’ said Michael, pleased with himself.
‘That was a dangerous thing to do. Whoever it is might have slipped a knife in between your ribs to get the deed, not just pushed you to the ground. Alcote was not simply searched, was he?’
Michael sighed softly. ‘Actually, I mentioned it in front of the whole household because I imagined everyone would be glad to see the back of us and our deed tomorrow. It only occurred to me later that someone might attack me for it – hence I gave a spare copy to Cynric. Initially, I was sceptical about your claim that Alcote was murdered, but the more I worked on Tuddenham’s documents last night, the more I realised there might have been some truth in what you suggested.’
‘You mean because Tuddenham’s affairs are so murky?’
Michael shook his head. ‘Quite the contrary. We have allowed Alcote to mislead us. He told us that Tuddenham’s affairs seethe with inconsistencies and dishonesties. Well, I found from my work last night that, although there is some question as to whether the Peche Hall land is his, there is virtually nothing in Tuddenham’s business that is sinister or illegal.’
‘Of course not. Alcote said he burned the deeds that proved that.’
‘But Alcote was lying, to make us think he was working hard for the College. The priest, Wauncy, had made an inventory of all Tuddenham’s documents before we arrived, and none of them is missing. If Alcote had burned anything, it was nothing important.’
‘But why should Alcote lie?’ asked Bartholomew, bewildered.
‘Simple, Matt. He was pretending the deed was immensely difficult to write, so that when we return to Michaelhouse he could claim that his role was more important than it was. In reality, the whole business is so straightforward that even you could draft an advowson from it.’
‘And that was why he refused our help?’ said Bartholomew, ignoring the barb. ‘Because if we had been allowed to see the documents we would have seen that he was lying about how complex the advowson was to write?’
Michael nodded, ‘Precisely. But there was also something else. I found out that he was building a case to wrest a place called Gull Farm from Tuddenham’s neighbour, John Bardolf, and hand it back to Tuddenham – for a commission, of course.’
‘Gull Farm?’ mused Bartholomew. ‘At Unwin’s funeral, Bardolf told me that his father had stolen that from the Tuddenhams thirty years ago. He openly acknowledged that it really belonged to Tuddenham, and just as openly said he was going to keep it because he was fond of it.’
‘I see. Well, doubtless Tuddenham would have been delighted to have it back, although it seems to me that Alcote’s case was based more on documents he had written himself than on ones that are genuine – showing us that Alcote was not an honest man. He was a liar and a cheat, and he played a game that was more dangerous than he realised: he told everyone that he was the only man who could write the advowson, and he died for his deception.’
‘How could Alcote have been so stupid?’ cried Bartholomew, suddenly angry at the Senior Fellow’s selfish machinations. ‘It has been clear from the start that things are not all they seem here. How could he risk his life for something so pointless?’
‘And our lives,’ said Michael. ‘We would have left days ago, had he not kept us all waiting while he worked out how he could turn the situation to his own advantage. But to go back to yesterday, he was probably killed so that the deed – which he announced, quite openly, would be completed today – would never be finished.’
‘So, you think the fire was aimed at Alcote alone?’
Michael shrugged. ‘Probably, although had we been incinerated, too, it could only have helped the killer’s cause. Michaelhouse does not have an inexhaustible supply of scholars to sacrifice, even for something as attractive as an advowson.’
‘It all seems rather desperate,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The living of the church might mean a lot to our College, but it is only a small part of Tuddenham’s estates. I do not understand why anyone should go to such lengths to keep it from us.’
‘And that is precisely where our theory comes to a standstill,’ said Michael. ‘Who would gain from keeping the living in Tuddenham hands? Hamon, who would lose the right to appoint his own priest? Tuddenham himself? Wauncy will be the poorer when a Michaelhouse man comes to share the money he makes from saying masses for the plague-dead, while Dame Eva seems to dislike the notion of her husband’s estates being less than they were in his time. Or was Norys right, and do we need to look outside the village – to Grosnold or Bardolf? Or perhaps the person behind all this is someone we have never met, directing events from afar.’
‘You mean like the Bishop of Norwich or the Despenser family, who are overlords here?
‘Why not? The Bishop of Norwich might not approve of Tuddenham giving the living of a church in his see to an institution where the Bishop of Ely holds power. Or perhaps the Despensers want the deed for themselves – a family like that does not rise to such infamy by allowing lucrative advowsons to slip through their fingers.’
They sat in silence on an ancient tomb, trying to think of a reason why someone should have taken against their College.
‘William’s psalter?’ Michael asked the hovering Cynric suddenly, his mind returning to where the book-bearer might have hidden the document for safe keeping. ‘He seldom bothers to look at it when he prays, and a slender piece of parchment could remain undetected there for weeks.’
Cynric shook his head. ‘Do you think we are safe here?’ he asked, looking around him. ‘Will the person behind all this murder and mayhem try to attack us again tonight? Should we be inside the church with Tuddenham and his retinue, rather than relaxing here like sitting ducks?’
Michael shook his head. ‘Now that the killer has what he believes to be the only copy, I believe we will experience no further problems until we present the other one later today. And I intend to do that with as many witnesses present as possible.’