Perhaps he was already dead.'
'What?' said Michael, his eyes wide with disbelief. 'Are you suggesting that someone brought a corpse up here in the middle of the night and left it?'
Bartholomew grinned at him. 'No. I am merely following the rules of the deceased Master Wilson and trying to solve the problem logically.'
'Well, that suggestion, my dear doctor, has less logic than Wilson's crumbling bones could present,' said Michael. 'How could someone smuggle a corpse into the church and leave it here? I can accept that someone might hide below and then sneak up here after all was secured for the night, but not someone carrying a corpse!'
'So, the friar hides in the church, picks three locks to reach this room, picks three locks to open the chest, lies face-down in it, and dies. Master Wilson would not have been impressed with your logic, either,' retorted Bartholomew.
'Perhaps the friar came up here as you suggested and died suddenly,' said Michael.
'And closed the lid afterwards?' asked Bartholomew, raising his eyebrows. 'De Wetherset said it was closed with the friar inside. I think it unlikely that he closed it himself.'
'You think another person was here?' asked Michael, gesturing round. 'What evidence do you have for such a claim?'
'None that I can see,' replied Bartholomew. He went to sit on one of the benches and Michael followed him, settling himself comfortably with his hands across his stomach.
'Let us think about what we do know,' the monk said.
'First. It is likely that this man hid in the church and then made his way up to the tower after the church had been secured. We can ask the sexton what his procedures are for locking up.'
'Second,' said Bartholomew, "I think this man was a clerk or a friar, as he appears, and that he has been sleeping rough for a few nights as attested by his dirty clothes. Perhaps he had undertaken a journey of several days' duration, or perhaps he had spent some time watching the church in preparation for his burglary.'
'Third,' Michael continued, 'you say he appears to have suffered no violence. He may have died of natural causes, perhaps brought on by the stress of his nocturnal activities.'
Bartholomew nodded slowly. 'And fourth,' he concluded, 'the locks seem to have been picked with great skill.'
'But there are no tools,' said Michael. 'He must have needed a piece of wire at the very least to pick a lock.'
Bartholomew went to the chest and rummaged around, but there was nothing. 'So either he hid the tools before he died, or someone took them.'
'If there was another person here with him to take the tools and close the lid, that person could have killed him,' said Michael.
'But there is no evidence he was murdered,' said Bartholomew.
They sat in silence for a while, mulling over what they had deduced.
'And there is the question of the Chancellor's scribe, Nicholas of York,' said Bartholomew. 'De Wetherset says he is now suspicious of his death — a death that appeared to be natural, but now seems too timely. Two deaths that seem natural, connected with the University chest?' He frowned and drummed on the bench with his fingers.
Michael looked at him hard. 'What do you mean?' he said.
'Although I can find nothing that caused the death of this man, I am reluctant to say it was natural. I suppose it is possible he could have suffered a fatal seizure, fell in the chest, and the lid slammed shut. But what of the missing tools? And anyway, people who have such seizures usually show some evidence of it, and I can see no such evidence here.'
'So what you are saying,' said Michael, beginning to be frustrated, 'is that the friar does not seem to have been killed, but he did not die naturally. Marvellous!
Where does that leave us?'
Bartholomew shrugged. "I have just never seen a man die of natural causes and his body look like the friar's.'
'So what do we tell the Chancellor?' said Michael.
Bartholomew leaned his head back against the whitewashed wall and studied the ceiling. 'What we know,' he said. 'That the man was probably an itinerant friar, that he probably had some considerable skill as a picker of locks, that he died from causes unknown, and that there was probably another person here.'
'That will not satisfy de Wetherset,' said Michael, 'nor will it satisfy the Bishop.'
'Well, what would you have us do, Michael? Lie?' asked Bartholomew, also beginning to be frustrated. He closed his eyes and racked his brain for causes of death that would turn a man's skin waxy white.
'Of course we should not lie!' said Michael crossly.
'But the explanation we have now is inadequate.'
'Then what do you suggest we do?' demanded Bartholomew. He watched Michael gnaw at his thumbnail as he turned the problem over in his mind. It gave him an idea, and he went to look at the tiny cut on the friar's thumb. He sat cross-legged on the floor and inspected it closely. It was little more than a scratch, but it broke the skin nevertheless. He let the hand fall and sat pondering the chest. It suddenly took on a sinister air as his attention was drawn to the locks.
He reached across the body to the middle lock.
Protruding from the top of it was a minuscule blade, less than the length of his little fingernail. He took one of his surgical knives and pressed gently on it. under the pressure, it began to slide back into the lock. When he moved his knife, the small blade sprang back up again.
Michael watched him curiously, and stretched out a hand to touch it.
'No!' Bartholomew slapped Michael's hand away. "I think the lock has its own precaution against intruders,' he said, looking down at the dead friar. "I think it bears a poison.'
The Chancellor looked in horror at the lock that lay on his table, the little blade coated with its deadly poison protruding from the top.
'A true Italian lock,' he said in hushed tones. He picked up a quill and poked the lock further away from him, as though he was afraid that it might poison him from where he sat, and exchanged a look of revulsion with his clerk, who stood behind him.
'Did you know that the lock had the capacity to kill?' asked Bartholomew. Michael gave him a warning elbow in the ribs. The head of the University was not a man of whom to ask such a question.
De Wetherset looked aghast. "I most certainly did not!' he said, standing and walking to the opposite side of the room, still eyeing the lock with deep suspicion. "I unlocked it myself many times!' The thought of a possible narrow escape suddenly dawned on him and he turned paler still.
'Are you sure that the lock has not been changed since you last saw it?' said Michael.
The Chancellor thought for a moment, his eyes involuntarily swinging back to the lock on the table.
'Not really,' he said. 'It is the same size, the same colour, and has the same general appearance, but in a court of law I could not swear that this lock was the one that was there yesterday. It probably was, but I could not be certain. What would you say, Gilbert?'
'It looks the same to me,' said his clerk, leaning down and examining it minutely.
'Father Cuthbert?' asked Bartholomew of the fat priest.
Cuthbert put up his hands defensively. "I am priest only of the church. The tower is beyond my jurisdiction and belongs to the University. I know nothing of poisoned locks.'
'Who else might know?' said Bartholomew.
'My deputy, Evrard Buckley, is the only person other than me who is permitted access to the chest. Even Gilbert does not touch it,' said de Wetherset. 'And the only person other than me to have keys is the Bishop.
He keeps a spare set in Ely Cathedral, but we have had no cause to use those for years.'
'Are you the only person actually to use the keys?' asked Bartholomew. 'Do you ever give them to a clerk or your deputy to open the locks?'