Bartholomew had intended to spend what remained of the day teaching, but Michael had other ideas. Ignoring the physician’s objections, he commandeered his help to search the area around Michaelhouse, to find the place where Drax had been stabbed. Unfortunately, St Michael’s Lane was home to several hostels, all of which owned a number of disused or infrequently visited sheds, and the task proved to be harder than he had anticipated.
‘We are wasting our time,’ said Bartholomew, after a while. ‘This is hopeless.’
‘We must persist,’ said Michael. ‘It stands to reason that Drax was killed nearby – he was not very big, but corpses are heavy, even so. Moreover, a killer would not risk toting one too far.’
‘I cannot imagine why a killer would tote one at all,’ grumbled Bartholomew, poking half-heartedly around Physwick Hostel’s old dairy with a stick. The place was filled, for some unaccountable reason, with broken barrels. ‘Unless…’
‘Unless what?’ asked Michael, glancing up.
‘We saw Kendale arguing with Drax. And Kendale’s hostel is near Michaelhouse. It would not be difficult to carry a corpse to our College from Chestre. Perhaps we should be looking there: not in abandoned outbuildings, but in the hostel itself.’
Michael grimaced. ‘That has already occurred to me, I assure you. Unfortunately, Kendale is the kind of man to take umbrage, and I cannot risk him taking the College–hostel dispute to a new level of acrimony. I must wait until I have solid evidence before we search his home.’
‘Does this qualify as solid evidence?’ asked Bartholomew soberly. He stood back so Michael could see what he had found. ‘It is blood. A lot of it.’
‘You think this is our murder scene?’ asked Michael, looking away quickly. The red-black, sticky puddle was an unsettling sight.
Bartholomew crouched down to look more closely, then nodded. ‘The volume seems right, and you can see a smear here, where a body was moved. However, from the pooling, I suspect Drax lay dead for some time – hours, probably – before he was taken to Michaelhouse.’
‘Lord!’ breathed Michael. ‘Then we are dealing with a very bold and ruthless individual, because most murderers do not return to tamper with their victims after they have made their escape. It shows he must have been very determined to cause trouble for Michaelhouse.’
‘Which may mean Kendale is the culprit – he hates the Colleges.’ Bartholomew frowned. ‘However, Kendale is clever, and this seems rather crude to me. Perhaps the killer is a member of a College, and he dumped Drax in Michaelhouse because he wants a hostel blamed for it.’
Michael sighed. ‘Damn this ridiculous dispute! It means that even finding the spot where Drax was murdered does not help us – and we have wasted hours doing it.’
‘We had better talk to Physwick,’ said Bartholomew. ‘They are more reasonable than Chestre, so I do not think questioning them will result in a riot.’
‘It might, if they are guilty of murder,’ muttered Michael, trailing after him.
Physwick Hostel was a dismal place in winter. The fire that flickered in its hearth was too small to make much difference to the temperature of the hall, and all its windows leaked. It reeked of tallow candles, unwashed feet, wet wool and boiled cabbage. Its Principal was John Howes, a skinny lawyer with oily hair and bad teeth, who had ten students and three masters under his care.
‘We are sorry about Drax,’ he announced, before Michael could state the purpose of his visit. ‘He rented our dairy to store old ale barrels from his taverns, and we need all the money we can get in these terrible times. He did not pay much, but a penny a week is a penny a week.’
‘Why did he want to store old barrels?’ asked Bartholomew curiously.
‘He was too mean to throw them away,’ explained Howes. ‘He once told me he planned to reclaim the metal hoops, and sell the wood to the charcoal burners.’
‘He was killed there,’ said Michael baldly. ‘We found his blood.’
‘Did you? How horrible!’ Howes shuddered. ‘That means one of us will have to go out with a mop and a bucket of water, because we cannot afford to pay anyone else to do it. Unless cleaning murder scenes comes under the Corpse Examiner’s remit?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No, it does not,’ said Bartholomew shortly. ‘Did any of you see or hear anything on Monday morning that may help us catch his killer?’
‘Not really. We went out twice on Monday – once not long after dawn, when we attended a service in the Gilbertines’ chapel, and again mid-afternoon when we were invited to see St Simon Stock’s scapular. We can see the dairy from our hall here, but we do not look at it much.’
‘But they would probably have noticed the comings and goings of strangers,’ murmured Michael to Bartholomew, as they took their leave. ‘So their testimony has helped.’
Bartholomew nodded. ‘It tells us for certain that Drax was killed shortly after dawn, when they went out the first time. The pooled blood proves the body lay for several hours in the dairy, then was moved to Michaelhouse when they went out for the second time – probably after I started teaching, when Blaston was in the stable, and when Yffi and his boys were on the roof discussing Yolande’s skills in the bedchamber.’
‘A discussion that ensured all attention was drawn upwards,’ said Michael. ‘Away from the yard. I see we shall have to have another word with Yffi and his louts.’
Once outside, they began to walk towards the Carmelite Priory, to check Physwick’s alibi, although both believed Howes’s testimony. They had not gone far before Bartholomew was diverted to Trinity Hall, where a student was nursing a bleeding mouth. There had been a fight between that College and Cosyn’s Hostel.
‘It would never have degenerated into blows a week ago,’ said the Master, Adam de Wickmer worriedly. ‘Our relationship with Cosyn’s has always involved cheeky banter, but never violence, and I am shocked that punches have been traded.’
‘So am I,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I do not understand why previously amiable relationships have suddenly turned sour.’
‘Oh, I understand that,’ said Wickmer bitterly. ‘The paupers in the hostels have always been jealous of our wealth, and they are probably hoping that there will be an all-out battle in which they can invade us and steal our moveable possessions.’
Bartholomew stared at him. ‘I hope you are wrong.’
‘So do I,’ said Wickmer. ‘But the hostels are suffering from the expense of a long, hard winter, and Kendale has been fanning the flames of discontent and envy. I have a bad feeling it will all end in blood and tears.’
Later that evening, Bartholomew set off to meet his medical colleagues. Meryfeld had been intrigued by the notion of devising a lamp with a constant flame, and had decided that if university-trained physicians could not invent one, then nobody could. He had sent messages asking all three of his colleagues to come to his house, so they might commence the project.
Bartholomew was the last to arrive, because his students, alarmed by their poor performance during his earlier inquisition, had tried to make amends with a plethora of questions. The delay meant he was obliged to run all the way to Bridge Street, where Meryfeld occupied the handsome stone mansion that stood between Sheriff Tulyet’s home and Celia Drax’s.
When he was shown into Meryfeld’s luxurious solar, Bartholomew was astonished to see that Rougham of Gonville Hall had accepted the invitation, too. Rougham was a busy man, or so he told everyone, and Bartholomew was amazed that he should deign to spare the time to experiment with colleagues. He was an unattractive fellow, arrogant and overbearing, and although he no longer cried heresy every time Bartholomew voiced an opinion, the two would never be friends.