Alice shrugged and looked away. ‘I wanted to, but I am not stupid – I know who folk would have believed, and challenging Isabel would have done me more harm than good. But I am telling the truth now: she is the dishonest one, not me.’
‘Then how unfortunate for you that she has disappeared,’ said Bartholomew, feeling vaguely tainted by the whole affair, ‘and can never corroborate your tale.’
‘Disappeared?’ asked Alice uneasily. ‘Do you mean she has slunk off to pray in some quiet church? Or that she has run away?’
Michael glanced at Bartholomew. ‘Perhaps Isabel is the killer. She brained Orwel, realised that Clippesby might have witnessed her crime, and rather than claim yet another victim – one who is a real saint in the making – she elected to vanish.’
‘Leaving her possessions behind?’ asked Bartholomew doubtfully, assailed by the sudden sense that their reasoning was flawed, and that pursuing Isabel as a suspect would lead them astray at a time when they could not afford to make mistakes.
‘Leaving her spare habit and a few books behind,’ corrected Michael. ‘None of which are essential to a woman fleeing the law.’ He glared at Alice. ‘Regardless, she is not in a position to help you, so tell us more about your dealings with her.’
‘But I have told you everything already,’ whispered Alice, her plans for vengeance and a triumphant return to power in tatters around her, ‘other than that she was writing a report which she said would cause a stir.’
‘What report?’ demanded Michael. ‘It was not in her room.’
‘I think she left it with the Gilbertines. But do not ask me what it contains, because she refused to let me read it.’ Alice’s small faced turned hard again. ‘However, if it is more evidence of my so-called wrongdoings, it will be a pack of lies.’
‘Of course it will,’ said Michael, regarding her with distaste.
Out in the yard, Joan was waiting to tell them that St Radegund’s had been scoured from top to bottom, but Abbess Isabel was not in it. Michael nodded brisk thanks for her help, declined her offer to look for Isabel in the town, and left the convent at a run. When he and Bartholomew reached the Barnwell Causeway, they saw a smudge of smoke, grey against the blue sky. Was it someone burning old leaves? Or had trouble erupted already?
‘Isabel’s report will be about Alice,’ predicted Bartholomew as they trotted along, ‘because Alice continues to claim that she was unfairly dismissed – that Isabel exaggerated or invented the charges against her. No would-be saint likes being accused of dishonesty, so I suspect Isabel aims to expose Alice’s unsavoury character once and for all.’
‘Alice was asked to steal and lie, and she did,’ mused Michael, ‘proving how easily she can be corrupted. It is possible, I suppose.’
‘Although if Isabel is the killer, why not just dispatch Alice, like she has her other victims? It would have been a lot simpler.’
‘She would have headed our list of murder suspects if she had,’ shrugged Michael, ‘and that sort of allegation is a lot more serious than defaming a nun whom no one likes. Unfortunately, her disappearance has convinced me that she is the culprit. I am sorry for it, as her crime will reflect badly on my Order.’
‘But why would she dispatch Orwel? Or any of the victims, for that matter? It makes no sense.’
‘I had high hopes of answers at St Radegund’s,’ sighed Michael wearily, ‘but we should have stayed home and worked on quelling the trouble instead.’
Bartholomew was inclined to agree, and looked at the plume of smoke again. He tried to determine where it originated, stepping off the road to see if he could identify a church to give him his bearings. It was then that he saw a flash of white deep in the undergrowth. His stomach lurched.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he gulped. ‘It is the Abbess!’
As he and Michael fought their way through the thicket towards the body, Bartholomew noted twin tracks where feet had been dragged backwards along the ground. There were also splashes of blood, suggesting that Isabel had been attacked on the Causeway, then hauled off it, out of sight. She was well hidden, and he would have missed her if he had not left the road to look at the smoke. He crouched next to her and was startled when her eyes flickered open – he had assumed she was dead. Michael dropped to his knees and took her hand in his.
‘Abbess?’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?’
Isabel did not move.
‘Head wound,’ said Bartholomew tersely, wondering how long she been there. Since she had visited Margery two nights before? But no – she could not have survived her injury that long. Moreover, the blood was wet, suggesting a recent assault.
‘And there is the weapon,’ said Michael, nodding at the bloodstained stone that lay next to her. ‘The same as Wyse and Orwel.’
‘So we were wrong about her,’ whispered Bartholomew. ‘She is not their killer.’
‘She is trying to speak! You listen – your ears are sharper. What is she saying?’
Bartholomew did his best, but still only heard half the softly murmured words.
‘She does not know who attacked her,’ he relayed. ‘She heard footsteps behind her, but was hit before she could turn around. The first blow caught her shoulder, so she tried to fight back, but the second knocked her down. Her assailant kept his face hidden the whole time.’
He strained to decipher more, aware that Isabel’s voice was growing fainter as the effort drained her strength. Eventually, he sat back.
‘She wants a priest now. She says she refused to die until God sent her one, as it will help her case … her beatification.’
He moved away so Michael could perform last rites. Isabel’s eyes shone with an inner joy when the monk pronounced the final absolution, then it faded and she stopped breathing.
‘Such faith,’ said Michael softly in the silence that followed. ‘I wish I … But never mind. What else did she tell you?’
‘That we should go to the Gilbertines, where she has left a full report, and that the comb holds the key to all we need to know about Paris and the others.’
‘What did she mean?’
‘I could not hear that part. She also said that Alice is irredeemably wicked, because even when she was pretending to be her – Isabel’s – friend by “acquiring” the comb, she was still sending her deadly gifts. Her dying wish is for Alice to be excommunicated.’
Michael winced. ‘But she charged Alice to steal, declined to tell the truth when the theft became public knowledge, and was plotting to see Alice ousted from our Order. That is hardly an example of good fellowship.’
‘She did witness Orwel’s murder,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘It frightened her so much that she fled to St Edward’s, where she has been hiding ever since.’
‘Orwel’s body was taken there,’ mused Michael. ‘Its vicar is almost blind, and no one ever attends his services, because he tends to fall asleep in them. By luck, she went to the only church where she could lurk for days without being noticed.’
Bartholomew groaned suddenly. ‘The next morning, I went there to re-examine Orwel, to make sure there was nothing I had missed. I thought I sensed someone watching me.’
‘And you did not go to investigate?’ demanded Michael, unimpressed.
‘No, because I often feel I am not alone when I examine corpses. I assumed it was my imagination or … It never occurred to me that it would be a living person.’
Michael shook his head in disgust. ‘We might have had answers days ago if you had bothered to search the place. So what caused Isabel to leave in the end?’