A Summer of Discontent

‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew grimly. ‘He is getting better at it.’

Chapter 4

It was afternoon by the time that Bartholomew and Michael had completed their examination of the bodies in St Mary’s Church, and had put them back the way they had found them. John offered Bartholomew four grubby pennies for his pains, which the physician refused, asking that they be given to Haywarde’s widow instead. Then he and Michael left the church, and stepped gratefully into the glorious sunshine outside.

Michael took a deep breath to clear his lungs of the cloying stench of death, and tipped his pale face back so that the warmth of the sun could touch it. Bartholomew removed his black scholar’s tabard and stuffed it in his bag. In Cambridge, he could be fined for not wearing the uniform of his College, but in Ely he was free of such restrictions. It felt good to wear only shirt-sleeves in the warmth of a summer day, and he did not envy Michael his heavy Benedictine habit.

‘All that prodding with corpses has done nothing for my appetite,’ complained the monk. ‘I am not in the least bit hungry.’

‘You are not hungry because you ate like a pig this morning,’ said Bartholomew critically. ‘I have never seen so much food piled in one place. No wonder so many of your brethren are fat.’

‘Thomas is fat,’ said Michael huffily. ‘But I am large-boned, as I have told you before. You are far too quick to accuse people of being obese these days, Matt. Making your patients feel uncomfortable about their physical appearance is not a kind thing to do.’

‘You are not my patient,’ said Bartholomew, laughing.

‘I will be soon, if you drive me to my sickbed with your constant comments about my size,’ declared Michael testily. ‘I am not fat; I just have heavy bones.’

‘I am sorry, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, still laughing. ‘I forgot.’

‘Well, do not forget again,’ admonished Michael. He sighed. ‘What do you think, Matt? Where have these discoveries of yours led us?’

‘Deeper into a mystery to which I can see no answer,’ said Bartholomew, who would rather have been discussing Michael’s girth than the perplexing case of the three dead men. ‘As you said, your Bishop is certainly clever enough to kill two more people in order to “prove” he was innocent of the death of the first.’

‘I hope I am wrong,’ said Michael fervently. ‘I keep thinking that de Lisle would not have brought me here to investigate if he really had had a hand in Glovere’s death, but perhaps that is exactly his intention: to make people think he is innocent by ordering me to make enquiries.’

‘But the Bishop is not the only man on our list of suspects. A number of your brethren give the impression they harbour an intense dislike for de Lisle and would not be averse to hatching a plot that would see him blamed for a killing.’

‘Such as Robert,’ agreed Michael. ‘He is a nasty man — greedy and niggardly with the alms he distributes to the poor. Men like Leycestre would not be so vocal about the priory’s harshness if Robert gave away all that he should.’

Bartholomew was unconvinced. ‘But Robert only dispenses kitchen scraps. Why should he be niggardly with those? There is enough food at the table to ensure he is never hungry himself.’

‘He can sell spare food to the lay-brothers and pocket the proceeds. The priory also grants him an allowance of gold that is supposed to be used for the benefit of the poor. Who knows whether that goes the way it should?’

‘Surely it is Prior Alan’s responsibility to ensure that it does?’

‘All Alan’s attention is absorbed by his building projects. He delegates most other matters to Sub-prior Thomas. Thomas also dislikes de Lisle, although he is far too fat to go around killing people.’

‘He is not too fat to grab someone and immobilise them once he has them on the ground.’

‘True,’ admitted Michael. ‘Thomas shall remain on our list of suspects, then.’

‘William seems cleverer than the others,’ said Bartholomew, thinking of the monks he had seen at the refectory that morning. ‘He is the kind of man to damage de Lisle, then sit back to watch the consequences and only step forward to take advantage when he is sure it is safe.’

‘That is a good analysis of him,’ said Michael approvingly. ‘I have never trusted him — mostly because he sports that ridiculous hairstyle. However, he does despise the snivelling Robert, which tends to raise him in my estimation, and he is genuinely concerned for the poor.’

‘Meanwhile, Alan should have been Bishop, but was cheated of the post when the Pope elected de Lisle instead,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘Alan has every reason to want de Lisle to fall from grace, because then it is likely that he will become bishop.’

‘A possible solution, but an unlikely one,’ said Michael dismissively. ‘Alan is not the kind of man to kill.’

‘That is what Father John said about Leycestre, but we remained sceptical,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘If we elect to use a particular logic to name one suspect, then we must use that same logic to name others.’