A Plague On Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory

Author:Susanna Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub

Bartholomew snatched his hand back. 'Then it was also you who murdered Brother Paul!' he said. 'Poor Brother Paul! Murdered while he lay defenceless on his pallet bed!'

Wilson gave an awful grimace that Bartholomew took to be a smile. 'No! You have that wrong, Physician.

You always were poor at logic. Listen to me and learn.'

Bartholomew gritted his teeth so that he would not allow his distaste for the lawyer to show.

Wilson continued wheezily. 'After I left the feast, I went back to the room I shared with Alcote. We talked for a while, and he went to sleep, as we told the Bishop the next day. But I did not sleep. Alcote was almost senseless with the amount of wine he had drunk. It was a simple thing to slip out of the room once it began to ring with his drunken snores. He woke only when Alexander came to fetch us when you had raised the alarm, and by then I was back in my bed. There was my alibi!'

He stopped speaking, and lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavily. After a few moments, Wilson opened his eyes again, and fixed Bartholomew with an unpleasant stare.

"I allowed quite some time to pass before I went to Augustus's room that night,' he continued, his voice weaker than before. "I was going to send Aelfrith away and offer to pray for Augustus until dawn. I went up the stairs, but saw that Augustus's room had been ransacked, and that he was gone. Aelfrith was unconscious on the floor. The shutters were open, and in the light from outside, I could see that there was an irregularity in the wooden floor. It is doubtful I ever would have noticed it in ordinary light. I closed the shutters and had just prised up the board, when you came. We fought, and you lost.'

He paused, coughing weakly. Bartholomew wiped away a thin trail of blood that dribbled from his mouth and thought back to that struggle. Wilson, like Michael, was flabby, and was well-endowed with chins, but that did not mean to say he was also weak. If Wilson had been desperate and panic-stricken, Bartholomew believed he could have been overpowered by him.

"I assume your intention in going to Augustus's room was not to pray?' asked Bartholomew.

Wilson sneered. 'Damn right it was not to pray!

I wanted to find the seal. I am certain that whoever murdered Sir John did not get it from his body.'

Bartholomew caught his breath. 'You say Sir John was murdered?'

Wilson sneered again. 'Of course he was! He was killed for the seal he always carried, and without which no further messages would come from his contact in Oxford. It was imperative I found that seal. I saw it round his neck as he went for dinner the night of his death. The way in which his body was dressed indicated that it had not been round his neck when he died, or his murderers would not have bothered taking his clothes — they would merely have thrown his body into the mill stream.

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