‘And who is this “someone”, who decided to kill, rather than risk his nasty little secrets being made public?’ asked Michael. ‘Simeon? He seems to be that kind of man.’
De Walton pressed himself further into the corner and remained silent, tears welling in his eyes. Bartholomew suspected that even the formidable figure of the Senior Proctor was insufficient to frighten the Bene’t Fellow into telling them more, and was inclined to abandon de Walton to his dirty hut and his leprosy, and leave while he was still able. But Michael scratched his head, determined to persist.
‘I do not understand any of this. You say Raysoun’s death was as it initially appeared – an accident. Can you prove it?’
‘Ask the workmen,’ said de Walton in a small, tired voice, evidently sensing that the Senior Proctor was not a man to be easily deterred when in interrogation mode.
‘They will tell you that Raysoun was a drunkard and that the scaffolding was unstable. It was only a matter of time before he missed his footing and plunged to his death.’
‘Let us be logical about this,’ said Michael, infuriatingly pedantic. Both Bartholomew and de Walton glanced nervously at the door, anticipating some enraged killer plunging in from the dark while Michael calmly tried to clarify the twists and turns of de Walton’s information in his mind. ‘You say Raysoun’s death was an accident, so we will dispense with that for now. But someone definitely killed Wymundham, and my suspects are you, Heltisle, Caumpes, Simeon and the two porters, Osmun and Ulfo.’
De Walton laughed bitterly. ‘Me? If only I could! Do you think a leper could overcome a healthy man like Wymundham and smother him?’
Michael and Bartholomew exchanged a glance. The fact that de Walton was aware that Wymundham had been smothered suggested that he knew more about the death than an innocent man should have done. Yet Bartholomew believed that he was right about his physical limitations: Wymundham had been small, but certainly not weak, and it was obvious that de Walton was a very sick, frail man.
‘And Osmun and Ulfo were busy with College duties the night Wymundham disappeared,’ de Walton continued. ‘Ask any of the students. I would love to see Osmun and Ulfo hang for murder, but Wymundham did not meet his death by their hands.’
‘Whose then?’ pressed Michael.
‘Ask the others,’ pleaded de Walton. ‘Leave me alone! I do not want to be accused of telling tales and punished for it. Just go away and leave me be!’
‘We will question the others,’ said Michael with quiet determination. ‘But now I am speaking to you. I am left with Caumpes, Heltisle and Simeon. One of them is the killer.’
‘Simeon brought me here for safety,’ said de Walton. ‘He did not smother Wymundham.’
‘Then it must be Heltisle,’ reasoned Bartholomew, ‘because Adela Tangmer told me that Caumpes was not present when she saw Wymundham’s corpse in Holy Trinity Church. Caumpes was not one of the five who tried to conceal Wymundham’s leg from her.’
De Walton gazed at him aghast. ‘What?’ he cried, shaking his head and almost weeping in his agitation. ‘You think that Wymundham died in Holy Trinity? Thank God I did not leave this hiding place when you demanded! You know nothing, and I would be no more safe with you than I would in an open field!’
‘Explain what happened in the church, then,’ ordered Michael tersely.
De Walton swallowed hard. ‘I thought we had succeeded in hiding Wymundham when Adela Tangmer burst in on us unexpectedly. But it was no corpse she saw in the church that day: what she saw was Wymundham drunk.’
‘She saw a leg–’ began Michael.
‘She very well may have done,’ interrupted de Walton. ‘The man was in a terrible state – clothes dishevelled, wine spilled all over himself, and virtually insensible.’
‘And what had driven him to make such a spectacle of himself?’ asked Michael, unconvinced.
De Walton gave what was almost a smile. ‘Heltisle. He had just paid Wymundham a handsome fee to encourage him to tell the truth about Raysoun’s death – that the man had fallen. Wymundham took the money and bought himself enough wine to float a ship. Simeon spotted him going into Holy Trinity Church, and ran to fetch the rest of us before he could shame the College with his disgraceful behaviour.’
Bartholomew realised that de Walton was telling the truth. He knew that it was possible to buy cheap wine in Holy Trinity – he had been offered some there himself. Wymundham must have consumed his wine in the church, away from the disapproving stares of his Bene’t colleagues.
‘And what did you do?’ asked Michael. ‘Smother Wymundham while he lay insensible?’
De Walton sighed. ‘Of course not. We bundled him up in a cloak and carried him home, telling anyone who asked that he was faint with grief for Raysoun. I do not think many believed us, given the terrible stench of wine that wafted from him. It was all very embarrassing.’
‘But if Wymundham did not die in the church, where was he killed?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And who stabbed Brother Patrick?’
‘I know of no Brother Patrick, but I know where Wymundham met his end.’ De Walton reached out and tossed a filthy cushion at Michael. ‘That is what killed him. He died here, in this shed, just as I will, if you do not leave!’
Bartholomew took the cushion and inspected it in the candlelight. It was stained with something that might have been saliva, and there was a small tear surrounded by a brownish mark. He poked at it, and felt something hard embedded in the filling. More prodding with his surgical knife produced a small square of ivory. It was a broken tooth. He gazed from it to de Walton, and then flung tooth and cushion from him in revulsion. He recalled telling Michael that whoever had smothered Wymundham had pressed down so hard that one of the front teeth had snapped. It seemed de Walton was telling the truth.
‘Were you present when this vile deed was done?’ demanded Michael.
De Walton shuddered. ‘No! But Simeon and I examined this shed when we realised it was the last place any of us had seen Wymundham alive – he used it as a venue to meet with the people he was going to blackmail. Simeon and I saw him wandering with feigned nonchalance – the way he always walked when he knew he had some hapless victim awaiting his extortions here – down the path the day before his body was found.’
‘And?’ pressed Michael, when de Walton paused.
‘And the evidence of his death was here: the stains on the cushion, broken pots that suggested a struggle, and Wymundham’s ring left on the floor. And now I have told you all I know, so please leave me alone. Your blundering investigations have not revealed my hiding place to the killer yet, so go, before it is too late.’
‘Do you really feel safe here?’ asked Bartholomew, glancing around uneasily, noting that some of the smashed pots still lay on the ground. ‘What if the killer returns to the scene of his crime?’
De Walton shook his head with utter conviction. ‘It will be the last place he will look. He will want to stay as far away from here as possible. Now go.’
‘But you have not yet told us what we most want to know,’ said Michael. ‘Is Wymundham’s killer Heltisle or Caumpes?’
‘Work it out yourselves,’ whispered de Walton. ‘I do not want to be slain for betraying him.’
‘Caumpes,’ said Bartholomew suddenly, as something clicked in his mind. ‘Both Robin of Grantchester and my brother-in-law told me that Caumpes likes boats, and whoever killed Wymundham would have needed a boat to take the body from here to Mayor Horwoode’s garden.’
De Walton glared defiantly at him, and for a moment Bartholomew thought he would not confirm his reasoning. Then the Bene’t Fellow nodded, lowering his head to look at the lumpy, leprous patches on his hands. ‘Caumpes is the only one of us able to row a boat. Like you, Simeon and I surmised that he took the body downriver and dumped it on Horwoode’s land.’