He selected a minute pair of tweezers and removed the blade completely. It was a third of the length of Bartholomew's little finger and yet it had already killed one man. Haralda deftly unscrewed the lock to reveal its innards. Bartholomew peered over his shoulder.
Haralda tutted and shook his head. 'You do not know how to treat a lock, my lords,' he said reprovingly. This poor thing has not seen a drop of oil since the day it was made. You are lucky it has not killed someone/ Harling glared at Bartholomew and Michael in turn, daring them to say anything. Haralda did not notice.
This is an especially fine model,' he said. 'It became popular in Italy about twenty or thirty years ago, although few are made these days. It was one of the best locks ever to be produced. They are expensive, but worth the cost if you have something worth protecting/ He looked up, and Harling eyed him coldly. 'Just documents,' he said. 'Nothing that would interest a thief/ Haralda picked up the second lock and poked at it.
'Yes. This one is different. The blade comes through the back, not the top. It is in better condition than the other one, but not by much/ He turned his attention to the third one, and wagged its finger at it as it gave a sharp click when he started prodding. 'Look at that! You are lucky, my lords. If any of you had tried to open this, you would be dead. The mechanism is so worn, it is almost smooth. I would say it would have released its blade within three attempts at opening it at most. You were right to have called me/ "I do not understand why they have suddenly become so unreliable,' said de Wetherset. 'We have been using them for years without trouble/ 'But you have not cared for them as you should have done. They are rusty, and they have become dangerous.
You could have had many years' service from them if you had treated them properly, but now I would recommend that you dispense with them/ 'How has the poison stayed for so long in so potent a form?' asked Bartholomew.
Haralda beamed at him, pleased that someone was expressing an interest, rather than disgust, at the locks.
'The blade has its own chamber here, see? It is sealed with lead, so no poison can leak and cause damage. If I were to open this chamber, which I would only do under the special conditions at my workshop, you would find the poison mixed with various mixtures, including quicksilver, to keep it fluid. Thus the poison is always ready. I saw a lock like this kill a dog in under ten minutes in Rome, although I would think perhaps, judging from the age of this lock, that the poison may have lost some of its potency. If you meant business, you would need to change the poison regularly to ensure its continued efficacy.'
Bartholomew nodded, staring down at the rusting insides of the three locks on the table. He picked up Michael's keys and played with them idly. Haralda took them from him.
These smaller keys,' he said, holding them up, 'are to turn the poison mechanism on and off. In this way, the lock can be used normally.'
He inserted the smaller key into one of the parallel vertical slits on the back of one of the locks to show them.
Bartholomew studied it closely and admired its ingenuity.
The slit did not look like another keyhole, and anyone who did not know what it was, would never guess.
"I would assume,' said Haralda, 'that whoever last knew about this left the mechanism turned off. Once again, I say yeu are very lucky none of them slipped on while you were using them.'
'Which is why Buckley was safe, even without his gloves,' murmured Michael to Bartholomew. 'It must have broken as the friar poked about with it in a way that Buckley never had.'
Haralda stood up. 'Dispense with these, my lords.
They are no longer safe.'
'Will you take them?' asked de Wetherset. "I would feel more secure knowing that a professional man had disposed of them in a proper manner.'
Haralda bowed to him, flattered, and collected the pieces of the locks in the cloth. De Wetherset went to see him out of the church. Harling paced restlessly.
'It was a mistake bringing in another,' he said. 'He told us nothing we did not know or could not guess.'
'But now we are certain,' said Michael. 'We know the lock was not changed by Buckley, or by someone wanting to kill members of the University. We know that the locks are just old and worn, and that the friar was notmurdered.
I suppose it could be called accidental death.'
'But we still do not know what he wanted in the chest,' said Bartholomew. 'In fact, we are not much further forward at all.'
'Yes, we are,' said Michael. 'We are no longer looking for the murderer of the friar.'
'But we still want the murderer of Froissart,' said Harling. He chewed nervously at his fingers. 'If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have much to be doing.'
He bowed and left the room. Bartholomew leaned out of the window, and saw de Wetherset still talking to Haralda below.
'Harling was unaccountably nervous,' said Michael, opening one of de Wetherset's wall cupboards and peering inside. 'Even if it is a Sunday, I feel he had another reason why he did not want us to fetch the locksmith.'
Bartholomew sighed and made for the door. 'Come on, Brother. Harling is not the only one with much to be doing,' he said.
They stepped outside and began to walk home. There was a flicker in the sky, followed by a low rumble, and then rain began to fall heavily. Bartholomew and Michael joined several others who ran to St Mary's Church to wait the thunderstorm out. Inside, the church was dark from the grey clouds that hung low overhead, lit brilliantly by occasional flashes of lightning. Bartholomew had never been in a church during a thunderstorm before, and the way the wall-paintings suddenly lit up reminded him of passages from Revelations about the end of the world.
He wandered around aimlessly, listening to the rain drumming on the roof. The tombs in the choir reminded him of his promise to Master Wilson to attend to the building of his sepulchre. Some tombs were plain, while others were vulgar. A plain one in black marble would not be too bad, thought Bartholomew, but, in his heart of hearts, he knew that Wilson would have wanted a vulgar one. Not for the first time, Bartholomew was disgusted. Wilson should have arranged to be buried in a fairground with the kind of tomb he had had in mind, not a church!
A sharp tug on his sleeve pulled him from his thoughts.
One of the clerks was there, hiding behind a pillar. He looked frightened, and Bartholomew pretended to be reading an inscription on a nearby tomb, so that no one watching him would know he was speaking with a man in the shadows.
The lightning flickered again, making the man wince and press further back, but the storm was moving away.
'The day after the friar's death,' said the clerk, glancing furtively around him, "I saw that the bar on the front door had been moved.'
'What does that imply?' asked Bartholomew softly, rubbing the brass on the tomb with his sleeve and pretending to look closer.
'Everyone here thinks that the friar hid in the church before it was locked up. He then went upstairs and died.
But the bar on the door was in a different place in the morning than it was the night before,' whispered the clerk hoarsely. 'What I am saying is that I think the friar barred the door after the church was locked, which means that someone must have unbarred it from the inside, or we would not have been able to get in the next morning.'
Bartholomew's heart sank. He had just proved, rather ingeniously he thought, that the poisoned lock had been a cruel twist of fate that had killed the friar, and now this clerk was telling him the friar had not been alone in the church on the night of his death, which threw the whole thing back under suspicion.
'Are you certain?' he asked heavily, still careful not to look at the man and give him away.
The clerk nodded quickly. "I think I may be putting myself at risk by talking to you, but if I do not tell you what I know, how will you be able to solve this mystery and let us get back to normal?'