‘No one will come here, Master Thorne,’ Athelstan declared softly. ‘We have no need, as yet, to question your wife, so let us return to the Barbican the night you committed these murders. All your victims lay dead; both chambers left in chaos, the proclamation has been pinned, the gold and silver hidden away. Now you prepare to leave. You ensure that you have everything with you – you return to the lower chamber to check for the final time. The door is locked and bolted. You take the ladder into the upper storey, you secure the trapdoor and move swiftly. All lights are doused as you prepare to leave through the window.’ Athelstan held up a hand at a knocking at the door. He rose, crossed and opened it. Burley stood there holding a crossbow, three small quarrels and a wristguard. The knight put the quarrels and wristguard on the floor and held up the arbalest.
‘Found in Friar Roger’s chamber,’ he declared. ‘But very clever, look.’ The knight banneret swiftly unpinned the apparatus on the crossbow: the hand-drawn chord and the studs which held everything in place, the metal groove and release clasps could all be taken off. Burley did this swiftly and Athelstan smiled. The hand-held arbalest was no longer a deadly weapon but a Tau, the symbol beloved of the Franciscan order: a T-shaped cross which took its name from the Greek letter ‘Tau’, the symbol used by St Francis Assisi to sign his letters.
‘It can be assembled very swiftly,’ Burley explained, ‘and then just as speedily be stripped of all its war-like paraphernalia.’
‘And the quarrels?’
‘Found in his chamber. Again very cunning. All three can be taken apart, watch.’ Burley picked up one of the quarrels, removed the metal clasp with the miniature stiffened feathers which served as its flight, then the barbed steel tip. ‘All three were kept separate,’ Burley explained, ‘and unless you knew what you were looking for, it would be very difficult to realize that hidden amongst clothing, manuscripts, beads and other items, were these different pieces which, when brought together, would form a deadly hand-held arbalest and crossbow bolts.’ Athelstan took the flight and studied it carefully. He was certain that a similar bolt or quarrel had killed Thibault’s henchman. He recalled leaning over Lascelles to administer the last rites; the crossbow quarrels were the same and, more importantly, that could be proved. Lascelles’ corpse had been removed for burial; the quarrels, as the law laid down, would be stored away as evidence. It would be enough to despatch Brother Roger to the gallows, if he had not been a cleric.
‘Brother?’ Athelstan looked up at Burley’s lean, saturnine face.
‘You told me,’ the knight banneret declared, ‘to search his possessions but to forget that he was a friar and more probably a very skilled assassin. Everything we found we laid out on the floor of the chamber. It was like a puzzle, deciding which pieces would go together. I suspect when he travelled, as he was apparently preparing to do, the weapon would be dismantled. At other times, and it’s only a hand-held one, the arbalest would be readied, primed and hidden away.’
Athelstan thanked Burley, instructed him to keep the evidence safe and returned to the Dark Parlour. Thorne sat staring moodily into the goblet of white wine Cranston had poured for him. The coroner slouched stock-still in his judgement chair, watching the taverner as closely as a terrier would a rat hole.
‘You said I left by a ladder from the window,’ Thorne protested, ‘but that was locked from within and we have no ladder long enough …’
‘Silence, Master Thorne. This is how matters proceeded. You went up into the upper storey, locking the trapdoor from that side. You doused the candles and opened the shutters. Before you entered the Barbican you wheeled a handcart beneath the window. You dropped the ladder down on to the barrow; the hooks at either end of the ladder are secured on the sill which runs beneath the window. In fact, as I shall prove, the way you went down is the same way you later went up – that was an essential part of your plan.’ Athelstan stared down at the notes he had made. ‘You climbed out. You pull the inner shutter back; you slammed it shut to bring the hook down on the other side. Whether it did or not, I admit, is debatable because in the end it’s all pretence. The inner shutter looked sealed. You also closed the horn-covered window by simply loosening the horn and slipping your hand through to bring down the latch. You then repair the horn as well as you can before closing the outer shutters. Again the hooks could have swung down into their clasps just by the force of it being closed. If it did, all to the good. Whatever happened, for someone staring up through the murk with no light within and certainly none without, that window would appear sealed and locked as the main door of the Barbican. More importantly,’ Athelstan stared at the taverner, ‘you only had one person to convince.’
‘Who was that?’
‘You know full well. The ostler Mooncalf, who would go out to rouse them, stare up through the darkness and, full of panic, hasten back to raise the alarm. I shall come to that. You came down the ladder, the arbalest hooked on the war belt beneath your cloak. The night is pitch black. The Palisade stretched desolate, you are its owner, you know every inch of the ground. You move the barrow and ladder back to the nearby tangle of carts and other items stored under that tarpaulin. You then hurry across to the campfire. The archers lie fast asleep. What you have fed them would take hours to fade; anyone who did wander out would only see two very tired men who’d drank too much. In a few heartbeats you changed that. You primed your crossbow and loosed the killing shaft at close quarters into the heart of each of your victims. You return to the tavern and, in some narrow chamber, you would inspect yourself, hide your weapons, clean your boots. Oh,’ Athelstan held up his hand, ‘other matters. First, you are a very greedy man, Thorne, avaricious to the bone. You plundered the purses of your victims, stole every coin they owned. I suspect this lies with the rest. Secondly, you filched some of Mauclerc’s documents, his scribbles about what he’d discovered during his travels and stay at The Candle-Flame. You took care of these documents, burning them here in the tavern after you’d returned. You wanted everything to be safe!’
‘But Hugh of Hornsey?’
‘Really, Master Taverner? What could Hornsey say? That he had abandoned his post to meet his male lover? He’d either have to tell the truth or be swiftly cast as the killer – possibly both. You know what ensued. Hornsey returned and did what you, I and Sir John would expect – he panicked and fled. At first Hornsey was bound by terror; only later did he begin to reflect. Whatever happened, in your eyes, Hornsey was still dangerous. He had wandered round the Palisade. God knows what he might have glimpsed, which is why you killed both him and Ronseval.’
‘I didn’t-’
‘Let me finish. You returned to the tavern and your bed. Sure enough, early the next morning, Mooncalf raised the alarm. You were expecting him. You get up and go out to the Barbican. What happened then was crucial to your plan. You wanted to create the impression that the Barbican was totally sealed from within, both its door and window shutters. You make great play that the window is too high for any tavern ladder. Everyone is bustling around. You ask for a cart and ladder to be brought and up you climb. You prise open, or pretend to, the shutters and door window. Any suspicious indicator that they were loosed already is now removed. Once satisfied, you declare you are too bulky to enter. In fact, you are not, but you have accomplished your essential task. Mooncalf can now be used as the first witness to the horrors within. He climbs in, opens the door and you sweep in with the fresh opportunity to ensure you have not overlooked anything. Now,’ Athelstan picked up a scroll and let it drop, ‘Mooncalf has been terrified by me, and rightly so. I asked him, on his life, to reply to certain questions. He certainly recalls how you directed him to that tangle of carts and barrows under their canvas sheeting. He distinctly remembers you asking for the items which could be found there.’ Athelstan pulled a face. ‘I do wonder how you could be so precise on a freezing cold February dawn, that both cart and ladder are stored away there? Anyway, you climb that ladder. Mooncalf cannot say if the shutters were sealed, though, on reflection, he reports how you seemed to open them rather swiftly and made little attempt to climb inside. Again, I concede, I may be too suspicious.’ Athelstan paused and stared down at his sheet of vellum where he had constructed all these questions. ‘You see, Master Thorne, for the life of me, I cannot understand why you didn’t enter. Thanks to you, I stood in that window trying to escape the flames. There is plenty of space. Why didn’t you go in? You are a former soldier accustomed to danger?’ Thorne refused to reply. ‘After all, this is your Barbican, your tavern? Important guests have been beset by grave danger; two of their guards lie dead and no one appears to be alive in that tower? You have climbed a shaky ladder, perched perilously at the top, painstakingly opened shutters and windows yet you make no real attempt to enter? Mooncalf was certain of that. I would have gone in even if it was just to satisfy my own curiosity. Finally, and Mooncalf is very direct on this, you do not peer inside, nor do you call out. Why? That was the logical thing to do but of course you know there will be no answer, not from the horrors which lurk in the darkness.’