Blood.
Then Carlotta, blood on her chin from the carcase of meat, blood on her knife. The sign of squirrel’s paws under the bed. A blood stain on the nun’s mattress.
Blood everywhere.
She turned her deliberations to the death of Taillefer. Somehow she could not see Grizac entering the debauched darkness under the bridge.
If what she had been told were to be believed, he had crossed over, taking his time, arriving at the other side long after the others. He had been alone. Even so, he started with the others. The sentry had said so twice, once to herself and once, independently, to Edmund.
After the others crossed he would have had time to kill Taillefer on the bridge and then stop at the chapel to make confession.
It was the ferryman who had told her he heard an argument coming from the direction of the bridge. His testimony had persuaded her to look there. The priest confirmed the sound of an argument. Voices raised in anger above the howling wind, a knife in the darkness, a body splashing into the black waters of the Rhone.
It was the priest who had mentioned the bell for lauds, said he heard the voices before he rang the bell. But Hubert, Fondi and presumably the others stayed on for lauds because it wasn’t worth crossing from Villeneuve twice in such a violent storm.
The murderer could not have attended lauds. There would have been no way he could have been on the bridge shortly before the bell and then in attendance inside the palace.
It was a good fifteen minutes’ walk down the lane and then the complicated access to get into the chapel, another ten minutes at least. She saw the priest’s expression as he mentioned the bell and felt there was something evasive about it.
Was he confident that he had in fact rung the bell at the time he claimed? I sleep fitfully, he had told her. Had he woken earlier than he thought he had? Did he ring the bell long before lauds took place in the palace?
First the voices, then the murder, then the bell giving the murderer time to get back to the palace and into the office for lauds? Alibi intact. Grizac could have done it with time to spare.
It was a theory at least.
**
She went to find Hubert. He was in the Tinel with his two supporters.
Before she could speak he said, ‘I was just finishing my bread and water before coming to find you. I have something to tell you. But first, I trust your new chamber is satisfactory?’
‘Very,’ she replied. ‘I’m most grateful for your string-pulling on my behalf.’
‘No point in being a cardinal in waiting if I can’t help my friends,’ he announced dryly.
Gregory and Egbert chuckled.
‘You first then,’ he said. ‘You have something to say?’
She shot a swift glance at the two monks. They both beamed. They were clearly going to listen in.
Turning to Hubert she said, ‘It’s about that night when you crossed the bridge, when Taillefer was murdered.’
The two monks leaned forward with interest. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away. When Gregory spoke the matter had evidently been discussed with Hubert because he said, ‘Have you found new evidence, domina?’
‘Not really.’ She gave Hubert a helpless glance.
‘Have no worries. They know as much or as little as I do and whatever they hear will go no further.’
With no choice, she explained the problem so far.
Egbert looked interested. ‘So the murder took place on the bridge after an argument and around the time of the bell for lauds, thereby giving an alibi to any of us who were in the palace at that time. Well,’ he said, sitting back, ‘that’s a relief, eh, Hubert?’
Hubert smiled in acknowledgement. ‘But what Hildegard is saying is that the innkeeper at le Coq d’or told her the fellow who was trying to sell the dagger - probably the same one who stole it from the mortuary - went rushing out in pursuit of Taillefer as soon as he found out it’d been taken from his pack. Hence voices not on the bridge but in the lane outside the inn.’
‘But Taillefer was found on the temporary dam that had built up underneath the bridge with his clothes still partly dry.’
‘Meaning that he must have fallen from the bridge?’
‘Yes.’
Gregory frowned. ‘Were there any witnesses to this racket of shouting we understand to have taken place outside the inn?’
‘Plenty, apparently,’ Hildegard replied. ‘The stranger woke everybody up with his ranting. He chased Taillefer down the lane towards the bridge then returned a few minutes later complaining that the thief had got away. After that he gathered his things and left, to vanish into the night.’
‘And did he leave by means of the bridge?’
‘If so the sentries must have seen him go over.’
‘The sentry said nobody but the cardinals and Hubert crossed the bridge that night. But he heard no argument because of the storm.’
‘You believe him?’ Gregory’s eyes were sharp.
‘I see no reason for him to lie about it.’
‘Not unless he’s complicit with the murderer.’ Gregory frowned.
‘He means it could have been the sentry who murdered Taillefer,’ Egbert interpreted.
‘It could have been anyone,’ she admitted glumly.
‘Storm, argument, bell, theft, murder. Is it one of those puzzles destined to remain forever unsolved?’ Egbert shared her gloom.
‘Let’s look at it from another angle,’ Hubert suggested. ‘How did this second thief get hold of the dagger? Did somebody inside the palace pass it to him to sell at the highest price or was he working from inside the palace himself?’
‘There is a way somebody from outside could get into the palace,’ she mentioned hesitantly, wondering if she was breaking faith with her informant. ‘I was told in confidence that a certain postern is left unlocked some nights. If the fellow trying to sell the dagger knew about that he could easily have got inside - ’
‘Entered the mortuary - ’
‘And stolen the dagger.’
‘And then,’ added Hubert, ‘he could have found his way out to le Coq d’or?’
‘Easily.’
‘And the rest follows.’
‘Taillefer, knowing he would not be allowed onto the bridge, fled underneath the arch where the whores usually worked and was killed there.’
‘Except,’ Hildegard interrupted, ‘Taillefer’s garments were almost dry.’
‘So our version of events doesn’t answer the question how he got onto the raft without getting thoroughly soaked to the skin.’
‘And another yawning hole in all this is that no-one saw him under the arch.’ Hildegard frowned.
What seemed much more likely was that Taillefer had met the cardinal at the steps leading onto the bridge. Grizac was a figure of authority who could take him across, but then a quarrel, the raised voices, the knife across the throat, the body over the parapet, falling, to the cardinal’s ill luck, onto a floating raft of debris instead of into the water where he should have been swept away, the current taking with his lifeless body all clues to his murder.
She could not accuse one of the cardinals in front of these three men. Their allegiance was to Clement. They would close ranks against her.
There was a silence but then Gregory got up and went over to one of the servers. When he returned he had a flagon of something that when it was poured out into four beakers was definitely not water.
‘The flaw is that this boy, Taillefer, was not seen to go onto the bridge and it’s equally true that he wasn’t seen to run under the arch. Even if he had done so without being noticed - in all the rage of wind and rain that wouldn’t have been unlikely - he couldn’t have got onto the dam unless he had swum across from the bank. And that was impossible in the given conditions.’
Hildegard sighed with frustration. ‘Thank you, Hubert. That sums it up.’