Sir Peregrine felt the Dean’s eyes upon him and nodded graciously. ‘I am glad to hear it, Dean. We’ll speak to the Treasurer. While we wait, would it be possible for you to ask that the man who dropped the rock on the mason’s head be called here? I should like to speak to this clumsy fellow.’
‘Why? It was an accident. Many saw what happened.’
‘I’m glad it wasn’t another murder! In any case, I have to assess the deodand and ensure that it was not in truth a deliberate killing.’
The Dean was about to speak when he shrugged and called for his steward.
‘The poor fellow will probably be in a tavern somewhere at this time of day,’ he said when the servant had rushed from the room. ‘He will likely be very tired, so please do not be too hard on him.’
‘I shall try not to delay the building schedule, Dean,’ Sir Peregrine said.
They chatted of other matters while they waited for the steward to return, but when he did, alone, Sir Peregrine was not unduly surprised. As the Dean had said, the man was probably drinking off a tiring day in the nearest tavern. ‘He’s left for the night?’
‘Dean, I am afraid Thomas has fled,’ the steward told him. ‘The Master Mason tells me that all his tools are gone too.’
Baldwin shot a bitter look at Simon. ‘We should have questioned him more closely!’
‘I commanded that he should be watched,’ the Dean said with a frigid calmness.
‘The guards say that he looked as though he was going to escape through the Fissand Gate, but he saw them and ran back towards his hut. They thought he’d changed his mind. He didn’t leave by another gate. They asked.’
The Coroner leaped to his feet. ‘Show me this man’s room!’ he snapped to the steward and hurried from the room with him. Simon and Baldwin gave their thanks to the Dean, and followed him.
‘So, Sir Baldwin,’ the Coroner called over his shoulder as he threw open the door to the Close. ‘It seems our killer might have been in the Cathedral after all! Even if he was only a mason, he would be able to kill with ease inside the precinct. And now he is trying to escape the city, since he knows we are on his trail.’
Peter, the acting Prior at St Nicholas, was sitting at his desk in his hall at the Priory when the rough knocking on his door woke him from a reverie.
Sitting here, he had suddenly imagined what it would be like to actually be recognised as Prior. If only he could take that position, and with it enjoy the power and influence it brought, he could work through to the end of his days with satisfaction. He would have achieved something quite fine. It would be enough to satisfy him.
The post was not all-powerful, but with an accommodating and compliant Abbot at Battle, and he and the new Abbot had always been reasonably close, there was every possibility that he might be able to wield a free hand. That would certainly be his hope. And then, what a life he would have! To be master of a Priory like this in a major city was to be the ruler of a small, self-contained principality. He would have complete control.
Yet the investigation into that idiot saddler’s death was enough to bring the matter of Chaunter de Lecchelade back to everyone’s minds, and then he’d be without a chance yet again. There was no possibility of his being able to survive the renewal of interest in all that. He’d be ruined.
He had just reached this conclusion when the knock came, and it explained his harshness of voice and manner as he recognised his corrodian. ‘What is it, William?’
‘That’s no way to welcome an honoured guest in your Priory, is it?’
Peter eyed him like a King watching a poisoner in his kitchens. ‘You may be honoured by others, but to me you are only a man I used to know, who made his way in the world by dishonesty.’
‘Not dishonesty … just judicious use of the truth,’ William said. ‘But you and I need to talk.’
‘Those two have rattled you?’
‘They know more than I’d have guessed,’ William nodded. ‘They know about all of us. I suppose Joel told them. It means we’re in trouble. It’s likely to get out, unless we can shut them up somehow.’
‘And how would you propose to do that?’ Peter asked. ‘Perhaps quieten everything by slaughtering the pair of them? That would certainly stop all investigations in their tracks.’
‘Yes, it might,’ William smiled.
Peter was about to snap at him when he realised that William was being honest. Speaking carefully, he said, ‘I do not think that their deaths would succeed in stopping all debate. In fact, I feel that it might lead people to associate these recent deaths with that of de Lecchelade.’
‘It may be a risk worth taking. Whoever comes afterwards to look into things will be likely to find an easier target than us. He could be more easily manipulated than these two.’
‘You didn’t think that you could persuade the Keeper and Bailiff to leave the matter?’
‘No. They’re committed to finding a killer.’
‘Which means you’ll not be able to remain here. Not if it becomes known that you helped kill de Lecchelade and then benefited from his death by throwing the blame onto de Porta and the gate-keeper of the South Gate. That wouldn’t reflect well on you, would it?’
William looked at him but now the smile was wiped from his face like chalk from a board. ‘It would not reflect well on a Prior either, if it came to be widely known that he was a convicted murderer.’
‘All know of me, William. I submitted to the Church’s justice and was exiled for many years.’
‘Aye. And now you’re back and want this Priory all to yourself, don’t you?’
Peter made a dismissive gesture. ‘I will never have it. That much is clear, and I have grown accustomed to the end of my ambitions. Nay, I shall remain here as a monk and pass on the power to my replacement and successor.’
‘I won’t leave! Not without a good fight first,’ William swore.
‘What do you mean?’ Peter demanded. ‘I won’t have you committing bloodshed, Will. You are a corrodian now, man. You must not bring the name of this place into disrepute.’
‘Oh, I won’t let anyone know it’s anything to do with the Priory, don’t you worry, Peter,’ William said. ‘But I won’t stand by and see my place here put at risk by these damned inquisitive fools. No one will take my pension from me!’
Simon reminded himself of the strange coincidence of the man’s name and age, and wondered if it was in fact a mere quirk of fate. The mason had been surly and suspicious when they spoke to him. To learn that he had been responsible for another death, although it was apparently an accident, was still more curious. One coincidence was possible, but adding together the facts that a man like him had been involved with Joel and Henry all those years before, that he had been in the area when the friar had been murdered, and had even been seen talking to him, and the fact that he sounded like an Exonian even though he denied it, all added up to a suspicious chain of evidence, especially now that he had apparently fled the city.
‘Did anyone see him go?’ he asked when he reached Sir Peregrine and the steward at a small shack in the workmen’s little shanty town.
The steward shook his head. He was a small, birdlike man with very bright brown eyes. ‘No. The guard sent to stop him didn’t see him go. About here, all those I’ve asked said they thought he was still here, but no one’s seen him since mid-afternoon.’
The room in which he had lived was a rude hovel knocked up by a carpenter with little time for fripperies. It had plain beech walls that once had been lime-washed, a rough shingle roof of chestnut, and little by way of decoration. One stool, without even a table to sit at, and a wooden bench on which to lay his palliasse were the sole concessions to a man’s comfort. It was a sad, bare little chamber.
‘Nothing here at all,’ Simon noted. ‘He’s clearly run.’