Talorgen was on his feet, fists clenched.
“Repeat your charges outside the walls of this abbey and I will meet your steel with mine, Saxon cur!”
Dagobert came to his feet to intervene as Eadred launched forward from his chair toward Talorgen.
“Stop this!” The usually genial features of Laisran were dark with anger. His voice cut the air like a lash.
The students of the ecclesiastical school of Durrow seemed to freeze at the sound. Then Eadred relaxed and dropped back in his seat with a smile that was more a sneer than amusement. Dagobert tugged at Talorgen’s arm and the prince of Rheged sighed and reseated himself, as did the Frankish prince.
Abbot Laisran growled like an angry bear.
“Sister Fidelma is an official of the Brehon Court of Éireann. Whatever the customs in your own lands, in this land she has supreme authority in conducting this investigation and the full backing of the law of this kingdom. Do I make myself clear?”
There was a silence.
“I shall continue,” said Fidelma quietly. “Yet what Eadred says is partially true.”
Eadred stared at her with bewilderment clouding his eyes.
“Oh yes,” smiled Fidelma. “
She paused to let her words sink in.
“Let me first tell you how he died.”
“He was stabbed to death in his bed,” Finan, the dark-faced professor of law, pointed out.
“That is true,” agreed Sister Fidelma, “but without the aid of sorcery.”
“How else did the assassin enter a locked room and leave it, still locked from the inside?” demanded Eadred. “How else but sorcery?”
“The killer wanted us to think that it was sorcery. Indeed, the killer prepared an elaborate plan to confuse us and lay the blame away from him. In fact, so elaborate was the plan that it had several layers. One layer was merely to confuse and frighten us by causing us to think the murder was done by a supernatural agency; another was to indicate an obvious suspect, while a third object was to implicate another person.”
“Well,” Laisran sighed, “at the moment I have yet to see through the first layer.”
Sister Fidelma smiled briefly at the rotund Abbot.
“I will leave that to later. Let us firstly consider the method of the killing.”
She had their complete attention now.
“The assassin entered the room by the door. In fact, Wulfstan let his assassin into the bedchamber himself.”
There was an intake of breath from Dagobert.
Unperturbed, she continued.
“Wulfstan knew his killer. Indeed, he had no suspicions, no fear of this man.”
Abbot Laisran regarded her with open-mouthed astonishment.
“Wulfstan let the killer in,” she continued. “The assassin struck. He killed Wulfstan and left his body on the bed. It was an act of swiftness. To spread suspicion, the killer wiped his knife on a linen kerchief which he mistakenly thought belonged to Talorgen, prince of Rheged. As I said, if we managed to see beyond the charade of sorcery, then the assassin sought to put the blame for the murder on Talorgen. He failed to realize that the kerchief was borrowed two days ago from Dagobert. He did not realize that the kerchief prominently carried Dagobert’s motto on it. It was a Latin motto which exhorts ‘Beware what you say!’ “
She paused to let them digest this information.
“How then did the killer now leave the bedchamber and manage to bar the door from the inside?” asked Dagobert.
“The bedchamber door was barred with two wooden bars. They were usually placed on iron rests which are attached to the frame of the door. When I examined the first wooden bar I observed that at either end there were two pieces of twine wrapped around it as if to protect the wood when it is placed in the iron rests. Yet on the second wooden bar, the curiosity was that the twine had two lengths of four feet still loose. Each end of the twine had been frayed and charred.”
She grimaced and repeated herself.
“A curiosity. Then I noticed that there was a rail at the top of the door on which a heavy woollen curtain could be drawn across the door when closed in order to prevent a draught. It was, of course, impossible to see whether the curtain had been drawn or not once the room was broken into, for the inward movement of the door would have swept the curtain aside on its rail.”
Eadred made a gesture of impatience.
“Where is this explanation leading?”
“Patience, and I will tell you. I spotted two small spots of grease on the ground on either side of the door. As I bent to examine these spots of grease I saw two nails fixed into the wood about three inches from the ground. There were two short pieces of twine still tied on these nails and the ends were frayed and blackened. It was then I realized just how the assassin had left the room and left one of the bars in place.”
“One?” demanded Abbot Laisran, leaning forward on his seat, his face eager.
Fidelma nodded.
“Only one was really needed to secure the door from the inside. The first bar, that at three feet from the bottom of the door, had not been set in place. There were no marks on the bar and its twine protection was intact, nor had the iron rests been wrenched away from the doorjamb when Ultan forced the door. Therefore, the conclusion was that this bar was not in place. Only the second bar, that which rested across the top of the door, about two feet from the top, had been in place.”
“Go on,” instructed Laisran when she paused again.
“Having killed Wulfstan, the assassin was already prepared. He undid the twine on both ends of the wooden bar and threaded it around the wooden curtain rail across the top of the door. He set in place-or had already placed during the day, when the chamber was open-two nails. Then he raised the wooden bar to the level of the curtain rail. He secured it there by tying the ends of the twine to the nails at ground level. This construction allowed him to leave the room.”
Laisran gestured with impatience.
“Yes, but how could he have manipulated the twine to lower the bar in place?”
“Simply. He took two reed candles and as he went to leave, he placed a candle under either piece of the string near the ground. He took a piece of paper and lit it from his tinder box-I found the ashes of the paper on the floor of the chamber, where he had to drop it. He lit the two reed candles, on either side of the door under the twine. Then he left quickly. The twine eventually burned through, releasing the bar, which dropped neatly into place in the iron rests. It had, remember, only two feet to drop. The candles continued to bum until they became mere spots of grease, almost unnoticeable, except I slipped on one. But the result was that we were left with a mystery. A room locked on the inside with a corpse. Sorcery? No. Planning by a devious mind.”
“So what happened then?” Talorgen encouraged, breaking the spellbound silence.
“The assassin left the room, as I have described. He wanted to create this illusion of mystery because the person he wished to implicate was one he felt his countrymen would believe to be a barbaric sorcerer. As I indicated, he wished to place suspicion on you, Talorgen. He left the room and talked to someone outside Wulfstan’s bedchamber for a while. Then they heard the bar drop into place and that was the assassin’s alibi, because it was clear that they had heard Wulfstan, still alive, slide the bar to lock his chamber door.”
Raedwald was frowning as it seemed he struggled to follow her reasoning.
“You have given an excellent reconstruction,” he said slowly. “But it is only a hypothesis. It remains only a hypothesis unless you name the assassin and his motive.”
Sister Fidelma smiled softly.
“Very well. I was, of course, coming to that.”
She turned and let her gaze pass over their upraised faces as they watched her. Then she let her gaze rest on the haughty features of the thane of Andredswald.
Eadred interpreted her gaze as accusation and was on his feet before she had said a word, his face scowling in anger.
