been seeking — or even which of the women had lain dead in the makeshift Castle mortuary. Edred went back to his pile of crumbs.
'Now, tell us why you also think Lydgate killed Werbergh?' asked Michael, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his considerable girth. 'His death was an accident, was it not? The shed fell on him when he went to find timber to build a writing desk. Why do you think Werbergh was murdered?'
Edred looked pained. 'Because Master Lydgate told us that if we talked to you, he would kill us. Werbergh was seen talking to you and he disappeared, only to reappear dead under the shed.'
'And you think this suspicious?' asked Michael.
Edred gave another of his short, explosive laughs. 'I most certainly do! Oh, it looked convincing enough, and our servants, Saul Potter and Huw, both claimed that Werbergh had told them he was going out to look for wood to build a desk, but it seemed too convenient.
A man disappears and suddenly returns only to die in a fluky accident? No! That is too coincidental.'
'But you did not actually see Lydgate kill Werbergh,' pressed Bartholomew. It was a statement and not a question.
'It is not necessary to have seen him plunge the dagger into his victims in order to make sense of the evidence,' retorted Edred, his temper ruffled. He suddenly put his head in his hands, scattering the crumbs. 'I should have known it was a mistake to come to you. Why should you believe me?'
Why indeed? thought Bartholomew. Edred had really given them very little new information, and most was in the form of supposition and conjecture. But Bartholomew's compassion was aroused when he saw the young man's shoulders shaken by a sob. Edred obviously believed what he was telling them was the truth and was frightened by it.
'And what about James Kenzie?' he asked in a gentler tone. Edred shook his head, unable or unwilling to answer, so Bartholomew answered for him. 'You stole the ring from him during the street brawl and took it to Lydgate to claim your reward. Lydgate was simultaneously pleased to have such a clue regarding the identity of his daughter's lover, but angry when you told him it was a Scot. He is a man who blusters and threatens. He vowed to kill Kenzie, and hurled the ring from the window in his anger. Then he threatened to kill you if you confessed that you had stolen the ring.'
Edred looked at him with a tear-stained face. 'No. It did not happen quite like that. I gave the ring to Master Lydgate and he became furious. But not with the Scot, with me. He said the ring was a fake, a cheap imitation of the original. He accused me of having it made so that I could claim the reward from him. He hurled it to the floor and stamped on it. Then he said that if I ever told anyone what I had done, he would kill me. He said having a friar who was a confessed thief and liar would bring Godwinsson Hostel into disrepute. After he had gone I picked up the ring and I could see that he was right.
What I had thought was silver was cheap metal. I flung it through the window in disgust.'
'So the ring you took from Kenzie was a fake?' said Bartholomew thoughtfully. He reached into his sleeve and brought it out. Ts this it?'
Edred took the broken ring and examined it briefly.
'Yes. That's the wretched thing that brought me so much trouble. I don't know how the Scot came to have it, rather than the original. He came later that night to ask if I had taken it, but since it was already broken, and it had landed me in so much trouble, I told him I had not.'
But what was Kenzie doing with a ring that was a fake? wondered Bartholomew. Dominica had definitely given one of the original pair to Kenzie — Robert had identified it quite clearly as the one at Valence Marie — while the other, the one Dominica had kept, had remained with Cecily. But Kenzie had not worn the real ring in the street brawl, he had worn a cheap imitation. Meanwhile, the real ring was on the finger of the relic at Valence Marie. It made no sense. How did the real ring get from Kenzie to the hand found at Valence Marie? 'So, if Lydgate knew that the ring you had taken from Kenzie was a false one, why do you think Lydgate killed him?' Michael was asking.
'That evening, after I had shown the false ring to Master Lydgate, Dominica was sent away to relatives in Chesterton to keep her from seeing her lover,' said Edred. 'I was restless after the scene with the Scot, and knew I would be unable to sleep, so I stayed out. As I was returning, much later, I saw someone throwing pebbles at Dominica's window. He threw perhaps three or four before he realised he was not going to be answered, and then he stole away.'
'And did you recognise this person?' asked Michael.
'Oh yes, I recognised him by the yellow hose under his tabard, which was obvious, even by moonlight. It was the Scot-James Kenzie you say his name was. A few moments after, I saw Master Lydgate leave the house and follow him up the lane. I went to bed, and the next day, you came to say that Kenzie was murdered. I made the reasonable assumption that Lydgate had also seen Kenzie throwing stones at Dominica's window, guessed him to be her lover, followed him and killed him.'
'Why did you not tell us this before?' asked Michael.
'And why did you lie to us when we asked where you were that night?'
Edred looked frightened again, but also indignant.
'How could I do otherwise? By telling you, I would have admitted to theft and lying, two virtues not highly praised by my Order. I would have been thrown out of the University. And anyway, how could I accuse the Principal of murder? Who would you have believed: the poor, lying thief of a friar who had been seen by the Proctor arguing with the murdered man the day before his death, or the rich and influential Lydgate?'
Michael inclined his head, accepting the young man's reasoning. 'But by hiding your own lesser sins, you have protected the identity of a murderer. And you now say that this murderer has struck thrice more and will do so again.'
Edred looked away. 'I did not know what to do.' I did not think you would believe me, because I had already lied to you. But I was afraid, too. The Lydgates know I was absent from the hostel the night of Kenzie's death, and Mistress Lydgate could have accused me of lying when I used Werbergh as my alibi that night. But she did not, and I think she guessed I saw her husband leaving to follow Kenzie. Perhaps she saw me returning through her window. Anyway, the message was clear: if I maintained my silence about what I had seen, so would they.'
It made sense logically, thought Bartholomew, casting his mind back to the information they had been given the day of Kenzie's murder. Edred's story and Werbergh's had not tallied and Bartholomew had wondered whether Edred was lying about the theft of the ring to mask a far more serious incident. The incident had been that he believed his Principal had committed murder. It tallied with Cecily's story, too. She had been told not to contradict anything said to protect Godwinsson from the unwelcome inquiries of Brother Michael. But were Edred's suspicions to be believed? It was all so simple:
Lydgate killed Kenzie, then his daughter and Ned from Valence Marie, then Werbergh, whom he thought might be passing information to Bartholomew and Michael. Was Lydgate a man who could kill four people with such ease?
Cecily certainly feared her husband sufficiently to flee from him, so perhaps he was.
'Two more questions,' said Bartholomew, seeing the student's shoulders begin to sag with tiredness, 'and then you should sleep. First, do you know who attacked Brother Michael and me in the High Street?'
Edred shook his head. 'I heard about that from Master Lydgate. He was delighted that you had received your just deserts, but he did not know who would attack you, and neither do I.'
Bartholomew nodded, satisfied with the answer, especially given the very plausible response reported from Lydgate.
But that did not mean that Godwinsson was uninvolved.
Bartholomew remained convinced that it had been Saul Potter and Huw's voices he had heard that night, despite his hazy memory.
'And second,' he continued, 'where are Godwinsson's French students?'
Edred looked frightened again. 'One was killed in the riot. But when Master Lydgate had the truth from the other two that they had been involved in a brawl with you — and not with ten heavily armed townspeople as they initially claimed — he grew angry. They left to return to France. Huw and Saul Potter helped them escape.'
Escape from their Principal, thought Bartholomew.
What a terrible indictment of his violent and aggressive character. No wonder Cecily had left him.
As if reading his thoughts, Edred added. 'He hates you. That is one of the reasons I came. Any man who has earned such hatred from Master Lydgate must surely be the man whom I can trust with my life, and who will
