'I allowed quite some time to pass before I went to Augustus's room that night,' he continued, his voice weaker than before. 'I was going to send Aelfrith away and offer to pray for Augustus until dawn. I went up the stairs, but saw that Augustus's room had been ransacked, and that he was gone. Aelfrith was unconscious on the floor. The shutters were open, and in the light from outside, I could see that there was an irregularity in the wooden floor. It is doubtful I ever would have noticed it in ordinary light. I closed the shutters and had just prised up the board, when you came. We fought, and you lost.'
He paused, coughing weakly. Bartholomew wiped away a thin trail of blood that dribbled from his mouth and thought back to that struggle. Wilson, like Michael, was flabby, and was well-endowed with chins, but that did not mean to say he was also weak. If Wilson had been desperate and panic-stricken, Bartholomew believed he could have been overpowered by him.
'I assume your intention in going to Augustus's room was not to pray?' asked Bartholomew.
Wilson sneered. 'Damn right it was not to pray!
I wanted to find the seal. I am certain that whoever murdered Sir John did not get it from his body.'
Bartholomew caught his breath. 'You say Sir John was murdered?'
Wilson sneered again. 'Of course he was! He was killed for the seal he always carried, and without which no further messages would come from his contact in Oxford. It was imperative I found that seal. I saw it round his neck as he went for dinner the night of his death. The way in which his body was dressed indicated that it had not been round his neck when he died, or his murderers would not have bothered taking his clothes — they would merely have thrown his body into the mill stream. No murderer stays too long at the site of his crime,' he said with a superior smile.
'The only place Sir John went between dinner and when he left College for the last time was to see Augustus,'
Wilson continued. 'So, the seal had to be in Augustus's room. When you told me he had died, I decided to look for the seal before someone else did.'
'But you did not find it,' said Bartholomew. He thought of Augustus's senile ramblings the afternoon before the feast, exhorting John Babington to 'hide it well'. If Sir John had not hidden the wretched seal as well as he apparently had, Augustus, Paul, and Montfitchet might still be alive.
'I did not,' said Wilson. 'I had just felt about in the small hole in the floorboards when you came blundering in. But,' he continued, fastening a cold, but sweaty, hand round Bartholomew's wrist, 'I did not hit Aelfrith, I did not drug the wine, and I did not kill Paul.' He looked at Bartholomew. 'I also do not know what happened to Augustus, although I do not believe he was responsible for the happenings that night. The poor old fool was far too senile to have effected such a well-considered plan.'
'Well-considered?' said Bartholomew in disgust.
'You call the murder of Paul and Montfitchet well considered?'
Wilson ignored him and lay silent for a while.
'So how did you escape?' asked Bartholomew after a while. 'You did not pass me on the stairs.'
'You are observant, Master Physician,' said Wilson facetiously. 'Had you looked up instead of down, you may have noticed where I was, although I doubt it, for it is very cunningly concealed. The south wing of Michaelhouse was designed with two trap-doors in the ceilings of the upper floor. It is a secret passed on from Master to Master should the need ever arise for him to listen to the plottings of his fellows.'
'Sir John died before you became Master. How did you find out about this?'
'The day the Chancellor told me I was to be Master, he gave me various documents locked in a small chest.
I had to return the box to him immediately after I had read the documents, lest I die without passing certain information to my successor. Reference to these secret doors was included with a stricture that only Masters should be informed of their presence. I immediately went to Augustus's room to look for one of them.
He watched me, but did not understand what I was doing.'
'Who else knows about these trap-doors?'
'When you know that, you will know the murderer.'
Bartholomew's mind began to mull through this information. Wilson's callous dismissal of Augustus had probably brought about his death. Augustus had very possibly babbled to someone else, in one of his senile ramblings, about the trap-door he had watched Wilson uncover, and had thus endangered himself.
So, who might he have told? Evidently not Aelfrith or he would have guessed where his attacker might have hidden himself, and would not have searched with Bartholomew. Was it Michael? Or another Fellow?
Wilson watched him trying to reason the muddle out, his expression smug, as if Bartholomew were one of his students trying to resolve some legal point for which there was no solution. He continued. 'All I had to do once I had pushed you down the stairs was to stand on the window-sill, and pull myself through the opening. I could hear you looking for me and knew you would never be able to spot the trap-door, especially in the poor light. Whoever killed Paul and took Augustus evidently also knew about the trap-doors.'
Bartholomew sat back and thought. It made sense.
As Aelfrith had prayed over Augustus, the murderer had slipped through the trap-door- or perhaps even dropped something on the friar — and knocked him senseless.
The wine was drugged, and Paul murdered so that the commoners would know nothing about what was going on. A search of the room was made, but, not finding the seal, and perhaps hearing Wilson coming, the murderer took Augustus's body through the trap-door to hide it.
'But why steal a body?' asked Bartholomew, still thwarted in his attempt to make sense of the new information.
Wilson sighed. 'You are intractable, Physician. It would not take long to search a corpse, and so the answer is obvious. Augustus was alive, and was taken so that he would reveal where the seal was hidden to the murderer!'
Bartholomew shook his head. 'Augustus was dead, Master Wilson. He was probably murdered too.'
'Rubbish,' said Wilson dismissively. 'He was alive.
Why would anyone wish to steal a corpse? Think, man! Your supposition that Augustus was dead is not a reasonable one.'
He lay back on his pillow, his face red with effort.
Bartholomew sponged it again while he let all Wilson's claims sink in. Wilson was right. It would make sense for the murderer to take a living person with him to be questioned later, but not a dead one. But Bartholomew knew Augustus had been dead! He had touched his eyes, and made a careful examination of the body. Nevertheless, apart from that, Wilson's story made matters a little clearer, and also explained why the Master had been prepared to put about the Bishop's lies. The Bishop had probably known exactly what Wilson had been doing in Augustus's room, and approved of it.
The door swung open on its broken hinges, and Michael entered, bringing the things he would need to give Wilson last rites and to hear his confession.
'Get out!' hissed Wilson, lifting his head from the pillow. 'Get out until I am ready!'
Michael looked annoyed, but left the room without arguing. Wilson waited until he heard his footsteps going down the wooden stairs.
'Why did you want this seal?' Bartholomew asked.
Wilson' s eyes remained closed. The effort of sending Michael away had exhausted him. His voice was little more than a whisper when he finally spoke. 'Because the University is under threat from scholars at Oxford,' he said. 'Babington's seal would have enabled us to continue to receive reports on their activities from his contact there. Since the seal has gone missing, we have heard nothing, and we are missing out on vital information.
I had to find it and could let nothing stop me!'
'Even murder?' asked Bartholomew softly.
'I assure you I did not murder anyone,' said Wilson tiredly. 'Although I did try to kill you when you found me in Augustus's room. I do not like you, Master Physician.
I do not like the way you mix learning and dealing with those filthy thieves in the town you call your patients. I do not like the way your life and loyalties are divided between the College and the town. And I did not like the way Babington encouraged you to have it so.'
Bartholomew felt like telling Wilson that he did not like him either, but there was nothing to be gained from
