You could have had many years' service from them if you had treated them properly, but now I would recommend that you dispense with them/ 'How has the poison stayed for so long in so potent a form?' asked Bartholomew.
Haralda beamed at him, pleased that someone was expressing an interest, rather than disgust, at the locks.
'The blade has its own chamber here, see? It is sealed with lead, so no poison can leak and cause damage. If I were to open this chamber, which I would only do under the special conditions at my workshop, you would find the poison mixed with various mixtures, including quicksilver, to keep it fluid. Thus the poison is always ready. I saw a lock like this kill a dog in under ten minutes in Rome, although I would think perhaps, judging from the age of this lock, that the poison may have lost some of its potency. If you meant business, you would need to change the poison regularly to ensure its continued efficacy.'
Bartholomew nodded, staring down at the rusting insides of the three locks on the table. He picked up Michael's keys and played with them idly. Haralda took them from him.
These smaller keys,' he said, holding them up, 'are to turn the poison mechanism on and off. In this way, the lock can be used normally.'
He inserted the smaller key into one of the parallel vertical slits on the back of one of the locks to show them.
Bartholomew studied it closely and admired its ingenuity.
The slit did not look like another keyhole, and anyone who did not know what it was, would never guess.
'I would assume,' said Haralda, 'that whoever last knew about this left the mechanism turned off. Once again, I say yeu are very lucky none of them slipped on while you were using them.'
'Which is why Buckley was safe, even without his gloves,' murmured Michael to Bartholomew. 'It must have broken as the friar poked about with it in a way that Buckley never had.'
Haralda stood up. 'Dispense with these, my lords.
They are no longer safe.'
'Will you take them?' asked de Wetherset. 'I would feel more secure knowing that a professional man had disposed of them in a proper manner.'
Haralda bowed to him, flattered, and collected the pieces of the locks in the cloth. De Wetherset went to see him out of the church. Harling paced restlessly.
'It was a mistake bringing in another,' he said. 'He told us nothing we did not know or could not guess.'
'But now we are certain,' said Michael. 'We know the lock was not changed by Buckley, or by someone wanting to kill members of the University. We know that the locks are just old and worn, and that the friar was notmurdered.
I suppose it could be called accidental death.'
'But we still do not know what he wanted in the chest,' said Bartholomew. 'In fact, we are not much further forward at all.'
'Yes, we are,' said Michael. 'We are no longer looking for the murderer of the friar.'
'But we still want the murderer of Froissart,' said Harling. He chewed nervously at his fingers. 'If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have much to be doing.'
He bowed and left the room. Bartholomew leaned out of the window, and saw de Wetherset still talking to Haralda below.
'Harling was unaccountably nervous,' said Michael, opening one of de Wetherset's wall cupboards and peering inside. 'Even if it is a Sunday, I feel he had another reason why he did not want us to fetch the locksmith.'
Bartholomew sighed and made for the door. 'Come on, Brother. Harling is not the only one with much to be doing,' he said.
They stepped outside and began to walk home. There was a flicker in the sky, followed by a low rumble, and then rain began to fall heavily. Bartholomew and Michael joined several others who ran to St Mary's Church to wait the thunderstorm out. Inside, the church was dark from the grey clouds that hung low overhead, lit brilliantly by occasional flashes of lightning. Bartholomew had never been in a church during a thunderstorm before, and the way the wall-paintings suddenly lit up reminded him of passages from Revelations about the end of the world.
He wandered around aimlessly, listening to the rain drumming on the roof. The tombs in the choir reminded him of his promise to Master Wilson to attend to the building of his sepulchre. Some tombs were plain, while others were vulgar. A plain one in black marble would not be too bad, thought Bartholomew, but, in his heart of hearts, he knew that Wilson would have wanted a vulgar one. Not for the first time, Bartholomew was disgusted. Wilson should have arranged to be buried in a fairground with the kind of tomb he had had in mind, not a church!
A sharp tug on his sleeve pulled him from his thoughts.
One of the clerks was there, hiding behind a pillar. He looked frightened, and Bartholomew pretended to be reading an inscription on a nearby tomb, so that no one watching him would know he was speaking with a man in the shadows.
The lightning flickered again, making the man wince and press further back, but the storm was moving away.
'The day after the friar's death,' said the clerk, glancing furtively around him, 'I saw that the bar on the front door had been moved.'
'What does that imply?' asked Bartholomew softly, rubbing the brass on the tomb with his sleeve and pretending to look closer.
'Everyone here thinks that the friar hid in the church before it was locked up. He then went upstairs and died.
But the bar on the door was in a different place in the morning than it was the night before,' whispered the clerk hoarsely. 'What I am saying is that I think the friar barred the door after the church was locked, which means that someone must have unbarred it from the inside, or we would not have been able to get in the next morning.'
Bartholomew's heart sank. He had just proved, rather ingeniously he thought, that the poisoned lock had been a cruel twist of fate that had killed the friar, and now this clerk was telling him the friar had not been alone in the church on the night of his death, which threw the whole thing back under suspicion.
'Are you certain?' he asked heavily, still careful not to look at the man and give him away.
The clerk nodded quickly. 'I think I may be putting myself at risk by talking to you, but if I do not tell you what I know, how will you be able to solve this mystery and let us get back to normal?'
Bartholomew was taken aback by the man's confidence in his abilities as a detective, and not particularly pleased at the pressure he felt it put on him to draw this matter to an acceptable conclusion. 'Do you know anything else?' he asked. 'Like the whereabouts of the man who locked the church that night?'
The man huddled further back behind his pillar. 'He has not been seen since you chased him. He has not been home, and his family have had no word from him.'
'Did you know Nicholas of York?' Bartholomew whispered, watching as a second clerk walked past him, carrying a pile of dirty-white tallow candles.
He felt the man's confusion. 'Yes. He died more than a month ago,' he said.
'Did you see his body or attend his funeral? Did you notice anything untoward?'
The clerk looked at him as though he were insane.
'I saw his body in his coffin the night before we buried him, but I fail to see why you ask.' He sank back into the shadows as the other clerk returned from depositing his candles. 'The friar died a few days ago, and Nicholas has been in his grave for weeks.'
Bartholomew sighed. 'Then do you know anything about the Guild of the Coming or the Guild of the Purification?'
The man crossed himself so violently that Bartholomew could hear his hand thumping hollowly against his ribs.
'You should not speak those names in this holy church!' he hissed. 'And do not try to find out about them. They are powerful and would kill you like a fly if they thought you were asking questions/ 'But they are small organisations with only a few members,' said Bartholomew, quoting Stanmore's information, and trying to allay the clerk's fears.
