The Hand of Justice

‘Are you sure you have not made a mistake?’ asked Michael of his Corpse Examiner yet again. ‘It would be easily done in all that confusion last night. Look again, now it is light, so we can be certain.’

‘It is not necessary, Brother. I am sure. But I will check again if it makes you happy.’

Bartholomew crouched by the blanket that covered the two corpses, which had been recovered from the mill after the fire was out, and repeated the examination he had now conducted three times. He assessed the teeth that were conveniently exposed by the loss of facial tissue, the bones of the pelves and the shape of the heads.

‘Well?’ demanded Michael.

‘As I said, neither of these is Thorpe or Mortimer. One is a female, and the teeth of both indicate older people, not men in their prime.’

‘Damn!’ breathed Michael. ‘Then they are still at large. They used the confusion created by the fire to let folk believe they are dead, and now they intend to conduct their mischief from afar. This is terrible! At least when they were here, I could watch them.’

‘I am fairly sure these are the bodies of Lavenham and Isobel,’ said Bartholomew. ‘God alone knows how they ended up here, after we thought they had escaped from Cambridge.’

‘Thorpe and Mortimer killed them,’ came a low voice close behind him that made Bartholomew jump out of his skin. ‘They thought we would blame Quenhyth.’

‘Dame Pelagia,’ said Bartholomew, standing up quickly. He supposed he should not be surprised to see her, now that the murderer was unveiled and all that remained was to work out the answers to one or two loose ends. ‘How do you know Thorpe and Edward murdered the Lavenhams?’

‘Because I saw them,’ replied the old lady. ‘Unfortunately, I was too far away to prevent it from happening. They wanted the Lavenhams’ gold, and killed them for it near the Small Bridges after dark. They carried the bodies to the mill, where I watched them set the fire. Young Lenne may have thought the blaze was his doing, but all he did was give Thorpe and Edward the idea.’

‘Lenne did not burn the mill after all?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘His pathetic little blaze flickered out within moments. Thorpe and Mortimer watched him, and I thought they intended to kill again, but they merely decided to carry out what he had failed to do. They wanted you to believe they were dead.’

‘But they did not take my Corpse Examiner into account,’ said Michael proudly. ‘I have always said it is good to hire a physician who can tell his men from his women.’

Bartholomew was too agitated to be amused. ‘Where are they now? What do they intend to do?’ He realised that part of his unease was because he did not trust Dame Pelagia, and he had the distinct impression there was something she was not telling them.

She gave one of her enigmatic smiles. ‘Who knows?’

Michael was morose again. ‘I suppose we shall have to go through all this again in a couple of weeks, when they decide to return.’

‘The King would not like that,’ said Dame Pelagia. ‘He is fond of this town — probably because it is good for imposing extra taxes — and he does not want to see it in flames. A destroyed city is not a good source of revenue.’

‘The King is expecting a great deal of revenue from Deschalers’s death taxes,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘The town is obliged to pay them all. God knows how we shall find the money, what with the Great Bridge falling to pieces and fire damage to repair. And what about this compensation — or does the fact that Thorpe and Mortimer murdered the Lavenhams for gold absolve us of that?’

‘I shall have a word with a Westminster clerk or two about Deschalers’s taxes,’ said Dame Pelagia comfortably. ‘His heir will be ordered to pay, have no fear. And you can forget about the compensation, too. I doubt Thorpe and Mortimer will press their claim for it.’

‘We thought they intended to use the Hand to cause trouble in the town,’ said Michael. ‘As revenge for being sent into exile. But we were wrong.’

‘They were opportunists,’ said Pelagia. ‘The Hand presented them with an opportunity to stir up strife, and it was easy for them to give it a new name — to increase its importance and put strain on the relationship between University and town concerning its ownership. But that is not why they came.’

‘Why, then?’ demanded Bartholomew. He held his ground when the bright, intelligent green eyes settled on him. He wanted answers and felt the old lady had them; he would not allow her to intimidate him into not asking the questions that burned in his mind.

Dame Pelagia smiled, showing small yellow teeth, like Michael’s. ‘You will have to work that out for yourself. I do not see why I should explain everything to you.’

‘They wanted revenge on some of the people who brought them to justice for their original crimes,’ said Michael, thinking hard to make the evidence fit into a pattern that made sense. He could not bear to leave his grandmother’s challenge unanswered. ‘We thought they came to bring chaos and tumult, but they were not so ambitious.’