Chapter Thirty-Three
Without another thought, she tried to push her way into the room but the door was barred. She raised her hand to beat on it when it suddenly opened, and the Inspector’s broad frame was blocking the way.
‘You just can’t stop getting in the way, can you, Linnet? This is why there shouldn’t be women in men’s holy places. We have nunneries for that, no need to disturb our devotions.’
She was trying to see past him to find Isabelle, but the room was dark and he wouldn’t let her past.
‘No, no, you’re not coming in here. You and I are going for a walk. I’m going to teach you a lesson.’
He clutched her arms and half-dragged, half-carried her down the night stairs into the Priory Church. It was just after Compline and everyone was in their cells or at the inn, or in the Chapter House. There was no one to see or help her. The weather was too wild for anyone to be out and looking.
She opened her mouth to scream but his hand quickly smothered it, the force almost stopping her breathing.
She gagged, thinking of those dark wiry hairs on it and he stopped, waiting almost patiently to see if she would vomit.
Then he hissed, ‘I don’t think so,’ slapping her hard across the mouth, drawing blood, an iron taste as she licked it off her lips.
Where was he taking her and what had happened to Isabelle? She could feel herself shaking as she was pushed and pulled through the south aisle.
He’d not brought a candle and it was dark, the gathering storm sucking any remaining light from the stars and the moon, only a little light coming through the big windows. Once or twice he stumbled and she tensed, ready to run for it – but his hand was ever firm on her.
Near the front of the church now, he dragged her up more and more steps. They were climbing the right one of the two front towers by way of a winding staircase, hidden in the thick walls of the towers.
Eventually they stopped. They were in the small room at the top of the tower, with a broken, run-down, open window looking out over the island.
Linnet could see the odd flash of a candle, and hear the faint sounds of laughter and some shouts, maybe the masons still.
Would they hear her if she called? They might.
But by the time they got up here, the Inspector would have killed her.
‘You wouldn’t stop digging, would you?’ He spat the words in her face. She could hardly see him but she could smell him. Unwashed, a faint scent of the incense from the Priory, and something sharp and bitter, fear? Why would he be scared of her?
‘What was I doing?’
If she could keep him talking, perhaps she could think of a way to escape.
‘Asking questions. Talking about Durham.’
‘Were you the killer, then?’
‘No, that man is dead. God saw fit to save me and turn me into someone new. He has a purpose for me.’
She could imagine his fanatical, staring eyes. It was working. He was talking now, although there was little sense in what he said.
‘That stupid bitch and her stupid brother, they could have ruined my life. It was my right to beat her, everyone knew that. He had no business coming over, sticking his nose in. And she wouldn’t stop screaming, so I held her under.
It didn’t take much. I shouldn’t have killed them.
I know that now, but God had His reasons.
He took me to that knocker at the cathedral and I knew – I knew when I felt it under my hand, this would be a new life for me. ’
‘So you went to the cathedral?’
She thought she would keep prompting him. Even in her fear, she still needed to know what had happened, why Tom was dead now too.
‘Yes and that Prior, he was an arsehole, didn’t want anything to do with me. Wanted me gone as quick as he could and didn’t care which of his monks he sent off with me.’
He sounded aggrieved, as if he had expected better treatment for his sins. She noticed how the refined voice of the cleric had slipped. He was a common northerner now and not so pretty with his words.
‘It weren’t a long trip to the coast but those two fools didn’t listen to me and we got lost, wandering in a forest for a couple of days.
Then we all got sick. It was dark when I woke up and they were quiet.
I called out and called out. I thought they were punishing me, keeping silent.
You don’t know how horrible that was for me, hearing the silence.
I hate the silence. When I dragged myself up, I touched one.
His face was waxy and cold and I knew. I’d been saved and they’d been struck down. ’
He laughed, the incredulity of the moment coming back to him.
‘Do you know how hard it is to undress a dead body? They’re so heavy, as if something is added in death.
I did it though, and got him in my clothes, those robes with the yellow mark on them, the penitent robes, and me in his habit.
I told a passing pedlar about the bodies in the wood and to get word to Durham, then I went away, abroad, even learnt some of the tongue over there.
They thought I was strange at the monasteries I went to, but since that was what they thought, that’s what I became, a strange monk.
I never meant to come back to Durham but I thought I’d be safe, no one would remember me anymore as that man who knocked. ’
‘So who did?’
‘Oswyn, of course. I remember him when I came in that day, a skinny novice then but prying about, always looking. And here I tried to avoid him, but he found me after prayers and started insinuating. He was never going to stop.’
Oswyn probably would have kept the secret, Linnet thought. He lived for other people’s secrets, their weaknesses, collecting them like Pol collected shiny objects.
‘You drowned him?’
‘I didn’t mean to but God led me to the shore that morning, and when I saw him going to the water, I knew what to do.’
‘And Maykin?’
‘He kept saying he knew everything Oswyn knew. I had to find out. I sent him that note to meet me but he knew nothing, but by then he’d come to meet me in the night, I couldn’t let him go.
He stumbled first though, brought the kiln stones down on him.
I just added a few on top, couldn’t bear the sound of him begging me to take them off. ’
She felt a shudder run through her – that poor boy thinking even then that the Inspector would help him.
‘So, why Tom?’
‘Tom? Was that his name? The fisherman?’
He hadn’t even known his name. That made it worse. She went to say something but he was continuing.
‘He saw me arguing with Oswyn. When Oswyn was found dead, he came to see me. Didn’t know what I’d done but wanted paying for his silence anyway. I did for a while but he was going to keep coming back.’
So the gaming had done for Tom in the end, his need for coin driving him to blackmail this killer.
‘And you hanged him?’
‘I hit him over the head first. I had to work hard to get him up on the beam, worth it though – to expose him as the sinner he was. God didn’t want him troubling me.’
Again that satisfaction in his voice.
‘And Brother Luke? Why did you attack him?’
He didn’t answer that, turning his attention back to her.
‘And it was all working out and then you and that child and that evil bird started meddling where you had no business. She was in the Chapter House and asking everyone all those questions. And that bird. Looking at me like she knew everything.’
Isabelle. Her heart fell again.
‘Well I won’t be troubled by them anymore, nor those black staring eyes, watching me, I wrung her neck. I’d have got the other one an’ all if you hadn’t come knocking.’
And that was when her fear left her and she was consumed with rage.
This man who had killed again and again – and now Isabelle, put down like vermin.
Linnet was tired of being overlooked and powerless but now that was over.
She still had her cloak on from the trip to the island, and beneath was her pouch with her pens – and her knife.
He was still talking, still spinning stories. And in every story he seemed to be the one who was wronged, despite all his murderous violence. But she wasn’t listening, she was slowly easing the knife from her pouch.
For a moment the clouds parted, allowing a splash of moonlight into the tower and she saw his face, alight with an entitled madness. She was no longer thinking but suddenly the knife was free and she thrust it hard into his stomach.
He stopped talking and looked at her with incredulity and surprise.
‘Why do that? You can’t harm me, I told you God has a purpose for me.
He saved me from the sickness before. You can’t stop God.
He made the Bishop favour me when we met in France.
I told him I could help him, help him find out the sins the monks had.
He had so many places to look at, he was grateful of my help. ’
His voice faded. He looked down at the knife and pulled. She shrank back against the wall, not sure what to do. She was still burning with the rage at the thought of Isabelle, but the fear washed back over her.
He had the knife in his hand now but he too seemed undecided what to do. The blood flowed from his stomach, black as ink in what little light there was. Had she done enough to kill him? She knew a knife to the stomach was bad, but how far in had she pushed it?
The stones of the wall were cold and damp against her back. The clouds rushed across the moon’s face again and the threatening storm finally broke. It was completely dark now in the tower and the noise of the heavy rain was so loud she couldn’t see or hear the Inspector. Could she get away?
Too late. Heat on her face from his breath, and his hand on her arm again, wet with his blood.
‘You bitch.’ It was said calmly, without venom, almost as if it were nothing but a serviceable fact. Quiet but he was close enough for her to hear above the storm’s roaring.
He’d dropped the knife and his other hand was now grasping for her neck. She was sure he’d kill her if he could seize her by the neck.
She struck out blindly and her punch caught him in the wound. He screamed and let go of her arm and neck. She shoved him hard with both hands and ran.
She groped her way around the wall and found the steps. The stones were rough cut here, not the precise workmanship lower down in the Priory. She inched her way down fast in the pitch black.
He was shouting something she couldn’t hear, but she did hear crashing about, a maddened bear.
The steps went on for so long. She moved faster as she grew in confidence but where was she going to go when she got to the bottom?
She was almost there when there was a yell, a roar, and then a sudden rush of movement as the Inspector half-jumped, half-fell down the last steps on top of her, pinning her on the cold floor.
It seemed to be over and she felt like giving up, the weight of him crushing the hope out of her. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t talking. She summoned the last of her strength and shoved him, hard.
He rolled off her but didn’t move, and she struggled to get up. Everything in her wanted to run but she was rooted to the spot. She had to know.
She felt along the cold wall until she was touching the rough cloth of his habit. She stooped and listened. His chest was still. He must be dead.