A Head for Poisoning (33 page)

“No, thank you,” said Geoffrey, pushing the bowl away from him. He stood to leave, disgusted that he had allowed Julian to lead him into yet more potentially hostile territory.

“Then at least sleep here for a while,” said Adrian. He raised his hands as Geoffrey began to object. “I will not force you to stay, but I imagine you will be very much safer in my house than at the castle. And your sergeant can watch over you, if that will make you feel more comfortable.”

“If you will not listen to the physician, then take the advice of the priest,” said Helbye, pushing Geoffrey towards a bed in an alcove at the back of the room. “And I will be here, Sir Geoffrey. I will not leave you to the mercy of that murderous brood up at the castle.”

Geoffrey wanted to examine his father's body, to see if he might uncover some clues regarding the identity of his killer. And there was Rohese, too. Was she still buried in the dank depths of Godric's mattresses? If so, Geoffrey needed to talk to her, for surely she must have seen or heard something during the night. But he knew that he would never be able to walk up the hill again, and even if he did, he was in no state to do battle with Henry or one of the others if they refused to let him in. He sank down on the bed, thinking that a short doze might restore his strength, and was asleep before Helbye had finished fussing over the covers.

When he woke, it was dark, and he was aware of low voices coming from the people who were huddled around the table. Cautiously he raised his head, and saw Adrian, Francis, and Helbye deep in conversation. Julian, who had been sitting near Geoffrey, stood when she heard the rustle of straw from the bed.

Julian's movement attracted the attention of the others, and Helbye came towards him, his face anxious. Warily, Geoffrey sat up, relieved that the paralysing dizziness seemed to have gone and that the strength was back in his arms and legs. He stood.

“You deserve to feel atrocious for not taking the medicine that I so painstakingly prepared,” admonished Francis severely, referring, Geoffrey assumed, to the casual way he had flung a few powders into the bowl of warm water. “But it seems you have recovered without it anyway. And I have more good news for you. I believe I can prove you were not your father's killer.”

“I am grateful someone can,” said Geoffrey, going to sit on the bench at the table next to Father Adrian. “How have you acquired this proof?”

“As a physician, I have access to a certain knowledge of the dead,” began Francis, a touch pompously. “After I left you, I went immediately to inspect poor Sir Godric's corpse. None of your kinsmen had seen fit to lay it out in a decent manner, so I was able to inspect the scene of crime undisturbed, as it were. He was slain by a single wound to the stomach.”

“But he was stabbed in the chest,” objected Geoffrey. “I saw the knife there myself.”

“Did you, now,” said Francis thoughtfully. “Well, that clears something up, at least. As I was saying, the fatal wound was to his stomach. I imagine he would have died reasonably quickly from blood loss, but certainly not instantly. The knife, however, was embedded in his chest—as you yourself have attested.”

“I do not understand,” said Geoffrey.

He shook his head as Adrian offered him some ale. The priest took a deep draught from the beaker, and offered it a second time. Somewhat sheepishly, Geoffrey accepted, for his throat was dry and he was even more thirsty than he had been at times in the desert.

“How did the knife move from his stomach to his chest?”

“Well, it did not do it on its own,” replied Francis facetiously. “The wound in the chest had been inflicted
after
Godric had died. I can tell such things by the amount of bleeding—wounds bleed little or not at all after death, and there was virtually no bleeding from the injury to Godric's chest, unlike the gash in his stomach.”

“So someone killed my father with a fatal, but not immediately effective, wound in the stomach, and then stabbed him in the chest after he was dead?” asked Geoffrey doubtfully. “That does not sound very likely.”

“Likely or not,” said Francis haughtily, “that is how it happened. Now, the blood was still sticky although the body was cool. I estimate that Godric died sometime around dawn, or, more probably, a little earlier.”

But that did not help Geoffrey very much at all, because it did not tell him whether his father had died before or after Walter had risen and left. If he had died after, then Walter was probably as innocent of the murder as was Geoffrey. But if he had died before, then there were three possibilities. First, Walter, like Geoffrey, was drugged in some way to make him sleep through it—although he had not seemed ill that morning; second, Walter had killed Godric while Geoffrey slept, and had left Bertrada to discover the corpse; or, third, Walter had not killed Godric, but was complicit in his murder at the hands of another. And, despite Francis's claim, Geoffrey could not see how the physician's evidence proved that Geoffrey was not responsible.

Francis appeared to read his mind, for he smiled, and leaned across to dilute Geoffrey's ale with water from a jug from which Julian had been drinking.

“Avoid wines and strong ales for a day or two—the body will need time to recover. But you are interested in proving your innocence in all this, I see. Very well, then. I am almost certain that the poison used on you was some kind of poppy powder mixed with a tiny amount of the juice of ergot. You were not given enough to kill you, although whether by design or chance, I cannot be certain.”

“Chance would be my wager,” said Helbye with conviction. “Someone does not want you at the castle, lad. Whoever poisoned you wanted you dead, not sick.”

Geoffrey was thoughtful. Someone had gone to some trouble to ensure that his dagger was used to kill Godric, and that he was still in the room when the body was found. Was it because—as the Earl had claimed—someone had wanted him accused of his father's murder? Or was Helbye right, and the poisoner had actually wanted him dead? He sighed, not knowing what to think, or where to start looking for answers.

He turned to Francis. “Were the wound in Godric's stomach and the wound in his chest caused by the same implement?”

Francis's hitherto smug expression faded. “I did not think to look. How could I have forgotten to test for something so obvious?”

“No matter,” said Geoffrey. “I can look myself.” He drank more of the watered ale. “But you still have not explained your reasoning that the murderer was not me.”

“Next to the hearth was an opened bottle of wine and an empty bowl. Both contained the unmistakable aroma of poppy and ergot. You have already told me that you consumed something before you slept and, judging from your condition when you came to me, you could not possibly have been in a fit state to kill Sir Godric before dawn. The poppy would have had an effect almost immediately, and you were still under the ergot's influence when you came here this morning.”

Geoffrey did not consider Francis's logic to be without its flaws, especially since the bowl was empty because he had tipped Hedwise's broth down the garderobe shaft, and he certainly would not wish to hang his defence in a court of law on such a fragile thread. But at least it served to gain him another ally—two, if he included the priest Adrian, and, in a place like Goodrich, allies might mean the difference between life and death.

He rubbed his eyes, and tried to make some sense out of the evidence Francis had provided him. “So both the wine and the broth were treated with ergot?”

“Not just ergot,” said Francis pedantically. “There was poppy powder, too.”

“Why bother with two poisons?” asked Geoffrey. “It seems that the poppy powder would have served its purpose alone.”

“There are a number of possibilities,” said Francis. “Ergot in large quantities is fatal, but the poisoner probably did not want you wandering about the castle waking everyone as you died publicly—hence he or she added the poppy so that you would slip away quietly. Or perhaps each was the preferred compound of a different poisoner.”

“You mean that two people at the castle tried independently to poison me last night?” queried Geoffrey incredulously. “I know I am not popular with my brothers and sisters, but I do not think anyone but Henry holds genuine murderous intentions.”

“I think you overestimate your claim on your family's affections,” said Adrian sombrely. “I heard in the village this morning that Godric presented a copy of his latest will to you, naming you as his sole beneficiary. You have been away, so you cannot know the importance to which the inheritance of Goodrich has soared among your brethren. Walter, Bertrada, Stephen, Henry, Olivier, and even Joan and Hedwise would not hesitate to kill to get Goodrich.”

The priest's words were far from comforting, and it was with some gratitude that Geoffrey accepted Helbye's offer of a bed by his hearth that night. The knight huddled near the embers, twisted slightly to one side to avoid the drips that came through the roof from the rain outside, and thought about what he had learned. There was no question whatsoever in his mind now that Enide had been the victim of some foul plot, the prize of which was the inheritance of Goodrich. She had known about the documents that proved Walter's illegitimacy and that claimed Sigurd, not Godric, was the father of Stephen. The poachers Henry hanged had been innocent.

Godric claimed that Enide had burned the documents. Had she? Or had she kept them for some reason of her own? If the latter were true Geoffrey knew exactly where she would have hidden them, and resolved to look the following day. Was that why Adrian noticed that she had been distracted the morning of her death, or was her lack of concentration because she had arranged to meet someone—Caerdig perhaps? And why did someone poison her, but not fatally, if the intention was to secure her silence?

He rubbed his head, and took another sip of the water Helbye had left him. He was horrified at the notion that two members of his family would try independently to poison him the same night. After all, he had been to some pains to convince them that he did not want Goodrich. Of course, they had not believed him, and had even concocted some distorted story about him bribing Ine to return from the Holy Land to poison Godric.

Geoffrey frowned in the darkness. The physician had said that he had detected ergot in both the wine and the broth. Geoffrey tried to remember what little he knew about ergot. It was a fungus that poisoned crops, and prolonged or large doses caused gangrene. Godric had no gangrene, so did that mean that the person who had poisoned Godric was different from the person or persons who had poisoned Geoffrey?

A dim memory also told him that ergot was supposed to have a fishy flavour. The fish broth had certainly tasted fishy, and the smell had made him feel sick. But then, he recalled, so had the sip of wine that he had taken afterwards. So, had someone wanted him to take the poison sufficiently desperately to tamper with both broth and wine? Was it Stephen, who brought the bottle? Was it Hedwise, who made the broth? Was it Walter, who had insisted Geoffrey finish the broth or risk offending Hedwise? Or was it someone else, knowing that wine and broth would be taken to Geoffrey, and using Stephen, Hedwise, and Walter as innocent participants?

Geoffrey remembered Rohese. Perhaps she might have seen or heard something, assuming that she had remained in her hiding place, and had not emerged to kill Godric in his sleep. But that would mean that she probably also poisoned Geoffrey, and he was only too aware that she had had other, far more immediate, matters on her mind than taking the time to indulge in poisoning and murder. And in any case, if Rohese were going to poison anyone, it was far more likely that it would have been the Earl.

And how did the Earl fit into all this? Geoffrey could not imagine that Godric had made a will citing the evil Shrewsbury as sole beneficiary, and he did not believe that Godric would accept an annulment of his marriage without mentioning it to his children—it would have been exactly the kind of revelation he would have relished making. And if that were true, then the will that the Earl had flaunted earlier that day was a forgery.