Revelation (56 page)

We went out and crossed the road to the tumbledown shop. 'I see no guard,' Harsnet said.

'Knowing him, he may have refused to have one.' 'Then he must be made to.' 'There I agree.'

We crossed the road and knocked at the door. After a moment Cantrell opened it. 'It is you, again, sir,' he said without enthusiasm. He peered at Harsnet through his glasses. 'Who is this?'

'I am the London assistant coroner,' Harsnet said, mildly enough. 'Master Shardlake is working with me. We wanted to see how you fared. We hoped to see a guard at the house.'

'He is out the back.'

'May we come in?'

Cantrell's shoulders sagged wearily as we followed him down the musty corridor to the parlour, Harsnet leading the way. The place still smelled of unwashed skin and bad food. We went into the dirty little parlour. I saw the window to the yard had been repaired. Outside a burly man wearing a sword sat on an old box, eating bread and cheese. Cantrell gestured at him. 'He insisted. I don't want a man in the house. He can stay out there.'

I looked round the parlour. There was a broken dish on the floor by the table, pottage leaking into the floorboards.

'My dinner,' Cantrell said gloomily. 'I dropped it when you knocked. I tried to put it on the table, but missed.'

'You should get your eyes seen to,' I said. 'Remember I said I know a physician who would see you for no fee.' I would pay Guy's fee, I decided. If I could do it for Bealknap, I could do it for poor Cantrell.

Cantrell stared at me. I wondered what his eyes looked like exposed, what disease ailed them. He was silent a moment, then said, 'I am afraid, sir. Afraid he will say I am going blind.'

'Or he may say new glasses would help you. Let me make an appointment.'

'How long will I have to have that man here guarding me?' he asked sullenly.

'He may be needed for some time yet,' Harsnet said. 'I have to tell you that Francis Lockley has disappeared and the woman he was living with has been killed. The man who broke in here — could it possibly have been Lockley?'

Cantrell stared at us, his mouth falling open with surprise. 'No, it wasn't Francis. He was short, and the man who broke in here was tall. Dr Goddard was a tall man.'

'With a large mole on the side of his nose, Serjeant Shardlake said?'

'Yes.'

'And with a cut on his head after you thwacked him with that piece of wood,' Barak added approvingly.

'I don't know, I don't know,' Cantrell said with sudden petulance. 'Why do you all have to come here, asking me questions? I do not understand what is happening. I just want to be left alone, in peace.'

Harsnet looked at him without speaking for a moment, getting his attention. 'We have just been to see Dean Benson,' he said. 'He told us about the wretched scheme of Goddard and Lockley's, extracting patients' teeth under dwale. He told us you reported them to him.'

'Why did you not tell me?' I asked.

Cantrell sank down on a stool, a gesture of utter weariness. Ts that why Dr Goddard is after me?' he asked. 'Because I told?'

'Dean Benson never told Goddard about that,' I said. 'But why did you not tell me?'

'Much good it did me when I told on him the first time. I always suspected Dr Goddard guessed what I'd done, though he never said anything. His tongue seemed harsher than ever after that.' The young man sighed deeply. 'It does no good, trying to do right. It is better to be left alone.' He looked up at us with those huge swimming eyes behind his glasses. 'It wasn't just patients they took teeth from, you know. Word got around among the beggars and pedlars that there was money to be had with no pain for young folks with good teeth. Many healthy folks came to the infirmary.' I thought suddenly of the attractive young woman I had seen yesterday. 'Dr Goddard could pick and choose. I was always surprised nobody in authority knew, all the beggars did. But no one takes notice of beggars, do they?' He relapsed into silence, staring at the floor.

'I will have a word with the guard.' Harsnet looked at Cantrell, shook his head, then went out of the back door. He spoke briefly with the guard, then returned.

'There's been nothing suspicious while he's been here. But he's unhappy at not being allowed into the house. He even has to sleep in the shed which is full of old carpenter's junk. Why will you not let him in, Goodman Cantrell?'

'I just want to be left alone,' Cantrell repeated. I feared he might burst into tears. I put a hand on Harsnet's arm, and he followed me out of the parlour. I turned in the doorway and spoke to Cantrell. 'I will speak to my physician friend. I will arrange an appointment for you.' He did not reply, just sat looking at the floor.

O
utside,
H
arsnet shook
his head again. 'The smell of that place. Did you see how dirty his clothes were?' 'Yes, he is in a bad way. Poor creature.'

'Going the same way as Adam Kite, by the looks of him,' Barak said.

'I will help him if I can,' I said.

'You would help all the mad folks in London. They will drive you as mad as they.'

'Serjeant Shardlake merely wishes to help,' Harsnet said reprove ingly. I rubbed my arm at a sudden twinge from my wound. 'How is your arm?' Harsnet said. 'I forgot to ask.'

'Much better. But I have just had the stitches out. I hope that guard knows his business. I don't want to lose Cantrell too.'

Harsnet looked at me. I could see that like Barak he thought I was getting too involved in the troubles of the young ex
-
monk. 'He's competent enough. He is the last man I have. If we need any more we will have to rely on Sir Thomas Seymour.' He sighed heavily. 'In the end it will be as God wills.'

H
arsnet returned to
his office at nearby Whitehall, and Barak and I rode home along the Strand. It was late afternoon now and the shadows were lengthening.

'What the hell happened in that tavern last night?' Barak asked. 'Is Lockley the killer, and killing his wife part of his plan? If that were so, surely he would leave her to the end, as the seventh victim, not reveal his identity now?'

'I cannot see him as the killer. He does not have the fierce, cold intelligence the killer must have. Unless he is a good actor. Guy says the killer must be acting most of the time, to be able to pretend to be normal.' I shook my head. 'But how could Lockley know anything about the law, enough to prepare that letter for Roger?'

'I don't know. I can't see it being Goddard either, though. It doesn't feel right, somehow.'

'I agree. Dr Goddard sounds more and more like a man obsessed with status and money, not with religious feeling.'

Barak grinned sourly. 'Unlike our pure brother, coroner Harsnet.'

'He's not so bad. He has some good qualities.'

'He'd like to convert you. Make you a godly man too.' He snorted. 'How could anyone believe in a merciful God after what we've seen in that tavern?'

'I suppose some would say that God gives man free will and if he abuses it that is his doing, not God's.'

'Try telling that to Mrs Bunce.'

AS
we turned
into Chancery Lane I remembered that I had agreed to see how Adam Kite was faring. And I must ask Guy to see Cantrell. I could understand the young man's fear. What if Guy told him he would end wholly blind;

We took the horses round to the stable, then went into the house. As soon as I opened the door, Joan came hurrying down the stairs. 'Dorothy Elliard's maid Margaret has been round with a message,' she said.

'Has something happened to her;' My heart was suddenly in my mouth.

'No. She's all right. But she has a Master Bealknap in her lodgings. He collapsed on her doorstep. Margaret says he's at death's door.'

'Bealknap;' I asked incredulously. 'But he barely knows Dorothy.' 'That was the message, sir. It came half an hour ago. Margaret asked you to go over there as soon as you returned.' 'I'll go now.'

I opened the door and hurried back down the path, walking rapidly round to Lincoln's Inn, where candles were being lit in the windows as darkness fell. Margaret let me in, her plump face anxious.

'What is going on?' I asked.

'I heard a knocking at the door early this afternoon, sir, and when I answered I found this man in a barrister's robe collapsed on the doorstep. The mistress got the cook to put him to bed. He said you knew him—'

'I'm in here,' Dorothy called from the parlour.

'I'd better go back to him, sir,' Margaret said. 'He's in a bad way.' She hurried away with a rustle of skirts. I went into the parlour, where Dorothy was standing by the fire, studying the discoloured section of the wooden frieze.

'I must get this section redone. It was so poorly repaired, it irritates me now I spend so much time sitting here.' Her face was pale, and I sensed she was making an effort to stay calm. 'Thank you for coming, Matthew.'

'What has happened? Why is Bealknap here?'

'Margaret found him collapsed on the doorstep. Asking for help. She called me. He was lying there white as a sheet, gasping for air.' There was a slight tremble in her voice. I realized the sight must have brought back the memory of Roger, lying by the fountain. Damn Bealknap, I thought.

'Margaret said you've put him to bed.'

She spread her hands. 'What else could I do? He said he was dying, asked for my help. Though I barely knew him, and liked him no better than you did.'

'He knew a woman would not turn him away.' I frowned. 'I will go and deal with him.'

'Matthew,' Dorothy said quietly. 'Do not be too harsh. I think he is very ill.' 'We'll see.'

T
hey had put
Bealknap in a bedroom; from the schoolboy
-
sized tennis racquet on a wooden chest I guessed it was Samuel's old room. Margaret was leaning over the bed, trying to get Bealknap to drink something from a cup. He lay in the bed in his shirt. I was shocked by how bad he looked, his face against the pillows as pale as death in the light of the candle on the bedside table. He was conscious, though; he stared at me with wild, terrified eyes.

Margaret turned to me. She looked distressed. She, too, had seen Roger's corpse. 'I'm trying to get him to drink some weak beer,' she said.

'Leave us,' I said gently.

She put down the cup and left the room. I looked down at Bealknap. It was a strange thing to see him so close up, and so helpless. His disordered yellow hair was thinning, a large bald patch at the crown. Some of the drink Margaret had given him had spilled around his mouth. He looked utterly helpless, and his frantic stare showed he knew it.

'Why have you come here?' I asked quietly. 'You know what this household has suffered.'

'I knew — Mistress Elliard - was still here.' His voice was faint, his breath rasping. 'I knew she was kind. I have — no one else — to help me.'

'Anyone would help a fellow barrister in a state of collapse.'

'Not me. Everyone hates me.' He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment. 'I am finished, Shardlake. I cannot eat, the food just passes through me. Dr Archer said the last purge would wear off, but it has not. And I bleed sometimes, I bleed down there.'

I sighed. 'I will arrange for Dr Malton to come and see you here.'

'I think it is too late. My vision blurs, I feel faint all the time.' With a great effort, he pulled a skinny hand from beneath the covers and grasped my wrist. I tried not to flinch at the unexpected gesture. 'I have never believed in God,' he whispered, still fixing me with his agonized gaze. 'Not since I was a child. The world is a battleground, predators and prey. The rules and conventions of the law only disguise the fact. But now I am frightened. The Catholics say if you confess your sins and repent at the end, God will receive you into Heaven. I need a priest, one of the old type.'

I took a deep breath. 'I will have Dr Malton fetched now, and he may know a priest who will confess you. But I think, Bealknap, with proper treatment you may come round. I will send Margaret back in.' I tried to rise, but he still held me fast by the wrist, his grip surprisingly strong.

'You believe, don't you?' he asked.

I hesitated. 'I have no — certainty. I have not had for some time.'

He looked surprised. 'I always thought you did. All your concern for rules and ethics, the way you always looked down on me, I thought you were one of the godly folk.'

'No.'

'Then why help me now? When you hate me? I have done some hard things to you. Because you looked down on me as though I were a louse, not a man.' A brief flash of anger in the pale eyes.