I did not answer him.
He took a paper from his desk, his hand trembling slightly. 'Earlier I looked again at the draft Instrument of Surrender Commissioner Singleton gave me.' He quoted: '"We do profoundly consider that the manner and trade of living which we and others of our pretensed religion have practised and used many days, doth most principally consist in dumb ceremonies and in certain constitutions of Roman and other foreign potentates." I thought at first Lord Cromwell wanted our lands and wealth, that passage was merely a bonus for the reformers.' He looked up at me. 'But after what I have heard from Lewes — it's a standard clause, isn't it? All the houses are to come down. And after this Scarnsea is finished.'
'Three people have died most horribly,' I said, 'yet you seem concerned only with your own survival.'
He looked puzzled. 'Three? No, sir, only two. One, if the girl killed herself—'
'Brother Guy believes Simon Whelplay was poisoned.'
He frowned. 'Then he should have told me. As abbot.'
'I asked him to keep it to himself for the time being.'
He stared at me. When he spoke again it was almost a whisper.
'You should have seen this house just five years ago, before the king's divorce. Everything ordered and secure. Prayer and devotion, the summer timetable then the winter, unchanging, centuries old. The Benedictines have given me such a life as I could never have had in the world; a ship's chandler's son raised to abbot.' He gave a sad flicker of a smile. 'It's not just myself I mourn for, Commissioner; it's the tradition, the life. Already these last two years order has started to break down. We all used to have the same beliefs, think the same way, but already the reforms have brought discord, disagreement. And now murder. Dissolution,' he whispered. 'Dissolution.' I saw two great tears take form in the corners of his eyes. 'I will sign the Instrument of Surrender,' he said quietly. 'I have no alternative, have I?'
I shook my head slowly.
'I will get the pension Commissioner Singleton promised?'
'Yes, my lord, you will get your pension. I wondered when we would come to that.'
'First, though, I will have to obtain the formal agreement of the brethren. I hold everything in trust for them, you see.'
'Do not do so quite yet. But when I give the word, tell them.'
He nodded dumbly, lowering his head again to hide his tears. I looked at him. The prize Singleton had sought so earnestly had fallen into my lap, the murders had broken the abbot. And now I thought I knew who the murderer was, who had killed them all.
===OO=OOO=OO===
I found Brother Guy in his dispensary. Mark sat on a stool beside him, still in his servant's clothes. The infirmarian was cleaning knives in a bowl of water, stained brownish-green. The cadaver lay on the table, covered with the blanket, for which I was grateful. Mark's face was pale, and even the infirmarian's dark features had an underlying pallor, as though there were ashes under his skin.
'I have been examining the body,' he said quietly. 'I cannot be sure, but from her height and build I think it is the girl Orphan. And the hair was fair. But I can tell you how she died. Her neck was broken.' He lowered the blanket, exposing that dreadful head. He rotated it slowly; it swung loose, the vertebrae dislocated. I fought down nausea.
'Murdered then.'
'She couldn't have done that going into the pond. Master Poer says the bottom is thick silt.'
I nodded. 'Thank you, Brother. Mark, those other things we found, are they in our room? We have a call to make. Have you a change of clothes?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Go and put them on. You shouldn't be going around dressed as a servant.'
Mark left us and I took his stool. The infirmarian bowed his head.
'First Simon Whelplay poisoned under my nose, and now it seems this poor girl who used to be my assistant murdered too. And I thought her a thief.'