===OO=OOO=OO===
Jerome did not look at me, or the relic, again, but allowed Prior Mortimus to lead him down the nave in a painful shuffle. I watched him go. If Jerome had told me he had seen Alice visit Mark Smeaton the day I questioned him, instead of playing games, I could have arrested her there and then and with Singleton's killing solved I might have uncovered Edwig sooner. Then Mark would not have died, nor Gabriel. Yet somehow I did not feel anger towards him; all emotion seemed to have been leached out of me.
I knelt and peered at the relic where it lay on the floor. The casket was of richly decorated gold, the stones set in it the largest emeralds I had ever seen. Through the glass I made out a hand, skewered by the wrist to a piece of ancient black wood with a broad-headed nail, lying on a cushion of purple velvet. It was a brown, mummified thing, but discernibly a hand; I could even make out what looked like calluses on the fingers. Could it truly be the hand of the thief who had died with Christ, accepted him on the Cross? I touched the glass, with a second's mad hope that the pains I felt in every joint might vanish, my hump disappear and my back become whole and normal like poor Mark's that I had so envied. But there was nothing, only the sound of my fingernail tapping the glass.
And then I saw a tiny flash of bright gold from the corner of my eye, descending through the air. Something hit the tiled floor a couple of feet away with a tinkle. It spun and came to rest. I stared at it. It was a gold coin, a noble, King Henry's head staring up at me from the floor.
I looked upward. I was standing under the bell tower, above was the tangle of ropes and pulleys that had been the subject of the jests against Edwig at supper. But something was different. The workmen's basket was not there. It had been pulled up into the bell tower.
'He's up there!' I breathed. So that was where he had hidden the gold, in that basket. I should have looked more carefully at what lay under the cover when I had seen it before, the time I went to the bell tower with Mortimus. It was a clever hiding place. So that was why he had stopped the repair work.
I had been fearful when I climbed the winding stairs to the bell tower with Prior Mortimus, but this time I felt nothing but savage, determined fury as I struggled upwards, ignoring the screams of protest from every limb. Emotion had not been drained from me after all, it merely slept. Now an anger such as I had never known before impelled me on. I reached the tower where the bell ropes were. The basket was there, lying empty on its side, a couple more gold coins on the floor. There was no one in the room. I stared at the steps giving access to the bells themselves. More gold coins had been spilled there. I realized anyone here must have heard me climbing up; had he retreated to the bell room?
I climbed the steps carefully, holding my staff before me. I turned the handle of the door and quickly stepped back, using my staff to thrust it open. It was just as well I did, for a figure shot out and swung an unlit wooden torch at the space where I would have been standing. The improvised club jarred harmlessly on my staff and I caught a glimpse of the bursar's face, red and furious, his eyes wide and staring as I had never seen them.
'You are discovered, Brother Edwig,' I called. 'I know about your boat to France! I arrest you in the king's name for theft and murder!'
He darted back inside and I heard his feet pattering away across the boards, accompanied by a metallic chinking sound that puzzled me.