Free A Poisonous Plot by Susanna Gregory

after he had closed it.
    ‘His father will not be impressed by that cavalier attitude towards security,’ remarked Michael, watching him swagger away. ‘But it suits our purposes. Come on.’
    Bartholomew baulked. ‘If I am caught examining someone’s dead wife without permission, the town will rise against the University for certain.’
    ‘Then we must ensure that you are not caught. I will guard the door, while you go in. Be ready to make a run for it if you hear me hoot like an owl.’
    ‘ Can you hoot like an owl?’
    Michael flapped an impatient hand. ‘Hurry up. You are wasting time.’
    Heart hammering, Bartholomew stepped inside. A lamp had been left burning by one of the vats, so he grabbed it and made his way to the living quarters at the back of the house, expecting at any moment to bump into Shirwynk, back early from the festivities. But he met no one, and it was almost an anticlimax when he found Letia’s body on a pallet in the parlour.
    He examined her quickly, ears pricked for anything that sounded remotely like a bird. However, it was a cacophony of cheers from the High Street that eventually drove him outside again.
    ‘That was the procession ending,’ whispered Michael. ‘Shirwynk will be home soon, so let us be off before anyone spots us. Well? How did she die? And please do not say dizziness.’
    ‘I could not tell. There are no marks of violence, and certainly nothing to suggest she swallowed the kind of poison that killed Frenge. To all intents and purposes, she appears to have died of natural causes. Yet there are compounds that kill without leaving any trace …’
    ‘So was she murdered or not?’ hissed Michael impatiently.
    ‘I have already told you,’ said Bartholomew, equally testy. ‘I could not tell.’
    ‘But you must! You were gone an age – you must have seen something to help us find out why Shirwynk’s fellow brewer and wife died on the same day.’
    ‘It is suspicious,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘But I am afraid poor Letia provided no answers.’

CHAPTER 3
    ‘Lord, I feel sick,’ muttered Michael, as the Fellows took their places at the high table the following morning. Meals in College were meant to be taken in silence, so that everyone could listen to the Bible Scholar chanting the scriptures, but it was a rule they rarely followed, and the hapless reader invariably struggled to make himself heard over the buzz of conversation. ‘I think I ate something that was past its best last night.’
    The Benedictine was not the only one to be fragile. The feast had been glorious, reminiscent of the splendid affairs they had enjoyed a decade earlier, when the College had been flush with funds. There had been mountains of meat and fish, wine in abundance, bread made with white flour rather than the usual barley-and-sawdust combination, and enough cakes to feed an army. Bartholomew had stayed sober, lest he was called out on a medical emergency, but no one else had demonstrated such restraint, and now there were sore heads aplenty.
    Langelee was pale, and kept both hands pressed to his temples as he mumbled a grace that comprised a string of half-remembered Latin quotations, including part of a recipe for horse-liniment. No one but Bartholomew seemed to notice. Wauter had dark circles under his eyes and winced when Langelee raised his voice for a final amen, while William’s habit was not only splattered with a quantity of grease and custard that was remarkable even for that foul garment, but it was rumpled, suggesting he had slept in it.
    The remaining Fellows were Suttone and Clippesby, both swaying in a way that suggested they might still be drunk. Clippesby was a Dominican who talked to animals and claimed they spoke back, so was generally deemed to be insane. He had no beasts about his person that day, however, and when the College cat rubbed around his ankles, it was ignored. Suttone was a portly Carmelite famous for his conviction that the plague was poised to return