A Deadly Brew by Susanna Gregory Page B

rodent. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked doubtfully.
    Bartholomew nodded. ‘I did not see it drink the wine, but the cat …’ He looked around him. ‘Is there a cat in the College?’ he called to Colton. ‘A big ginger one?’
    Colton paused in his prayers, and treated him to a suspicious look. ‘Yes. Why?’
    ‘Have you seen it recently?’
    Colton looked angry. ‘Isaac is murdered, Philius’s room set alight and there are robbers at large, and you enquire after the cat?’
    As if on cue, the cat entered, still staggering uneasily on its feet.
    Colton gave it an unfriendly look. ‘It drinks. It haunts the storerooms and kitchens in search of ale and wine, and needs to be carefully watched or it smashes things.’
    ‘We have one or two Fellows who are the same,’ said Michael drolly. Bartholomew picked up the cat, and inspected it a second time. It looked back at him through contentedly half-closed eyes and began to purr loudly. It struggled when he looked inside its mouth, but purred again when he rubbed its fur absently. He had been right the first time: the cat showed no signs of poisoning.
    He shrugged at Michael, who sighed, and gestured to Isaac’s body.
    ‘What can you tell us about his death?’
    Bartholomew put the cat down, and knelt to re-examine Isaac. ‘He was hit on the head first, and I think the blow was sufficient to kill him. Can you see how I am able to move the bones of his skull in my hands? The brain underneath must have been seriously damaged.’
    The small room filled with unpleasant grating sounds. Colton turned white and Michael looked away in revulsion. ‘Please, Matt!’ he said. ‘We do not need to know every gruesome detail.’
    Bartholomew grinned at him behind Colton’s back. ‘I think his hands were bound behind him and he was hauled up to the rafters by the neck after he was struck. There are no marks on his wrists, so he did not struggle as he would have done had he been alive and conscious. Whoever did this wanted to make certain he was dead.’
    ‘They did a good job,’ said Michael soberly. ‘Could they not tell the blow to the head had killed him? Was it really necessary to hang him too?’
    Bartholomew looked at Isaac’s head. ‘It was probably dark, and, although the bones of the skull are smashed, the skin is barely broken. Perhaps they thought they had only stunned him. Leaving someone to hang is a reliable way of ensuring death if you are in a hurry and cannot afford to wait.’
    ‘But so is stabbing,’ pointed out Colton. ‘And a quick thrust with a knife would be considerably easier than heaving an inert body up by its neck.’
    ‘True,’ said Michael. ‘But perhaps they had no weapons. They might have stabbed Matt, rather than engage in all that pointless struggling if they had.’ He gestured around the room. ‘And there are no knives here that could have been used, although there is plenty of rope.’
    Bartholomew looked into the corner where Michael pointed and saw several lengths of rope discarded there that had been used to tie the sacks of flour. He was about to stand when a patch on one of Isaac’s hands caught his eye. He looked more closely, and saw the left palm was blistered and the surrounding skin was inflamed. Bartholomew racked his brains, trying to recall whether the injury had been present before Isaac had gone to the storeroom, but the memory eluded him. The porter at Valence Marie had complained of a burned hand after he had touched the bottles from St Bernard’s Hostel that Bartholomew had left in his care, and now it seemed as though Isaac might have sustained a similar wound after using the wine to prepare Philius’s purge.
    Bartholomew and Michael took their leave of Colton, collected Cynric and walked the short distance back to Michaelhouse.
    ‘I was wrong about the outlaws,’ said Michael. ‘A band of thieves intent on robbery would not come without knives or swords with which to protect themselves. It must all relate to