Murder most holy

an empty stomach, Sir John. Whatever would Lady Maude say?’
    ‘Bugger that!’
    ‘Shall I tell her you said so?’
    Cranston bit the quick of his thumb nail.
    ‘Some watered ale, then you’ll have my attention.’ Athelstan served him and told Cranston about the conclusions he had reached in the sanctuary behind the altar. The coroner heard him out and patted him affectionately on the shoulder.
    ‘My thoughts exactly,’ he stated. ‘I had wondered whether to follow that path but it seemed so bizarre. Well, it’s heigh-ho to Father Prior. We’ll need his permission.’
    ‘Not yet, Sir John. After Nones.’
    Cranston rose. ‘In which case I’ll do my ablutions and break my fast. You’ll join me?’
    ‘No, Sir John. Tell the kitchen you are eating for both of us.’
    As Cranston stumped back upstairs noisily to wash and dress himself, Athelstan began to study the parchment Fitzwolfe had provided the previous day. He found the entries rather sad and pathetic, a faint echo of his own activities, though Father Theobald seemed to have had little sense of organisation. He had been a tired, sick man, most concerned with burial dues, the building of the death house in the cemetery, and makeshift attempts to mend the roof. Athelstan finally came to a number of other entries: Father Theobald had apparently fallen in the sanctuary and there were notes for the buying of stone from A.Q.D. Athelstan looked at the date: September 1363. This was followed by a series of other payments: ‘For laying the stones in the sanctuary, £6.00 sterling to A.Q.D.’ Athelstan ran his finger along this and other entries.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered to himself. ‘But who is A.Q.D?’ Another idea occurred to him and he followed the entries through to January 1364, looking for payments made to Father Theobald to celebrate masses for people who had died but was unable to find the name of any young woman who’d fallen ill, been killed or mysteriously disappeared.
    He pushed the manuscript away, absentmindedly nodding as Cranston bellowed that he was going across for food. The friar waited until Cranston closed the door behind him, then he rose, went back up to the upper chamber and lay down on his bed. The coroner would be some time and Athelstan wanted to review the events of the previous day in peace. Something he had seen and heard had struck a chord in his memory, but what? Athelstan went back first to finding Roger’s body in the orchard and plotted the course of events for the rest of that day. At last he found it and smiled in surprise. Of course! He went back downstairs and looked at the entries in Father Theobald’s muniment book. Then he jumped up, clapping his hands like a child. ‘Of course!’ he murmured. ‘Of course! Take that away and everything crumbles!’
    Athelstan felt so pleased he found it difficult to contain his excitement. He decided to go for a long walk in the monastery grounds, startling the lay brothers going about their daily tasks with his brisk pace and cheerful salutations. He went down to the stable and was pleased to see Philomel eating away the monastery’s profits. The ostler, a raw-boned lay brother, assured him that the old war horse and Cranston ’s mount were being well looked after. Athelstan returned to the guest house to find Sir John waiting for him.
    ‘You seem mightily pleased, Brother.’
    ‘We are making progress, Sir John. We are making progress. I feel like a king besieging a castle. The walls are beginning to crumble and soon we will force an entry.’
    ‘What about my mystery?’ Cranston grumbled.
    Athelstan’s eyes strayed to his parchment and pen. ‘Not yet, Sir John. But all things in their time.’
    The friar sat down and, using cryptic abbreviations, began to list and organise his own thoughts. Cranston filled himself another tankard of mead, draining the small keg empty, and slumped on a stool, lost in his own gloomy reverie.
    The confrontation with Fitzwolfe and the long walk through the city had helped Cranston forget Lady Maude’s fury but now the full import of her words returned: he knew that the scene of the previous day would be as nothing compared to Lady Maude’s fury if he did not settle this matter successfully. The coroner had woken just after Athelstan and spent most of the morning, even during that most sacred and private occasion of breaking his fast, wondering what the solution was to this mystery of the scarlet chamber. He had failed to make