Satan in St Mary

inside, Corbett began to look for secret entrances, doors or passage-ways. House of God or not, he spared nothing in his search. He tried the disused side door and realized it had been blocked up for years. He checked the walls, windows and jabbed with his dagger between the sandstone pavement slabs. He could find nothing, so, he moved into the sanctuary, ignoring the protests of the priest who had joined him, and poked beneath and behind the altar. He went down into the crypt, dark, smelly and cold, to examine the floor, walls and thick granite pillars, but there was nothing.
    Corbett, hot and tired, then went outside walking around the perimeter of the church looking for signs of forced entry. There were none, no break in briar, bramble and rank weeds, except beneath one small window, Corbett found strands of cloth hanging from a thorn bush which he picked and rubbed between his fingers. They could have come from anywhere and, as he had surmised in his report, the window above could have only been entered by a young boy and. only then, with Duket's permission. Corbett put the fragments of cloth into his purse and walked back to the main door of the church where the Rector was still waiting.
    Bellet had regained his composure and was standing with a smug, slightly sardonic expression on his face. He did not say "I told you so" but his whole stance and bearing seemed to proclaim it. The clerk was about to leave when he remembered something he had seen as he walked past the church's cemetery. "Your burial ground?" he asked. "It has many fresh graves, judging from the newly turned mounds of earth?"
    The priest shrugged. "A bad winter brings many deaths, " he replied. "Why, do you wish to investigate them as well?" Corbett ignored the jibe, gave a slight bow, and turned away out of the church into Cheapside.
    He found Ranulf at the appointed meeting-place in a tavern on the corner of Walbrook and Candlewick Street. The reformed housebreaker was busily gawking at every woman in the place when Corbett joined him and the clerk had a difficult time making him concentrate on handing over the information he had. Surprisingly, Burnell had seen Ranulf immediately, and told him to return late that afternoon with his master. "Did he say anything else?" Ranulf shook his head and buried his face into a tankard.
    "No, " he replied, "except to say that when you come, he would have something for you. Oh, he did say that we should leave Thames Street and go to the Tower. " Corbett groaned inwardly, though he realized that the Chancellor was right. He could no longer stay in the city where he was so vulnerable. Sometimes he felt that he was being followed, being watched, but whenever he looked around, he saw no one and dismissed his suspicions as the fantasies of a fevered brain.
    Corbett wearily urged Ranulf to his feet, ensured he was still carrying the saddlebags, left the tavern and, passing by the church of St. Stephen, went down Walbrook. This was where the skinners plied their trade with their tubs, shears, knives and threads. Animal skins were pegged to wooden frames outside every shop or beside every stall while the skinners, knives in hand, scraped away the dry fat from the inside of the skins before throwing the finished piece into a tub of water to soak. In other places, the skins were being tanned, or fully finished, being sewn together into rectangular shapes of standard size.
    Corbett watched all this, trying to divert his mind and calm his frayed nerves. He wished he could scrape away the lies and fashion the truth from the many deceits he had discovered. Was there a finished product he wondered, or would he stay floundering in a morass of doubt until the assassins reached him or, until Burnell dismissed him ignominiously from his task? If only he could find out why Duket stabbed Crepyn. If only he could discover how the murderers, for there must have been more than one, had gained access to the church and then so easily escaped. There was one other problem. Why was Bellet so confident? Why did it always appear that the priest knew he was coming, even more, almost sensed that Corbett was stumbling around in the dark? Like some jester in a mummer's play, put there for the quiet laughter of the onlookers?
    Thirteen
    Corbett was still trying to solve the problem, almost talking aloud, arguing with himself when, their long walk was over, and Ranulf and he found themselves on Bridge Street walking down to the river with the