gate.’
‘Yes – yes, that’s it, some feral stray, found its way in through the gate.’ The rector grasped at the suggestion gratefully.
Mercer had fallen and been savaged only yards from the wooden gate into the lane behind the college, but when I went to try the handle, it was locked fast. The rector stood as if transfixed by the bodies of the hunter and his prey. On the back wall nearby I noticed a scrap of black material spiked on the edge of a brick; below this spot the grass was churned to mud with boot and paw prints, and splashed liberally with Mercer’s blood.
‘It looks as if he tried to scale the wall, poor man,’ I said, half to myself. ‘That would account for the mauling of his legs. But it is twice the height of a man – why did he not simply run towards the gate to escape? Unless the dog was between him and the gate, meaning it must have come in from outside. But then, how is the gate locked?’
I glanced at the rector, who remained immobile, then I ran to try the second gate into the college, from the passage that ran between the hall and the kitchens. This too was locked. How, then, I puzzled, had the dog entered the garden? And how, for that matter, had Roger Mercer?
I walked back to where the bodies lay.
‘Is it possible,’ I ventured, as the reality of what I had seen began to solidify in my mind, ‘that someone could have let the dog in deliberately?’
The rector turned to look at me incredulously.
‘As a prank, you mean?’
‘Hardly a prank. Whoever unleashed a half-starved hunting dog must have known it could kill.’ I knelt down by Mercer’s mauled body and patted the pockets.
‘Doctor Bruno!’ the rector exclaimed. ‘What are you about? The poor man is still warm, if you please.’
Roger Mercer had been fully dressed, despite the early hour; in one of the pockets sewn into his breeches I found what I had been looking for.
‘Here,’ I said, holding up two iron keys attached to a single ring, one much larger than the other. ‘Is one of these a key to the garden?’
The rector took the ring from my hand and examined the keys against the light.
‘Yes, the larger would open any of the three gates.’
‘Then either he let himself in and locked the gate behind him, or someone locked the gate through which he entered once he was inside,’ I reasoned. ‘Either way, he was trapped in here with a savage dog.’
‘But we still don’t know how the dog got in,’ the rector said, uncomprehending.
‘Well, we know it didn’t jump the wall, and it didn’t let itself in and lock the gate after it.’ I looked him directly in the eye as I spoke, waiting for understanding to take effect.
The rector clutched my arm, his face twisted with panic; I could smell the bile on his breath.
‘What are you saying, Bruno? That someone let that dog in and then closed every means of escape?’
‘I can’t see another explanation,’ I said, looking again at the dog’s fearsome teeth, through which its limp tongue now lolled, spittle hanging in tendrils from its jaws. Norris’s arrow stuck upright from its gullet. ‘Someone who knew Doctor Mercer would come here at this hour. But surely he never suspected any harm would come to him, else he would have armed himself.’
Then I remembered Mercer’s strange remark the previous night, about how we might all live differently if we saw death approaching. I had dismissed it, but had he been revealing that he feared for his life? Unhappy coincidence only, I guessed; besides, he had spoken confidently of attending the disputation, and of conversing with me later. I felt a sudden awful sorrow; though I hardly knew the man, he had seemed warm and genuine, and I had stood by only minutes ago and listened to him die. To think that he might have been saved if I had acted quicker, if someone had had a key, if Norris had arrived sooner with his bow. One moment of indecision decides a man’s fate, I thought, and realised that I too was trembling.
‘Was it perhaps his regular practice to walk in the garden so early?’ I asked. ‘I mean, could someone have known to expect him here?’
‘The Fellows often like to read in the quiet of the Grove,’ the rector said. ‘Though not usually at this hour, I grant you – it is too dark. The undergraduates usually rise at half past five to make themselves ready before chapel at six – morning service is compulsory. There is rarely a soul abroad in the college any earlier, not even the kitchen servants. I confess I have never walked in the garden at such an hour so I could not say if any of my colleagues had the habit of doing so.’
As I bent again to Mercer’s body, separating the bloodied and torn clothes to see if anything on his person might explain his presence in the Grove so early, I remembered how he had joked about the garden being popular for trysts. Had he been expecting someone who never came, or who came and brought death with them? He carried no book, but a bulge inside his doublet suggested a hidden pocket; reaching in, I withdrew a fat leather purse that jingled with coins.
‘If his purpose was a quiet, contemplative walk before sunrise, surely he would not have needed to bring this,’ I said, untying the purse and showing the rector its contents. The English coins meant nothing to me, though there were clearly a lot of them, but the rector’s eyeballs bulged at the sight.
‘Good God, there is at least ten pounds here!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why would he carry such a sum?’
‘Perhaps he expected to meet someone to whom he owed money.’
‘And knowing he would be here, they set a dog on him!’ he exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘Revenge for a bad debt, that must be it.’
I shook my head.
‘Then why is the money still in his pocket? If someone had wished to harm him for failure to pay a debt, surely they would have made sure to take the money first?’
‘But who would ever have meant to harm Roger?’ asked the rector in despair.
‘I cannot say. But a wild dog does not get into an enclosed garden through locked gates by accident.’ I brushed down my clothes, realising that they were now stained with Mercer’s blood. ‘I suppose now that this terrible thing has happened, Rector, you will want to cancel the disputation this evening?’
The rector’s face filled with fear again.
‘No!’ he said fiercely, gripping my shoulders. ‘The disputation must go ahead. We cannot allow this incident to disrupt a royal visitation – can you imagine the consequences, Doctor Bruno? Especially if it were rumoured to be –’ he glanced around before whispering the word – ‘deliberate. The college would be tainted and my reputation with it, and we have already had so much trouble here lately, I fear Leicester’s displeasure more than I can tell you.’
‘But a man has been brutally killed – perhaps murdered,’ I protested. ‘We cannot go about our business as if nothing has happened.’
‘Shh! For the love of Christ, do not repeat that dreadful word murder, Bruno.’ The rector looked frantically about the garden and lowered his voice, though we were alone. ‘We will have it announced that this was a tragic misfortune – we shall say
