‘How did he come to this, Gilbert?’ I asked.
He looked down at the body, a corruption of the work of God to something abhorrent. It was not a thing that could be comprehended in his universe of the schoolroom. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I truly do not know. Perhaps the doctor will tell us, or the baillie, no doubt. But it should never have come to this. I saw another life marked out for him.’ He paused. ‘And never such a death.’
‘What was his life, Gilbert?’ I asked.
The old man turned from the image before him and sought a recess of his mind. ‘A life of love,’ he said at length. ‘His was a life of love. His father, a lawyer in Aberdeen, died while Patrick was still a baby, and he was taken then by his mother to live with her sister here in Banff. Her sister was Helen – Walter Watt’s first wife – although he was not provost then, but a prospering merchant. Walter and Helen had no child of their own; she was with child often, but she never carried one a full nine months. Jaffray did all he could for her, but not one of them lived. I think she would have,’ he hesitated, ‘I think she would have given much for just one of them to live. But she was not blessed. It wore her out in the end. She was not thirty when she died. But the boy – this boy, Patrick Davidson, her sister’s son – was the light of her life. They loved that boy as much as any parents could. He was always to be seen around Helen’s skirts in the market place, at the kirk, or atop Walter’s shoulders as he saw to his cargoes at the quayside or walked for pleasure along the cliff tops in his rare periods of leisure. But then the boy’s mother married again, and took him with her when her new husband, a minister, was called to the charge of a kirk in Fife. Helen’s heart was finally broken, and she died soon afterwards. When Patrick was about fourteen, he matriculated at the university at St Andrews. I do not think he came back here often until he returned to take up his apprenticeship at Arbuthnott’s. It is a pity you could not have known him. He was a fine boy.’
I watched as he stroked the cold forehead. He uttered not another word. His thoughts were evidently of the child the man had been, mine of the staggering stranger calling for compassion, of the dying man dismissed as a drunkard. The gnawing shame in my gut might have been too much for one who did not live each day with such a sentiment. I could find no words to comfort my old friend and so said nothing. I do not know how long we sat there before the strange companionship of we three men was interrupted by the arrival of Mistress Youngson with a bowl of porridge and warm milk, which she handed to me. ‘Take this up to your room and dress, Alexander. The baillie and his men will be here soon, and there will be little enough time for food and drink after that.’ It was nine months since she had uttered my Christian name, and so surprised was I by the unwonted tenderness that, forgetting to thank her, I ascended the stairs without a word.
I re-entered the schoolroom perhaps a quarter of an hour later, to find the officers of burgh and kirk already there. In the room, aside from Gilbert Grant, were five other living souls: Baillie William Buchan, self-appointed arbiter of all things moral or otherwise in this burgh; the two town serjeants; James Cardno the session clerk, whose report of my movements on the previous evening would still, I had no doubts, be ringing in the baillie’s ears, and Mr Robert Guild, minister of Banff and brother to Geleis, the provost Walter Watt’s young wife. Guild was no friend of mine – he had been none those nine months ago at Fordyce and he was none now. I was glad to see him there, nonetheless – his well-known antipathy to William Buchan promised that the baillie would not have all his own way in whatever was about to unfold.
As ever, the baillie was dressed entirely in black, save for the plain white collar at his neck. The slight stoop to his shoulders and the ever-watchful eyes gave him something of the aspect of a carrion crow watching its prey. He addressed me without turning his head. ‘You have joined us at last, Mr Seaton. Evil has been at work here.’ He glanced slightly in my direction. ‘You were abroad late last night?’
‘Late. Late enough.’ I walked the length of the room to my desk.
The baillie was ever alive to the possibility – probability – of evil in the doings of his fellow townsmen, but I knew as I looked again into the face of the dead man that on this occasion at least, he was right. The eyes of Patrick Davidson were frozen in a grotesque comprehension of what was happening to him. There could be no doubt: this had been no natural death, no accidental consequence of too much bad drink. Some external human agency had been employed in the ending of this earthly existence. I spoke my thoughts. ‘Poison.’
‘There can be little doubt.’ It was the baillie who spoke, but the others murmured their assent.
The minister, having kept silent long enough, sought to assert himself. ‘Has Jaffray … ?’ but he did not finish his question. Gilbert Grant shook his head. ‘My good wife sent for the doctor the instant the boy – John Durno – found him. Jaffray was not at home. He was called out to Findlater late last night. My Lady Deskford …’ His voice dropped. ‘It would have made little difference.’ He brushed a little hair back gently from the corpse’s forehead. ‘He was cold. Long cold.’
No, Jaffray could have done nothing. Patrick Davidson had called for help hours earlier as he stumbled in the shadow of death, but the man who could perhaps have saved him had passed by on the other side. I said nothing further, and found myself, for the moment, ignored. Cardno murmured something to the baillie, inaudible to the rest of us, and the baillie nodded once before turning to issue instructions to the town serjeants standing silently by the still-unlit brazier. The session clerk made for the doorway, followed by the serjeants. He addressed Mistress Youngson as he passed, hands already at the keys on his belt. ‘We’re away for the mortcloth, mistress. Have your girl clean him up.’
The old woman looked witheringly at the clerk. ‘That is no work for any girl, James Cardno. If it is beneath you and your men to do the boy this service, I’ll do it myself.’ And with that the schoolmaster’s wife headed slowly towards the back courtyard and the well, more hunched and frail than I had ever seen her.
The minister spoke again. ‘And see that it’s the best cloth, Cardno. It is the provost’s nephew.’
The session clerk looked towards the baillie, and only on gaining the latter’s assent did he continue on his way. Guild’s displeasure was as impotent as it was evident. Since the day and hour he had been appointed to the charge of Banff, Buchan had been his nemesis, a shadow who thwarted him at every turn. I knew Guild to be a man of inferior intellect, formality rather than faith and great worldly ambition. It seemed part of God’s just punishment that such a one should have been amongst those to sit in judgement upon me, and pronounce me unfit to join the ranks of their ministry. To Buchan’s credit, it was Guild’s lack of fervency in preaching, his lassitude in prosecuting the discipline of the kirk, and his regard for rank that had earned him the enmity and mistrust of the baillie. Buchan’s ascendancy on the council and constancy at the session gave him a degree of influence amongst the townspeople that the minister could never hope to wield. As the door of the schoolroom closed behind Cardno and the town serjeants, the baillie turned to the minister and spoke directly to him. ‘I think there should be little mistake here, Mr Guild, before you claim kin in virtue of your sister. As you well know, it is the nephew of the provost’s first wife, who lies buried in yonder kirkyard and has done these eight years past.’ His point being thus made, he turned his back on us both and said nothing more.
Little more than half an hour later, I joined in the grim little procession that made its way through an unusually sombre gathering of the townsfolk from the schoolhouse up towards the Castlegate and the provost’s house. Though the hour was still early, rumours of what had occurred in the night had already begun to gain currency in the town, and as our cortège emerged into the nascent daylight, we were greeted by the murmurs of the small crowd that had already gathered outside the schoolhouse.
‘A great loss to the provost.’
‘Aye, and Arb
uthnott too.’
‘It’s well to be out of it.’
‘A scandal on the town.’
‘God’s will be done.’
The storm of the previous night had completely abated, leaving little trace of itself, other than the sodden streets, which made the pace of the pallbearers necessarily slow. The usual morbid interest occasioned by the sight of the mortcloth was much increased as news spread of the identity of the murdered man. I looked back towards the town: along by Lord Airlie’s lodging amongst the old Carmelite yards, derelict for seventy years now, and the great wall of the laird of Banff’s palace garden, more and more of my fellow townsmen paused in their early morning labours. Many, though, had seen such things too often before, and soon continued on their way to the marketplace and the setting-up of their booths, or to their workshops and backyards. Edward Arbuthnott had joined our procession; I looked for Charles Thom beside him, but Charles was not there.
There was no sign of life as yet at the Market Arms, and little stirred in the kirkyard opposite. Janet and Mary Dawson had little truck with the citizens of Banff in the daylight hours; indeed, they had little truck with the daylight hours at all. I could not believe that it was only last night that I had laughed here with the town whores, while Patrick Davidson staggered in agony towards his death. My sense of discomfort mounted as we progressed up the Water Path, and I was glad of the distraction afforded by the necessity of offering an arm to my elderly colleague. He took it gladly, and nodded his thanks. The force of the previous night’s rain had scoured the gutters clean. No mark remained where I had seen Davidson stumble and fall the night before, stumble again and try to pick himself up. There was an echo, though, of words I hadn’t heard through the ferocious wind, but which I knew had been spoken. Words I had ignored: ‘Help me.’
Near the top of the Water Path, close by the entrance to the castle grounds, we passed the site of the new manse the minister had finally succeeded in persuading the council to build for him. The land, to the general astonishment of the burgesses, had been granted for the purpose by the provost himself – the toft where his own former house had stood, the house that had been his before his fortune had been made; the house he had shared with Helen. And now he had granted it for a manse for his brother-in-law. His new wife was thought to be the agent of this change. At the head of the cortège, Guild allowed himself a complacent smile while Buchan stared determinedly ahead.
The great oaken doors of the provost’s house stood open, awaiting our arrival. Walter Watt and his wife, Geleis Guild, the minister’s younger sister, stood a little apart at the far end of the great hall of the house, on either side of the unlit hearth. Quality of craftsmanship was evident in every aspect of the room, from the carved oak panels of the ceiling to the tiling of the floor where others would have only flagstones or wood. A great Dutch side table stood against one wall, a cabinet carved by the same hand against another. Candlesticks on the mantelshelf and holders in the wall-sconces and suspended from the ceiling were fine and intricate work, better than our local craftsmen could supply. And yet it was a sombre place; only the necessary draperies, no tapestries, no painted panels to add relief and colour, only one solitary portrait hanging from the wall. Watt came forward gravely to meet the baillie who, like the rest of us, had removed his hat on passing through the doorway. The baillie inclined his head towards the provost and said something I could not hear. Watt nodded and stepped closer to the pallbearers. At a signal from Buchan, Cardno drew back the top of the mortcloth, far enough to reveal the young man’s waxen, but now mercifully clean face. The provost’s wife gave out a groan and then collapsed into uncontrolled grief. ‘It is him,’ said the provost after a long pause, staying a moment longer to gaze on the dead face before going to comfort his wife. I think I envied him that task. I had known her since we were children; her nature had always been kind, and was not belied by her beauty. She was better loved in the burgh than either her husband or brother.
‘It is God’s will, mistress,’ said the baillie. ‘We must seek out the evil in the hand that accomplished it, but we must not question His will.’
Drawing his young wife a little closer to him, the provost answered, ‘You must forgive my wife, Baillie. She is young and over-tender yet. She welcomed the lad to our home, and loved him well, for my late wife’s sake and for my own. And all in all, it is a bad death. A bad death,’ he repeated, more to himself than to the rest of us gathered there. The baillie held the provost’s gaze for a moment, but said nothing further of God’s will. Geleis Guild gradually extricated herself from her husband’s embrace and searched her pocket for the lace handkerchief with which she wiped her eyes. The provost held her a little away from him and said, ‘Go you to the children now. Do not let them be upset by this. I doubt the girl Arbuthnott will not be here to help you today. Now go.’ Eventually comprehending, she nodded slowly and left the room, without having uttered a word.
The provost turned to face the rest of us, and it was clear that his tender manner had departed with his wife. A large and imposing man, he was well over six feet tall with thick dark hair down to his shoulders, and eyes set wide in a broad brow. His clothes gave the appearance of being simple, but their cut was good and the plain dark material of high quality; the fine Dutch lace at his cuffs gave some hint of the wealth his strong hands had garnered. I felt the full force of his personality as he again strode the length of the room to where the body had been laid. He pulled back the mortcloth again and touched the cold cheek. I heard him murmur quietly, ‘Oh, Helen, that it has come to this.’
‘May God preserve us all from such a judgement,’ intoned the minister.
‘You would do well to see to your sister, sir,’ responded the provost, not quite mastering an evident contempt for his brother-in-law. The minister left reluctantly, and much to the satisfaction of the baillie. The latter was the next to feel the provost’s ire. ‘And you think it God’s will, do you, William Buchan, that a boy such as this should die choking in the gutter on his own vomit, like any common vagabond?’ As the baillie opened his mouth to reply, Walter Watt raised a prohibiting hand. ‘Spare me your sermon, man; we have ministers enough. As to your proper concerns, tell me what you know. Are the reports I hear correct? He was found in the schoolroom, covered in filth and vomit?’
It was Gilbert Grant who replied. ‘It is true, alas, true. The boy John Durno found him at about a quarter to six, when he came to light the brazier in Mr Seaton’s schoolroom.’
The provost turned a suspicious eye on me. It was seldom nowadays that I found myself worthy of his notice, and of that I was glad.
‘You were with him last night? Drinking? When were you with him?’
‘I was not with him. I never … we never met.’
‘And how did he come to be in your schoolroom, in such a condition and at such an hour? How did it come to be, Mr Seaton?’
‘That I cannot tell.’ The half-lie almost stuck in my throat, for I suspected some involvement of the Dawson sisters, but I was at a loss for any idea of its nature or how it was managed. ‘I returned from the inn a little before the hour had struck ten. I locked the schoolhouse door – the mistress is very particular about that.’ At this Grant murmured his sympathetic agreement; he had heard me harangued loud and long on more than one occasion on the hazards of leaving one’s back door unlocked at night. To Mistress Youngson, it was little less than an invitation to the Devil himself to come take what he would. ‘The house was quiet, and dark. The master and mistress always retire to bed before nine in the winter, and the serving girl rarely much later. There was no one in the schoolroom as I passed.’ And what had made me look in? I wondered. I did not know.
‘And you saw nothing of my nephew in the house at that time? You know not whether he was there then?’
‘He was not there,’ I said, my voice dull.
‘And you had had no dealings with him in the evening?’ The provost seemed determined to have me Davidson’s companion on h
is last night on this earth.
‘None,’ I answered emphatically. A vague chill began to creep over me as I realised there would be some in the burgh who would suspect me of having a guiding hand in the death of Patrick Davidson. The provost, thank God, pursued the point no further. He strode again the length of the room and back.
‘And the doctor? Where is he? What does Jaffray say? Was my nephew dead many hours when he was found? What does Jaffray say to the manner of death? Was the boy drunk?’
So again, this time for the provost’s benefit, the story of my lady Deskford and Jaffray’s summons to Findlater was relayed. Arbuthnott had not yet heard it. ‘What? Then Jaffray is a madman, on such a night.’
The Redemption of Alexander Seaton Page 3
