The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘I wanted a word,’ Gil said, ‘because it was Annie who spent May Day with the mason’s boy. The one that was taken up for dead in St Mungo’s yard. Maybe you’ve heard about that. And now Annie has disappeared, and the other men who wanted to speak to her have left.’

  ‘I’ve heard about it,’ said Mistress Bell with a sniff, measuring a huge jug of ale for another girl, ‘but I don’t pay much mind to what happens up-by.’

  ‘I hoped,’ Gil pursued, ‘that she might be able to tell me who struck him down. Since the boy is still in a great swound, he can tell us nothing. But now I am concerned for Annie, since there’s another girl dead.’

  ‘I remember now,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Annie came back late on May Day. About this time, it was, or later, after Compline anyway. I would have fetched her a welt for it, for we’d been busy, but she seemed owercouped by something.’

  ‘She said nothing?’

  ‘No to me.’ She poured two beakers of ale for one of the girls. ‘Mysie, when you’ve served these, get out the back and search for Annie. All of ye. Take torches to look in the buildings, work in pairs, look in all the corners. All of them, mind, and the yard as well.’

  ‘Why? What’s come to her?’ asked the girl pertly. Mistress Bell raised her arm to her and she ducked, grinning, and spilled some of the ale. ‘I hear ye, mistress.’

  ‘Maybe we should lend a hand,’ offered Gil as the girl hurried off. Mistress Bell eyed him carefully.

  ‘Maybe ye should no,’ she corrected. Gil, understanding her, felt his face burning, but nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘You keep your girls well, mistress. Supposing she is not to be found out the back, can you tell me where she might have gone?’

  ‘I can not. Do ye think I’ve the sight like an Ersche henwife? Her mother’s at Dumbarton, she might run home if she’s feart for something.’ She grinned at him. ‘Get you out my way and wait, maister. Unless you like to lend a hand here fetching jugs of ale, since I’ve sent all the lassies out hunting for Annie.’

  But Joan, reporting back after a quarter-hour or so, had no information.

  ‘Not a sign of her, mistress,’ she said. ‘No in the outhouses, no in the brew-house, no in the yard. Mysie and Peg looked behind the kindling, Eppie and me checked the sacks of malt, but there’d been nobody there, you could see that.’

  ‘Could you?’ asked the mason. She threw him a challenging look.

  ‘Aye, you could. Because Rob Morrison tore a sack when he unloaded this afternoon, and there was no fresh footprints in the spilt grain. But we did find the side gate unbarred,’ she added to her mistress.

  ‘Ye did, did ye? Was it closed over?’

  ‘Oh, aye. Ye’d never have seen from outside that it was unfastened. I think she’s away, maisters, and I think she went that way.’

  ‘May we see it?’ Gil asked.

  Mistress Bell scowled, looked round the room and finally said, ‘Joan, mind the tap a wee while. This way, maisters.’

  The light was at that difficult stage where it was too dark to see clearly, but torches helped very little. The yard where Mistress Bell brewed her ale was surrounded by a stout fence of cut planks, as high as Gil’s shoulder. Near the house there was a narrow gate for foot traffic, closed by a latch and a bar the thickness of the mason’s forearm. It conveyed no information whatever. Gil, holding his torch high, peered round at the dancing shadows of barn and brew-house.

  ‘This is the only gate?’ asked the mason.

  ‘No, there’s the gate for the carts, yonder by the barn. This is the gate the lassies use in the morn, it’s the one she’d think of first. The cart-gate’s barred, maisters, I can see it from here.’ She strode down the yard and brandished her own torch at the big double leaves.

  ‘May I open this?’ Gil asked.

  ,if it makes ye happy.’

  Beyond the gate was the muddy track which led between the ale-house and the next cottage. On one side it went out on to the street, on the other it disappeared into the shadows between the two tofts. Mysterious vegetable shapes jumped in the dimness.

  ‘Out there’s only Neighbour Walker’s grosset bushes,’ Mistress Bell informed him. ‘If ye’re ettling to search those in this light ye’re a better man than I am. Walker could sell the thorns for whingers.’

  Gil shut the gate from the outside. It dragged over the ground, but with one hand in the latch-hole he contrived to close it completely. As Joan had said, from the outside all looked secure, and he judged that the hefty girl they were looking for would have had no difficulty in doing the same. He opened the gate and stepped back in.

  ‘Thank you, mistress,’ he said, settling the bar in place.

  ‘Seen enough?’

  ‘I have, for one,’ said the mason. ‘May we now leave the neighbour’s gooseberry bushes and speak to the girls?’

  Joan, handing responsibility for the tap back to her mistress, admitted that she had no idea what was troubling-Annie.

  ‘She’s no been right,’ she admitted, ‘she’s been as if the Bawcan’s after her, peering in corners and ducking at shadows. She’s been taking more than her turn at the dishes, which is no like her.’

  ‘But kept her out of the way of customers,’ Gil interpreted.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Joan. ‘But as for telling anyone, no. Mysie says she tried, and Peg tried, but she’d tell nobody. She said she’d the toothache, but we thought maybe someone forced her,’ she admitted.

  ‘And why did none of you tell me?’ demanded her mistress. ‘What a flock of haiverel lassies!’ She cast a glance round the emptying room, and raised her voice. ‘Last orders, neighbours! It’s near curfew.’

  ‘Do you know where Annie’s mother lives in Dumbarton?’ Gil asked.

  ‘No; said Maggie Bell bluntly. ‘And if you’ve to get home to the Wyndheid before they bar the door, you’d best get away over the river.’

  ‘You know me?’ asked Gil.

  ‘I know you’re from St Mungo’s.’

  ‘Then if you hear any word of Annie - good or bad,’ he said earnestly, ‘will you send to me? I stay in the Official’s house - the Cadzow manse.’

  She nodded impatiently.

  ‘I’ll do that. Goodnight, maister. I’ll put Sandy the tanner out in a wee bit and he’ll shut the Brig Port on his way home.’

  Out in the darkening street Maistre Pierre said thoughtfully, ‘She left well before the Sempills.’

  ‘Aye. She may simply have run, as the other girl says.’ Gil looked up and down the street and turned towards the bridge. ‘Providing she has not met James Campbell in a kirkyard, she is probably safe enough.’

  ‘You think he knifed the other girl?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  The mason remained silent until they had crossed the bridge with a few last revellers, who vanished in ones and twos into the closes of the Waulkergait. Finally he said, ‘I do not know. Nevertheless I think we have learned something useful tonight, even if the scent is broken.’

  ‘We have.’ Gil hitched his gown round his shoulders. ‘Now - shall we try opening Bess Stewart’s box?’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘But can you believe anything he says?’ Alys asked, jiggling the baby on her hip. ‘Dance a baby, diddy!’

  ,It is obvious he needs the child,’ said Gil, looking at it with more interest. ‘And if he’s wise, he’ll try to convince his uncle without showing it to him. Even by candlelight, it’s dearly the harper’s get.’

  J 1 V The baby grizzled at this, but Alys said indignantly, ‘It’s a boy. Aren’t you, my little man?’ she crooned to the baby.

  J ‘Why is he crying?’ asked her father resignedly. ‘Is he hungry?’

  ‘No, because we fed him just now. And he’s all clean …’ She sniffed at the child’s nether regions. ‘Yes. I think he wants his mammy, poor little boy.’

  ‘May I take him?’ Gil put his hands out. She hesitated. ‘I am an uncle,’ he assured her, and after a moment she handed him t
he bundled baby.

  He had forgotten what it felt like to hold a child this age, small and solid and totally dependent on the adult arms. By the time he remembered, his left elbow was crooked to support back and swaddled legs, and his right thumb was offering itself as a grasp for the small hands. The baby, perhaps hoping this new person might be the one he was looking for, stopped wailing long enough to inspect him.

  ‘There’s a bonnie fellow,’ said Gil, and was suddenly assailed by longing. He bounced the baby gently, and turned the little face to the light. Dark wispy eyebrows and deep-set blue eyes scowled at him; the lip quivered above a jaw alarmingly like Ealasaidh’s. ‘What a bonnie boy,’ he said hastily, and tried one of the tossing-up tricks other babies had enjoyed. Although this baby did not laugh as his nephews did, he showed no immediate signs of disapproval, but waved his arms as he was caught. Gil tried it again, and the bells on the coral pinned to the infant’s chest rang merrily.

  ‘He’s not long been fed,’ Alys pointed out. ‘Shall I take him?’

  ‘That’s what my sister always said.’ Gil handed the baby over reluctantly. As Alys left, the small face peered round her shoulder, looking for Gil. He waved, feeling rather foolish, and sat back as the door closed behind them both, wondering why there seemed to be less light in the room.

  ‘It is late,’ said the mason. ‘We only got over the bridge because Sandy the tanner had not yet returned to shut the Brig Port. If you are to go back up the brae before the moon sets -‘

  ‘True.’ Gil turned his attention to the box in front of him. ‘Have we something on which to make an inventory?’

  ‘I have,’ said Alys, returning. ‘And pen and ink.’ She stood at her father’s tall desk, dearly well accustomed to the position, and lit another candle, which gleamed on the honey-coloured fall of her hair.

  ‘Then let us commence,’ said Gil, drawing his gaze with reluctance from the sight.

  The box was not a large one, but sturdy, the kind of thing a country joiner might make for a woman to keep jewellery in. The lock gave way after a little persuasion, and they raised the lid.

  ‘Documents!’ said Maistre Pierre eagerly.

  ‘A bundle of five documents,’ Gil agreed, dictating slowly to Alys. ‘Tied with a piece of red ribbon. We’ll look at them in a moment.’

  ‘They were at the top,’ Alys said. ‘Had she looked at them recently, do you suppose?’

  ‘Before she went out to meet Sempill,’ speculated Gil, ‘to refresh her memory or to be sure of the wording.’ He had a sudden vision of Bess Stewart, the fall of her French hood swinging forward past her scarred jaw, fingering through the handful of parchments, and then going up the hill to her death, trusting that Euan her familiar servant would see her home.

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Not a great deal. She did not bring much away from Bute with her.’ Gil peered into the box. ‘A gold chain for a jewel, in a little bag. A remarkably good Book of Hours.’ He turned the pages respectfully. ‘This is old. See the strange clothes the saints are wearing. Two more letters. A round stone. And a roll of cloth containing …’ He untied the tapes. ‘Ah, here is her jewellery. I wonder which of her husbands gave her these?’

  ‘Now you have unwrapped it, it must be inventoried,’ said Alys practically. ‘Item, one pin, set with a sapphire.’ She wrote carefully. ‘Item, one pair of beads with enamelled gauds. Item, a necklace of pearls. Mon Dieu, father, look at those pearls! I think they are better than mine.’

  ‘And she was carrying these about Scotland in a wooden box,’ said Gil, letting the string glimmer over his fingers in the candlelight. ‘Ealasaidh described the cross that is missing as her one jewel. She cannot have worn these since she left Bute. If Sempill ever got his hands on them he could settle his debt to the Crown at a single stroke.’

  They completed the list of Bess Stewart’s jewellery, and turned to the packet of documents. Gil untied the red ribbon and spread the five slips of parchment out on his knee.

  ‘In fact,’ he said after a moment, ‘these are not all full documents. This and this,’ he lifted the two longer missives, ‘are attested copies of the title deeds to land on the Island of Bute. It seems as if she held that in her own right.’ He set those aside. ‘This is a memorandum of an item in the will of one, Edward Stewart of Kilchattan, whom I take to be her first husband, leaving her a property in the burgh of Rothesay outright, and the interest in two more until her remarriage. And these two are memoranda of grants of land in respect of her marriage to John Sempill.’ He tilted them to the light. The wording is not at all clear. They might be her tocher, though my uncle thought that was in coin, or they might be conjunct fee -‘

  ‘Land given jointly in respect of their marriage,’ Maistre Pierre translated for his daughter.

  ‘I know that,’ she said absently, her pen scraping on the paper.

  ‘What these do,’ said Gil, ‘is confirm what we already knew by hearsay in respect of her own property, and if you like confirm how little we know in respect of the conjunct property. Even the names of the grantors are omitted.’

  ‘I do not like,’ said the mason gloomily, ‘but I take your meaning.’

  Alys bit the end of her pen, frowning.

  ‘What difference does it make whether it was her tocher or a conjunct fee?’ she asked.

  ‘Quite a lot, now,’ said Gil. ‘Sempill keeps the conjunct property, the tocher may well go back to her family.’

  ‘So if we are still pursuing cui Bono we need to know,’ said Maistre Pierre. He scratched at his beard, the sound loud in the quiet room. ‘Do you suppose Sempill will tell us?’

  ‘I had rather speak to the man who drew these up,’ said Gil. ‘We need to go to Rothesay.’

  ‘Ah. When do we go?’

  ‘And we need to find Annie Thomson, if she really has gone to Dumbarton.’

  ‘If we go by Dumbarton and not by Irvine, we may look for her on the road. That is if the boy can still tell us nothing.’

  ‘Davie is still asleep,’ said Alys. ‘He is no worse, but he is no better either. Brother Andrew says we must continue to pray and keep him warm and still.’

  ‘So we must rely on finding Annie. We also need to think about Bridie Miller. I would like to look at Blackfriars yard where she was found. There may be some sign for us there.’

  ‘The beets,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘I take it they had not come home with her?’

  ‘Agnes did not mention them,’ said Alys, ‘and I had a rather detailed account of the event from her.’ She smiled quickly. ‘Poor soul, she has had a trying two days.’

  ‘So have I,’ said her father. ‘So we go to Rothesay after we look at Blackfriars yard, yes?’

  ‘I must speak to my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘But, yes.’

  The great door of the house in Rottenrow was barred. Gil, untroubled, went along the house wall and in at the little gate to the kitchen yard. To his surprise, there was a light showing in the window there.

  Within, the kitchen smelled of tomorrow’s bread, which was rising in the trough near the fire. Beyond the hearth, William the kitchen-boy was already asleep, curled up on his straw mattress in a bundle of blanketing. Beside it, Maggie was on the settle, spinning wool by firelight. She looked up when he came in.

  ‘My, you’re early home, Maister Gil.’

  ‘It’s all this loose living,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘Did you wait up for me, Maggie?’

  ‘Someone had to. The maister wanted the door barred. Do you want a bite?’

  ‘I’m well fed, thank you.’

  ‘So what’s come to Bridie Miller?’

  He told her what they had learned. She listened carefully, watching her spindle twirling at the end of the yarn.

  ‘She’ll have stepped aside from the market,’ she said when he had finished.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To ease herself. Men can make use of a dyer’s tub, or a tanner’s, but a modest lass cann
y hoist her skirts in the street.’ She picked up the spindle and began to wind on the new thread.

  ‘In Blackfriars yard?’

  ‘It’s where we mostly go. It’s a long way back up the brae to your own privy, Maister Gil, and there’s a wee clump of bushes where prying laddies’ll not get a sight of your shift.’

  ‘That would account for the smell on her hair,’ said Gil, startled by this glimpse into another world.

  ‘Aye, it would. It gets a bit rich by the end of a morning.’

  ‘Why was she not found, I wonder? How many women step aside like this in a day?’

  She shrugged, and set the spindle twirling.

  ‘I’ve never stood around counting. You don’t often meet anyone else.’

  ‘And somebody followed her, or lay in wait - no, that would mean he was expecting her. Someone saw her step out of the market and followed her, took her unawares - I must speak to Mally Bowen.’

  ‘I could do that for you,’ said Maggie. ‘What do you want - just the state she was in when she was washed?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said gratefully. ‘How much blood was there,

  and where was it, and had she been forced? Were her hands clean? That kind of thing. Oh, and Maggie. I never said. Thank you for today’s work in the Sempill house.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said, and lifted the spindle again. ‘Aye. There’s more.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘See, I was sweirt to tell you this in front of the maister.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. It’s no very nice, and it might just be Marriott Kennedy spreading gossip, but …’

  ‘Go on,’ Gil encouraged.

  ‘Aye. Well. Marriott says. She took her time to it, and went all round about, but in the end she came out with it that Euphemia Campbell’s one of those with a taste for wee games.’

  ‘Wee games?’

  ‘And I don’t mean merry-ma-tansy,’ she said grimly. ‘Marriott says - this is just what she says, mind - she’s forever washing blood off shifts, and no just where you’d expect blood on a decent woman’s shift. And off his shirts as well.’

  ‘Agnes Yuill was complaining about having to get blood off her satin clothes today,’ Gil recalled.