The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  The old boy can talk, thought Gil. Euphemia and her brother were glaring at one another.

  ‘I speak for the bairn,’ said David Cunningham. ‘I stipulate that once the fosterage is agreed, John Sempill and Angus Mclan both swear to abide by the agreement. Likewise once a tutor is agreed both swear to abide by that agreement. Both these oaths to be properly notarized and recorded. And when the property is transferred it is entered into the title that John Sempill renounces any claim to it.’

  Boxed in, thought Gil. He bent to say quietly to his client, ‘Well? Do we agree?’

  ‘Aye, we agree,’ snarled Sempill. ‘I need this settled.’

  ‘We agree,’ said Gil.

  ‘I am agreed also,’ said the harper. Euphemia was now sitting rigidly erect, staring over Ealasaidh’s head. The lines between her insignificant nose and pretty mouth were suddenly quite noticeable.

  ‘Then let us consider,’ continued Canon Cunningham, ‘where the bairn is to be fostered. There is an offer from Maister Peter Mason, master builder of this burgh, to foster him in his household.’

  ‘He’s offered?’ said John Sempill suspiciously. ‘Why? Why would he do that?’

  ‘I have taken a liking to the boy,’ said Maistre Pierre, his accent very marked. ‘Regard it as an act of charity, if you will.’

  Alys smiled at her father. Sempill breathed hard down his nose, and the Official, looking from one side to the other of his makeshift court, said, ‘What do you say to this offer, Maister Mclan?’

  ‘It is a generous offer,’ said the harper, ‘for that I know well it was made before the matter of the boy’s income was mentioned.’ At Gil’s side John Sempill cursed under his breath. ‘I am agreeable. I will abide by this arrangement.’

  ‘And I,’ said Sempill harshly.

  ‘And I propose,’ said the harper, before David Cunningham could speak again, ‘that Maister Gilbert Cunningham be named the boy’s tutor, to stand in loco parentis until he be fourteen years old and to. see after his fostering and rearing and his schooling and leaming.’

  There was a pause, in which the baby made a remark. Ealasaidh answered him in soft Gaelic.

  Well, thought Gil. And where did Mclan learn Latin tags?

  ‘I hardly think I am the best -‘ he began.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the harper. ‘You are a man of learning, well connected in this diocese, well able to judge if the boy is being managed as he ought. I am greatly in favour of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said John Sempill happily. ‘I agree.’

  Gil, detecting the note of revenge, kept his face blank.

  ‘Then we are past the first hurdle,’ said the Official, ‘for both these suggestions are agreeable to me as the bairn’s adviser. The next point to consider is the property which John Sempill will settle on the bairn, renouncing any claims which might proceed from his marriage to the bairn’s mother.’

  ‘Aye,’ said John Sempill sourly. ‘Only I don’t have the papers for it, since Bess took them when she left my house. Not that it’ll do ye much good,’ he added.

  ‘It was not your house,’ said Ealasaidh, not quite under her breath. The mason sneezed.

  ‘I have seen the papers she had,’ said Gil. He produced the inventory and tilted Alys’s neat writing to the daylight. ‘There is a house in Rothesay and two farms at Ettrick. The house I believe is let to a kinsman of the Provost of Rothesay’s wife, who is not keeping it in repair. The farms are also let. The rent on the house is five merks, a hen and a creel of peats yearly, the rent on the farms is five merks and a mart cow, with a half-merk mail yearly. Each,’ he added.

  ‘Eh?’ said John Sempill. ‘Each? Do you mean Bess was getting that much rent all this time?’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Euphemia in her high, pretty voice. ‘That would be fifteen merks a year, let alone the - ow!’

  Her brother put both hands on his knees and remained silent. Philip Sempill said, ‘You never had that amount from the land in Bute, John!’

  ‘No, I never,’ agreed John Sempill flatly.

  ‘Whose responsibility is it to collect the rents?’ asked the Official.

  ‘Sempill’s,’ said James Campbell.

  ‘They go to James,’ said Sempill in the same moment. Their challenging stares met. ‘Except the rents that went to Bess, to buy harp keys with,’ he added in a suggestive snarl.

  Euphemia giggled again. Her brother’s green velvet elbow moved sharply, and she showed her teeth at him. The harper sat impassive.

  ‘Is it agreeable to Bess Stewart’s kin,’ asked the Official, ‘that these properties pass to her bairn, with arrangements for the rent to be paid directly to his foster-parent?’

  ‘Her kin have nothing -‘ began Sempill.

  ‘It is not,’ said James Campbell of Glenstriven, as if he had been waiting for this. ‘I am married to her sister Mariota Stewart, and I submit that if John Sempill alienates these properties they should be offered first to my wife.’

  ‘It is none of your -‘

  ‘If Bess had died before she disgraced herself -‘

  ‘Which, St Catherine be my witness, I wish she had!’ exclaimed Euphemia piously.

  ‘You keep out of this,’ said her brother. ‘If she’d died before she went for a harper’s whore, Mariota would have got her Stewart properties.’

  ‘I’d have seen you in court first!’

  ‘I’d have taken you there with pleasure.’

  ‘Bess never had no rent off her lands in Bute,’ said Ealasaidh loudly. Both men turned to look at her. The mason sneezed again.

  ‘What are you saying, woman?’ demanded Sempill.

  ‘Och, what does a singing tramp know,’ began James . Campbell

  ‘You miscall my sister, do you, Mhic Chaileann?’ said the harper quietly.

  ‘I am saying Bess never had any money off Bute but what she brought away with her,’ said Ealasaidh doggedly.

  ‘And that was what little she had by in the house. She was saying, if we had waited till St Martin’s tide she would have had more to bring that was her own rents.’

  ‘Hold up here,’ said Sempill. ‘Are ye saying she never brought anything but the coin that was in the house? What about the plate-chest? There was plenty in that.’

  ‘Plate-chest?’ said Ealasaidh. There was no mistaking the blank surprise in her voice. ‘How would she be taking a plate-chest off Bute, and me not noticing?’

  ‘Well, she never left it behind,’ said Sempill. His pale eyes turned to Campbell. ‘At least, so I was tellt. Well, good-brother?’

  Gil stepped back quietly from the shouting.

  ‘Euan,’ he said to the waiting gallowglass. The man, intent on the argument, jumped and looked up at him. ‘Go down yon stair to the kitchen and fetch your brother up to me.’

  By the time Neil sidled into the hall, James Campbell had reached the point of accusing Ealasaidh directly.

  ‘And what price did you get for it, you and her? Plenty of silversmiths in Edinburgh would ask no questions, though it had the crest on it.’

  Ealasaidh was on her feet, spitting Gaelic. Beside her, Alys was hugging the baby, who was becoming alarmed by the noise. The harper cut across his sister with a single calm sentence which made all the Gaelic-speakers in the room flinch.

  ‘I must ask you to speak Scots in this court,’ said the Official, apparently forgetting where he was for the moment.

  ‘I ask the court’s pardon.’ The harper rose and bowed in the direction of Canon Cunningham’s table, his darkbrowed face very solemn. ‘I have said, I am a harper, and I can determine the truth of the matter.’ It appeared to be a threat.

  ‘There is one here,’ said Gil, cutting in smoothly, ‘who can tell us more towards the facts.’

  ‘Euan Campbell?’ said his master. ‘What does he know?’

  ‘They were asleep when she left,’ said Campbell of Glenstriven. ‘She got out of a window, no doubt with help from this ill-conditioned woman -‘

  The harper
said something, quietly, to his sister. She bowed her head and restrained herself. Gil said, ‘I have seen this window.’ James Campbell turned to look at him, his jaw dropping. ‘It is this size,’ Gil continued, measuring the air with his hands. ‘I have not seen the plate-chest -‘

  ‘It was this big!’ Sempill demonstrated. The dimensions appeared quite similar.

  ‘But we are asked to believe that this woman climbed out twenty feet above the ground, from a window scarcely big enough to accommodate a laddie, let alone a grown woman fully clothed, taking with her a box at least the size of the window and containing near thirty pounds of plate, as well as coin and jewels.’

  ‘Forty pounds of plate at least!’ Sempill corrected.

  ‘I have the inventory,’ Gil said, looking at another of the parchments in his hand. ‘Twenty-seven pounds, ten and a half ounces. There were never any marks of a ladder found, so she either jumped or climbed down a rope with this box -‘

  ‘She must have lowered it first to whoever helped her,’ said James Campbell desperately.

  ‘And landed in the spreading white rose-bush which grows under that window.’ Euphemia giggled, and was pinched savagely by her brother again. ‘Shall we hear a different version? Not Euan Campbell but Neil can tell us more about that night.’

  He beckoned the gallowglass forward, and got him launched with difficulty on the account he had given on Sunday evening. While the halting explanation went on he looked round the faces. On this bench, John Sempill in steadily rising fury, Euphemia critical as if she was listening to an old tale badly told, her brother in gathering alarm, Philip Sempill with the expression of a man waiting for a cannon to go off. On the other, the mason absorbed, Alys watching the baby (she looked up, and their eyes met for a moment), Ealasaidh intent, her face softening as she remembered the escape, and her brother beside her, clasping the harp, still as King David on a church doorway. In the great chair, his uncle was watching the gallowglass.

  ‘And I never laid eyes on it again,’ the man finished.

  ‘Lies - all lies!’ said James Campbell, a second before Sempill said,

  ‘Right, James. Where is it?’

  David Cunningham beckoned to Gil, and when he approached asked quietly, ‘What is the significance of the plate-chest?’

  ‘It is certainly missing,’ said Gil. ‘The contents belonged to her first husband’s family, and were to revert to them, so someone owes them the value of twenty-seven pounds of silver.’

  ‘And ten and a half ounces,’ the Official added, watching the growing argument before him. At the point where Philip Sempill leapt up to restrain his cousin, Canon Cunningham banged sharply on the table with his winecup. Even muffled by the table-carpet the sound was enough to distract the combatants.

  ‘I am not certain,’ he said in his dry voice, ‘that this discussion is relevant to the point at issue, which is I believe to establish what lands belonged to Elizabeth Stewart, deceased, in the Island of Bute, and which are now to be assigned to her son.’

  ‘May it please the court,’ said Gil, following where his uncle led, ‘I think it is relevant, since if the money and other rents did not reach John Sempill and did not reach Bess Stewart they must still be owing to someone, and might be said to belong to the bairn.’

  ‘And what about the land in Kingarth?’ said Philip Sempill, sitting down. ‘And was there not another stretch in Rothesay itself? Where are the rents for that?’

  ‘The conjunct fees. I had the rents off those,’ said Sempill grudgingly, ‘for what they’re worth.’

  ‘The land at Kingarth,’ said Gil, referring to the parchment again, ‘is valued at eight merks and a weaned calf, besides the toll on the rents taken at St Blane’s Fair, which my informant estimated at a considerable sum.’

  ‘What?’ Sempill stared at him. ‘And I suppose there’s a goldmine on the plot on the shore?’

  ‘No, but there is a very handsome barn on it,’ said the mason, ‘used by a cartel of merchants whose turnover is probably a thousand merks a year, I would guess.’

  ‘The barn? You told me it was the next toft!’ John Sempill’s hands were at his brother-in-law’s throat. James Campbell flung himself backwards off the bench, rolling over as he landed to come up with his dagger drawn. Euphemia screamed, but Philip Sempill got between them, stripping off his gown to use as a defence.

  ‘Be seated, maisters!’ said David Cunningham sharply.

  ‘I sent you on the rent,’ said the laird of Glenstriven, ignoring him. ‘I sent you it with that pair of perjured caterans.’ He jerked his head at Neil, who was in front of the table, stooping to retrieve the scattered wine-cups. ‘It should have reached you.’

  ‘Oh, aye, it reached me. Eight shillings reached me for the two properties at Candlemas. Less than two merks and a half for the year, that makes. Where’s the rest, James? Where’s the rest? Is that what your fine education and your foreign travel does for you? Is that what studying law in Italy learns you?’ He tried to push his cousin aside. ‘Let me at him, the cheating -‘

  James Campbell cracked.

  ‘Oh, there was more than that, John. I sent it to Euphemia.’

  James!’ She leapt to her feet, her hands at her bosom, her eyes luminous with martyred virtue, the image of a little saint accused before Caesar. Sempill turned to her.

  ‘Where’s the money, Euphemia?’ He held his hand out, as if expecting her to produce it from her bodice.

  ‘I - I gave you all James sent me,’ she said, tears quivering in her voice. ‘Don’t be angry with me.’

  ‘I’ll be as angry with you as I choose to be,’ he snarled, face to face. ‘What did you do with the money, Euphemia?’

  ‘I gave you it, John!’

  ‘That you did not,’ said her brother. ‘Most of it’s on your back, high-kiltit hussy that you are. How much do you think she paid an ell for that satin she’s wearing?’

  ‘Is it so?’ said Sempill, advancing on her. She gave back another step. ‘Keep my rents back, would you, and then come winding round me begging for this and that jewel, with me scraping and pinching to find the money I owed the Crown -‘ He snatched the gaud hanging at her waist and yanked at it. She screamed, but lurched forward against him. Philip Sempill was there again.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ he begged them, ‘as we are bid. Sit down and discuss this properly.’

  Now there’s a vain hope, thought Gil. His sleeve was tugged. He looked round, and found one of the gallowglasses beside him, directing his attention to the kitchen doorway.

  Maggie stood there, beaming broadly, one red fist clenched.

  ‘Easy,’ she said when he reached her. ‘A wee secret drawer in the bottom of her jewel-box.’

  ‘Secret?’ he said, startled.

  ‘You don’t hide much from Marriott Kennedy. No that secret,’ she admitted. ‘And did you know the woman Campbell has a troutie in the well?’

  ‘She does, does she? Did Marriott tell you that?’

  She nodded, and opened the fist to show him her trophy: a plain gold cross, smoothly shaped and sweet to hold.

  ‘And this was with it,’ she added, and showed him a little key in her other hand. He took key and cross, and kissed her.

  ‘Well done, Maggie. Wait here a moment, will you?’ He crossed behind the Official in his great chair, barely noticing Mistress Murray, who was swelling like a threat ened hen and glaring at Maggie. Alys looked round as he approached her.

  ‘Bring the bairn,’ he said quietly, ‘and come away. There may be a bit of a squabblement shortly.’

  ‘I want to watch!’ she said, following him back round to the kitchen stair. ‘It’s like jousting, isn’t it? You’re defending the truth against all comers.’

  Gil, quite charmed by this view of matters, introduced her to Maggie and dispatched the pair of them downstairs cooing over the baby, with instructions to send Tam up. Then he turned back to the fray.

  It appeared at the moment to be a four-handed shoutingmatch
between both Sempills and the Campbell brother and sister, each taking on all comers. Nobody else was attempting to speak, which was probably just as well, he reflected.

  The mason caught his eye and nodded approvingly, then sneezed again. Drawing a deep breath, Gil moved forward, and placed the cross on its ribbon on his uncle’s table, the key beside it.

  ‘What is this?’ asked David Cunningham.

  ‘Evidence; said Gil deliberately, ‘of who killed Bess Stewart, and therefore also Bridie Miller.’

  la?r

  ‘What did you say?’

  Sharp exclamations from Philip Sempill and James Campbell. Ealasaidh, identifying the cross from the far end of the bench, was speaking in an urgent undertone to her brother. Sempill and Euphemia were still shouting.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to have nice things!’

  ‘Not to that tune, you light-fingered bismere! How much have you had? What have you cheated me of? Tell me that!’

  ‘Lady Euphemia!’

  Campbell of Glenstriven said something vicious in Gaelic which made Ealasaidh nod, pursing her lips. Euphemia turned to look at him, flung a glance so swift at the table that Gil would not have seen it if he had not been waiting for it, and clasped her hands at her throat.

  ‘Oh, I am breathless!’ she said. ‘I am faint!’ She dropped gracefully into her brother’s arms, an effect badly marred by his pushing her away and dumping her unceremoniously on the bench. Mistress Murray hurried forward, with another dark look at Gil, and began patting hands and exclaiming.

  ‘If the lady is not well,’ said Canon Cunningham, ‘should we adjourn?’

  Gil shook his head at him over the roiling mass between them. John Sempill emerged from it, his cousin at his elbow.

  ‘What’s that you say, Gil Cunningham?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know who killed Bess? Who was it? Was it no the Italian?’

  ‘If you sit down, I will explain,’ said Gil.

  ‘I thought we were sorting who took the plate. And the rents,’ he added, with a savage kick at his mistress’s ankle.