Seaton 01 - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by S. G. MacLean

  The candles on the mantelpiece were burning low. The church bell had struck seven, but it was still light outside the window. The usual caw of the gulls trying their luck at the shore and the town middens was joined now by the twilight songs of the spring birds. At last, as April approached, we were hauling ourselves out of the last dregs of winter and towards the light and freedom of the spring and summer. It was as if the storm of two nights ago had blown the darkness further back across the northern seas. The doctor went over to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper, which he handed to me.

  ‘These are the findings of my examination of the corpse of Patrick Davidson.’ I waited. ‘He was poisoned.’ A matter-of-fact statement; a piece of common knowledge. He took the paper back out of my hand, crumpled it, and threw it in the fire. ‘Patrick Davidson was one of the healthiest specimens it has ever been my duty to examine. And yet he is dead. Dead because someone took the root of a small and beautiful flower and fed it to him. So lethal was it that it started to kill him before it ever reached his stomach, for there was little trace of it there. He was lost to this world from the moment he swallowed it.’

  I did not understand. ‘A flower? But … if there was no trace, how do you know—’

  ‘I know because we found it in the vomit, Arbuthnott and I, before we ever had the barber help us open him up. We found elements of the root, pieces and two whole slices, in the vomit congealed on his hair and his clothes. Mistress Youngson is a woman of experience and wisdom – she knows what to clean away and what to leave. It was the apothecary who spotted it. The man has an eagle’s eye, and a knowledge of botany far in advance of my own. And yet, when he pointed it out and voiced his supposition, I knew him to be right.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Colchicum mortis – the colchicum of death.’

  A flower. ‘James and the flowers.’ The words of Janet Dawson, whispered so urgently only yesterday, came back to me now. But Jaffray was warming to his theme, and did not notice my abstraction.

  ‘You will not have heard of it. Indeed, why would you have? I have never come across a case myself before. Other varieties of colchicum, of course, are of use in medicine and cooking.’

  ‘In cooking?’ I knew that poisons were often used in the preparation of medicines, but that they were put into food was something new to me. ‘Is that not dangerous?’

  Jaffray laughed. ‘Saffron, Alexander, saffron. Many women will use it for its colour and its flavouring. It is obtained from the stamen of the colchicum and Arbuthnott stocks it openly on his shelves. I have often myself prescribed it for the treatment of gout and arthritis. However, a high dose can be dangerous, giving rise to palsies and fits. Arbuthnott, like any good apothecary, will measure his doses carefully.’

  ‘So someone has been storing it up, with a murderous intent.’

  Jaffray shook his head. ‘No. It was the root, remember, the sliced root that we found. Almost like a small, discoloured onion – by the look of it he had eaten it in a stew. There are many varieties of colchicum that, wrongly used, will harm a man, but only one that will kill him, and with such speed. The colchicum mortis; to judge from Patrick Davidson’s face, and the set of his corpse when he was discovered, he had suffered convulsions and paralysis before his death.’

  I remembered the contorted features and the grotesque arrangement of the body I had seen dead at my desk, and I did not argue with the doctor. He continued. ‘The plant is grown and its properties well known in the Alps where, despite its beauty, none will touch it. I have seen it only once and at a distance, at a lecture at Montpellier nearly thirty years ago. I cannot pretend I remember it clearly or could describe it accurately. Later, though, I did see some sketches of the flower.’

  I was as ignorant of botany as it had been possible for a student of divinity to be. I had always been so taken up with the internal world of man that the external, with all its seasonally changing beauties, had in many ways remained a mystery to me. And yet I was doubtful. ‘And with this knowledge you can identify the root of one small plant?’

  Jaffray reached again for his pipe. ‘I cannot be certain I would even have thought of it had not Arbuthnott drawn my attention to the residue in the hair. The root – bulb, in fact – could be from one of several plants, but none with such lethal effect as the colchicum mortis.’ He paused for a moment in thought, sombre. ‘Poisoning is an act of veiled and contemptible cowardice, born in the blackest region of a man’s heart. It admits of no possibility of the victim fighting back. And yet,’ he hesitated.

  ‘Yet what?’

  ‘I do not think, in the end, that the murderer was able to fully conceal his crime from the boy. The colchicum should have no taste, but I believe that in his last minutes, Patrick Davidson knew he had been poisoned. Death did not come quickly enough for either of them.’

  There came a searing flash in my mind again of a man calling out to me, a man falling, trying to get up, calling to me for help. A wave of nausea ran through me. Mine had been the second face that night to condemn him to death. I did not want this to be true.

  ‘Why do you think so, James?’

  ‘The grass. A dog eats grass to make itself sick. There is no briony to be had at this time of year, for that would have done the trick, so in his last conscious moments in this world, Patrick Davidson resorted to the behaviour of a dog in an attempt to save his own life. He tried to make himself vomit because he knew he had been poisoned.’

  ‘How long would he have suffered?’ My voice could barely hold the question.

  ‘Longer than he should have done. Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes.’

  And when, in those fifteen or twenty minutes, had I seen him? How near to death or to the possibility of salvation had Patrick Davidson been when he had made his desperate, hopeless appeal to me? ‘And Arbuthnott is of your view?’

  ‘I did not discuss that point with the apothecary. I trust him implicitly on the matter of plants and compounds, but the human psyche is beyond his expertise.’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Else he would not have married him such a wife.’

  I could not help but smile myself, grave though the present matter was. The doctor had seen greater tragedies and greater evil before, no doubt, and it was only his humour that allowed him to bear it day after day. He called his humour a gift of faith, a grace. It was a gift greatly misunderstood by some of the narrower minds in our community, those whose chief delight in life was to cast withering glances and utter words of reproach. Those such as Baillie Buchan, James Cardno and even, I sometimes thought, my landlady, Mistress Youngson. ‘What does Arbuthnott have to say about the provenance of the root? Was it taken from his shop?’

  Jaffray shook his head. ‘He has never had nor would ever have it. There is, he claims – and I do not disbelieve him, for I know of none myself – no use in medicine or hygiene for the root of that variety of the species. I checked every shelf and every drawer in that shop today – there is no poison under the apothecary’s roof that is not on the permitted list.’

  ‘Then was it grown here?’ I knew that many plants native to the Alps had become favourites in the gardens of landed and professional people who had returned to our shores after study abroad. Some grew them for further study, but many, I knew, simply for the joy of it.

  Again Jaffray was doubtful. ‘That was my own next thought. I know little enough about the cultivation of flowers myself – it is Ishbel who tends to Elizabeth’s garden – so I went and enquired of Gilbert Jack.’ As ever, the doctor had seen to the heart of the matter: if any man in Banff knew of the flower, it would be the laird of Banff’s gardener. The laird’s palace gardens ran down opposite the kirkyard and towards the Greenbanks, taking in much of what had once formed the yards and gardens of the Carmelites in the burgh. Three generations of gardeners – Gilbert Jack’s father and grandfather before him – had redeemed what was best in those gardens: the herbarium, the kitchen garden, the orchard with its many types of apple, plum and pear, and had crea
ted a garden that was the glory of the north. If Gilbert Jack could not grow something in Banff, it probably could not be grown here at all.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it cannot be grown here. The winds and the salt air are too harsh. He knows because he tried once, many years ago, with bulbs the laird had brought from the continent, and failed. So that should have been an end to the matter.’

  ‘But it has not been.’

  ‘No, it has not.’ He went to light another candle against the failing light. ‘I fear that my examination is next to worthless. It has done nothing to bring us any nearer to discovering the identity of Patrick Davidson’s killer. And so it does nothing to open the locks of the tolbooth for Charles.’ He returned heavily to his chair.

  ‘It may yet do something.’

  ‘I do not see how.’

  ‘“James and the flowers”.’ I murmured it quietly to myself and then repeated it to him, more clearly this time. ‘ “James and the flowers”.’

  Jaffray’s face was a study in incomprehension.

  ‘They were the last words Patrick Davidson ever spoke: “James and the flowers”.’

  He looked at me, unable to understand something. ‘But Alexander, how do you know?’

  I had forgotten, completely, to tell him of my encounters with the Dawson sisters – either on the night of the murder or with Janet Dawson yesterday. And, I now acknowledged, with a sinking heart, that I had utterly neglected to tell him of my own sighting of Patrick Davidson on the night of his death. And so I told him it all. Throughout the narrative he said nothing, but his eyes, when I told him of my abandonment of my fellow creature calling for help, spoke much of what was in his heart. I saw in him a deep and sincere sorrow and a disappointment he could not mask – the one for Patrick Davidson, the other for me. I made no excuses for I knew there were none. I finished my piece and he sat in silent contemplation of what I had told him. After a time, he spoke.

  ‘And you say it was a little before ten? Where was he heading to, or coming from?’

  I shook my head. ‘That I cannot tell you. He was,’ I cleared my throat, ‘he was slumped against the wall of the Castle grounds, before he fell. He may have fallen before that – I do not know. I did not,’ and my voice fell, ‘I did not linger long enough to see a second time if he righted himself, or where he tried to go.’

  ‘And in those ten, fifteen minutes from where he’d parted from his killer, he might have travelled far enough.’ He sighed deeply, ‘No, it does not help us.’ He paused, and then roused himself again. ‘But what do you think it means, “James and the flowers”?’

  I confessed that I had little idea – the matter had been put almost entirely from my mind by the discovery of the maps, and the explanations that did suggest themselves to me I did not like.

  Jaffray packed his pipe again and reached another spill from the fire to light it.

  ‘Evidently,’ he said, ‘the flowers refers to the colchicum: the boy knew exactly what he had been poisoned with. And as for the “James” – well, I fear there can only be one conclusion.’

  I hesitated to say it; I had been avoiding the thought. ‘The murderer?’

  ‘Indeed, what else?’

  ‘Then it does not help us greatly. For every ten men in Banff, two will be named James.’

  Jaffray smiled. ‘And one of them is myself.’

  I looked at the loved old face. ‘And you, my friend, I discount. But as for the rest – how can we tell who had dealings with Patrick Davidson and who did not?’

  ‘We ask anyone who knew him. At the same time we must see where any other evidence may point, and if that also points to James, then so much the better.’ Jaffray was animated, for he had a scheme, a plan. He was not a man who liked to wait upon events.

  I set my mind to work. The killer of Patrick Davidson must have a minute knowledge of plants and their properties – even than a physician and as good as an apothecary. Not only of native plants, but also of the more exotic alpine species that could not be found or grown on our harsh and windblown scrap of God’s earth. And to know of this colchicum mortis they must have travelled or have been in close commune with someone who had. As the doctor sat looking sadly into the fire, I went through the burgh in my mind, in search of the most likely poisoner. There was the apothecary himself, Edward Arbuthnott. There was only his word to say that he did not have access to a stock of the colchicum roots. But then, why would he have pointed them out to Jaffray, and what possible motive might he have for murdering his apprentice? The doctor himself? I could not countenance such a thing. There was Marion Arbuthnott – might she have managed to obtain the plant without her father’s knowledge? Again, I could see no possible reason she might want Davidson dead. By all appearances she had loved him. Her mother? No. According to Charles, Marion’s marriage to Patrick Davidson had been her mother’s goal. And if there had been some scandal? Betrothal, not murder, was the answer to that type of scandal – for such as Marion and Davidson, at least. I was certain Charles had no knowledge of or interest in botany. True, he would have access to Arbuthnott’s stores, but if Arbuthnott did not store the poison – again, I was going around in a circle, and arriving where I had begun. I was tired and my head was beginning to ache at the temples. ‘I must go, James. The light is fading and I rise early tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, I had almost forgotten myself. I must go into Aberdeen, about the business of the bursaries.’

  Jaffray was interested. ‘Indeed? The bursaries? But yes, I recall now. And will you find lodging in the college, or in the town?’

  ‘The town. I will lodge with my old friend William Cargill—’

  ‘James Cargill’s nephew?’ The doctor interrupted. ‘Yes. William is married now and has his own home in the Green quarter. He has been building up a lucrative lawyer’s business since his return from Leiden. He’ll be the town’s advocate in Edinburgh before long.’

  Jaffray was unimpressed. ‘A great pity that he did not follow his uncle into medicine. The young—’ He was about to launch himself into one of his well-rehearsed diatribes on the laziness and thanklessness of my generation – not a word of which he meant – when he stopped suddenly. ‘Of course. James Cargill. Cargill’s notebooks – that is where I saw the sketch of the flower! If anyone in the north of Scotland ever knew that flower it would have been James Cargill.’

  ‘But the doctor has been dead these ten years and more,’ I protested.

  He brushed this aside. ‘It matters little. His notebooks were the most exact I ever saw. He was an excellent physician yet his great pleasure, passion even, was the study of botany. He told me once that he was never happier than the summer he spent at Montbéliard with Jean Bauhin in the gathering and study of flowers. These troubles in the Empire would break his heart, if he lived today. Yes, I must see James Cargill’s notebooks. If his nephew has them, I trust you will manage to persuade him to lend us them awhile.’

  ‘I have no doubt. But how might they help?’

  Jaffray muttered at my idiocy. ‘They will show us the flower. Arbuthnott has but a very hazy memory of its appearance, and I none. If we at least know what the plant from which these noxious bulbs are harvested looks like, then it may avail us something. Gilbert Jack may yet be proved wrong – perhaps it has been grown here, but we will never discover it if we do not know what it looks like.’ I felt Jaffray and I were leading each other farther and farther on the same wild goose chase, but we had nowhere else to go if we were to help our friend. I assured the doctor I would do my best to secure James Cargill’s notebooks.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘But this business of the maps, Alexander, I doubt it will avail Charles Thom anything. If Davidson were spying for every papist from here to Madrid, what good does the discovery of it do Charles Thom?’

  This was a question I had asked myself as I’d walked down towards the doctor’s from the tolbooth. ‘If Davidson was a papist spy, then that would at least allow
of a motive for his murder other than this nonsense of jealousy over a woman. It may be that his activities had been found out – that he was murdered to prevent his maps falling into the hands of his sponsors. Yet in such a case, why not accuse and try him openly?’

  ‘Because it would cause panic, my boy. And it might expose others whom the authorities might not wish to have exposed.’

  The pain in my head was now throbbing relentlessly. The faces of Patrick Davidson, the provost, Marion Arbuthnott, Baillie Buchan, Charles Thom, the unseen Gordon of Straloch were all crowding in on me.

  For his part, on my mission, Jaffray took it upon himself to enquire into Patrick Davidson’s connections in the burgh and its hinterland – be they Gordons, papists or simply ‘Jameses’, while I was away. My headache receded after I swallowed a draught of laudanum he had given me from his own store, and he and I talked much later into the night than I had planned, of other things. Finally, having promised that I would leave fresh provisions from Ishbel for Charles at the tolbooth before I left Banff early the following morning, I bade the doctor’s household farewell until I should return from Aberdeen.

  SIX

  A Journey

  There was already much business at the shore as I passed on my way to the tolbooth early next morning. The first boats since the great storm of Monday had put into port, and their wares had already been unloaded to make way for salmon, grain and woolfells destined for their entrepôt at Aberdeen. The shore porters who had spent Monday night gaming in the inn were now busily engaged on their proper labours. Traders and merchants’ boys ferried goods from the harbour to the market place in small carts or on their backs. The gulls were circling and cawing round the gutting station where the women cleaned the fish just landed for salting. Everything was as it had always been, as if the murder had been but a pedlar’s tale. The slight haar brought a smell of stagnant seaweed up from the shore; I had never liked it. I was glad that much of today’s journey would take me many miles away from the coast, almost till I reached Aberdeen itself.