A Pig of Cold Poison

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘No!’ shrieked Agnes overhead. ‘It was nothing to do wi me! Get your hands off me! My faither will –’

  ‘What in Our Lady’s name are you doing?’ Grace’s voice.

  ‘Ah, you wee bitch! Mind her claws, Willie.’

  ‘Oh, mem!’ said Babtie. ‘What are they doing? Are they taking her up for it?’

  ‘A course they are!’ said Jess scornfully. ‘What else d’you think? Even if Isa wouldny tell them what she heard, I let them know it plain enough. Proof positive, that is.’

  ‘We need lights in the chamber yonder,’ said Alys. ‘Will one of you fetch candles?’

  ‘They’re here, mem,’ said Babtie. She crossed the chamber to the plate-cupboard and lifted two candles from the box on its lower shelf, a small two-branched pricket-holder from the upper shelf. Fitting them together she struck a light and lit the candles, their small flames blossoming in the suddenly darkened room. As she returned, the thumping and shouting overhead moved on to the stairs, the newel-post rocking in the approaching light. Booted feet appeared round the turn of the stair, stamping uncertainly, and then Agnes’s skirts and the rest of her person, writhing as she attempted to free herself from the grip of the two men. They all lurched gasping off the stair on to the flagged floor of the hall.

  ‘It’s nothing to do wi me!’ Agnes shrieked again. Behind her, Grace descended quietly, dismay in her face, and a frightened Nell Wilkie appeared at her back. ‘My faither will stop you!’ Agnes persisted. ‘Daddy, tell them! Make them let go!’

  ‘Ah, shut your noise,’ said one of the men, the one with the scratched face. ‘This way, and we’ll see what your daddy says.’

  ‘Why have they taken her? Have they proof of any sort?’ Grace said quietly.

  ‘Circumstantial only,’ said Alys. ‘Is Meg –?’

  ‘Her mother’s wi her.’

  Alys took the candles from Babtie and followed the constables into the chamber, Grace at her shoulder, aware that the two maidservants were following them. Nell hurried after, clearly unwilling to be alone.

  It was already a complex and noisy scene. Agnes was appealing again to her father, Eleanor was on her feet sobbing on Syme’s shoulder, Nicol was leaning against the wall beside Gil and giggling foolishly, and Maister Renfrew, his face alarmingly dark in the dim light, was arguing with the Serjeant, who alternately answered him and conjured Agnes to admit her guilt. By the settle, in deep bell-like tones, the Dominican priest whose name Alys had not caught was reciting prayers for the dead and intercessions for the bereaved and the guilty, a grace she felt they could have done without at this moment. Babtie slipped in behind her, shrinking against the door where she obviously hoped to be unnoticed, staring round-eyed at Robert’s body. Jess followed, gazing triumphantly at the struggling prisoner, and Nell Wilkie peeped timidly round the door.

  ‘It wasny me!’ repeated Agnes. ‘Where’s Grace, she’ll tell you, where’s –’ She twisted round to see who else was in the room, and froze briefly, staring at the group by the door. ‘It was you!’ she exclaimed in fury.

  Next to Alys, Grace jerked as if she had been struck by an arrow. She turned to look at the other woman, and then over her shoulder at the two maidservants, who were staring back at Agnes, open-mouthed.

  ‘Who?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘What are you saying, Agnes? It was never Grace!’

  ‘It was you!’ Agnes said again. ‘You, Jess Dickson!’ She glared from one to the other of the men that held her, her eyes glittering. ‘Take her, no me. It was her poisoned my brother, she did it.’

  ‘No I never!’ Jess looked round her, alarmed, and edged towards the door. ‘How would I pyson anybody?’

  ‘Aye, hold the lassie!’ ordered Renfrew. Alys met Gil’s eyes across the chamber. Even in that light, she could tell that he was as startled as she was.

  The Serjeant sighed. ‘We’ll just take them both,’ he said resignedly. ‘Hold her and all, lads.’

  * * *

  ‘But why can they not release my brother?’ asked Christian Bothwell heatedly. ‘If she’s poisoned one man, she’s poisoned another, surely?’

  ‘The Provost must decide,’ said Gil, with sympathy, ‘and he’s abed with the rheum. It could still have been a matter of conspiracy between them, you must see that –’

  ‘Never! No my brother!’

  ‘I realize it’s not in his nature, but the law takes no account of such things.’

  ‘The law is a fool,’ said Mistress Bothwell.

  They were standing in the street, where she had caught up with them on their way home after seeing a tearful Nell Wilkie back to the dyeyard. The news of Robert Renfrew’s death and his sister’s arrest had obviously spread rapidly in the lower town, and she was certain Gil could now secure her brother’s release.

  ‘This is not the place to discuss it,’ said Alys. ‘Will you not come home with us just now? If you could persuade your brother to confess where he came by the flask he used, it would help him. It would help us too.’

  ‘He’ll not hear me,’ said Mistress Bothwell, wringing a fold of her plaid in her hands. In the torchlight her face was pinched and her eyes huge and dark. ‘I got in to see him yesterday, afore they moved him to the Castle, but he’d not admit it was other than one of ours, I asked him where he’d got it and he never answered –’

  ‘He might tell us more when he knows Agnes has been taken up,’ Gil observed.

  She shook her head. ‘No, if he’s decided to protect her he’ll not change his mind.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘I canny bear it if I’m to see him hang, only for the sake of a vicious wee trollop like Agnes Renfrew.’

  ‘Come back with us,’ said Alys again, ‘and at least have some company for the evening.’

  She shook her head again. ‘My thanks, lassie, I’m bidden to the Forrests for my supper. It’s right kind of them, considering. And kind of you, too.’ She looked up at Gil. ‘So you’ll not see Nanty released?’

  ‘I’ve no authority,’ he said with reluctance. ‘I’d like nothing better, but the Provost makes his own decisions. He’ll not rise from his bed to question Agnes, I suspect, and he won’t release your brother till he has good reason.’

  ‘Is there more you need to know?’ she asked directly. ‘Can I find anything for you?’

  ‘I still haven’t learned what the poison is or where it came from,’ said Gil. ‘Anything you can think of that might help me to that would be valuable.’

  ‘Aye, I can see that.’ She gathered her plaid round her, preparing to walk on up the High Street. ‘I could – I’ll think on it more. I suppose Agnes isn’t saying anything that will help?’

  ‘She still denied everything, even when they put the chains on her,’ said Alys. She turned to put the platter of roast meat on the plate-cupboard where it would not tempt Socrates. Gil watched appreciatively as the high delicate bridge of her nose was outlined for a moment against the candlelight gleaming on the plate. Turning back she looked briefly down the table as she had been doing all evening to make sure John was safe on his nurse’s knee, and lifted the serving-spoon before her. ‘Catherine, may I help you to the applemoy?’

  ‘It is unbelievable,’ said Maistre Pierre.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I find it all too believable, and what Alys learned in the kitchen bears me out.’

  ‘But whether you find it believable, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘do you think she did poison her brother? Or was it the maidservant as she claimed?’

  ‘She accused the girl out of spite,’ said Alys. ‘When she recognized who had set the constables on to her. She is very vindictive.’

  ‘Never yet I knouste non Louesomer in londe,’ observed Gil, with irony.

  ‘So not the maidservant but the mistress.’

  ‘Her father thinks she did,’ said Alys.

  ‘He looked as though he would have a seizure when he saw her manacled,’ said Gil. ‘I was glad when Grace reminded him to take his drops, though
they didn’t seem to help much.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Alys slowly, ‘it could have been any of them. Agnes is likely, I admit, but as we found last night, they all have as much reason as she does to poison Robert, they all have the knowledge, and the method was open to any of them. Or to anyone else who recognized the possibility.’

  ‘Except for Nanty Bothwell,’ said Gil.

  ‘Unless he had prepared the things earlier and left them in place,’ Maistre Pierre said, ‘and it only now came to light. But why would he poison Robert Renfrew if he had a notion for Agnes?’

  ‘To gain favour with her?’ suggested Gil.

  ‘It might work,’ said Alys critically, ‘but it would be out of character. None of his friends could believe it of him, that he might poison his rival, and it makes even less sense to poison his sweetheart’s brother. It was her father who objected to her choice of sweetheart, not her brother.’

  ‘And at the rate Robert ate the things, if they were left before the play on Thursday I’d have thought he would reach a poisoned one sooner than this. No, I think we can probably discount Bothwell,’ Gil agreed. ‘Which only leaves us the entire family. And the maidservant.’

  ‘Da Gil!’ said a forceful voice at his side. He looked down, to find John, who would usually have been in bed by suppertime, beaming at him under dark curls full of green sauce. Socrates reached an enquiring muzzle and licked the boy’s ear.

  ‘What a sight you are,’ Gil said, pushing the dog away and lifting John on to his knee. ‘He seems well enough now, after his misadventure.’

  ‘I think he’s unharmed,’ said Alys. ‘He slept all afternoon, Nancy told me. Only the adults were afflicted. I thought this morning I would never recover from the fright, and poor Nancy is consumed by guilt.’

  ‘He will be guarded more carefully now,’ observed Catherine.

  ‘Poon,’ said John, seizing Gil’s spoon.

  ‘It seems to me,’ continued Catherine, laying her own spoon in her plate, ‘that the key to the question is, what is the source of the poison.’

  ‘I think so too, madame,’ Gil agreed. ‘Whoever poisoned the cherries must at least have had access to the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, whether or not it was the same person.’ He wrestled the spoon back and silenced the shouts of indignation by using it to offer John a mouthful of applemoy.

  ‘But is that sufficient reason to kill her brother?’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly.

  Gil suddenly recalled his sister Dorothea, of all people, a year ago in this hall saying, You don’t need a sensible reason to want to kill a brother, just a strong one. He repeated the remark, and Alys nodded.

  ‘And Agnes’s reasons were strong,’ she said. ‘But were anyone else’s as strong?’

  ‘Poj!’ said John, reaching out to Gil’s plate. Gil checked the sticky little paws and gave the boy another spoonful.

  ‘It isn’t porridge, John,’ he said. ‘It’s applemoy. Nancy,’ he called down the table, ‘bring me his wee dish.’

  ‘Moy?’

  ‘He never grasps the whole word, does he?’ Gil said. ‘Thank you, Nancy. You’re a good lass.’ Nancy gave him a watery smile, bobbed and went back to her own seat. ‘We should call you Tuttivillus, wee man.’

  ‘Have you still the list you made, ma mie?’ Catherine asked Alys. ‘You should study it after supper. It might prove of value.’

  ‘It was certainly no accident, by what you say,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘The sweetmeats were deliberately poisoned. Could they have been intended for someone else?’ He turned his head. ‘Is that someone at the door? Who would come calling at this hour?’

  ‘Syme,’ guessed Gil, as his father-in-law rose. ‘He’s the most likely.’

  He was right. Admitted in a flurry of apologies for disturbing their supper, James Syme bowed to the company, refused a seat at the table, and begged a word with Gil when he was free.

  ‘I’m about done here,’ Gil said, ‘if Pierre will excuse me. John, go to Mammy Alys.’

  ‘Take dish,’ ordered John, sliding to the floor.

  Gil obediently handed him the little painted plate with its mound of applemoy, and he pattered round the table to Alys. Gil rose, wiping food from his person, and Maistre Pierre said, ‘Go above to my closet, if you wish.’

  Seated in his father-in-law’s comfortable panelled closet, with its shelf of books, its jug of Malvoisie left ready, Alys’s sewing lying on the windowsill, Gil handed Syme a glass of the golden wine and studied the man.

  ‘A bad business,’ he said, with genuine if conventional sympathy.

  ‘Oh!’ Syme shook his yellow head. ‘My – my wife’s at her wits’ end, poor lass. She’s howding, you ken,’ he divulged, with that air of imparting a secret, though the whole of Glasgow could recognize this one, Gil thought. ‘It makes her easy upset. But I said I’d come out and ask you –’ he paused, biting his lip – ‘ask you what you thought in the case. Is my good-sister guilty, do you think, Maister Cunningham, or the girl Jess, or is my wife right that it must ha been some other enemy of the family?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Gil returned the question.

  Syme threw him a hunted look, but considered his answer with care. ‘If Agnes hadny named her, I’d never ha thought of Jess. She’s a cheery wee soul, but not clever. I would never ha thought she’d do such a thing on her own. But I can see why John Anderson took Agnes up for it,’ he admitted. ‘She’s the means for it, since she makes many of the dainties we sell, and she’d know how to – to – it was right defty, what you described, the way the stuff had been put in the marchpane and then covered over. I can roll pills wi the best, but I’d not manage that, nor would Nicol I’d say. Agnes is neat-fingered, like Frankie and my wife.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Gil.

  Syme looked at the candlelight reflected on his glass and said, ‘As for why she’d do such a thing, there’s never been any love lost between her and her brother. But in that family it means little, maister.’ He smiled sourly. ‘I don’t think they know what the word means. Love, I mean. The tales I could – well, never mind that. The point is, why pick on Agnes when it might as well be any of the family or none?’

  ‘Was her chamber searched?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Aye, the Serjeant and I searched it after they’d taken her up. We never found any sign she’d been working wi sweetmeats there, but then she’s been trained to clean up after hersel, like any good worker. There was no sign of the poison either, not in Agnes’s goods nor in the lassie Jess’s scrip.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Gil. ‘How did her father take that?’

  ‘I’m not right sure he took it in.’

  ‘Could it have been any of the rest of the family?’ Gil asked, without inflection. Syme shook his head. ‘Why would anyone want to kill Robert, do you think?’

  Syme looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s never – he’s no that easy to get on wi,’ he revealed unnecessarily. ‘I was Frankie’s prentice, and then his journeyman, till he took me into partnership, so I’ve watched the laddie growing up, and I’ve wondered, lately, about the future of the business.’

  ‘In what way?’ Gil prompted, when he paused.

  ‘Well, it seemed likely Frankie would take the boy into the partnership too, and I’m junior partner, I’d be able to say nothing on that, the way the papers were drawn up. And he’s aye been wilful, steering, fond of his own way, and his manner no always what would be best for a man dealing wi folk across a counter.’ Syme turned his glass in his hand, then took a sip from it. ‘Well enough for me, I could always sell out, assuming I could find the money, and move elsewhere. But Frankie would have to live wi it, and wi the boy’s prying and spying. No that I’ve discussed it wi him, you understand.’

  ‘What about Nicol?’ Gil asked. ‘And Mistress Grace? How did they get on with him?’

  ‘You’ve seen them,’ said Syme awkwardly. ‘Nicol just laughs when his brother digs at him. Robert’s aye been civil to Grace, and she to him, I’ll
say that for him. She’s a remarkable woman, is Grace.’

  Gil sat for a moment, absorbing this, and then said, ‘How long a task would it be, would you think, to –’ he hesitated for a word – ‘treat two of the marchpane cherries like that?’

  ‘Maybe a quarter hour, once you had all the materials to hand, for someone used to making the things. Not more than half an hour, at any rate.’

  ‘And when were the marchpane cherries put under the counter, do you think? Would it have been easy done?’

  ‘Robert finished a box of apricot lozenges that he said the mice had been at, yesterday after dinnertime,’ said Syme reflectively. ‘He’d to do without after that, for I was in the shop and watching him. I’d say there was nothing under the counter the rest of the day, nor first thing this morning.’ He shut his eyes to recall more clearly. ‘Today in the time afore dinner we’d a bit of custom, a few folk calling to talk about the mummer or congratulate Frankie, Agnes and Grace was both through the shop passing the time of day, and Robert was out at the door a lot, crying a barrel of spectacles your good-brother fetched to us last week.’ He grimaced. ‘I said it was unwise, but he would go ahead, and the chaffing and japing it earned us, well! Then we’d the upset about your wee laddie.’ He opened his eyes to look at Gil. ‘Was that him up at the table now? He’s recovered well, whatever it was he took, Christ and His saints be praised for it.’

  ‘He’s well,’ agreed Gil, ‘and we owe Mistress Grace a debt for life.’

  ‘And we were all in and out,’ continued Syme, nodding agreement, ‘looking up and down the street for this Erschewoman Grace says called her to help. I suppose in all that time there would have been opportunity for someone to put the box where you found it, but I never saw such a thing when we locked up for dinnertime, and Robert, Our Lady send him grace, was never eating at anything. Which he would have been if it was there.’

  ‘So it probably wasn’t there,’ agreed Gil. ‘And over the dinner-hour? Where was everyone? Where did you eat your own dinner?’