by Pat McIntosh
‘Aye, on you go, Isa,’ said Syme, his felt hat held against his chest. ‘I’ll get someone to him. Thanks, lass.’
She bobbed briefly and slipped out of the room. Gil bent his head and offered a brief prayer, then drew back the shroud and studied the corpse. As Syme had said, there was nothing untoward to see; the face was a healthy colour, perhaps not as high a colour as the man had sometimes flown in life, and once the jaw softened and the mouth could be closed the expression would be as peaceful as Robert’s. Gil bent to sniff at the cold lips, but there was no odour at all; reaching for the nearest candle, he held it to cast light into the dark cavern of the open mouth, without success. Resignedly he set the candle back in its place and inserted his forefinger, feeling cautiously round the stiffened tongue and behind the teeth. The cavity felt strange, and curiously much smaller than his own mouth felt when he explored it. Many of the back teeth were missing.
‘What are you doing?’
He looked up, to see Grace Gordon standing in the doorway, her light eyes wide with astonishment.
‘Wondering what he ate last,’ he said, returning to the task.
‘Why?’ She came forward into the room. ‘What’s it to you? Never tell me you think he was pysont!’
‘I’m not easy in my mind.’ Gil withdrew his finger and looked at it. The usual whitish material was caked under the nail, scraped from the dead man’s teeth; there were some darker fragments lodged in it, which seemed to be crumbs of oatcake.
‘He had oatcakes and cheese to his dole,’ Grace agreed, still disapproving. Her voice was high and sharp with tension this morning. And small wonder, he reflected. ‘He’d eaten them, it was all over his teeth, so I rinsed out his mouth. No sense in upsetting Meg further, if she felt equal to seeing him afore we can close his mouth, I thought.’
‘A good thought,’ said Syme solemnly. ‘A right good thought.’
‘You saw nothing out of the ordinary?’ Gil asked.
‘Beyond him being deid, you mean?’ she responded, her tone acrid. ‘No, I can’t say that I did. He’d slept in his own bed, eaten his own dole, lit his own candle. There was no albarello of pyson in the chamber, no marchpane fancies. Are you thinking now it wasny Agnes that slew Robert?’
‘No.’ Gil drew back the shroud, looking down the length of Renfrew’s body, flabby and blue-veined, with a paunch the man’s garments had concealed in life. How undignified death is, he thought, stripping away all the defences we put in place. Is this how God and the saints see us?
‘You might leave him some dignity,’ said Grace, echoing his thoughts.
‘I’d rather send him justice, if he should need it.’
‘Justice? For Frankie?’ she said bitterly. Syme looked at her in astonishment, but she turned to leave the room, just as Nicol slouched in from the hall.
‘Aye, lass,’ he said, putting an arm round her, and raised his eyebrows at Gil. ‘Getting a word wi Frankie, are you, Gil?’
‘He’s looking for poison,’ said Grace into his shoulder. ‘He thinks it wasny Agnes slew Robert.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Nicol cheerfully, ‘for it’s just been determined up at the Castle that it was Agnes slew both Robert and Danny Gibson. I brought the lassie Jess down the road wi me.’
All three people in the room stared at him.
‘Gibson as well?’ said Syme at length. ‘Have they let young Bothwell go?’
‘They were just striking off his chains and all when I came away. I’d thought his sister was hoping to cure his hurts wi her tears.’ He grinned. ‘Unguentum Lacrimae, how would that sell, would you say, Grace?’
‘Is that right, d’you think, maister?’ Syme said to Gil.
‘It’s the best we’ll get,’ he said. ‘I’d thought Danny’s death was an accident, myself, but I’d never ha hoped to convince the assize it was none of Bothwell’s intent. Someone was right eloquent, I’d say.’
‘It was the Provost,’ said Nicol, without great interest. ‘What do we need to see to here, Jimmy? If Gil’s no wanting the corp, can we see to getting the old man buried along wi Robert? There’s no denying it would be handier to put them both under at the one time.’
Syme swallowed this one with difficulty, and suggested, ‘We’ll need to send round word to his gossips. They’ll want to drink to his memory, and that will have to be for this night. We’ll no get the two of them buried afore the morn’s morn, and it might need to be the day after. Wednesday, that would be.’
‘The morn’s morn,’ repeated Nicol. ‘Aye, I suppose Gerrit might wait so long. Grace?’
She looked steadily at him, and nodded.
‘I’ll get on wi packing,’ she said.
‘No, I’m no interested,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘If you’ve found nothing we can show an assize, and none of the household suspects poison, I’m no for opening it up. They’ve enough to bear for now, what wi this morning’s work and the head of the house dead and all.’
‘I think Syme is uneasy,’ said Gil. ‘He said the corp somehow resembled Robert’s.’
‘They’re father and son,’ said the Provost irritably. ‘What else would they do but resemble one another?’ He sat back in his great chair; Walter the clerk looked up briefly, then went back to his scratching pen. ‘We’ll take a look at this a moment, if we must. Was there any sign of poison in the chamber or elsewhere?’
‘The house is full of poisons,’ Gil observed. Sir Thomas grunted. ‘There was no sign in the chamber, and no sign the man had taken poison, but then Robert shows no sign either by now, even the smell of almonds has left him.’
‘Aye. Now who was in the house that might have ministered the stuff?’
‘The maidservants.’
‘No. No that lot.’
‘No, I agree. Mistress Mathieson, who everyone says is not fit to leave her bed, though I’ve seen her up and seated in a chair. Her mother. Grace and Nicol. The man himself,’ he added scrupulously, ‘though if it was the same poison, he could never have taken it himself and then left all tidy. It works too fast.’
‘Aye, and we don’t know yet what it was. The mes-senger’s no like to reach me afore this evening at the best, this time of year,’ said the Provost, glancing at the dull window.
‘And there was no sign of anything untoward in the bedchamber,’ Gil reiterated.
Sir Thomas grunted again. ‘And who of those might have a reason to kill Frankie Renfrew? The wife, I suppose, given that she’d sooner ha wedded Tammas Bowster, but you tell me she’s not got the knowledge. The good-mother, who I met at Frankie’s wedding,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘A woman of sense, I’d not put it past her to have the ability, and if she thought Frankie had slighted her bairn, I suppose she might. Did you get a word wi them?’
‘I did, after I’d seen the corp,’ said Gil. ‘Mistress Mathieson is hardly able to speak from shock, poor woman. Her mother made more sense, but it seems the two of them were up most of the night with the baby, and the lassie called Babtie with them, so all three can speak for one another through the night. I saw the candles,’ he added. ‘Anyone can burn a candle down, but I thought they were speaking the truth.’
‘Right,’ said the Provost. ‘And what of that daftheid and his wife? Did you ever hear sic a thing this morning? Frankie’s no able,’ he mimicked. ‘We’ll none of us miss him. Hah! Did you say they were leaving Glasgow?’
‘They have a passage booked from Dumbarton,’ Gil said, ‘sailing with the morning tide on Wednesday, assuming their dead can be in the ground by then.’
‘M’hm.’ Sir Thomas blew his nose and mopped it thoughtfully. ‘They’re not expecting to gain from the will, are they?’
‘Renfrew made that very clear,’ Gil said. ‘Nicol has had his share from the business already, and he could expect nothing. I’ve no information about whether Renfrew altered his will since they came home,’ he added, ‘but he’d no chance to make a new one since Robert’s death, so it all likely goes as you’d expect, the widow’s third porti
on to Mistress Mathieson and the rest between Robert, Agnes and Eleanor, with whatever he thought proper to Syme as his partner. Oh, and the bairn must get a share.’
‘They’ll not be able to divide it, either,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘till the Justice Ayre deals with that wee wildcat Agnes. They might find her innocent, after all,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You never can tell. But if Nicol’s no expecting anything under the will, why would he poison his faither?’
‘He’s never liked him,’ Gil said slowly. ‘But he said to me, when he told me his father was dead, I’m rid of him at last, and none of my doing either. Coming from him, I’d take that as the truth.’
‘And the wife, Grace Gordon, is that the name? What of her? She’s a wise woman, it seems, but is she wise enough to poison her good-father and leave no traces?’
‘It was her that cleared up, stripped the bed, washed the corp.’
‘Aye, but what gain? What benefit to her from this death?’
Gil shook his head. He was still unconvinced, but he could not muster an argument to support his suspicions.
‘She gains the return to the Low Countries, which he’d been trying to prevent, but since they must have had the passage booked already, that doesn’t seem like a reason. They could well pack and leave without him knowing, in a house that size. I think she disliked him more than she let on, but that’s not much of a reason either.’
‘Aye.’ Sir Thomas reached into his purse, produced a small box of ointment, and anointed the reddened area under his nose. Replacing the box, he said, ‘This is all assuming it was the same poison, and it was left overnight. It could ha been that wildcat Agnes left it for him, though I think she was surprised by Nicol’s news. Or it could ha been something else entirely. No, Gil, it’s too wide open, it’s like catching smoke. I’ll ha none of this. The man died of grief, and that’s that.’
‘Packing?’ repeated Alys, serving out stewed kale with caraways to go with the cold sliced mutton. ‘So they are leaving immediately? Not even waiting to read Maister Renfrew’s will?’
‘And young Bothwell is set free?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘That I am glad to hear.’
‘It seems Agnes did herself no favours,’ Gil said, ‘denying everything and casting blame on Bothwell or on the girl Jess indiscriminately. The Provost was able to convince the assize she was to blame for Robert’s death, and they decided on their own account to name her alone for Gibson. Bothwell may be liable for blood money, since he ministered the poison, but the Provost can consider that at more length. The man is free.’
‘And so Frankie Renfrew is dead.’ Maistre Pierre frowned. ‘I wonder what will come to the business now? There is the young widow, and the daughter and her man, but if Nicol is to return to the Low Countries –’
‘What troubles you, maistre le notaire?’ asked Catherine. ‘I think you are not convinced of the truth of something.’
Gil shook his head. ‘You are perceptive, madame. I’m not …’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not convinced Renfrew’s death is natural, but I can’t see who could be responsible.’
‘Then you must find out,’ she said, and returned to her kale.
Chapter Thirteen
Sitting on his folded plaid on a damp bank on the Dow Hill, the dog ranging happily in the rough grass, Gil surveyed the burgh laid out before him in the afternoon light and considered three deaths.
Small birds scolded among the bushes as Socrates invaded their territory. Sounds drifted up from the town on the brisk wind, voices and hammering, the clack of the several mills downstream, a steady rasping from the sawpit at the foot of Andrew Hamilton’s toft. Up to his right, the blond bulk of St Mungo’s loomed against the grey sky, its narrow spire and lopsided towers familiar as a friend’s face. The big houses of the Chanonry stood round it, their gardens sprawling down to the mill-burn dotted with autumn-leaved fruit trees and plots of dark green kale. A tumble of smaller cottages on the High Street led down the steep portion known as the Bell o’ the Brae, their long narrow tofts built up with workshops and storage sheds. The university was easily picked out by its swarming students in their blue gowns, with what seemed to be a noisy game of football taking place on the Paradise Yard. Next to that, the Blackfriars’ austere narrow kirk stood among the conventual buildings, and was succeeded, directly in front of him, by more big houses where the successful lived. He picked out Pierre’s house, and Morison’s Yard, and the Renfrew house next to it, the source of his present problems.
He cast his mind back over the past few days. The first death, the mummer’s poisoning, he was fairly certain was an accident. The way both Bothwell and Agnes Renfrew had reacted made that clear. But who had the lethal little flask been intended for, if not for Danny Gibson? And where had Agnes found it? He’d locked his workroom, she had said, I had to take what I could find. Where would she look if her father’s workroom was unavailable, and all the servants in the kitchen? He or the man Andro had searched the rest of the house; they had both found similar painted flasks, but the content of each was identifiable, though some they had had to refer to the helpful Syme or to Grace Gordon.
That flask, the one which Nicol called Allan Leaf, had gone to the Forrest brothers and so far as he knew was still in their possession. So Agnes must have found a further supply of the stuff, to concoct the sweetmeats which had killed her brother. Where? Or had she first located a larger quantity, and helped herself to what she needed each time? If the stuff killed on contact with the skin, she must either have been very lucky the first time or have known already what it was. And where was it stored?
That was the point they kept coming back to. What was the stuff, where did it come from, who knew about it? Presumably one person in the house did. Was that person still in the house? Still in the world? Could it have been Robert who brewed the poison, only to fall victim to it at his sister’s hands? Could it have been Frankie’s work?
And if Renfrew’s death was not natural, how had it happened? He considered the scene in the stripped bedchamber this morning. Grace’s motive seemed to be a good one, of sparing the young widow the distress of dealing with the task herself, but in doing so she had made a clean sweep of everything which might have indicated whether the man had died peacefully of a heart attack or not. You would hardly have known he had slept in that chamber, he reflected.
Below him, across the Molendinar, a figure in the garden of the Renfrew house was grappling with what seemed to be a barrel, twirling it on one end down the rough path towards the back gate. He watched, half attending. The chimney of the washhouse in the same garden was smoking briskly; the November wash must still be under way. Up and down the bank of the mill-burn other households seemed to have completed their wash, and linen was being spread out on dykes and hedges, bushes and greens, in the hope that this wind would continue. Likely the Renfrew household had been late starting, in the circumstances.
If Renfrew’s death was not natural, who could be responsible? The figure with the barrel – was it Nicol? – had deposited the thing by the gate and was returning to the house. What about those two, he wondered, Nicol and Grace? Why had they come home? Why had they stayed so long when they were unwelcome? No, more logical to ask why Renfrew had made them stay so long when they were unwelcome. A man of contradictions, the apothecary, a man who wished to control everyone round him. Nicol would return to the Low Countries, presumably make a living there, his quiet, beautiful wife with him. They had planned to leave already, as he had told the Provost, why would they have to poison Frankie in order to get away?
Mistress Mathieson and her mother claimed not to have stillroom skills. Faced with something labelled as poison, one would hardly need stillroom skills to make use of it, but this stuff was dangerous, and an untrained person using it would put himself at serious risk. Or herself, he corrected, as the Provost had done. Would Renfrew have taken a wife who knew nothing about the work in the shop? Perhaps he planned to train her, he answered himself.
Who else was left
? The servants, and Syme and his wife. The maidservants did not seem to him to be strong contenders, though of course they had access to all parts of the house while they were working, and whichever one it was who had come to tell Grace her master had not risen might have had the chance to remove whatever evidence had been left before the rest of the household reached the chamber.
Across the burn, down in the Renfrew garden, Nicol appeared from the house with a box. It seemed to be heavy; when one of the women emerged from the washhouse to speak to him he lowered it to the ground. Gil watched idly as the two held some kind of discussion. Nicol’s manner never related closely to his words, but the woman appeared to be telling him something she relished knowing. Then he spoke, and she seemed to take offence, swung round and hurried back into the washhouse. Nicol lifted the box, carried it to the gate and set it on top of the barrel. Then he let himself out of the garden, crossed the Molendinar by the nearest footbridge, and set off purposefully up on to the hill.
Who else? Yes, Syme and his wife. Always about the house, well able to leave a trap for Renfrew, both well placed to gain a great deal from the two deaths in the family. Both with the necessary knowledge. Either must be a good actor if guilty, he considered, recalling Eleanor’s response to her brother’s death. It did not seem to have occurred to either that the other might be guilty; perhaps they were in conspiracy. He thought about that for a moment, trying to imagine how one would discuss such a subject, broach the idea in the marriage-bed perhaps.
‘I thought that was you, Gil Cunningham!’
He looked up, startled, to find Nicol Renfrew standing in front of him, face lit by that aimless grin.
‘Did you, then?’ he returned. Socrates loped over to inspect the newcomer.
‘Aye, from yonder in our garden.’ Nicol sat down beside him, without benefit of plaid or padding, and reached to scratch behind the dog’s ears. Socrates accepted the attention, then wandered off again, nose down in the brown tussocks. ‘Here, this grass is damp. And I wanted a word, so I cam up to find you.’
