Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

‘Well, that all seems very clear,’ he said after a moment, and Januar looked away. ‘I’ll make some notes, if I may.’ He drew his tablets from his purse and began a careful list of the properties and their respective values. The doctor moved quietly about while he worked, pouring a spoonful of something from a flask, something else from a jug, into the glass beaker on the tray by his side. The servant lifted the glass and stepped to the bedside, and the sick man accepted the dose gratefully, drinking it in small cautious sips.

‘Who has a mind to Annie’s property?’ Gil asked eventually, stacking the documents into their bundle again. ‘There must be more than one family would be glad of the alliance. Who have you turned away?’

Sir Edward gazed at him unreadably for a long moment. Eventually he said, in that thread of a voice,

‘Most of Ayrshire. Half Lanarkshire. Boyds, Muirs, Somervilles.’ One of those faint smiles. ‘Lost count a while back.’

‘None of them seemed more determined than others? More persistent?’

A soundless No. Whether that was the case or not, Sir Edward was clearly not the one to ask. Gil was considering his next question when hasty feet sounded in the courtyard, Socrates wuffed a greeting beneath the window, and Lowrie entered, rattling at the pin as he opened the door.

‘Forgive me, maisters,’ he said, bowing briefly. ‘Maister Gil, I think we have a name for the dead lassie.’

Out in the yard he was a little more explicit.

‘One of the alehouses out near the Stablegreen Port. Seems the bellman stopped there to wet his thrapple, and cried his tale by the door as he came and went, and naturally they all came up here to see the sight, and recognised her kirtle where we’ve spread it out to dry on the grass.’ Gil nodded, acknowledging his dog’s salutation. ‘They think it’s one of the lassies from the next tavern, just inside the Port. Someone’s gone out there to tell them, fetch her man, maybe get the alewife here too. I thought you’d wish to witness that.’

‘You’re right,’ said Gil. ‘What is her name, then? Assuming they’re right, and assuming the dead lassie is the owner of the kirtle,’ he qualified.

‘Peg, they called her. Peg Simpson. She works at the sign of the Trindle, so they thought, and her man’s a porter in the town.’

In the chapel, a small group who might or might not be different from the previous group was discussing this, while the woman who had been praying earlier sat on her heels, her beads wrapped round her hand, listening to the comments. Her husband had vanished, presumably to his duties about the hostel.

‘Likely one o their regulars tried it on a bit far,’ said a man in a cowhide apron as Gil entered. ‘You ken what the place is like, after all.’

‘I don’t know it,’ said Gil. ‘Tell me about it.’

All the heads turned, and the man in the apron, taken aback, swallowed once or twice and then said,

‘Aye, well, it’s no the most- It’s no a- It’s no like the Mitre that Ep Davison keeps, that’s a clean house and well ordered.’

‘A true word, Willie,’ agreed a woman in a striped kirtle. ‘Eppie keeps a well-ordered house, right enough. Her las sies are all decent folk, a woman can take a drink in there and never be troubled by other folk’s husbands. Unless she wants to be,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Jean Howie’s ale isny the wonder o the town neither,’ said a man with a bright green hood rolled down on his shoulders. ‘That’s her that keeps the Trindle,’ he added.

‘Aye it is,’ contradicted someone else, ‘it’s a wonder that folks goes back there after they’ve tasted it once.’

‘That’s no what they go back for,’ said another voice.

‘I heard that, William Pringle,’ said a stout woman at the chapel door. She pushed past Gil without apology, taking her beads in her hand as she went. ‘Now what’s this about Peg? She should ha been at her work hours since. What’s she doing here, and dead wi it?’

‘Here she’s, Jean,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘That’s if it is her, she’s been beat that bad you wouldny ken her.’

Mistress Howie halted at sight of the dead woman’s face, crossed herself, and went forward more slowly.

‘Oh, in the Name,’ she said after a moment. ‘What a beating she’s taen. The poor lass. I’ll wager it’s that man o hers, raised his fist to her once too often.’

‘More than his fist, I’d ha said,’ offered the woman in the striped kirtle. ‘She’s black and blue, head to foot. Take a look, Jean.’

Bessie, the hostel servant, got to her feet and raised the shroud, glaring at the male bystanders. Mistress Howie cast a cautious glance under the linen at the hunched length of the corpse, and nodded grimly, pursing her lips.

‘Have you sent to take him up?’ she demanded of Gil, unerringly scenting authority. ‘Her man. Billy Baird. Makes his living carrying other folks’ goods on his back, such as doesny fall into his pouch on the way to where he’s going. Scrawny black-haired creature wi a scar across his lug.’ She raked one finger across the folds of her linen headdress, over her ear and down her cheek. ‘It’s hardly murder, if a man slays his own wife wi his fists, but he should face the Provost for it any road.’

‘They’ve sent after him, Jean,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘Likely he’ll be here to gie a name to her.’

‘Aye, but who did ye send?’ she said sceptically.

‘Where do they dwell, mistress?’ Gil asked. ‘Have you any notion where the fellow Baird might be working this morning? Have you seen him the day?’

‘No to say seen him.’ Mistress Howie folded her arms under her substantial bosom, slightly relieving the strain on her red kirtle. ‘When I threw out the night’s stop-overs, maybe an hour afore Prime, I seen him keeking out at their door, but he ducked back as soon as he seen me look at him. They dwell on our back lands,’ she enlarged, ‘got a room in one o the wee sheds. Right handy for. ’ Her voice tailed off, and she glanced at the corpse and crossed herself. ‘Poor lass,’ she said again.

Gil, listening to what was not said, could only agree with her. How did the man Baird feel if his wife brought her clients home, he wondered. Indeed, was she his wife?

‘Would you swear this is Peg Simpson?’ he asked.

She gave him a sharp look, then made another inspection of the shrouded corpse, obviously seeking something.

‘Aye, I would,’ she said at length. ‘She’s got the mark o a burn on her arm, that I recall her getting at my fireside last Yule. That’s Peg. But her man should ken her and all,’ she added, changing her tune slightly.

‘And when did you see her last?’ Gil persisted.

‘I seen her yesterday afternoon,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘I seen her in that blue kirtle that’s lying outside on the grass, fetching a basket of bread home to your tavern, Jean.’

‘Aye, that would be right,’ said Mistress Howie after a moment’s thought. ‘I sent her for bread, maybe an hour after noon. She was ower long about it-’

‘Aye, she would be,’ said the man with the apron, ‘seeing she was standing at the Wyndheid watching the procession come in, all the fine folks and their braw clothes on horseback coming here, and the horse-litter for the poor man that’s on his deathbed, quite an entertainment it was.’

‘Aye, it would be,’ agreed Mistress Howie. ‘So that’s where she was, right enough? She denied it to me. Wait till I get a word wi her. ’ Her voice cracked as she realised what she was saying, and she suddenly pulled the tail of her linen headdress up across her face. ‘Och, the poor lassie,’ she said from behind it, muffled. ‘She never deserved this.’