Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

‘You stop that, you filthy leear,’ said the man in the hide apron, shaking him. ‘Right, maister, will we just take him round to the Provost the now while we’ve got our hands on him? Saves hunting for him later on.’

‘No,’ said Gil. There were indignant exclamations. ‘No, let him go. I need a right word wi him, and I’m not doing it here with half the upper town looking on.’

‘He’ll run as soon as he’s loosed,’ said the woman in the striped kirtle.

‘I will not, Agnes Wilkie,’ said Baird, ‘for that I’ll be hunting for him that did that to Peg.’

‘Let him go,’ Gil repeated, and was obeyed with reluctance. ‘And leave me wi him.’

Lowrie began to clear the chapel of the various bystanders, eventually persuading them that there was no more excitement to be had. When all that remained were Gil and Lowrie himself, the hostel servant Bess, and the man Baird, Gil led the porter over to the head of the bier and deliberately turned back the sheet to show the dead woman’s face.

‘Tell me when she went out,’ he said. Baird looked down at the battered countenance, his mouth twisting.

‘No much to tell,’ he said, with fractured bravado. ‘She cam round fro the alehouse when they’d put up the shutters, lifted her plaid and said she’d be away out.’

‘Her plaid?’ Gil repeated. ‘What like is her plaid? You’re certain she took it?’

‘Well, it’s no in the lodging, I’d to sleep cold. Just ordinar. Kind o brown checkit thing. Aye, that’s it.’ He nodded at the bundle Gil lifted from below the bier. ‘That’s hers. Can I get it back, maister? I was- I was right cold last night.’

‘And what did you say when she said she would go out?’ Gil prompted.

‘I said, Away out? At this hour? and she said, Aye. There’s someone back in the town I need a word wi .’ He paused, scratching at his groin again, his face sour as if the memory tasted bad. As well it might, Gil thought. ‘So I says, Who would that be? and she says, Nobody you ken, Billy, though he’s afflicted the both o us. Then she goes away out. Don’t wait up, she says, I’ll likely be a while. And I never,’ he dashed impatiently at his eye, ‘I never seen her again. Till now.’ He put out a hand and touched the bruised cheek with surprising tenderness. ‘Peggy, lass, who was he? What did you do that he slew you this way?’

‘She didny tell you who he was?’

‘No a word.’

Gil went back over the man’s statement in his mind.

‘She said there was someone back in the town,’ he repeated, ‘and someone who had afflicted both of you. What did she mean by that? Your landlord, maybe?’

‘No likely,’ said Baird dismissively, ‘it’s Jean Howie rents us the place, or rents it to Peg any road. Likely she’ll want me out o there now,’ he added, ‘seeing I canny bring in custom to her alehouse.’

‘You think it might have been a matter of picking a fight with this man? Of having something out wi him?’

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it no?’ retorted Baird with grim humour. ‘No, I canny add aught to what I’ve tellt you, maister. The lassies ’at worked wi her might have more to say, she maybe told them whatever it was that was eating at her.’

‘You’re saying she was worried about something?’

‘No worried,’ contradicted Baird. ‘More like annoyed. Something wasny right. I never asked her,’ he said a little desperately, ‘I thought she’d tell me when she cam in, maybe wi money in her purse. I’d naught but those few words wi her afore she went off into the night and I never seen her again till this. It’s no right, maister! It’s no justice!’

Following Gil out into the sunshine again, leaving Baird standing in baffled anger by the bier, Lowrie said quietly,

‘Was she maybe putting the black on someone? Is that why she was killed?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder how this fellow had afflicted them both? And when he came back into the town?’ He glanced at the sky, and snapped his fingers for Socrates, who obediently left the doorpost he was inspecting and came to his side. ‘I think we need a word wi the lassies at the Trindle, and then it’s high time we went home for the noon bite.’

Jean Howie’s alehouse presented itself much as Gil expected. It stood with its sagging stone gable facing the street, at the top of one of the long narrow tofts north of the Castle walls and just within the Stablegreen port. Tumbledown thatch lowered over the doorway, a similar building stood just beyond it, and a straggling line of sheds and shacks further along the path must include the lodging Billy Baird had shared with Peg. Beyond the fence at the far end of the toft was a stretch of common ground, and then the foot of the gardens of Vicars’ Alley, where the songmen of St Mungo’s dwelt. There was a sound of women weeping, and two gloomy men standing outside the house.

‘Is this it?’ said Lowrie doubtfully.

‘The sign says it is,’ Gil answered. The younger man looked at the weather-worn board hanging crookedly over the door; just recognisably it depicted a trindle, one of the long candles matched to the donor’s height and coiled into a spiral which were pledged to one saint or another in return for favours granted.

‘They aye make me think of dog-turds,’ he remarked, following his superior along the path. ‘Trindles. The way they curl round about.’

‘Thank you for that,’ said Gil. He nodded to the two men at the door, and rapped smartly on the doorjamb. Socrates returned from a brief jaunt down the path and sat down grinning at his feet.

‘You’ll get no assistance, neighbour,’ said one of the bystanders. ‘A man could die o thirst in there the day, if he wasny drowned first wi them weeping.’

‘Aye, well, they’re a’ owerset,’ said his companion. ‘One o their hoors is deid,’ he explained to Gil, ‘strangled to death at Glasgow Cross in the night so they’re saying. It’s only natural they should be out o sorts.’

Inside, the alehouse was dark, the fire burning low. The room seemed to be full of sour-smelling bodies huddled together in sobbing groups, but as his vision improved Gil made out Mistress Howie moving about by the two barrels of ale on their trestles, and no more than four other women, three at the single window with their arms about one another and one on her own by the hearth, stirring something in a pot. This one rose and came forward, wiping her eyes.

‘You’ll ha to forgive us, friend. Maister,’ she corrected herself as she assessed Gil’s clothing in the dimness. ‘We’re no serving the now, for we’ve just had bad news-’

‘I ken that,’ he said, raising his hat to her. Lowrie had taken up position by the door, the dog at his feet. ‘I was hoping for a word wi all of you that worked beside Peg Simpson. It’s possible she said something yesterday that might help me track down the man that slew her.’

‘You found us, then,’ said Mistress Howie from the tap. ‘Aye, Sibby, answer his questions, and if you ken aught that would help, tell it him straight out.’

‘It was that man o hers, for certain,’ said one of the group by the window. ‘Question him, why don’t you, or just take him up afore the Provost-’

‘I still need to know why she died,’ said Gil. ‘Did she tell any of you why she went out last night? Or where she was going?’

‘I seen her,’ said another woman by the window. She disengaged herself from the group and came nearer, rubbing at her arms as if she was cold. The sleeves of her kirtle were decorated with braid like Peg’s. ‘She went off down the road wi her plaid about her. You seen her and all, Mysie.’