Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

‘I wonder if she knew of Craigie’s thefts. She was trying to support his money-gathering, I suppose she was aware of his penance. She was certainly writing to men of law in Ayrshire, I suspect with a view to claiming property on his behalf, and without his knowledge. I need to question him, once Blacader is finished wi him. So yes, she might have tried to instruct Barnabas about the matter, which he would not have taken well.’

‘And then she lifted a cord and kept it. Is that the cord she strangled him wi? Why would she strangle him, any road?’

‘No, I think she used that cord on Peg Simpson. Barnabas was strangled wi the cord he had in his hand when he went off from the Almoner’s store.’

‘On Peg Simpson. You’ve still no explained why, either o them.’

‘I think,’ said Gil carefully, ‘she had just realised that her schemes for Annie’s marriage were coming to naught. So she slipped out in the night, greasing the hostel door hinges so that she could return in silence, and strangled the girl at the Cross. She was very insistent that nobody had left the women’s hall, but she was our only witness for that. I suppose she could have made certain they all slept soundly, just as the doctor did in the other hall.’

‘Aye,’ said Otterburn, not particularly encouraging.

‘I think Barnabas either recognised her part in what happened to Peg, or suspected Craigie of involvement as we originally thought. It was his misfortune to meet Dame Ellen rather than Craigie, whether it was in the Lower Kirk or out in the kirkyard as the Dean would prefer to believe.’

‘She was a big strong woman,’ said Otterburn thoughtfully.

‘And she had done it before,’ said Gil. ‘Sir Edward died peacefully, a couple of hours back, but he made a deposition in his last hour, witnessed by Sir Simon and myself.’ He drew the folded paper from his purse. ‘It’s interesting reading.’

Otterburn shot him a wary look, but took the paper and unfolded it.

‘All circumstantial,’ he said after a moment.

‘But it all points in the same direction,’ Gil observed. ‘She had tried to strangle her brother with a cord when they were children, and he was never satisfied that her first two husbands hanged themselves. That detail of the bruising on the first fellow’s neck is very convincing.’

‘Aye, but that was twenty year or more ago. No way to tell now.’ Otterburn laid the document flat and smoothed it onto his desk. ‘Does it satisfy you?’

‘I think it fits better than accusing Will Craigie,’ Gil admitted. ‘He’s still swearing he did not kill Barnabas, and I’m inclined to think it’s the truth.’

‘Aye,’ said Otterburn again. ‘It would be tidy, I’ll admit. It’s no like you to go for the tidy solution.’

‘I’m none so sure it is tidy,’ Gil said. ‘We still don’t know just why Barnabas died, or why Peg Simpson was throttled, though we can guess, and it’s still no clear whether Habbie Sim was involved or no. In some ways it would be neater if we could blame Craigie, but he swears innocence o both those crimes.’

Otterburn folded the paper and handed it back to Gil.

‘Well, we’ll put it to the assize, though what they’ll make of it Deil alone kens. And now I’d best make a start on this quest, afore my lord sends out to know what we’re up to.’

‘So that abominable laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘had the answer to your questions the whole time?’

‘Not all of them,’ said Gil.

The day had been longer than he liked. The assize had accepted his evidence and brought in the verdicts Otterburn required of them, but its aftermath had included a long and difficult interview with Robert Blacader and a very painful one with John Lockhart. The Archbishop had been rather less surprised than Lockhart to learn that Dame Ellen had been malefactor as well as victim, but saddened to realise that she had died without being confessed and absolved of her crimes, particularly those against Holy Kirk.

‘A lesson to us all, Gilbert,’ he said in his rich Latin. ‘Death can strike at any time, and without warning. That unhappy woman has died in the midst of her villainy, with no opportunity for repentance or amendment of life. I hope our two songmen, Craigie and Sim, will learn from her example and make full confession and restitution for their sins.’

Lockhart had been more realistic about the consequences.

‘It falls to me, I suppose,’ he said in harassed tones, ‘as good-son, to order all, Sir Edward’s burial and Dame Ellen’s, and executing his will, and dealing wi her property, and I’ll have the first hairst, the wheat field, to get in as soon as we’re back in Lanarkshire. As for what to do wi these daft lassies, I’m at my wits’ end. Annie will wed her doctor and be off my hands, and I’m glad of it, for she’s by far less biddable than she was, but the other two, well! My wife will take them under her eye, but I’ve to get them to her first.’

‘Maybe Mistress Forrest would mind them the now,’ Gil suggested. ‘She seems a capable woman.’

‘Aye, maybe,’ said Lockhart dubiously, and then with more enthusiasm, ‘Aye, you could be right. A good thought, maister. And meantime I can get a word wi Sir Simon about getting Sir Edward in the ground, and who I should ask about whether Dame Ellen’s fit to put in a kirkyard, or if she’s to go out at a crossroads somewhere. I canny believe it o her, she was aye a steering argumentative woman, but you never think o sic wickedness in someone that’s kin, even by marriage. I don’t know, if I’d seen what would come o’t I’d never ha got involved in this whole enterprise.’ He rose to leave Otterburn’s office, where Gil had taken him to explain his findings, and offered his hand. On the doorstep he turned back. ‘At least Sir Edward’s got his release now, and dee’d at peace, sic a grace as that was.’

Maistre Pierre had appeared at the back door after dinner, apparently in the hope of picking over the outcome of the case, so now they were once more in the comfortable little solar, with its windows firmly shuttered against the insistent wind, and Lowrie was handing wine. Catherine accepted her glass from him and remarked,

‘The boy knew a great deal more than anyone realised, I think, including himself.’

‘He’s confirmed the time of Peg Simpson’s death,’ Gil agreed, ‘which I could ha done with knowing earlier, as well as this tale of the argument in the kirkyard.’

‘But what did he fear?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘What kept him silent?’

‘I think,’ said Alys, ‘so far as Luke and I can understand him, he had hidden from the battle at the Cross, by going up the Stablegreen beyond St Nicholas’. He saw the Muirs, and described them well, going up the street and down again.’

‘To call on Dame Ellen at the hostel?’ interrupted her father.

‘We think so,’ agreed Gil.

‘When they returned,’ Alys continued, ‘there was a woman with them, arguing, who must have been Peg Simpson. They passed him, and he didn’t see what happened. But when the battle ended and all turned for home, he set off down the Stablegreen, and found the woman lying dead in the street.’ She grimaced. ‘He seems to have decided that some of the other prentices must have killed her, rather than the Muirs. That was what frightened him.’

‘What, that they might come after him if he told anyone?’ Lowrie said in surprise. ‘He’s no very sharp, is he?’

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre with feeling.

‘He is barely fourteen, and without friends in a strange country,’ said Alys.

‘I suppose. But when did he see these other two arguing in the kirkyard?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Some time when he should have been working, most likely.’