Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘I wouldny cross a layer-out. I ordered it left alone. Annot made some outcry about prayers for her mistress, but I bade her stand at the door wi her beads, and set two of our men on to keep the rest away. The priest said he’d send a couple of bidders up from St Agnes, but he took little persuasion himself to go away meantime.’ Gil looked startled, and both Livingstone men grimaced. ‘She’d loosed her bowels,’ the elder explained, and put a hand to his nose. ‘It’s a bit-’

‘There’s Mistress Bowen now,’ said Lowrie as a hinge creaked outside. ‘Will we go down to meet her?’

The house stood round three sides of a courtyard, so that the hall windows looked out over the knot-garden and the little fountain at its centre, as well as the gate opposite. To judge by the ladders and stacked timber there were carpenters working on one of the shorter wings, though they did not appear to be active today. Dame Isabella and her entourage were lodged in the other wing, where a set of three linked chambers at ground level had been made comfortable with hangings and padded furniture. The first of these seemed full of people, though this resolved into the man Attie and two grooms in green livery talking about crossbows, several elderly women in the dark habit of St Agnes’ almshouse praying industriously for the departed, and Mistress Bowen, a spare body in middle age bundled in a blue striped plaid, the long ends of her white linen headdress tied up on the top of her head for a day’s work, her towel and basin in her arms.

‘Good day to ye, maister,’ she said, and bobbed a curtsy to all three men impartially. ‘I’ll be glad to get this sorted and get the poor soul her rights.’

‘Aye, well, it might ha been easier if you’d tellt me what was wrong at the first,’ said Maister Livingstone sourly, but she ignored him and led the way into the second chamber. By the far door a tearful Annot looked up as they entered, and hauled herself up from her knees, folding her beads into her hand.

‘And time too!’ she said. ‘She’ll be set by now, no hope of making her decent afore evening, it’ll be the morn afore she-’

‘You’ll not tell me my job,’ said Mistress Bowen, and laid a hand to the door. ‘Has she been disturbed since I left, maister?’

‘Only if Annot’s been in,’ said Livingstone.

‘No! No!’ disclaimed Annot. ‘At least,’ she bit her lip, and they all looked at her. ‘I couldny bear to think of her staring like that, I laid a cloth to her face!’

‘I tellt you to leave her alone,’ said Livingstone in annoyance. Gil ignored them and followed Mistress Bowen into the chamber.

The first thing one noticed was the stink, which caught at the throat and made one gag. The next was Dame Isabella herself, sprawled in her filthy shift like a stranded porpoise, half on her side. The cloth Annot had mentioned covered her face, long locks of grey hair snaking from under it across the polished floorboards. A pantofle of scuffed embroidered velvet had fallen off and lay a yard or so away; the other was still wedged on the plump foot over its defiled stocking. Gil closed his eyes briefly, muttering a prayer for the dead, thinking again how death stripped all dignity from a human being.

‘Amen,’ said Mistress Bowen, crossing herself.

‘Is she just as you left her?’ he asked. ‘What was it you wanted to show me?’

‘Aye.’ She had shed the plaid and tied on an apron. Beneath it she wore a working woman’s short-sleeved gown of grey wool; now she began to roll up the sleeves of kirtle and shift, baring wiry forearms. ‘In this calling, maister, you get to ken the signs of a death. Heart trouble, apoplexy, old age. Poverty.’ Gil nodded, wondering if his belly would hold out against the smell in the chamber. ‘Whether a death’s been expected or no.’ She bent, feeling one of the outstretched arms with a professional air. ‘Aye, aye, she’s progressing well. Now, poverty’s no been a problem here,’ she measured the girth of the arm with a wry smile, ‘but just the same it didny seem right to me. So I’d a good look at the corp. There’s no saying what more I’ll uncover when I get her right washed, but to start wi I found,’ she twitched the linen cloth away, ‘here’s what I found.’

The face was hideous, as Maister Livingstone had implied, staring eyes and open mouth giving the impression of someone gazing into Hell, the trickle of blackened blood caked in the wispy moustache adding to the horror. Gil, unable to help himself, reached out and tried to close the eyelids, and discovered they were set wide as they were.

‘See here,’ said Mistress Bowen, and he realized she had put back a handful of the thinning hair and was pointing at the old woman’s ear. It was delicately whorled, pink, quite incongruously pretty and scrupulously clean. It was a pity when convention demanded that women had to hide attractive features, he reflected, thinking of Alys’s long honey-coloured hair which now he only saw at night.

‘Look closer,’ prompted Mistress Bowen. ‘Someone’s stoppit her lug.’

He looked obediently, and looked again. Half-hidden within the hollow of the ear was a black dot, like the ticks he had to extract from Socrates’ coat if they went out onto the Dow Hill.

‘It’s no a tick,’ said Mistress Bowen when he mentioned this. ‘Touch it.’

He got down on one knee and inspected the mark. It was raised, roughly square, and not black as he had first thought but dark as iron, with flecks of rust-red which -

‘Sweet St Giles!’ he said, and crossed himself. ‘It’s a nail.’

He put out a finger to test the thing. It was iron, cold iron. No, not cold, he recognized, nearer lukewarm, cooling with the corpse.

‘Aye,’ said Mistress Bowen grimly. ‘Now how did that get there?’

‘Murder,’ he said. ‘We need to send for the Serjeant.’

‘What are you saying?’ demanded Maister Livingstone from the doorway. ‘A nail? How has the old witch got a nail in her lug? That makes no sense!’

‘It does if someone put it there,’ said Lowrie. ‘Will I send Attie out for the Serjeant, uncle?’

‘But in here? She was at her prayers, Annot said. Here, Annot, woman, tell him!’

Annot, grasping what was being said, collapsed onto her knees again wailing incoherently. The men in the outermost chamber could be heard asking what ailed her. Gil ignored all, covered up the corpse’s hideous face and sat back on his heels, gazing round the chamber.

The door from the courtyard into the set of chambers was in the angle of the two wings, so this furthest chamber was at the outermost end of the wing and had windows in three walls, the door in the fourth. It was light, therefore, and contained a great number of items. He counted a free-standing box bed, set up so as to protect its occupants from most of the draughts, several kists which seemed to be Dame Isabella’s baggage, two settles, a folding table, a prayer-desk. The hangings lay in folds round the wall-foot as if they had been bought for a room with higher tenterhooks; they would surely impede anyone who hid behind them and hoped to step out quickly grasping hammer and -

‘What did he use to strike it home?’ he said aloud. Mistress Bowen, on her way to attend to Annot, gave him an approving look. ‘Is there a mell in the chamber? Anything that could be used for one?’

‘The wrights has mells in the other wing, all different sizes,’ said Livingstone, but his nephew had begun casting about, peering behind and under the furniture. ‘Are you saying — are you saying someone cam in here and struck a nail into her lug while she was at her prayers? And killed her? But how wad she ever let that come to pass? Did she no call for help, for her servants? It doesny make sense.’