Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

A loud, confident voice rose in the outermost room, with a commotion of several people. Maister Livingstone could be heard trying to explain what had happened, but the new voice overrode his.

‘No, no, I’ll just hae a look mysel afore you explain all. Ben here, is she? And Maister Cunningham’s here already, you say.’

There was a heavy tread, and Serjeant Anderson proceeded into the chamber, a well-built man in the long blue gown of a burgh servant with the embroidered badge on the breast. He nodded to Gil, then stopped just inside the door, his hand halfway to his head.

‘Your bonnet, Serjeant,’ said Mistress Bowen, her tone nicely combining formality and wifely reproof. He completed the gesture and removed his felt hat, staring at the corpse. His constable peered round his arm and stepped back, grimacing, but the Serjeant came forward, bent ponderously to look under the linen cloth, and retreated.

‘Our Lady’s garters, Mally, have ye no washed her yet? It’s no decent leaving her like that. And what’s this about murder, any road? She looks more like an apoplexy to me.’

‘Aye, so I thought at first,’ said his wife, ‘but see here.’

Shown the evidence of misdoing, the Serjeant surveyed it for a long moment, tested the rigidity of Dame Isabella’s neck and jaw, then straightened up and looked at Gil.

‘Aye, Maister Cunningham,’ he pronounced. ‘So you’ve time to spare from your researches about the burgh, I see. How far have ye got, then?’

‘John!’ said Mistress Bowen, reminding Gil irresistibly of Magdalen Boyd. The Serjeant threw his spouse a quick glance and continued more civilly,

‘See, if it was me, I’d ha questioned all her servants by now. She’s been lying there a good while, by the feel of her. How long was it known she was dead?’

‘Aye, well, small chance of that,’ said Maister Livingstone from behind the constable. He stepped into the chamber, dragging the man Attie by the arm. ‘Here’s this lad only the now telling me, her own folk has run, Serjeant, all but two of them. Lifted their bundles and vanished.’

‘I couldny stop them,’ said Attie miserably. ‘It was that Marion started it, said she wasny staying here to get the blame o the old wife taking an apoplexy, and the other lads saw it the same way and up and left. I tried to tell them you’d never charge them wi it, maister,’ he said to Maister Livingstone, ‘but they wouldny hear me.’

‘Aye, well,’ said the Serjeant. ‘I’ll ha their names off yir maister and we’ll get the constables after them. If I cry them from the Cross we’ll run them to ground soon enough.’

‘That’s if they’ve stayed in Glasgow,’ Gil said, considering the situation. If only one servant had run, he might have read it as an admission of guilt, but four fugitives confused the picture. ‘Maybe you should ask at the gates, too.’

‘I ken my job, Maister Cunningham,’ said the Serjeant.

They had repaired to the outermost chamber of the set, to allow Mistress Bowen and her assistant to resume work. While Livingstone dismissed the two men in green livery with a long list of people to call on with news of Dame Isabella’s death, Lowrie had quietly set up a table, and now, to the Serjeant’s evident gratification, he and Gil were seated behind it like a miniature court, Attie standing before them mangling his velvet bonnet, with Lowrie himself and the scrawny constable at either end making notes. The old women of St Agnes’ were still at their task in the corner, but their soft ancient voices were more soothing than distracting.

‘Why did Marion think she would get the blame, Attie?’ Gil asked now.

‘I don’t know.’ Attie spread his hands, the bonnet dangling from one like a dead bird. ‘She wasny making sense.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ Gil said. The man looked blank. ‘What was the first you knew of your mistress’s death?’

‘First we all knew,’ said Livingstone, striding the length of the chamber and back. One of the bedeswomen looked up at him, but did not break off her murmured recital. ‘When Annot came running out crying that she was dead. Is that right, lad?’ he flung at the servant.

‘Where were you at the time, maister?’ Gil asked him. ‘You said Annot came to you — where was that?’

‘We were in the hall,’ Lowrie contributed. His uncle nodded.

‘Aye, so we were.’

‘Let’s hear how the day started,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Was the departed just as usual? Who dealt wi her first?’

‘That would be her women,’ said Attie, working his bonnet between his hands. He was a lean, dark-haired fellow in his early twenties, Gil guessed, with a frightened air which was probably natural in the circumstances. ‘They’re her bedfellows, see.’

‘And you men slept where?’ asked the Serjeant.

‘Yonder in the mid chamber, see, on a couple straw pletts, which you’ll find stowed in ahint the big kist.’

Gil sat back and listened while the Serjeant led Attie competently through the beginning of the day. The grooms had risen first, naturally, though they had heard the women stirring soon after. One of the men had fetched bread and ale from the kitchen and all four had broken fast. The two waiting-women had also eaten in snatches as they moved back and forth through the set of chambers.

‘Your mistress ate nothing?’ Gil asked.

‘She’d not eat first thing,’ said Lowrie at his elbow, ‘not till she’d-’

‘Not till she’d been to stool,’ confirmed Attie awkwardly. ‘You never — you never — Nicol, that’s had several places afore this, he said he never seen anyone like the old carline neither for concern wi her belly. So they got her up, and fetched her the glass hot water she likes, and we heard her shouting about her bedgown, and then she summoned us in wi orders for the day.’

‘What, before she was dressed? Why should her women not carry the orders out to you?’ Gil asked.

Attie shook his head. ‘She never trusted a one of us to carry a sensible word to the others.’

‘Same wi the rest of the household,’ contributed Livingstone. ‘If she wanted to say a thing she’d summon you afore her, even Archie or my good-sister under their own roof.’

‘So what were the orders?’ demanded the Serjeant. ‘What would she have you all do?’

Attie shut his eyes, the better to remember, while the old women switched in unison from Pater noster to Ave Maria .

‘Nicol and Billy was to go find out when the Campbells would be back,’ he produced, ‘I think they’d a word for the place they lodge in, and Alan and me was to go an errand to the potyngar she favoured, which you’d ken wouldny be the nearest, and fetch a list o things, and straight back here.’

‘And did you?’ asked the Serjeant.

‘Aye, we did,’ Attie assured them, ‘for it wasny worth the beating if we’d dawdled.’

‘And the women?’

‘Likely they’d be set to getting her dressed,’ suggested Livingstone.

‘Aye, that was it,’ agreed the groom. ‘That was the usual. Takes an hour or two, what wi lacing her up and getting all the points tied and dressing her head, and her changing her mind, and she’s right particular how you comb her head, or so Forveleth aye says.’

‘Forveleth?’ questioned Gil.

‘Forveleth,’ Lowrie said. ‘It’s her right name. An Erschewoman, she is. Dame Isabella would aye call her Marion.’

‘Said she couldny abide these heathen names,’ supplied Attie. ‘A bonnie enough lass, but away wi the fairy half the time, full of ravery about one or another ill-wishing her.’ This must refer to the missing woman, Gil assumed, rather than her mistress. ‘I tried to stop her running off,’ he added, ‘but she said she’d seen a corp laid out in the middle chamber there whenever we set foot in it. Daft, I call it, for it was in the inmost one the auld carline died.’