Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘And how long was ye about your errand?’ demanded the Serjeant impatiently. ‘When did ye get back from the potyngar’s? Which was it, any road?’

‘It was Jimmy Syme’s, away down the High Street,’ said Attie earnestly. Gil looked at the man, reckoning in his mind how long it might take to walk down to the apothecary shop of Syme amp; Renfrew in the High Street, and what short cuts might be possible. ‘And we were no that long,’ Attie went on, ‘straight there and back like we were told to, quicker than the other two any road, and then we just sat here in this chamber. They cry us waiting-men, after all,’ he said sourly.

‘Here? Could you see the door to your mistress’s chamber?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Attie. He waved a hand at the corner where the bedeswomen sat, from which Gil reckoned the doorway would be hidden. ‘We were yonder, waiting for the auld carline to send out for us, only the first thing that happened was Annot going in to her, and she screamed,’ he went on more fluently, ‘and started up saying My lady’s dead! and when we went to see, well, you ken what we saw.’

‘So when you and — Alan, was it?’ said Gil, ‘left, she was alive, and the first you saw of her after you got back, she was dead. Is that right?’

Attie looked at him for a moment, turning this over in his mind, and then nodded.

‘That’s it, maister,’ he said in some relief. ‘That’s it exact.’

‘And the two of you were together the whole time?’

‘Oh, aye, maister,’ Attie assured him. ‘The whole time. Never took our een off one anither.’

‘Then why did Alan run off?’ demanded Maister Livingstone.

‘Aye, that’s the nub o it,’ agreed the Serjeant. ‘If the two o ye could speak for one another, he’d no need to run off and cast suspicion on hissel, and the same for the two other lads.’

‘He never said,’ said Attie doubtfully. ‘But him and Nicol’s brothers, see, maybe he wouldny want to stay here on his lone.’

‘What had the two of ye to fetch from the potyngar?’ asked Livingstone. Lowrie looked up from his notes, and nodded. ‘Was it paid, or do we have to take it back and get it struck off the slate?’

‘Alan had it by heart,’ said Attie, ‘five or six different — all on the slate, maister — and he put them all in the breast o his jerkin, and I’m thinking he never took them out when we got back here.’ He looked uneasily at Livingstone’s expression, and counted on his fingers. ‘An ounce o root ginger, an ounce o cloves. Flowers o sulphur two ounce — that’s all I recall, maister, but I ken there was more. Was it a nutmeg, maybe? Or senna-pods?’

‘Oh, if he’s got that lot on him we’ll smell him out readily enough,’ said the Serjeant, laughing heartily. ‘You’ll can set that great dog o yourn after him, Maister Cunningham.’ He tilted his chair back, then forward again with a thump. ‘Right, I’d say that’s all I want from you the now, lad, we’ll hear what the woman has to say that’s no run away. Tammas, away and find her, I think she was to be in the kitchen.’

His scrawny constable left obediently. Livingstone said rather sharply to Attie,

‘And you can get about the tasks I gave you, my lad. We’ll need the mortcloth, and the hatchments have to go up at the door.’

‘But where do I get them all, maister? It’s no our house, I’ve never a-’

‘Ask at the kitchen, you great gowk! St Peter’s bones, the old beldam was right enough calling you scatterwits.’

Attie turned to go, and checked as a shadow darkened the door to the courtyard.

‘Here you all are!’ said John Sempill. ‘There’s never a soul answering your door at the house, Eckie, and I want the title to Balgrochan back, for the old dame never gave us the right papers. What’s afoot, then, what’s come to the old carline? They’re saying out in the town it’s murder.’

‘Aye, maister, it is that,’ pronounced the Serjeant with relish. ‘Were you acquaint wi the corp, then?’

‘Aye,’ said Sempill, scowling at him. ‘She’s — she was my wife’s godmother. So what’s come to her? Have you no taken whoever it was yet?’

‘Just gie it time, maister,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Ah, here’s the woman. Sit there, lass, and tell me your name.’

Annot, tearstained and tremulous, halted on the threshold at sight of Sempill; he stared back at her with round pale eyes, then abruptly turned away saying to Gil,

‘Are you in this and all? What’s ado? What came to her, then, if it wasny an apoplexy?’

‘Someone drove a nail in her head,’ reported Livingstone before Gil could speak. ‘She’s done and dunted, John, and quite a bargain for some of us.’

‘When?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Gil said. ‘When did you see her?’

Sempill paused a moment, like a man trying to reckon times. Behind him the women of St Agnes’ embarked on another round of the rosary.

‘I’m no right sure,’ he said finally. ‘But she was well enough when I saw her,’ he added aggressively, ‘it was never me that nailed her down. How could you-’ He stopped again, looked from one hand to another with small gestures as if holding nail and hammer, looked at Annot and the bedeswomen. ‘What, right through her veil and cap and that? Must ha been a mighty dunt! Can I see her? Will she be fit for my wife to view?’

‘No just yet,’ said Livingstone, ‘they’re still washing her. Come away, John, and let the Serjeant get questioning folk, though he’ll maybe want a word wi you-’

‘No, no,’ said the Serjeant, waving grandly. ‘That’s no a bother, her own folk’ll tell me all I need.’

Sempill was persuaded away with a mutter of Malvoisie, the two note-takers picked up their instruments, and the Serjeant drew a deep breath and began.

It was clear almost immediately that Annot was not going to be a helpful witness. Asked her name she stumbled and stammered over the formal Ann, the everyday Annot, and two forms of her surname, which was either Hutchie or Hutchison.

‘What do you usually get?’ the Serjeant asked her. ‘What does most folk call you?’

‘Annot,’ she said miserably. ‘Save for my mistress, that calls me — called me Sparflin Annie.’

‘That’s a good one!’ said the Serjeant. ‘And are you a sparfler, then, Annot?’

She shook her head, blinking away more tears, and Lowrie put in,

‘Her mistress had names for all her servants, Serjeant, none of them very complimentary. Attie Scatterwit, Marion Frivol, Billy Blate.’

‘And none of them true,’ said Annot, with a faint flicker of old indignation.

Gil studied her. She was a small, well-rounded woman, probably past thirty, and would be comely when her face was not puffed with weeping. She was dressed well but without show as fitted her station, in a gown of dark blue broadcloth, good linen on her head, her only jewellery a cross on a cord and the beads at her girdle. Why her mistress would call her a spendthrift was not immediately clear.

She was now attempting to deal with the beginning of the day, stopping and starting and muddling herself. The Serjeant was showing signs of irritation; with an effort, Gil pulled himself together and applied himself to his duties.

‘Mistress Annot,’ he said. She turned her eyes on him. ‘Attie tells us your mistress called the men in to give them their orders before she was dressed. Is that right?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, that’s — well, no afore she was dressed, exactly, for we’d — she’d never ha sat there in her shift, we’d to-’

‘That was her usual way,’ said Lowrie.

‘How was she clad?’ Gil persevered.

‘Her bedgown about her and yesterday’s cap over her hair,’ Annot said with a sudden access of coherence, ‘for we’d combed her and washed her hands and face, and she’d drunk her glass o hot water, though it wasny to her liking-’