Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

Mollified, the two departed and the bedeswomen from St Agnes’ were installed beside their client. Annot, clearly feeling more settled now that the ordeal of her questioning was over, knelt beside them. Gil moved carefully into the bedchamber, looking about him.

‘Tell me a bit more,’ he said as Lowrie joined him.

‘There’s a fair bit more to tell,’ the younger man agreed.

‘John Sempill, for a start. You’ve something to add to Annot’s tale? When was he here?’

‘Last night after dinner, as she said. The old woman kept him standing, and then refused to see him privately. A roaring row in the antechamber.’

‘Your uncle said the same,’ Gil recalled. ‘So not this morning?’

‘Not that I know,’ Lowrie said warily.

‘But he got a word wi her anyway.’ Gil frowned, trying to think of what Sempill had said earlier.

‘Aye. After he left us he stopped by this window,’ he nodded at the one opposite the bed-foot, which gave onto the courtyard, ‘and shouted through it at her, and they’d another roaring argument you could hear in Partick, till he flung off out the gate bawling threats-’ Lowrie stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying. ‘He said,’ he continued more slowly, ‘he’d see her in Hell afore he did whatever it was she’d ordered him to do. She was looking out at the window, and asked what his wife would say if she kent what he’d been at, and he, he went closer and said something quiet, and she laughed at him. So he stormed off out the gate.’

‘Where were you?’ Gil asked. ‘Where were her servants, at that?’

‘I’ve no notion where her servants were,’ Lowrie admitted, ‘though I’d not believe Annot heard none of it, but I was hanging out the upstairs window listening for all I was worth. I’ve not had such entertainment all week. Is the man aye so birsie?’

‘He’s much improved since this marriage, if you’ll believe me,’ Gil said. And where had Sempill been this morning, he wondered, when he told his wife he was talking to Dame Isabella? ‘Now, do you see aught amiss here? Aught that’s out of place or missing?’

‘I’d not know.’ Lowrie looked about him. ‘She was right persnickety, I’d guess her kists are all packed just so, but you want Annot for that. I’ll fetch her in.’ He turned to go, then hesitated. ‘Maister, I’d say I was wi my uncle from the time the two o us came down for our porridge till Annot came running to say she was dead, for we were going back over all the documents and debating what to do about the Strathblane lands.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘So am I,’ Lowrie admitted. ‘But the thing is, we were at the back o the hall, looking onto the garden, so we neither of us saw nor heard anything from this side the house. And a course the kitchen’s out that way and all, so she was right unattended, nobody within call in any direction, if what Annot says is right.’

‘Except her murderer.’ Gil sighed. ‘It’s not an easy one to piece together. She was enthroned yonder, and to judge by the sign she was in no position to move. Unless her bowels were loosed as she died,’ he added thoughtfully. He stepped into the room and looked about him. ‘Someone entered the chamber, and lifted something to use as a hammer, or else brought one in, then went around the settle and behind her,’ he did so as he spoke, finding to his relief that the cover was down on the close-stool, ‘and drove the nail into her ear.’

‘Into the far side of her head.’ Lowrie put his hand up to his own skull. ‘She’d be facing the window, with the settle at her left side. Does that work? Nail in the left hand, mell in the right, reach across over the top of her head — why? Why no strike it in at the back or the crown?’

‘So that she didn’t see the blow coming,’ Gil guessed. ‘The left hand over her head, as you said, and the right striking from behind her. It’s odd, just the same, you’d think the wall would cramp your movement. Unless,’ he stooped, looking at the shutters in the lower portion of the window, ‘unless she was looking out of the window. This is just ajar, there’s a good view of the street.’

‘She was right nosy,’ Lowrie said. ‘That would be like her, to sit there looking up the Drygate, however she was occupied.’

‘Aye, I like that better. And then whoever it was left, and took the mell with them.’

‘And she tried to follow.’ Lowrie grimaced. ‘Maybe she was a cantankerous old attercap, but nobody deserves a death like that.’

Annot, summoned from her prayers, seemed likely to start weeping again, and was not reassured by Lowrie saying,

‘We’re still trying to find out what happened.’

‘It wasny me,’ she protested, ‘I wasny here, I’ve never a notion what can have come to her, save it was some wicked soul off the street!’

‘Look about you,’ Gil said, ‘and see if you can tell me what’s changed from,’ he paused, considering. ‘From the time the men were in to get their orders this morning.’

‘The men?’ She stared at him, then applied herself to this idea. ‘Oh, maister, all’s different.’

‘Where was your mistress seated?’

‘Here on the settle,’ she pointed, ‘and that bowl and towels wasny there on the bench, for we’d washed her hands and face afore she rose and set the bowl on the wee table by the bed-foot.’

‘How was she clad?’

‘Her good bedgown that’s lying on the bed now, wrapped all about her and tied decent.’

‘What about her feet?’

‘Her pantofles. She aye wears her pantofles in the mornings, blue velvet wi stitch-work on them, and her hose under them for warmth. Her head? Just her cap, to cover her hair decent.’

‘What else is different?’ Gil persisted. ‘Has anything been moved? Are her kists all as they should be?’

‘I, I think so. Save that someone’s opened up her jewel-kist,’ she said, with sudden indignation. ‘Who’s been prying?’

‘Is aught missing?’ Lowrie asked. She looked at him, then crossed the chamber to where the leather-clad box lay on the settle. Setting back the lid she inspected the multiplicity of little bags of velvet or brocade it contained.

‘Her silver cross,’ she murmured, lifting it, ‘the great chain, the two small chains, the jet from St Hilda’s, the pearl rope, the pearl chain-’

Sweet St Giles, thought Gil, what an inventory. The woman could have funded a Crusade.

‘There’s just the one thing missing,’ said Annot finally, looking up at them. ‘And Christ be my witness, Maister Lowrie, it was here when I last looked in this kist. It’s a purse of silver coin, maister, that she never touched or would let us touch. It should be at the bottom of the kist and it’s no there, look, you can see where it ought to be.’

‘And you’ve a witness,’ said Andrew Otterburn. ‘No a very reliable one, by all I hear, but he kens what he saw, I suppose.’

‘I’d say so,’ agreed Gil.

‘And they struck you down so that you lost your senses. Aye, I’ve got that. Pity it wasny to the effusion of your blood, maister, but we canny have everything.’

‘I’ll contrive to do without it,’ Gil said, touching the back of his head gingerly. Otterburn acknowledged this with a flick of his eyebrows. ‘And likely Madam Xanthe will swear to what she knows, taking me in near senseless and drying me off.’

‘Aye, so I hear,’ agreed Otterburn drily. ‘Well, well, we’ll get it writ up in due process and serve them wi’t as a summons, but will we do aught afore that? Would you wish any other action? We canny have the Archbishop’s man struck down all anyhow. Per exemplum , I’d be happy enough to send Andro and two-three men to search the place, take the man Muir’s workshop apart, gie them a bit fright.’ Gil nodded. ‘Walter, man, see to that, would you? They’ve plenty time afore supper.’