Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Is there another key?’ Gil asked.

‘Aye, Jimmy has a key, being a partner in the business, but he keeps it close as I do.’

‘And do you have any more idea what yesterday’s poison might be?’

‘None.’ Renfrew opened the workroom door, a little too quickly for his son who was revealed within a yard or so of the other side. ‘Robert, have you no work to occupy you?’

‘Aye, Faither,’ returned the young man, ‘but it’s all in the workroom where you were just now.’

‘Get on with it, then, afore I take a stick across your back,’ said his father sharply. ‘Jimmy, I think Peter and his good-son are just leaving.’

‘No,’ said Gil apologetically. ‘I need a word with your daughter Agnes.’

‘Wi Agnes?’ Renfrew stared at him. ‘Why?’

‘As you said yourself, sir,’ Gil pointed out, ‘one of her sweethearts has slain the other. I’d say Sir Thomas will want a word wi her and all, and it’s plain she can help me. I’ve given her most of the day, since she’s not left her chamber, but I must speak wi her now.’

‘You’ve no need to speak to Agnes,’ said Renfrew crisply. ‘An empty-heidit lassie like her can add nothing to what the rest of us saw.’

‘I’ll fetch her,’ offered Robert, still in the workroom doorway. Gil looked at the young man, and saw the smirk just vanishing from his face.

‘I come with you,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘I’d sooner speak to the lassie in her own chamber,’ said Gil, ‘with maybe one of the other women at her side.’

‘She’s nothing to hide from her faither,’ pronounced her father in menacing tones.

‘Then you’ll not need to be present, sir,’ suggested Gil.

Renfrew grunted sourly at that and turned to the house door. ‘You’d best come up, then,’ he said.

‘I’ll come and all,’ said Robert. ‘I want to hear what she has to say.’

With a faintly gleeful air he preceded them through into the house, up the newel stair into the hall, up a further flight.

‘What is a hurcheon?’ asked Maistre Pierre absently as they passed through a succession of ostentatious rooms, their wooden furnishings pale and new, and the hangings bright and fresh even in the dwindling daylight.

‘ Hérisson ,’ translated Gil. ‘Hedgehog.’

Finally Robert kicked at a shut door and flung it open, saying, ‘Agnes? Here’s the Provost’s men come to take you up for poisoning Danny Gibson.’

‘Robert!’ said Gil sharply, but it was drowned in Agnes’s shriek of terror. She had been lying on the handsome tester-bed which occupied most of the chamber, and she sprang up and off the bed on the far side, all in one movement, white-faced, petticoats flying, stammering:

‘No! No, I didny — I never —!’

‘Robert, you’re a fool!’ said his father.

‘Come, come, Agnes,’ said Maistre Pierre reassuringly. ‘You know enough not to pay attention to what your brother says, no?’

‘I never — ’ repeated Agnes, and then the sense of these words penetrated. ‘You mean it’s not — he was — ’ She swallowed, and turned a savage face on her brother, showing little even teeth. ‘Our Lady’s nails, I’ll pay you for that one, Robert, I swear it, if it’s the last thing I ever do.’

‘ There was joye to sen hem mete, With layking and with kissing swete. Thank you, Robert,’ said Gil, without sincerity. ‘I’m sure your father can spare you now. Likely Maister Syme would like your help to close up the shop.’

‘Aye, get away, Robert,’ said Renfrew. ‘That was a daft trick. And we’ll ha none o your sarcasm, maister,’ he added. Robert gave Gil an ugly look and slunk out, and Renfrew entered the chamber, saying to his daughter, ‘Here’s Maister Cunningham wants to ask you about yesterday, Agnes. Speak up and answer him the truth, lassie.’

His face cracked in a half-smile, and the girl relaxed slightly, and came round the end of the bed. Her cheeks were wet, as if she had been weeping, and Gil saw that she was still trembling from the fright her brother had given her.

‘Shall we have some light, and then sit down?’ he suggested.

Seated by the opened shutters, he studied Agnes again in the light of the yellow sunset. She did not look as if she had slept; the blue eyes were dark-ringed, the gold curls uncombed, and she clasped and unclasped her hands, apparently unaware that she did so. Maistre Pierre was watching her with some sympathy.

‘You know your good-mother has a wee lassie,’ Renfrew said.

‘I could hardly miss it,’ said Agnes. Not so distressed as she seems, then, Gil registered.

‘Where did you find the flask, Agnes?’ he said abruptly. She reared back like a horse sharply reined in, and stared at him, mouth open, eyes very wide.

‘Find it?’ she said after a moment. ‘Me?’

‘You gave it to Nanty Bothwell on the stair,’ Gil said. Renfrew looked from his daughter to Gil, open-mouthed in indignation.

‘Why would I do that?’ she countered boldly. Definitely not so distressed as she seems, thought Gil. ‘What would I — does he say I gave him it?’

‘Never mind what he says,’ said Gil. ‘I’m interested in what you say. Where did you find it?’

‘What’s this about?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘My lassie never had aught to do wi the flask. I told you all that below stairs the now!’

‘I never had it,’ she said resolutely, shaking her head. ‘It was nothing to do with me.’

‘I’ve heard a different tale,’ said Gil. ‘You saved the play, you claimed. Where did you find the flask?’

‘Why would I have the flask?’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to do wi me, is it, Daddy? You keep all those things in your care, locked in the workroom, we never get a sight of them, what would I be doing passing one to Nanty Bothwell?’

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ said Gil. ‘Nanty forgot to lift the one he should have had with him, so he asked you to find him something that would do, when you slipped back here to fetch your good-mother a cushion.’

‘Why are you accusing her like this?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘What’s the proof you have?’

‘I never did anything of the sort,’ said Agnes, sounding alarmed. ‘You canny show I did, either!’

‘Aye, what proof?’ demanded Renfrew again.

‘She was seen talking to Nanty, out in the yard, when she left Morison’s house,’ said Gil. ‘And seen afterwards, talking to him on the kitchen stair. That was when she said she’d saved the play. You brought Nanty that flask, Agnes, and it killed Danny Gibson. Was that your intention?’

She turned her face away from the light, putting one hand up to cover her eyes.

‘Do you think I’ll ever forget how he died?’ she whispered. ‘You canny torment me like this, maister. Daddy, stop him! I never — ’

‘That’s nothing to say to the matter!’ said Renfrew angrily. ‘It’s all hearsay! How could she get the flask, let alone whatever was in it, when the key to the workroom was in my purse all the time?’

‘Did you know what you’d lifted?’ Gil asked. ‘Did you know it was poison? Did you plan to have one lad kill the other and be hanged for it?’

‘No, I never. Where would I get something like that?’ she asked, without looking round. ‘Tell me that, maister! My faither keeps control over all that moves in this house, and certainly over all that’s to do wi the craft. How would I find sic a flask, let alone poison to put in it to-’ Her face crumpled, and she covered it with her hands again. ‘Oh, the poor laddie!’

‘Danny died. Nanty will hang,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘unless we can show it was a mistake, that he’d no knowledge of what was in the flask. One of your sweethearts has died, but you could save the other one by telling me the truth, Agnes.’