Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

He thought about that. Alys was inclined to make friends with the people involved in a case, and he was sure it did not help her to be impartial. Look at how she brought Christian Bothwell home, he reflected. If she had learned something this afternoon which reflected badly on Christian, or on Agnes Renfrew, would she have retreated from it in this way? No, probably not, he decided. Her ability to face unpalatable facts was one of the things he valued about her. So how unpalatable must something have been to reduce her to the state in which he had found her earlier? Perhaps Kate can tell me, he thought, I can go there after I speak to Wat. He set off down the Drygate, pulling his plaid up against the wind.

The Forrest brothers were closing up the shop, Wat fastening the shutters while Adam swept the debris of the day’s trading out into the street. They both looked up when he halted beside the door.

‘Gil,’ said Adam hopefully. ‘Have you learned anything?’

‘Nothing,’ said Gil. ‘Whatever I ask, it leads me no further. I’m more certain than ever it was an accident, but I canny prove it, and Nanty willny speak.’ He looked from one man to the other in the light spilling from their doorway. ‘Have you learned aught about the poison?’

‘No really,’ said Wat. He shook the shutters to check they were secure, and gestured to Gil to enter. ‘Come and I’ll show you what I’ve done so far.’

‘You’d hear Meg Renfrew had a wee lassie,’ said Adam, following them in. ‘The image of Frankie, so the howdies said.’

‘I did.’

Gil waited while the brothers stowed the last oddments about the shop, closed the box with the money and lifted the candles. Leading the way into the workshop, Wat said, ‘He’ll be after me within the week to betroth the bairn to our Hughie, I’ll wager.’ He set the box down within his sight and nodded at the pottery flask where it sat bright and innocent on the bench in the candlelight. ‘Now, this. We’ve tried this, we’ve tried that, we’ve tested it for colour and for how quickly it boils, for how it mixes with oil and milk and butter.’

‘Butter?’ repeated Gil, startled.

‘There’s some poisons can be combined with goose-grease or butter, to smear on the skin or work into a glove or the like,’ said Wat. He caught sight of Gil’s expression, and grinned. ‘If you’re wishful to poison someone, man, there’s a way to it, whatever care your victim takes.’

‘So I see,’ said Gil. ‘And does this stuff work that way?’

‘No need,’ said Adam. ‘It slew Danny just from touching his skin, we think. The best we can do is that it’s some plant infusion or distillation.’

‘But there’s this.’ Wat drew on a scorched and stained glove and reached for a small dish. ‘We emptied it out into a glass, to get a better look at the colour, and when we poured it back, there was this left as residue. You’d be surprised what gets past the searce.’ He carried the dish to the light, and poked with a spill at one of the objects which lay on it. ‘You see?’

‘I see it.’ Gil moved his head this way and that to get a better look at the fragments. ‘What would you say it is? It looks to me like scraps of nutmeat. A broken almond, or the like.’

‘I’d say the same,’ agreed Wat happily, ‘and Adam’s agreed. It’s about the hardness of nutmeat, and by daylight it’s white, like cream rather than like milk.’

‘Almonds. Who mentioned almonds?’ Gil recalled. ‘When the lad fell, someone — aye, it was Robert Renfrew — said he’d been eating almonds, for you could smell them on him.’

‘I mind that,’ agreed Adam. ‘You could smell them, the boy was right for once.’ Gil glanced at him, and he grimaced. ‘He’s not a natural apothecary, young Robert, for all Frankie says.’

‘I never heard that you could brew a poison out of almonds,’said Gil doubtfully.

‘Nor I,’ agreed Wat. ‘Nor there’s nothing in the books we have. Mind, if you put the right things to it, you can brew poison wi anything, but this hasny the look of something that’s been brewed from a complex receipt. The more you put to a compound, the muddier it gets.’

‘Not if it’s distilled out,’ Adam reminded his brother.

‘Frankie was working with some sort of nuts this morning,’ Gil recalled. ‘The label said Nux pines . Could that be it?’

‘Pine nuts?’ Wat guffawed. ‘Frankie? I wonder who those were for?’ He grinned at his brother, and added to Gil, ‘They’re reputed excellent for — ’ he gestured expressively — ‘propping up what willny stand. They’re no poisonous, save you take too many, and you’d need to eat a sackful at a sitting for that.’

‘I’ve heard they eat them in Italy and places like that,’ said Adam. ‘Gil, have you learned anything at all yet?’

‘A little.’ Gil leaned against the bench and summarized what he knew or suspected so far, while the two men listened with lengthening faces. When he finished, Wat shook his head.

‘I’ve aye kent it was a quarrelsome house,’ he admitted, ‘but I never thought it was that bad. I’m more than ever glad I turned Frankie down yesterday. I’d say your choice is a better one, Adam.’

Gil, keeping his face blank, asked, ‘Would you have said any of the household had the skill to produce this?’

‘Frankie himself,’ said Wat, ‘for he’s good at his trade. Jimmy, a course, and likely young Robert would know how though whether he’d achieve it I couldny say. How much Frankie’s taught his daughters I’ve no notion. But it’s hard to assess another’s craft without seeing them at work.’

The Morison household was preparing to sit down to supper. The great board had been set up in the hall, the two young maidservants were shaking out the linen cloths to go over it, and the little girls and their nurse were waiting to set out the spoons and wooden trenchers. As Gil followed Andy Paterson across the chamber, the older child, Wynliane, intercepted him, looking up earnestly at his face. Her eyes were blue, darker than Agnes Renfrew’s. He paused, and smiled at her.

‘Good evening, Maister Gil,’ she said in her soft voice, and bobbed a child’s curtsy. ‘Will you stay for supper?’

‘He better not,’ said Ysonde from her nurse’s side. ‘Isn’t enough pastries.’

‘Ysonde,’ chided Nan. ‘That’s no a polite lassie.’

‘Well, there isn’t,’ asserted Ysonde.

Gil went on to find Kate, his mood lightened slightly as it always was by contact with Ysonde. His sister was inspecting some linen with Babb in the next chamber, supported on her crutches and holding up one end of a long cloth opposite a candle.

‘It looks well enough by this light,’ she said to Babb. ‘Set it aside and we’ll have another look by daylight. Will you stay to supper, Gil?’

‘Ysonde says there aren’t enough pastries,’ he reported. Kate rolled her eyes. ‘I’m expected at home. I only called by to ask if you had seen Alys this afternoon.’

‘I did,’ she agreed, accepting two corners of the cloth from Babb and waiting while the big woman lifted the folded end of the cloth. ‘I gave her a message for you.’

‘Was she well?’

‘Well enough. Sit down a moment,’ she said, glancing at him, and helped Babb put the final folds in the cloth. ‘There, put it on the plate-cupboard, Babb, and we can search for stains by daylight. Ask Ursel if the supper will wait a quarter-hour, would you?’

‘She’ll likely no be pleased,’ Babb warned, ‘she’s wanting to go next door to hear about the mistress’s groaning-time.’

‘Offer her my apology,’ Gil said guiltily, sitting down on a chair against the wall. ‘I didn’t mean to hold back your meal, Kate.’