Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

Next to Alys, Grace jerked as if she had been struck by an arrow. She turned to look at the other woman, and then over her shoulder at the two maidservants, who were staring back at Agnes, open-mouthed.

‘Who?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘What are you saying, Agnes? It was never Grace!’

‘It was you!’ Agnes said again. ‘You, Jess Dickson!’ She glared from one to the other of the men that held her, her eyes glittering. ‘Take her, no me. It was her poisoned my brother, she did it.’

‘No I never!’ Jess looked round her, alarmed, and edged towards the door. ‘How would I pyson anybody?’

‘Aye, hold the lassie!’ ordered Renfrew. Alys met Gil’s eyes across the chamber. Even in that light, she could tell that he was as startled as she was.

The Serjeant sighed. ‘We’ll just take them both,’ he said resignedly. ‘Hold her and all, lads.’

‘But why can they not release my brother?’ asked Christian Bothwell heatedly. ‘If she’s poisoned one man, she’s poisoned another, surely?’

‘The Provost must decide,’ said Gil, with sympathy, ‘and he’s abed with the rheum. It could still have been a matter of conspiracy between them, you must see that — ’

‘Never! No my brother!’

‘I realize it’s not in his nature, but the law takes no account of such things.’

‘The law is a fool,’ said Mistress Bothwell.

They were standing in the street, where she had caught up with them on their way home after seeing a tearful Nell Wilkie back to the dyeyard. The news of Robert Renfrew’s death and his sister’s arrest had obviously spread rapidly in the lower town, and she was certain Gil could now secure her brother’s release.

‘This is not the place to discuss it,’ said Alys. ‘Will you not come home with us just now? If you could persuade your brother to confess where he came by the flask he used, it would help him. It would help us too.’

‘He’ll not hear me,’ said Mistress Bothwell, wringing a fold of her plaid in her hands. In the torchlight her face was pinched and her eyes huge and dark. ‘I got in to see him yesterday, afore they moved him to the Castle, but he’d not admit it was other than one of ours, I asked him where he’d got it and he never answered — ’

‘He might tell us more when he knows Agnes has been taken up,’ Gil observed.

She shook her head. ‘No, if he’s decided to protect her he’ll not change his mind.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘I canny bear it if I’m to see him hang, only for the sake of a vicious wee trollop like Agnes Renfrew.’

‘Come back with us,’ said Alys again, ‘and at least have some company for the evening.’

She shook her head again. ‘My thanks, lassie, I’m bidden to the Forrests for my supper. It’s right kind of them, considering. And kind of you, too.’ She looked up at Gil. ‘So you’ll not see Nanty released?’

‘I’ve no authority,’ he said with reluctance. ‘I’d like nothing better, but the Provost makes his own decisions. He’ll not rise from his bed to question Agnes, I suspect, and he won’t release your brother till he has good reason.’

‘Is there more you need to know?’ she asked directly. ‘Can I find anything for you?’

‘I still haven’t learned what the poison is or where it came from,’ said Gil. ‘Anything you can think of that might help me to that would be valuable.’

‘Aye, I can see that.’ She gathered her plaid round her, preparing to walk on up the High Street. ‘I could — I’ll think on it more. I suppose Agnes isn’t saying anything that will help?’

‘She still denied everything, even when they put the chains on her,’ said Alys. She turned to put the platter of roast meat on the plate-cupboard where it would not tempt Socrates. Gil watched appreciatively as the high delicate bridge of her nose was outlined for a moment against the candlelight gleaming on the plate. Turning back she looked briefly down the table as she had been doing all evening to make sure John was safe on his nurse’s knee, and lifted the serving-spoon before her. ‘Catherine, may I help you to the applemoy?’

‘It is unbelievable,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I find it all too believable, and what Alys learned in the kitchen bears me out.’

‘But whether you find it believable, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘do you think she did poison her brother? Or was it the maidservant as she claimed?’

‘She accused the girl out of spite,’ said Alys. ‘When she recognized who had set the constables on to her. She is very vindictive.’

‘ Never yet I knouste non Louesomer in londe ,’ observed Gil, with irony.

‘So not the maidservant but the mistress.’

‘Her father thinks she did,’ said Alys.

‘He looked as though he would have a seizure when he saw her manacled,’ said Gil. ‘I was glad when Grace reminded him to take his drops, though they didn’t seem to help much.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Alys slowly, ‘it could have been any of them. Agnes is likely, I admit, but as we found last night, they all have as much reason as she does to poison Robert, they all have the knowledge, and the method was open to any of them. Or to anyone else who recognized the possibility.’

‘Except for Nanty Bothwell,’ said Gil.

‘Unless he had prepared the things earlier and left them in place,’ Maistre Pierre said, ‘and it only now came to light. But why would he poison Robert Renfrew if he had a notion for Agnes?’

‘To gain favour with her?’ suggested Gil.

‘It might work,’ said Alys critically, ‘but it would be out of character. None of his friends could believe it of him, that he might poison his rival, and it makes even less sense to poison his sweetheart’s brother. It was her father who objected to her choice of sweetheart, not her brother.’

‘And at the rate Robert ate the things, if they were left before the play on Thursday I’d have thought he would reach a poisoned one sooner than this. No, I think we can probably discount Bothwell,’ Gil agreed. ‘Which only leaves us the entire family. And the maidservant.’

‘Da Gil!’ said a forceful voice at his side. He looked down, to find John, who would usually have been in bed by suppertime, beaming at him under dark curls full of green sauce. Socrates reached an enquiring muzzle and licked the boy’s ear.

‘What a sight you are,’ Gil said, pushing the dog away and lifting John on to his knee. ‘He seems well enough now, after his misadventure.’

‘I think he’s unharmed,’ said Alys. ‘He slept all afternoon, Nancy told me. Only the adults were afflicted. I thought this morning I would never recover from the fright, and poor Nancy is consumed by guilt.’

‘He will be guarded more carefully now,’ observed Catherine.

‘Poon,’ said John, seizing Gil’s spoon.

‘It seems to me,’ continued Catherine, laying her own spoon in her plate, ‘that the key to the question is, what is the source of the poison.’

‘I think so too, madame,’ Gil agreed. ‘Whoever poisoned the cherries must at least have had access to the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, whether or not it was the same person.’ He wrestled the spoon back and silenced the shouts of indignation by using it to offer John a mouthful of applemoy.

‘But is that sufficient reason to kill her brother?’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly.

Gil suddenly recalled his sister Dorothea, of all people, a year ago in this hall saying, You don’t need a sensible reason to want to kill a brother, just a strong one . He repeated the remark, and Alys nodded.

‘And Agnes’s reasons were strong,’ she said. ‘But were anyone else’s as strong?’