Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Where was Nicol?’ Gil asked. ‘Was he ill? Mistress Grace said he was abed, but he seemed well enough when he came down.’

Syme hesitated, his expression disapproving.

‘You’d best ask Nicol himself about that,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll not — no. It’s for him to tell you, if he will.’

Tell me what? Gil wondered. What had Nicol meant with his talk of a journey? Where had he been?

‘And was that the order that you gathered?’ he said aloud. ‘You and Robert, and then Agnes, and Frankie, and Grace?’ Syme nodded. ‘And your wife?’

‘She’d spent the morning by the fire in our own house, stitching at bairn-clouts,’ said Syme, his face softening again. ‘I think she’d never moved. When I’d eaten my dinner, I went home to take her down to St Mary’s Kirk, to hear Mass where her own mother liked to hear it, and she nearly fell when she stood up, her legs were that stiff.’

Gil nodded. The man was a partial witness, of course, but he could check later, perhaps with the servant, and meantime it did seem as if he could leave Eleanor out of the matter. Which left -

‘Mistress Mathieson,’ he said. ‘Your good-mother, I mean. Is she capable of — ’

‘No,’ said Syme firmly. ‘Even if she could rise from her bed, which I doubt, she’d a right bad time of it, it seems — even if she rose, as I say, she’s neither the skill nor the ability to concoct sic a thing. She might put it in place, but she’d have to get someone else to make it for her.’

‘Her mother?’ Syme shook his head. ‘And nobody suggested the other apothecaries — Wat and Adam, or Mistress Bothwell.’ Another shake of the head, an impatient exclamation. ‘No, I agree. But that leaves us with,’ Gil counted them off on his fingers, ‘Agnes, her father and Mistress Grace. If Frankie Renfrew poisoned his son, he put up a very good act this afternoon, and Mistress Grace tried as much as you did to help him.’

‘Aye, but she would anyway,’ said Syme without thinking. ‘I mean,’ he elaborated, ‘she’s a clever woman, if she’d been the one to put the stuff there in secret, she’d see she’d have to dissemble.’ He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Our Lady save me, what am I saying here?’

‘I agree,’ said Gil again. ‘So unless it was you — ’ Syme snatched the hand away to stare at him, then realized Gil was not serious — ‘we are forced to assume it was Agnes.’

‘Aye, I see your reasoning. You make it very clear.’ Syme sagged in his chair, and swallowed the remaining wine in his glass. ‘It’s as much like the way we’d think through a case. Is it this, is it that, using one argument or another to discard till you’re left with a single — well.’

‘The other thing I’d like to know,’ said Gil, ‘which might have some bearing on it all, is where the poison came from.’

‘Where it came from? Have you never sorted that out yet?’ Syme shook his head. ‘I suppose it’s only been two days. What did Wat and Adam learn?’

‘Wat thought it might be made from almonds. He found a scrap of nutmeat at the bottom of the flask.’

‘From almonds? I never heard of a poison made from almonds,’ said Syme, as everyone else had done. He paused, however, and said after a moment, ‘You could ask at Nicol. He knows some surprising things, though whether he’ll tell you is another matter.’

‘Nicol? Yes, of course, he studied with a Saracen in the Low Countries. I suppose if it exists the Saracens will have heard of it.’

‘Oh, you can be sure.’ Syme set his glass down, and began to gather himself together. ‘I’m right grateful to you, maister. It’s no great comfort, I’ll admit, but what you say has clarified my mind. Now I have to bring my wife to accept it, if I can.’

‘It must be hard for her,’ said Gil. ‘But I’d not thought she had much affection for her brother, or for her sister.’

‘I think that makes it all the harder,’ said Syme.

‘He’s a good man and a wise one, for all his irritating ways,’ Gil commented, when he had returned to the hall after seeing Syme out to the street, and recounted the gist of the conversation. ‘Eleanor Renfrew has done better than she realizes yet.’

‘I think she’s beginning to see it,’ said Alys.

‘Perhaps.’ Gil sat down on the settle beside her and sighed. ‘This is difficult. I feel I ought to act in the matter of Robert’s death, but I’ve no idea what to do next. I suppose I can hardly call on Nicol at this time.’

‘He would have no objection,’ surmised Maistre Pierre.

‘So it could have been Agnes, with or without Jess,’ said Alys, ‘but Maister Renfrew or Grace would have had as much chance to place the box of sweetmeats.’

‘So would Nicol. I wonder if he really was in his bed all day? But he seems not to want a place in the business, which removes one reason for disposing of his brother, and he seemed to find Robert more amusing than annoying. Hardly worth the risk of poisoning him, at any rate.’

‘He might dissemble,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Could he?’ said Alys.

‘Probably not. And I’d think Eleanor could have done it, but she would have had to pick her moment so as not to be seen.’

‘But she would know when the family would be at dinner and the shop would be empty,’ Alys pointed out, ‘and she could just walk into the house. And we have to consider Syme himself, of course.’

‘We do. I think he was telling the truth, but he did dislike Robert.’

‘That much?’ queried Alys.

Gil sighed again. ‘Poison is a hidden crime, I suppose it might go with hidden passions. If we ignore the idea of a stranger for the moment, we have,’ he counted, ‘seven people, no eight, close enough to Robert and with access to the house and the shop to have put the sweetmeats there for him.’

‘But Mistress Baillie or Meg would have to procure the poison from somewhere else,’ Alys objected, ‘and from someone else.’

‘And if they got it in Glasgow,’ contributed her father, ‘whoever provided it is not saying.’

‘So we’re left with Renfrew himself, Agnes, Nicol and Grace, Eleanor and Syme. We’re going round in circles.’

‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre gloomily, ‘we have one corpse whom nobody disliked, and we find nobody we can plausibly suspect of killing him on purpose, and another who was widely disliked, and far too many people to suspect. If you call on Nicol, I come too, and pay my respects to the dead. And you, ma fille ?’

‘No,’ she said reluctantly, ‘I have things to do here in the house.’

Nicol, surprisingly, was acting the part of his father’s elder son with some aplomb. Robert’s body was already washed and shrouded, laid out on a black-draped trestle in the same room where he had died, with a branch of candles either side of his head. When Gil and his father-in-law were shown in, by a sniffling maidservant, an older woman, Nicol welcomed them and handed each a brimming glass.

‘To drink to his memory,’ he said.

‘Usquebae,’ said Maistre Pierre, accepting his glass with reluctance, and went forward to commiserate with Maister Renfrew who was standing bleakly at the foot of the bier, surrounded by his friends of the burgh council. Gil stayed beside Nicol.

‘I think maybe your father would rather not speak to me just now,’ he said.

‘More than likely,’ agreed Nicol, and paused to greet another guest. ‘Christ aid us, we’re a bigger draw than the sheep wi two heads at St Mungo’s Fair. You’re no drinking your aquavit.’

‘No.’ Gil set the glass down untouched beside the others. ‘Nicol, there’s a couple things I’d like to ask you.’