Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘I’d say Agnes was the likeliest, but it’s all very circumstantial,’ agreed Gil. ‘It’s the poison still worries me. It seems the girl’s chamber was searched, and no sign found either of poison or of her working with the sweetmeats. If it was the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, which nobody in Glasgow seems to recognize, then where did it come from?’

Sir Thomas dabbed at his scarlet nose.

‘Maybe this letter I’ve sent away for you will get us some result. Or maybe all the potyngars in Glasgow are in it thegither,’ he suggested gloomily. ‘Did John Anderson question the rest of the household? Did he search the shop and the house, or only the lassie’s chamber?’ He read the answer in Gil’s face, and grunted. ‘And how does it connect wi the other death, other than it was the same stuff that slew both?’

‘Have you questioned Nanty Bothwell yet?’

‘I have not. That’s for the day, St Thomas help me. Standing in a cold cell, watching Andro wi the pilliwinks and thinking what to ask next, it’s like to bring on a lung-fever. Confound this rheum!’

‘I’ve an idea about that,’ Gil offered.

Nanty Bothwell was sitting on the bench in his damp cell, staring blankly at the chain which led from his ankle-iron to a hasp in the wall. He looked up when the captain of the guard unlocked the door, and got to his feet.

‘Provost,’ he said, with a nervous bob of a bow which made the chain clink. ‘Maister Cunningham. What — can you tell me how’s my sister?’

‘Well enough,’ said Gil, ‘considering she’s worried sick for her brother.’

‘Never mind that,’ said Sir Thomas, and blew his nose again. ‘We’ve taken up your accomplice now, Nanty Bothwell — ’

‘Accomplice?’ he said sharply. ‘What accomplice?’

‘- for she’s used the the same pyson to slay Robert Renfrew, which is — ’

‘ What? ’

‘Robert was poisoned yesterday,’ said Gil, ‘by what seems like the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, hidden in a marchpane cherry.’

‘In a marchpane cherry ?’

‘Clearly Agnes Renfrew’s work,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘and the Serjeant very properly — ’

‘Or the girl Jess Dickson,’ Gil put in.

‘Jess Dickson? Who’s she? It canny be Agnes. How’d you make out it was Agnes?’

‘It’s certainly someone skilled in potyngary work,’ Gil said, ‘and Agnes had the chance to do it and to use the same poison as before.’

‘But she’d no — she never knew — she’d no idea — ’ Bothwell bit off his words.

‘No idea?’ Gil repeated. ‘No idea what it was?’

‘If she’d no idea, how come she used it on her brother?’ demanded the Provost. ‘Where did she get it, anyway? Did you supply it to her?’

‘No! No, I — ’

‘Either you gave it to her,’ Gil said, ‘or she gave it to you. One or the other, Nanty.’

‘Maybe we both got it from the same place,’ Bothwell offered desperately.

The Provost pounced. ‘And where was that, then? The lassie Dickson?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘You don’t know? You don’t remember how you got something that fatal?’ Sir Thomas blew his nose, with some diminution of his authority, and declared, ‘If there’s someone running about Glasgow purveying pyson that slays a man in minutes, I want to find him and stop him. Or her,’ he added scrupulously. ‘So out with it, my lad, who gave you that flask and the stuff in it, or did you brew it up and supply it to Agnes Renfrew for the slaying of her brother? Was that your aim all along?’

‘I think Agnes brewed it and gave it to him,’ said Gil. ‘Is that right, Nanty?’

‘No! I told you, she’d no idea!’

‘The lassie’s made a fool of him as well as her brother,’ said Sir Thomas.

‘No, she — she never — ’ Bothwell swallowed, looking from one to the other in the grey light. ‘It wasny like that. We never — ’

‘Never what?’ prompted Gil.

‘We neither of us knew what was in the flask. It was just something she found.’

‘Found where? Let’s have the story, my lad,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And be quick about it, so I can get out of here. It’s ower cold for a man wi the rheum.’

Bothwell sighed. ‘We’d no conspiracy,’ he said, ‘I swear it. Only I forgot the flask I should ha carried, wi the stuff that smokes when you draw the stopper, and when I saw Agnes in the yard, on her way back to her own house, I asked her if she’d fetch me one of the wee painted ones from her father’s workroom. She brought me that one, but she never said where it was from, only that her father had locked his workroom. We — we thought it was almond milk, it looked — it smelled — when Danny fell down, I’ll never forget — ’ He stared at Gil. ‘I’ll swear it’s the truth on anything you mention, maister. Agnes never knew it was pyson when she gave it to me.’

‘Why not tell us this earlier?’ Gil asked.

‘He’s only just now made it up,’ said Sir Thomas.

‘No, it’s the truth,’ said Bothwell earnestly. ‘I never — I didny want to bring the lassie into trouble.’

‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas explosively. ‘She’s done that for herself, wi none of your help.’

‘I canny believe it,’ said Bothwell. ‘Why would she do that? Surely it’s been this lassie Jess, or another of the family — or some kind of an accident, maybe? Or that Grace? She’s a wise woman.’

‘Too wise to go about poisoning her brother-in-law,’ Gil said.

‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas again. ‘I’m away back to my fireside. I’ll leave you to it, Gil. Andro! Here and let me out!’

As the key turned in the lock again behind the Provost Gil said, ‘Is that the plain tale? And the whole one?’

‘Aye.’

Gil waited, unmoving. After a long moment the other man turned his head away.

‘I canny believe it,’ he said again. ‘She’s such a bonnie wee thing, wi such taking ways. How would she — and why? What way would she kill her own brother?’ Another pause. ‘And do you — I canny — do you suppose she kent fine all along what it was? That she kent what she’d got in that flask?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. ‘What do you think?’

‘I canny believe it of her,’ said Bothwell, shaking his head. ‘And yet — ’ He laughed, without humour. ‘Chrissie would say she tellt me. We’d words a few times, about my looking towards that family.’

‘What did Agnes say when she brought you the flask?’ Gil asked.

‘I don’t recall right.’ Bothwell thought for a moment. ‘We were on the stair up from the kitchen, and she handed me the thing and said, her father had locked his workroom, she’d to take what she could get. I smelled at it, just at the flask, I never unstopped it, you ken, and I said, What is it , and she says, It looks like almond milk . Which I thought nothing of at the time, but it came to me sometime yesterday, who keeps almond milk lying about in a wee flask? The kitchen has it in a bowl or a jug, no in a tottie wee flask.’ He held up fingers and thumb to show the measure of the object. ‘Then I wondered if maybe she’d put it up especial to bring me.’

‘If she put it up for you, she knew what it was,’ said Gil, ‘or else she was very neat about it, for it seems even a drop on her skin would have killed her like Danny Gibson. She didn’t say?’

‘We’d no more conversation.’ Bothwell sighed. ‘Tammas Bowster came up the stair and was on to me for upsetting Danny and the company just then, what would it do to the play, and Agnes says, I’ve saved your play , and off she went up the stair to her minnie wi the cushion.’ He looked anxiously at Gil in the dim light. ‘Has she no tellt you about it?’