Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘I told you to let me ask the questions,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘Where’s these mummers? Tammas Bowster, come and tell us what passed afore the play.’

‘Does he ken it was the wrong flask?’ asked Nicol in Gil’s ear. ‘Will Tammas tell him?’

‘Likely.’ Gil was watching the assize. It did not seem to him that they were hostile to Bothwell, but the evidence being put to them was not favourable. Bowster was now detailing the events in the kitchen, how the two young men had disagreed over Agnes Renfrew and how the refreshment handed round had been common to all.

‘So there’s your answer, Davie Johnson,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘They all shared the refreshment. It wasny in that, whatever slew the poor lad.’

‘It might ha been a bad cake,’ persisted Johnson.

Sir Thomas glared round the hall, ignoring this. ‘Is any of the Renfrew household here?’ His eye fell on Nicol. ‘Is it just you? Where’s Frankie?’

‘He’ll no be coming,’ said Nicol, pushing forward to the edge of the dais. ‘He’s no able.’ He gave Sir Thomas one of his sunny, heavy-eyed smiles, and the Provost stared at him in growing indignation until he realized what the bystanders were saying.

‘Dead? Are you saying Frankie Renfrew’s dead, man?’

‘Aye, he’s dead,’ agreed Nicol. ‘I found him.’

Sir Thomas looked briefly at Gil, then back at Nicol in some bafflement.

‘I’m right sorry to hear it,’ he said, ‘for he’ll be a sad miss in the burgh, but — ’

‘I’m no,’ said Nicol. ‘We’ll none of us miss him in our house, save maybe wee Marion.’

‘But we’re here to deal wi Danny Gibson’s death, and we’ll get on wi that for now. Come up here, man and tell us what your sister Agnes has to do wi the matter.’

‘Oh, she’s nothing to do wi’t,’ said Nicol, stepping obediently on to the dais, ‘for Frankie would never ha let either of them wed her. He’s got other plans for her, seeing Adam didny want her to wife, being a man of good sense.’ Adam Forrest went scarlet at this, and Nanty Bothwell looked up and stared at his sister. ‘But I suppose those will come to naught now,’ went on Nicol. ‘There’s none will want to wed her if she’s to drown for poisoning Robert.’

‘We’re dealing wi Danny Gibson,’ repeated Sir Thomas. ‘If your sister’s naught to do wi that, why were these two lads quarrelling over her in Maister Morison’s kitchen?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nicol, ‘for I wasny there, man, but maybe it was because Agnes fetched the flask to Nanty out of our house, that had the poison in it.’

Nanty Bothwell lunged forward exclaiming, ‘No! No, it was nothing to do wi her, she never knew what it was!’

‘You be quiet,’ said one of his guards, and dragged him back to buffet him round the head. ‘Stand there at peace now!’

Bothwell sagged against the wall, half-stunned, and Sir Thomas said over the sudden buzz of conversation, ‘You’re certain it came from your house?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Nicol smiled at him.

‘How are you so sure it had the poison in it? Wat Forrest’s just tellt us it might not.’

‘Oh, aye, it might not,’ agreed Nicol. ‘But it might, too. Hard to say.’

Sir Thomas snarled faintly. ‘Tell me a straight tale, man, and be quick about it.’

‘It’s no very straight,’ said Nicol, shrugging again. ‘Anyway she said she never. Just Gil Cunningham thought she did.’

Sir Thomas closed his eyes, rubbed his brow, and said wearily, ‘Leave Maister Cunningham out of it and tell me what you know, Nicol Renfrew, till I see if it helps us any.’

‘What I know? You mean all what I know? That’s a lot, man,’ objected Nicol.

‘All that’s to our purpose the now. About your sister Agnes and the flask.’

‘Agnes and the flask?’ repeated Nicol. ‘She fetched it to him, since he’d forgot the one he should ha had. I never saw her fetch it, seeing I was in Augie’s house at the time, but it’s the flask that should ha held my father’s drops for his heart, one of those that he keeps in his workroom. I saw it in our house just afore we left to see the play.’

‘Those were never drops for the heart,’ said Wat Forrest clearly.

Sir Thomas nodded at him, leaned back and spoke to his senior man-at-arms, then said to Nicol, ‘Why are you so certain it was your sister fetched it?’

‘Because he said so.’ Nicol made one of his wide gestures in Gil’s direction.

‘Would it no be more likely Nanty Bothwell stole it out of your father’s house?’ demanded one of the assize. ‘What’s he say himself, anyway, Provost? Has he been put to the question?’

‘I’m asking the questions,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘We’ll have Anthony Bothwell’s statement read out in a wee while. Nicol Renfrew, are you telling us your sister stole a flask of poison out of your father’s workroom and gave it to one of her sweethearts to poison the other?’

Gil closed his eyes for a moment. Prompting the witness, he thought, is the presiding officer’s prerogative.

‘You’re putting words into my mouth, Provost,’ said Nicol, laughing indulgently. ‘I’m saying Agnes fetched the flask from our house, for I’d seen it there afore we came out, but where she found it or what she thought was in it I’ve no knowledge. Nor what Nanty Bothwell thought he’d do wi it.’

‘Have you asked her if she’d done sic a thing?’

‘We don’t talk,’ said Nicol simply. ‘Besides, there’s been all to do in our house these last days, what wi my minnie brought to bed and now the old man struck down. There’s been more to think on than a silly lassie. You’ve more chance than I have, now she’s locked up here.’

‘What’s a flask of poison doing lying about the house,’ asked one of the assize, ‘where a lassie can find it? That’s no very good practice.’

‘Oh, it wasny lying about,’ objected Nicol, ‘for it would all have run out if it was lying, and pysont the whole lot of us wi the foul airs. It was standing just where it ought to be when I saw it, all at peace on the shelf. Mind, I’ve no notion whether it was poison in it then,’ he qualified.

This generated a three-cornered argument involving Sir Thomas, Nicol and the assize, who seemed unable to accept that any householder, much less an apothecary, could have a container in his house whose contents he could not identify at once. Gil, despite his several anxieties, found the exchange amusing, as did most of the women in the audience. Sir Thomas, eventually losing his temper, ordered the assize to leave the subject and attempted to get out of Nicol a statement of who might have filled up the flask. Finally he abandoned that too.

‘Right, that’ll do for that,’ he said. ‘Walter, let’s have Bothwell’s deposition, afore we’re all demented wi this.’

Walter the clerk rose, selecting a sheet of parchment from the array before him, found his place and began in a clear monotone, ‘Anthony Bothwell compearing, deponit that on All Hallows Eve in the year of Our Lord 1493, in acting of the play of Galossian …’

It was roughly what the man had said yesterday, Gil realized, tidied into continuous narrative in Walter’s competent prose. The failure to bring the right flask, the statement about almond milk, were included. Whatever had prompted them to use the thumbscrews, Sir Thomas and Andrew had got no new facts out of Bothwell.

‘I should not be here,’ he muttered to Morison. ‘I need to speak to Syme.’

‘Never worry your head,’ said Nicol at his other side. ‘The auld man went quiet in his sleep. I’d say it was his heart, mysel, he would forget he was past fifty.’

And by now he would be washed and laid out, Gil recognized, as the assize began asking questions about Bothwell’s statement. Was a third sudden death in the same group of people really something to look at closely, or was he being unduly suspicious?