Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Can we no ask the lassie what it was she brought him?’ asked one of the assize.

‘She should be here by now,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘Where’s Andro got to?’

With the words, a door was flung open, raised voices reached them, and Agnes was hustled in shrieking furiously and striking out with her manacled hands at the two men-at-arms who gripped her shoulders. One of them contrived to get hold of her fetters and dragged her up on to the platform.

‘Let me go, you villains!’ she shouted. ‘Let me go, afore my faither comes — he’ll slay you, he’ll have the law on you, he’ll — ’

‘Be silent, lassie!’ bawled Sir Thomas, and she stopped, open-mouthed, and stared at him. ‘Your faither can be no help to you now.’

‘Aye he can,’ she protested. ‘He’ll get a man of law to speak for me — ’

‘Frankie Renfrew is deid,’ said Sir Thomas.

Agnes went very still. She stared at the Provost for a moment, then turned her head and looked direct at her brother. She must have noticed him as she was dragged in, Gil realized. Again, she must be far less upset than she appeared to be, though that seemed to be changing now.

‘Died in his sleep,’ said Nicol cheerfully. ‘Found this morning.’

Agnes swallowed. She had gone white, the blue eyes suddenly huge in her pinched face.

‘Poison?’ she said. ‘Was it poison? It must ha been the same person as poisoned Robert, then.’

Sir Thomas looked at her, his eyes narrowed, then turned to Andro and conferred with him again. As the man made his way down off the dais and through the press of people, the Provost said, ‘Right, lassie, what was this flask you brought out of your house to give Nanty Bothwell on Hallowe’en?’

‘I never brought any flask,’ said Agnes. She seemed to be trembling. ‘It was nothing to do wi me. I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.’

‘It never flew from our house to Augie’s,’ observed Nicol. ‘Somebody shifted it.’

‘Maister Cunningham?’ said Andro at Gil’s shoulder.

‘It’s right hard to believe,’ said James Syme. He was standing at the desk in the workroom, his hand on a stack of papers. He shook his head. ‘I–I suppose it’s grief that slew him, but he seemed stout enough last night. You’d never ha taken him for one to die of grief.’

‘So Nicol said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Did anyone hear anything? He’d no chamber-fellows, no company?’

‘It’s a big enough house there’s no need for the maister to share his chamber,’ divulged Syme, with a flicker of his usual manner. ‘And seeing Mistress Mathieson’s lying apart the now, being new delivered, he’d be all his lone.’ He looked intently at Gil. ‘Is there any suspicion about his death, maister? Is that why you’re here?’

‘The Provost and I would both like to be sure there’s no suspicion.’

‘Oh,’ said Syme slowly. He shuffled the papers into a neat stack and turned from the desk. ‘You’ll want a look at the chamber, then, for a start.’

‘How have the women taken it?’ Gil asked, following the man up the stair.

‘Grace has been a marvel,’ said Syme over his shoulder. ‘My — my wife was that struck down, weeping fit to break her heart, poor lass, and her good-mother was right bad too, but Grace and Mistress Baillie atween them two got them calmed down and resting. Grace had some drops that worked a wee miracle.’

Did she, now? thought Gil.

‘The women are little help,’ Syme added, ‘the maidservants I mean, they were all in pieces already with the one lass being taken up alongside Agnes, they’re useless the day, but Grace saw to getting him laid out, and we’ve taken Mistress Mathieson’s opinion on the burial, and — we ordered as much in the way of mourning yesterday, you’ll understand, for Robert, that it’s no been a hard task for me the day.’

‘How are matters left?’ Gil asked. ‘Who gets the business? I’d have thought you and Robert would be his heirs, by the way he talked, but he’ll not have had time to change that since Saturday.’

‘I’ve no a notion. I was looking for the will just the now. His share might be all left wi Mistress Mathieson.’ Syme led the way through one of the well-furnished chambers Gil had seen before, and into the next. ‘Here it’s, maister. This is where we found him.’

The high tester-bed was stripped, the hangings gone, the woollen mattress bare and hauled up into a ridge to air. Pillows were stacked on the kist at the bed-foot, blankets of several colours were folded on a stool by the wall, and a red worsted counterpane lay forgotten in a heap beyond the bed-frame. There was nothing to be learned here, Gil recognized. Sighing, he looked about him.

‘Did you see him before he was moved?’

‘I did. Nicol came out to find me and break the word to my wife. He’s a kind man, I think,’ said Syme thoughtfully. ‘I never understood Frankie’s — well.’

‘How was he lying? How did he look?’

Syme bent his mind to this.

‘When I saw him,’ he said with care, ‘he was lying in his bed, on his back, with his mouth open and one hand here.’ He pressed a hand to his chest, just below the windpipe. ‘The bedclothes were flung back, but Nicol and Grace both had tried to find a heartbeat, likely that was their doing.’

‘His legs?’

‘Straight. One foot turned out a wee bit.’ Syme eyed Gil. ‘He’d gone quite peaceful, I’d say. He’d neither struggled nor voided. There was no blood, nor other signs.’

‘But,’ Gil prompted after a moment.

Syme shook his yellow head. ‘I’d not like to start anything — anything — ’

‘But,’ Gil said again.

‘It was just — ’ He bit his lip. ‘Just somehow awful like the way Robert looked, once we’d laid him out, and the way poor Gibson looked. And yet, one peaceful death’s much the same as another, and those two slipped away easy enough at the very end. There’s nothing to go on.’

‘Nothing but an experienced man’s feeling that something wasny right,’ Gil said. He bent to look under the bed-frame. ‘The jordan is missing. Had it been used? Has Mistress Grace taken it away to empty it?’

‘Aye, likely. He’d voided urine in it, a reasonable quantity for a man his age, the colour what you’d expect considering his state of health.’

The apothecary’s response to the question, Gil thought. He stood by the head of the bed and surveyed the chamber. There were two painted kists against one wall, the initials MM displayed in a wreath of daisies on each. The one at the bed-foot, he recalled, had Renfrew’s initials. ‘Most of us can find the jordan in the dark. Was there any sign that he’d tried to strike a light, maybe to get at his drops, to call for help?’

‘Ah.’ Syme considered. ‘When I saw him, which was maybe half an hour after they’d found him, for I came straight away and left Nicol to bring my wife, when I saw him there was an empty candlestock on the dole-cupboard yonder, which was at the bedhead then. Grace must ha taken it for cleaning, like the jordan.’

‘Empty. As if the candle had burnt out.’ Gil moved to the dole-cupboard, a well-made piece whose spiral-turned legs matched the more massive posts of the bed. He lifted the neat brass latch and opened the little door to peer in at the empty platter.

‘I suppose so.’

‘What do they usually put in the dole-cupboard?’ he asked. ‘I think Nicol mentioned oatcakes and cheese.’ His uncle’s housekeeper Maggie had always left little sweet cakes and a cup of ale; he had encountered this more substantial dole first in his father-in-law’s house, oatmeal bannocks and hard cheese, or sometimes a cold meat pasty, set ready to deal with night-time hunger in a household devoted to manual labour.