Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘It has to be something which can be given in liquid,’ supplied Lady Egidia, ‘with a taste that can at least be disguised.’

‘And a single dose must suffice.’ She looked at her list. ‘Much as I like her, I could not credit Joanna with so much sense, any more than a spring lamb, but perhaps I misjudge her. All the others could know that much from either Arbella or Beatrice.’ She made a mark beside each name in the first column.

‘What next?’ asked Lady Egidia. Alys glanced up sharply at her enthralled tone, wary of mockery, but the older woman’s expression matched her voice. ‘Opportunity, or a reason for ministering poison?’

‘Opportunity,’ said Alys firmly. She tried to recall the several conversations about the silver flask, piecing them together as they came to her mind. ‘Mistress Weir gave the flask to Bel to take to Murray before he and Joanna left their apartment. By Joanna’s account, she put it straight in his scrip under his eye.’

‘So Arbella and her granddaughter had the chance, but not Joanna. Raffie was in Glasgow, I suppose. What of the other two?’

‘Phemie told us they all broke their fast together in the other chamber, all of them except Joanna and Murray. You know, Raffie could have given the stuff to one of his sisters to minister, perhaps without saying what it was.’ She made a note at the foot of the leaf. ‘I must ask Phemie, before she knows where her mother is and why she came here.’

‘Ask her what?’

Alys looked up with an apologetic smile, realizing she had not finished the sentence.

‘Whether she or her mother went out into the hall after Joanna came through, but before they all went to see the travellers off.’ She looked at her list, and marked two names off in the second column.

‘And we come to the reason,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘If there can be said to be a reason for killing another Christian.’ Or anyone else, thought Alys, but did not say so. ‘Did you tell me the lassie Brownlie was afraid of her man?’

‘I thought she was,’ agreed Alys. ‘Beatrice thought she was. Joanna herself will say nothing against him.’

‘Hmm. A well-reared lassie. And the younger girls?’

‘Murray made fun of Bel and her lack of speech. He had slighted Phemie, who thought he would have married her until Joanna’s portion became known — ’

‘Aye, Joanna’s portion. That’s a strange matter. Why — no, we must think this through first. What about the older women?’

‘Mistress Weir and Murray were at odds over the running of the business.’ Alys looked down at her list again. ‘She only said that she was disappointed in him, but Phemie told me, and her brother told Gil, that the man had ideas of his own which did not suit the old lady. There was shouting, Phemie said.’

‘That might be enough. Money does strange things to people. As for our penitent down in Alan’s chamber, did she give a reason, or were you to work that out as well?’

‘She said Murray was annoying her lassies, and Joanna.’

‘No,’ said Lady Egidia after a moment. ‘She is a rational woman, and a healer. That makes no sense.’

‘No. I think we are agreed, Beatrice Lithgo may have confessed, but she is probably not the poisoner.’

‘So who is she protecting?’

‘We come back to that,’ agreed Alys.

‘And today,’ said her mother-in-law, with an abrupt change of direction, ‘you went to Dalserf. What’s your interest in Joanna Brownlie?’

‘I heard a lot about the family,’ Alys said. ‘Particularly about her father’s deathbed. And his will was very interesting.’

‘What, you think the man Brownlie was poisoned and all?’

‘Well, I wonder,’ she said earnestly. ‘His death was different from Murray’s, but it sounds very like the way Matt Crombie died.’

Lady Egidia studied her for a time, her long-chinned face solemn in the candlelight.

‘How many?’ she said eventually.

‘Four of the family, I think,’ said Alys. ‘And also Joanna’s father. Five all told, I suppose, though not all by poison.’ Her mother-in-law counted on her fingers, frowning, and finally nodded. ‘But what worries me is why there has been an extra death this year.’

Lady Egidia looked at her, pursed up her long mouth, and finally said, ‘And then there is this errand that has taken Gil to Elsrickle. It’s a long ride for something that won’t prove anything whatever the answer might be.’

‘It won’t prove it, but it adds to the picture,’ Alys began, and was interrupted. Socrates raised his head, and suddenly scrabbled to his feet, claws scraping on the tiled floor, and rushed out into the hall. There was a furious hiss, a flurry of movement, a yelp from the dog almost drowned by the clatter and crash of pewter dishes, and a long-drawn-out yowling.

The two women collided in the doorway, the streaming flame from the branch of candles just missing Alys’s velvet hood. Out in the hall, the light growing as Lady Egidia hurried the length of the chamber, they found the dog abased below the plate-cupboard amid the debris of the display, while the grey cat, all standing fur and round furious eyes, swore at him from the top shelf, tail lashing.

‘Socrates!’ exclaimed Alys. ‘What a bad dog!’

‘Silky has been teasing him,’ said Lady Egidia, magnanimous in her pet’s victory. ‘I dare say she taunted him from out here just now. Has she clawed him?’

‘He seems unhurt. Oh, no, here is a scratch on his nose.’ Alys dabbed at it with her handkerchief, while the dog rolled his eyes at her and at the cat. ‘Bad dog. Look at all the dishes you have brought down!’

She lifted the nearest, and stacked them up on the shelves. Lady Egidia set down the candles and joined her in the task, remarking, ‘I’m surprised they aren’t up from the kitchen to see what the noise was. It sounded like the clap of Doom. What’s this? Oh, that piece of stone Gil had in his purse. Will you take it? If you’re going up to the coal-heugh tomorrow you could give it back to the lassie.’ She retrieved a round dish which had rolled into the hearth, and blew the ashes from it. ‘And take both Steenie and Henry with you, my dear. Silky, you are a naughty cat.’

‘I’ve no recollection,’ said Phemie. ‘You’ll no tell me, Alys, that you rode all the way up here, and two of your good-mother’s men at your back, just to ask me did anyone go into the hall alone that day?’

They were seated in the room she called the window-chamber, before the great glass window, Phemie and her sister side by side on the cushioned bench and Alys on one of the backstools with Socrates’ head on her lap while he watched the girls intently.

‘No, no,’ said Alys hastily, ‘I have more reason than that. But Phemie, you must see, the quest will most likely find that someone here gave the poison to Thomas Murray, and you need to be ready with the right answers when they come to ask them.’

‘Oh.’ Phemie glowered at her, lower lip stuck out, in an expression which reminded Alys again of the younger Morison girl. Apparently she had not thought about this until now. ‘I’ve no recollection,’ she said again. ‘I was here, eating my porridge. What about you, Bel? You were here too, were you no?’

Her sister nodded, and pointed emphatically at the floor of the chamber where they sat.

‘And the others? Joanna, your mother?’ asked Alys innocently. ‘Where is Joanna just now? How is she today?’

‘My mother’s been called out, I suppose, or she could tell you herself and Joanna’s laid down on her bed again. I’ll go to her directly. No, she never came through till Murray did.’ Phemie’s tone was still disparaging when she referred to the man. ‘My mother was in here dishing out the porridge. The kitchen brings it in and sets it up there,’ she indicated the pale oak court-cupboard, ‘and we serve ourselves. Or my mother sees to it.’