Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘Unless?’

‘I know someone stood by the gate for a time. And kept hearing things, so I’m told.’

‘Aha! Our man came here to wait for him to leave, you mean?’

‘She didn’t leave, but went in through the gate, in fact,’ Gil replied, sending Maistre Pierre’s eyebrows up into the shadow of his hat. ‘It seems Michael holds the keys to the gate and the Douglas lodging, and has taken advantage of it. I hope he can keep it quiet from his father.’

‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘And from her kin, whoever she is.’

‘Or perhaps,’ pursued Gil, ‘our man found Michael’s lass or someone else coming along the vennel behind him, and took refuge here until matters were quiet. But where was the corpse meantime?’

‘Well, you may ask him when you find him. Now, this cloth. We take it somewhere to dry out? And dry out a little ourselves?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Gil looked about him. ‘Some of this makes sense, but not all. I need to think it through, and I need to know what you found in the accounts. Shall we put the keys back in the Douglas lodging and go round to Rottenrow?’

‘We should speak to Millar first.’

The gate locked behind them, Gil followed the dog along the little gravel path to the door of the Douglas lodging. Looking along the row of neat houses in the rain, he saw that this end one was larger, with carving above the inscribed lintel, an upper floor, and a more elaborate outline to the windows. Socrates pawed at the door, and hurried in ahead of the two men when Gil opened it, sniffing round the floor with the air of one resuming an interrupted task.

‘Not a bad lodging,’ said Maistre Pierre, looking round with a professional eye. ‘A snug building, indeed, if it is fifty years old. A good plan,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘to endow an almshouse and reserve a place for oneself.’

‘The family uses it as a town lodging,’ said Gil, hanging the keys on a nail on the back of the door as he had been asked and surveying the sparsely furnished outer chamber. ‘It saves having to pay the burgh taxes on a townhouse, after all.’

‘Yes,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘That had occurred to me. What is that dog looking for?’

Socrates looked up, waved his tail, and continued on his patrol. Gil followed him, lifted the seat of the box-bench to peer into the storage space within, checked the fireside aumbry, felt carefully at the sack of meal on the over-mantel, looked at the fire-irons where they stood in a box by the hearth. The dog threw him a withering glance and took his more acute senses into the inner chamber.

When, after a quarter-hour or so, Gil came down the precipitous stair with Socrates sliding behind him, Maistre Pierre was seated on the bench, his cloak thrown back and his tablets in his hand.

‘The accounts are revealing,’ he said, looking up. ‘This is what I came out to tell you. Have you found anything?’

‘Nothing of interest to us, though I had to drag the dog away from the bed in the inner chamber there,’ Gil reported, smiling wryly. ‘I hope the boy provided sheets for his leman. There are none there now, though there’s the scraps of a love-feast.’

‘Hah!’ said Maistre Pierre in disapproval. ‘Nothing else?’

‘There’s little above-stairs to see, let alone to search. I suppose Sir James will bring cushions and hangings with him to make the place habitable. Tell me about these accounts.’

‘Here are the figures.’ Maistre Pierre tilted the tablets so that Gil could read the columns inscribed on the green wax. ‘You see, this is what comes in quarterly from one endowment and another, lands in Lanarkshire and some northwards by Kilsyth as well. That was donated ten years since by the grateful kin of one particular bedesman, it seems. The total is quite a significant sum.’

‘And yet he has been making economies,’ said Gil. ‘Where was the money going?’

‘Here,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning a leaf of the tablets with a triumphant flourish. ‘You see? Property by the Caichpele. Properties in Rottenrow. Properties in the Gallowgait. The records are all there, in the locked kist by his bed.’

‘In whose name is this property?’ enquired Gil levelly

‘In the name of Robert Naismith. And the conveyancing,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning another leaf, ‘was done by one Thomas Agnew.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ agreed Maister Millar. The community had said Nones and eaten its dinner, and the bedesmen were seated round the hall fire again, but Gil and Maistre Pierre had cornered the sub-Deacon in his own lodging. It was a single chamber, with a bed built into the panelling of one wall and a neat desk for a scholar opposite the hearth, five books on a shelf above it. There was no sign of a black cloak other than Millar’s own, and no velvet hat visible. ‘He’s done the bedehouse’s legal work ever since I’ve been here at any rate, I’ve no doubt he’s — he was Deacon Naismith’s man of law and all.’

‘So Naismith was diverting the bedehouse’s incomings to his own use,’ said Gil.

Millar gave him a shocked look. ‘Oh, I’m certain that canny be right. He’d no do such a thing. Would he?’ he added dubiously, lowering his eyes to the figures on Maistre Pierre’s tablets. ‘I find this unbelievable, Maister Cunningham.’

‘The figures do not lie,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘You said something about a property out to the north,’ Gil said.

‘This one.’ Maistre Pierre pointed with his thumb. A rich one, as you see.’

‘Where is it? Who gave it?’ Gil asked.

His friend shrugged. ‘I was looking only at the figures. I think the donor’s name was not in the papers I looked at, indeed. Do you know, Maister Millar?’

‘I wouldny ken,’ said Millar helplessly. ‘It would be afore my time. I’ve never paid much mind to the bedehouse money, you understand. I take my part in the duties towards the brothers, and the Deacon’s part as well half the time, and look to my studies between whiles, and he deals — dealt wi the money. Would Maister Agnew ken who was the donor, maybe?’

‘I’ll not ask him just yet.’ Gil stared thoughtfully at the column of figures. ‘Do we have the bedehouse outgoings there?’

‘We do.’ Maistre Pierre turned to another leaf. ‘They seem to have been kept up daily, in great detail, which did not conceal that the outlays were very small for such a community. Perhaps only one-third of mine.’

‘He oversaw the accounts daily,’ agreed Millar. ‘I tellt you that.’

Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘The charitable receipts are noted and included, but even so Mistress Mudie must have worked wonders, to be feeding and physicking six bedesmen and a household of six people from such an amount.’

‘Oh, she does, she does. Which makes it the more vexing — ’ Millar stopped.

Gil eyed him for a moment, and then said, ‘Talking of six bedesmen, Maister Millar, there’s an odd thing. The boy Livingstone thought he saw a seventh this morning. Did you see anything?’

‘When was this?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Gil relayed Lowrie’s account of the extra figure in the chapel, and found Millar shaking his head, an embarrassed grin on his face.

‘No. No. We ken that one,’ he said. ‘We don’t let on about it much, which I suppose is why the boy made the mistake. It’s — well, to say truth, we believe it’s one of the past brothers. I’ve seen him now and then myself, but he doesny attend every day, or even every week,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘whatever Anselm says.’ He stopped, looking from one to the other of them. ‘We get used to it,’ he said.

‘You are saying it is a spirit?’ said Maistre Pierre with incredulity. ‘A ghost?’

‘Call it what you like, maister,’ said Millar a little defiantly. ‘I’m saying it’s one of our past bedesmen, still coming to Mass where he worshipped for years, and no anything harmful.’