Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘It’s a sorry tale,’ Gil agreed. ‘But as matters stand, she won’t lose by the man’s death. His existing will was much more generous to her and to the little girl as well, Agnew tells me.’

‘Oh, you have seen the lawyer?’

‘After supper. And also Maister Veitch at the bedehouse.’

‘Who else benefits from the old will?’ asked Alys.

Gil looked down at her where she leaned against his shoulder, and smiled. ‘There are one or two bequests of named property to his kin, by what Agnew says, and something for the bedehouse, something for the child by name, and the residue goes to Marion Veitch. I would say he’s purchased several plots of land since it was drawn up. She’ll be a wealthier woman than he intended.’

‘Oh,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘So the man’s death comes very convenient for her.’

‘It does.’

‘And for who else?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Did he have enemies, have you discovered?’

Gil grimaced. ‘According to Maister Veitch anyone in the bedehouse, not only the six brothers but Millar and Mistress Mudie as well, had cause to dislike him. Marion’s brother John was very angry with him last night. I don’t yet know who his friends were, other than Agnew and one of the Walkinshaws, and I must find out. I should have asked Agnew just now.’

Maistre Pierre grunted, and sipped his wine, pausing to savour it respectfully.

‘What else do we know about the Deacon?’ he said. ‘Consider how did he die. That is the first thing’

‘Did you say he was killed somewhere else?’ said Alys.

Gil nodded. ‘He was stabbed, by two opponents, one of them left-handed. After he was dead his eyes were closed, and he lay for a while in one position, perhaps as long as three hours, and then he was moved to the bedehouse garden, where he fell into another position.’

‘Do not forget the marks on his face,’ prompted Maistre Pierre, ‘and the straw in his garments.’

‘Straw?’

‘Flakes of straw,’ agreed Gil. ‘Those may have come from Agnew’s chamber in the Consistory tower. Someone has been sweeping the chambers, I think, and his stair is covered in fragments.’

‘So that confirms Agnew’s story.’ Maistre Pierre took one of the little cakes from the half-empty plate on the tray, and bit it thoughtfully.

‘So far,’ agreed Alys. ‘What else, Gil?’

‘His keys were on his belt,’ continued Gil, ‘and gate and door were locked as usual. It seems most likely that he was moved somehow to the Stablegreen and put over the wall into the garden, rather than being taken in by the door.’

‘And then he was heard walking about,’ said Alys.

‘Someone was heard. There was a light and movement in his lodging about ten o’clock, witnessed by Mistress Mudie and by Millar separately.’

‘You make it very clear,’ said Maistre Pierre. Alys reached for the plate of cakes and offered it to Gil.

‘You think it was not the man himself who was heard in his lodging,’ she said. ‘So who was it? And why?’

‘One of those who killed him, one assumes,’ said her father.

‘But who?’ she persisted. ‘Who is most likely?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘Gilbert, of those we know, who had the means to kill him?’

‘Virtually all.’

‘We need only one. Take the woman first, the mistress. Could she have killed her lover? She has reason, God knows it.’

‘Naismith broke his news, and there was an argument, but he left the house after it,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘we have witnesses to that.’

The mason waved his empty glass in one large hand. ‘Perhaps she went out later and waited for him to leave the Consistory tower.’

‘You saw her, Gil. Could she have done that?’ asked Alys. ‘Waiting alone in the dark for the right person to come along, so that she could stab him?’ She shivered.

‘She’s a timid soul,’ Gil said, and thought of Michael’s leman, waiting in the dark for a different reason. He put his arm round Alys’s waist. She clasped his hand, fingers moving in a quick, private caress, and shifted it to her shoulder. What did that mean, he wondered, tightening his grasp obediently.

‘Her brother!’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘He could have knifed the man, whether in St Mungo’s Yard or in the street.’

‘Or they both did, together — you said there were two opponents.’

‘That’s possible,’ agreed Gil. ‘And then they hid the body as we thought happened, and put him over the wall later. And a man like John Veitch could have carried the Deacon without trouble, alone or with — ’

‘Ah! And while he did that, she went into the bedehouse in her lover’s cloak — ’

‘Why?’ said Alys. ‘What is the benefit?’

‘To cover up the time or the place where he was killed. To make it seem he was killed inside the bedehouse instead of outside.’

‘I would certainly prefer it,’ said Maistre Pierre plaintively, leaning forward with the jug of wine to refill Gil’s glass, ‘if it were not Naismith who came home to the bedehouse last night. Experience tells me he was dead long before the footsteps were heard.’

Alys nodded.

‘It can’t have been Naismith,’ Gil agreed. He pulled a face. ‘There are tales — McIan the harper could tell you some — of people who were seen and heard after they were dead, but I think Our Lord was the only one who appeared after he was dead and consumed a meal.’

‘And we are not told that He slept in His bed,’ said Alys.

‘If that is what happened — the body over the wall, someone else in the Deacon’s lodging — it didn’t only disguise the time and place of death. It also got the impostor time with the accounts,’ Gil said thoughtfully, ‘which had certainly been searched, by what Millar says. I wonder what he — or she — was looking for? And of course once Millar had come in, the outer gate was locked as well as the door between the courtyards, so the impostor was trapped, even if he had originally intended to leave.’

‘Whoever it was took a risk,’ observed Alys. ‘The body might have been found before he could get away.’

‘He would have heard the outcry and had time to hide somewhere about the place. The chapel, for instance. I suspect he did not remove his boots, whoever he was. Anyway, John Veitch claims he slept in his own bed last night. I’ve still to go down and find this Widow Napier he’s lodging with,’ Gil admitted. ‘And his boots are bigger than the prints we found in the clump of trees.’

Alys turned her head to look at Gil from within the circle of his arm.

‘And the man of law,’ she said. ‘He thinks it was his brother who killed the man.’

‘He’s worrying about very little, I should say. The brother is certainly mad, and it seems he can be violent, so vexis him the thoghtful maladie , but if Millar is to be believed, the door was locked between the Deacon’s lodging and the bedesmen’s houses. And Mistress Mudie corroborates that,’ Gil added. ‘Mind you, she would certainly lie to protect Humphrey.’

‘It is possible,’ said Alys, ‘surely even if she was not lying? If it was indeed Deacon Naismith in his lodging when the light was seen, he might have come down into the garden later, locking the door behind him. You said his keys were with him.’

‘His keys,’ agreed Gil, ‘but no lantern. It was cloudy last night, the moon would give no light — ’

‘Perhaps he had one, but whoever killed him took it,’ suggested Alys.

‘That would mean,’ he said glumly, ‘that anyone in the bedehouse could have killed him. Even Mistress Mudie had good reason. Those receipts in Naismith’s purse were hers, Pierre, family remedies that the Deacon forced her to reveal, and it’s clear enough from what Maister Veitch tells me that any of the brothers might have had a reason, as well.’