Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘But Naismith did not die where he was found,’ Maistre Pierre reminded him. ‘We thought it was not in the garden.’

‘We don’t know where he died. We don’t know for certain that he was put over the wall,’ Gil admitted. ‘The marks we found are circumstantial, no more. The dog found nothing to interest him in the little houses, but he’s no lymer, he doesn’t hunt by scent. It would help if we could find the Deacon’s cloak and hat.’

‘Hmm,’ said the mason. ‘We keep coming back to it — both Mistress Mudie and Millar maintain there was someone in Naismith’s lodging by ten o’clock last night. She heard footsteps, he saw a light.’

‘If she was lying,’ said Gil, ‘he might simply agree with her, for whatever reason — being sure she was right, or some such thing. Or perhaps she had gone up herself and lit the candle and eaten the dole, so that Millar did see a light.’

‘And rearranged the accounts?’ said Alys. ‘Can she read? Oh, yes,’ she recollected, ‘you said the receipts were hers.’

‘Or did Millar himself go up there?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘Is it the woman who is agreeing because she is sure he is right? I am not convinced she is capable of lying, her tongue runs too freely.’

‘If Millar had rearranged the accounts,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘he had no need to tell us they were in disorder. We would never have known it. I’m inclined to think he was telling the truth — that he went straight to his own chamber when he came into the bedehouse.’

‘What about the kitchen hands?’ said Alys. ‘Do they live in? Have you spoken to them?’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘Another thing to do tomorrow.’

‘Meantime,’ said Maistre Pierre, nodding agreement, ‘if we accept this evidence, we have someone in the Deacon’s lodging last night. We also have an extra figure at the morning Mass.’ He cocked an eyebrow at Gil. ‘Was it real, or was it spectral?’

‘Oh, aye, if it was real, easiest by far to assume those are the same person. But if we do, we must assume neither was the Deacon, because he was certainly dead long before Prime, and possibly dead before Mistress Mudie first heard footsteps overhead.’

‘I should have said ten to fourteen hours before I saw him, though I cannot be certain.’

‘That would be, I suppose between seven and eleven last night,’ Gil reckoned. ‘We know he was alive about half an hour after seven, when he left the house by the Caichpele, and if it was not Naismith that Sissie heard we can probably assume he was dead by ten. That fits.’

‘How accurate do you think her sense of time is?’ asked Alys.

‘I don’t know about that, but she did say she heard someone moving about over her head after Millar had come in,’ Gil supplied. ‘Millar’s story is clear enough — and Patey Coventry confirmed it for me just now.’

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre in disappointment. ‘That certainly discounts my next idea.’

‘What, that one of the brothers leapt up that stair and stabbed him before the door was locked, then carried him down into the garden without Sissie noticing? I thought of that too, but there was no sign of a fight, let alone a death, in Naismith’s lodging. In any case it wouldny account for the extra figure at Mass, and nor would the idea that he was killed in the garden or in one of the wee houses. We would have to accept that what Lowrie saw was — not real. No, the only way it works is for the man last night to be the same as the man this morning.’

‘Man or woman,’ Alys put in.

‘As we said,’ Gil agreed. ‘Marion Veitch is as tall as Dorothea. Hidden in a great cloak and a hat, she could be taken for a man.’

‘While her brother dealt with the body, as we surmised,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Aye, that would work, but who minded the bairn if she was out of the house overnight? I’m not convinced Eppie could lie for her mistress, she talks too much, like Sissie Mudie, and the man Danny certainly wouldn’t.’

‘I could get a word with the painter’s man,’ suggested Alys. ‘He will have spoken to his cousin this evening. Along with the whole town,’ she added, her quick smile flickering.

‘I’ve spoken to her already,’ said Gil. ‘I encountered her on her way home, and convoyed her down the road.’

‘Oho!’ said Maistre Pierre, grinning again. ‘Yet another lady! And only — how many days is it to the wedding?’

‘What did she say?’ asked Alys. Gil bent his head to rub his cheek on her hair, and she nestled in against him.

‘She confirmed some of Marion’s story,’ he admitted, ‘if only by hearsay, for she says she was earlier leaving the house last night than tonight. But she said something odd.’

‘What was that?’ Alys prompted him after a moment.

‘She seemed quite certain the house was being watched this evening.’

‘Watched? You mean someone standing out in the cold,’ Alys began, and faltered as she saw the parallel.

‘Waiting alone in the dark for the right person to come along,’ agreed Gil.

‘Did she see the watcher?’ demanded Maistre Pierre.

‘A big man with a black beard. But you’re here, so she must have been imagining it,’ said Gil, at which his friend grinned absently and stroked the beard, considering.

‘There are not so many black beards in Glasgow,’ he commented. ‘Most Scotsmen go shaven like you.’

‘Save the Earl of Douglas, and he is fair,’ amended Alys absently. ‘I wonder if she really saw anyone. You know what servant lassies are like, if anything goes wrong in the household.’

‘They see bogles behind every bush,’ agreed Gil. ‘This one seems less silly than most.’ He paused, as something else came back to him. ‘Now, I wonder what that was?’ Alys looked up at him questioningly. ‘She repeated Eppie’s account of the quarrel last night, with a little more. It seems John Veitch claimed Naismith owed his sister for her maidenhead, and Naismith made some sort of reply which Bel refused to tell me. Claimed she had forgotten.’

‘Something to her mistress’s discredit? Does she like her place there?’ asked Alys shrewdly.

‘I’d say so. I wonder if it concerned Frankie’s parentage.’

‘I’ll talk to the painter’s man,’ she said decisively.

‘The jug is empty,’ said Maistre Pierre, peering into it. ‘I think we must send you home, Gilbert. There is much to do in the morning.’

Eating her porridge in the candlelight before dawn, Tib seemed much more inclined to be friendly. She had greeted Gil civilly with an account of how Maggie’s share of the kitchen work for the feasting had progressed. Unused to lively conversation at this hour, he responded with encouraging monosyllables while he ate.

‘Are you still chasing after the man at the bedehouse?’ she asked at length.

‘I’ll chase after him till I find who killed him,’ said Gil, and put his empty bowl down for the dog.

‘So you’ll be there again all day? What must you do there?’

‘This morning, for certain,’ he agreed with caution. What had changed her tune, he wondered.

As if she had heard his thought, she said lightly, ‘I’d like to know about it. It’s what you do for your office, after all, and there’s no other office like it that I ever heard of.’

‘I’ll ask questions,’ he supplied, ‘as I did most of yesterday. I’ll get another look at the dead man, since he’s likely softened and been stripped by now, and set someone to hunt for ladders in the Chanonry, fruitless though that’s like to be. As Tam said, near every house must have one at least. And I’ll go over the accounts.’

‘Oh, accounts.’ She pulled a face. ‘Why?’

‘I think the reason he was killed may be hid in there.’