Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘You?’ he said involuntarily, but his hand went to the purse. ‘How can you — ?’

‘I’ll find a way. You have enough to worry you. Is there anything useful in them?’

‘The notes for the new will Naismith was to make. The family copy of the disposition for Humphrey’s support is in there too. I saw nothing more.’

She nodded, and tucked the brocade bag into her own purse.

‘I’ll contrive something. Now I must go down the road, or there will be no supper tonight. Are you coming now, Father, or later?’

‘Now, I suppose.’ Her father got to his feet and lifted a lantern from the hearth. ‘Lucky I left this in the lodge the other day. We need not borrow one. What will you do next, Gilbert?’

Gil shrugged. ‘Speak to the Sheriff after supper, likely. He should know what that laddie was saying.’ He recounted the kale-cutter’s tale, and Maistre Pierre nodded.

‘Certainly Sir Thomas should hear of that. It puts another view of the matter entirely. I wish there had not been so many witnesses to the trial by blood. And what of the matting?’

‘That,’ said Gil firmly, ‘can wait till daylight.’

Sir Thomas Stewart, extricated without visible reluctance from an evening’s music in his own lodging, heard Gil’s report of Eck Paton’s evidence with a frown.

‘I see what you mean,’ he agreed at the end. ‘If the laddie’s that certain, our man had by far too little time to do his business afore Agnew came home. The corp was last seen alive just after Prime, you say? Did his maister say when he saw him last? Had he left by that hour?’

‘You’ll need to get that from him, sir,’ suggested Gil. ‘I ken I saw Maister Agnew at the bedehouse no long after Terce the day. I can ask Andro Millar what hour he got there.’

‘Aye, do that. And the bedehouse. The bedehouse!’ said Sir Thomas impatiently. Small, neat and balding, he tipped back his head and peered at Gil across his cluttered desk. ‘What’s this I hear about the second man that died? That was the bedesman, wasn’t it no? The one that’s mad? Only now he’s rose up and cured of his madness?’

‘So it seems,’ agreed Gil with caution.

‘Did the poor soul do away wi himself first,’ Sir Thomas crossed himself at the thought, ‘or did someone else do it for him? And if it was murder, was it this fellow Veitch? He’s got kin in the bedehouse, hasn’t he, he’d have the run of the place likely.’

‘Humphrey doesny recall,’ said Gil regretfully. ‘He says the last he minds is going to his rest after dinner yesterday. There’s some doubt in my mind whether he hanged himself or someone else did it for him, and if it was someone else, then it’s surely linked to the Deacon’s death some way. As to the servant in Vicars’ Alley, I need to find out more.’

‘The Deacon!’ said Sir Thomas. ‘I ken you’re looking into it, Maister Cunningham, but are you anywhere near bringing me a whole tale for the quest on Deacon Naismith?’

‘I might be,’ said Gil circumspectly.

‘Are they all separate? Two deaths in the bedehouse is bad enough, another in Vicars’ Alley as well is too much to swallow, maister. It wasny this man Veitch killed all three, then?’ suggested Sir Thomas again, without much hope.

‘Likely not all three,’ said Gil. ‘May I speak to him? I’ve a thing or two to ask him.’

‘Aye, you might as well speak to him. He’s not been questioned yet.’ Sir Thomas rose. ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Gil, considering the point. ‘I’ve the matting that Agnew’s servant lay on when he died. I’ll get a look at that the morn’s morn afore the two quests.’

‘What good will that do?’ demanded the Provost.

‘It might tell us how he bled, which of the wounds was the most fatal.’

‘I suppose so.’ Sir Thomas contemplated the idea, and gathered his wine-coloured velvet gown about him. ‘Sooner you than me, laddie. Come down now, and I’ll bid Archie let you in to see the man Veitch. And then, I suppose, I’ll have to get away back to hear these musicians my wife brought in. Howling like cats, they are, and all in French or some such tongue. What her ladyship’s thinking o I’ve no idea.’

John Veitch’s clothes were already showing the effects of half a day’s imprisonment. The cell he lay in stank of damp and human waste, and the smell and the green mould clung to his hose and his brown plaid and short furred gown. His spirit did not appear to be daunted.

‘Aye, Gil,’ he said. ‘I looked for you sooner. What’s ado, then, can you tell me that?’

‘No yet,’ said Gil. He looked about him in the light of the candle Veitch had been allowed, and sat down cautiously on the end of the stone bench. ‘Tell me what happened, John.’

‘Tellt you that already,’ Veitch pointed out, sitting down likewise. ‘I found the door standing unlatched, so I pushed it open and went in, and found the poor fellow lying in his blood. Then while I was still trying to see if it was worth calling help to him, his maister came in and set up a cry of Murder.’

‘As soon as he stepped in the door?’ Gil asked. Veitch looked sharply at him, suddenly very like his kinsman in the bedehouse.

‘As soon as he stepped in the door,’ he confirmed. ‘I heard the step on the doorsill, and turned my head, and he took one look and began to shout.’

‘When you got to Vicars’ Alley,’ said Gil after a moment, ‘did you speak to anyone?’

‘Oh, aye. I asked the way a couple of times, never having been there. It’s no easy to find, tucked away at the back of St Mungo’s like that. A woman at the Wyndhead, a fellow by the Consistory wi a mason’s apron. Then when I found it there was a lad cutting kale or something in one of the wee yards, and he pointed me at the door next to his, which was Agnew’s.’

Gil nodded. ‘I’ve spoken to the boy cutting kale,’ he said. ‘If we can get him to speak up the morn, he’ll confirm that.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Veitch grimaced. ‘A man can meet his end at any time, I ken that, but I’d as soon no meet mine being hung for a killing I didny do.’

‘And the man Naismith?’

‘I didny do that neither,’ said Veitch firmly. ‘The last I saw him, he went out my sister’s house in a strunt because she didny take it well that he was to wed and put her out from under that roof. I never set eyes on him again till he was laid out in the washhouse at St Serf’s.’

‘Would you swear to that?’

‘I would.’

Gil felt in his sleeve and produced the stained linen scarf again. ‘Have you seen this before?’

‘Is that — ?’ Veitch took it and turned it round, holding the embroidery to the light. He felt the stitched initials between finger and thumb, and nodded. ‘Aye, it’s mine. Where’s it been? How’d it get blood on it? It was clean the day I lost it.’

‘When was that?’

‘Same day I last saw Naismith.’ Gil raised his eyebrows at this, and Veitch frowned. ‘It’s a long tale.’

‘I’ve time to listen.’

It seemed to be only half the tale nevertheless. The previous Saturday Veitch had ridden in from Dumbarton where the Rose of Irvine was lying, and taken lodgings with the widow in St Catherine’s Wynd. On Sunday he had traced his sister to the house by the Caichpele, and appeared on her doorstep with gifts to receive a warm welcome from Marion and later a chillier one from the Deacon when he arrived to eat his supper and deliver his unwelcome news.

‘I judged she deserved better of him,’ said Veitch, indignation still warming his tone, ‘and tried to tell him so, but he wouldny listen to me, called me an ignorant mariner and accused me of wanting to live off my sister.’ He laughed shortly. ‘If he’d kent what the Rose’s last cargo was worth he’d ha sung another tune. So then he said he wouldny stay there to argue wi me, and he’d no look to find me there when he returned, and he went down the stair and collected up his cloak and hat and left. And I wondered if he’d lifted my neckie and all,’ he admitted, ‘for I couldny find it when I left the house myself, but searching for the thing by lantern-licht was a fruitless task. So where did you find it?’