Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

Gil took up the lantern and obeyed. Lowrie followed him.

‘- at least his eyes are closed, but can he no be left at peace under a decent length of good linen till he softens, with maybe a couple candles and one of my old men to — ’

‘There are these marks on his cheek, which I am not certain about, but also you must look at his other ear,’ said Maistre Pierre. He took the light and held it carefully to shine across the left side of Naismith’s face. ‘See, this pattern in the skin.’

‘Ridges and furrows,’ said Lowrie, craning round Gil’s elbow. ‘It’s almost like the marks on ploughland that’s been left to grazing for a year or two.’

‘It’s as if he’s lain on something uneven,’ said Gil. ‘After death, do you suppose? While he set?’

‘I thought so too,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, ‘though I cannot decide what. But there is also the ear. You see?’ He moved the lantern, and pointed at the edge of the corpse’s right ear.

‘It’s torn,’ said Lowrie in astonishment. ‘But there’s no blood.’ He looked from Maistre Pierre to Gil. ‘I nicked Ninian’s ear on the rim like that with a broken jug last year, and it bled all over him. Is it an old injury maybe?’

‘There are little tags of skin,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It has not healed in any way, but nor has it bled.’

‘So — ?’ Gil prompted, and recognized his uncle’s teaching methods. Lowrie bent to look closer at the injury.

‘So I suppose this must have happened after he died too. How? Is it related to the other marks? Are they both from some kind of rough treatment, maybe when he was moved to where we found him?’

‘It fits,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘Look at him.’ He stood back, gesturing at the length of the body. ‘Apart from that arm, he lies level from the feet to the shoulders, just as he was on the grass. But his head does not rest on this board, it did not rest on the grass, it lies as if on a cushion. A thin cushion,’ he qualified.

‘- as for sticking knives into him once he’s dead, I never heard of such a thing, even if he is asking for a cushion for the poor soul’s head now, and I don’t have such a thing — ’

‘Do you mean, maister,’ said Lowrie slowly, ‘are you saying that he was already part stiffened when he was moved?’

Maistre Pierre grinned approvingly his teeth showing white in his neat black beard.

‘Indeed, I think so. Face, jaw and neck, perhaps, were already set. Then he was disturbed, and taken into the garden, a task I would not care for myself, and fell into the position in which we found him. In which we see him now,’ he nodded at the unresponsive corpse. ‘I suppose if the shoulders lay differently when he was set down, the head would not touch the ground.’

Gil studied the face, still locked in its dream.

‘So he was stabbed in some other place,’ he said slowly, ‘and his eyes closed. Then he was kept there for some time, maybe an hour or two — ’

‘Perhaps as much as three, when the weather is so cold,’ advised Maistre Pierre. Millar exclaimed inarticulately in the doorway.

‘- maybe three, and then borne into the garden and left there. Why?’ Gil lifted the fur-lined gown from the bench where Maistre Pierre had laid it, and began to turn it carefully, inspecting its heavy folds.

‘- what a thing to be suggesting, that’s no way to be treating a Christian corp — ’

‘He couldny stay where he was killed,’ suggested Lowrie.

‘Well, yes, but why? And why go to so much trouble? Why not simply leave him on the Stablegreen or out in the street? How was he got past the locked door here?’

‘His own keys?’ suggested Lowrie.

‘But the keys are on his belt, so how did his bearer get out again?’

‘Over the wall?’

‘Mm,’ said Gil doubtfully, and peered into the wide sleeve of the garment he held. ‘What is this lodged in the fur?’ He picked the pale scraps out of the soft hairs, and held them nearer the light. ‘Grass, is it? Straw? Hay?’

Lowrie came to look, and lifted one of the flakes from Gil’s palm.

‘Straw, isn’t it,’ he agreed. ‘Has he been kept in a hayloft or something?’

‘- and anyway I heard him myself last night, he was certainly home by the time I had Humphrey settled, the poor soul, and in his bed no long after — ’

‘What was that, madame?’ said Maistre Pierre, turning sharply.

Mistress Mudie, half his size, recoiled for a moment, recovered herself, and said again, ‘I heard him last night wi my own ears, tramping about the boards over my head. He was in his own lodgings a couple hours afore midnight, maister, my word on it.’

‘Tell us about it, mistress,’ suggested Gil. Unnecessary, he thought, we’ll hear more than we want to. ‘Did you see him at all?’

‘Oh, aye, of course I saw him,’ she said, plump cheeks puffing out with importance. ‘We had the accounts to see to in the afternoon, same as always, and then he had a word for the whole community, and then they all went to Vespers and Compline, and after it he went out of the almshouse in his good cloak and velvet hat.’

‘It was dark by then?’ said Gil, attempting to follow this headlong description.

‘Compline’s over by maybe half an hour after five o’clock,’ supplied Millar.

Gil nodded acknowledgement, but Mistress Mudie rattled on. ‘Oh, aye, full dark, but I seen him go out at the gate wi a lantern. And then,’ pursued Mistress Mudie without apparently pausing for breath, ‘I had supper for my old men to see to, and they talked a while by the fire, and then there’s one or two I have to help to their beds, and Humphrey and all, and after I seen to that I was in my own lodging next the kitchen, and heard Deacon Naismith come in and walk about on the boards over my head, and eat the collation that I leave him in the court-cupboard to break his fast wi, and drink a beaker of wine, and then ready himself for his bed. And that,’ she concluded triumphantly, ‘was just afore you came in, Maister Millar, so you see there’s no need of saying he was stabbed or anything, because it must have been someone in here if he was, and who’d do a thing like that to the Deacon I’d like to know?’

‘So would I, indeed,’ said Gil politely. ‘Tell me, mistress, do you know where the Deacon went when he left yesternight?’

‘Well, of course I do, though that’s to say, he never said, but a body could tell,’ she dimpled at Gil suddenly, ‘ye can aye tell when a man’s going to his mistress, the more so after what he tellt us all in the afternoon, will you be seeing yours when you’ve done asking questions here, maister?’ I will indeed, thought Gil uneasily. ‘He went out the gate in his good cloak and hat wi his Sunday gown under them, the same one he died in, look at him there, the soul, and his shoulders back, right pleased wi himself,’ she demonstrated, causing a major upheaval under her decent black gown, ‘he’d be going to his house by the Caichpele where the woman Veitch dwells, where he often goes for his supper — ’

‘So he was out of this place before six,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘and returned — when?’

‘I was back here about ten,’ said Millar uneasily. ‘And he was already home.’

‘Returned before ten.’ Maistre Pierre raised his eyebrows. ‘A short evening with one’s mistress.’

‘How long does it take?’ said Gil absently, and caught his breath. ‘I mean — ’ He broke off, and felt his face burning.

‘Longer than that, I hope, the first time,’ said his betrothed’s father unanswerably.

‘- and he was later back than he’s often been,’ supplied Mistress Mudie, to Gil’s relief, ‘for it’s quite usual he’s in his lodging and walking up and down over my head before St Mungo’s Vespers is ended, maybe eight o’clock — ’