Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘At my lodging,’ corrected Maistre Pierre. ‘Alys sent Wattie for it.’

‘It must certainly be opened,’ agreed the Official. ‘There is of course the further point that, whoever finally benefits, and this is not immediately clear, the person who knifed Mistress Sempill may have been under the erroneous impression that he would be a beneficiary.’

There was a pause.

‘You mean he might not have been aware of the bairn’s existence,’ Gil said. ‘I agree, sir.’

‘It’s all mixter-maxter,’ complained Maggie. ‘You’ve made things worse, maister.’

‘And we still have no proof it was someone of that household,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘although I do not know who else it could be.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Maggie, ‘seeing I found this.’

She dug in the placket of her capacious skirt and produced, from whatever pocket lurked there, a bundle of grimy cloth. This she unfolded to reveal a limp object which she planted triumphantly on the stool in front of her in a waft of rotting cabbage smells. Maistre Pierre snatched the plate of girdle-cakes away and peered past it.

‘Bones of St Peter, what is it?’ he demanded.

‘The purse?’ said Gil.

Maggie nodded. ‘The purse.’

‘A purse,’ the Official corrected. ‘Where, Maggie?’

‘On the midden. That’s why it stinks a bit; she admitted, ‘it was on a heap of kale. Why throw away a perfectly good purse, maister, only because the strings is cut? Someone with a bad conscience pitched it there.’

‘Particularly since John Sempill can work leather,’ Gil observed. ‘He could mend it readily enough if it was his own.’

‘It’s empty; Maggie said regretfully.

‘Well; said the mason. ‘At last, something concrete.’

‘Anything else, Maggie?’ Gil asked.

‘A lot of gossip,’ she said. ‘Marriott Kennedy’s a terrible gossip, which is no more than you’d expect from a woman who keeps a kitchen like yon. A lot of gossip, and most of it not to the point.’ She cast her mind back. ‘She was telling me how long Mistress Campbell’s been visiting the house. Since the year of the siege at Dumbarton, she said, only it was the autumn. And she’d known Sempill well for a year or more before that.’

‘The siege was in ‘89,’ Maistre Pierre supplied.

‘Near three years, then,’ said Gil.

‘As Sempill’s mistress?’ asked Canon Cunningham.

‘So she had me understand. Her brother’s as bad, Marriott says. Aye out in the town after the servant lassies, for all he’s a married man. And it seems now Mistress Campbell’s no content with Sempill, for Marriott keeps finding the tags off someone else’s points in her chamber.’

‘Oh, aye?’ said the Official hopefully. ‘And whose might they be?’

‘That wee lutenist. The Italian.’

‘Well!’ said David Cunningham, in some pleasure. ‘Do you say so?’

‘Did you learn anything else?’ said Gil, before his uncle could begin to explore this topic. ‘Or find the plaid? The cross?’

‘I never got into her chamber,’ said Maggie apologetically, ‘though I tried, for that Mally Murray that calls herself her waiting-woman was fussing about seeing to her clothes. I never saw a sign of the plaid elsewhere in the house. There were other plaids in plenty, in any colour you can name, but not a blink of that green.’

She turned her head, listening.

‘Is that someone in my kitchen? Your pardon, maisters.’

She rose, setting down her ale, and made for the kitchen stairs. Gil prodded the purse, and teased out the strings which had hung it to its owner’s belt.

‘Cut,’ he said. ‘I wonder.’

‘It shows a connection with that household,’ Maistre Pierre observed.

‘If it is the dead woman’s purse,’ reminded the Official.

Maggie’s voice on the stair preceded her entry into the hall.

‘Come away up, ye daft laddie, and tell Maister Gil your message to his face.’

‘A message for me?’ Gil turned as she dragged the mason’s man Luke in by his wrist.

‘Here’s this laddie sent with a word for Maister Gil,’ she reported, ‘and trying to teach it to wee William, that can hardly remember his own name, rather than come up and disturb us.’

‘Bring him in then,’ said the Official.

‘And it’s for the maister too,’ mumbled Luke, trying to cling to the doorpost.

‘Then come in, Luke, since Maister Cunningham gives you leave,’ said his master, ‘and tell us what your word is.,

‘It’s from the mistress,’ said Luke, bobbing. ‘I was to find Maister Cunningham and yourself, and tell you, Bridie Miller’s no been seen since she went to the market this morning, and now they’ve picked her up dead in Blackfriars yard. Mistress Hamilton’s in a rare taking, and I’ve to come home after I’ve tellt you.’

‘She was certainly in the market this morning,’ said Alys, patting Mistress Hamilton’s hand.

‘She never came back,’ sobbed Mistress Hamilton, ‘and I had to make Andrew’s dinner without the beets she was to bring.’

‘Did any of the other girls go with her?’ Gil asked uncomfortably. Alys threw him an approving smile, and Mistress Hamilton wiped her eyes on one long end of her linen headdress, hiccuping.

‘They all went,’ she said, ‘but they came back by their lones. They do that, they tarry, if they’ve met a friend, or a sweetheart. She was a good girl, she knew the beets were for the dinner, she’d have brought them straight back.’ She dissolved into tears again. ‘Alys, what can have happened?’

‘Where is she?’ asked the mason. ‘Did they bring her back here?’

‘Come ben and see her.’ Mistress Hamilton rose, still dabbing at her eyes, and led them out across the yard, past the silent kitchen and into a store-room in one of the other outhouses. One of the dead girl’s colleagues rose from her knees and stepped back as they entered. ‘It’s not right, laying her here, but it’s quiet, and fine and cold. Oh, the poor lass!’

‘Where was she found?’ Gil asked, drawing back the linen. ‘What happened?’

‘A corner of Blackfriars yard. Dear knows what she was doing there, she’d gone down to the market, she’d pass the house on the way back up before she got to Blackfriars. Mally Bowen that washed her says she was stabbed. She thought maybe sometime between Sext and Nones, by the way she was stiffening.’

‘She looks as if it was quick,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She had not been forced, then?’

‘Mally says not. But she’d been robbed. The money I gave her to go to the market — a couple of groats, no more — that wasny on her.’

Gil looked down at Bridie Miller. Young, moderately pretty, quite ordinary, she lay as if asleep on the board set up to receive her, and kept her secret.

‘May I see the wound?’ he asked. Alys glanced quickly at him, and stepped forward past Mistress Hamilton’s flustered exclamations.

‘It’s very like the one that killed Mistress Stewart,’ she said, ‘save that it is at the front.’ She drew the shroud further back, exposing the rigid hands with their bitten nails, crossed and bound neatly over the girl’s belly. Under one muscular upper arm, just below the girl’s small breast, a narrow blue-lipped wound showed between two ribs. Gil bent close to study it, smelling the harsh soap Mally Bowen had used to wash the body. He sniffed, and sniffed again.

‘There is, isn’t there; said Alys. Just a trace of a scent.’

‘Like a privy,’ said Gil. ‘And something else as well.’

‘She’d void herself,’ Mistress Hamilton pointed out practically, and wiped her eyes again.

‘Mally must have washed that off,’ Alys said. Gil leaned over the corpse, sniffing.