Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

‘In the lodge?’ repeated Gil incredulously.

‘In the lodge. It seems Luke found it spread out on the ground the morning all this began, Tuesday or whenever it was, and folded it up and put it away all tidy.’ He looked from one to the other, well pleased with his effect. ‘He never thought it might be important.’

‘In the lodge,’ said Gil again, thoughtfully. ‘On the other side of the wall from where Bess died.’ He followed the mason towards the gatehouse, abstracted. ‘Bess was in the trees. Suppose she left her plaid there when she went into the building site — ‘

‘Why?’ asked Alys.

‘So John Sempill would know she was not far away? But Davie and his new girl found it, and took it into the lodge to make the ground more comfortable, and overheard — part of the conversation? Bess’s death?’

‘And ran away in fear and were pursued? But I thought we agreed it was someone else who struck the boy down.’

‘Oh, it was,’ said Gil. ‘We have been very slow. It was someone else, and he is still there, with his weapon.’

‘Still there?’ Maistre Pierre turned to stare at him.

‘I know,’ said Alys, pulling her plaid tight round her. ‘The tree.’

The tree?’ repeated her father, but Gil nodded.

‘The boy was running bent over, with his head down.’ He demonstrated. “That’s why the mark on the branch is so low.’

‘He ran into the tree,’ said Alys. ‘And the girl ran on and never looked back, thinking they were still pursued. Maister Gil, you must find her. It becomes more urgent every hour.’

‘Oh, aye, she had a new sweetheart,’ said Kat Paton. She looked speculatively from Alys to Gil, and giggled.

Agnes Hamilton, when asked for the name of the girl closest to the dead Bridie, had become flustered, counted off her entire household one by one, and finally selected this one. She was a small, lively, chattering creature, who had eyed Alys warily at first but seeing no signs of pepper had accompanied her willingly. She was not at all overwhelmed by sitting with her in the best bedchamber talking to a man of law, and Gil was having difficulty getting a word in.

‘She told us all about it when she quarrelled with the mason’s laddie,’ she assured them, ‘and she wept for him a day or two, so she did, and then she cheered up. So I asked her, and of course she said not, but I kept at her about it, and finally she said she’d a new leman, and not to tell anyone. So I didn’t. Well, not hardly, only Sibby and Jess next door.’

Alys, with fewer qualms than Gil, cut briskly across this.

‘Did she tell you anything about him, Kat?’

‘Oh, no. Well, she wouldn’t, would she? But I think maybe he had money. He gave her a great bunch of ribbons for May Day. Only he wasn’t in Glasgow on May Eve for the dancing, so she said she’d mind the kitchen if she could get away on May Day after dinner, and we all went off and left her happy enough.’

‘Did she go out on May Day?’ Alys broke in ruthlessly.

‘Indeed she did, with her new ribbons in her hair, and came back late. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been, but it had been good, you could tell.’ Kat giggled merrily, then suddenly sobered and crossed herself. ‘She’s dead, poor soul, and no in her grave yet, I shouldn’t be talking about her this way.’

‘When did she first meet him, do you think?’ Gil asked, seizing his chance.

Kat looked up and made a face, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Last week sometime,’ she said vaguely.

‘Can you be more certain than that? Had she met him on Easter Monday?’

‘No,’ she said, and then more confidently, ‘no, for her brother that’s a ploughman out at Partick came to see her. And it wasn’t the next day, for that was the day we burned the dinner. Nor the next, because …’ Kat giggled again, but would explain no further. ‘I know!’ she said suddenly. ‘It was at the market last week. She came back looking happier than she had since Good Friday, and she slipped out again after her dinner and when she came back she had the ribbons. And she saw him again on the Friday,’ she went on fluently, ‘but after that he wasn’t in Glasgow. Not till May Day.’

‘What about yesterday morning?’ Gil asked. ‘Did you all go out to the market together?’

‘Oh, yes. Well, not together, exactly, the mistress called Bridie back to tell her where to ask for the beets she wanted, so she was behind me a bit.’

‘And did you see her in the market?’

‘No,’ she said regretfully. ‘I was looking, for I wanted a sight of her new man. I thought I saw her a couple of times, but I was wrong.’

‘So you haven’t seen the new sweetheart?’ said Alys.

‘No. Well, just the once.’

‘And can you tell us what he looks like?’ asked Gil.

‘Just ordinary, really,’ she said dismissively. ‘Not as goodlooking as my Geordie,’ she added, and giggled again.

‘How tall is he? What colour is his hair?’ Gil persisted.

‘I never got a right look at him,’ said Kat evasively. ‘Just a quick glance. I never saw his hair, for he’d a hat on.’

‘A hat? Not a blue bonnet?’

‘A big sort of green velvet hat with a feather in it,’ she said, ‘all falling over his eyes. Daft-looking, I thought it was.’

‘What else did he have on?’ Alys asked.

Kat looked shifty. ‘I never saw him very well,’ she admitted.

Alys studied her for a moment, and then said shrewdly, ‘Were you somewhere you shouldn’t have been?’

The bright eyes rolled sideways at her.

‘I won’t tell, and nor will Maister Cunningham.’

‘Unless it becomes necessary in the course of justice,’ said Gil scrupulously.

Kat rubbed the toe of her shoe along the line of the floorboards.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I just happened to be looking out of the window of the maister’s closet, see, when she came back on May Day. There was no harm, really, seeing that the maister was out at supper at the Walkinshaws and no in his closet. And if the marchpane suckets got dislodged when I was there, that the mistress put to dry and never told us, well, it wasn’t — ‘

‘I’m sure it was completely accidental,’ said Alys. ‘And certainly nothing to do with Maister Cunningham.’

‘Oh, quite!’ Gil agreed hastily.

‘And the closet overlooks the street?’ said Alys. ‘So you got a sight of them from above.’

‘Yes.’ The cracked leather of the shoe went back and forth. ‘So I didn’t really see him very well. But I did see one thing,’ said Kat, sitting up straighter. ‘It wasn’t any of the laddies in the town. And he was gey fine dressed, to go with the hat. I thought he was a gentleman.’

Gil, leaving Alys at the White Castle to oversee the dinner, went on down the High Street, taking more care over where he was going this time. Round the Tolbooth, into the Thenawgait, he passed a baker’s shop where hot loaves steamed on the boards, the apothecary’s where the scent of spices tickled his nose, the burgh’s one armourer with two sullen apprentices rottenstoning a breastplate at the door. He reached the Fishergait without straying from the route, and there encountered Ealasaidh buying bread.

‘Good day to you,’ she said, unsurprised. ‘Himself is waiting on you.’

‘You were expecting me?’

‘Himself is, certain. He woke me to say you would be here, he had seen it. It is a thing he does now and then.’

‘He did not see what came to Bess, I suppose?’

‘If he did he has not told me.’ She took the change the baker’s man offered her and turned towards her lodging. ‘I am troubled about him, maister. His women come and go, though never none like Bess, and I have never seen him shaken like this, not even when the servant lassie at Banff drowned herself. He is still saying he may never play again.’