Pat McIntosh - The Harper's Quine

The musician’s dark gaze fell on Gil, and he said something to his mistress. She looked round, slid off the mounting-block and came towards the gate, sidestepping quickly as the mastiff rushed at her snarling, and smiled brilliantly at him, pushing back the fall of her French hood with a graceful movement.

‘Maister Cunningham, how nice to see you. Have you found who killed Bridie Miller yet? Will the serjeant take someone up for it?’

‘Not yet,’ said Gil, crossing the yard to meet her, staying carefully outside the mastiff’s range. ‘Good day to you, madam. I have a — ‘

‘Oh, but he must! Have you never a word of advice for him? Was it the same ill-doer who killed Bess? Is Glasgow full of people killing young women?’ She shuddered, biting a knuckle. ‘None of us is safe. What if something came to that little poppet who summoned you yesterday? Such a well-mannered child, a pity she’s so plain.’ Gil recognized Alys with difficulty. ‘Or to Mally here, or those bairns out at the Cross?’

‘Calma, calma, donna mia,’ said the Italian beside her. She threw him a glance, and smiled again at Gil, a little tremulously.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘What brings you here, Maister Cunningham?’

‘I have a word for Maister Sempill,’ said Gil, ‘and I wanted to speak to your brother. Are they at home?’

‘I think John’s in the stables.’ She lifted the bread from the mounting-block, looked down at it, and threw another lump, rewarded by further round of barking. ‘Ask them at the house.’

Gil left her breaking a new loaf, and climbed the forestair to the house door, aware of the lutenist’s dark gaze on his back. Hughie, he reflected, if confronted by that lovely smile, those taking ways, would not have troubled to resist Euphemia. And how did he feel, he wondered, when he realized what she had cost him? Not guilty, most like. Few things were ever Hughie’s fault.

The door stood open, but the hall within was deserted. After some calling, he raised Euphemia’s companion, who emerged from a door at the far end of the hall exclaiming, ‘Your pardon, maister! I never heard you, the dog’s that loud. Oh, it’s Maister Cunningham, is it, the man of law? And what are you after today?’

Gil explained his errand, and she sniffed.

‘Maister James is in the tower room with his books, I think Sempill’s out the back docking pups’ tails. Here, you go down this stair.’

She turned towards another doorway, picking up her dark wool skirts.

‘No need to trouble you,’ Gil said. ‘I can find my own way.’

‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ she said a trifle grimly, as if she was protecting the house from unauthorized invasion. She stumped down the stair, the rosary and hussif at her belt clacking together at each step, and said over her shoulder, in unconscious echo of her mistress, ‘And have you found who’s running about knifing women? We’ll none of us be able to sleep till someone’s taken up for it. Euphemia’s quite ill with the worry, the wee sowl, and it’s not good for her.’

‘I’m still searching,’ said Gil, emerging after her into the reeking stable yard. John Sempill was just going into the cart-shed opposite, but seeing Gil he turned and waited for him to cross the yard.

‘Well, Gil?’

‘Well, John. Finished with the pups?’

‘Oh, that was an hour since. I’d ha been quicker with it, but Euphemia helped me.’

‘Oh, she never!’ exclaimed Mistress Murray. ‘In her green velvet, too! It’ll be all over blood.’ She turned and hastened back across the yard.

Gil, suppressing an image of Euphemia Campbell being stripped of the green velvet gown, said, ‘I’ve had a word with the harper, john.’

‘Aye?’

He recited the statement the harper had delivered. Sempill glared at him.

‘Better than nothing,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Aye, I’ll meet him, and his conditions. Do you want to name someone yourself to stand for the brat, or will I find a man?’

‘I thought to ask my uncle.’

Sempill shot him another look, scowling.

‘Aye,’ he said at length. ‘That makes it clear I’m dealing straight with him.’

‘It does that, John,’ agreed Gil.

Sempill opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and finally said in exasperation, ‘So when can we meet? I need to get this over with.’

‘I have still to speak to my uncle, but if he was free this evening-’

‘Not this evening. I’m promised to Clem Walkinshaw.’

‘Then it needs be a few days hence. I’ve an errand that takes me out of town.’

‘What errand? I thought you were hunting down Bess’s killer?’

‘I am. This is to that end. What can you tell me about Bess’s property in Bute?’

‘In Bute? There’s the two farms from her father, and the burgage plot from Edward Stewart, with the house on it. Then there’s the two joint feus, which will be mine now, I suppose, little use though they are. One’s a stretch of Kingarth covered in stones, and the other’s between the castle and the sea. Gets burned every time the burgh’s raided, it seems. God, I’ll get back at him for that. Little benefit she’ll have got from the rents, mind you,’ he added thoughtfully.

‘And the other property? Whose is that now?’

‘What the devil’s it to do with you?’

‘It may have some bearing on her death.’

Sempill stared at Gil. ‘Are you still harping on that one? It was some broken man, skulking in the kirkyard, that’s obvious.’

‘Not to me. Do you know whose the other property is now?’

‘I suppose,’ said Sempill, chewing his lip, ‘it depends on how it was left. Alexander Stewart would know, he likely drew up both wills. Is that where you’re going? To poke about Rothesay asking questions that don’t concern you?’

‘They concern your wife’s death, which I am investigating,’ Gil said. ‘Another thing, John. Did you know that that pair of gallowglasses knew your wife before?’

Sempill stared at him.

‘Of course I did, gomerel. Where do you think I got them from? She hired them, after Stirling field when the country was unsettled and I was away. John of the Isles was raging up and down the west coast, and who knew what he’d do next. So of course I sent Neil down with the message for her on May Day. I knew he’d deliver it to the right woman.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘You can not. They’re away an errand. Both of them.’

‘When will they return?’

‘When they’ve completed it, I hope. I’ll send them over to you when they get back, but it’ll likely be Sunday or Monday.’

‘Thank you. Then can I speak to Maister Campbell of Glenstriven?’

James Campbell was in the chamber at the top of the wheel stair, where Gil had first spoken to the household. He was seated by the window, one expensively booted leg crossed over the other, with a book of Latin poetry in his hands, but he closed this politely enough, keeping a finger in his place, and allowed Gil to take him back over the events of May Day without revealing anything new.

‘Where is this leading?’ he asked at length. ‘I have answered these questions before.’

‘Some new detail might emerge,’ said Gil inventively. ‘Now — do you have a green velvet hat? What shape is it?’

‘This one, you mean?’ Campbell nodded at the gown on the floor beside him, and lifted it to untangle a hat from the folds of material. ‘See for yourself.’

Gil turned the hat in his hand. It was a floppy bag-like object, with a couple of seagull feathers secured to one side by a brooch with a green stone. It smelled of musk and unwashed hair.

‘And were you wearing this,’ he said carefully, ‘when you were in Glasgow last market day? Not yesterday, but a week ago?’