Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘You mentioned the cumin before,’ said Montgomery with impatience. ‘I canny see that it has anything to say in the business.’

Behind him his nephew eased imperceptibly backwards, to lean against the wall.

‘We next spoke to many of William’s teachers and fellow scholars and the servants of the University, and learned a number of valuable things. In the first place, the people who knocked him down and tied his wrists had left him, alive but dazed, in the limehouse. As a sort of student joke. Their story fits the facts I had observed, and I do not think they killed him.’

‘Their reasons were very unworthy,’ commented Maister Doby in grieved tones, ‘but I have no cause to doubt what they told me either.’

Montgomery grunted sceptically, but Maister Crawford rose to address the air between the Dean and the Principal.

‘What my colleague has described was common assault,’ he objected in Latin. ‘Are we to permit our scholars to attack one another without penalty? This will resound most grievously to the discredit of our University.’

‘It was not without penalty — ’ began the Principal.

‘Students will aye be students,’ said Maister Forsyth in Scots. ‘Sit down, Archie, and hold your peace. Gilbert has a lot to tell us.’

Montgomery grunted again in what sounded like agreement.

‘Therefore,’ Gil continued, as Maister Crawford sat down with a dissatisfied expression on his face, ‘someone else had killed him and put him in the coalhouse, for a reason which was not apparent.

‘In the second place, we found William’s purse. It contained a great sum in coin, a letter in code, and a draft will, in which he would have left his property to be divided between his friend Ralph Gibson and his nurse Ann Irvine.’

‘He was capable of the generous impulse,’ said Maister Forsyth approvingly.

‘There was no key, not even his own key to his chamber, which was locked. Using another of the college keys, we opened his chamber and found it had been searched and stripped of all the paper it contained, leaving behind a ransom in jewels and other valuables. William’s wolfhound pup, which shouldn’t have been in the room, had tried to defend its master’s property and been struck a blow on the head.

‘In the third place, we discovered that William had been in the habit of getting information and making it work for him.’

‘No harm in that,’ said Hugh Montgomery suspiciously.

‘Nobody was free of his attentions, though their responses varied. He extorted money or favours from fellow students, teachers, the kitchen staff, the college porter, on the basis of what he knew, and recorded it all in a notebook.’

‘Notebook?’ said David Gray, startled. ‘What notebook is this? Are you saying the boy wrote down all his misdeeds in a book?’

‘He did,’ said Gil, and looked round the room in a short silence. Most of the Faculty was frowning in what appeared to be disapproval. Hugh Montgomery was watching him with a deepening scowl, and behind him his nephew stood, rather pale, glaring down his nose in that Montgomery way. Father Bernard, as Gil’s eye fell on him, crossed himself and bent his head, his lips moving as if in prayer for William’s soul.

‘Now we go back in time a little. William left the hall where the acting was just before the play ended. Shortly after it ended there was a great clap of thunder and a very heavy shower, and the scholars all ran out to shut windows and rescue books. This was when William was discovered poking in someone else’s property, knocked down and tied up, and put in the limehouse. Shortly after that, the senior members of the feast dispersed in a more orderly fashion, so that many people were moving about the college for a quarter-hour or more. Unfortunately, I think it was during that time when William was killed.’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked the Dean, frowning. ‘On what do you base the statement?’

‘On several things. The extent to which the body had cooled when it was found, the fact that when my good-father and I inspected it later it was only just beginning to stiffen, and the supposition that if William had roused while he was in the limehouse he would have shouted, kicked on the door, and made other attempts to get the attention of the kitchen hands. Therefore I think he was killed before he had a chance to recover his senses.’

‘I see,’ said the Dean, though he sounded doubtful.

‘Thanks to some patient questioning,’ Gil bowed to the two regents, ‘and clever casting-up of the results, we managed to establish that nearly everyone whose initials were later found in the notebook, or whom I saw in speech with the boy that morning, had been in sight of one or more others for most of the break.’

‘Do you mean you have the notebook?’ asked Maister Crawford.

‘It fell into my hands yesterday,’ said Gil. ‘It has since met with a sorry accident and the pages cannot be read.’ He looked round his audience. Both the lawyers appeared to have relaxed a little. Montgomery’s jaw had tightened, and behind him Robert was watching with a glazed stare. The remaining members of the Faculty were stolidly unmoved. He drew breath to continue, and the door opened.

‘Your pardon, maisters,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Here is more food, but these good fellows are needed back at the hall, so we must serve ourselves.’

He stood aside for two of the velvet-gowned college servitors, each with jug and heavy platter.

‘Robert can serve us,’ said Montgomery. ‘Make yourself useful, boy.’ He watched grimly as the trays of food were set on the trestle table, the servants left, and Robert with some reluctance stood away from the wall and approached the table. ‘Come on, you can serve out wine without a towel for once. As for you, Maister Cunningham. You’ve spent a while proving that nobody could have killed our William. When are you going to get to the name I want? The boy’s dead, and somebody’s to suffer for it.’

‘I’m in no doubt of that,’ said Gil. ‘I’m making a report, my lord. The Faculty will wish to be certain we have looked at everything that might have a bearing on the matter.’

‘Oh, get on with it!’ said Montgomery savagely. He took a wedge of cold pie from the tray Robert was presenting to him and nodded to the boy to proceed round the company.

‘On Sunday evening,’ Gil continued, ‘the dog-breeder called at the college yett asking for the wolfhound. Two more chambers were searched, by different hands, and I was robbed in the street of a bundle of papers. From all this I concluded that at least one party was still looking for something on paper.

‘On Monday, the bundle of papers was returned, for which I was grateful, and it became clear from the admission of one of his victims that William was gathering information not just round the college but more widely. He had that knack of fitting stray words and scraps of news together to make a story that would interest the King’s advisers.

‘Then Jaikie the porter was found stabbed at the college yett. There was another bundle of papers smouldering in his brazier which turned out to be William’s lecture-notes and other papers. Likely they had been lifted from the boy’s chamber when it was searched. Also in Jaikie’s chamber I found a dog-collar, hidden in a press.’

‘What has that to do with anything?’ asked Maister Crawford.

Maister Forsyth stirred irritably on his bench, but Gil answered, ‘It was a thing out of place. Why should the porter have a dog-collar in his chamber? And there is a dog in the matter, and the dog-breeder had been at the yett a number of times asking for the dog and therefore speaking to Jaikie.’

Maister Crawford grunted.

This was not going well. Lord Montgomery’s scowl was intent, but the other members of the Faculty wore assorted expressions of puzzlement, except for David Gray, who appeared to have settled into a blank exhaustion. Gil accepted a cup from the mason and sipped it. Wine, he thought, and well-watered. Bless the man. He drank deeper, and groped for the thread of his argument again.