Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘And in those ten, fifteen minutes from where he’d parted from his killer, he might have travelled far enough.’ He sighed deeply, ‘No, it does not help us.’ He paused, and then roused himself again. ‘But what do you think it means, “James and the flowers”?’

I confessed that I had little idea – the matter had been put almost entirely from my mind by the discovery of the maps, and the explanations that did suggest themselves to me I did not like.

Jaffray packed his pipe again and reached another spill from the fire to light it.

‘Evidently,’ he said, ‘the flowers refers to the colchicum: the boy knew exactly what he had been poisoned with. And as for the “James” – well, I fear there can only be one conclusion.’

I hesitated to say it; I had been avoiding the thought. ‘The murderer?’

‘Indeed, what else?’

‘Then it does not help us greatly. For every ten men in Banff, two will be named James.’

Jaffray smiled. ‘And one of them is myself.’

I looked at the loved old face. ‘And you, my friend, I discount. But as for the rest – how can we tell who had dealings with Patrick Davidson and who did not?’

‘We ask anyone who knew him. At the same time we must see where any other evidence may point, and if that also points to James, then so much the better.’ Jaffray was animated, for he had a scheme, a plan. He was not a man who liked to wait upon events.

I set my mind to work. The killer of Patrick Davidson must have a minute knowledge of plants and their properties – even than a physician and as good as an apothecary. Not only of native plants, but also of the more exotic alpine species that could not be found or grown on our harsh and windblown scrap of God’s earth. And to know of this colchicum mortis they must have travelled or have been in close commune with someone who had. As the doctor sat looking sadly into the fire, I went through the burgh in my mind, in search of the most likely poisoner. There was the apothecary himself, Edward Arbuthnott. There was only his word to say that he did not have access to a stock of the colchicum roots. But then, why would he have pointed them out to Jaffray, and what possible motive might he have for murdering his apprentice? The doctor himself? I could not countenance such a thing. There was Marion Arbuthnott – might she have managed to obtain the plant without her father’s knowledge? Again, I could see no possible reason she might want Davidson dead. By all appearances she had loved him. Her mother? No. According to Charles, Marion’s marriage to Patrick Davidson had been her mother’s goal. And if there had been some scandal? Betrothal, not murder, was the answer to that type of scandal – for such as Marion and Davidson, at least. I was certain Charles had no knowledge of or interest in botany. True, he would have access to Arbuthnott’s stores, but if Arbuthnott did not store the poison – again, I was going around in a circle, and arriving where I had begun. I was tired and my head was beginning to ache at the temples. ‘I must go, James. The light is fading and I rise early tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I had almost forgotten myself. I must go into Aberdeen, about the business of the bursaries.’

Jaffray was interested. ‘Indeed? The bursaries? But yes, I recall now. And will you find lodging in the college, or in the town?’

‘The town. I will lodge with my old friend William Cargill–’

‘James Cargill’s nephew?’ The doctor interrupted. ‘Yes. William is married now and has his own home in the Green quarter. He has been building up a lucrative lawyer’s business since his return from Leiden. He’ll be the town’s advocate in Edinburgh before long.’

Jaffray was unimpressed. ‘A great pity that he did not follow his uncle into medicine. The young–’ He was about to launch himself into one of his well-rehearsed diatribes on the laziness and thanklessness of my generation – not a word of which he meant – when he stopped suddenly. ‘Of course. James Cargill. Cargill’s notebooks – that is where I saw the sketch of the flower! If anyone in the north of Scotland ever knew that flower it would have been James Cargill.’

‘But the doctor has been dead these ten years and more,’ I protested.

He brushed this aside. ‘It matters little. His notebooks were the most exact I ever saw. He was an excellent physician yet his great pleasure, passion even, was the study of botany. He told me once that he was never happier than the summer he spent at Montbéliard with Jean Bauhin in the gathering and study of flowers. These troubles in the Empire would break his heart, if he lived today. Yes, I must see James Cargill’s notebooks. If his nephew has them, I trust you will manage to persuade him to lend us them awhile.’

‘I have no doubt. But how might they help?’

Jaffray muttered at my idiocy. ‘They will show us the flower. Arbuthnott has but a very hazy memory of its appearance, and I none. If we at least know what the plant from which these noxious bulbs are harvested looks like, then it may avail us something. Gilbert Jack may yet be proved wrong – perhaps it has been grown here, but we will never discover it if we do not know what it looks like.’ I felt Jaffray and I were leading each other farther and farther on the same wild goose chase, but we had nowhere else to go if we were to help our friend. I assured the doctor I would do my best to secure James Cargill’s notebooks.

‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘But this business of the maps, Alexander, I doubt it will avail Charles Thom anything. If Davidson were spying for every papist from here to Madrid, what good does the discovery of it do Charles Thom?’

This was a question I had asked myself as I’d walked down towards the doctor’s from the tolbooth. ‘If Davidson was a papist spy, then that would at least allow of a motive for his murder other than this nonsense of jealousy over a woman. It may be that his activities had been found out – that he was murdered to prevent his maps falling into the hands of his sponsors. Yet in such a case, why not accuse and try him openly?’

‘Because it would cause panic, my boy. And it might expose others whom the authorities might not wish to have exposed.’

The pain in my head was now throbbing relentlessly. The faces of Patrick Davidson, the provost, Marion Arbuthnott, Baillie Buchan, Charles Thom, the unseen Gordon of Straloch were all crowding in on me.

For his part, on my mission, Jaffray took it upon himself to enquire into Patrick Davidson’s connections in the burgh and its hinterland – be they Gordons, papists or simply ‘Jameses’, while I was away. My headache receded after I swallowed a draught of laudanum he had given me from his own store, and he and I talked much later into the night than I had planned, of other things. Finally, having promised that I would leave fresh provisions from Ishbel for Charles at the tolbooth before I left Banff early the following morning, I bade the doctor’s household farewell until I should return from Aberdeen.

There was already much business at the shore as I passed on my way to the tolbooth early next morning. The first boats since the great storm of Monday had put into port, and their wares had already been unloaded to make way for salmon, grain and woolfells destined for their entrepôt at Aberdeen. The shore porters who had spent Monday night gaming in the inn were now busily engaged on their proper labours. Traders and merchants’ boys ferried goods from the harbour to the market place in small carts or on their backs. The gulls were circling and cawing round the gutting station where the women cleaned the fish just landed for salting. Everything was as it had always been, as if the murder had been but a pedlar’s tale. The slight haar brought a smell of stagnant seaweed up from the shore; I had never liked it. I was glad that much of today’s journey would take me many miles away from the coast, almost till I reached Aberdeen itself.