The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Four

‘What are you saying?’ demanded Maister Livingstone from the doorway. ‘A nail? How has the old witch got a nail in her lug? That makes no sense!’

‘It does if someone put it there,’ said Lowrie. ‘Will I send Attie out for the Serjeant, uncle?’

‘But in here? She was at her prayers, Annot said. Here, Annot, woman, tell him!’

Annot, grasping what was being said, collapsed onto her knees again wailing incoherently. The men in the outermost chamber could be heard asking what ailed her. Gil ignored all, covered up the corpse’s hideous face and sat back on his heels, gazing round the chamber.

The door from the courtyard into the set of chambers was in the angle of the two wings, so this furthest chamber was at the outermost end of the wing and had windows in three walls, the door in the fourth. It was light, therefore, and contained a great number of items. He counted a free-standing box bed, set up so as to protect its occupants from most of the draughts, several kists which seemed to be Dame Isabella’s baggage, two settles, a folding table, a prayer-desk. The hangings lay in folds round the wall-foot as if they had been bought for a room with higher tenterhooks; they would surely impede anyone who hid behind them and hoped to step out quickly grasping hammer and -

‘What did he use to strike it home?’ he said aloud. Mistress Bowen, on her way to attend to Annot, gave him an approving look. ‘Is there a mell in the chamber? Anything that could be used for one?’

‘The wrights has mells in the other wing, all different sizes,’ said Livingstone, but his nephew had begun casting about, peering behind and under the furniture. ‘Are you saying — are you saying someone cam in here and struck a nail into her lug while she was at her prayers? And killed her? But how wad she ever let that come to pass? Did she no call for help, for her servants? It doesny make sense.’

‘Done and dunted,’ Lowrie muttered from under the nearer settle. ‘No, maister, I see nothing that’s like to be used for the purpose that wouldny show the marks or break in two when you tried it. That pewter basin, or her jewel-box, for instance.’ He lifted the basin, looking at its unblemished base. ‘Likely he took it away wi him.’

‘Aye, that would be too easy,’ said Gil. He got to his feet and looked down at the corpse. ‘Tell me, Mistress Bowen, is this how you found her lying when you first saw her?’

She paused in her soothing of Annot, considered the body, and said,

‘Aye, more or less. Her shift was up about her hurdies, I pullt it down for decency, but I’ve heard the Serjeant on about moving a corp too often to make that mistake. As soon as I jaloused it wasny natural, I took care I never changed anything else.’

‘She’s just the way she was when I saw her,’ said Livingstone. He bit at a knuckle. ‘It was maybe no right to leave her there on the floor in her dirt, but to be honest I didny fancy handling her, the state she’s in, and anyway no sense in more of us getting fouled than need be.’ Mistress Bowen glanced at him, but said nothing. ‘Will I send the boy out to find the Serjeant, then? Is that what-?’

‘Attie’s away to find him already,’ said Lowrie, returning from the outer room.

‘And I’ll need a word with Attie when he gets back,’ said Gil, ‘with all her servants indeed, and this one in particular.’ He looked at Annot, now sobbing on Mistress Bowen’s shoulder. ‘As soon as she’s fit for it,’ he added.

‘Give her a bit longer,’ said Mistress Bowen. ‘If there’s another lassie about the place maybe she could give me a hand, we’ll get the departed made clean at least. I’ll not ask the St Agnes women, they’re full old to be heaving the likes of her around, the souls.’ She looked down at Annot and patted her back soothingly. ‘Thanks be to Our Lady, we had her shroud out of her baggage when I was first here.’

‘Then we can clean up the chamber,’ muttered Livingstone. ‘What Canon Aiken’s going to say — violent death in his house, and the state the chamber’s in, and all! But this doesny make sense, Maister Cunningham, why would an ill-tempered old attercap like her let a man close enough to drive a nail into her head?’

‘Someone she trusted,’ said his nephew, ‘someone she’d no reason to be suspicious of? Mind you, she’d suspect the Archbishop himself,’ he added.

‘It makes no sense,’ repeated Livingstone.

By the time Annot had been led away by one of the kitchen-maids for a nice sit-down and maybe a cup of buttered ale with honey in it, Gil had managed to get a good look around him.

There was a grey woollen bedgown lying on top of the counterpane, a black velvet gown with embroidered sleeves hung on a peg on the wall, more armfuls of black cloth on top of a kist must be the other garments Dame Isabella had discarded last night. A second kist had been opened, and a bundle of folded linen lay on top of the contents: the shroud Mistress Bowen had mentioned, without which no provident person would travel.

A set of rosary beads of carved ivory with jet gauds lay coiled beside a worn velvet-covered book on the prayer-desk by one of the windows. On the nearer settle a bowl of water, still faintly warm to the hand, and a pile of towels suggested the morning routine. The jewel-box Lowrie had noticed, of wood covered in leather and fastened by a stout brass strap, lay on the further settle, a silver cross on a chain dangling from beneath its lid; a close-stool covered in blue velvet to match the prayer-book stood half-hidden beyond the settle, and added its contribution to the appalling atmosphere in the room.

Livingstone, with a muttered excuse, had retreated to the outer chamber to wait for the Serjeant, but Lowrie remained, prowling about and looking awkwardly from time to time at the corpse.

‘Maybe we’ll can get her made decent,’ said Mistress Bowen, returning with a jug of water. ‘Did you see enough, maister, can I move her now?’

‘In a moment,’ Gil said. ‘I’d as soon leave her for the Serjeant to see as well. Mistress, what would you say happened here?’

‘Oh, she was at stool,’ the woman said, ‘that’s for certain. It’s all down her legs and her hose, you can see, but there’s little enough on the boards.’

He nodded. This had been his reading too.

‘What made you look for — for what you found, mistress?’ Lowrie asked suddenly. She turned to him, and her thin face softened a little.

‘Violent death’s never a bonnie sight,’ she said obliquely. ‘What made me look? The sight o her, maister. Her eyes starting out like that, the blood at her nose, yet her face is pale and there’s no other signs o an apoplexy. I mind my mother, that had the same calling, telling me the tale o just such a death she attended, oh,’ she paused to reckon, ‘forty year syne or more. Only there the nail was easier to find, not being driv’ home the same way.’

‘I never heard that tale,’ Gil said. And what other stories would a layer-out have to tell, he wondered.

‘Aye, well, you wouldny. My mother never tellt any but me. The corp was a foul-tempered fellow, she said, and had broke all his wife’s limbs in turn and started on his daughters.’ She closed her mouth firmly on that subject and turned to the corpse. ‘I’d as soon tend to her now, maister, never mind waiting for Serjeant Anderson. I’ve one of the kitchen lassies out-by, ready to give a hand.’

‘Not just yet,’ said Gil. ‘I’m still trying to work this out. She was seated over yonder, then,’ he nodded towards the close-stool, ‘and someone struck a nail into her ear.’ He drew back the cloth and considered the black dot of the nail-head again, and put his fingers to his own ear to match the place. ‘He must have moved fast, to strike home before she was aware of it. Or she,’ he added scrupulously.

‘If the stool’s not been moved,’ said Lowrie.

‘No by me,’ said Mistress Bowen.

‘It’s where I last saw it,’ the young man agreed. ‘Then someone could have approached her round the settle, whichever way she was facing.’

‘Someone she knew,’ said Gil, ‘someone she trusted, someone she’d no objection to having in the chamber while she was occupied like that.’

‘Anyone in the house, then,’ said Lowrie. ‘Not that she trusted any of us, as I said, but she’d summon any or all and sit there enthroned, giving out her orders for the day. Her women, her grooms, me or my uncle.’

‘Well, they aye say the wealthy has no need of good manners,’ said Mistress Bowen disapprovingly.

‘At that rate, mistress, Isabella Torrance could ha bought and sold Scotland,’ said Lowrie.

‘So how did she come to be lying here?’ wondered Gil. ‘Did she move herself?’

‘Maybe it didn’t kill her immediately,’ said Lowrie slowly. ‘Head wounds are orra things, I know that.’

‘It’s possible. I’ve seen stranger,’ said Mistress Bowen.

Gil looked down at the sprawled figure, half on its side, plump limbs part-flexed.

‘Aye, I suppose. She rose up and came forward-’

‘Maybe she thought to go after whoever it was as they left.’ Lowrie was prowling round the bed, and now leaned forward to sniff cautiously at its woodwork. ‘I’d say she’s laid her hand to this end panel, maybe to steady herself.’ He turned to open the shutters of the window over the prayer-desk, doubling the light that fell on the area he indicated. ‘Aye, it’s smeared like her shift.’

‘Her hands are foul.’ Gil considered this. ‘And then she collapsed where we see her. That would work. She looks as if she fell rather than being carried or dragged.’

A loud, confident voice rose in the outermost room, with a commotion of several people. Maister Livingstone could be heard trying to explain what had happened, but the new voice overrode his.

‘No, no, I’ll just hae a look mysel afore you explain all. Ben here, is she? And Maister Cunningham’s here already, you say.’

There was a heavy tread, and Serjeant Anderson proceeded into the chamber, a well-built man in the long blue gown of a burgh servant with the embroidered badge on the breast. He nodded to Gil, then stopped just inside the door, his hand halfway to his head.

‘Your bonnet, Serjeant,’ said Mistress Bowen, her tone nicely combining formality and wifely reproof. He completed the gesture and removed his felt hat, staring at the corpse. His constable peered round his arm and stepped back, grimacing, but the Serjeant came forward, bent ponderously to look under the linen cloth, and retreated.

‘Our Lady’s garters, Mally, have ye no washed her yet? It’s no decent leaving her like that. And what’s this about murder, any road? She looks more like an apoplexy to me.’

‘Aye, so I thought at first,’ said his wife, ‘but see here.’

Shown the evidence of misdoing, the Serjeant surveyed it for a long moment, tested the rigidity of Dame Isabella’s neck and jaw, then straightened up and looked at Gil.

‘Aye, Maister Cunningham,’ he pronounced. ‘So you’ve time to spare from your researches about the burgh, I see. How far have ye got, then?’

‘John!’ said Mistress Bowen, reminding Gil irresistibly of Magdalen Boyd. The Serjeant threw his spouse a quick glance and continued more civilly,

‘See, if it was me, I’d ha questioned all her servants by now. She’s been lying there a good while, by the feel of her. How long was it known she was dead?’

‘Aye, well, small chance of that,’ said Maister Livingstone from behind the constable. He stepped into the chamber, dragging the man Attie by the arm. ‘Here’s this lad only the now telling me, her own folk has run, Serjeant, all but two of them. Lifted their bundles and vanished.’

‘I couldny stop them,’ said Attie miserably. ‘It was that Marion started it, said she wasny staying here to get the blame o the old wife taking an apoplexy, and the other lads saw it the same way and up and left. I tried to tell them you’d never charge them wi it, maister,’ he said to Maister Livingstone, ‘but they wouldny hear me.’

‘Aye, well,’ said the Serjeant. ‘I’ll ha their names off yir maister and we’ll get the constables after them. If I cry them from the Cross we’ll run them to ground soon enough.’

‘That’s if they’ve stayed in Glasgow,’ Gil said, considering the situation. If only one servant had run, he might have read it as an admission of guilt, but four fugitives confused the picture. ‘Maybe you should ask at the gates, too.’

‘I ken my job, Maister Cunningham,’ said the Serjeant.

They had repaired to the outermost chamber of the set, to allow Mistress Bowen and her assistant to resume work. While Livingstone dismissed the two men in green livery with a long list of people to call on with news of Dame Isabella’s death, Lowrie had quietly set up a table, and now, to the Serjeant’s evident gratification, he and Gil were seated behind it like a miniature court, Attie standing before them mangling his velvet bonnet, with Lowrie himself and the scrawny constable at either end making notes. The old women of St Agnes’ were still at their task in the corner, but their soft ancient voices were more soothing than distracting.

‘Why did Marion think she would get the blame, Attie?’ Gil asked now.

‘I don’t know.’ Attie spread his hands, the bonnet dangling from one like a dead bird. ‘She wasny making sense.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ Gil said. The man looked blank. ‘What was the first you knew of your mistress’s death?’

‘First we all knew,’ said Livingstone, striding the length of the chamber and back. One of the bedeswomen looked up at him, but did not break off her murmured recital. ‘When Annot came running out crying that she was dead. Is that right, lad?’ he flung at the servant.

‘Where were you at the time, maister?’ Gil asked him. ‘You said Annot came to you — where was that?’

‘We were in the hall,’ Lowrie contributed. His uncle nodded.

‘Aye, so we were.’

‘Let’s hear how the day started,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Was the departed just as usual? Who dealt wi her first?’

‘That would be her women,’ said Attie, working his bonnet between his hands. He was a lean, dark-haired fellow in his early twenties, Gil guessed, with a frightened air which was probably natural in the circumstances. ‘They’re her bedfellows, see.’

‘And you men slept where?’ asked the Serjeant.

‘Yonder in the mid chamber, see, on a couple straw pletts, which you’ll find stowed in ahint the big kist.’

Gil sat back and listened while the Serjeant led Attie competently through the beginning of the day. The grooms had risen first, naturally, though they had heard the women stirring soon after. One of the men had fetched bread and ale from the kitchen and all four had broken fast. The two waiting-women had also eaten in snatches as they moved back and forth through the set of chambers.

‘Your mistress ate nothing?’ Gil asked.

‘She’d not eat first thing,’ said Lowrie at his elbow, ‘not till she’d-’

‘Not till she’d been to stool,’ confirmed Attie awkwardly. ‘You never — you never — Nicol, that’s had several places afore this, he said he never seen anyone like the old carline neither for concern wi her belly. So they got her up, and fetched her the glass hot water she likes, and we heard her shouting about her bedgown, and then she summoned us in wi orders for the day.’

‘What, before she was dressed? Why should her women not carry the orders out to you?’ Gil asked.

Attie shook his head. ‘She never trusted a one of us to carry a sensible word to the others.’

‘Same wi the rest of the household,’ contributed Livingstone. ‘If she wanted to say a thing she’d summon you afore her, even Archie or my good-sister under their own roof.’

‘So what were the orders?’ demanded the Serjeant. ‘What would she have you all do?’

Attie shut his eyes, the better to remember, while the old women switched in unison from Pater noster to Ave Maria.

‘Nicol and Billy was to go find out when the Campbells would be back,’ he produced, ‘I think they’d a word for the place they lodge in, and Alan and me was to go an errand to the potyngar she favoured, which you’d ken wouldny be the nearest, and fetch a list o things, and straight back here.’

‘And did you?’ asked the Serjeant.

‘Aye, we did,’ Attie assured them, ‘for it wasny worth the beating if we’d dawdled.’

‘And the women?’

‘Likely they’d be set to getting her dressed,’ suggested Livingstone.

‘Aye, that was it,’ agreed the groom. ‘That was the usual. Takes an hour or two, what wi lacing her up and getting all the points tied and dressing her head, and her changing her mind, and she’s right particular how you comb her head, or so Forveleth aye says.’

‘Forveleth?’ questioned Gil.

‘Forveleth,’ Lowrie said. ‘It’s her right name. An Erschewoman, she is. Dame Isabella would aye call her Marion.’

‘Said she couldny abide these heathen names,’ supplied Attie. ‘A bonnie enough lass, but away wi the fairy half the time, full of ravery about one or another ill-wishing her.’ This must refer to the missing woman, Gil assumed, rather than her mistress. ‘I tried to stop her running off,’ he added, ‘but she said she’d seen a corp laid out in the middle chamber there whenever we set foot in it. Daft, I call it, for it was in the inmost one the auld carline died.’

‘And how long was ye about your errand?’ demanded the Serjeant impatiently. ‘When did ye get back from the potyngar’s? Which was it, any road?’

‘It was Jimmy Syme’s, away down the High Street,’ said Attie earnestly. Gil looked at the man, reckoning in his mind how long it might take to walk down to the apothecary shop of Syme amp; Renfrew in the High Street, and what short cuts might be possible. ‘And we were no that long,’ Attie went on, ‘straight there and back like we were told to, quicker than the other two any road, and then we just sat here in this chamber. They cry us waiting-men, after all,’ he said sourly.

‘Here? Could you see the door to your mistress’s chamber?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Attie. He waved a hand at the corner where the bedeswomen sat, from which Gil reckoned the doorway would be hidden. ‘We were yonder, waiting for the auld carline to send out for us, only the first thing that happened was Annot going in to her, and she screamed,’ he went on more fluently, ‘and started up saying My lady’s dead! and when we went to see, well, you ken what we saw.’

‘So when you and — Alan, was it?’ said Gil, ‘left, she was alive, and the first you saw of her after you got back, she was dead. Is that right?’

Attie looked at him for a moment, turning this over in his mind, and then nodded.

‘That’s it, maister,’ he said in some relief. ‘That’s it exact.’

‘And the two of you were together the whole time?’

‘Oh, aye, maister,’ Attie assured him. ‘The whole time. Never took our een off one anither.’

‘Then why did Alan run off?’ demanded Maister Livingstone.

‘Aye, that’s the nub o it,’ agreed the Serjeant. ‘If the two o ye could speak for one another, he’d no need to run off and cast suspicion on hissel, and the same for the two other lads.’

‘He never said,’ said Attie doubtfully. ‘But him and Nicol’s brothers, see, maybe he wouldny want to stay here on his lone.’

‘What had the two of ye to fetch from the potyngar?’ asked Livingstone. Lowrie looked up from his notes, and nodded. ‘Was it paid, or do we have to take it back and get it struck off the slate?’

‘Alan had it by heart,’ said Attie, ‘five or six different — all on the slate, maister — and he put them all in the breast o his jerkin, and I’m thinking he never took them out when we got back here.’ He looked uneasily at Livingstone’s expression, and counted on his fingers. ‘An ounce o root ginger, an ounce o cloves. Flowers o sulphur two ounce — that’s all I recall, maister, but I ken there was more. Was it a nutmeg, maybe? Or senna-pods?’

‘Oh, if he’s got that lot on him we’ll smell him out readily enough,’ said the Serjeant, laughing heartily. ‘You’ll can set that great dog o yourn after him, Maister Cunningham.’ He tilted his chair back, then forward again with a thump. ‘Right, I’d say that’s all I want from you the now, lad, we’ll hear what the woman has to say that’s no run away. Tammas, away and find her, I think she was to be in the kitchen.’

His scrawny constable left obediently. Livingstone said rather sharply to Attie,

‘And you can get about the tasks I gave you, my lad. We’ll need the mortcloth, and the hatchments have to go up at the door.’

‘But where do I get them all, maister? It’s no our house, I’ve never a-’

‘Ask at the kitchen, you great gowk! St Peter’s bones, the old beldam was right enough calling you scatterwits.’

Attie turned to go, and checked as a shadow darkened the door to the courtyard.

‘Here you all are!’ said John Sempill. ‘There’s never a soul answering your door at the house, Eckie, and I want the title to Balgrochan back, for the old dame never gave us the right papers. What’s afoot, then, what’s come to the old carline? They’re saying out in the town it’s murder.’

‘Aye, maister, it is that,’ pronounced the Serjeant with relish. ‘Were you acquaint wi the corp, then?’

‘Aye,’ said Sempill, scowling at him. ‘She’s — she was my wife’s godmother. So what’s come to her? Have you no taken whoever it was yet?’

‘Just gie it time, maister,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Ah, here’s the woman. Sit there, lass, and tell me your name.’

Annot, tearstained and tremulous, halted on the threshold at sight of Sempill; he stared back at her with round pale eyes, then abruptly turned away saying to Gil,

‘Are you in this and all? What’s ado? What came to her, then, if it wasny an apoplexy?’

‘Someone drove a nail in her head,’ reported Livingstone before Gil could speak. ‘She’s done and dunted, John, and quite a bargain for some of us.’

‘When?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Gil said. ‘When did you see her?’

Sempill paused a moment, like a man trying to reckon times. Behind him the women of St Agnes’ embarked on another round of the rosary.

‘I’m no right sure,’ he said finally. ‘But she was well enough when I saw her,’ he added aggressively, ‘it was never me that nailed her down. How could you-’ He stopped again, looked from one hand to another with small gestures as if holding nail and hammer, looked at Annot and the bedeswomen. ‘What, right through her veil and cap and that? Must ha been a mighty dunt! Can I see her? Will she be fit for my wife to view?’

‘No just yet,’ said Livingstone, ‘they’re still washing her. Come away, John, and let the Serjeant get questioning folk, though he’ll maybe want a word wi you-’

‘No, no,’ said the Serjeant, waving grandly. ‘That’s no a bother, her own folk’ll tell me all I need.’

Sempill was persuaded away with a mutter of Malvoisie, the two note-takers picked up their instruments, and the Serjeant drew a deep breath and began.

It was clear almost immediately that Annot was not going to be a helpful witness. Asked her name she stumbled and stammered over the formal Ann, the everyday Annot, and two forms of her surname, which was either Hutchie or Hutchison.

‘What do you usually get?’ the Serjeant asked her. ‘What does most folk call you?’

‘Annot,’ she said miserably. ‘Save for my mistress, that calls me — called me Sparflin Annie.’

‘That’s a good one!’ said the Serjeant. ‘And are you a sparfler, then, Annot?’

She shook her head, blinking away more tears, and Lowrie put in,

‘Her mistress had names for all her servants, Serjeant, none of them very complimentary. Attie Scatterwit, Marion Frivol, Billy Blate.’

‘And none of them true,’ said Annot, with a faint flicker of old indignation.

Gil studied her. She was a small, well-rounded woman, probably past thirty, and would be comely when her face was not puffed with weeping. She was dressed well but without show as fitted her station, in a gown of dark blue broadcloth, good linen on her head, her only jewellery a cross on a cord and the beads at her girdle. Why her mistress would call her a spendthrift was not immediately clear.

She was now attempting to deal with the beginning of the day, stopping and starting and muddling herself. The Serjeant was showing signs of irritation; with an effort, Gil pulled himself together and applied himself to his duties.

‘Mistress Annot,’ he said. She turned her eyes on him. ‘Attie tells us your mistress called the men in to give them their orders before she was dressed. Is that right?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, that’s — well, no afore she was dressed, exactly, for we’d — she’d never ha sat there in her shift, we’d to-’

‘That was her usual way,’ said Lowrie.

‘How was she clad?’ Gil persevered.

‘Her bedgown about her and yesterday’s cap over her hair,’ Annot said with a sudden access of coherence, ‘for we’d combed her and washed her hands and face, and she’d drunk her glass o hot water, though it wasny to her liking-’

‘What’s no to like in a glass o hot water?’ demanded the Serjeant. ‘Daft way to start the day, to my thinking. No nourishment in it.’

‘It was — it wasny — she said it wasny hot,’ Annot stammered, ‘though it burned my fingers.’

‘Humph!’ said the Serjeant.

‘What happened next?’ Gil asked. ‘After the men went away, what did you and Marion have to do for your mistress?’

‘She’d go to her prayers,’ Annot bit her lip, then nodded. ‘Aye, that was — for she aye — so she dismissed us, bid us return in an hour.’

‘An hour!’ repeated the Serjeant. ‘Was she praying for the whole o Scotland by name? So you left her an hour. Was she well when you went back?’

‘Oh aye. Well, she must ha been, for she called us in herself — and then we — she would have us wash her — and we’d barely — as soon as her clean shift was on her she would go to — she would-’

‘Go to stool,’ Gil prompted when she hesitated. She nodded at that. He frowned, trying to concentrate. ‘She needed a stick to walk, or else support. So you had to help her across the room?’ She nodded again. ‘And were you and Marion both still present?’

She stared at him, puzzled.

‘We were both washing her. Oh I see, yes, the both of us was getting out her clean cap and her comb and that while she sat there, until — for she shouted at us, Get out my sight you pair o — so we went, I went out to the kitchen to get anither bite o food-’

‘Why had you not had a bite when she was at her prayers?’ Gil asked.

‘I wasny hungry at the time,’ she said simply.

‘So you went straight to the kitchen,’ said the Serjeant. She nodded, sniffling. ‘And where did the other woman go, this Marion? Was she at hand all the time you were away? Never tell me you leave your mistress unattended?’

‘Aye, for she’d — if she bade us — I reckoned a quarter-hour would be-’ Annot swallowed, glanced at Lowrie, and said, more coherently, ‘My mistress sent the both o us from her, so we went.’

‘But where was the other one? Tell me that!’ demanded the Serjeant.

‘Was she about the house?’ Lowrie suggested. ‘Or did she step out for a bit?’

At that Annot’s face crumpled.

‘I canny say,’ she wailed, ‘for I’ve no a notion, only it canny have been Marion that — she never — I canny tell where she was! And then she came to the kitchen, and we — we got talking, so we did, and it was longer than I meant to leave her! And then when I came back she was, she was,’ she scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘I’ll see her face afore me the rest o my days, I’m certain o’t.’

‘Mistress Annot,’ said Gil. ‘The man that came in just now.’

She blinked at him, trying to follow his thoughts.

‘Sempill of Muirend, aye,’ she said after a moment.

‘When was he last here? Did he have word with your mistress this morning?’

She shook her head in surprise.

‘Oh, no, maister. No this morning. He was here yestreen, right enough, and they had a word.’ Lowrie grunted, but did not comment. ‘Through the window, and all,’ she added.

‘What about?’ Gil asked.

‘I wasny listening. I couldny hear.’

‘So this Marion was about the house for a while on her own,’ said the Serjeant, returning to the immediate issue. ‘How long for, would you say? How far could she get in the time?’

The constable looked up and offered, ‘Maybe she was at the privy hersel.’

The Serjeant guffawed.

‘More than likely,’ he said, ‘by the way this death stinks.’ He laughed loudly again at his joke, sat back in his chair and went on, ‘Did you get all that writ down, Tammas? Good lad. Well, young maister, if you’ll can give us a note of the names of all these that’s gone missing, and a description, we’ll away and let you get on. I’ll get them cried at the Cross and through the town, and one o them will turn out to be the guilty party, most likely this woman wi the two names, that’s as clear as day to me.’ Lowrie looked doubtfully at Gil, and the Serjeant followed his gaze. ‘You’re agreed, I take it, Maister Cunningham?’

Gil shrugged, being careful not to move his head more than necessary.

‘I’m agreed we need to talk to the servants that have run off,’ he said, ‘but I’d say there’s a lot more to learn. We haven’t got the whole story here.’

‘We’ve enough of it for my purpose,’ said the Serjeant, rising. ‘I’ll report all to the Provost if you like, maister, no need for you to go up the hill as well. No, no, Maister Cunningham, it’s clear as day to me, like I said. One of her servants has slain her, and small wonder, wicked crime though it is, from the way she’s treated them.’

‘No, surely no,’ protested Annot, sniffling, while Lowrie looked hard at his notes. ‘None of us would never do a thing like that — it’s been some wicked fellow passing that’s come in off the street and found her unattended-’

‘And stole nothing? Those velvet gowns would sell for a good sum down the rag market,’ said Serjeant Anderson, ‘let alone her beads and the silver cross I saw ben there. No, no, lass, you’ll no tell me. One o them that’s run has taken their chance, finding her unattended and no others in sight, and lifted a mell and nail from the carpenters’ work across the yard. Is there no someone in Holy Writ that got slain that way, maister?’ he asked Gil, who blinked at him and answered almost automatically,

‘Sisera the man of Canaan. In the Book of Judges.’

‘Aye, I thought that,’ said the Serjeant with satisfaction. ‘And where’s Maister Livingstone to be found? In the hall, you say? Right, then. I’ll see you in good time, maisters.’ He gathered up his constable and sailed out. Gil sat back against the wall, put a cautious hand to his aching head and sighed. Lowrie raised his eyes from his tablets.

‘What would you wish to do now, Maister Gil?’ he asked. ‘Have you more questions for Annot here or Attie, or do you want to seek out the mell, or what?’

‘If the women have finished,’ Gil said reluctantly, ‘I’d as soon get another look at the bedchamber. Little chance of any sign anyway, but by the afternoon you’ll have all Glasgow tramping through it to pay their respects and destroying whatever there is.’

‘I’ll go and ask, maister,’ volunteered Annot timidly. He nodded, and she braced herself and set off into the other chamber. Lowrie looked down at his notes again.

‘Do you want to take a copy of this, or should I write it out for you? There’s one or two things they said-’

‘There were, weren’t there,’ Gil agreed. ‘Give me a read of it if you will.’

Although Mistress Bowen was just completing her task when Annot tapped at the door, it was some time before Gil got access to the chamber. The process of locating Attie, the laying-out board and four stools of equal height was a lengthy one; then both Gil and Lowrie had to lend a hand in moving the body onto the board and the board into the middle chamber to rest on the stools. Annot, Mistress Bowen and the kitchen-maid who had helped her saw to the decent disposition of the linen shroud, and stood back. Lowrie reached for his purse, and Gil went to stand in the chamber door, surveying the scene. The two women had obviously turned their attention to the chamber itself when they had dealt with the corpse; the place smelled much fresher than when he had first seen it.

‘Here, what’s this?’ said Mistress Bowen sharply behind him. He turned, to find her looking indignantly at her palm. ‘I’ll no be bought, maister-’

‘Indeed no!’ said Lowrie hastily, his neck reddening. ‘I hope you’ll tell the Sheriff what you found and no other, when the time comes. No, no, it’s in consideration of a dirty task, mistress, and there’s a shroud-penny to Kirstie as well.’

Mollified, the two departed and the bedeswomen from St Agnes’ were installed beside their client. Annot, clearly feeling more settled now that the ordeal of her questioning was over, knelt beside them. Gil moved carefully into the bedchamber, looking about him.

‘Tell me a bit more,’ he said as Lowrie joined him.

‘There’s a fair bit more to tell,’ the younger man agreed.

‘John Sempill, for a start. You’ve something to add to Annot’s tale? When was he here?’

‘Last night after dinner, as she said. The old woman kept him standing, and then refused to see him privately. A roaring row in the antechamber.’

‘Your uncle said the same,’ Gil recalled. ‘So not this morning?’

‘Not that I know,’ Lowrie said warily.

‘But he got a word wi her anyway.’ Gil frowned, trying to think of what Sempill had said earlier.

‘Aye. After he left us he stopped by this window,’ he nodded at the one opposite the bed-foot, which gave onto the courtyard, ‘and shouted through it at her, and they’d another roaring argument you could hear in Partick, till he flung off out the gate bawling threats-’ Lowrie stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying. ‘He said,’ he continued more slowly, ‘he’d see her in Hell afore he did whatever it was she’d ordered him to do. She was looking out at the window, and asked what his wife would say if she kent what he’d been at, and he, he went closer and said something quiet, and she laughed at him. So he stormed off out the gate.’

‘Where were you?’ Gil asked. ‘Where were her servants, at that?’

‘I’ve no notion where her servants were,’ Lowrie admitted, ‘though I’d not believe Annot heard none of it, but I was hanging out the upstairs window listening for all I was worth. I’ve not had such entertainment all week. Is the man aye so birsie?’

‘He’s much improved since this marriage, if you’ll believe me,’ Gil said. And where had Sempill been this morning, he wondered, when he told his wife he was talking to Dame Isabella? ‘Now, do you see aught amiss here? Aught that’s out of place or missing?’

‘I’d not know.’ Lowrie looked about him. ‘She was right persnickety, I’d guess her kists are all packed just so, but you want Annot for that. I’ll fetch her in.’ He turned to go, then hesitated. ‘Maister, I’d say I was wi my uncle from the time the two o us came down for our porridge till Annot came running to say she was dead, for we were going back over all the documents and debating what to do about the Strathblane lands.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘So am I,’ Lowrie admitted. ‘But the thing is, we were at the back o the hall, looking onto the garden, so we neither of us saw nor heard anything from this side the house. And a course the kitchen’s out that way and all, so she was right unattended, nobody within call in any direction, if what Annot says is right.’

‘Except her murderer.’ Gil sighed. ‘It’s not an easy one to piece together. She was enthroned yonder, and to judge by the sign she was in no position to move. Unless her bowels were loosed as she died,’ he added thoughtfully. He stepped into the room and looked about him. ‘Someone entered the chamber, and lifted something to use as a hammer, or else brought one in, then went around the settle and behind her,’ he did so as he spoke, finding to his relief that the cover was down on the close-stool, ‘and drove the nail into her ear.’

‘Into the far side of her head.’ Lowrie put his hand up to his own skull. ‘She’d be facing the window, with the settle at her left side. Does that work? Nail in the left hand, mell in the right, reach across over the top of her head — why? Why no strike it in at the back or the crown?’

‘So that she didn’t see the blow coming,’ Gil guessed. ‘The left hand over her head, as you said, and the right striking from behind her. It’s odd, just the same, you’d think the wall would cramp your movement. Unless,’ he stooped, looking at the shutters in the lower portion of the window, ‘unless she was looking out of the window. This is just ajar, there’s a good view of the street.’

‘She was right nosy,’ Lowrie said. ‘That would be like her, to sit there looking up the Drygate, however she was occupied.’

‘Aye, I like that better. And then whoever it was left, and took the mell with them.’

‘And she tried to follow.’ Lowrie grimaced. ‘Maybe she was a cantankerous old attercap, but nobody deserves a death like that.’

Annot, summoned from her prayers, seemed likely to start weeping again, and was not reassured by Lowrie saying,

‘We’re still trying to find out what happened.’

‘It wasny me,’ she protested, ‘I wasny here, I’ve never a notion what can have come to her, save it was some wicked soul off the street!’

‘Look about you,’ Gil said, ‘and see if you can tell me what’s changed from,’ he paused, considering. ‘From the time the men were in to get their orders this morning.’

‘The men?’ She stared at him, then applied herself to this idea. ‘Oh, maister, all’s different.’

‘Where was your mistress seated?’

‘Here on the settle,’ she pointed, ‘and that bowl and towels wasny there on the bench, for we’d washed her hands and face afore she rose and set the bowl on the wee table by the bed-foot.’

‘How was she clad?’

‘Her good bedgown that’s lying on the bed now, wrapped all about her and tied decent.’

‘What about her feet?’

‘Her pantofles. She aye wears her pantofles in the mornings, blue velvet wi stitch-work on them, and her hose under them for warmth. Her head? Just her cap, to cover her hair decent.’

‘What else is different?’ Gil persisted. ‘Has anything been moved? Are her kists all as they should be?’

‘I, I think so. Save that someone’s opened up her jewel-kist,’ she said, with sudden indignation. ‘Who’s been prying?’

‘Is aught missing?’ Lowrie asked. She looked at him, then crossed the chamber to where the leather-clad box lay on the settle. Setting back the lid she inspected the multiplicity of little bags of velvet or brocade it contained.

‘Her silver cross,’ she murmured, lifting it, ‘the great chain, the two small chains, the jet from St Hilda’s, the pearl rope, the pearl chain-’

Sweet St Giles, thought Gil, what an inventory. The woman could have funded a Crusade.

‘There’s just the one thing missing,’ said Annot finally, looking up at them. ‘And Christ be my witness, Maister Lowrie, it was here when I last looked in this kist. It’s a purse of silver coin, maister, that she never touched or would let us touch. It should be at the bottom of the kist and it’s no there, look, you can see where it ought to be.’

‘And you’ve a witness,’ said Andrew Otterburn. ‘No a very reliable one, by all I hear, but he kens what he saw, I suppose.’

‘I’d say so,’ agreed Gil.

‘And they struck you down so that you lost your senses. Aye, I’ve got that. Pity it wasny to the effusion of your blood, maister, but we canny have everything.’

‘I’ll contrive to do without it,’ Gil said, touching the back of his head gingerly. Otterburn acknowledged this with a flick of his eyebrows. ‘And likely Madam Xanthe will swear to what she knows, taking me in near senseless and drying me off.’

‘Aye, so I hear,’ agreed Otterburn drily. ‘Well, well, we’ll get it writ up in due process and serve them wi’t as a summons, but will we do aught afore that? Would you wish any other action? We canny have the Archbishop’s man struck down all anyhow. Per exemplum, I’d be happy enough to send Andro and two-three men to search the place, take the man Muir’s workshop apart, gie them a bit fright.’ Gil nodded. ‘Walter, man, see to that, would you? They’ve plenty time afore supper.’

The clerk left the chamber, and Otterburn sat back.

‘Now, this matter of murder and maybe robbery at Canon Aiken’s house,’ he went on. ‘You’re saying you’re no right convinced by John Anderson’s version?’

‘I’m saying,’ Gil replied carefully, ‘there are more questions to be asked. It might be that the Serjeant’s right, but it might not. I’m not clear about a few things.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to call some of them to mind. ‘For one, all her people said she wore her cap to give the men orders, but when she lay dead she was bareheaded and there was no cap to be seen. For another, it was a right sharp morning, but she had only her shift on her, nothing round her shoulders. And now this matter of the missing purse of coin.’

‘You think these things matter?’

‘The coin matters, for certain, and I think the others might.’

Otterburn nodded, making small squares with the little stylus in the wax of his tablets. After a moment he said,

‘Well, no harm if Anderson pursues these servants he’s cried at the Cross, for we’ll need to speak to them whatever else we jalouse. And this bag o siller has to be found and all. You’ll make your own enquiries, I take it? Aye. Well, call on me if you need help, man. There’s a whole troop o armed men eating their heads off out there, we need to gie them occupation.’ He threw Gil another look. ‘But no the day, I hope. You look to me as if you’re about done.’

‘I’m for home,’ Gil agreed. ‘I’ve a few things to discuss wi my wife.’

‘I’ll wager you have,’ said Otterburn, grinning.