A Pig of Cold Poison

Chapter Ten

‘I’m staying here no longer than I have to,’ declared the woman with the knife. ‘I’ll be away as soon as my term’s up. But I suppose there’s our supper to see to, even if they’re no wanting to eat in there the night.’ She rolled back the striped sleeves of her kirtle and bent to hack savagely at a turnip on the board before her, the little cubes flying from under her blade.

‘Indeed,’ said Alys, ‘Your mistress must eat, for her baby’s sake, but the rest of the household is in a great upset.’

‘No blame to you for that, either, Elspet,’ said Isa from her position by the charcoal range. ‘There’s none of us happy under this roof, even if we areny pysont.’

‘How so?’ said Alys innocently. ‘It’s a wealthy household, I’d have thought you’d be well suited here.’

She was seated by the hearth in the kitchen of the Renfrew house, a commodious limewashed structure across the cobbled yard from the back door, its nearest wall a sensible three paces from the house in case of fire. There was little bacon hung from the rafters so close to pig-killing time, but an array of well-scoured metal pans stood on a rack near the fire and the tin-glazed crocks on the shelf by the range glowed yellow in the shadows. She had been welcomed in and offered refreshment, plied with anxious questions, allowed to explain how Robert had died and that nobody else was in danger. She was guiltily aware that she was in another woman’s kitchen, gossiping with her servants, but the chance to ask questions was too valuable to pass up.

The two much younger girls in the corner, still pallid and tearstained despite her reassurances, shook their heads now at her comment and Elspet said, ‘Oh, there’s aye enough to eat, the mistress is well taught, for all she’s young, and runs a good house. But the maister’s an ill-tempered man and the young ones are no better, aye quarrelling and disputing, carping and criticizing. It’s no a happy house.’

‘Do they not agree well?’ Alys said. She bent to put her ale-cup on the flagstones beside her stool. ‘Brothers and sisters often argue, I believe,’ she added. ‘I have none.’

‘There’s squabbles,’ said Elspet, attacking another turnip, ‘and there’s the kind of thing we get in this house, and they’re no the same thing. And there’s what you heard, Isa, and all.’

‘There is,’ agreed Isa. She turned from the pot she was stirring and gestured with a dripping spoon. ‘Wi these ears I heard her. I’ll pay you for that, Robert, she says, if it’s the last thing I do. What way’s that for a decent lassie to talk to her brother?’

‘And she did,’ said Elspet. She scraped the heap of yellow cubes into a bowl beside her and reached across the table for a bunch of carrots. ‘Pay him, I mean. Or someone did.’

‘Surely no!’ protested one of the two in the corner. Her name was Babtie, Alys thought.

‘Oh, aye,’ said the other one darkly. ‘I’d put nothing past her.’ She bared her arm above the elbow, to show an array of many-coloured bruises. ‘See these? That’s from I lost a bunch of ribbons off her blue gown, that one’s from when I washed her hair last and got soap in her eye — ’

‘There was the time Robert stole her billy-doo,’ said Elspet. ‘God send him rest,’ she added perfunctorily. ‘Aye, a billy-doo. From young Walkinshaw, it was.’ Alys, who had been pursued by Robert Walkinshaw before she met Gil, pulled a face. ‘Read it out afore the family at dinner, though she tried to stop him, and laughed when she swore she’d be even. And do you ken what she did, mem?’ Alys shook her head. ‘She cut the codpiece out of all his hose, every pair he had, and threw them in the pigsty. He’d to wear his faither’s for a week, and the maister doesny favour joined hose, being the age he is. You should ha heard what young Robert had to say about that.’

‘Aye, but,’ said Babtie. ‘That’s different. Putting pyson for someone, for your own brother, that’s no — that’s no …’ She paused, unable to find a word.

‘It cannot have been Agnes, surely,’ said Alys. ‘Could she do such a thing? Put poison in the sweetmeat so it would not be noticed?’

‘It’s Agnes and Eleanor makes those cherries,’ said Isa. ‘Eleanor’s hardly been round the house the last couple of days, except she’s been talking wi the mistress, so it won’t have been her. It would take our fine lassie no time at all to pyson one or two out of a box and put it where she’d know he’d get them.’

‘And where anyone else would — ’ put in Babtie, shivering.

‘Like we did,’ agreed Isa grimly. ‘I’m away at the term too, Babtie, I’m no staying in a place where pysons is left lying about for anyone to lift by accident.’

‘But I believe her father keeps his workroom locked when he isn’t there,’ said Alys. ‘She would hardly work at such a thing under his eye. And how would she come by the poison?’

‘Made it up hersel, most like,’ said Elspet. ‘I’d put nothing past that one.’

Not if it must be distilled, thought Alys, that would certainly have been noticed.

‘She found some somewhere in the house on Hallowe’en,’ she observed, ‘for she fetched it next door to Nanty Bothwell. Did any of you see her that day?’

Heads were shaken, regretfully.

‘We were all in here,’ said Isa, ‘seeing they was all out, the mistress had said we could have a wee bit extra to wir dinner, and take the rest of the day. Then they come back early, and her groaning,’ she added darkly.

Don’t think about it -

‘She’d likely have it hid in her chamber,’ said the bruised girl. ‘She works in there often enough, likely she brewed it there and all. She’ll carry all she wants up there, and scold at me for disturbing her when I go in for something out my own scrip under the bed, and then there’s another tray of kickshawses drying by the window, and I’ve to sleep in there wi the smell of them driving me wild.’ She sniffled again, and rolled down her sleeve.

Isa gave her a hard look, and said, ‘If you’re feeling more like the thing, Jess, you can fetch me in a pail of water.’

‘But surely, she can’t have been working like that lately?’ Alys wondered.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Jess. ‘Just yesterday, she was.’ She got reluctantly to her feet. ‘After her wee sister was born, when I went to call her to see the bairn washed and wrapped, did I no get my head in my hands, only for opening the door. That’s likely when she was preparing what slew her brother.’

‘Never say it!’ said Isa, crossing herself. ‘And sitting in at the supper-table last night, making up to her daddy like a good daughter.’

That cannot be right, thought Alys. The timing is wrong, and she would hardly work a distillation in her own chamber.

‘But is that how they are all the time?’ she asked. ‘Such vindictiveness and ill feeling.’

‘Aye,’ said Babtie baldly.

Jess paused on her way across the kitchen and said, ‘It’s those two’s aye been the worst. Eleanor’s no as bad, and that Nicol,’ she giggled suddenly, ‘he’s aye a laugh, he’s no got the same temper as the rest.’

‘Och, you’re sweet on him,’ said Babtie.

‘You never heard him the night they came home, like I did,’ said Isa. ‘Him and his father, going at it like the Stewarts and the Douglases.’

‘The very night they came home?’ repeated Alys, making round eyes.

‘Aye. All seated round the supper-table, wi their baggage still lying in the hall, shouting about whether Nicol had any right to expect a place in the business, what his bairn could inherit — and the mistress half in tears, and Mistress Grace white as new milk, she was that tired wi the journey. And then she miscarried that same night, the poor soul.’

‘Oh, how sad,’ said Alys. That was what Kate told me, she thought. And how interesting that Grace gets her title when Eleanor does not.

‘She’s never taken again yet,’ said Elspet. ‘It’s a crying shame, that. She’s a good woman.’

‘Aye, but what sort a bairn would that Nicol get?’ objected Babtie.

‘You speak civil of your maister’s son,’ ordered Elspet.

‘But Mistress Grace being as wise hersel,’ said Isa, ‘you’d think it would even out, surely? And you’d think and all, she’d know of a pill or a ’lixir or the like would help her to what she wants. Or the maister, even, given the way he values her, he ought to know something would help. Aye asking her advice, he is.’

‘She is wise indeed,’ said Alys.

‘She couldny save Robert, just the same, Our Lady succour him,’ said Elspet, slicing white discs of carrot. ‘She was running up and down from her own chamber, wi almond milk and all what, but it never helped the laddie.’

‘She saved our John,’ said Alys, and crossed herself quickly at the thought of the morning’s disruption. ‘She knew exactly what to do for him.’

‘Oh, mem, I’d forgot that,’ said Isa, ‘what wi the rest of the day. How is your wee one? Did you ever find that Erschewoman? I tell you, I was working in the hall at the time, taking the dust off the panelling, to be handy for the door when the mistress’s gossips came calling, and the first I knew was Mistress Grace ran down the stair wi her apron full of crocks, and out the back way and down the garden. I never saw any Erschewoman or anyone else come through the hall.’

‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Nor did anyone. It’s — it’s very strange.’

‘Here, Isa, look yonder,’ said Elspet, on a warning note, looking out of the window into the yard.

Isa craned to see, and exclaimed in annoyance. ‘What’s that lassie up to? Is that one of John Anderson’s constables she’s daffing wi?’ She stepped quickly to the door. ‘Jess! Come in here now wi that water!’

Alys got to her feet. ‘He will wish to speak to you all,’ she said. ‘I should leave. Thank you for the ale — ’

‘Speak to us?’ said Babtie on a rising squeak. ‘What for? We’ve never done anything!’

The three women still in the kitchen seemed almost to draw together, though they did not move. Jess’s wooden soles clopped on the cobbles and she appeared in the doorway, the burly blue-gowned form of one of the constables looming behind her.

‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s Isa that heard her say it!’

Back in the house, Alys paused in the hall. She could hear the Serjeant in the room where Robert had died, still asking questions; Gil was there too, putting in the occasional word. She curbed her wish to hurry to his side and considered what she might usefully do now. She had no wish to speak to Agnes again, though poor Nell must still be with her since it was beginning to grow dark and there was nobody to walk her home. Perhaps Meg could tell me something useful, she thought reluctantly.

‘What’s ado?’ asked Nicol Renfrew in the doorway from the stair. ‘The house is full of constables, all asking questions. Who’s that? Oh, it’s you. Gil Cunningham’s wee wife.’ He giggled sleepily, and slouched forward through the shadows. ‘How are you the day, mistress?’

‘Do you know your brother is dead?’ she asked directly.

‘Oh, aye, Grace told me. Are they all in there?’ He ambled towards the open door. Alys followed him. ‘And there’s the Serjeant. Are you come to arrest us all, Serjeant?’

Within the room, Serjeant Anderson was interrogating Maister Syme about whether marchpane cherries habitually lay about the shop. Give the man his due, Alys thought, he was asking the right kind of questions, perhaps because whatever conclusion he reached would offend Maister Renfrew, who was standing over the settle, his beads clenched in his hand, his colour ominously high. Gil was over by the wall, listening, though he met her eyes and smiled as she entered, and there was a Dominican priest talking to Eleanor; there was no sign of Grace.

‘Where have you been all day?’ Maister Renfrew demanded of Nicol. ‘Here’s Robert dead of pyson and none to lift a hand to prevent it — ’

‘Pyson?’ said Nicol with interest. He looked at his brother’s body. ‘Better have him out of here, Faither, or he’ll set afore he’s washed.’

‘Is that all you’ve to say, you daftheid? Where have you been, anyway?’

‘I’ve been a wonderful journey.’ Nicol waved a hand in a wide gesture, and Serjeant Anderson swayed back to avoid being slapped. ‘Three times round the world, met Agnes in Rome and Grace in Constantinople, and that mad Italian in his strange new world, and then back across the Dow Hill. Is there aught to eat in the house? I’m famished.’

‘Can you make marchpane cherries?’ asked the Serjeant.

‘Me?’ Nicol giggled again. ‘No, I leave that to my wife. And the putting pyson in them.’ The Serjeant looked sharply at him. ‘Grace told me,’ he added. ‘A bad business, Faither, for the both of us, and for you, Jimmy, but we’ll no talk of it now wi so many present.’

The Serjeant grunted, and returned his attention to Maister Syme.

‘It’s a habit of the young man’s,’ Syme pronounced, with that air of sharing a secret, ‘I mean it’s aye been a habit, if a box of sweetmeats gets broken, he’d eat the dainties himself, rather than save the box and perhaps put two such together and sell one complete. I’ve mentioned it a time or two,’ he admitted, ‘but Robert never desisted.’

‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Young men will aye have their cantrips.’ Syme’s offended expression suggested that he possessed none. ‘And who knew of this, maister?’

‘All his family,’ said Syme steadily, ‘but also anyone that came into the shop while Robert was there could observe him, and a few of those might have heard me mention it to him.’

‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant again. He looked round as his constables entered. ‘Well, lads?’

The one who had been in the kitchen nodded significantly. What had he learned? Alys wondered. Their superior acknowledged the nod and went back to Syme.

‘And who makes all these kickshawses?’ he asked.

‘My wife,’ said Syme, ‘her sister, her good-sister. All three of them’s right good at the fancy work — ’

‘And does each one have her speciality? What do you make best, mistress?’

‘I made those marchpane cherries,’ admitted Eleanor wearily. ‘But I never put aught in them but dried cherries and marchpane. And as for harming my brother, I’d never — I’d never — Oh, he was the dearest wee boy!’ she burst out, tears springing to her eyes, and Father James patted her hand. ‘I canny believe it!’

‘Well, well,’ said the Serjeant, with a certain rough sympathy. He turned to his men again, and Syme hurried across the room to his wife. Alys watched, wishing she was closer, as the constables conveyed some information to the Serjeant’s ear.

‘Right, lads,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘I think that’s all we need to know. Away and take her up, and you’ll no accept any marchpane cherries off her.’

‘Who?’demanded Eleanor as the two constables left the room. ‘Take who up?’ exclaimed her father at the same time. ‘Her? Who — not — not Grace?’

‘Your daughter Agnes,’ said the Serjeant with satisfaction. ‘She was heard to say she’d get back at her brother, and she’d the means and the chance to put the dainties where he’d find them.’

‘Agnes?’ said Nicol, interested. ‘I’d never have thought she’d do that. Senna in his porridge maybe, but no pyson. She must dislike him worse than I thought.’

‘Agnes?’ said Eleanor at the same moment, but not as if she disbelieved it. She looked up at her husband, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

‘No!’ said Renfrew. ‘No, Serjeant, no my wee lassie! You canny mean it!’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘And I’m wondering if she’s responsible for what came to Danny Gibson after all.’ He smiled kindly at Gil. ‘There you are, Maister Cunningham, two deaths sorted and the miscreant taken up, all in less than half an hour.’

What was that line in the play? Alys thought. I’ll rug you down in inches In less than half an hour. Gil returned the smile with the politeness which meant he was deeply annoyed.

‘Sir Thomas will be impressed,’ he said.

‘We should have some light in here,’ said Syme anxiously. He looked at Alys. ‘Could I trouble you to call for candles, mistress? It would — ’

She nodded, and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her and wondering whether to go out to the kitchen for lights. Overhead, suddenly, there was screaming, exclamations, running feet, loud voices. The two constables seemed to be having some difficulty with their capture. In the same moment she realized that the two younger maidservants were by the door which led out to the kitchen, clinging together and staring at the ceiling.

‘No!’ shrieked Agnes overhead. ‘It was nothing to do wi me! Get your hands off me! My faither will — ’

‘What in Our Lady’s name are you doing?’ Grace’s voice.

‘Ah, you wee bitch! Mind her claws, Willie.’

‘Oh, mem!’ said Babtie. ‘What are they doing? Are they taking her up for it?’

‘A course they are!’ said Jess scornfully. ‘What else d’you think? Even if Isa wouldny tell them what she heard, I let them know it plain enough. Proof positive, that is.’

‘We need lights in the chamber yonder,’ said Alys. ‘Will one of you fetch candles?’

‘They’re here, mem,’ said Babtie. She crossed the chamber to the plate-cupboard and lifted two candles from the box on its lower shelf, a small two-branched pricket-holder from the upper shelf. Fitting them together she struck a light and lit the candles, their small flames blossoming in the suddenly darkened room. As she returned, the thumping and shouting overhead moved on to the stairs, the newel-post rocking in the approaching light. Booted feet appeared round the turn of the stair, stamping uncertainly, and then Agnes’s skirts and the rest of her person, writhing as she attempted to free herself from the grip of the two men. They all lurched gasping off the stair on to the flagged floor of the hall.

‘It’s nothing to do wi me!’ Agnes shrieked again. Behind her, Grace descended quietly, dismay in her face, and a frightened Nell Wilkie appeared at her back. ‘My faither will stop you!’ Agnes persisted. ‘Daddy, tell them! Make them let go!’

‘Ah, shut your noise,’ said one of the men, the one with the scratched face. ‘This way, and we’ll see what your daddy says.’

‘Why have they taken her? Have they proof of any sort?’ Grace said quietly.

‘Circumstantial only,’ said Alys. ‘Is Meg —?’

‘Her mother’s wi her.’

Alys took the candles from Babtie and followed the constables into the chamber, Grace at her shoulder, aware that the two maidservants were following them. Nell hurried after, clearly unwilling to be alone.

It was already a complex and noisy scene. Agnes was appealing again to her father, Eleanor was on her feet sobbing on Syme’s shoulder, Nicol was leaning against the wall beside Gil and giggling foolishly, and Maister Renfrew, his face alarmingly dark in the dim light, was arguing with the Serjeant, who alternately answered him and conjured Agnes to admit her guilt. By the settle, in deep bell-like tones, the Dominican priest whose name Alys had not caught was reciting prayers for the dead and intercessions for the bereaved and the guilty, a grace she felt they could have done without at this moment. Babtie slipped in behind her, shrinking against the door where she obviously hoped to be unnoticed, staring round-eyed at Robert’s body. Jess followed, gazing triumphantly at the struggling prisoner, and Nell Wilkie peeped timidly round the door.

‘It wasny me!’ repeated Agnes. ‘Where’s Grace, she’ll tell you, where’s — ’ She twisted round to see who else was in the room, and froze briefly, staring at the group by the door. ‘It was you!’ she exclaimed in fury.

Next to Alys, Grace jerked as if she had been struck by an arrow. She turned to look at the other woman, and then over her shoulder at the two maidservants, who were staring back at Agnes, open-mouthed.

‘Who?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘What are you saying, Agnes? It was never Grace!’

‘It was you!’ Agnes said again. ‘You, Jess Dickson!’ She glared from one to the other of the men that held her, her eyes glittering. ‘Take her, no me. It was her poisoned my brother, she did it.’

‘No I never!’ Jess looked round her, alarmed, and edged towards the door. ‘How would I pyson anybody?’

‘Aye, hold the lassie!’ ordered Renfrew. Alys met Gil’s eyes across the chamber. Even in that light, she could tell that he was as startled as she was.

The Serjeant sighed. ‘We’ll just take them both,’ he said resignedly. ‘Hold her and all, lads.’

‘But why can they not release my brother?’ asked Christian Bothwell heatedly. ‘If she’s poisoned one man, she’s poisoned another, surely?’

‘The Provost must decide,’ said Gil, with sympathy, ‘and he’s abed with the rheum. It could still have been a matter of conspiracy between them, you must see that — ’

‘Never! No my brother!’

‘I realize it’s not in his nature, but the law takes no account of such things.’

‘The law is a fool,’ said Mistress Bothwell.

They were standing in the street, where she had caught up with them on their way home after seeing a tearful Nell Wilkie back to the dyeyard. The news of Robert Renfrew’s death and his sister’s arrest had obviously spread rapidly in the lower town, and she was certain Gil could now secure her brother’s release.

‘This is not the place to discuss it,’ said Alys. ‘Will you not come home with us just now? If you could persuade your brother to confess where he came by the flask he used, it would help him. It would help us too.’

‘He’ll not hear me,’ said Mistress Bothwell, wringing a fold of her plaid in her hands. In the torchlight her face was pinched and her eyes huge and dark. ‘I got in to see him yesterday, afore they moved him to the Castle, but he’d not admit it was other than one of ours, I asked him where he’d got it and he never answered — ’

‘He might tell us more when he knows Agnes has been taken up,’ Gil observed.

She shook her head. ‘No, if he’s decided to protect her he’ll not change his mind.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘I canny bear it if I’m to see him hang, only for the sake of a vicious wee trollop like Agnes Renfrew.’

‘Come back with us,’ said Alys again, ‘and at least have some company for the evening.’

She shook her head again. ‘My thanks, lassie, I’m bidden to the Forrests for my supper. It’s right kind of them, considering. And kind of you, too.’ She looked up at Gil. ‘So you’ll not see Nanty released?’

‘I’ve no authority,’ he said with reluctance. ‘I’d like nothing better, but the Provost makes his own decisions. He’ll not rise from his bed to question Agnes, I suspect, and he won’t release your brother till he has good reason.’

‘Is there more you need to know?’ she asked directly. ‘Can I find anything for you?’

‘I still haven’t learned what the poison is or where it came from,’ said Gil. ‘Anything you can think of that might help me to that would be valuable.’

‘Aye, I can see that.’ She gathered her plaid round her, preparing to walk on up the High Street. ‘I could — I’ll think on it more. I suppose Agnes isn’t saying anything that will help?’

‘She still denied everything, even when they put the chains on her,’ said Alys. She turned to put the platter of roast meat on the plate-cupboard where it would not tempt Socrates. Gil watched appreciatively as the high delicate bridge of her nose was outlined for a moment against the candlelight gleaming on the plate. Turning back she looked briefly down the table as she had been doing all evening to make sure John was safe on his nurse’s knee, and lifted the serving-spoon before her. ‘Catherine, may I help you to the applemoy?’

‘It is unbelievable,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I find it all too believable, and what Alys learned in the kitchen bears me out.’

‘But whether you find it believable, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘do you think she did poison her brother? Or was it the maidservant as she claimed?’

‘She accused the girl out of spite,’ said Alys. ‘When she recognized who had set the constables on to her. She is very vindictive.’

‘Never yet I knouste non Louesomer in londe,’ observed Gil, with irony.

‘So not the maidservant but the mistress.’

‘Her father thinks she did,’ said Alys.

‘He looked as though he would have a seizure when he saw her manacled,’ said Gil. ‘I was glad when Grace reminded him to take his drops, though they didn’t seem to help much.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Alys slowly, ‘it could have been any of them. Agnes is likely, I admit, but as we found last night, they all have as much reason as she does to poison Robert, they all have the knowledge, and the method was open to any of them. Or to anyone else who recognized the possibility.’

‘Except for Nanty Bothwell,’ said Gil.

‘Unless he had prepared the things earlier and left them in place,’ Maistre Pierre said, ‘and it only now came to light. But why would he poison Robert Renfrew if he had a notion for Agnes?’

‘To gain favour with her?’ suggested Gil.

‘It might work,’ said Alys critically, ‘but it would be out of character. None of his friends could believe it of him, that he might poison his rival, and it makes even less sense to poison his sweetheart’s brother. It was her father who objected to her choice of sweetheart, not her brother.’

‘And at the rate Robert ate the things, if they were left before the play on Thursday I’d have thought he would reach a poisoned one sooner than this. No, I think we can probably discount Bothwell,’ Gil agreed. ‘Which only leaves us the entire family. And the maidservant.’

‘Da Gil!’ said a forceful voice at his side. He looked down, to find John, who would usually have been in bed by suppertime, beaming at him under dark curls full of green sauce. Socrates reached an enquiring muzzle and licked the boy’s ear.

‘What a sight you are,’ Gil said, pushing the dog away and lifting John on to his knee. ‘He seems well enough now, after his misadventure.’

‘I think he’s unharmed,’ said Alys. ‘He slept all afternoon, Nancy told me. Only the adults were afflicted. I thought this morning I would never recover from the fright, and poor Nancy is consumed by guilt.’

‘He will be guarded more carefully now,’ observed Catherine.

‘Poon,’ said John, seizing Gil’s spoon.

‘It seems to me,’ continued Catherine, laying her own spoon in her plate, ‘that the key to the question is, what is the source of the poison.’

‘I think so too, madame,’ Gil agreed. ‘Whoever poisoned the cherries must at least have had access to the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, whether or not it was the same person.’ He wrestled the spoon back and silenced the shouts of indignation by using it to offer John a mouthful of applemoy.

‘But is that sufficient reason to kill her brother?’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly.

Gil suddenly recalled his sister Dorothea, of all people, a year ago in this hall saying, You don’t need a sensible reason to want to kill a brother, just a strong one. He repeated the remark, and Alys nodded.

‘And Agnes’s reasons were strong,’ she said. ‘But were anyone else’s as strong?’

‘Poj!’ said John, reaching out to Gil’s plate. Gil checked the sticky little paws and gave the boy another spoonful.

‘It isn’t porridge, John,’ he said. ‘It’s applemoy. Nancy,’ he called down the table, ‘bring me his wee dish.’

‘Moy?’

‘He never grasps the whole word, does he?’ Gil said. ‘Thank you, Nancy. You’re a good lass.’ Nancy gave him a watery smile, bobbed and went back to her own seat. ‘We should call you Tuttivillus, wee man.’

‘Have you still the list you made, ma mie?’ Catherine asked Alys. ‘You should study it after supper. It might prove of value.’

‘It was certainly no accident, by what you say,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘The sweetmeats were deliberately poisoned. Could they have been intended for someone else?’ He turned his head. ‘Is that someone at the door? Who would come calling at this hour?’

‘Syme,’ guessed Gil, as his father-in-law rose. ‘He’s the most likely.’

He was right. Admitted in a flurry of apologies for disturbing their supper, James Syme bowed to the company, refused a seat at the table, and begged a word with Gil when he was free.

‘I’m about done here,’ Gil said, ‘if Pierre will excuse me. John, go to Mammy Alys.’

‘Take dish,’ ordered John, sliding to the floor.

Gil obediently handed him the little painted plate with its mound of applemoy, and he pattered round the table to Alys. Gil rose, wiping food from his person, and Maistre Pierre said, ‘Go above to my closet, if you wish.’

Seated in his father-in-law’s comfortable panelled closet, with its shelf of books, its jug of Malvoisie left ready, Alys’s sewing lying on the windowsill, Gil handed Syme a glass of the golden wine and studied the man.

‘A bad business,’ he said, with genuine if conventional sympathy.

‘Oh!’ Syme shook his yellow head. ‘My — my wife’s at her wits’ end, poor lass. She’s howding, you ken,’ he divulged, with that air of imparting a secret, though the whole of Glasgow could recognize this one, Gil thought. ‘It makes her easy upset. But I said I’d come out and ask you — ’ he paused, biting his lip — ‘ask you what you thought in the case. Is my good-sister guilty, do you think, Maister Cunningham, or the girl Jess, or is my wife right that it must ha been some other enemy of the family?’

‘What do you think?’ Gil returned the question.

Syme threw him a hunted look, but considered his answer with care. ‘If Agnes hadny named her, I’d never ha thought of Jess. She’s a cheery wee soul, but not clever. I would never ha thought she’d do such a thing on her own. But I can see why John Anderson took Agnes up for it,’ he admitted. ‘She’s the means for it, since she makes many of the dainties we sell, and she’d know how to — to — it was right defty, what you described, the way the stuff had been put in the marchpane and then covered over. I can roll pills wi the best, but I’d not manage that, nor would Nicol I’d say. Agnes is neat-fingered, like Frankie and my wife.’

‘Go on,’ said Gil.

Syme looked at the candlelight reflected on his glass and said, ‘As for why she’d do such a thing, there’s never been any love lost between her and her brother. But in that family it means little, maister.’ He smiled sourly. ‘I don’t think they know what the word means. Love, I mean. The tales I could — well, never mind that. The point is, why pick on Agnes when it might as well be any of the family or none?’

‘Was her chamber searched?’ Gil asked.

‘Aye, the Serjeant and I searched it after they’d taken her up. We never found any sign she’d been working wi sweetmeats there, but then she’s been trained to clean up after hersel, like any good worker. There was no sign of the poison either, not in Agnes’s goods nor in the lassie Jess’s scrip.’

‘Interesting,’ said Gil. ‘How did her father take that?’

‘I’m not right sure he took it in.’

‘Could it have been any of the rest of the family?’ Gil asked, without inflection. Syme shook his head. ‘Why would anyone want to kill Robert, do you think?’

Syme looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s never — he’s no that easy to get on wi,’ he revealed unnecessarily. ‘I was Frankie’s prentice, and then his journeyman, till he took me into partnership, so I’ve watched the laddie growing up, and I’ve wondered, lately, about the future of the business.’

‘In what way?’ Gil prompted, when he paused.

‘Well, it seemed likely Frankie would take the boy into the partnership too, and I’m junior partner, I’d be able to say nothing on that, the way the papers were drawn up. And he’s aye been wilful, steering, fond of his own way, and his manner no always what would be best for a man dealing wi folk across a counter.’ Syme turned his glass in his hand, then took a sip from it. ‘Well enough for me, I could always sell out, assuming I could find the money, and move elsewhere. But Frankie would have to live wi it, and wi the boy’s prying and spying. No that I’ve discussed it wi him, you understand.’

‘What about Nicol?’ Gil asked. ‘And Mistress Grace? How did they get on with him?’

‘You’ve seen them,’ said Syme awkwardly. ‘Nicol just laughs when his brother digs at him. Robert’s aye been civil to Grace, and she to him, I’ll say that for him. She’s a remarkable woman, is Grace.’

Gil sat for a moment, absorbing this, and then said, ‘How long a task would it be, would you think, to — ’ he hesitated for a word — ‘treat two of the marchpane cherries like that?’

‘Maybe a quarter hour, once you had all the materials to hand, for someone used to making the things. Not more than half an hour, at any rate.’

‘And when were the marchpane cherries put under the counter, do you think? Would it have been easy done?’

‘Robert finished a box of apricot lozenges that he said the mice had been at, yesterday after dinnertime,’ said Syme reflectively. ‘He’d to do without after that, for I was in the shop and watching him. I’d say there was nothing under the counter the rest of the day, nor first thing this morning.’ He shut his eyes to recall more clearly. ‘Today in the time afore dinner we’d a bit of custom, a few folk calling to talk about the mummer or congratulate Frankie, Agnes and Grace was both through the shop passing the time of day, and Robert was out at the door a lot, crying a barrel of spectacles your good-brother fetched to us last week.’ He grimaced. ‘I said it was unwise, but he would go ahead, and the chaffing and japing it earned us, well! Then we’d the upset about your wee laddie.’ He opened his eyes to look at Gil. ‘Was that him up at the table now? He’s recovered well, whatever it was he took, Christ and His saints be praised for it.’

‘He’s well,’ agreed Gil, ‘and we owe Mistress Grace a debt for life.’

‘And we were all in and out,’ continued Syme, nodding agreement, ‘looking up and down the street for this Erschewoman Grace says called her to help. I suppose in all that time there would have been opportunity for someone to put the box where you found it, but I never saw such a thing when we locked up for dinnertime, and Robert, Our Lady send him grace, was never eating at anything. Which he would have been if it was there.’

‘So it probably wasn’t there,’ agreed Gil. ‘And over the dinner-hour? Where was everyone? Where did you eat your own dinner?’

‘With the family,’ said Syme modestly. ‘It shortens the time I’m away from the business, and eases the burden on my wife just now.’

‘So was everyone there?’

‘Not everyone. Nicol was absent, and Mistress Mathieson herself a course, and I believe her mother ate with her, the two of them off a tray. Robert and myself went through to the dining-chamber when we closed the shop, and Agnes came down from above, and Frankie from somewhere about the house, and Grace, and then Frankie gave thanks for the food and we sat to eat. The family eats separate from the household,’ he divulged, with a return to his usual manner, ‘Frankie hasn’t held by the old ways like your good-father here.’

‘Where was Nicol?’ Gil asked. ‘Was he ill? Mistress Grace said he was abed, but he seemed well enough when he came down.’

Syme hesitated, his expression disapproving.

‘You’d best ask Nicol himself about that,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll not — no. It’s for him to tell you, if he will.’

Tell me what? Gil wondered. What had Nicol meant with his talk of a journey? Where had he been?

‘And was that the order that you gathered?’ he said aloud. ‘You and Robert, and then Agnes, and Frankie, and Grace?’ Syme nodded. ‘And your wife?’

‘She’d spent the morning by the fire in our own house, stitching at bairn-clouts,’ said Syme, his face softening again. ‘I think she’d never moved. When I’d eaten my dinner, I went home to take her down to St Mary’s Kirk, to hear Mass where her own mother liked to hear it, and she nearly fell when she stood up, her legs were that stiff.’

Gil nodded. The man was a partial witness, of course, but he could check later, perhaps with the servant, and meantime it did seem as if he could leave Eleanor out of the matter. Which left -

‘Mistress Mathieson,’ he said. ‘Your good-mother, I mean. Is she capable of — ’

‘No,’ said Syme firmly. ‘Even if she could rise from her bed, which I doubt, she’d a right bad time of it, it seems — even if she rose, as I say, she’s neither the skill nor the ability to concoct sic a thing. She might put it in place, but she’d have to get someone else to make it for her.’

‘Her mother?’ Syme shook his head. ‘And nobody suggested the other apothecaries — Wat and Adam, or Mistress Bothwell.’ Another shake of the head, an impatient exclamation. ‘No, I agree. But that leaves us with,’ Gil counted them off on his fingers, ‘Agnes, her father and Mistress Grace. If Frankie Renfrew poisoned his son, he put up a very good act this afternoon, and Mistress Grace tried as much as you did to help him.’

‘Aye, but she would anyway,’ said Syme without thinking. ‘I mean,’ he elaborated, ‘she’s a clever woman, if she’d been the one to put the stuff there in secret, she’d see she’d have to dissemble.’ He put a hand over his eyes. ‘Our Lady save me, what am I saying here?’

‘I agree,’ said Gil again. ‘So unless it was you — ’ Syme snatched the hand away to stare at him, then realized Gil was not serious — ‘we are forced to assume it was Agnes.’

‘Aye, I see your reasoning. You make it very clear.’ Syme sagged in his chair, and swallowed the remaining wine in his glass. ‘It’s as much like the way we’d think through a case. Is it this, is it that, using one argument or another to discard till you’re left with a single — well.’

‘The other thing I’d like to know,’ said Gil, ‘which might have some bearing on it all, is where the poison came from.’

‘Where it came from? Have you never sorted that out yet?’ Syme shook his head. ‘I suppose it’s only been two days. What did Wat and Adam learn?’

‘Wat thought it might be made from almonds. He found a scrap of nutmeat at the bottom of the flask.’

‘From almonds? I never heard of a poison made from almonds,’ said Syme, as everyone else had done. He paused, however, and said after a moment, ‘You could ask at Nicol. He knows some surprising things, though whether he’ll tell you is another matter.’

‘Nicol? Yes, of course, he studied with a Saracen in the Low Countries. I suppose if it exists the Saracens will have heard of it.’

‘Oh, you can be sure.’ Syme set his glass down, and began to gather himself together. ‘I’m right grateful to you, maister. It’s no great comfort, I’ll admit, but what you say has clarified my mind. Now I have to bring my wife to accept it, if I can.’

‘It must be hard for her,’ said Gil. ‘But I’d not thought she had much affection for her brother, or for her sister.’

‘I think that makes it all the harder,’ said Syme.

‘He’s a good man and a wise one, for all his irritating ways,’ Gil commented, when he had returned to the hall after seeing Syme out to the street, and recounted the gist of the conversation. ‘Eleanor Renfrew has done better than she realizes yet.’

‘I think she’s beginning to see it,’ said Alys.

‘Perhaps.’ Gil sat down on the settle beside her and sighed. ‘This is difficult. I feel I ought to act in the matter of Robert’s death, but I’ve no idea what to do next. I suppose I can hardly call on Nicol at this time.’

‘He would have no objection,’ surmised Maistre Pierre.

‘So it could have been Agnes, with or without Jess,’ said Alys, ‘but Maister Renfrew or Grace would have had as much chance to place the box of sweetmeats.’

‘So would Nicol. I wonder if he really was in his bed all day? But he seems not to want a place in the business, which removes one reason for disposing of his brother, and he seemed to find Robert more amusing than annoying. Hardly worth the risk of poisoning him, at any rate.’

‘He might dissemble,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Could he?’ said Alys.

‘Probably not. And I’d think Eleanor could have done it, but she would have had to pick her moment so as not to be seen.’

‘But she would know when the family would be at dinner and the shop would be empty,’ Alys pointed out, ‘and she could just walk into the house. And we have to consider Syme himself, of course.’

‘We do. I think he was telling the truth, but he did dislike Robert.’

‘That much?’ queried Alys.

Gil sighed again. ‘Poison is a hidden crime, I suppose it might go with hidden passions. If we ignore the idea of a stranger for the moment, we have,’ he counted, ‘seven people, no eight, close enough to Robert and with access to the house and the shop to have put the sweetmeats there for him.’

‘But Mistress Baillie or Meg would have to procure the poison from somewhere else,’ Alys objected, ‘and from someone else.’

‘And if they got it in Glasgow,’ contributed her father, ‘whoever provided it is not saying.’

‘So we’re left with Renfrew himself, Agnes, Nicol and Grace, Eleanor and Syme. We’re going round in circles.’

‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre gloomily, ‘we have one corpse whom nobody disliked, and we find nobody we can plausibly suspect of killing him on purpose, and another who was widely disliked, and far too many people to suspect. If you call on Nicol, I come too, and pay my respects to the dead. And you, ma fille?’

‘No,’ she said reluctantly, ‘I have things to do here in the house.’