The Fourth Crow

Chapter Four

They approached with care along the path, all three men scrutinising the ground about their feet as they went. The Cross was not a cross, but a tall stone with the shadows of ancient images still visible on all four sides; it could easily date back to Kentigern’s time. If it had ever had arms they were long since broken off, but Gil thought he could make out a cross carved in relief on one uneven surface, with the ring, or nimbus, or symbol of the infinite Godhead, or whatever it was, circling the juncture.

‘It takes more than one man,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘to tie someone to that, unless the subject is willing.’

‘Did you say you saw them bind Mistress Gibb?’ Lowrie asked.

‘I did. It took three of them. I was rounding up my men like a sheepdog, you understand, and young Berthold was right at the front of the crowd. I had a good view. Two were servants, I should say, and one man in a gown worth a baron’s ransom who held her in her place while the men bound the ropes about her. And one of the clergy, was it that fellow Craigie? offering up prayers.’

‘So was the other woman, the one in the chapel now, still alive when she was put here?’ Lowrie stood still to contemplate the idea. ‘Why would she consent? Or was she already dead, or in a great swoon from the beating, or what? I wouldny think it any easier to bind a dead woman here than a live one.’

‘We’re looking for traces of at least two people, then,’ said Gil.

‘There were more than two about here last evening,’ declared Maistre Pierre.

Gil stepped cautiously over to the Cross and stood with his back to it, looking about him.

‘Unless they crossed the burn,’ he said slowly, ‘whoever released her came down the slope from the gate, and the ground’s by far too trampled to tell how many they were. I wonder, was she awake, expecting them?’

‘Like Maister Craigie,’ said Lowrie. Gil, who had already seen the songman making his way towards them, made no comment, but Maistre Pierre tutted audibly. ‘It makes less and less sense, doesn’t it?’ Lowrie went on.

‘It never has made sense,’ grumbled the mason. ‘Everything we have learned so far has made the matter more confusing.’

‘Well, well, Gilbert,’ said Craigie in Latin, coming close enough to speak. ‘And what have you learned so far? A sad matter, a sad matter, and not good for St Mungo’s.’

‘The Sub-Dean is very displeased,’ agreed Gil, accurate but uninformative.

‘Very sad,’ repeated Craigie. ‘I little thought, when I offered prayers for Mistress Gibb’s healing, that this would be the consequence of her petition to our saint.’

‘It was you offered prayers?’

‘It was. Her family wished it, and I was free. And now this has happened.’

Gil considered him. He was a handsome, stocky man with a wide grin, dressed with less flamboyance than Maister Sim in a fashionably cut long gown of dark green cloth faced with black velvet. His belt was shod with silver, the brim of his round felt hat was pinned up with a bright enamel brooch, and altogether he was the image of a prosperous, modest cleric. Now, becoming slightly uncomfortable under Gil’s gaze, he said, switching to Scots,

‘Is that right, what the bellman’s crying? Does it mean someone throttled a complete stranger? Surely not! I canny believe it!’

‘She is certainly a stranger so far,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We have not yet a name for her.’

‘But what was she doing here? Where is Mistress Gibb?’

‘If I knew that I’d be rattling at her door,’ Gil observed. ‘What did you see when they called you down here this morning, William?’

‘What did I see? Well, her men were here at her side, and there the woman was bound to the Cross. You saw her yoursel, Gil. How did the men no recognise her? That’s gey strange!’

‘You saw her too,’ Gil pointed out. ‘You must mind how badly she was beaten. Her men saw what they expected to, I suppose. Nobody else was about?’

‘No at that moment, though a good few gathered once they saw us.’

‘Which of the men came up to St Mungo’s? How did he get in? What did he say?’

‘Oh.’ Craigie paused to consider. ‘Well, we were all in the vestry robing up for Prime, and this fellow came in from the nave wi one of the vergers on his heels, likely he’d got in at the west door, crying that his mistress was dead. I’ve no idea which of them it was, likely the one that spoke to you when you got here. And seeing there was only us songmen and Canon Muir in the place, Adam Goudie told off Habbie and me to go and deal wi the matter. We could see at once there was naught to be done, she was cold and stiff, so I began an act of Conditional Absolution and Habbie went to fetch you.’

‘Who found the cord about her neck?’

‘Oh, that would be Habbie. He was for trying to revive her, patting her face and the like, and here were the ends hanging.’ He crossed himself. ‘A bad business, a very bad business. And no good for St Mungo’s,’ he repeated.

Gil dug in his purse for the coiled cord. Shaking it loose he said,

‘This is what was about her neck. Have you seen the like before? Have you any idea where it might have come from?’

‘What, an ell and a half of stout cord?’ said Craigie. ‘Just about anywhere, I’d have thought. Try the candlemakers, they use string and cord, all sorts.’

Gil nodded, and wound the cord about his fingers again, turning back to the Cross. Its massive sandstone pillar gave nothing away, and the trampled grass around it showed no useful signs, as Lowrie had commented earlier. There was a long silence, into which Maister Craigie finally said,

‘Well, I’ll let you get on. But tell me if you learn aught, Gil, so I can put it in my prayers.’

‘Do that, William,’ agreed Gil. He turned to raise his hat politely, but Craigie was already on his way up the slope towards St Mungo’s. Maistre Pierre, staring at the man’s green cloth back, remarked in French,

‘Does he think we suspect him?’

‘He seems concerned,’ Gil agreed. He waited a moment longer, till Craigie was well out of earshot, then said to Lowrie, ‘So what have you got there?’

Lowrie rose from where he had hunkered down in the shadows twenty yards along the bank of the Girth Burn. Socrates, who had been sitting beside him looking where he looked, splashed into the water and waited hopefully for a stick to be thrown.

‘Someone cut across there to the waterside,’ said Lowrie, pointing upstream of where he stood. ‘And I wonder if this is why? It looks like a garment, blue woollen cloth any road. It’s caught under the other bank here, where the Provost’s men would likely ha missed it. Could it be her gown? And someone came down this way to throw it into the burn?’

‘Ah!’ Maistre Pierre made for the burn, avoiding the line Lowrie had indicated. Gil followed him more slowly, picking out the signs the younger man had found. They were slight, a matter of bent and flattened grasses, the print of a heel in a softer patch; whoever left them had contrived to avoid the bluebells’ juicier, more easily damaged leaves. Was that luck, he wondered, or good judgement? ‘Or was it daylight by then?’ he said aloud.

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. He was calf-deep in the burn, fending off the interested dog and gathering up the waterlogged cloth which Lowrie had seen. ‘Not if this was put in the water at the same time as the body we have was bound to the Cross. Lend a hand here.’ Lowrie sprang to help him, with a quick apology. ‘She was put there within perhaps an hour of her death, and then she was throttled, and left to stiffen like that. After midnight, but long before dawn, I should say.’

‘Someone who kens the kirkyard well?’ Lowrie offered. He and the mason splashed out of the burn with the heavy wet garment between them and began to spread it out.

‘This has been cut off her,’ said Maistre Pierre, unfurling a ragged sleeve. ‘See, cut the whole length from cuff to neck, and the braid at the elbow too.’

‘And the other sleeve,’ said Lowrie, unfolding it to match. ‘The laces are cut and all.’

‘So likely she was dead already when she was brought here,’ said Gil. He stared about him, then moved carefully back to the Cross and began quartering the trampled area about its foot. Socrates joined him, and after a moment so did Lowrie, while Maistre Pierre continued to arrange the folds of wet blue wool.

‘It is a working woman’s kirtle,’ he said at length, ‘with such short sleeves, and in this cheap woollen stuff, though this bit of braid at the sleeve may help us to identify her. The hem is much worn and stained. And also- Pah! Full of insects. The seams are thick with their eggs. Lice, I suppose. I wonder where she worked.’

‘A flesher’s? One of the cookhouses?’ Gil suggested. ‘Somewhere the floor is wet and dirty, at any rate, and not in the better parts of the town either.’

‘Peut-être. Do we seek her in the alehouses, perhaps?’

‘That would certainly account for why nobody has come forward yet to name her.’ Gil was crouched, peering at the ground. ‘We might learn more once they open up for the day’s trade. Lowrie, come and tell me what you see here.’

Lowrie obeyed, elbowing the dog aside to study the scraps of colour caught under the flattened stems.

‘That’s it,’ he agreed. ‘That must be it. She was cut out of the gown here.’

Gil used his fingernails to extract one wispy blue thread, and laid it on his palm, trying not to breathe on it.

‘Or at least, the gown was cut,’ he amended scrupulously. ‘She was probably still in it, but we have no proof.’

‘Here’s a bigger bit,’ said Lowrie, now on hands and knees. He pinched something up from a mat of grasses, and turned back to Gil. ‘Look, Maister Gil, it’s a bit of the weave, not just an odd thread.’

Gil took the fragment, turning it over carefully.

‘How did that happen?’ he wondered.

‘He used shears,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘One sleeve has been cut using shears, quite small ones such as a needlewoman carries, and the other using a knife.’

‘Two people, then,’ said Gil.

‘Mistress Gibb herself, with the scissors from her hussif?’ Lowrie said in surprise, and answered his own question. ‘Hardly, she had naught on her but that sacking gown I suppose. Unless whoever freed her brought her clothes to her. No, the tirewoman said her clothes were all in the hostel.’ He looked down at the wisps of cloth in Gil’s hand. ‘I wonder they never kept this whole for Annie to wear, at least till she found shelter.’

‘Not so easy,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to strip a corpse in the dark. I suppose it was quicker this way.’

‘Nonetheless,’ said Gil, ‘it fits. We have our two people at least, as we reckoned it would take to bind the corp to the Cross, and one of them carried a pair of small shears. Our corp was dead when she was brought here, and then stripped of that blue gown, the sacking gown put on her, and I suppose one held her up while the other tied the ropes.’

‘Well, that is clear enough,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, straightening up cautiously. ‘It only leaves the one question, and that greater than all the rest together.’

‘Well, I think there are others we’ve not asked yet,’ said Gil, ‘but that is certainly the biggest one right now. Why? What did they gain by it? Why that lassie in particular, why any corp at all, why change her dress? What was the purpose?’

‘Time,’ said Lowrie, sitting back on his heels. ‘Did the man Sawney no say he came down to the gate wi a light every hour or so? If he’d found nobody here he’d surely ha raised the alarm immediately. They must have won several hours that way, between making the exchange and Sawney and Rab finally coming to free their mistress.’

‘And if we knew how long that was,’ said Gil, ‘we’d have some idea how far afield we’ll need to search for Annie Gibb. I think you must be right, Lowrie.’

‘Do we seek her?’ asked Maistre Pierre, still studying the wet kirtle. ‘It is not against the law to run from friends and family.’

‘Mistress Gibb, or whoever freed her,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘kens more than we do about the lassie in St Catherine’s chapel and how she died. I want a word wi her and her friends.’

Lowrie nodded. Maistre Pierre cocked his head, and said,

‘Well, for now you may seek her on your own. It is more than time I went back to work if those pillars are to be set up this side of Judgement Day. I have not heard a chisel for the quarter of an hour. Moreover,’ he added, ‘that boy Berthold is no use today. Boys will be boys, I accept that he and Luke went out last night after supper, but Luke came home at a reasonable hour, just before midnight indeed. Saints alone know when Berthold came in, and this morning he cannot lift so much as a mell without dropping it. I wish you joy of him when he serves you, young Lowrie.’

‘The good Doctor Chrysostom has told me the news,’ said Sir Edward in the thread of a voice. Chrysostom Januar, fingers on his patient’s pulse, nodded encouragement, and a man in the decent plain clothing of an upper servant, presumably a body-servant, stood by watching jealously. Sir Edward breathed carefully, in and out, in again, and went on, ‘Maister, I couldny say where Annie might be. I hoped,’ another cautious breath, ‘to meet her again freed of her ills, though no as I shall be of mine afore long.’

Gil studied the sick man with sympathy. This was the wreckage of a warrior, he thought; the flesh had fallen away from a broad frame with a sturdy ribcage and big-boned hands. Silver scars on the yellowish flesh of neck and brow below the linen nightcap told their own story.

‘She never said anything to you about friends in Glasgow or hereabouts?’ he asked. Sir Edward considered briefly, but answered a soundless No. ‘Did she speak of her future at all?’ Another No. ‘What had you intended for her, sir? Lockhart thought you planned to treat her the same as your own lassies when you divide the property.’

This time the answer was Aye. Sir Edward collected himself, lifted a hand slightly and added, ‘My will. Show him.’

‘In the small leather kist, I think,’ said Doctor Januar, and received an infinitesimal nod.

The men’s hall was a big, open chamber with two rows of beds, wide troughs of Norway pine set on short legs against the long walls. Most of them were bare but one opposite and three at the far end held straw mattresses which now, by daylight, were humped up like caterpillars to air, with a clutter of bags and boxes on the floor round them. Here, nearest the door and the light, Sir Edward lay on good linen, propped on a mound of pillows, a featherbed under him and a fine woollen blanket about his shoulders. More kists were stacked on either side of the bedhead; there was a tray with spoons, a beaker, a jug of water on top of one pile.

Turning away, the servant extracted a leather-bound box from the other stack. He searched briefly in it and drew out a folded parchment, which he handed to Gil, returning to his post. Gil unfolded the document and tilted the writing to the light. It was not the original, which was presumably lodged with the man of law Lockhart had mentioned, but a full copy.

‘This is well drawn up,’ he said after a moment. Sir Edward’s thin mouth twitched in a faint smile. ‘It makes matters quite out of doubt.’

The will was also very wordy, but the testator’s intentions were unmistakable. There were bequests to the servants, to Dame Ellen, to the parish kirk and its priest; then in a long preamble Sir Edward’s affection for his daughters and his good-daughter were set out in terms which could only gratify the four women concerned, and the quite significant property which Sir Edward held was allocated, feu by feu, with reasons given for each bequest.

‘Would you by any chance,’ Gil asked, still perusing the list, assembling the blocks of land in his head, ‘would you by any chance have any of Annie’s papers wi you? Her contract, the lands from her own faither, that sort of-’ He broke off, as Sir Edward signalled with one finger and pointed at the kist again.

The servant, searching through it as if he knew what he sought, extracted several documents which he bundled together and handed to Gil. Over his head as he did so the doctor met Gil’s eye with a significant look. Significant of what? wondered Gil, preserving a blank expression. He turned to the papers, skimming through them. Anna Gibb, daughter of James Gibb and Mariana Wallace his spouse, was a wealthy woman, that was immediately obvious; she had no need to live in one room like an anchorite. These documents were the originals, and seemed to be the complete set of her titles to everything that was hers outright, along with a short copy of the deeds to several conjunct fees and a number of properties in which she had the life interest. He raised his eyes to the three men watching him, and met another of those intent looks from the doctor.

‘Well, that all seems very clear,’ he said after a moment, and Januar looked away. ‘I’ll make some notes, if I may.’ He drew his tablets from his purse and began a careful list of the properties and their respective values. The doctor moved quietly about while he worked, pouring a spoonful of something from a flask, something else from a jug, into the glass beaker on the tray by his side. The servant lifted the glass and stepped to the bedside, and the sick man accepted the dose gratefully, drinking it in small cautious sips.

‘Who has a mind to Annie’s property?’ Gil asked eventually, stacking the documents into their bundle again. ‘There must be more than one family would be glad of the alliance. Who have you turned away?’

Sir Edward gazed at him unreadably for a long moment. Eventually he said, in that thread of a voice,

‘Most of Ayrshire. Half Lanarkshire. Boyds, Muirs, Somervilles.’ One of those faint smiles. ‘Lost count a while back.’

‘None of them seemed more determined than others? More persistent?’

A soundless No. Whether that was the case or not, Sir Edward was clearly not the one to ask. Gil was considering his next question when hasty feet sounded in the courtyard, Socrates wuffed a greeting beneath the window, and Lowrie entered, rattling at the pin as he opened the door.

‘Forgive me, maisters,’ he said, bowing briefly. ‘Maister Gil, I think we have a name for the dead lassie.’

Out in the yard he was a little more explicit.

‘One of the alehouses out near the Stablegreen Port. Seems the bellman stopped there to wet his thrapple, and cried his tale by the door as he came and went, and naturally they all came up here to see the sight, and recognised her kirtle where we’ve spread it out to dry on the grass.’ Gil nodded, acknowledging his dog’s salutation. ‘They think it’s one of the lassies from the next tavern, just inside the Port. Someone’s gone out there to tell them, fetch her man, maybe get the alewife here too. I thought you’d wish to witness that.’

‘You’re right,’ said Gil. ‘What is her name, then? Assuming they’re right, and assuming the dead lassie is the owner of the kirtle,’ he qualified.

‘Peg, they called her. Peg Simpson. She works at the sign of the Trindle, so they thought, and her man’s a porter in the town.’

In the chapel, a small group who might or might not be different from the previous group was discussing this, while the woman who had been praying earlier sat on her heels, her beads wrapped round her hand, listening to the comments. Her husband had vanished, presumably to his duties about the hostel.

‘Likely one o their regulars tried it on a bit far,’ said a man in a cowhide apron as Gil entered. ‘You ken what the place is like, after all.’

‘I don’t know it,’ said Gil. ‘Tell me about it.’

All the heads turned, and the man in the apron, taken aback, swallowed once or twice and then said,

‘Aye, well, it’s no the most- It’s no a- It’s no like the Mitre that Ep Davison keeps, that’s a clean house and well ordered.’

‘A true word, Willie,’ agreed a woman in a striped kirtle. ‘Eppie keeps a well-ordered house, right enough. Her las sies are all decent folk, a woman can take a drink in there and never be troubled by other folk’s husbands. Unless she wants to be,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Jean Howie’s ale isny the wonder o the town neither,’ said a man with a bright green hood rolled down on his shoulders. ‘That’s her that keeps the Trindle,’ he added.

‘Aye it is,’ contradicted someone else, ‘it’s a wonder that folks goes back there after they’ve tasted it once.’

‘That’s no what they go back for,’ said another voice.

‘I heard that, William Pringle,’ said a stout woman at the chapel door. She pushed past Gil without apology, taking her beads in her hand as she went. ‘Now what’s this about Peg? She should ha been at her work hours since. What’s she doing here, and dead wi it?’

‘Here she’s, Jean,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘That’s if it is her, she’s been beat that bad you wouldny ken her.’

Mistress Howie halted at sight of the dead woman’s face, crossed herself, and went forward more slowly.

‘Oh, in the Name,’ she said after a moment. ‘What a beating she’s taen. The poor lass. I’ll wager it’s that man o hers, raised his fist to her once too often.’

‘More than his fist, I’d ha said,’ offered the woman in the striped kirtle. ‘She’s black and blue, head to foot. Take a look, Jean.’

Bessie, the hostel servant, got to her feet and raised the shroud, glaring at the male bystanders. Mistress Howie cast a cautious glance under the linen at the hunched length of the corpse, and nodded grimly, pursing her lips.

‘Have you sent to take him up?’ she demanded of Gil, unerringly scenting authority. ‘Her man. Billy Baird. Makes his living carrying other folks’ goods on his back, such as doesny fall into his pouch on the way to where he’s going. Scrawny black-haired creature wi a scar across his lug.’ She raked one finger across the folds of her linen headdress, over her ear and down her cheek. ‘It’s hardly murder, if a man slays his own wife wi his fists, but he should face the Provost for it any road.’

‘They’ve sent after him, Jean,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘Likely he’ll be here to gie a name to her.’

‘Aye, but who did ye send?’ she said sceptically.

‘Where do they dwell, mistress?’ Gil asked. ‘Have you any notion where the fellow Baird might be working this morning? Have you seen him the day?’

‘No to say seen him.’ Mistress Howie folded her arms under her substantial bosom, slightly relieving the strain on her red kirtle. ‘When I threw out the night’s stop-overs, maybe an hour afore Prime, I seen him keeking out at their door, but he ducked back as soon as he seen me look at him. They dwell on our back lands,’ she enlarged, ‘got a room in one o the wee sheds. Right handy for. ’ Her voice tailed off, and she glanced at the corpse and crossed herself. ‘Poor lass,’ she said again.

Gil, listening to what was not said, could only agree with her. How did the man Baird feel if his wife brought her clients home, he wondered. Indeed, was she his wife?

‘Would you swear this is Peg Simpson?’ he asked.

She gave him a sharp look, then made another inspection of the shrouded corpse, obviously seeking something.

‘Aye, I would,’ she said at length. ‘She’s got the mark o a burn on her arm, that I recall her getting at my fireside last Yule. That’s Peg. But her man should ken her and all,’ she added, changing her tune slightly.

‘And when did you see her last?’ Gil persisted.

‘I seen her yesterday afternoon,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘I seen her in that blue kirtle that’s lying outside on the grass, fetching a basket of bread home to your tavern, Jean.’

‘Aye, that would be right,’ said Mistress Howie after a moment’s thought. ‘I sent her for bread, maybe an hour after noon. She was ower long about it-’

‘Aye, she would be,’ said the man with the apron, ‘seeing she was standing at the Wyndheid watching the procession come in, all the fine folks and their braw clothes on horseback coming here, and the horse-litter for the poor man that’s on his deathbed, quite an entertainment it was.’

‘Aye, it would be,’ agreed Mistress Howie. ‘So that’s where she was, right enough? She denied it to me. Wait till I get a word wi her. ’ Her voice cracked as she realised what she was saying, and she suddenly pulled the tail of her linen headdress up across her face. ‘Och, the poor lassie,’ she said from behind it, muffled. ‘She never deserved this.’

‘Come away, Jean, and get a seat.’ The woman in the striped kirtle drew her aside, and the hostel servant Bessie drew the shroud with care over the dead woman’s face. Gil waited till Mistress Howie was settled on the stone bench at the wall-foot and then asked her again:

‘When did you last see Peg Simpson, then? You saw her when she brought the bread back, I take it.’

‘Oh, aye, for I’d to get the change off her. Then she was about the tavern, her and the other lassies, all the evening I’d ha said, though she took a couple trips out the back wi one fellow or another, her regulars they were,’ Mistress Howie sniffed, and swallowed hard, ‘but as to when I seen her last, it would ha been when we closed up, put the shutters up. After Compline, that would be.’

‘Oh, well after it,’ said the man in the green hood helpfully. ‘Near midnight, it would ha been, Jean.’

‘Nothing o the sort,’ she said repressively.

‘She was about at the end of the evening?’ Gil persisted. ‘You’re certain you saw her then?’

‘Well, I must ha done, for I never missed her. You could ask at the other lassies, if you’re-’ She paused, staring up at him. ‘Are you saying maybe it was one o her regulars that’s put her here? Is that why you’re asking?’ Gil nodded. ‘Oh, I wouldny say that, maister. They’re wild enough lads, but none o my customers would-’

‘Someone did,’ observed the man in the hide apron. Mistress Howie would have answered him, but there was a disturbance at the door of the chapel, where more spectators had gathered; a pushing and elbowing, a rising tide of indignant comments suddenly swallowed, heralded the arrival of a scrawny man with lank black hair and a scarred face, his blue bonnet clamped to his head by a stiff leather hood with a short cape. He dragged both these off as he emerged from the crowd, looking round desperately.

‘Peg!’ he said. ‘Where is she? What’s come to her?’

‘You ken well enough what’s come to her, Billy Baird,’ responded Mistress Howie tartly. ‘There she lies, dead and cold, covered in the marks you laid on her. You’ll not raise your hand to her again, you ill-doer.’

‘Peg!’ said the newcomer again, ignoring all of this but the most significant point. He flung himself at the bier and pulled back the linen, stared for a horrified moment, and turned to the crowd.

‘Who the hell did this? I swear by all the saints, if I find who’s treated my Peg like that I’ll have his lights for garters. Who did it?’ he demanded, as if someone present was concealing the information.

‘Listen to you!’ said Mistress Howie scornfully. ‘You’ll be telling us next you never put a bruise on her yoursel!’

‘I never put these on her,’ said Baird fiercely. ‘I never did more than show her what was right. A man can chastise his own woman, I suppose. Look at that, she’s taen a vicious beating, way ayont what’s reasonable!’

Gil, trying to imagine how one might find beating one’s wife reasonable, said,

‘When did you last see her?’

Baird turned dark eyes on him.

‘Who’re you?’ he demanded aggressively. Several voices told him, with varying degrees of triumph, that this was the Archbishop’s quaestor. He considered Gil with contempt, scratched at his codpiece, then said, ‘Aye well, I hope you’re on the trail of whoever slew her already.’

‘I’m still trying to pick up the trail,’ said Gil. ‘So when did you see her last?’

The dark gaze slid away from his.

‘That would be last night,’ he said. ‘No long after the alehouse closed.’

‘Oh, the leear!’ said Mistress Howie. ‘When she slept at home wi you!’

‘She never!’ said the man desperately. ‘She never, she went away out, and I wish she hadny! I tried to stop her!’

‘A good tale that is,’ said the man in the green hood.

‘When did she go out?’ Gil asked.

‘After the alehouse closed. I said.’ Baird brushed something from his eye. ‘She came down the back to our place, and then she went out again.’

‘Why?’ Gil asked patiently. ‘What took her out again, in the dark, after an evening’s work?’

‘He’s having you on, maister,’ said the woman in the striped kirtle. ‘He’s slew her himself, no doubt of it. Ask them ’at dwells down the same pend.’

‘No I never!’ protested Baird. ‘I never did! She left me, she left our house, and I looked for her to come back, and she never did, no afore I had to go out to my work afore Prime. I never saw her again, till.’ He stopped, staring at the bier, and scratched behind his codpiece again. ‘Till now.’

‘Why did she go out?’ Gil asked again.

‘She said she had to see someone. She wanted a word wi someone.’

‘At that hour?’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘When decent folks are all in their beds? What was she about?’

‘Maybe in someone’s bed and all,’ suggested another man, grinning. Baird lunged at him, roaring, and was restrained with difficulty by the man in the hide apron and his fellow with the green hood.

‘Let me go!’ he shouted, writhing in their grip. ‘Let me at him, he’ll no- Let me at him!’

‘Who was it she went to see?’ Gil asked him. ‘What did she tell you about where she was going?’

‘Nothing!’ he said rather desperately. ‘Just it was- She said something about he was back in town, she would get a word wi him.’ He paused in his struggles and stared at Gil, and added, ‘She didny sound as if he would enjoy it, but.’ He read scepticism in Gil’s face, and offered, ‘Maybe she said more to the other lassies?’

‘Likely she did,’ agreed Mistress Howie with another of her abrupt changes of direction. ‘You could ask at them, maister. I’ll bid them tell you the truth.’

‘Aye, where are your lassies, Jean?’ asked the man in the green hood. ‘I’m surprised they’re no here and all, to see the show. Pay their respec’s,’ he corrected himself.

‘I tellt them to get the house swep’ and the day’s kale on the fire, that’s how they’re no here,’ retorted Mistress Howie.

‘So are you going to take him up, maister?’ asked the man in the hide apron. ‘I’d say he slew her, myself, he should come afore the Provost for it, though I suppose he’ll no hang.’

‘Whoever killed her tied her to the Cross in place of Mistress Gibb,’ Gil said. ‘That could be seen as attempting to conceal it, which makes it secret murder-’

‘Secret? Out in the open at the Cross like that?’ said the woman in the striped kirtle, laughing.

‘At the Cross?’ repeated Baird incredulously. ‘Are you saying that was my Peg they were talking about? Bound at the Wyndheid and left in the midnight? Will you two let me go?’

‘No the Wyndheid,’ several voices contradicted him. ‘St Mungo’s Cross in the kirkyard,’ added the man in the green hood. Baird stared at him, then looked at Gil, who nodded confirmation.

‘She was tied to St Mungo’s Cross in place of the mad lady,’ he agreed.

‘What was she doing in the kirkyard?’ Baird asked blankly. ‘She hated the place, she’d never ha gone there in the daylight, far less in the dark, no for any money. She was feart for bogles, ever since someone tellt her some daft tale about a hand coming out a grave. What would take her there, maister?’

‘That’s right,’ affirmed Mistress Howie. ‘She’d never go near the High Kirk, aye worshipped in St Thomas’ wee chapel out ayont the Port.’

‘She’d ha been feart to death,’ said Baird, his voice sounding constricted. ‘Bound there and left to die. St Peter’s bones, if I find who did that to my lassie I’ll throttle him mysel, I’ll no wait for the hangman to do it.’

‘You stop that, you filthy leear,’ said the man in the hide apron, shaking him. ‘Right, maister, will we just take him round to the Provost the now while we’ve got our hands on him? Saves hunting for him later on.’

‘No,’ said Gil. There were indignant exclamations. ‘No, let him go. I need a right word wi him, and I’m not doing it here with half the upper town looking on.’

‘He’ll run as soon as he’s loosed,’ said the woman in the striped kirtle.

‘I will not, Agnes Wilkie,’ said Baird, ‘for that I’ll be hunting for him that did that to Peg.’

‘Let him go,’ Gil repeated, and was obeyed with reluctance. ‘And leave me wi him.’

Lowrie began to clear the chapel of the various bystanders, eventually persuading them that there was no more excitement to be had. When all that remained were Gil and Lowrie himself, the hostel servant Bess, and the man Baird, Gil led the porter over to the head of the bier and deliberately turned back the sheet to show the dead woman’s face.

‘Tell me when she went out,’ he said. Baird looked down at the battered countenance, his mouth twisting.

‘No much to tell,’ he said, with fractured bravado. ‘She cam round fro the alehouse when they’d put up the shutters, lifted her plaid and said she’d be away out.’

‘Her plaid?’ Gil repeated. ‘What like is her plaid? You’re certain she took it?’

‘Well, it’s no in the lodging, I’d to sleep cold. Just ordinar. Kind o brown checkit thing. Aye, that’s it.’ He nodded at the bundle Gil lifted from below the bier. ‘That’s hers. Can I get it back, maister? I was- I was right cold last night.’

‘And what did you say when she said she would go out?’ Gil prompted.

‘I said, Away out? At this hour? and she said, Aye. There’s someone back in the town I need a word wi.’ He paused, scratching at his groin again, his face sour as if the memory tasted bad. As well it might, Gil thought. ‘So I says, Who would that be? and she says, Nobody you ken, Billy, though he’s afflicted the both o us. Then she goes away out. Don’t wait up, she says, I’ll likely be a while. And I never,’ he dashed impatiently at his eye, ‘I never seen her again. Till now.’ He put out a hand and touched the bruised cheek with surprising tenderness. ‘Peggy, lass, who was he? What did you do that he slew you this way?’

‘She didny tell you who he was?’

‘No a word.’

Gil went back over the man’s statement in his mind.

‘She said there was someone back in the town,’ he repeated, ‘and someone who had afflicted both of you. What did she mean by that? Your landlord, maybe?’

‘No likely,’ said Baird dismissively, ‘it’s Jean Howie rents us the place, or rents it to Peg any road. Likely she’ll want me out o there now,’ he added, ‘seeing I canny bring in custom to her alehouse.’

‘You think it might have been a matter of picking a fight with this man? Of having something out wi him?’

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it no?’ retorted Baird with grim humour. ‘No, I canny add aught to what I’ve tellt you, maister. The lassies ’at worked wi her might have more to say, she maybe told them whatever it was that was eating at her.’

‘You’re saying she was worried about something?’

‘No worried,’ contradicted Baird. ‘More like annoyed. Something wasny right. I never asked her,’ he said a little desperately, ‘I thought she’d tell me when she cam in, maybe wi money in her purse. I’d naught but those few words wi her afore she went off into the night and I never seen her again till this. It’s no right, maister! It’s no justice!’

Following Gil out into the sunshine again, leaving Baird standing in baffled anger by the bier, Lowrie said quietly,

‘Was she maybe putting the black on someone? Is that why she was killed?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder how this fellow had afflicted them both? And when he came back into the town?’ He glanced at the sky, and snapped his fingers for Socrates, who obediently left the doorpost he was inspecting and came to his side. ‘I think we need a word wi the lassies at the Trindle, and then it’s high time we went home for the noon bite.’