The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘So it wasn’t me that killed him,’ he said, and scrubbed at his eyes. ‘But how did he get in the coalhouse?’

  ‘That is what I would like to know,’ Gil said. ‘Show me your feet,’ he said suddenly to Lowrie, who gaped at him, then closed his mouth and turned up the soles of his boots one at a time to the light.

  ‘No coal, I hope,’ he said lightly.

  ‘No coal,’ Gil agreed. ‘There’s lime on the hem of your gown –’ He stopped, recalling the hem of William’s gown. Quicklime and damp wool – that would account for the scorch marks.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Michael gruffly.

  ‘Mine are on the kist yonder, maister.’ Ninian nodded across the room. Gil stooped to inspect Michael’s boots, then made his way round the great box of the bed. As he lifted Ninian’s downtrodden footwear heavy steps pounded on the stair, and there was a hammering at the door.

  ‘Lowrie! Lowrie Livingstone! Is Maister Cunningham there? He’s wanted!’

  Lowrie opened the door. Two students were on the landing, and eager footsteps suggested more on the stair. The nearest, the irrepressible Walter, said urgently, ‘Maister, can you come quick?’

  ‘There’s something in William’s chamber,’ said the boy behind Walter.

  ‘It’s a ghaist,’ said Walter. ‘We heard it!’

  ‘If it’s no the deil himself,’ said someone on the stairs.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Gil firmly.

  ‘We heard it!’ said Walter again. ‘It’s wailing and girning like the Green Lady. Come and hear for yirsel, maister!’

  ‘I do not believe William’s ghost can be in his chamber,’ said Gil, ‘much less the deil himself. Why should the devil be in William’s chamber?’

  ‘I could tell you that,’ muttered Michael.

  ‘But we heard it, maister! Please will you come and listen?’

  ‘Why were you at his chamber door anyway?’ asked Lowrie. ‘You lodge here in the Inner Close, no out-by.’

  ‘Billy Ross went with a message from Maister Doby,’ said Walter virtuously, ‘and heard the noise on the way past, so he cam and tellt us and we all went and we heard it an’ all. Will you come, maister? There’s certainly something there, for I heard it.’

  ‘We all did,’ said someone on the stairs. ‘It goes Ooo-oo.’

  ‘That’s foolishness!’ said Gil. ‘How can a ghost make a noise like a screech-owl? Walter, what is a ghost, tell me that?’

  ‘A ghost is the spirit of a dead man,’ said Walter nervously, clearly quoting something.

  ‘It has no body, has it?’ Walter shook his head. ‘So how can it make a noise? Whatever is making a noise, it must be something in possession of a body.’

  ‘Aye, the deil,’ said a voice on the stairs.

  ‘All of you,’ said Gil. ‘Go and ask Maister Coventry and Maister Kennedy, if they have finished the list I asked them for, to meet me in a quarter-hour at William’s chamber door. Can you mind that?’

  Walter repeated the message in a rush, nodded, and thudded off down the stairs. The boy behind him reiterated, ‘There’s something in William’s chamber, maister, for we heard it!’

  ‘All of you,’ said Gil again. ‘In a quarter-hour, by William’s chamber.’

  He shut the door on the departing crowd and turned to the three senior bachelors.

  ‘Ninian, are you wearing your belt?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ said Ninian, pushing back the blankets to display the item.

  ‘May I see it?’

  The belt was old, and had clearly been worn by Ninian as he filled out, for a succession of holes had been stretched by the buckle. The most recent was easy to identify, but the older ones were beginning to close up as the leather itself stretched. Gil, concluding that the belt was Ninian’s and nobody else’s, handed it back.

  ‘Have you any other belt?’ he asked.

  ‘We have a spare,’ Lowrie said. ‘Where is it, Miggel?’

  ‘In your carrel,’ said Michael. A brief search uncovered the spare belt in Ninian’s kist. Gil inspected it for the sake of the thing, though his aim had been only to locate the object, and handed it to Michael, who put it on.

  ‘Two more questions,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want to see my belt?’ asked Lowrie.

  ‘I can see it from here. What did you eat at the feast?’

  ‘I never ate,’ said Michael. ‘I wasn’t hungry. Besides, I had to get painted up for the play.’

  ‘I had a mouthful of flan,’ said Lowrie indignantly, ‘and then Bendy Stewart came along fussing about me spoiling my voice. I got some wine, though,’ he added.

  ‘Snoddy Tod,’ said Ninian tolerantly. ‘I had rabbit stew, and foul it was, too. She’d put ground almonds to it.’

  ‘And the other question?’ prompted Lowrie.

  ‘You mentioned the meeting. When William rose –’

  ‘God, that was funny,’ said Ninian, whose spirits were improving by the moment. ‘Did you see all their faces? And old Tod Lowrie here waiting to speak.’

  ‘It was not funny,’ said Lowrie. ‘I spent hours getting that speech by heart. It might have gone right out of my head, with William interrupting me like that.’

  ‘What did he say again?’ said Gil, who remembered perfectly well.

  ‘What if another of the college’s sons has misused her money,’ quoted Michael, in excellent imitation of William’s clearly enunciated Latin, ‘or has inculcated heretical beliefs in her students?’

  ‘What did he mean?’ wondered Ninian.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gil. ‘Who was it intended for?’

  ‘Hanged if I know,’ said Lowrie. ‘I thought by his expression it was a shot at someone, not just random unpleasantness, if you see what I mean, but I don’t know who.’

  ‘One of the Elect?’ said Michael.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Lowrie. ‘Bendy Stewart would root out heresy in his students if they even sniffed it, I’d have thought.’

  ‘I don’t think we know, maister,’ Ninian said to Gil.

  ‘Are you going to see after this ghost?’ Lowrie asked.

  ‘I am,’ Gil agreed. ‘But you three are not coming with me.’

  ‘How not?’ said Ninian.

  ‘We have to go and confess,’ said Lowrie heavily. ‘Who should we tell, maister?’

  ‘Either Maister Doby or Maister Coventry,’ advised Gil. ‘And if I were you I should offer it as sacramental confession. They are both priested, either of them can hear you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lowrie, scuffing thoughtfully at the floorboards with his toe. ‘Yes, it’s perjury, isn’t it? We’ve broken the oath about brotherhood and amity.’

  ‘He started it,’ said Ninian.

  ‘No defence,’ said Michael. He got to his feet, and braced himself. ‘Come out of your burrow, Ning. Better get it over with.’

  ‘I offer my sympathy in advance,’ said Gil. ‘I’ll speak to you again.’

  As Gil reached the courtyard, the bulky form of the mason emerged round the kitchen stair, followed by three of the college servants dusting at their clothes. Sighting Gil, he made his way to meet him, grinning.

  ‘Success!’ he proclaimed. ‘Thank you, all of you, that is all!’ Coins changed hands and the men went off, looking less gloomy. ‘Here it is. It was hidden behind the sacks, as you thought.’

  He held out a plain leather purse, somewhat greasy. Gil took it, and weighed it.

  ‘It is not empty,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘I have not looked, I kept it to show to you.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a key,’ said Gil, loosening the strings. He tipped the contents jingling into his palm.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Maistre Pierre. Gil sorted the coins.

  ‘Two, two and a half – three merks in silver, and several groats. A total of two pounds and eighteen pence Scots,’ he said, ‘simply carried about in his purse. And this.’ He pushed the little set of tablets along his fingers.

  ‘I use tablets when I am wor
king,’ observed the mason, ‘but I should have thought these too small to be much use for taking notes.’

  ‘He had a small hand,’ said Gil, ‘and there are several leaves.’ He shook the purse. ‘Is there anything – ah!’

  White flakes fell to the flagstones. The mason pounced, and came up with two pieces of paper, one folded into a long curling spill, one wadded square.

  ‘What have we here?’ he said, and unfolded the long piece.

  Tiny writing, in ink, covered one side and half of the other.

  ‘It is notes of some sort,’ said the mason after a moment. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘M will be in G,’ Gil read, taking the much-creased sheet. ‘He believed in making full use of the paper, didn’t he? H passed through for Irvine. I wonder who H and M might be?’

  ‘Friends of the boy’s? And why ever fold it like this?’

  ‘Who knows? What of the other piece?’

  Maistre Pierre unfolded the thick square.

  ‘It makes no sense,’ he complained.

  Gil peered over his shoulder, tucking the coins back in the purse.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s in some kind of code.’

  ‘Certainly no language that I know.’

  ‘A game of some sort?’

  ‘He has sustained it well,’ said the mason thoughtfully. ‘It is a long passage to put into code, merely for a game.’

  ‘Well, we can try to decode it, though I suspect it will take time. And the tablets.’ Gil slipped the leather case off and turned the little block to admire it. ‘Very pretty, with this chip-carving on the outside. What has he written down? M will be in G – it seems to be the original notes for the long piece of paper.’

  ‘Why did he simply transcribe them?’ Maistre Pierre wondered. ‘More usual, surely, to expand – to say who he meant by M.’

  Gil grunted absently, turning the little wooden leaves.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, tilting the last opening to read the tiny writing incised on the green wax. ‘It looks like a will.’

  ‘I thought you said he was a bastard,’ said the mason.

  ‘I did,’ said Gil in puzzlement. ‘He couldn’t make a will. What does it say? I, William Montgomery, sometime called William Irvine, being in my right mind and now able to make a will, commend my soul to Almighty God and direct that . . . Whatever is he about?’

  ‘It is not signed,’ observed Maistre Pierre. ‘Nor witnessed.’

  ‘He would hardly get it witnessed still in the wax like this, even if it had any standing. His kin may take it as an instruction if they please, but if I know the Montgomery . . . He wishes his property divided equally between Ann Irvine, whoever she is, and Ralph Gibson. Poor boy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Was this fantasy? Or folly?’

  ‘Should it be either?’

  Gil tapped the frame of the tablet with a long forefinger.

  ‘He is pretending, here, to be legitimate. Either it was a private game, committed to writing, or he was deluding himself into believing it.’

  ‘Do not we all delude ourselves, at his age?’ Maistre Pierre took the long spill of paper back and folded it carefully with the larger sheet. ‘I myself was convinced from the ages of nine to twelve that I was of noble blood, snatched away at birth. I still remember the disappointment when I realized that I had no birthmark by which my true exalted parent could recognize me when I rescued him from drowning.’ He laughed, the white teeth flashing in his neat beard. ‘We lived, you understand, two hundred leagues from the sea.’

  ‘I see where Alys gets her love of romance,’ Gil commented. ‘Come and see if Patrick Coventry’s key will open the boy’s chamber. There is something strange there.’

  William’s stair was easily identified by the huddle of students at its foot. As Gil and Maistre Pierre approached, first one boy and then another put his head in at the doorway and ducked out again grinning with bravado.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Gil asked, making his way through the group.

  ‘Listening for the ghost, maister,’ said Richie the Scholar.

  ‘A ghost?’ said the mason. ‘In broad day?’

  ‘There is no ghost,’ Gil said. ‘How can a spirit with no body make a noise?’

  ‘Like the wind does?’ said somebody else smartly.

  ‘I heard it, maister,’ said one of the Ross boys with pride. ‘It went Ooo-oo.’

  ‘You dreamed it,’ said Gil. ‘Stay down here, all of you.’

  William’s door was halfway up the stair, and therefore had only a narrow wedge of landing. Maister Coventry and Maister Kennedy were waiting there, still in formal academic dress, both with the appearance of men who would rather be elsewhere.

  ‘Gil!’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘Thank God you’re here. Listen to this – there is something in there.’

  They listened.

  ‘I hear nothing –’ said the mason, but Patrick Coventry’s upraised hand cut him off. Then they all heard it, through the heavy oak door: a high-pitched sobbing, unearthly, dying off in a wail. Gil felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

  ‘No mortal throat made that sound,’ said Maistre Pierre through dry lips, and clutched at the crucifix on the end of his set of beads.

  ‘Does that open this door?’ Gil asked, looking at the key in the Second Regent’s hand. For answer, the small man fitted it into the lock and turned it. The tumblers clicked round. Gil lifted the latch and pushed, and the door swung ponderously open.

  ‘Christ aid!’ said Maister Kennedy.

  The room was in complete disarray. Books and clothing were strewn about, the bed-frame yawned emptily and mattress and blankets were tumbled in a heap, a lute lay under the table.

  ‘Faugh!’ exclaimed Maistre Pierre. ‘What a stench!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gil, relaxing. ‘What a stench, indeed.’

  He stepped into the room, placing his feet with care, and halted. The mason moved watchfully to stand at his back, saying, ‘But what has happened here? Is this the work of devils? Is that why the stink –?’

  Gil, surveying the wrecked room, said absently, ‘No, I think not. Watch where you step, Pierre.’ He moved forward as the two regents followed them, staring round. ‘I think we can conclude,’ he continued, ‘that someone has found William’s key and made good use of it.’ He bent to lift the rustling mattress back into the bed-frame, and piled the blankets on top of it.

  ‘He had many possessions, for such a young man,’ said the mason, still watchful at Gil’s back.

  ‘And what in the name of all the saints was making that noise?’ said Maister Coventry.

  ‘That?’ said Maister Kennedy in alarm.

  They all looked where he was pointing. A heap of clothing lay under the window, a tawny satin doublet, a red cloth jerkin, several pairs of tangled hose. As they watched, the jerkin moved, apparently by itself. The high wailing began again, and something appeared from the cuff of the sleeve and became a grey hairy arm.

  ‘Ah, the poor mite!’ said Gil. Under the mason’s horrified gaze he strode forward and lifted the clothing. The jerkin came up, swinging heavily, with a grey shaggy body squirming in its folds.

  ‘Mon Dieu, what is it?’ said the mason as a long-nosed face appeared through the unlaced armhole.

  ‘A dog,’ said Gil. ‘At least, a puppy. Wolfhound, deerhound – one or the other. Some kind of hunting dog, certainly.’

  He disengaged the animal from the garment and set it on its feet, a gangling knee-high creature consisting principally of shaggy legs and a long nose. It promptly abased itself, pawing appealingly at his boots. He bent to feel at its collar. ‘Perhaps three or four months old, far too young to be wearing a good leather collar like this. That’s the source of the stink,’ he added. ‘Watch where you put your feet. Bad dog,’ he said to the pup, which flattened its ears and wagged its stringy tail, trying to excuse its lapse of manners.

  ‘William should certainly not have been keeping a dog in his chamber,’ said Maiste
r Coventry.

  ‘That’s William for you,’ said Nick Kennedy.

  ‘Who do you suppose searched the place?’ said Maistre Pierre, watching Gil soothing the dog. ‘Was it the same person who killed the young man?’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ said Gil. ‘But it was certainly the same person who hit this fellow over the head.’ He lifted the pup again, its long legs dangling, and turned its head so that they could all see the blood clotted in the rough hair behind one ear. ‘I’ll wager he tried to defend his master’s property, eh, poor boy? – and was struck or kicked. When he recovered he began to howl, and the boys took him for a ghost.’

  ‘Poor brute,’ said Maister Coventry. ‘What a way to treat a young animal!’

  ‘What about this chamber?’ said Maister Kennedy, cutting across the mason’s comment. ‘Do we search it, or lock it, or send for John Shaw to get it redded up?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Gil, ‘that we must search it ourselves. It should not take the four of us long.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ said Maister Kennedy in resigned tones.

  ‘Anything the boy should not have had. Possibly papers, or money, or jewels.’ Gil settled the pup in a nest in the blankets and turned away. It promptly staggered out and pawed at his boots again.

  ‘Papers, you say?’ Maistre Pierre stared round again. ‘Gil, I see very little paper here. Surprisingly little, for a student’s chamber.’

  ‘What about the students?’ said Patrick Coventry. ‘There are a great many boys below in the yard working themselves into a terror about the ghost.’

  ‘Let them,’ said Maister Kennedy callously, stooping to lift a book. ‘Peter of Spain. This is the library’s copy, with Duncan Bunch’s own notes in it. Plague take the boy, I’ve been wanting this for months. As well they never saw the brute,’ he added, ‘or they’d have kent it for Auld Mahoun himself.’

  ‘And what do we do with it?’ worried Maister Coventry, shaking out the satin doublet. ‘We canny keep a wolfhound when we’ve forbidden the students to keep dogs.’

  ‘Properly he belongs to William’s next kin,’ said Gil doubtfully, ‘but he must be fed and physicked before they can be here to claim him.’

  ‘That’s true. It seems to like you, Maister Cunningham. Would you take it? As regent with a duty for the late keeper,’ said the Second Regent formally, ‘I ask you to have a care to this animal until its right owner can be identified. Will that do?’