The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘It’s Jaikie,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘He’s deid, maister,’ said the younger one, on a rising note. ‘Like William.’

  ‘What, throttled?’ said Gil involuntarily.

  ‘It was a knife,’ said the older boy. ‘Someone’s killed him in his chamber.’

  ‘There’s blood,’ said his brother, and sniffled. ‘And he’s all sharny.’

  ‘Let me put my boots on,’ said Gil.

  ‘Gil,’ said Alys in a small voice. He turned to her, nearly falling over the wolfhound, and found that Catherine had come up from the kitchen and was standing behind her nurseling, staring inscrutably at Wattie from under her black linen veil. ‘Gil, Wattie says my father has not been to the site today.’

  ‘Perhaps he went somewhere else?’ Gil suggested, taken aback. ‘It must have been a pressing matter, to take him out of the house when he had a guest.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Catherine in her gruff French, ‘that there is a little difficulty with madame your mother? Perhaps our master absented himself as a matter of diplomacy.’

  ‘He went out because Wattie sent for him,’ said Alys in Scots.

  ‘Oh, aye, I sent for him,’ agreed Wattie, ‘but he never came.’

  ‘Could he have met someone else he wanted a word with?’ said Gil, wondering privately if Catherine was not right.

  ‘But who else? And for so long?’

  ‘My uncle?’ Gil suggested. ‘Perhaps he thought of something they needed to discuss. You know what they’re like when they get together.’

  ‘That’s likely,’ said Wattie.

  ‘Vraiment,’ agreed Catherine.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alys doubtfully, ‘but he has not been home to eat, either.’

  ‘Maggie would feed him if he’s talking to my uncle. Perhaps,’ Gil added hopefully, ‘he and my mother are coming to some harmony by now.’

  ‘Maistre le notaire a raison, ma mie,’ said Catherine.

  ‘Now, who would do him harm, mistress?’ said Wattie, in the tone of one regretting that he had raised the subject. ‘He’s no enemies, and the size he is nobody’d trouble him.’

  ‘I’m sure you are right,’ she said in unconvincing tones, and became aware of the maidservant still standing open-mouthed by the stair. ‘Annis, take these laddies down to the kitchen and find them a bite to eat while Maister Cunningham gets his boots on. Bide here, Wattie, while I think what to do.’

  She drew Gil back up the spiral stair to where his boots, newly waxed, stood neatly at the corner of the best bed. As he eased the first one on, pulling awkwardly one-handed at the heel, she said in anxious French, ‘I do not like it. He never vanishes like this.’

  ‘He is a grown man,’ Gil observed. ‘He may not be pleased if you set up a search for him without reason.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘How long since he left the house?’

  ‘When Father Bernard did. Gil, that is what worries me.’

  Gil straightened up to look at her.

  ‘I don’t trust Father Bernard,’ she said earnestly. ‘I think he isn’t being truthful, and he knows more about William than he says. What if he has –’

  ‘I agree,’ said Gil slowly, ‘that Father Bernard doesn’t appear completely truthful. I have already caught him out in something. But that doesn’t make him capable of harming your father, who must be twice his size. It’s Jaikie who has come to grief, not your father.’

  ‘No, but –’

  He trod down on the heel of the second boot, wriggled his toes into position, and said, ‘Alys, I must go to the college. I want to see the porter before they move him. I will ask for Father Bernard when I am there – after all, he left here to go and prepare a disputation, he should be about the place. If I learn anything that causes me worry I will send to you immediately.’ He cupped his hand round her jaw. ‘Your father has done something unexpected and it has taken longer than he intended. I’m sure that’s all, sweetheart. Send Wattie back up to St Mungo’s, and stop worrying.’

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  ‘There has been only the two of us and Catherine for so long,’ she said after a moment. ‘And in Paris –’

  ‘This is Glasgow, not Paris, and there are three of us and Catherine now.’ Gil shrugged on his short gown and kissed her. ‘Go and find those boys, and try not to be foolish.’

  The college yett was shut again.

  ‘Maister Doby shut it behind us,’ said the younger Ross.

  ‘They’re all in the pend,’ said his brother. Gil looked at them. They had followed him, slightly sticky and a little more cheerful, from the mason’s house, but were becoming round-eyed and quiet again.

  ‘I’ll knock at the yett,’ he said. ‘You two go round by the Blackfriars gate, in case Maister Doby’s in his house, and tell him I’m here.’

  ‘We could go in at his door,’ said the younger boy. ‘We’re allowed.’

  ‘On you go, then.’ Gil watched them run back to the street door of the Principal’s house, then turned and hammered on the yett with the hilt of his dagger, as he had done the previous evening. The postern swung open immediately, and he found himself face to face with the missing Maistre Pierre.

  ‘At last!’ said the mason, at the same time as Gil said,

  ‘So this is where you are!’

  ‘I sent for you a good half-hour since,’ said Maistre Pierre reproachfully.

  ‘Wattie sent for you,’ Gil countered, ‘and has just come down to the house looking for you.’

  His friend’s face changed.

  ‘Alys will be worried. I must send –’ He stood back, so that Gil could enter. The pend was crowded and noisy with conversation and a buzzing of flies, and there was a foul smell in which Gil identified a top-note of burning paper. Yet another group of marvelling students was taking turns to stare in at the door of the porter’s small room, past the barricade provided by a resolute Lowrie Livingstone. The mason laid a big hand on the shoulder of the nearest blue gown, which jumped convulsively as its owner twisted to look at his assailant.

  ‘You, my friend. Run down to my house, which is the one with the sign of the White Castle,’ he instructed, ‘and tell them there that Maister Mason is at the college. Ah, Maister Doby,’ he continued seamlessly. ‘My son-in-law is arrived.’

  ‘Oh, Gilbert,’ said Maister Doby, pushing through the dissolving crowd of onlookers as the messenger, recovering his poise, slipped past Gil and away in a cloud of flies. ‘We are finding out who last saw him alive. Is not this a dreadful thing? Who could have done such a deed? Is it connected to William’s death, do you think? I would have moved him long since, but Maister Mason said –’

  ‘Tell me what has happened,’ said Gil. The last of the goggling students drifted out of the pend into the courtyard, and Lowrie, with obvious relief, lowered his arm and stepped to one side.

  ‘He’s in there,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Someone’s knifed him.’

  Just inside the doorway, Jaikie lay on his back beside his overturned chair, his head tipped back and away from them, one leg drawn up and his codpiece and the legs of his hose dark and stinking. His mouth was wide open, showing his blackened teeth. He could have been drunk, except for a dribble of blood running from his mouth down towards his ear, and the flies crawling on that, on his wide-open eyes, and on the bloody rent in the breast of his greasy blue livery gown.

  On the floor beside the brazier a bundle of blackened papers explained the smell of burning.

  ‘Well,’ said Gil.

  ‘Well, indeed,’ said the mason.

  Maister Doby, clutching his beads to his nose as if they would ward off the smell, said, ‘Poor man. Poor man. He had his faults, but he hardly deserved this.’

  ‘Nobody deserves this,’ said Gil absently, gazing round the room. ‘Is this how he was found? Who found him?’

  ‘We did,’ said Lowrie from the pend.

  ‘Go on,’ said Gil. ‘Who is we?’

  ‘Us
. Michael and Ninian and me,’ said Lowrie reluctantly. ‘We came down to ask who came into the college yesterday while we were all at Vespers, and there he was. So I stayed here and the others went to tell Maister Kennedy and he tellt Maister Doby and here we all are.’

  ‘Where are the others now?’

  ‘Out in the yard,’ said Lowrie. ‘It was a bit much for Ning.’

  ‘The boy Ninian was a little overcome,’ elaborated the mason, ‘so I sent him away.’

  ‘Very wise,’ muttered Maister Doby, still staring at the corpse. ‘Gilbert, can we do nothing about these flies? It is not seemly.’

  ‘Is this how you found him? You touched nothing?’

  ‘I’ll say we touched nothing,’ agreed Lowrie vehemently. ‘We could see – with the flies and that – and the blood. You could tell he was dead. He looks like a day-old fox kill.’

  ‘Not as much as a day.’ Gil was still looking about the room. ‘So you moved nothing.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. Except to take the papers out the brazier.’

  ‘Pierre?’

  ‘Nothing more has been touched,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘What do you miss?’

  ‘Last night he had a stone bottle of usquebae, and I’ll swear there were several empty ones in yon corner.’

  ‘The alehouses will give you money for the empties,’ said Lowrie. ‘So I’ve heard,’ he added hastily, one eye on Maister Doby. ‘There they are, yonder under the bed.’

  ‘Perhaps he knocked them over when he fell?’ suggested Maistre Pierre.

  ‘No, for they were right under the bed, I recall now.’ Gil stepped into the room, and bent to touch the corpse, waving the flies away without effect. ‘How long is it since you found him?’

  ‘An hour?’

  ‘Longer than that, surely, Lawrence,’ said Maister Doby. ‘It must be more than an hour since you sent to me.’

  ‘He’s beginning to stiffen.’ Gil was feeling the jaw and neck. He tested the arms, and straightened the bent leg. ‘It’s been a while since. Two-three hours, maybe.’

  ‘Less,’ said the mason decidedly. ‘He is lying by the brazier. It happens faster in heat.’

  ‘Who do you think has done this?’ asked Maister Doby again.

  ‘If he was drunk as he usually was, almost anybody,’ said Gil. ‘Someone about his own height, who can use a dagger, which must include half the grown men in Glasgow.’ He patted at the front of the porter’s unsavoury gown, avoiding the bloody rent, but could feel nothing under the cloth except flabby flesh. There was a purse hanging at the straining belt, which proved to hold only a few coppers and a worn lead pilgrim badge of St Mungo. He attempted to tie the purse’s strings again, then gave up and got to his feet. ‘There is no sign of a fight. Pierre, would you agree?’

  ‘The chair?’

  ‘More likely he knocked that over as he went down,’ Gil surmised, looking round the room again. ‘The table is untouched, see, and the brazier and the pricket-stand are undisturbed. I need to speak to Ninian and Michael, and anyone else who was past the yett today. Maister Doby, do you wish to get him moved? Then we can search the room properly, and get a look at these papers.’

  ‘Search the room?’ repeated Maister Doby.

  ‘The bottle of usquebae?’ said the mason.

  But when the stiffening corpse had been removed by two of the college servants, there was no sign of any stone bottle still containing usquebae. The four jars rolling about under the shut-bed were empty and dry.

  ‘And a spider in this one,’ reported Maistre Pierre, shaking the creature on to the floor.

  ‘Strange,’ said Gil.

  ‘There are marks in the dust down here, see,’ continued the mason. ‘Someone has searched under this bed recently.’

  ‘Not Jaikie.’

  ‘Perhaps whoever stabbed him?’ suggested Lowrie Livingstone, watching with interest. ‘And he took the full one away with him? St Mungo’s bones, what a stink. Sonar slais ill air na suord.’

  ‘But why?’ wondered Gil. ‘Why take it away?’ He crossed to the window and opened its shutters wide, then bent to look in the press beneath it.

  ‘I never knew that was there,’ said Lowrie.

  ‘You have been in this room?’ asked the mason.

  ‘Well,’ said Lowrie diffidently. ‘Aye. It’s a blag, see? A dare,’ he elucidated. ‘The bejants has to get in here when Jaikie’s no here, and borrow something.’

  ‘Borrow?’ said Gil, his head still inside the press. Maistre Pierre got to his feet and began poking fastidiously at the blankets in the rancid bed.

  ‘Well. You ken what I mean.’

  Gil, who had undertaken the same dare himself, emerged from the press and shut the door carefully.

  ‘Nothing in there except a dog-collar and leash,’ he reported, tucking the strips of leather into his doublet.

  ‘A dog-collar?’ repeated the mason. ‘There is no bottle of usquebae, but look at this. It was under the mattress, on this little shelf.’

  ‘Likely off William’s dog,’ said Lowrie offhandedly.

  ‘You knew about the dog?’ Gil said, crossing the room to join Maistre Pierre.

  ‘Most of us did. He got it a new collar a couple weeks ago. Too good for a beast that age, I thought, but it wasny worth saying so to him. It’d be like Jaikie to keep the old one.’

  ‘Where did William get the new one?’ Gil asked. The mason put a heavy purse into his hand, and he weighed it and whistled.

  ‘Anderson the saddler made it to him.’ Lowrie eyed the purse. ‘Is that where he kept it?’

  ‘Kept what?’ Gil took the purse to the window and peered into its mouth. ‘It’s mostly coppers, but there must be a fair sum here. Where did Jaikie get this much money?’

  ‘In drink-money,’ said Lowrie reasonably. ‘No off us, for certain, but all the folk that comes to the gate would give him something for sending to say they were here.’

  Gil stared at him. It would never have occurred to him to tip a college porter. Which perhaps explains Jaikie’s attitude to the members of the college, he thought.

  ‘You ken that’s William’s writing on the papers?’ added Lowrie.

  ‘I wondered when we would get to that.’ The mason picked something off his sleeve and crushed it carefully. Gil, setting the purse down on the small table, bent to lift the singed bundle, making a clumsy task of it with his left hand. Lowrie came to help, and rose, shedding flakes of burnt paper as he shuffled the surviving fragments together.

  ‘Gently,’ said Gil. ‘We may want to read them.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing interesting here,’ reported Lowrie, already peering at the tiny writing. ‘This looks like his copy of Ning’s notes on Peter of Spain, and that’s Aristotle. It’s lecture notes, maisters.’

  ‘What, all of it?’

  ‘I think so.’ Lowrie tilted more sheets to the light. ‘Aye, I remember that point. Do you have to learn your lectures off by heart, maister, so you can give them the same every year?’

  ‘I know where these have come from,’ said the mason. ‘You recall I commented on how little paper there was in William’s chamber?’

  ‘I think you must be right,’ said Gil. ‘But how the devil did it get into the brazier? Jaikie sent word by Michael he wanted to speak to me – could it have been about this?’

  ‘Jaikie might have found them somewhere,’ suggested Lowrie, reaching the last legible page. ‘Aye, it’s all lecture notes, maister, barring William’s own notes for a disputation I mind he won. If there was anything else here, it’s burned past reading.’

  Behind the student, Maistre Pierre caught Gil’s eye, shut his mouth and shook his head significantly. Gil accepted the smoky bundle from Lowrie and said, ‘These should go with William’s other property. I suppose they belong to his kin, though I hardly think they’ll be valued. Now let us try and find out who last saw Jaikie alive.’

  Chapter Nine

  The courtyard was occupied by several knots of stu
dents, standing about discussing this newest happening. Ninian and Michael were seated at the foot of the stairs to the Fore Hall, and as Lowrie followed Gil and Maister Mason into the courtyard they came forward to join their fellow, but were shut out by one of the bigger groups which surrounded them, full of eager questions.

  ‘Was it a robber?’

  ‘He tellt someone to go round by Blackfriars gate and they stabbed him.’

  ‘No, he dee’d of the stink in his chamber. A’body kens bad air can kill ye.’

  ‘What, wi a great knife?’

  ‘Is that right his throat’s cut, maister?’ demanded the irrepressible Walter.

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Auld Nick,’ muttered someone at the back. ‘He was uncivil to him one time too many.’

  There were sniggers, but Ralph Gibson, nearest to Gil, said, ‘Maister, did Jaikie kill William? Was it a judgement on him?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Ralph,’ said Maister Kennedy, emerging from the stair which led to his chamber. ‘Jaikie was killed by some human agency. How could that be a judgement on him when we don’t know yet who killed William?’ Ralph stepped back, blushing scarlet, and the well-loved teacher surveyed the group and continued, ‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham. I had a word with most of these earlier, and it seems to me Robert Montgomery was the last in the college to speak to Jaikie. Anyone else that was down at the yett after Nones can wait here too. The rest of you go and wash your hands if you want to be allowed to eat dinner today.’

  Ralph, with the air of one undergoing martyrdom, took up position beside his room-mate, and two other boys remained while the rest of the group drifted off, elaborately casual. Gil looked over his shoulder and found Lowrie with Ninian and Michael, conferring quickly in low tones.

  ‘We didn’t see anybody, maister,’ said Michael in his deep voice. ‘Not when we came down to speak to Jaikie, and not earlier. He was fine when I came back into the college.’

  ‘He was alone then?’

  ‘Aye – sitting in his great chair scowling at the door. Mind you –’ Michael grinned. ‘If I’d not seen William’s dog with you, maister, I’d almost have sworn it was in Jaikie’s chamber.’