The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘What made you think that?’ asked the mason curiously.

  Michael shrugged. ‘I thought I smelled a dog-kennel, in among the rest of the reek. Likely he’d stepped into the street, got dog-sharn on his boots or something. I checked mine.’ He turned them up, one by one, as Lowrie had done when Gil was looking for coal dust. ‘I look where I’m stepping.’

  ‘When did you get back?’ Gil asked.

  ‘I was just in time for Maister Coventry’s lecture at noon. I’d sooner have missed that, as it happened, for it was Euclid and I hadny prepared my answer.’

  Gil nodded. The mason looked at the sky and frowned.

  ‘He must have been dead very soon after that,’ he commented. Michael’s eyes widened.

  ‘How can you tell that?’ Lowrie asked curiously. ‘You said something like that already.’

  Maistre Pierre stepped aside and began a concise little discourse on the progress of stiffening in a dead body. Gil met Maister Kennedy’s eye, and moved towards the other students.

  ‘When did you last see Jaikie, then?’ he asked Ralph Gibson.

  Ralph, blushing and stammering, eventually admitted that he had not been near the yett all day. ‘But I thought Robert . . .’ he said inconclusively.

  ‘Thought I what?’ asked Robert challengingly.

  ‘Thought you might . . .’

  Gil, watching the boy writhe, took pity on him.

  ‘You thought Robert might be glad of your company,’ he suggested. Ralph went scarlet with gratitude, and nodded. Robert said nothing, but his face, turned away from Ralph, was eloquent. Gil looked at the two bystanders, recognizing them now as two more of the cast of the play. Frivolity and one of the daughters of Collegia, he thought.

  ‘Well, Henry? Andrew?’ prompted Maister Kennedy.

  ‘We saw him just after Michael came in,’ said Henry importantly. ‘Andrew wanted to know where Maister Shaw the Steward was, and somebody thought he was talking to Jaikie. But he wasny. It was a . . . a big man,’ he finished, his voice trailing off as he heard his own words.

  ‘What kind of a man?’

  ‘A big warlike kind of man,’ offered Andrew. ‘Wi’ a whinger. He was at the yett talking to Jaikie, and Jaikie said to us he didny ken nor care where Maister Shaw was and to go and get Robert Montgomery. And that’s the last we seen him.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what kind of a man,’ said Robert Montgomery impatiently. ‘It was no more nor less than my uncle Hugh asking for me. Jaikie let him in and sent these two to fetch me, and gave my uncle an earful of incivility the way he always does – did,’ he corrected himself, ‘when he spoke to him about William. And by the time my uncle Hugh had done with me, I was late for Maister Coventry’s lecture in the Bachelors’ Schule, so he never asked me my question, and it took me all morning to con the answer.’

  ‘What did your uncle want with you?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Family business.’ The challenging glare was directed at Gil now.

  ‘There was nobody else about at the yett at the time?’

  ‘No that I saw.’

  ‘And that was the last you saw Jaikie?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘He was alive when you left? Did you or your uncle leave him first?’

  ‘We left together. I went up the pend and my uncle stepped out at the yett. And that was the last I saw Jaikie.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘What would I kill him for? Or with, if it comes to that? You ken fine we’ve no daggers about the college, maister, or has it changed that much since your day?’

  ‘Robert,’ said Maister Kennedy in warning tones. The boy looked at him, and reined in his anger. Dropping his gaze to the chipped flagstones under his feet, he muttered something which might have been an apology.

  ‘Did you see anything like papers burning in the brazier?’ Gil asked.

  ‘There was just coals in the brazier when I got there,’ said Robert indifferently.

  ‘Your uncle had no papers? Or Jaikie?’

  ‘There was just the coals burning when I got there,’ Robert repeated.

  ‘And Jaikie was alive when you left him,’ Gil persisted.

  Maister Kennedy frowned, and Robert said with weary defiance, ‘When I saw Jaikie he was alive. I didny kill him, maister, and you may as well stop asking it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gil. ‘That will be all just now, Robert.’

  Robert ducked his head in a kind of bow and set off rapidly for the pend leading to the inner courtyard. Ralph, who had been standing staring, gulped and hurried after him, exclaiming, ‘Robert, wait! Wait for me!’

  ‘And you two can go and wash your hands,’ prompted Maister Kennedy.

  Andrew and Henry left obediently, with sidelong glances at Gil, and Maistre Pierre said, ‘You were severe.’

  ‘He was evasive,’ Gil said. Maister Kennedy, about to comment, stopped with his mouth open, clearly listening to the conversation again.

  ‘So he was,’ he agreed at length. ‘He’s aye so sneisty it takes your mind off what he has to say. He never answered you straight, save to say he didny kill Jaikie.’

  ‘Which I never thought,’ added Gil. ‘If anyone, I’d suspect his uncle.’

  ‘I’d put nothing past the Montgomery,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘It’s a quarter-hour to dinner, I’d best go and wash like the scholars. How are you, Gil? Who was it attacked you? They didny kill you, anyway. Oh, I near forgot,’ he added. ‘Maister Doby asked would you go by his lodging and tell him what you found.’

  Dean Elphinstone glared at Gil and Maister Doby impartially.

  ‘If someone can step in off the street and kill our porter, a man carefully selected by our Steward here to ward the gate,’ he added, with a brief bow towards John Shaw who was frowning as he tried to keep up with the incisive Latin, ‘how are we to keep forty scholars safe, not to mention their regents and the college servants? We need to know, Gilbert, whether this was a deliberate act of vengeance on this man, or the result of a quarrel, or an attack on the college itself.’

  ‘Or an attempt to reach one of the scholars,’ suggested the mason in French.

  The Steward looked worried, but the Dean nodded, and continued, ‘The man was impertinent and unsatisfactory, but he was a college servant and we are responsible for him. Have you discerned any likely reason for this violent death? Are you able to pursue justice for him?’

  ‘It was not theft,’ said Gil, ‘since that bag of coin I gave you was hidden in his bed, and probably not an attack on the college. Beyond that, Dean, I can only speculate at present.’

  ‘And what do your speculations tell you? Surely one proposition is more likely than another,’ said the Dean.

  ‘I hope not an attempt to reach one of the scholars,’ said Maister Doby. ‘No, surely not. None of our students would attract such enmity.’

  ‘William did,’ said Gil. There was a short silence, in which the bell began to ring for the college dinner.

  ‘Do you hold, then, that the one death is connected to the other?’ asked the Dean, in the exasperated tone of a teacher who cannot see where his student’s error lies. Gil spread his hands, and flinched as his bruised wrist twinged.

  ‘I think we must assume that they are connected,’ he said, ‘although it is not obvious how, simply because it defies logic that, in a community as small as the college, two violent deaths in two days should be unconnected.’

  The Dean snorted, but made no answer. Through the open window they could hear a buzz of voices as the students who lived in the outer courtyard made their way towards the pend.

  ‘What else must you ask?’ said Maister Doby. ‘Do you need more from us, Gilbert? I must go and say Grace for the scholars.’

  ‘I need to speak to Father Bernard again,’ said Gil, ‘but I suppose I must apply to Blackfriars to find him, and I would be grateful for a little of Maister Shaw’s time.’ He nodded at the Steward, who smiled doubtfully.

  ‘Father Bernard had a lecture,’ said the ma
son.

  ‘He’ll have finished that,’ said the Dean. ‘You’re right, he’ll be back in Blackfriars by this. Aye, go and say Grace, Principal, and I’ll follow you. The Steward can come back here once he’s convoyed you into the hall, can’t you no, John?’

  They all rose and bowed the Principal and Steward from the room, and as the door closed behind them the Dean sat down and said in sharper French, ‘Give me your suspicions, Gilbert, Maister Mason. Where are you at with finding William’s murderer, first?’

  Gil looked at Maistre Pierre.

  ‘We haven’t had an opportunity to talk this through,’ he admitted, ‘for it’s been an eventful day already. We have established that William was given to extortion, which should point us to a suspect, but most of the people whom I know he had approached were in plain sight of one another at the time when I believe he was killed.’

  ‘Conspiracy?’ said the Dean.

  ‘Is always possible,’ Gil agreed.

  ‘It seems clear,’ said the mason, ‘that the boy got into the limehouse as a matter of mischief rather than malice.’

  ‘But after that we are less certain of the course of events.’

  ‘So all you’ve done is show who couldn’t have killed him?’

  ‘So far, yes.’

  The Dean grunted. ‘Well, if you go on that way long enough, you’ll end up with one man, I suppose. You will have heard that William’s burial is tomorrow after Sext?’

  ‘I have,’ Gil said. ‘We are searching diligently, Dean, and we may well know a lot more by then. If you are willing to invite Lord Montgomery into the college after the burial, then even if I can’t name the boy’s killer as he demanded I can at least explain what conclusions I have reached by that time.’

  ‘I suppose that might placate the man for the time being.’ The Dean glared at them both again. ‘And this newest business? The death of our porter? What did you mean about speculation?’

  ‘Just that. We spoke to the scholars, and established the time of death. We searched the man’s chamber, and found the bag of coin which is now in Maister Doby’s strong-box, which must be Jaikie’s savings, all in coppers as it is, and we found a great bundle of William’s lecture-notes which someone had put in the brazier. There’s nothing else to point our direction, so we must speculate.’

  ‘St Nicholas’ bones!’ said the Dean. ‘Jaikie was burning William’s lecture-notes? How did he get hold of them?’ He paused, looking from Gil to the mason and back. ‘Are you saying it was Jaikie killed William? How could he leave his post without being seen?’

  ‘No, I think not,’ said Gil. ‘William was killed and moved into the coalhouse by someone who knew where he was hidden. Jaikie would have no way of learning that and acting on it, in the time available.’

  ‘So was it Ninian and his fellows?’

  ‘No,’ said Gil. ‘They say they left him in the lime-house, and we found evidence which confirms their story. I am reasonably convinced William was alive when they left him.’

  Dean Elphinstone snorted, and got to his feet.

  ‘I must go to the Laigh Hall if I am to get any dinner today. Where do you dine, Gilbert, Maister Mason? Do you have time for dinner?’

  ‘Our dinner awaits us at my house,’ said the mason. ‘But there was the matter of a word with John Shaw.’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The Dean led the way out into the courtyard. ‘I’ll send him back to ye, if he’s in the hall. Let me know as soon as you’ve anything to report, Gilbert. We must write to the Archbishop soon, whether or no we’ve found the answer.’

  ‘I know that, sir.’

  The Dean sketched a benediction for which they both bowed, and strode off across the grey flagstones, his everyday woollen cope billowing at his back.

  ‘I am glad he is on our side,’ said the mason doubtfully, then, as the Dean stepped aside to allow someone to emerge from the pend, ‘Ah, there is John Shaw. Poor man, he has all to do and too many masters telling him how. Good day, John. It is good of you to spare us a moment.’

  ‘And what a day, maisters,’ said the Steward in harassed tones. ‘How am I to ward the college now, I ask you? Jaikie was a dirty ill-tempered beffan, but he did his duty, and now I’ve to find a replacement before Vespers, and his chamber like a fox’s den to be cleaned out before the new man’s in place –’

  ‘Ask Serjeant Anderson,’ Gil suggested. ‘He might recommend one of the constables to act as porter for a day or two. He’d know if they were trustworthy. Or would the Blackfriars have a lay-brother they could spare?’

  ‘The Serjeant . . .’ The Steward tasted this idea. ‘One of the constables? Maybe. Maybe you’re right, maister. Aye, I’ll do that.’ He looked suddenly more cheerful. ‘And how can I help ye, maisters? Was it something you wanted done?’

  ‘Information, rather, John,’ said the mason. ‘Come and sit down and tell us about yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ Maister Shaw followed them into the Bachelors’ Schule. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day. What d’ye need to know, Peter? You were there, and so was Maister Cunningham.’

  ‘Not I,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘not until after it all happened. Tell me about it. You had the procession and the feast to order, did you not?’

  ‘I did that. And that William underfoot,’ added Maister Shaw bitterly. ‘Correcting and criticizing, amending my greetings to the guests and the members, till I went off and left him to get on with that. I thought he might as well make himself useful,’ he added. ‘I’d to see the garlands on to Willie Sproat’s donkey-cart, with the donkey trying to eat them and Willie killing himself laughing at the sight, I’d to make sure there were horses to all the maisters, and the moth out of all the Faculty hoods, and the music to the Mass put on the donkey-cart, and John Gray the Beadle misplaced his robes and I found them in here, where that William had put them down –’ He nodded at a cupboard under the lecturer’s pulpit. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day!’

  ‘But all went smoothly,’ said Gil. ‘Indeed, I thought the morning went very well, Maister Shaw. It was later, when the thunder started and they were all running about the yards, that things went wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by wrong,’ said Maister Shaw, bridling slightly, ‘I thought it was bad enough when the boy Maxwell served half the high table with a dirty towel over his arm, and as for that William distracting Robert Montgomery while the Dean waited for the made dishes, words fail me, maisters, they do.’

  ‘None of these things prevented us enjoying the feast,’ said Gil soothingly.

  ‘But you have high standards, John,’ interposed the mason. ‘And when the thunder started, what happened then?’

  ‘Ha! All the scholars running about, shutting windows that should never have been left open, neglecting their duties. It took some doing to get them back to their tasks, I can tell you, Peter. I had to send a whole lot I found in the Inner Close about their business.’

  ‘Who would that be?’ Gil asked. ‘Can you remember?’

  ‘Now you’re asking,’ said Maister Shaw doubtfully. ‘Henry and Walter, that’s certain. You canny miss Walter,’ he added, with disapproval. ‘Andrew. Robert Montgomery, I sent him back to the kitchen, and that soft-head Ralph, poor laddie, and I met John Gray’s nephew Nicholas in the pend and chased him back to the crocks and all. There might have been more.’

  ‘Nicholas and Robert were not together?’ Gil asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Oh, what a day!’

  ‘And then we found William in the coalhouse. Tell me this, Maister Shaw,’ said Gil. ‘Who would have had a key to that door?’

  ‘Oh, near everyone,’ said the Steward, looking startled. ‘All the regents, for certain, as well as me and Agnes, even some of the scholars. Anyone that had a chamber with a key to it. Most of the college doors is the same, maister. I’ve a notion Archie Bell only kens three patterns of lock, and we’ve got all he ever made of one of them.’

  ‘And the Blackfriars yett?’ Gil asked, with a sinking
feeling.

  ‘That, too. Not that you’d need a key by daylight, the gate stands open from Prime to Compline. I’ve tellt Maister Doby many a time,’ he confided, ‘we ought to get a different lock put on the coalhouse door, for the coals goes down faster than they should. Maybe now he’ll listen.’

  ‘So anyone could have put William in the coalhouse,’ said the mason, watching the Steward’s retreating back.

  ‘Anyone with a key,’ agreed Gil. ‘So we are no further forward. Anyone who had or could borrow a key could walk into the college by the Blackfriars yett, if they were not inside its walls already, and unlock the coalhouse door and lock it again after.’

  ‘And this other matter.’ Maistre Pierre jerked one large thumb over his shoulder at the mouth of the porter’s pend.

  ‘Yes, indeed. How do you come to be present?’

  ‘Ah. Well. I had something to attend to at Blackfriars.’ He stared across the courtyard, and finally admitted, ‘I tell you from the beginning. Come into the middle of the yard here.’

  Gil, puzzled, strolled forward to the centre of the flagstones, where none could overhear them without being seen.

  ‘I walked up to Blackfriars with Father Bernard,’ began Maistre Pierre.

  ‘When he left your house before Nones?’ Gil interrupted. ‘The women thought you had gone up to the site.’

  ‘I intended to,’ said the mason impatiently. ‘Wattie had sent the boy for me, I intended to go on there afterwards. But I spent longer in Blackfriars kirk than I thought to. First I was alone, and then I spent some time with Father Bernard, if you understand me.’

  Confession? Gil wondered. Why now? Of course, Father Bernard speaks French. He nodded, and the mason went on.

  ‘We had to end the matter, for he had a lecture to deliver, and I walked into the college with him and found it buzzing like a bee-skep, those three in the yard here exclaiming what they had found, the Principal becoming flustered, half the college crowding in to look at the dead. So I had them send for you and made Lowrie stand guard with me. I would have shut the door and locked it, though small good that would have done if all the keys in the college fit the lock, but you saw how he lay. We could not close the door without moving him.’