The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘He was capable of the generous impulse,’ said Maister Forsyth approvingly.

  ‘There was no key, not even his own key to his chamber, which was locked. Using another of the college keys, we opened his chamber and found it had been searched and stripped of all the paper it contained, leaving behind a ransom in jewels and other valuables. William’s wolfhound pup, which shouldn’t have been in the room, had tried to defend its master’s property and been struck a blow on the head.

  ‘In the third place, we discovered that William had been in the habit of getting information and making it work for him.’

  ‘No harm in that,’ said Hugh Montgomery suspiciously.

  ‘Nobody was free of his attentions, though their responses varied. He extorted money or favours from fellow students, teachers, the kitchen staff, the college porter, on the basis of what he knew, and recorded it all in a notebook.’

  ‘Notebook?’ said David Gray, startled. ‘What notebook is this? Are you saying the boy wrote down all his misdeeds in a book?’

  ‘He did,’ said Gil, and looked round the room in a short silence. Most of the Faculty was frowning in what appeared to be disapproval. Hugh Montgomery was watching him with a deepening scowl, and behind him his nephew stood, rather pale, glaring down his nose in that Montgomery way. Father Bernard, as Gil’s eye fell on him, crossed himself and bent his head, his lips moving as if in prayer for William’s soul.

  ‘Now we go back in time a little. William left the hall where the acting was just before the play ended. Shortly after it ended there was a great clap of thunder and a very heavy shower, and the scholars all ran out to shut windows and rescue books. This was when William was discovered poking in someone else’s property, knocked down and tied up, and put in the limehouse. Shortly after that, the senior members of the feast dispersed in a more orderly fashion, so that many people were moving about the college for a quarter-hour or more. Unfortunately, I think it was during that time when William was killed.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ asked the Dean, frowning. ‘On what do you base the statement?’

  ‘On several things. The extent to which the body had cooled when it was found, the fact that when my good-father and I inspected it later it was only just beginning to stiffen, and the supposition that if William had roused while he was in the limehouse he would have shouted, kicked on the door, and made other attempts to get the attention of the kitchen hands. Therefore I think he was killed before he had a chance to recover his senses.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Dean, though he sounded doubtful.

  ‘Thanks to some patient questioning,’ Gil bowed to the two regents, ‘and clever casting-up of the results, we managed to establish that nearly everyone whose initials were later found in the notebook, or whom I saw in speech with the boy that morning, had been in sight of one or more others for most of the break.’

  ‘Do you mean you have the notebook?’ asked Maister Crawford.

  ‘It fell into my hands yesterday,’ said Gil. ‘It has since met with a sorry accident and the pages cannot be read.’ He looked round his audience. Both the lawyers appeared to have relaxed a little. Montgomery’s jaw had tightened, and behind him Robert was watching with a glazed stare. The remaining members of the Faculty were stolidly unmoved. He drew breath to continue, and the door opened.

  ‘Your pardon, maisters,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Here is more food, but these good fellows are needed back at the hall, so we must serve ourselves.’

  He stood aside for two of the velvet-gowned college servitors, each with jug and heavy platter.

  ‘Robert can serve us,’ said Montgomery. ‘Make yourself useful, boy.’ He watched grimly as the trays of food were set on the trestle table, the servants left, and Robert with some reluctance stood away from the wall and approached the table. ‘Come on, you can serve out wine without a towel for once. As for you, Maister Cunningham. You’ve spent a while proving that nobody could have killed our William. When are you going to get to the name I want? The boy’s dead, and somebody’s to suffer for it.’

  ‘I’m in no doubt of that,’ said Gil. ‘I’m making a report, my lord. The Faculty will wish to be certain we have looked at everything that might have a bearing on the matter.’

  ‘Oh, get on with it!’ said Montgomery savagely. He took a wedge of cold pie from the tray Robert was presenting to him and nodded to the boy to proceed round the company.

  ‘On Sunday evening,’ Gil continued, ‘the dog-breeder called at the college yett asking for the wolfhound. Two more chambers were searched, by different hands, and I was robbed in the street of a bundle of papers. From all this I concluded that at least one party was still looking for something on paper.

  ‘On Monday, the bundle of papers was returned, for which I was grateful, and it became clear from the admission of one of his victims that William was gathering information not just round the college but more widely. He had that knack of fitting stray words and scraps of news together to make a story that would interest the King’s advisers.

  ‘Then Jaikie the porter was found stabbed at the college yett. There was another bundle of papers smouldering in his brazier which turned out to be William’s lecture-notes and other papers. Likely they had been lifted from the boy’s chamber when it was searched. Also in Jaikie’s chamber I found a dog-collar, hidden in a press.’

  ‘What has that to do with anything?’ asked Maister Crawford.

  Maister Forsyth stirred irritably on his bench, but Gil answered, ‘It was a thing out of place. Why should the porter have a dog-collar in his chamber? And there is a dog in the matter, and the dog-breeder had been at the yett a number of times asking for the dog and therefore speaking to Jaikie.’

  Maister Crawford grunted.

  This was not going well. Lord Montgomery’s scowl was intent, but the other members of the Faculty wore assorted expressions of puzzlement, except for David Gray, who appeared to have settled into a blank exhaustion. Gil accepted a cup from the mason and sipped it. Wine, he thought, and well-watered. Bless the man. He drank deeper, and groped for the thread of his argument again.

  ‘It seemed likely that Jaikie’s death was connected with William’s –’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said Montgomery in argumentative tones.

  ‘I can well believe, my lord,’ said Gil with a slight bow, ‘that you would accept the existence of two separate enemies of the college at one time, but I find it more economical to think they are connected.’

  Montgomery grinned at him, and gestured for him to continue. Robert reached the Dean and knelt before him with the depleted tray.

  ‘We therefore began to ask questions about both. Jaikie was a disobliging and ill-mannered employee, and quite capable of learning from William’s example, but none of William’s victims inside the college had been near him about noon. I think he might have tried to get money from someone who came to the yett from outside, someone else involved in William’s schemes, and been knifed for it.’

  Robert had paused before him with the food. Gil looked down as the last slice of pie on the tray fell on its side.

  ‘No,’ he said with regret, ‘I’ll eat after I’ve done talking, Robert.’

  ‘Are you saying Jaikie was killed by one of William’s accomplices?’ asked the Dean. ‘Does this mean William was killed by someone from outside after all?’

  ‘Gilbert, I must remind you,’ said Father Bernard, ‘I have a disputation to organize this afternoon. Will this take much longer?’

  ‘You’ll sit here for as long as it takes, priest,’ said Montgomery, ‘and so will the rest of you. Get on with it, Cunningham.’

  There was a knocking away through the house. Maister Doby looked up, startled.

  ‘The street door,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody to answer it – they’re all at the Laigh Hall to serve the food.’

  ‘Robert,’ said Montgomery curtly. The boy set the empty platter on the table and left the room with an expression of something li
ke relief. His uncle nodded sharply at Gil, who took another draught of the watered wine and continued.

  ‘We asked questions of a number of people concerning Jaikie’s death. The last to see him alive seemed at first to have been Lord Montgomery and his nephew –’ He met Montgomery’s wary scowl and continued smoothly, ‘who were each, separately, at pains to convince me that the other had left him first and that the man was alive when they last saw him.’

  ‘There is a contradiction there, Gilbert,’ said Maister Forsyth. ‘Almost an oxymoron, eh?’

  ‘I think rather a paradox, sir,’ said Gil. Montgomery was staring through the open door of the chamber, frowning. ‘Montgomery men will back each other to the death. I took it to mean that neither of them had killed Jaikie, but each feared the other might have.’

  Maister Forsyth nodded approval of this, but Montgomery turned his head to look at Gil, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘We also questioned the dog-breeder. His answers were not in concordance with the observed facts, and though he claimed to have been exercising the dogs at noon yesterday someone else had seen his wife walking them as usual.’

  ‘Out on the Dow Hill,’ said Maister Crawford unexpectedly. ‘I saw her myself. There’s a black-and-white spaniel –’ He found the Dean’s eye on him and stopped.

  ‘A useful contribution, Archie,’ said the Dean ambiguously. ‘Go on, Gilbert.’

  ‘We know Doig had been at the yett a number of times asking about the wolfhound. I think he was passing information to William, and possibly getting more information back and passing it on elsewhere as well. I know Jaikie was doing the same. I think Jaikie tried to get money or favours from Doig and was knifed for it.’

  ‘By Doig?’ said Montgomery incredulously. ‘He was twice the size. How could –’

  ‘Jaikie was drunk,’ Gil said.

  ‘As usual,’ muttered Maister Kennedy. The Dean turned his blue stare on him.

  ‘You said yourself, my lord,’ Gil continued, ‘that he was sprawled in his great chair when you last saw him. A strong man, even one of Doig’s stature, could have knifed him easily enough in that posture.’

  ‘But have you no other evidence?’ asked Maister Doby ‘We couldny make an accusation like that about a Glasgow burgess, just because it could have happened.’

  ‘Was his clothing marked? Had he stolen anything of the porter’s?’ asked Maister Forsyth.

  ‘I do not think Doig is a burgess, but whatever his status the accusation would not be well founded,’ said Gil punctiliously. ‘He was wearing a leather apron when we saw him. It was much too big for him, very apt for hiding marks of any kind between chin and ankle.’ Several of the Faculty members nodded their understanding of this point. ‘And hidden in one of the dog-pens there was a bottle of usquebae. It had been stopped with a rag, precisely the way Jaikie used to stop his current jar. The evidence is circumstantial, no more.’

  ‘Perhaps he aye keeps his supply there,’ suggested Maister Kennedy.

  ‘The dogs had got at it,’ said the mason, grinning reminiscently ‘I do not think they were used to having it in their pen.’

  ‘This isny getting any nearer to the name I want,’ said Montgomery abruptly. Robert, slipping in through the open door, flinched as he spoke.

  ‘So where is this man now?’ asked Maister Crawford, ignoring this. ‘Are we to send some of the college servants to fetch him in for trial?’

  ‘Ye willny do that, clerk,’ said Montgomery, ‘for Doig’s run, so I hear. Now can we get on to the matter of who killed William?’

  ‘Run?’ repeated the Dean. ‘What do you mean, run?’

  ‘Maister Mason and I saw him leaving this morning,’ said Gil, ‘over the Dow Hill with a cart and his wife with all the tykes of Tervey on one leash.’ He met the Dean’s icy blue stare. ‘I had no authority to stop him. It was hardly secret murder, since the body was left in plain sight in the porter’s chamber, and he could have claimed easily enough that it was a matter of self-defence. There’s the matter of blood-money to Jaikie’s kin –’

  ‘He had no kin,’ said Maister Doby.

  ‘Can we get on?’ demanded Lord Montgomery.

  ‘Very well,’ said the Dean in dissatisfied tones. ‘We must leave the matter of Jaikie’s death there, but I do not feel you have acted well in this, Gilbert.’

  ‘I do,’ said Maister Forsyth unexpectedly. ‘We must deplore the death of our porter, but the college has neither lost nor gained by it, which is better than might have been expected.’

  Maister Crawford opened his mouth to speak, caught the Dean’s eye, and subsided.

  ‘To return to the question of William’s murder,’ said Gil. Montgomery muttered something. ‘When we set out all the information we had gathered and looked at it, we found inconsistencies. One or two people had lied about one or two matters. In particular, one man had lied about where he was during the time when I think William was killed, the time which began with the great clap of thunder and ended when the feast reconvened.’

  The members of the Faculty were watching him intently. Beyond Maister Kennedy the chaplain sat upright and tense. Between him and the door, Montgomery’s narrow-eyed glare was backed by his nephew’s, though the boy appeared to be leaning surreptitiously against the wall again.

  ‘Someone in this chamber?’ asked Maister Forsyth. Gil flicked him a glance, and nodded.

  ‘Bernard,’ said Hugh Montgomery, low and dangerous. ‘Bernard, what have you done?’

  Father Bernard unclasped his hands to cross himself.

  ‘Christ and all his saints be my witness,’ he said with great dignity, ‘I did not kill William.’

  ‘Then where were you at the time you should have been giving a lecture in the Theology Schule?’ Gil asked.

  ‘I was taken ill. The spiced pork –’ began the chaplain, casting a look of loathing at Maister Coventry.

  ‘Yesterday you blamed the rabbit stew,’ said Gil.

  ‘And on Sunday,’ said Maister Forsyth, ‘you complained that you had got nothing at the feast beyond some of Agnes’s onion tart. Bernard, you must tell us the truth. You understand that.’

  ‘I will speak before my superior.’

  ‘You’ll speak now,’ said Montgomery quietly, ‘and you’ll speak truth. What have you done, Bernard? What have you done to Isobel’s boy?’

  Nobody had moved, not even Montgomery, but suddenly the scene was a trial rather than a hearing. Gil caught Maister Crawford’s eye, and the other man of law nodded briefly and rose.

  ‘We must assume,’ he said, again addressing the gap between the Dean and the Principal, ‘that my colleague has good reasons for his implied accusation. Should not these reasons be heard before the accusation is consolidated? Then my cli– our chaplain may defend himself against them, refuting them one by one if he is able.’

  ‘Aye, if he’s able,’ said Montgomery, apparently following the Latin without difficulty.

  ‘Expound your reasons, Gilbert,’ said the Dean, and the Principal nodded, without removing his shocked gaze from Father Bernard.

  ‘I do not have to defend myself –’

  ‘You do, Bernard. You do. Or I’ll make you,’ declared Montgomery, still in that quiet dangerous voice.

  Gil, looking round the room, marshalled his thoughts and continued.

  ‘In the first place, Father Bernard claimed he had not had time to speak to William, early in the day before the procession, because he had to get the music-books to St Thomas’s. But the Steward remarked later that he had seen to flitting the music.’

  ‘He has just confirmed that he did so,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I asked him, over in the Laigh Hall.’

  ‘I think they did speak. William showed you whatever it was in the package I had just delivered to him, didn’t he?’

  Father Bernard stared at Gil, dark eyes impassive. After a moment, Gil went on, ‘Just before the end of the play, Father Bernard said he returned to the Dominicans’ house.’

 
‘My colleague will swear to it,’ the chaplain said, breaking his silence. ‘We discussed the subject of my lecture.’

  ‘I have no doubt of that,’ said Gil. ‘Then he returned to the college. By the time he did so, William was hidden in the limehouse. The scholars who hid him noticed their chaplain crossing the Inner Close behind them towards the Theology Schule, where his students were waiting for him. Something caused him to leave the lecture-room again, almost immediately –’

  ‘I told you, I was taken ill –’

  ‘It was the package, wasn’t it?’ said Montgomery harshly. ‘What was in it, Bernard?’

  ‘I saw no package!’

  ‘The boy showed you a piece of paper,’ said Gil. ‘I witnessed that.’

  ‘Only your word for it, Cunningham!’ said Father Bernard, showing the yellow teeth.

  ‘True,’ agreed Gil, ‘but why should I invent such a thing?’

  ‘He has mentioned it to me more than once,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘from the beginning of the investigation.’

  ‘We have witnesses who confirm these movements. They saw Father Bernard,’ Gil continued, nodding his thanks for this comment, ‘crossing the Inner Close after the end of the play, before the two o’clock bell rang. However we have two further witnesses who saw him in the Outer Close, just after the two o’clock bell, when he led me to believe he was giving a lecture. A lecture which did not in fact take place.’

  ‘Who –’ began Father Bernard, and closed his mouth.

  ‘You may not realize,’ Gil said to Hugh Montgomery, who was staring intently at him, ‘that the door to the Theology Schule is in the Inner Close. Nobody lecturing there would need to be in the Outer Close.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Montgomery, and nodded. ‘But William’s chamber was in the Outer Close. I mind I asked him how come he was out here with the great ones and he tellt me he was valued in this place.’ Robert muttered something, and he turned his head to look. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Kind of thing he would say,’ repeated Robert with reluctance.