by Pat McIntosh
‘No,’ agreed Gil. He found Lowrie in the shadows. ‘Go and find Alan Jamieson, if you will,’ he requested, ‘let him know what’s happened, ask him when he last saw Barnabas.’ The younger man ducked his head in a bow and left by the same door the Sub-Dean had used, and Gil lifted the pricket-stand with its remaining candle and turned to the chapel of John the Baptist. It was a small rectangular space, bounded on two sides by the south and east walls of the building, on its north side by an arcaded partition wall which separated it from the next chapel. The well, its cover standing open, was a dark shadow on the wall-foot bench in the south-east corner, surrounded by wet patches where the corpse had been dragged out. The bucket, still tethered to its rope, stood forlornly by. Gil took the candle over and peered into the well; past the glow of the light he could see a faint glitter of its reflection, a pale glimpse of his own face cross-lit. The water was not far down.
‘Sheer luck he wedged on the bucket rather than going right in,’ said Maistre Pierre grimly at his elbow. ‘I know this is not a well for drinking, but nevertheless—!’
‘What happened?’ Gil said aloud. ‘Some kind of encounter here in the Lower Kirk, whatever Dean Henderson thinks, and the man strangled with a cord and then thrust into the well for concealment.’
‘He was not a big man,’ said his father-in-law, ‘but nevertheless I should think it needs another grown man to lift him and put him in there. Or perhaps two people.’
‘Two?’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I suppose it might be. Some kind of conspiracy, maybe.’
Chapter Seven
He turned away from the dark cavity and took the candle into the next chapel. Wooden in the carved altarpiece, St Andrew supported his white-painted cross on one shoulder and raised the other hand in blessing; Bishop Wishart, that warlike man of God, lay austerely under the arch of his tomb between this chapel and that of Saints Peter and Paul beyond him. Nothing which might be of any help showed up in the leaping light.
‘But why?’ asked Maister Sim from where he still stood near the corpse. ‘He was a right scunner, never did aught you asked him without arguing, and times no even then,’ Galston stirred; Sim glanced at him, and went on, ‘but that’s no reason to throttle the man. He must ha done something to provoke it!’
‘Did anyone know he was here?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Did you fellows know?’
‘He should ha been off duty by now,’ said Galston, ‘seeing he’s on early this week.’
The two vergers still standing by the Chapter House doorway looked at each other in the candlelight.
‘Aye, he was here first thing,’ said one of them, ‘he was, it’s— It was his turn to open up this week, he was here afore the songmen cam in for Prime.’
‘That’s right,’ said Maister Sim. ‘He was.’
‘He’d ha been free to get off home an hour or two since,’ Galston continued, ‘unless Maister Jamieson had work for him. When did you see him last, Davie?’
‘Afore Vespers?’ the man offered.
‘And who of the clergy should have been down here?’ Gil moved past the two men into the chapel of St Nicholas next to the Chapter House door, holding the candle high to look about him. Nothing seemed to be out of place here either. ‘There’s these four chapels, there’s Our Lady, there’s St Mungo himself.’ He nodded towards the other two shrines, placed in the middle of the pillared space, their banked lights showing gaps now as the candles set by the faithful burned out. ‘Which of the canons or their vicars is responsible for these altars? I’ll need to ask them when they said Mass, though I suspect none of them would be late enough in the day to be any help.’
‘I could do that,’ offered Maister Sim, ‘though maybe no till the morn’s morn now.’
‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘surely the most of them will be under their own roofs, thinking of retiring for the night by this.’
Or of going out to start the evening’s drinking, thought Gil, not meeting his friend’s eye in the candlelight.
‘Aye, Habbie, if you would,’ he said with gratitude, and would have continued, but beyond St Mungo’s shrine hasty feet sounded on the north stair, the stair which led out to the Vicars’ hall as well as the main church.
‘Maister Gil?’ Lowrie’s voice. ‘Here’s Maister Jamieson. He’s something to tell us.’
‘Indeed aye!’ Jamieson was right behind Lowrie as they threaded their way through the forest of stone, to emerge in the candlelight beside the corpse. ‘What’s this? Is the man deid in truth? How can that be? I was speaking wi him no an hour since! Galston, is that right?’
‘Aye, deid right enough, Alan,’ said Maister Sim.
‘An hour since?’ said Gil, hastening to join them. ‘Are you certain, man?’ Behind him he could hear his father-in-law rumbling dissent, and was aware of relief. An hour was hardly possible, given all that must have happened here. Jamieson, bending to look closer at the body of his henchman, said,
‘Aye, aye, Gil, it canny be longer, I’d stake my— How is he all wet like this? What’s come to him? Has he had Conditional Absolution?’
‘Tell me when you last saw him,’ Gil said. Jamieson straightened up, crossed himself, muttered a brief prayer and turned away.
‘No that long since,’ he said, frowning. ‘Let me see, it was afore Vespers I’d say, but no so long afore it.’ So at least two hours since, thought Gil. That’s more like it. ‘We’d been telling the dry stores, him and me, and trying to account what might ha gone missing this week. And it seems to me,’ he frowned, ‘as if something he saw, or something one o us said to the other, put him in mind o a thing, for he suddenly up and said, It canny be! It canny be! Like that, ye ken, all astonished. Surely no, he says. What canny be, Barnabas? says I, but he stood there like a stock wi one o the sack-ties in his hand, and then he says, Forgie me, Maister Jamieson, I’ll no be long, and starts out the door. I cried after him, Where are ye going, and he says ower his shoulder, I’ll no be long, I see it now, and that’s the last I saw him.’
‘What did you do?’ Gil asked, fascinated.
‘Oh, I gaed on wi the task. The poor we ha aye wi us, after all, I need to be sure o how much I can gie out in alms. To tell truth,’ Jamieson looked down at the corpse again and crossed himself, ‘I forgot about him, and about the time. It gied me quite a start when your man here chapped at the almonry door, let alone what he had to tell me.’
‘The length of cord, the sack-tie you called it,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Did he take it away with him?’
‘Aye, for I’d to find another to the second boll o barley. Canny leave it lying open all night.’ He bent to touch the corpse, tracing a cross on the darkened forehead. ‘Poor fellow, I canny believe it. Talking wi me, he was, no an hour since. I canny believe it. What came to him, Gil? You’ve no tellt me yet. He’s dreadful to see, he looks as though he’s been throttled, but he’s wringing wet forbye. Was he in the Girth Burn, or something?’
‘He was in the well,’ said Maister Sim. ‘St Mungo’s own well, yonder in the corner.’
Jamieson looked at him in astonishment, then turned to Lowrie who was watching quietly from the top of the steps.
‘You said that!’ he said. ‘I mind now. Throttled and put into the well, you said that, I mind it. Why? Who’d ha done that? It makes no sense!’
‘We need to find out,’ said Gil. ‘By what you say, it looks as though he left you to find someone. Given that he’s been dead well over an hour, I think it’s likely that person killed him, probably throttled him wi the sack-tie he was carrying. Aye, that one,’ he added as Maistre Pierre produced the cord he had unwound from the corpse’s neck. Pausing to acknowledge Jamieson’s shocked identification, he went on, ‘Can you mind anything more about when the fellow left you? What were you talking of? Did either of you say something that set him thinking, or was it something you handled, or—?’
‘No, no that I can think,’ said Jamieson doubtfully.
‘Maisters,’ interrupted Galston, ‘maist
ers, would you maybe take your questions away somewhere else?’ Gil looked round at the man, startled, and he bowed politely. ‘We’ll ha to shift Barnabas out o here, Maister Cunningham, and get tidied up, all afore locking-up time, and there’s no denying it would be a help if you clergy wasny here.’
‘I can see that,’ said Gil. He looked about him. ‘Aye, I think we’re done here, but I need a word afore I leave the building.’
Galston nodded.
‘We’ll be in the vestry,’ he said, and gestured his minions forward.
Lighting the way out to the Vicars’ hall, Gil was suddenly aware of the empty spaces round him, of the echoes from the upper church, the air movement between the squat pillars. The atmosphere of the place was tense, watchful, as if the whole building was waiting for him to move, to ask the right questions, to find the truth of what had just happened. As if its patron himself was looking for an answer. He paused as he went under the arch to the stairs, and glanced over his shoulder at the brightly painted shrine within its wrought-iron fence. Blessed St Mungo, he said to the saint in his head, I’ll do what I can, but you’ll have to help me. I need to know what to ask, who to speak to.
Just for a moment the shadows shifted in the elaborate vaulting above the shrine, like a stirring of tree branches in the wind.
The Sub-Almoner led them into the undercroft of the Vicars’ hall, and picked his way between the pillars and the stored ecclesiastical bibelots to the far end, where he unlocked a padlock which fastened a sturdy door.
‘This is the dry store, you see,’ he said, ‘and there’s the Vicars’ store alongside it. I’ve the key here, but there’s still goods walking out when my back’s turned, and out the Vicars’ store and all, so they tell me.’
‘Alan?’ Gil turned at the voice. It was William Craigie, descending the stairs from the hall above. ‘What’s amiss, Alan? The vergers is all at sixes and sevens. They should ha locked up by this.’
‘Oh, William!’ said Jamieson. ‘Plenty’s amiss. There’s no wonder the vergers is in disarray, here’s Barnabas dead and drowned in St Mungo’s own well.’
‘What?’ Craigie’s rich bass rose a couple of octaves. ‘In the well? What’s he doing there?’
‘Not drowned, in effect,’ said Maistre Pierre, sounding annoyed, ‘but strangled with a cord, a sack-tie—’
‘A sack-tie? Like the girl at the Cross?’ Craigie came closer, into the circle of their several lights. He looked shaken, his eyes huge with astonishment. ‘Here, is that someone slain within St Mungo’s? That’s— Does the Dean ken?’
‘The Dean is very clear that it happened outside St Mungo’s,’ said Gil without inflection.
‘But how did it happen? Who? When?’ Craigie shook his head. ‘I canny believe it.’
‘And I was talking to him no an hour since,’ said Jamieson.
‘It’s been some time afore Vespers,’ Gil supplied, ‘maybe a couple of hours ago.’ He considered the songman. ‘Where were you the now, William? Had you company? When did you last see the man?’
‘Me? I’ve seen no sign o Barnabas since this morning. Are you certain it’s him? Certain he’s dead?’ Gil continued to look hard at him, and Craigie’s tone became defensive. ‘I was in our hall the now, been there since Vespers, conning some o the morn’s music. You saw me there, Habbie, I spoke to you.’
‘Aye, so you did,’ agreed Maister Sim.
‘Are we to see inside this store, or no?’ Maistre Pierre demanded. ‘I wish to know what the dead man was seeking.’
The store was not large, and was uncomfortably crowded when they all tried to get inside. Lowrie backed out of the door again; Gil, thinking that it would have been more use for his father-in-law or the two songmen to withdraw, stood looking about him. The Almoner’s stock was neatly set out, like that in the office in the tower where he had been – was it only this morning? Sacks of grain hung out of reach of vermin, their canvas labelled with a stencilled tree in imitation of the badge the vergers bore and a single letter, O or B or W for the contents; barrels of donated goods stood against the wall, the contents identified in chalk on the lid. Rys, resns, aples, hering, read the nearest few. A grey sugar-loaf hung in a net beyond the barley, the nippers wedged in beside it.
‘You were checking the stores,’ he said again. ‘Where were you working?’
‘I was down that end, see,’ Jamieson waved a hand, craning to see past Maister Sim, ‘and Barnabas was here, checking the level of the barrel o rice, and I said to him, gie’s a hand to get this barley down. So he came and helped me lower the sack, and it was when he loosed it he held the sack-tie in his two hands, and says, It canny be!’ Jamieson looked from one hand to the other in illustration of this. ‘And then he up and went out of here, and the next I saw him, there he was stretched on the floor by St John’s chapel.’ He crossed himself, shaking his head sadly. ‘Aye, we none o us ken when our moment will come, though there’s no so many o us meet an end like that. You need to sort it, Gil, it willny do!’
‘How did you raise the sack, Maister Jamieson?’ asked Lowrie from the door. Jamieson looked blankly at him. ‘You said you needed Barnabas to help you lower it. Did you get it back up by yoursel?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Jamieson gestured at the ropes. ‘It goes up slow, that’s no trouble. But lowering it, when you lowse the rope it can run away, burn your hands, and then the sack splits if it hits the floor. So it’s best to ha someone to take a bit of the weight. Oh, I got it back up no bother.’
Beyond Lowrie, the shadows in the undercroft shifted, and he turned to look over his shoulder as footsteps approached. Keys clinked.
‘Maister Jamieson?’ It was one of the two vergers they had left in the Lower Kirk. ‘Maister Galston sent me. Is Maister Jamieson there? Only Maister Galston thought you’d maybe better take charge o this.’ The man ducked past Lowrie, peering about in the crowded little space for the Sub-Almoner. ‘See, it’s his keys, Barnabas’ keys, and is this no the key to your bonnie new padlock? You’ll want that.’
‘No, no, Matthew, he never had—’ began Jamieson, reaching automatically for the jangling assemblage.
‘No, this one, see. I’d swear it was as like, we all said that.’ The verger picked one out of the keys and held it up, the remainder of the bunch swinging from it. Jamieson checked, staring at it, then groped at his belt for his own ring of keys.
‘It is,’ he said. ‘It’s as like.’ He sorted out the right key, and held it against the other one. ‘It’s the same key, it is.’ He looked from Matthew to Gil, and back at the keys, incredulity fading slowly into stricken comprehension. ‘Christ aid us all, it’s surely no Barnabas has been thieving the stores all this while? The man I trusted?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Gil, striding through the twilight up towards the Stablegreen Port. ‘But it looks very much like it.’
‘That was a rare amount of money for a man like that to have in his kist,’ said Lowrie.
‘Either too much or not enough,’ said Gil.
‘What, you think he wasny acting alone?’
‘He canny have been.’ Gil paused, looking about them, and dropped his voice. ‘He’d been on duty since dawn, his turn to open up the building as Galston said, and that was him about to go off duty when he went to confront whoever throttled him. By what Galston told me, he’s tied to St Mungo’s all the hours of daylight, so when would he get the goods he’s pilfered off the policies and somewhere they could be sold? He must have had a confederate.’
‘Could that be who killed him?’
‘No telling, for now,’ said Gil resignedly. ‘It might be, it might ha been somebody else. We’ll see if Galston learns anything.’
‘And his chamber,’ said Lowrie, as they turned to move on.
Galston had listened in grim silence to the Almoner’s tale, and then had accompanied Gil and Lowrie to Barnabas’ lodging, a meticulously tidy chamber in the stone undercroft of one of the larger houses by the tennis court. Here he had watched bleakly
while they had inspected the man’s belongings, which contained some surprises. There had been the coin in his kist to which Lowrie had already referred, along with two or three jewels carefully wrapped in scraps of brocade like relics; there had been a number of garments of good quality, several pairs of expensive shoes, a pile of handsome blankets on the bed. Gil, having heard Alys lately on the subject of blankets, was well able to estimate what those alone might have cost. Clearly the man was making a good income from whatever he was doing.
‘He’d kept back quite a bit, as well as selling the stuff on,’ Lowrie went on. ‘I saw a barrel of dried figs in his chamber, and another o apricots.’ Gil grunted agreement. ‘Galston did say he’d aye had a sweet tooth.’
The head verger had been burning with suppressed anger; Gil thought it was the man’s reaction to finding that one of his staff had injured St Mungo’s in such a way. The two songmen, on the other hand, had been full of indignation at the abuse of privilege, and Maister Sim had been proposing an immediate stock-take of the Vicars’ dry stores as well.
‘It might help us to know if anyone saw him, after he left the Almoner and before he was found dead,’ Gil had said as they locked Barnabas’ door again. ‘He might ha said something about who he was seeking.’
‘If anyone saw him,’ said Galston with quiet determination, ‘I’ll uncover it. And we’ll search the building the morn first thing, Maister Cunningham, my men by threes and reporting to me every quarter-hour. I’ll learn how he’s been getting the stuff out o St Mungo’s, if it’s the last thing I do. And soon’s I learn it, I’ll send you word, maister.’
‘Mind you,’ said Lowrie now, ‘those were maybe from the other store, the Vicars’ store, as Maister Sim said. I canny see who’d donate a barrel o figs to the poor, and if they did it would be right conspicuous, Sir Alan would ha noticed if it went missing.’
‘You can check that wi Alan in the morning,’ said Gil.
They went on through the gathering summer twilight, past lit windows and raucous alehouses, and halted within sight of the Trindle. Business seemed to be brisk despite the house’s bereavement; there was loud conversation inside the little building, and a group of men drinking companionably outside, under the sign.