The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Aye, well, it might ha been easier if you’d tellt me what was wrong at the first,’ said Maister Livingstone sourly, but she ignored him and led the way into the second chamber. By the far door a tearful Annot looked up as they entered, and hauled herself up from her knees, folding her beads into her hand.

  ‘And time too!’ she said. ‘She’ll be set by now, no hope of making her decent afore evening, it’ll be the morn afore she—’

  ‘You’ll not tell me my job,’ said Mistress Bowen, and laid a hand to the door. ‘Has she been disturbed since I left, maister?’

  ‘Only if Annot’s been in,’ said Livingstone.

  ‘No! No!’ disclaimed Annot. ‘At least,’ she bit her lip, and they all looked at her. ‘I couldny bear to think of her staring like that, I laid a cloth to her face!’

  ‘I tellt you to leave her alone,’ said Livingstone in annoyance. Gil ignored them and followed Mistress Bowen into the chamber.

  The first thing one noticed was the stink, which caught at the throat and made one gag. The next was Dame Isabella herself, sprawled in her filthy shift like a stranded porpoise, half on her side. The cloth Annot had mentioned covered her face, long locks of grey hair snaking from under it across the polished floorboards. A pantofle of scuffed embroidered velvet had fallen off and lay a yard or so away; the other was still wedged on the plump foot over its defiled stocking. Gil closed his eyes briefly, muttering a prayer for the dead, thinking again how death stripped all dignity from a human being.

  ‘Amen,’ said Mistress Bowen, crossing herself.

  ‘Is she just as you left her?’ he asked. ‘What was it you wanted to show me?’

  ‘Aye.’ She had shed the plaid and tied on an apron. Beneath it she wore a working woman’s short-sleeved gown of grey wool; now she began to roll up the sleeves of kirtle and shift, baring wiry forearms. ‘In this calling, maister, you get to ken the signs of a death. Heart trouble, apoplexy, old age. Poverty.’ Gil nodded, wondering if his belly would hold out against the smell in the chamber. ‘Whether a death’s been expected or no.’ She bent, feeling one of the outstretched arms with a professional air. ‘Aye, aye, she’s progressing well. Now, poverty’s no been a problem here,’ she measured the girth of the arm with a wry smile, ‘but just the same it didny seem right to me. So I’d a good look at the corp. There’s no saying what more I’ll uncover when I get her right washed, but to start wi I found,’ she twitched the linen cloth away, ‘here’s what I found.’

  The face was hideous, as Maister Livingstone had implied, staring eyes and open mouth giving the impression of someone gazing into Hell, the trickle of blackened blood caked in the wispy moustache adding to the horror. Gil, unable to help himself, reached out and tried to close the eyelids, and discovered they were set wide as they were.

  ‘See here,’ said Mistress Bowen, and he realized she had put back a handful of the thinning hair and was pointing at the old woman’s ear. It was delicately whorled, pink, quite incongruously pretty and scrupulously clean. It was a pity when convention demanded that women had to hide attractive features, he reflected, thinking of Alys’s long honey-coloured hair which now he only saw at night.

  ‘Look closer,’ prompted Mistress Bowen. ‘Someone’s stoppit her lug.’

  He looked obediently, and looked again. Half-hidden within the hollow of the ear was a black dot, like the ticks he had to extract from Socrates’ coat if they went out onto the Dow Hill.

  ‘It’s no a tick,’ said Mistress Bowen when he mentioned this. ‘Touch it.’

  He got down on one knee and inspected the mark. It was raised, roughly square, and not black as he had first thought but dark as iron, with flecks of rust-red which –

  ‘Sweet St Giles!’ he said, and crossed himself. ‘It’s a nail.’

  He put out a finger to test the thing. It was iron, cold iron. No, not cold, he recognized, nearer lukewarm, cooling with the corpse.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mistress Bowen grimly. ‘Now how did that get there?’

  ‘Murder,’ he said. ‘We need to send for the Serjeant.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘What are you saying?’ demanded Maister Livingstone from the doorway. ‘A nail? How has the old witch got a nail in her lug? That makes no sense!’

  ‘It does if someone put it there,’ said Lowrie. ‘Will I send Attie out for the Serjeant, uncle?’

  ‘But in here? She was at her prayers, Annot said. Here, Annot, woman, tell him!’

  Annot, grasping what was being said, collapsed onto her knees again wailing incoherently. The men in the outermost chamber could be heard asking what ailed her. Gil ignored all, covered up the corpse’s hideous face and sat back on his heels, gazing round the chamber.

  The door from the courtyard into the set of chambers was in the angle of the two wings, so this furthest chamber was at the outermost end of the wing and had windows in three walls, the door in the fourth. It was light, therefore, and contained a great number of items. He counted a free-standing box bed, set up so as to protect its occupants from most of the draughts, several kists which seemed to be Dame Isabella’s baggage, two settles, a folding table, a prayer-desk. The hangings lay in folds round the wall-foot as if they had been bought for a room with higher tenterhooks; they would surely impede anyone who hid behind them and hoped to step out quickly grasping hammer and –

  ‘What did he use to strike it home?’ he said aloud. Mistress Bowen, on her way to attend to Annot, gave him an approving look. ‘Is there a mell in the chamber? Anything that could be used for one?’

  ‘The wrights has mells in the other wing, all different sizes,’ said Livingstone, but his nephew had begun casting about, peering behind and under the furniture. ‘Are you saying – are you saying someone cam in here and struck a nail into her lug while she was at her prayers? And killed her? But how wad she ever let that come to pass? Did she no call for help, for her servants? It doesny make sense.’

  ‘Done and dunted,’ Lowrie muttered from under the nearer settle. ‘No, maister, I see nothing that’s like to be used for the purpose that wouldny show the marks or break in two when you tried it. That pewter basin, or her jewel-box, for instance.’ He lifted the basin, looking at its unblemished base. ‘Likely he took it away wi him.’

  ‘Aye, that would be too easy,’ said Gil. He got to his feet and looked down at the corpse. ‘Tell me, Mistress Bowen, is this how you found her lying when you first saw her?’

  She paused in her soothing of Annot, considered the body, and said,

  ‘Aye, more or less. Her shift was up about her hurdies, I pullt it down for decency, but I’ve heard the Serjeant on about moving a corp too often to make that mistake. As soon as I jaloused it wasny natural, I took care I never changed anything else.’

  ‘She’s just the way she was when I saw her,’ said Livingstone. He bit at a knuckle. ‘It was maybe no right to leave her there on the floor in her dirt, but to be honest I didny fancy handling her, the state she’s in, and anyway no sense in more of us getting fouled than need be.’ Mistress Bowen glanced at him, but said nothing. ‘Will I send the boy out to find the Serjeant, then? Is that what—?’

  ‘Attie’s away to find him already,’ said Lowrie, returning from the outer room.

  ‘And I’ll need a word with Attie when he gets back,’ said Gil, ‘with all her servants indeed, and this one in particular.’ He looked at Annot, now sobbing on Mistress Bowen’s shoulder. ‘As soon as she’s fit for it,’ he added.

  ‘Give her a bit longer,’ said Mistress Bowen. ‘If there’s another lassie about the place maybe she could give me a hand, we’ll get the departed made clean at least. I’ll not ask the St Agnes women, they’re full old to be heaving the likes of her around, the souls.’ She looked down at Annot and patted her back soothingly. ‘Thanks be to Our Lady, we had her shroud out of her baggage when I was first here.’

  ‘Then we can clean up the chamber,’ muttered Livingstone. ‘What Canon Aiken’s going to say – violent death in hi
s house, and the state the chamber’s in, and all! But this doesny make sense, Maister Cunningham, why would an ill-tempered old attercap like her let a man close enough to drive a nail into her head?’

  ‘Someone she trusted,’ said his nephew, ‘someone she’d no reason to be suspicious of? Mind you, she’d suspect the Archbishop himself,’ he added.

  ‘It makes no sense,’ repeated Livingstone.

  By the time Annot had been led away by one of the kitchen-maids for a nice sit-down and maybe a cup of buttered ale with honey in it, Gil had managed to get a good look around him.

  There was a grey woollen bedgown lying on top of the counterpane, a black velvet gown with embroidered sleeves hung on a peg on the wall, more armfuls of black cloth on top of a kist must be the other garments Dame Isabella had discarded last night. A second kist had been opened, and a bundle of folded linen lay on top of the contents: the shroud Mistress Bowen had mentioned, without which no provident person would travel.

  A set of rosary beads of carved ivory with jet gauds lay coiled beside a worn velvet-covered book on the prayer-desk by one of the windows. On the nearer settle a bowl of water, still faintly warm to the hand, and a pile of towels suggested the morning routine. The jewel-box Lowrie had noticed, of wood covered in leather and fastened by a stout brass strap, lay on the further settle, a silver cross on a chain dangling from beneath its lid; a close-stool covered in blue velvet to match the prayer-book stood half-hidden beyond the settle, and added its contribution to the appalling atmosphere in the room.

  Livingstone, with a muttered excuse, had retreated to the outer chamber to wait for the Serjeant, but Lowrie remained, prowling about and looking awkwardly from time to time at the corpse.

  ‘Maybe we’ll can get her made decent,’ said Mistress Bowen, returning with a jug of water. ‘Did you see enough, maister, can I move her now?’

  ‘In a moment,’ Gil said. ‘I’d as soon leave her for the Serjeant to see as well. Mistress, what would you say happened here?’

  ‘Oh, she was at stool,’ the woman said, ‘that’s for certain. It’s all down her legs and her hose, you can see, but there’s little enough on the boards.’

  He nodded. This had been his reading too.

  ‘What made you look for – for what you found, mistress?’ Lowrie asked suddenly. She turned to him, and her thin face softened a little.

  ‘Violent death’s never a bonnie sight,’ she said obliquely. ‘What made me look? The sight o her, maister. Her eyes starting out like that, the blood at her nose, yet her face is pale and there’s no other signs o an apoplexy. I mind my mother, that had the same calling, telling me the tale o just such a death she attended, oh,’ she paused to reckon, ‘forty year syne or more. Only there the nail was easier to find, not being driv’ home the same way.’

  ‘I never heard that tale,’ Gil said. And what other stories would a layer-out have to tell, he wondered.

  ‘Aye, well, you wouldny. My mother never tellt any but me. The corp was a foul-tempered fellow, she said, and had broke all his wife’s limbs in turn and started on his daughters.’ She closed her mouth firmly on that subject and turned to the corpse. ‘I’d as soon tend to her now, maister, never mind waiting for Serjeant Anderson. I’ve one of the kitchen lassies out-by, ready to give a hand.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Gil. ‘I’m still trying to work this out. She was seated over yonder, then,’ he nodded towards the close-stool, ‘and someone struck a nail into her ear.’ He drew back the cloth and considered the black dot of the nail-head again, and put his fingers to his own ear to match the place. ‘He must have moved fast, to strike home before she was aware of it. Or she,’ he added scrupulously.

  ‘If the stool’s not been moved,’ said Lowrie.

  ‘No by me,’ said Mistress Bowen.

  ‘It’s where I last saw it,’ the young man agreed. ‘Then someone could have approached her round the settle, whichever way she was facing.’

  ‘Someone she knew,’ said Gil, ‘someone she trusted, someone she’d no objection to having in the chamber while she was occupied like that.’

  ‘Anyone in the house, then,’ said Lowrie. ‘Not that she trusted any of us, as I said, but she’d summon any or all and sit there enthroned, giving out her orders for the day. Her women, her grooms, me or my uncle.’

  ‘Well, they aye say the wealthy has no need of good manners,’ said Mistress Bowen disapprovingly.

  ‘At that rate, mistress, Isabella Torrance could ha bought and sold Scotland,’ said Lowrie.

  ‘So how did she come to be lying here?’ wondered Gil. ‘Did she move herself?’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t kill her immediately,’ said Lowrie slowly. ‘Head wounds are orra things, I know that.’

  ‘It’s possible. I’ve seen stranger,’ said Mistress Bowen.

  Gil looked down at the sprawled figure, half on its side, plump limbs part-flexed.

  ‘Aye, I suppose. She rose up and came forward—’

  ‘Maybe she thought to go after whoever it was as they left.’ Lowrie was prowling round the bed, and now leaned forward to sniff cautiously at its woodwork. ‘I’d say she’s laid her hand to this end panel, maybe to steady herself.’ He turned to open the shutters of the window over the prayer-desk, doubling the light that fell on the area he indicated. ‘Aye, it’s smeared like her shift.’

  ‘Her hands are foul.’ Gil considered this. ‘And then she collapsed where we see her. That would work. She looks as if she fell rather than being carried or dragged.’

  A loud, confident voice rose in the outermost room, with a commotion of several people. Maister Livingstone could be heard trying to explain what had happened, but the new voice overrode his.

  ‘No, no, I’ll just hae a look mysel afore you explain all. Ben here, is she? And Maister Cunningham’s here already, you say.’

  There was a heavy tread, and Serjeant Anderson proceeded into the chamber, a well-built man in the long blue gown of a burgh servant with the embroidered badge on the breast. He nodded to Gil, then stopped just inside the door, his hand halfway to his head.

  ‘Your bonnet, Serjeant,’ said Mistress Bowen, her tone nicely combining formality and wifely reproof. He completed the gesture and removed his felt hat, staring at the corpse. His constable peered round his arm and stepped back, grimacing, but the Serjeant came forward, bent ponderously to look under the linen cloth, and retreated.

  ‘Our Lady’s garters, Mally, have ye no washed her yet? It’s no decent leaving her like that. And what’s this about murder, any road? She looks more like an apoplexy to me.’

  ‘Aye, so I thought at first,’ said his wife, ‘but see here.’

  Shown the evidence of misdoing, the Serjeant surveyed it for a long moment, tested the rigidity of Dame Isabella’s neck and jaw, then straightened up and looked at Gil.

  ‘Aye, Maister Cunningham,’ he pronounced. ‘So you’ve time to spare from your researches about the burgh, I see. How far have ye got, then?’

  ‘John!’ said Mistress Bowen, reminding Gil irresistibly of Magdalen Boyd. The Serjeant threw his spouse a quick glance and continued more civilly,

  ‘See, if it was me, I’d ha questioned all her servants by now. She’s been lying there a good while, by the feel of her. How long was it known she was dead?’

  ‘Aye, well, small chance of that,’ said Maister Livingstone from behind the constable. He stepped into the chamber, dragging the man Attie by the arm. ‘Here’s this lad only the now telling me, her own folk has run, Serjeant, all but two of them. Lifted their bundles and vanished.’

  ‘I couldny stop them,’ said Attie miserably. ‘It was that Marion started it, said she wasny staying here to get the blame o the old wife taking an apoplexy, and the other lads saw it the same way and up and left. I tried to tell them you’d never charge them wi it, maister,’ he said to Maister Livingstone, ‘but they wouldny hear me.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ said the Serjeant. ‘I’ll ha their names off yir maister and we’ll g
et the constables after them. If I cry them from the Cross we’ll run them to ground soon enough.’

  ‘That’s if they’ve stayed in Glasgow,’ Gil said, considering the situation. If only one servant had run, he might have read it as an admission of guilt, but four fugitives confused the picture. ‘Maybe you should ask at the gates, too.’

  ‘I ken my job, Maister Cunningham,’ said the Serjeant.

  They had repaired to the outermost chamber of the set, to allow Mistress Bowen and her assistant to resume work. While Livingstone dismissed the two men in green livery with a long list of people to call on with news of Dame Isabella’s death, Lowrie had quietly set up a table, and now, to the Serjeant’s evident gratification, he and Gil were seated behind it like a miniature court, Attie standing before them mangling his velvet bonnet, with Lowrie himself and the scrawny constable at either end making notes. The old women of St Agnes’ were still at their task in the corner, but their soft ancient voices were more soothing than distracting.

  ‘Why did Marion think she would get the blame, Attie?’ Gil asked now.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Attie spread his hands, the bonnet dangling from one like a dead bird. ‘She wasny making sense.’

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Gil said. The man looked blank. ‘What was the first you knew of your mistress’s death?’

  ‘First we all knew,’ said Livingstone, striding the length of the chamber and back. One of the bedeswomen looked up at him, but did not break off her murmured recital. ‘When Annot came running out crying that she was dead. Is that right, lad?’ he flung at the servant.

  ‘Where were you at the time, maister?’ Gil asked him. ‘You said Annot came to you – where was that?’

  ‘We were in the hall,’ Lowrie contributed. His uncle nodded.

  ‘Aye, so we were.’

  ‘Let’s hear how the day started,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Was the departed just as usual? Who dealt wi her first?’

  ‘That would be her women,’ said Attie, working his bonnet between his hands. He was a lean, dark-haired fellow in his early twenties, Gil guessed, with a frightened air which was probably natural in the circumstances. ‘They’re her bedfellows, see.’