The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  The writing was neat and accomplished, the spelling no wilder than Gil’s own. Admiring the economy of ‘elhus’, Gil commented, `That’s in the Gorbals - the Brigend. By the leper-house. I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Well, even on the other side of the river they must drink,’ said the mason, putting the paper back in his pouch. ‘Come, let us leave this place, I have seen enough of it for now.’

  ‘I want to look at something else.’ Gil set off up the slope. ‘You know, if you found yourself a son-in-law who could move in with you, Alys would not have to go away.’

  ‘I thought of that. The trouble is, I would have to live with him too, and she and I would look for different qualities. It isn’t easy. You’ll find that yourself when you -‘

  ‘If I am to be a priest,’ said Gil, the familiar chill knotting in his stomach, ‘I will never have to seek a son-in-law.’

  ‘The two are not necessarily separate. Many of those in the Church have children and acknowledge them. Look at Bishop Elphinstone in Aberdeen. His father did well by him, from all one hears.’

  ‘A vow is a vow,’ said Gil, ‘and a promise is a promise. Robert Elphinstone’s father was not yet priested when he was born - and by what my uncle says he would never have been allowed to marry the lady anyway. No, some are able to break their vows daily and still sleep at night, but I am not among them.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I want to look in the haw-bushes opposite the south door where the gallowglass left Bess Stewart waiting for her husband. These bushes.’

  ‘What do you hope to find?’

  ‘After two days, not a lot.’ Gil stepped into the ring of trees, looking round in the dappled, scented light. ‘Now if I was a woman waiting for someone I barely trusted …’

  ‘he weapon is not here,’ said Maistre Pierre doggedly, and sneezed.

  ‘No, I agree. Whoever struck the boy, wherever he has gone, he kept hold of the weapon. How tall was she?’

  ‘About so? A little more than.Alys?’

  Gil measured off the level which Alys’s head had reached as she tied the fringed black silk on his arm before the funeral. Holding out his hand at that height, he turned from tree to tree, parting the young leaves and peering under them. Maistre Pierre did likewise at the other side of the circle, sneezing from time to time. Birds chirruped above their heads.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ the mason asked.

  ‘Any sign that she was here. There were hawthorn flowers in her headdress, but there are other haw-bushes. If we find nothing, it does not disprove Euan’s story, but …’ Gil paused, looking closer at the spray of may-blossom he was holding back. ‘Ah. Come and look at this.’

  Maistre Pierre obeyed, with another explosive sneeze.

  ‘The smell of these flowers!’ he complained. ‘What have you here?’

  ‘There.’ Gil pointed. ‘A scrap of thread, look, on that thorn.’ Carefully he dislodged it. ‘The shade of green is certainly very like Ealasaidh’s plaid.’

  The mason, covering his nose with one big hand, peered at the little twist of colour.

  ‘And this atomy,’ he said, wondering, ‘tells us she was here.’

  Gil looked round.

  ‘She stood under this tree,’ he agreed, ‘waiting while Euan went into the kirk and her killer came out to meet her. May I have that paper? It would do to keep it safe.’ He folded the wisp of yarn close in Alys’s writing and stowed both carefully in his purse.

  ‘You know, it’s a strange thing,’ he added, looking round at the encircling trees. ‘We had evidence, and now we have more, that Bess was here. We have repeated sightings of Davie and whatever girl it was - they were here, they were there, they were yonder down the slope. But after all the people went in to Compline we have no sign of anyone else in the kirkyard. It’s as if whoever struck Davie was as invisible as his weapon.’

  ‘Perhaps it was the same person that stabbed Bess.’

  ‘No,’ said Gil regretfully. ‘We abandoned that hypothesis early, remember. The knife is not here - if it was the same person, then he still had the knife, so why use an invisible stick? We are missing something, Maistre Pierre.’

  The mason, turning away, sneezed explosively,

  ‘Let us go away,’ he said plaintively. ‘I will not miss these confounded flowers. What do we do now? Go down to cross the river and question Annie Thomson?’

  ‘That, or go to my uncle’s house,’ said Gil, following him out of the kirkyard. ‘I set Maggie that keeps house for us to find out what she could, and my uncle accepted Sempill’s invitation this afternoon. There may be information. Or - wait. Do you speak Italian? I’ve only a little.’

  ‘Italian? I do. Oh, you think of the musician? Why not, indeed? We question him, and then we are next to your uncle’s house.’

  ‘My thought also. The lassie Thomson will keep, I hope.’

  The mastiff had clearly been shut up for the afternoon, and was still raging fruitlessly in the darkness of her kennel as Gil and the mason crossed the courtyard of the Sempill house. When she stopped baying to draw breath they heard her claws scraping on the stout planks which contained her.

  ‘I hope that creature is securely chained,’ observed Maistre Pierre.

  ‘Sempill claims she is,’ Gil answered.

  The house door was open, and within was a noisy disorganized bustle of servants shouting and hurrying about with plate and crocks from the hall. Euphemia’s stout companion backed out of a door with an armful of ill-folded linen, shouting, ‘And the same for your mother’s brat, Agnes Yuill!’

  ‘My mother!’ Another woman erupted after her into the screens passage, brandishing a bundle of wooden servingspoons. ‘I’ll tell ye, Mally Murray, what my mother says of yon yellow-headed strumpet! It’s no my place to dean blood off her fancy satin -‘

  Catching sight of their audience, she turned to bob a curtsy. ‘Your pardon, maisters,’ she said in more civil, tones, tucking the spoons out of sight behind her skirts. ‘What’s your pleasure? Are you here for the burial, for if so I’m feared you’re too late.’

  ‘It’s that lawyer,’ said Mistress Murray, her plump face suspicious. ‘If ye’re wanting a word with Euphemia, maister, it’s no possible, for she’s away to lie down. She’s had a busy day of it, what with one thing and another.’

  ‘No, I thank you,’ said Gil. ‘No need to disturb her if she’s in her bed. Would you ask Maister Sempill if we might get a word with the Italian musician?’

  ‘What, Anthony?’ said Mistress Murray. ‘You’ll no get much out of him. If he’s got ten words of Scots he’s no more.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Gil politely, ‘we would like a word with him.’

  She stared at them, then sniffed and said, ‘Aye, Agnes. Away and tell the maister what they’re asking.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘How should I know? I wish that friend of Marriott Kennedy’s had stayed longer. We could ha done with her.’ Mistress Murray hitched her armful of linen higher and set off purposefully for the door at the far end of the passage. Agnes shrugged, and ducked back into the hall, past two men carrying a bench.

  After some time, during which the visitors had ample opportunity to study the temperament of the household, she returned, dragging the alarmed lutenist.

  ‘The maister says, what’s your will wi him, maisters?’ she reported. ‘You can talk in the yaird, he says, and no to be long, for he’s wanted to play for them up the stair.’

  ‘Agnes!’ said the Italian, twisting in her grasp. ‘Cosa succede?’

  ‘May we speak to you?’ said Gil. ‘I wish to ask you some questions.’

  The mason translated, and the musician stopped squirming and gaped at him.

  ‘Che hai detto? Questione? Perche, messeri?’ He broke into a torrent of speech and gesture which appeared to deny all knowledge of anything.

  Gil gestured at the fore-stair, and Agnes said robustly, ‘Away out and talk to them, man, and get out from u
nderfoot.’ She pushed him forward and slammed the door behind him.

  Antonio was coaxed down into the yard with some difficulty, and stood, apparently on the point of flight, looking from Gil to the mason and back. Feeling like a man baiting a suckling calf, Gil looked down at him and said, ‘You know that a woman was killed in the churchyard on May Day?’

  The mason translated this, and the musician looked even more alarmed.

  ‘Non so niente! Niente, niente.’

  ‘He says he knows nothing,’ the mason translated.

  Gil nodded. ‘I surmised that. Ask if he saw anything unusual when he came out of St Mungo’s.’

  The dark gaze flicked from his face to the mason’s, a hint of - surprise? relief? - in the man’s expression.

  ‘San Mungo?’ It sounded like relief. ‘La cattedrale? No - vedevo niente insolito.’ He shook his head emphatically. Gil studied him, considering his next question.

  ‘You didn’t see the woman standing in the trees?’

  Maistre Pierre translated this, and got a blank look and a surprised answer.

  ‘He says the lady was by the church, not in the trees,’ he reported.

  ‘By the church?’ repeated Gil. ‘What lady does he mean? Lady Euphemia was by the church, but -‘

  ‘Si, si, Donna Eufemia, accanto a la cattedrale,’ agreed Antonio enthusiastically.

  ‘Did he see another lady in the trees?’

  The answer was emphatic, and scarcely needed to be translated. There was no lady in the trees.

  ‘And he saw nothing suspicious? I thought he had his hand on his dagger.’ Gil demonstrated, and the small man tensed warily. Maistre Pierre translated, and there was a longer exchange.

  “This is not satisfactory,’ the mason complained at length. ‘I cannot make sense of what he says. I ask about his knife. He says he drew because he thought he saw something - an uomo cattivo, a ladro - in the kirkyard. I say you have not mentioned such to me.’ He raised his eye brows, and Gil nodded in confirmation. They turned to study the lutenist, who was now holding the knife across his palm, looking at them with an ingratiating expression. The knife was a little one, with a narrow springy blade, much like the one James Campbell carried.

  ‘I don’t think he can tell us anything,’ said Gil. ‘It seems clear he saw nothing, like everyone else in the household.’

  ‘He seems afraid of something,’ the mason said.

  ‘He does, doesn’t he? Ask him what it is he’s afraid of.,

  The small man ruffled like a fighting-cock, in the same way as the Italians Gil had known in Paris. Slamming the dagger back in its sheath he conveyed in indignant tones that Antonio Bragato feared nothing and no one. The mastiff, roused, barked again, and he flinched and glanced over his shoulder, then squared up to Gil again.

  The door above them opened, and James Campbell said, ‘Antonio, vieni suonare. Dai! Oh, your pardon, maisters. Are you still questioning him?’

  ‘No, we’ve done,’ said Gil, and nodded to the lutenist, who hurried up the steps and past James Campbell without a backward glance. ‘Good of John to spare him for a quarter-hour.’

  ‘I think you were wasting your time. If a broken man knifed Bess under his nose,’ said James, ‘Antonio would see nothing. He’s a rare good lutenist, but that’s all I can say for him.’

  He withdrew, slamming the door with finality. Gil and the mason looked at one another.

  ‘Let us go and enquire of your uncle,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I feel sure he will provide us something to drink.’

  ‘The man is certainly afraid,’ said Gil thoughtfully, moving towards the gate.

  ‘Did we ask the right questions?’ wondered the mason.

  ‘I keep asking myself that,’ Gil admitted, ‘but I think in this case we would have got no different answers. Niente, niente,’ he quoted, crossing Rottenrow.

  ‘But is he afraid,’ said Maistre Pierre, avoiding a pig which was chasing two hens, ‘because he is guilty, or because he knows who else is guilty?’

  ‘Or is he afraid of being suspected, or of casting suspicion?’ Gil countered, and opened his uncle’s front door.

  Canon Cunningham was seated by the fire in the hall, reading as usual, but set his book aside and rose when he saw the guest. Gil, bowing, began to introduce the mason, but his uncle cut across that.

  ‘We have met more than once. Good evening, Maister Mason. I hope I see you well?’

  ‘Except for these confounded flowers,’ said the mason, sneezing again. ‘Good evening, sir.’

  ‘Gilbert, Maggie’s in the kitchen. Bid her fetch ale for our guest.’

  ‘No need, maister.’ Maggie appeared in the doorway to the kitchen stairs, a tray in her hands. ‘I brought mine as well, seeing it was poured.’ She set the tray on a stool and began to draw others forward to the fire. ‘Maister Gil will be wanting to hear about Sempill’s idea of a funeral feast, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘You listen too much, Maggie,’ said the Official.

  ‘That was a remarkable funeral; said Maistre Pierre, accepting a beaker of ale. ‘I had not witnessed that wailing over the dead before. A local custom, I hear.’

  ‘Aye,’ said David Cunningham grimly. ‘And they’d have been better to keep quiet. Someone in Sempill’s household understood fine what was said, and I was questioned about the bairn. Fortunately I could say I knew nothing.’

  The gallowglass brothers are Erschemen,’ Gil pointed out.

  ‘And that Euphemia Campbell speaks their tongue,’ Maggie said. ‘I heard her, rattling away with one of them. Seems she speaks Italian and all, for I heard her with the wee dark lutenist. And Campbell of Glenstriven too.’ She nudged the mason with a plate of girdle-cakes. ‘Take a pancake, maister. My granny’s receipt.’

  ‘But did you learn anything, sir?’ Gil asked hopefully.

  ‘Not to say learn,’ the Canon said, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. ‘Elizabeth Stewart or Sempill’s tocher I think was in coin or kind, which simplifies that.’

  ‘ocher?’ queried the mason. ‘I would say her dot, her dowry. Is it equivalent in law?’

  ‘Her bride-portion, aye.’ Canon Cunningham nodded approvingly, as at a bright student, and continued, ‘It is clear that there is also property in Bute. Some of it was Mistress Stewart’s own outright, some of it was left her by her first husband -‘

  ‘I never knew she was married before,’ said Maggie.

  The Official glared at her and continued, ‘And some of it was the conjunct fee from her kin.’

  ‘Land given them jointly in respect of their marriage,’ Gil translated for Maistre Pierre, who nodded, absently taking another girdle-cake.

  ‘However,’ continued the Official, ‘it is not clear who now has control over these properties. Even if Mistress Stewart made a will, and disposed of nothing which it was not her right to dispose of, we have still to consider the questions of the bairn’s inheritance, the conjunct fee property, and the precise terms of her first man’s will.’

  Gil, recognizing the tone of voice, settled back. Not for nothing did his uncle lecture at the College from time to time. Maggie was less patient.

  ‘So will that be written down somewhere?’ she demanded. ‘And will it tell us who put a knife into the poor woman?’

  ‘Not immediately,’ said Canon Cunningham, put off his stride. ‘But it may tell us who benefits from her death.’

  ‘The information may be in her box,’ said Gil. ‘I was on the point of opening it this morning when something else happened. It is at the harper’s lodging.’

  ‘At my lodging,’ corrected Maistre Pierre. ‘Alys sent Wattie for it.’

  ‘It must certainly be opened,’ agreed the Official. ‘There is of course the further point that, whoever finally benefits, and this is not immediately clear, the person who knifed Mistress Sempill may have been under the erroneous impression that he would be a beneficiary.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You mean he might not have been
aware of the bairn’s existence,’ Gil said. ‘I agree, sir.’

  ‘It’s all mixter-maxter,’ complained Maggie. ‘You’ve made things worse, maister.’

  ‘And we still have no proof it was someone of that household,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘although I do not know who else it could be.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Maggie, ‘seeing I found this.’

  She dug in the placket of her capacious skirt and produced, from whatever pocket lurked there, a bundle of grimy cloth. This she unfolded to reveal a limp object which she planted triumphantly on the stool in front of her in a waft of rotting cabbage smells. Maistre Pierre snatched the plate of girdle-cakes away and peered past it.

  ‘Bones of St Peter, what is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘The purse?’ said Gil.

  Maggie nodded. ‘The purse.’

  ‘A purse,’ the Official corrected. ‘Where, Maggie?’

  ‘On the midden. That’s why it stinks a bit; she admitted, ‘it was on a heap of kale. Why throw away a perfectly good purse, maister, only because the strings is cut? Someone with a bad conscience pitched it there.’

  ‘Particularly since John Sempill can work leather,’ Gil observed. ‘He could mend it readily enough if it was his own.’

  ‘It’s empty; Maggie said regretfully.

  ‘Well; said the mason. ‘At last, something concrete.’

  ‘Anything else, Maggie?’ Gil asked.

  ‘A lot of gossip,’ she said. ‘Marriott Kennedy’s a terrible gossip, which is no more than you’d expect from a woman who keeps a kitchen like yon. A lot of gossip, and most of it not to the point.’ She cast her mind back. ‘She was telling me how long Mistress Campbell’s been visiting the house. Since the year of the siege at Dumbarton, she said, only it was the autumn. And she’d known Sempill well for a year or more before that.’

  ‘The siege was in ‘89,’ Maistre Pierre supplied.

  ‘Near three years, then,’ said Gil.

  ‘As Sempill’s mistress?’ asked Canon Cunningham.

  ‘So she had me understand. Her brother’s as bad, Marriott says. Aye out in the town after the servant lassies, for all he’s a married man. And it seems now Mistress Campbell’s no content with Sempill, for Marriott keeps finding the tags off someone else’s points in her chamber.’