The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Oh, aye?’ said the Official hopefully. ‘And whose might they be?’

  ‘That wee lutenist. The Italian.’

  ‘Well!’ said David Cunningham, in some pleasure. ‘Do you say so?’

  ‘Did you learn anything else?’ said Gil, before his uncle could begin to explore this topic. ‘Or find the plaid? The cross?’

  ‘I never got into her chamber,’ said Maggie apologetically, ‘though I tried, for that Mally Murray that calls herself her waiting-woman was fussing about seeing to her clothes. I never saw a sign of the plaid elsewhere in the house. There were other plaids in plenty, in any colour you can name, but not a blink of that green.’

  She turned her head, listening.

  ‘Is that someone in my kitchen? Your pardon, maisters.’

  She rose, setting down her ale, and made for the kitchen stairs. Gil prodded the purse, and teased out the strings which had hung it to its owner’s belt.

  ‘Cut,’ he said. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘It shows a connection with that household,’ Maistre Pierre observed.

  ‘If it is the dead woman’s purse,’ reminded the Official.

  Maggie’s voice on the stair preceded her entry into the hall.

  ‘Come away up, ye daft laddie, and tell Maister Gil your message to his face.’

  ‘A message for me?’ Gil turned as she dragged the mason’s man Luke in by his wrist.

  ‘Here’s this laddie sent with a word for Maister Gil,’ she reported, ‘and trying to teach it to wee William, that can hardly remember his own name, rather than come up and disturb us.’

  ‘Bring him in then,’ said the Official.

  ‘And it’s for the maister too,’ mumbled Luke, trying to cling to the doorpost.

  ‘Then come in, Luke, since Maister Cunningham gives you leave,’ said his master, ‘and tell us what your word is.,

  ‘It’s from the mistress,’ said Luke, bobbing. ‘I was to find Maister Cunningham and yourself, and tell you, Bridie Miller’s no been seen since she went to the market this morning, and now they’ve picked her up dead in Blackfriars yard. Mistress Hamilton’s in a rare taking, and I’ve to come home after I’ve tellt you.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘She was certainly in the market this morning,’ said Alys, patting Mistress Hamilton’s hand.

  ‘She never came back,’ sobbed Mistress Hamilton, ‘and I had to make Andrew’s dinner without the beets she was to bring.’

  ‘Did any of the other girls go with her?’ Gil asked uncomfortably. Alys threw him an approving smile, and Mistress Hamilton wiped her eyes on one long end of her linen headdress, hiccuping.

  ‘They all went,’ she said, ‘but they came back by their lones. They do that, they tarry, if they’ve met a friend, or a sweetheart. She was a good girl, she knew the beets were for the dinner, she’d have brought them straight back.’ She dissolved into tears again. ‘Alys, what can have happened?’

  ‘Where is she?’ asked the mason. ‘Did they bring her back here?’

  ‘Come ben and see her.’ Mistress Hamilton rose, still dabbing at her eyes, and led them out across the yard, past the silent kitchen and into a store-room in one of the other outhouses. One of the dead girl’s colleagues rose from her knees and stepped back as they entered. ‘It’s not right, laying her here, but it’s quiet, and fine and cold. Oh, the poor lass!’

  ‘Where was she found?’ Gil asked, drawing back the linen. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A corner of Blackfriars yard. Dear knows what she was doing there, she’d gone down to the market, she’d pass the house on the way back up before she got to Blackfriars. Mally Bowen that washed her says she was stabbed. She thought maybe sometime between Sext and Nones, by the way she was stiffening.’

  ‘She looks as if it was quick,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She had not been forced, then?’

  ‘Mally says not. But she’d been robbed. The money I gave her to go to the market - a couple of groats, no more - that wasny on her.’

  Gil looked down at Bridie Miller. Young, moderately pretty, quite ordinary, she lay as if asleep on the board set up to receive her, and kept her secret.

  ‘May I see the wound?’ he asked. Alys glanced quickly at him, and stepped forward past Mistress Hamilton’s flustered exclamations.

  ‘It’s very like the one that killed Mistress Stewart,’ she said, ‘save that it is at the front.’ She drew the shroud further back, exposing the rigid hands with their bitten nails, crossed and bound neatly over the girl’s belly. Under one muscular upper arm, just below the girl’s small breast, a narrow blue-lipped wound showed between two ribs. Gil bent close to study it, smelling the harsh soap Mally Bowen had used to wash the body. He sniffed, and sniffed again.

  ‘There is, isn’t there; said Alys. Just a trace of a scent.’

  ‘Like a privy,’ said Gil. ‘And something else as well.’

  ‘She’d void herself,’ Mistress Hamilton pointed out practically, and wiped her eyes again.

  ‘Mally must have washed that off,’ Alys said. Gil leaned over the corpse, sniffing.

  ‘It’s on her hair; he said finally. ‘Mally wouldn’t wash that. It smells of …’ He tested the air again. ‘Aye, like a privy. Stale. Not from when she voided herself but older, like the spillage outside a dyer’s shop. But there’s something else.’ He frowned. ‘It’s familiar, but I can’t place it.’

  Maistre Pierre came forward curiously, peered at the wound, and sniffed cautiously at the lank brown locks coiled by the dead girl’s shoulders.

  ‘How did she wear her hair?’ he asked, and sneezed.

  ‘Like any other lass,’ said Mistress Hamilton. ‘Loose down her back, with a little kerchief tied over it for going outside.’

  ‘Is her kerchief here?’

  ‘It’s yonder,’ said the maidservant still standing by the wall, pointing at the side of the room. Gil looked around, and found a pile of garments on a barrel.

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Aye, likely. Yes, take it, if you need it.’ There were voices out in the yard, and Agnes Hamilton turned her head. ‘That’s likely the serjeant. He sent word he’d come by before he had his supper.’

  Gil hastily folded the kerchief and stowed it in his pouch as Serjeant Anderson proceeded into the store-room.

  ‘Good evening, maisters,’ he said, nodding. ‘What’s all this then? One dead lass, as notified.’ He touched Bridie’s cold cheek with a massive hand, twitched back the linen shroud to look at the wound, and nodded again. ‘Aye, aye. She’s dead, for certain. Between Sext and Nones, eh? A wee foreign kind of knife, would it be, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gil despite himself.

  ‘Found in Blackfriars yard, you tell me,’ said the serjeant, covering the corpse’s face again. ‘Simple enough. Knifed in Blackfriars yard this forenoon by some foreigner, no doubt when she wouldny do his will. Murder chaud- melle. A lesson to all Glasgow lassies no to take up with foreigners. No offence, maister,’ he said belatedly to the mason, who eyed him quizzically, and sneezed.

  ‘But is that -‘ Gil began.

  The serjeant smiled indulgently. ‘See, Maister Cunningham, I’ve a burgh to watch and ward. I’ve no time to run about the streets asking questions. Now, once I’ve called to mind what foreigners are in Glasgow the now, I can lift someone for it, and get a confession, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘But suppose he was somewhere else at the time?’ said Gil helplessly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This man you’re going to seize for the killing.’

  ‘How could he have been elsewhere,’ said Serjeant Anderson, ‘when he was in Blackfriars yard knifing Bridie Miller? Now, I’ve more to do than stand around all evening. God save ye, maisters.’

  He raised his bonnet to them, and left. Gil stared after him, and Agnes Hamilton drew a gusty breath.

  ‘I must set someone to watch,’ she said. ‘The lassies are barely fit for it, what with the last two-three days. Alys, Maister Mason, Gil
, I must not keep you. You’ve been good neighbours. Candles,’ she muttered, leading the way from the store-room. ‘Flowers. Would St Thenew’s send someone to watch?’

  She ushered them out with incoherent thanks and shut the door with great firmness behind them. Out on the step, at the head of the Hamiltons’ handsome fore-stair, they all paused, Gil watching the serjeant’s back retreating towards the Tolbooth as he headed majestically for home and supper. Alys said, ‘I think she was no more than eighteen.’

  ‘Hush a moment,’ said her father softly. ‘Maister Cunningham, look here.’

  Gil turned to look up the High Street. There were not many people abroad, although it was still full daylight, but a few stalwarts drifted from door to door in search of variety in their evening’s drinking. Among them, conspicuously sober and wearing a short gown of blue velvet which must have cost a quarter’s rents, was James Campbell of Glenstriven.

  ‘He has seen us,’ said Maistre Pierre. The comment was unnecessary . Gil had also recognized the tiny pause in the sauntering gait. He moved forward, to descend the forestair, and Campbell altered direction to meet him, waving his blue velvet hat in a bow. The dark hair was receding unkindly up his high forehead.

  ‘What, are you still at your questions? Don’t say you suspect Andrew Hamilton?’ he asked, with slightly artificial lightness.

  ‘No,’ said Gil, as Alys and her father came down the stair behind him. ‘But someone suspected Bridie Miller of knowing too much.’

  The handsome, narrow face froze.

  ‘Bridie Miller?’ Campbell repeated. ‘Is Bridie dead? But she - are you saying that’s the girl that was in St Mungo’s yard?’

  ‘The point is that she wasn’t in St Mungo’s,’ Gil reiterated. ‘She had quarrelled with Maister Mason’s laddie before Easter. Someone else was in St Mungo’s yard with the boy, and not Bridie. Nevertheless, she is dead.’

  ‘Poor lassie,’ said Campbell, with a hollow note to his voice. ‘What happened? When was this?’

  ‘She was found stabbed in Blackfriars yard,’ said Maistre Pierre behind Gil.

  ‘Stabbed,’ repeated James Campbell. ‘Like Bess, you mean? Then surely the same broken man or - When did this happen?’

  ‘She never came back from the market this morning,’ said Gil.

  ‘Oh,’ said Campbell, his face changing.

  ‘Do you know something to the purpose?’ asked the mason. James Campbell glanced at him and shook his head.

  ‘She was found this evening.’ Gil gestured down the hill. ‘Are you for the lower town? Maister Mason goes home, I believe.’

  ‘Poor wee trollop,’ said Campbell. ‘Had she been forced?’

  ‘It seems not.’

  Campbell looked about him, and frowned.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I must away back up the hill. I am forgetting. I - I’m to meet Sempill before Compline. Good e’en to ye, maisters. Good e’en, demoiselle.’

  He raised the hat again, bent the knee briefly and strode off rapidly up the High Street, the breadths of velvet in the back of his gown swinging.

  ‘That is a very unpleasant man,’ said Alys, ‘and his eyes are too close together, but I think he was upset to hear about Bridie.’

  ‘I thought so too,’ said Gil.

  Maistre Pierre tucked his daughter’s hand under his arm, and drew her down the street, saying with rough sympathy, ‘You go home now and help Catherine. She is still praying for Davie, no?’

  ‘She is.’ Alys looked up at him. ‘What did you think of that man, father?’

  ‘He was hiding something,’ said the mason firmly.

  Gil, with a covert look over his shoulder, said, ‘He has just stepped into Greyfriars’ Wynd. I wonder where he is meeting Sempill?’

  ‘We have already questioned him,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘and I can think of a better errand.’

  ‘Where are you going, father?’

  ‘There is yet an hour to Compline; said the mason, glancing at the sky. Maister lawyer, are you of a mind with me?’

  ‘We must find Annie Thomson,’ Gil agreed. ‘Thirsty, are you?’

  ‘I knew I could depend on you.’ Maistre Pierre stopped outside his own house, and patted his daughter’s hand. ‘Go in, ma mie, and we will go drinking. You will not be shocked, I hope.’

  ‘Catherine says one should never be shocked by the things men do,’ she reported primly. ‘I wish I could come to the ale-house too.’

  ‘Now Maister Cunningham will be shocked,’ reproved her father. She smiled wryly, tilting her face to share the joke with Gil.

  ‘Women are always restricted in what they can do,’ she complained. ‘Like priests. You must make the most of this visit, Maister Cunningham, for you won’t be able to make many more. You should join the Franciscans or the Blackfriars instead of being a priest - they like the inside of an ale-house, by what I hear.’

  ‘If we are not back, you do not go to Compline. Understood?’

  ‘Luke and Thomas -‘

  ‘Understood?’

  ‘Very well, father.’ She kissed him. ‘Will you both come in later?’

  ‘There is Mistress Stewart’s box to inspect,’ said Gil, speaking quietly, although they were using French. ‘I would like to do that before the day’s end.’

  ‘Then I shall see you later.’ She smiled at him, and slipped into the shadowy tunnel of the pend. The mason watched her fondly out of sight, and turned to go on down the hill.

  ‘Is the demoiselle truly only sixteen?’ Gil asked, falling into step beside him. ‘She seems much older.’

  ‘She will be seventeen on St John’s Eve,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Her mother was prettier, but I think Alys is a little the wiser.’ He sighed. ‘Who would be a father?’

  They passed the Tolbooth and Gil said, ‘What do you think about this second killing?’

  ‘I think it is either connected or coincidence,’ said the mason, ‘and I do not believe in coincidence. Well, maybe I do,’ he conceded, ‘but not here. And you?’

  ‘I agree.’ Gil tucked his hands behind his back under his gown. ‘The means of killing looked very similar. To get close enough to kill in that way one must be trusted, or much stronger than one’s victim, I suppose, and there were no bruises on her wrists. I would have liked to look further. I wish we had seen her before she was washed.’

  ‘Before she was lifted from Blackfriars yard would have been better,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And why was she killed? She knew nothing.’

  ‘Either she knew more than she realized -‘

  ‘Or we, indeed.’

  ‘Or we. Or as I said to James Campbell, her killer did not know it was the wrong lass. In which case we are respons ible for her death.’ They paused, looking at one another in dismay.

  ‘Who knew we were searching for her?’ asked the mason.

  ‘Your man Luke told Alys who she was,’ said Gil, pacing onward. ‘All her household knew it when Alys learned that she had quarrelled with the boy, although they may not have been paying attention,’ he added, recalling the scene in the Hamilton’ yard. ‘But she went on talking about it. Alys said she was at the market today, very full of her narrow escape.’

  ‘Poor lass,’ said the mason after a moment. ‘And little older than Alys, by what Agnes says. So who could have killed her? Do we look for the same person?’

  ‘Serjeant Hamilton is looking for a foreigner,’ Gil reminded him. We are hunting off our own land down here.’

  ‘Aye, true. So would we be looking for the same person? In hypothesis?’

  ‘In hypothesis, yes. The existence in the one small burgh of two killers, with two causes for killing, using the same means and method, is not a reasonable postulate.’

  ‘I saw John Sempill coming down the hill as I went up this morning.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘After Prime? Maybe later. He and his - cousin, is it? - the fair-haired man who came to the burial - they passed the cross at the Wyndhead to go down as I went
up, talking loud about black velvet and leather for a girth. Did you say Sempill works leather? Does he use a knife?’

  ‘Aye. I saw the tools, and some harness he was working on. I would say the knife was the right shape, but too short in the blade.’

  ‘I suppose so, but we should bear it in mind.’ Maistre Pierre paused on the crown of the bridge to look down at the water forty feet below. ‘We have not simplified matters, have we? The more we look, the more complicated it gets.’

  ‘My mother embroiders bed curtains,’ said Gil, and got a startled look. He drew his companion into one of the boat-shaped niches in the parapet as a late cart ground its way up the long slope from the Gorbals side. ‘When the cat gets at her thread, it falls into knots and tangles, and I have to untangle it. The best method is to loosen this, and tease at that, and the tangle gets bigger and takes in more thread, and then suddenly you find the end and you can unravel the whole.’

  ‘I see,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘So we are not hunting, we are untangling things. Your mother is yet living, then?’

  ‘She and my two youngest sisters live on her dower lands by Lanark.’ Gil leaned on the parapet, looking at the green banks of the river in the evening light. ‘Let us consider this morning. The girl who has died was at the market,’ he said carefully, conscious of ready ears passing as people crossed the bridge to go home or to go out drinking. ‘We know that from several sources. Who else was there?’

  ‘Most of the women of the burgh,’ Maistre Pierre pointed out. Gil ignored him.

  ‘You saw two of - of the quarry at the Wyndhead. I saw two more in the market.’ He gestured quickly, sketching a man’s jack and helm, and Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘That was just before I met the lady and her escort. Oh, and her brother whom we saw just now. Assuming that her waiting-woman was not -‘

  ‘Can we assume anything?’

  ‘True. Well, the waiting-woman was probably not in the town this morning, since they had a funeral feast to arrange, but seven others of the household were. The men I saw were likely gathering information.’