The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Well,’ said Sir William. ‘And how can I help you? What do you need to know?’

  ‘Tell me about Bess Stewart; Gil said. ‘Did you know her, sir?’

  ‘I baptized them both. Bonny bairns they were, too, her and her sister. Well-schooled, obedient lassies, able to read and write their names, modest and well-behaved for all their mother died when they were young.’ He sighed. ‘I wedded her to Edward Stewart, and I witnessed his will. He was a good man, and a loving husband to her. Then her good-brother handfasted her to the man Sempill, after Edward died, and I think she was never happy again.’

  ‘You witnessed her first husband’s will,’ Gil repeated. ‘Do you remember the terms? How was the outright bequest worded?’

  ‘Oh, I canny mind that. It was near ten years ago; Dalrymple pointed out. ‘She’d lose the tierce when she remarried, of course, but there was the house, and I suppose the use of the furnishings.’

  ‘That would be the house she left when she ran off with the harper,’ said the mason, cutting another slice off the pie.

  ‘Aye, it was. That was a mystery.’

  ‘Tell us about it,’ Gil prompted. ‘It was November, wasn’t it? Before Martinmas?’

  ‘It was,’ said Dalrymple, giving him a startled glance. ‘Janet McKirdy the Provost’s wife was full of guilt after it happened, for they’d met in her house at Allhallows E’en when she had the guizers’ play acted in the yard. Then not ten days later the harper left in a night, and Bess Stewart with him.’

  ‘And what was the mystery?’ asked the mason, chewing. ‘What was it that must be cleared up?’

  ‘Why, the money,’ said Sir William. ‘She took every penny there was in the house away with her, and the plate, and her jewels, but the next we heard she was in Edinburgh, and living on the harper’s earnings. Whether she’d lost it, or spent it, or given it away, nobody knows.’

  ‘There was no money in her box,’ said Gil. ‘How much plate would this be?’

  ‘Edward Stewart was cousin to Ninian Stewart the Provost,’ said Sir William. ‘He was a bien man, very comfortable. I remember a considerable amount of plate when I was in the house. All silver, of course, gold’s not to be found in Rothesay, except when the King’s in residence, but nevertheless …’ He took the last roasted onion and bit into it reflectively. ‘Twenty-five or thirty pounds weight, maybe.’

  The mason whistled.

  ‘Did his kin not reclaim it when she remarried?’ Gil asked.

  ‘They tried to, but the man Sempill resisted. It was to come to the head court in the February. They made an inventory, and lodged it with Alexander Stewart, and got Sempill to sign it as well. We’re honest folk on Bute, maisters. Well, mostly.’

  ‘How would she carry that much?’ the mason wondered. ‘It is a great burden, even as far as the shore.’

  ‘Oh, she’d not go by the shore,’ said Sir William. ‘You can wait days for the right wind, in November. They would go round by Rhubodach, to the ferry.’

  ‘When was all this discovered?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Not till the morning. Her good-brother came calling, and found the servants in disarray, and her chamber door shut. It seems she’d barred it with a kist and climbed out of the window. He raised a band to follow, but they’d made good time and she was off the island, so he turned back. Once they got in among the hills, there’d be little hope of finding them.’

  ‘Burdened by a chest containing twenty-five or thirty pounds of silver,’ said Gil, ‘as well as money and jewels, they had made such good time that a mounted band could not catch them?’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘It is strange, when you look at it,’ admitted Sir William.

  ‘Who else lived in the house with her?’

  ‘She’d a waiting-woman, a kinswoman of some sort, and two-three kitchen girls, of course, and two outside men and a pair of swordsmen.’

  ‘So her kinswoman did not share her chamber? Quite a household.’ Gil pushed the crumbs of his bannock into a heap. ‘That is strange, for the harper’s sister never mentioned that Bess had money. Indeed, she told me that as soon as the bairn could be left, Bess was helping to earn her keep.’

  ‘There was a bairn, was there? Poor Bess.’ Sir William looked blankly at the empty dishes. ‘Is that all the food there was? Come and leave your scrips in my chamber, and I will lead you to Alexander Stewart.’

  The lawyer, it seemed, lived away up the Kirkgait. Having left their baggage in the priest’s stuffy chamber in the loft above the chapel, they went out at the postern, into the busy little town.

  There were still a lot of people about, even this late in the afternoon, men from the foreshore in tarry jerkin and hose, shipmasters and merchants in furred woollen gowns and felt hats, Highlanders in shirt and belted plaid. The women gossiping at one street corner wore checked gowns like Ealasaidh’s, those at the next were in good wool. Many of the passers-by greeted Sir William, who had a name and a blessing for everyone.

  They turned inland and walked round the castle walls, passing the mercat cross where a man with a tabor and pipe had an audience of children and time-wasters. Sir William, ignoring this, pointed out one of the stone houses as the Provost’s.

  ‘Same stone as the castle,’ said the mason. ‘I know that soft stuff. You can shape it with axes.’ He stopped. ‘Maister Cunningham, do you need me to help you talk to a lawyer?’

  ‘I could likely manage without you.’

  ‘Then I will go and walk about this burgh a little way. I can get back into the castle, no?’

  Armed with the password for the day, he set off briskly for the shore, and Gil and the stout priest went on inland, Sir William still nodding to passers-by.

  ‘I wonder is the Provost here any kin of Stewart of Minto who is Provost of Glasgow,’ Gil speculated. ‘I know they say All Stewarts areny sib to the King, but are they all sib to one another?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Sir William seriously. ‘Although I believe a cousin of Janet McKirdy’s wedded one of the Stewarts of Minto a few years back. And that is Bess Stewart’s own house,’ he continued, pausing casually a few tofts along before a substantial timber-framed building, set back from the roadway. Before it, at some time, someone had made a small pleasure-garden, which was now struggling against the depredations of the roving hens. ‘It seems she got out of that window there.’

  Gil eyed the window. It was just under the thatch, twenty feet above the ground, and the shuttered lower portion was no more than eighteen inches deep.

  ‘Was there a rope?’ he asked. ‘Or marks of a ladder? What time would this have been?’

  ‘You think she might not have climbed down? I thought the same,’ confessed Sir William. ‘And another thing I thought was, a woman’s kirtle is a lot of cloth. Would it all fit through there?’

  ‘Did you mention this at the time?’

  ‘What would be the point? She’d run off, poor lass, and her kin were pinning their mouths up about it. Who was I to argue with her good-brother’s version?’

  Gil nodded absently, studying the house. It was not being well maintained. He could see several places where the clay and plaster infill between the sturdy timbers of the frame was crumbling under its limewash, exposing the wattle.

  That rose will be through the wall shortly,’ he commented. ‘What is it, a white one? We have one in Rottenrow which spreads like that. Who was covering up for whom, I wonder?’

  ‘I wondered if her sister might have helped her,’ said Dalrymple. ‘It would be a sin, of course, to help a woman to leave her lawful husband, but they were very close. If Bess asked for help Mariota would give it. I thought likely Mariota’s man suspected that had happened, for he dosed up his own house in Rothesay, just down yonder, and moved all out to the farm at Ettrick. He would beat her for it himself rather than have it known publicly that he couldn’t control her.’

  ‘The waiting-woman knew nothing?’ Gil swung his foot at a hen which was inspecting
his boots. It flapped away, squawking, and two more hurried over to see what it had found.

  ‘She slept at the back of the house. The first she heard was when the servants woke her.’ The priest’s breathing had settled down. He moved on, walking slowly among the homeward-bound workers. ‘It’s let now, of course. Probably for a good rent, it’s a good family in it. Another cousin of Ninian Stewart’s. No, I have it wrong, a cousin of his wife’s.’

  There were a few more timber-framed houses, none quite as grand as Bess Stewart’s house, interspersed with long low cottages of field stones. Beyond these were even lower structures which, to Gil’s astonishment, proved to be composed of alternating layers of turf and stone, their roofs turfed over and sprouting happily. Women in loose chequered gowns called in Gaelic from house to house as they passed, until they came to one with two goats tethered above the door, and four or five half-naked children in successive sizes tumbling in the street next to its rounded end.

  ‘This is Alexander’s house,’ said Sir William, turning off the main track towards the door. The children halted their playing to stare as he shouted something in Gaelic.

  There was a reply from within, and the leather curtain across the doorway swung back. A woman in a plaid and a checked gown stared at them, then made a gesture of invitation with a dignity quite unimpaired by the fact that she was barefoot and had a sucking child in the crook of her other arm.

  .Inside the house the smell was almost solid. To the right, clearly, the goats, the hens and at least one cow spent their nights.To the left a peat fire glowed on a square hearth, and by its light a man rose from a stool and bowed to them. He was clad, like the harper, in a saffron shirt and buskins. Several of the children squeezed in past Gil to crowd into a corner, watching the guests with big dark eyes. The priest offered a blessing, to which they all said fervently ‘Amen!’ with a strange turn to the vowels. Then he made a speech, apparently introducing Gil and explaining his errand.

  I can speak Latin,’ said the man of the house at length. ‘It is a sight of the title deeds to Bess Stewart’s property you are after, yes?’

  ‘I need to know who benefits,’ Gil said. At the sound of his voice the children giggled, and their father turned and spoke sharply in Gaelic. They sobered immediately. ‘The title deeds, the terms of Edward Stewart’s will, Bess’s father’s will, the conjunct fee or whatever it was, Bess’s own will if she made one. I need to know what happens to all that property now, because I suspect that is how I will learn who killed Bess Stewart.’

  ‘You don’t ask much,’ said the other man drily. ‘I have the title deeds and the two wills here in one of the protocol books, I can be finding them for you in a little while, but the other, the conjunct fee, I never drew up. I can tell you it was conjunct fee, it will certainly be going to the husband now, but I have not the details. And if she was making a will, it was not when she was in Rothesay. I have no knowledge of such a thing.’ He looked about him, and spoke to the children. Two of them dragged a long bench near the fire. ‘Be seated, guests in my house, and the woman of the house will bring you something. I will be looking for the papers.’

  He threw a brief word to the woman, who was settling the baby in a strong-smelling nest of sheepskins at the foot of what must be their bed. She straightened up, fastening her gown, and moved to a carved court-cupboard opposite the door. Her man made for the shadows in the corner, and began to search in a kist full of books and papers.

  The refreshment proved to be oatcakes with green cheese, and usquebae in a pewter cup. Gil drank his share of the spirit off quickly, to get it over with, and to his dismay was handed another cupful. The oatcakes were light and crisp, and the cheese was excellent. He said as much to the woman, and got a blank smile, until Sir William translated. The smile broadened, and she offered him more, but he refused in dumbshow, fearing he might be eating the children’s supper.

  ‘There is plenty,’ Sir William assured him. ‘Mairead makes excellent oatcakes.’

  Gil was about to answer when two more of the children tumbled in from the street shouting in Gaelic. A man’s voice spoke indistinctly outside and Gil turned to listen, sure he knew the accents. The woman, pulling her plaid over her head, slipped out past the tall desk which stood at the light, and. Gil heard her speaking softly beyond the leather curtain.

  ‘Here it is, maister,’ said Alexander Stewart. He brought an armful of books forward into the firelight. ‘If we take it to the door there will be light for reading.’

  He moved to the door, and pulled back the curtain. Gil, following him, was aware of swift movement and the certainty that someone had ducked round the end of the house. The woman went past them into the shadows, to offer Sir William another oatcake, and the lawyer opened one of the books on the desk to show Gil his own copy of the first of the documents.

  ‘Torquil Stewart of Ettrick,’ he said. ‘His will. You see, he left his property divided between the two daughters, held in their own right, to leave as they see fit.’

  ‘This is very clear,’ said Gil. ‘A nice piece of work.’

  ‘He was very clear about his wishes himself,’ said Maister Stewart modestly. Seen by daylight, he was dark of hair and eye like his children, the neatly combed elf-locks hanging round a pale, intent face. He seemed, Gil thought, to be not much past thirty. ‘He had raised his daughters to know how to run a property, he trusted them to go on as he had taught them. And this is Edward Stewart’s will,’ he continued, setting open another book. ‘More complicated, because more clauses, but in essence the same in respect of the property itself. The house outright to his wife Elizabeth, in her own right, to dispose of as she sees fit. The use of the contents of the house entire, with provision for it to be inventoried at his death, for the rest of her life. Requirement that she does not sell any item, and replaces items worn out or broken. All the liferent goods to revert to his kin after her death. In fact when the house was let the remainder of the contents went to Ninian Stewart like the residue of the estate.’

  ‘This matter of the plate and money is very strange,’ Gil said. He skimmed down the careful Latin sentences of Edward Stewart’s will, aware out of the tail of his eye of a steady sauntering of passers-by out in the street, as Maister Stewart’s neighbours came to admire his Latin conversation with the colleague from Glasgow. ‘There is no sign that she came to the harper with a fortune in her kist. If it were to surface, whose would it be?’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Alexander Stewart thoughtfully. ‘The plate would certainly be the Provost’s, like the furniture. The money I suspect was hers, or perhaps her husband’s. It would have been rent for the land at Kingarth and the two farms at Ettrick, all good land. Some of the rent would be in kind, you understand, and some in coin. As to jewellery, some of that would be paraphernal, and should return to her kin, or I suppose it now belongs to the bairn, but any the husband gave her would revert to him. All subject to discussion, I suspect. An interesting question, Maister Cunningham.’

  ‘Had she made a will herself?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Not one that I knew of, since her second marriage.’

  ‘I wish we had a copy of the conjunct settlement. What was the value of the two properties? You say the land at Kingarth is good? I had heard otherwise.’

  ‘I do not know who could have told you that,’ said Maister Stewart disapprovingly. ‘It is very good land. Further, it is beside the St Blane’s Fair gathering-place, so it is used for grazing and pound-land at the Fair, and the rents for that every year would ransom a galley. As for the other, it lies between the castle and the harbour, and is rented to two merchants for a good figure. One of them has built a barn on his portion.’

  ‘I saw it as we came into the bay. Trade through the burgh is rewarding, then?’

  ‘Rothesay is the only burgh in the Western Isles licensed to trade overseas,’ said Maister Stewart with some pride. This is why I moved here last year, to be closer to the centre of trade. There was no man of law here anyway,
I came here often or folk came to me in Inveraray to draw up documents, and after I lost two or three clients in bad weather I thought, well, well, better to move the inkstand than the mounting-block.’

  ‘Very wise. I hope it has been good for business.’ Gil, only half attending, looked from one will to the other. ‘These properties,’ he said slowly, ‘I think are now the bairn’s. There is no indication that either husband had a claim on them. Do you have paper to spare? Would you object to my having a true copy? I need to show them to John Sempill, and to my uncle, who acts for the bairn. And can you tell me who was the grantor of the conjunct fee? Who gave them these two valuable properties? And who is collecting the rents while Bess has been away from Bute?’

  The same man in both cases. Even if I did not draw up the deeds, I know that. It will be the good-brother. Her sister’s man, out at Ettrick.’

  ‘And who is he?’

  ‘Alexander makes a good living,’ said Sir William as they made their way back down towards the castle. The street was much quieter now, with only a last few townspeople making their way home before curfew. ‘He is the only man of law in Rothesay at present, and for some distance round about, and-he-is a good lawyer.’

  ‘Where did he study, do you know?’ Gil asked. ‘I meant to ask him, but we were so busy writing these copies that it slipped my mind.’

  ‘St Andrews, I think. Yes, surely. If it had been Glasgow I would have remembered, because he would have met David - your uncle. Yes, indeed, I am sure it was St Andrews. He is Master of Arts as well as Bachelor of Laws. He told me so.’

  ‘He is certainly a good lawyer, and his Latin is excellent. Why does he stay here? Could he not do better in Stirling or Edinburgh?’

  ‘I believe he is happy here. There is plenty of business. Besides, he is one of the wealthiest men in the burgh,’ said Sir William with vicarious pride.

  ‘Wealthy?’ said Gil despite himself.

  ‘Oh, yes. Did you not see the court-cupboard at the door, and that desk? Those, cost him a penny or two. He gives very generously to the poor, and they always have food on the table. I have eaten there myself when the Provost has been invited, and I am sure you could not have dined better in Glasgow. And he goes daily in that saffron shirt.’