The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  But his children played half-naked in the street, and they all slept under one roof with the cattle, like any poor peasant and his family. Could I live like that, Gil thought, if I remained a layman?

  Entering by the postern gate as the curfew bell began to ring across the burgh, Gil and the stout priest found Maistre Pierre seated in the castle courtyard enjoying the evening light and watching the guard detail gathering by the main gateway.

  ‘And was that helpful?’ he asked as they reached him.

  ‘Oh, very useful,’ said Dalrymple immediately. ‘Maister Stewart was very helpful, very helpful. Maister Cunningham has seen and copied all the documents he needs, I think. Forgive me, maisters, I must say Compline. I believe it is late.’

  ‘How was your walk?’

  ‘Interesting.’ The mason rose to follow Sir William into the chapel. ‘That cog at the wharf had lately been to Nantes. I had a word with her skipper.’

  Gil looked at him consideringly.

  ‘You have more news than that; he observed. ‘I can tell.’

  ‘I have indeed.’

  ‘And so have I. What is yours?’

  ‘Guess who I saw in the town?’

  Gil paused in the chapel doorway. A seagull screamed from the wall-walk, and then broke into a long derisive cackling. As well it might, he thought. I have been slow.

  ‘Was it by any chance,’ he said, suddenly sure of the half-heard voice at the door of the lawyer’s cottage, ‘was it one of the gallowglasses? Neil or Euan?’

  ‘It was,’ said the mason, slightly disappointed, ‘though I do not know which. Did you see him too?’

  ‘No, but I heard him. Now it is your turn. Can you guess who is Bess Stewart’s good-brother, the man who is collecting her rents and who granted the two properties in conjunct fee?’

  ‘Now that,’ said the mason triumphantly, ‘is easy. It must be James Campbell.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘But should one of us not stay in Rothesay,’ said the mason, ‘in the hope of laying hands on that gallowglass?’

  They were riding out of the burgh in the wake of one of the castle scullions, who had reluctantly volunteered, when cornered by Sir William after Sunday morning Mass, to guide them to Ettrick and the farm where Bess Stewart’s sister lived. Their mounts were the best the stout priest had been able to coax out of the stables, stocky, shaggy creatures with large unshod feet and no manners, and none was willing to go faster than a trot.

  Grinning shiftily, their guide had led them over the headland and round a broad sandy bay where the gorse bushes grew down close to the shore, and then turned inland. He appeared to know where he was going. They were now bumping along a track which appeared to lead westward through a broad shallow valley. The occasional spire of sweet blue peat-smoke suggested that the place was inhabited, but they had encountered nobody.

  ‘Whichever brother it was you saw yesterday, if we do not find him in Rothesay we can surely find him in Glasgow,’ said Gil. ‘I feel happier meeting Mistress Mariota Stewart with some company at my elbow. She may not yet know her sister is dead, poor lady.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the mason. ‘And apart from that, what do you wish to say to her?’

  ‘I wish to ask her where the money is.’ Gil looked about him. ‘This is good land. These cattle are sturdy and the crops look healthy, and that was a handsome tower-house we passed a while back.’

  ‘It is when you make remarks like that,’ said Maistre Pierre in resentful tones, ‘that I recall that you are of baronial stock. Do not change the subject. Are we riding into the wilds, on these appalling beasts, with a guide who does not speak Scots, merely to ask the lady where the money is? And which money, anyway?’

  ‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘Yes. And no. The money and plate which vanished when Bess did, and the rent for her land and the joint land. John Sempill doesn’t appear to be receiving much for it, from what he said, and it must be going somewhere.’

  ‘If it is going into James Campbell’s coffers, why should she tell us?’

  ‘A good point.’

  ‘How much further are we going? Do we enter those mountains?’ Maistre Pierre nodded towards the blue sawtoothed mass in the distance to their left.

  ‘Sir William said it was two-three miles. I think those mountains must be the next island, for there is the sea.’

  Their guide, whom Sir William had identified as Lachie Mor, turned and gave them a snaggle-toothed, shifty grin.

  ‘Arran,’ he said, pointing at the mountains. Then, pointing to the other side of their path, ‘Ettrick. Mistress Stewart. Agus Seumas Campbell,’ he added, with great feeling, and spat.

  ‘What is wrong with being a Campbell?’ asked Maistre Pierre curiously. ‘The Fury - the harper’s sister - felt the same way.’

  ‘If you’re a Campbell, nothing,’ said Gil. ‘But my understanding is that they all reserve their first allegiance for the Earl of Argyll, the head of the surname, and next to another Campbell. Local ties and feus, obligations to the lord they hold their land from, come a long way after. And since any Campbell worth the name can manipulate that position to his own benefit, many people distrust them. These two, of course - James and Euphemia - are the grandchildren of the present earl by one of his younger daughters, and so even closer.’

  ‘I suppose that accounts for the air one detects in both of them, of being accountable to no one else for their actions.’

  ‘You could be right,’ said Gil, much struck by this. Their guide, listening intently, nodded, spat again, and turned his pony off the track on to a narrower path, down towards a stony ford.

  ‘Ettrick,’ he said again, pointing to a thin column of blue smoke visible over the near skyline.

  The house, though not a tower-house, was at least stonebuilt, with shuttered windows tucked under its thatch, and contained a long hall and a small chamber at its far end, well away from the byre. Two little boys practising their letters were dismissed to see Seonaidh in a separate kitchen out the back, quite as if they were in Rothesay. Gil, seated on a morocco-leather backstool in front of Flemish verdure tapestry, sipped the inevitable usquebae out of a tiny footed Italian glass, eyed the woman opposite him and said carefully,

  ‘Mistress Stewart, what is the latest word that has reached you about your sister Bess?’

  Mariota Stewart, in her woollen gown and white kerchief, gazed back at him. She was unnervingly like her sister, with the same oval face, the same build and wellbred carriage, but Bess’s sweet expression was lacking. This woman looked out at a world which held no illusions for her.

  ‘Word of her death reached me yesterday, maister.’ Her voice was quite steady. ‘It was no surprise to me. Half the parish heard the washing at the ford yonder, on Tuesday night, so we were waiting for something of the sort.’ She sipped at her own glass. ‘I understand she was murdered.’

  ‘Yes. I found her. She had been stabbed, without struggling. She probably felt nothing.’

  The white kerchief bowed. After a moment, still quite steady, she said, ‘Thank you. Do you know who …?’

  ‘I am acting on behalf of St Mungo’s, to find out who. Maister Mason, here, is also concerned, in that it was on his building site that she was found.’

  Maistre Pierre offered some conventional words of sympathy, at which Mistress Stewart bowed her head again and said levelly, ‘If I can tell you anything that will help, ask it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Gil paused, and took a bite of yesterday’s oatcake to blot up the spirits. ‘Mistress, you and your sister both inherited land. The rents are clearly valuable, but your sister had not received hers since she left Bute. Can you tell me where the money might have gone?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘My husband collected them,’ she said, ‘coin and kind both. The grain and kye he would store, or maybe buy in, and the coin went to John Sempill, as was his legal right.’ Only the absence of expression conveyed what she thought about Sempill’s legal right.

  ‘And
yet,’ said Gil, equally expressionless, ‘John Sempill is convinced that Bess was receiving the rents of her own property, and also that the two conjunct properties, the land by the shore and the plot in Kingarth, are worthless. This suggests to me that very little rent is reaching him.’

  ‘I do not know how that can be,’ she said, and took refuge in the married woman’s defence. ‘My husband deals with all the money.’

  ‘How does the coin go to John Sempill?’ asked the mason. She flicked a glance at him, and considered.

  ‘If my husband is to go to Renfrewshire, it goes with him. Otherwise we send a couple of men. We have trustworthy servants.’

  ‘That would be the Campbell brothers,’ Gil prompted, and she nodded, taking his knowledge for granted. ‘So they take the money to John Sempill?’

  ‘Wherever he chances to be.’

  ‘Which of them brought you word yesterday?’

  ‘Neil,’ she said indifferently.

  ‘And which of them helped your sister to get out of her house, the night she left with the harper?’

  What does that have to do with -‘ She stopped, looking out of the window. ‘I suppose you need to know,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It might all have a bearing on the matter.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gil in some relief. She sighed.

  ‘Her husband - John - was in Renfrewshire, and Bess was here in Rothesay. Last time John was on Bute he had been - displeased, because the rents were less than he wanted. The factor had given the coin to James, and James counted it and gave it straight into his hand,’ she added, without seeming to hear what she was saying. ‘So John took it out on Bess. And the harper and her - it was like in the ballads, the old romances. One word together and it was as if they were the two halves of an apple. I tried to speak to her,’ she said, biting her lips, ‘but ‘she would not listen. I knew no good would come of it.’

  ‘If it’s of any comfort,’ Gil said gently, ‘she seems to have been happy while she was with the harper and his sister.’

  She smiled bitterly. ‘For a year and a half. Aye, well, it’s longer than some folk get. So anyway he was leaving and she would go with him. I made sure both the Campbell brothers were in Rothesay for her, and lent her a horse, one that would come back to me on its own from the ferry, and I hugged her and wished her Godspeed, for all she was going into sin, and went back to my own house that night, and I never saw her again.’ She stopped speaking and put the back of her hand across her mouth, apparently unaware that tears were pouring down her face. Gil reached out and touched her other hand.

  ‘Drink some usquebae, mistress,’_ he suggested.

  ‘Perhaps we should be going,’ said Maistre Pierre uncomfortably.

  ‘There is still something I need to ask.’

  Mistress Stewart poured herself another glass of spirits and took a gulp.

  ‘Ask it,’ she said.

  ‘The plate and money -‘

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I know nothing. I do not believe my sister took them with her, for the plate was not hers, and she was angry at John Sempill for not returning it to the Stewarts when she wedded him. She kept it, you understand, to make a good showing at the wedding, and then he insisted it was part of her tocher, though it was all clear in her first man’s will. She would not have taken it away. Nor any money that was not hers,’ she added. ‘Jewels, now, that was different, and our grandmother’s prayer-book that we learned our letters out of, but never a thing that was not hers.’

  ‘What do you suppose might have happened to it?’ Gil asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Ask Neil Campbell. It was him was there when James went in the morning to call on her. I think James suspected what we had done,’ she said, taking another mouthful of usquebae.

  ‘When did the horse come home?’ asked the mason.

  ‘That was what sent James round to her house. It came in as soon as the Gallowgait Port was opened in the morning, and one of the stablemen must have told him I’d lent it to Bess.’

  ‘What was the name of your sister’s waiting-woman?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t likely her. She was another of the Provost’s cousins, an auntie of Edward Stewart’s. She’d an interest in making sure it went back to her kin.’

  ‘I had wondered if she might have been your good-sister Euphemia.’

  ‘Her?’ Mariota Stewart looked genuinely startled by the idea. ‘Euphemia go for a waiting-woman? Not till the sky falls in! She’s got ideas beyond her means, that one. It was a great pity her man fell at Stirling, particularly with him being on the wrong side.’

  ‘I thought Chancellor Argyll was for the present King,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘with all his kin.’

  ‘Someone married Euphemia to the wrong man. He was a Murray, and hot-headed like all of them, so Euphemia trying to argue with him only brought him out the more strongly for the late King. So her ladyship had to see all the property she’d married him for handed over to the Crown in fines. What she lives on now I don’t know. To be honest,’ she confided, taking another sip of usquebae, ‘I don’t care either. She’s not a nice woman, with her airs and her graces, and her fancy clothes, and her scent to her own receipt, that smells of something else when it gets stale. She’s not a nice woman at all, and I don’t like her round my bairns.’

  She sighed, and hiccuped.

  ‘Where is my sister laid?’

  ‘In Greyfriars kirkyard,’ said Gil gently. ‘Maister Mason and I were at the burial. It was well attended, by Sempill’s kin and the harper’s friends, and she was properly keened. There area number of Ersche speakers in Glasgow.’

  She nodded, and went on nodding for some time before she collected herself and said formally, ‘Will you eat, maisters?’

  ‘No, no, I thank you,’ said Gil, getting to his feet. The mason did likewise, and she sat looking from one to the other. ‘We must get back to Rothesay and find Neil Campbell. Mistress …’ He hesitated, looking down at her. ‘Did Neil tell you that there was a bairn?’

  ‘Why are we being sidetracked by this money and plate?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Is it relevant? Will it tell us who stabbed Bess Stewart in my building site?’

  ‘I feel it is involved,’ said Gil, hitching his plaid up against the fine smirr of rain. ‘I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to see a pattern. One name keeps coming to our attention.’

  ‘How does he benefit?’

  ‘If Campbell of Glenstriven has been diverting the rents to his own use rather than give them to Sempill, it was in his interest to prevent Sempill speaking to Bess.’

  ‘Killing her is rather final.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it is effective. Since he did not know about the bairn, he could assume the Ettrick lands would go back to his wife as Bess’s surviving kin. The house in Rothesay might go to Sempill of Muirend, which could not be helped, and so would the conjunct fee lands, but since in law Sempill could not dispose of those without first offering them to Bess’s kin, Campbell’s next step, I should think, would be to buy them in at a bargain price, so his lies might not be detected.’

  ‘And the plate?’

  ‘It is at least curious that he was the first on the scene after Bess left her house to run off with the harper.’

  ‘But what of the other girl? Surely if he was with Bridie on the High Street before Compline, he must know she was not in the kirkyard during the Office. He had no need to kill her. And I thought he was distressed to learn of her death.’

  ‘I thought about that.’ Gil counted off the points. ‘Imprimis, he might not be certain of where she went after he left her. She could have been in the kirkyard, half the town heard us say she was there, he might have killed her to be certain.’

  ‘A poor reason.’

  ‘Someone killed her. Secundus, perhaps she did know something. What if she followed him and saw what happened -‘

  ‘Whatever that was.’

  ‘Whatever that was, and when they met, yesterday at the ma
rket - no, the day before, now - she tried to threaten him, or get money from him.’

  ‘Give me some ribbons or I’ll tell what I saw, you mean?’

  ‘Precisely. Let’s step aside here and discuss this, my doo. And in goes the knife.’

  ‘Are there more possibilities?’

  ‘Perhaps he was simply tired of her, and thought her death could be blamed on the same broken man as killed Bess.’

  ‘Not so probable, surely. Do we know him to have behaved like this in the past?’

  ‘No, but we don’t know him to have knifed his sister-inlaw before this either. He was concealing some strong emotion when he heard of Bridie’s death,’ Gil pointed out. ‘It is hard to be sure whether it was grief, or alarm that we knew of it already, or something else. Even if he killed her, he might have felt grief for her death.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The mason rode in silence for a few minutes, considering this. Then, looking about him at the woodland through which they rode, he said in some alarm, ‘This is not the path we took! Where are we?’

  ‘The track’s about a half-mile that way.’ Gil nodded to their left. ‘I don’t think this fellow means us any harm. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, and Sir William knows where we are.’

  Lachie Mor, obviously understanding this, grinned his unreliable grin and pointed ahead.

  ‘Eagleis,’ he enunciated. ‘Eagleis Chattan.’

  ‘A church?’ said the mason.

  Gil nodded. The church of the cat?’ he hazarded.

  Their guide shook his head emphatically. ‘Chattan,’ he repeated, and gestured: a halo, a benediction.

  ‘St Chattan?’ Gil offered, and got another grin and a nod. ‘How far?’

  ‘Not far,’ said the mason. ‘We are here.’

  They emerged into the open, and the ponies stopped and all three raised their heads, ears pricked, as if they had seen someone they knew approaching. Gil stared round him in the sunshine. They were in a circular clearing in the trees, perhaps fifty paces across. A small burn trickled at their feet, and a grassy bank beyond it sloped gently up to the remains of a small stone building. It was now roofless, but the walls and the two gables with their slit windows still stood, silent witness to the craft of the old builders who had fitted silver-grey slabs and red field-stones together, course after ragged course, apparently without benefit of chisel.