The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

‘All this excitement’s not good for her, Maister Sempill,’ Mistress Murray remonstrated.

  ‘I’ll be a lot worse for her yet,’ he threatened, and Euphemia moaned faintly.

  ‘It’s all linked,’ Gil said.

  Sempill glowered at him, but sat down, pushing Euphemia along. She was now drooping on her companion’s bosom with little fluttering movements; unimpressed, Sempill said, ‘If you can’t sit up straight, go and he on the floor. Philip and James want to sit down.’

  ‘I am ill,’ she said plaintively. ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘There is a garde-robe in the corner,’ said Gil. Euphemia rose, and tottered towards it, supported by Mistress Murray. The sounds which emerged from behind the curtain suggested that she was indeed throwing up.

  ‘Come on, then, man,’ said John Sempill. ‘Who killed Bess?’

  ‘I, too, wish to know,’ said the harper.

  Gil, bowing to his uncle, surveyed his audience.

  ‘Bess Stewart came up the High Street,’ he began, ‘on the evening of May Day, with Euan Campbell. Not Neil,’ he added to John Sempill, who looked blankly at him. ‘She was seen by more than one person, including James Campbell of Glenstriven, who was tousling a lass in a vennel near the Bell o’ the Brae and made some effort not to be seen by her. I don’t know whether he was successful.’ Both Sempills turned and stared at James Campbell, who was staring in turn at Gil, the colour rising in his face. ‘Euan left her in the clump of trees opposite the south door of St Mungo’s and went into the kirk to tell John Sempill she was waiting for him.’

  ‘We know all this,’ growled Sempill. ‘Get to the point, man.’

  ‘Campbell of Glenstriven, leaving his limmer in the High Street, followed Euan into the kirk.’

  ‘There’s a sight too many Campbells in this tale,’ muttered Sempill.

  Gil, who had felt this from the start, nodded, and went on. ‘I was near to your party in the kirk. I saw both these two arrive. I saw Campbell of Glenstriven slip away briefly and return. I saw other comings and goings.’

  ‘I went away to pray before St Catherine,’ said Euphemia wanly, returning.

  ‘I saw you before her altar. The one I did not see go away, the one I had my eye on every few verses, was the lutenist. He cannot have killed Bess Stewart.’

  ‘Why did you not -‘began John Sempill, and stopped.

  ‘You gave me little chance, John. You were aye quick with your hands.’

  He looked at the faces again. The harper’s face turned towards him, Ealasaidh staring sourly at the opposite bench, the mason intent. His uncle watching without expression, the way he did when a witness was about to become entangled in the facts. Philip concerned, James Campbell with a faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip, John Sempill looking baffled. Euphemia, wilting elegantly on a stool near the kitchen stair, her waiting-woman bending over her and glaring at Gil. Checking that Tam was nearby, and Neil by the other stairs, Gil continued.

  ‘Bess was not in the trees when we all came out of Compline. She was already dead, inside the building site of the Bishop’s new work. Archbishop,’ he corrected himself. Ealasaidh made a small angry sound, and her brother put one hand over hers. ‘Whoever killed her had probably come out of the kirk, enticed her into the building site, presumably to be private, knifed her, and then gone back into the kirk. Unless it was a reasonless killing, and it seemed too carefully done for that, it had to be someone who knew her.’ Gil counted off. ‘You yourself John, James Campbell, Philip, Lady Euphemia, all came and went. I knew, at first, of no reason why any of the others should wish to kill Bess Stewart, and I did you the credit of believing that you would not have summoned her publicly and then murdered her secretly.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Sempill ungraciously.

  ‘I found her the next morning, and was charged with tracking down her killer. Maister Mason here, also concerned because it was his building site, has hunted with me. It has not been easy.’

  ‘Get on with it, man!’

  ‘The kirkyard appeared to be empty, but there were in fact two witnesses, a young couple still a-Maying. What I think happened was that they found Bess’s plaid where she had hung it on a tree so that her husband would know she was not far away. They decided to make use of it for greater comfort in the masons’ lodge, against the side of the Fergus Aisle, and I think they overheard some of the conversation and the killing. They may have looked, and seen murder committed by a wealthy individual, one of the baronial classes who could be assumed to have the backing of powerful people, people who could be a threat to a mason’s laddie and his sweetheart. The two of them certainly fled. The boy broke his skull running into a tree, and has been able to tell us nothing. The girl got away.’

  Gil exchanged a glance with Maistre Pierre, who pulled a face and nodded.

  ‘I think the burden of guilt must be shared here. If we had not hunted so openly for Bridie Miller, who was the boy’s previous leman, she would be alive yet. She had quarrelled with the boy on Good Friday, and spent May Eve in the kitchen and part of May Day with her new lover.’ He looked at James Campbell, who was now staring fixedly at his boots, still sweating. ‘The boy had a new lass. Her name is Annie Thomson, and we have traced her in Dumbarton.’ Was it imagination, or did Campbell’s eyes widen briefly?

  ‘Bridie Miller was killed at the market on Thursday. She had been persuaded to step aside to a place where many of the girls go to ease themselves. She was killed in the same way as Bess Stewart, by a fine-bladed knife, with no sign of a struggle. It could have been a separate killing, but two killers abroad in Glasgow at the one time, with the same method of killing, seemed unlikely. Most of your household, John, was down the town that morning, but you and Philip can swear for each other, Lady Euphemia was with her lutenist, and I saw James Campbell myself near the Tolbooth about the time Bridie was killed.’

  Campbell’s eyes did flicker this time.

  ‘We know all this,’ said Sempill again. ‘Get to the point, in Christ’s name!’

  ‘Then the serjeant came to arrest Antonio.’

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Euphemia again, raising her head from her companion’s bosom. They all paused to watch her sway towards the garde-robe. Maistre Pierre sneezed.

  ‘Antonio was killed,’ said Gil elisively, ‘and therefore could not be questioned. Nor could he swear to anything he did or did not do or see.’

  Sempill frowned, staring at him.

  ‘By this time I had eliminated yourself and Philip, John.’ Philip Sempill looked up with a crooked grin. ‘I went down to Bute to discover who benefited, and dislodged a fine mess. I had the wrong philosopher. Not Aristotle but Socrates: there is always a previous crime.’

  ‘Thank you for nothing,’ grunted Sempill. ‘I’d have caught up with it eventually.’

  Gil, suppressing comment, counted off points again.

  ‘I found there was evidence of misdirected rents, more than one version of what happened the night Bess Stewart left Bute, the curious story of the plate-chest, and one name that kept coming up in all these inconsistencies. It is clear to me that you and James Campbell of Glenstriven have a lot to settle between you, John.’

  James Campbell leapt to his feet, his whinger hissing from its sheath. The narrow Italian blade appeared as if by magic in his other hand, and he backed wide round the Official’s table as if he had eyes in his heels.

  ‘I’ll take at least one of you with me,’ he said. ‘Who will it be? It wasny me that killed Bess, or Bridie, the poor wee trollop, and I’ll prove it on any of you that cares to try. Come on, then.’

  There was a tense silence, into which the harper said something calmly in Gaelic. Then Ealasaidh sprang up with a cry of fury and hurled herself, not at Argyll’s grandson but the other way, towards the door which Neil guarded. Gil whirled, to see her grappling with the gallowglass and shrieking vengefully in Gaelic. He ran to intervene, and she fell back, ranting incoherently.

  ‘She is gone, she is escaped, this h
allirakit kempie, this Campbell has let her go! Let me by, you ill-done loon!’

  ‘She bade me,’ stammered Neil. ‘I thought it was Maister James we was after, I thought -‘

  At the foot of the stairs the house-door slammed. Gil stared round, and saw the curtain of the garde-robe still swinging, and met the triumphant gaze of Euphemia’s waiting-woman. He stepped hastily to the window, flinging the shutters wide.

  ‘Leave her,’ said John Sempill. ‘Get on with it. Are we to take my good-brother or no, and are you going to be at the front of the assault?’

  ‘No,’ said Gil, ‘for it was not Campbell of Glenstriven that killed your wife.’

  ‘Well, if it’s Euphemia we’re after, she’ll not get far. Is that her down at the gate now?’ Keeping one wary eye on his brother-in-law, Sempill came to join Gil at the window.

  Across the street Euphemia had just succeeded in opening the gate of the Sempill yard. Hitching up her tawny satin skirts, she slipped through the gap and made straight for the house-door. She was half-way across the yard when the second tawny shape emerged from the kennel.

  ‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ exclaimed the mason behind Gil as the mastiff bounded across the cobbles, silent but for its dragging clanking chain.

  ‘Saints keep us, the dog!’ wailed Mistress Murray. ‘Oh, my poor pet!’

  Euphemia turned her head just before the jaws closed on her arm. Gil got a glimpse of her horrified face before she went down, screaming, under the weight of the huge beast. Bright blood sprang on the tawny satin of her sleeve as Doucette, pinning her prey with one massive paw, let go Euphemia’s arm to go snarling for the throat.

  ‘Help her, maister!’ shouted her waiting-woman. She turned, darted at James Campbell, her black veil flying, and tugged at his sleeve. ‘Call the brute off! Save her!’

  ‘She’s past helping,’ said Campbell, shaking her off.

  ‘In Christ’s name!’ Gil exclaimed, making for the door. Before he reached it a hand seized each of his wrists.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Ealasaidh at his left through the screaming.

  ‘If she killed Bess,’ said Philip Sempill at his right, ‘this is her due.’

  The screaming turned to a dreadful gurgling which sank beneath the mastiff’s snarls. The dog was now shaking her prey as easily as some monstrous terrier.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said John Sempill, staring out of the window. ‘It wouldny have been legitimate anyway.’ As Mistress Murray fell at his feet in a moaning heap and across the road the yard was filled by horrified shouting, he added, ‘She should never have teased that dog the way she did.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘We will have to reconvene,’ said David Cunningham, ‘to determine the questions of the bairn’s future still unsettled.’

  ‘Another day, I beg of you, maister,’ said the harper, as his sister put the little goblet in his hand. ‘I at least have had enough of great deeds for one day.’

  ‘I, too,’ muttered Ealasaidh. She accepted wine herself from the Official, and sat down.

  They were all in the garden in the evening sun, with the replenished jug of wine and a plate of cakes. John Sempill and his household had gone home. Gil had felt it was typical of the man that he had asked no further questions. Euphemia’s guilt was clear enough to him in her flight. Euphemia’s brother also seemed to accept the fact, although he had been more intent on defending himself and casting blame on her in the matter of the missing rents. It seemed, indeed, as if Mistress Murray was the only person to feel any grief for her fate, and that appeared to be mixed with dismay at the loss of her own living.

  Canon Cunningham was initiating a discussion with the harper on the differences in the law of inheritance on either side of the Highland line. Gil paid little heed to the polite exchange; his attention was being drawn to the other side of the garden where the mason and his daughter were in intense conversation. Alys’s head was bent, and he could not see her face, but Maistre Pierre’s expression was stem. Overcome by a sudden feeling that it was now his responsibility to chastise Alys if anyone was going to, Gil set down his pewter goblet and made his way between the box-hedges, his footsteps light on the gravel. As he approached, Alys turned and walked away, rapidly, aimlessly. The mason looked at her retreating back and moved towards Gil.

  ‘Who would be a father?’ he complained. ‘She has been a rational intelligent mortal since she could talk, but suddenly now she is betrothed -‘ He bit off the next words.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Gil asked, with a return of the familiar sinking in his stomach. Has she changed her mind? he wondered. Perhaps Euphemia’s fate -

  ‘No. She’ll come round,’ said Maistre Pierre. That was an impressive performance just now, Gilbert. You made all very clear - and with your uncle watching, too.’

  ‘He trained me,’ Gil pointed out. ‘But Alys -‘

  ‘I should let her be.’

  ‘But what’s troubling her?’

  ‘She is mumping,’ said the mason in exasperated tones, ‘because she was excluded from that singularly unpleasant scene a little while ago. She feels she had a right to be present.’

  Gil looked from his friend, bulky and indignant in the big fur-lined gown, to Alys, slender and indignant in almost identical pose at the other end of the path.

  ‘I have to deal with this,’ he said, half to himself.

  ‘She’ll come round,’ said the mason again. ‘Leave her.’

  ‘You have sixteen years’ advantage over me,’ Gil pointed out. ‘You came to terms with her long since. Alys and I have all our terms to settle, and this is certainly a clause which demands negotiation.’

  ‘Well, your diplomacy is clearly more polished than mine.’ Maistre Pierre looked beyond Gil at the wine and cakes. ‘Negotiating with your uncle is taxing enough for me. You go and make terms with Alys, if you feel you must.’

  Filling two goblets with watered wine, Gil avoided the stately legal discussion and made his way to where Alys was pacing slowly along another of the walks, her brocade skirts brushing over the gravel. Stopping in front of her, he held out a goblet.

  ‘A toast with you, demoiselle,’ he said formally. She turned her head away. He held the goblet forward so that the backs of their hands touched. ‘Alys,’ he said, more gently. ‘What ails you, my sweet?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, with an attempt at lightness.

  ‘It is the duty of a good wife,’ he pointed out, ‘to speak the truth to her lord at all times. I assumed I was getting a good wife, and if it’s going to be otherwise I think I need to know it now.’

  She looked at him uncertainly round the fall of her hood. Her face was pale and pinched, the narrow blade of her nose outlined sharply against the black velvet. He smiled at her, and put the goblet into her hand.

  ‘If you won’t drink a toast, shall we walk?’ He indicated the path beyond her. She set her other hand on his wrist and turned to walk with him between the beds of primroses and cowslips. Gil found himself thinking, suddenly and irrelevantly, of the primroses growing wild on the steep banks of the burn at Thinacre, where the Cunningham young had scrambled to pick handfuls of the flat, sweet-scented flowers for their mother’s still-room. These were slips of the same growth, brought in on the cart when the tower-house was cleared. And there had been primroses by the well at St Chattan’s, when he saw the hind, he recalled, and recognized that the images were not irrelevant at all. This was part of the next thing that he had asked for.

  ‘Tell me what troubles you, Alys,’ he prompted.

  She paced on, carrying the goblet of wine, and at length said, ‘You have offended Maggie.’

  ‘Maggie and I are old friends. She’ll come round.’ But that was what the mason had said of Alys. Am I wrong about Maggie too? he wondered.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Alys, with another shy glance round the hood, ‘you have rewarded her ill. She had done an unpleasant task for you, and you repaid her by shutting her in the kitchen away from the excitement.’


  ‘I gave her the care of the bairn and of you,’ said Gil. She turned her head away. ‘Is that it, indeed? Your father said you were mumping at not seeing the excitement -‘

  ‘I was not mumping,’ she said clearly.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing parents say,’ he agreed, ‘to reduce us to their power. Did you really want to see Euphemia torn to pieces by the dog?’

  ‘No,’ she said, with an involuntary shiver. ‘But I wished to be present while you explained what happened. I know you’ll tell me how you discovered it - won’t you?’ She turned to look up at him. He nodded. ‘But Maggie and I should have seen how they all heard your account.’

  ‘What - you think it was your right to be present?’ he said, startled.

  ‘It was certainly Maggie’s.’

  ‘And yours?’ He found he was looking at the back of her hood again. ‘This is the nub of it, isn’t it, Alys?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ she admitted after a moment.

  ‘Then put your case to me, and then I will put mine, and we will both judge between them.’

  ‘But how can two judges agree? It takes three to sit on the bench in Edinburgh.’

  ‘One and one make three,’ he said fondly, ‘but I hope not until a year or so after we are wed.’ He heard the little intake of breath. ‘No, here are only two judges, so we must either agree, or agree to disagree. Come, Alys. You speak first. How was it your right to be present?’

  He moved on as he spoke, leading her through the gate in the hedge, out of the formal flower garden to the kailyard on the slope below it. The burgh lay at their feet under its haze of smoke. The bell of Greyfriars began to ring for Compline before she spoke.

  ‘I also helped you to gather the facts of the story,’ she said at length.

  ‘So did a number of other people who weren’t there,’ Gil observed.

  ‘But most of those had duties elsewhere. You sent me from your side,’ she said, trying to suppress indignation.

  ‘I thought it would be dangerous,’ said Gil, annoyed to hear himself on the defensive, ‘and I was right. How could I take the risk, for you or the bairn?’