A Pig of Cold Poison

by Pat McIntosh

  Mistress Bothwell sighed in relief. ‘I hoped you’d say aye to it.’ She held the letter out. ‘My thanks on this, maister.’

  ‘If it helps the case,’ Gil said, checking that the direction was clear and the seal secure. ‘I take it you’ve got no further in proving the stuff, Adam?’

  ‘We’ve a list this long of what it isny,’ said Adam, grimacing. ‘It’s held us back in the work of the shop, no that that’s a consideration when Nanty’s life’s at stake, but the two of us has thought of little else for the last few days, and Barbara as well.’

  ‘It was Barbara encouraged me to write the letter,’ said Mistress Bothwell. ‘She’s a good woman.’ Beside her, Alys murmured agreement.

  ‘Were you at Frankie’s the now?’ Adam asked. ‘How are they all? We’d heard nothing of their trouble till Christian came up the road at suppertime. Wat and I will have to call in the morning to condole.’

  ‘Frankie is much shaken, as you would expect,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We were just saying as we came home that he seems to believe his daughter guilty.’

  ‘So likely would the half of Glasgow,’ said Mistress Bothwell grimly.

  ‘And Nicol?’

  Maistre Pierre grimaced. ‘I had a word with him, after you left the room,’ he said to Gil. ‘He was not sober, I should say. I asked him what he would do now, would he take up his brother’s place in the business, and he said, on the contrary, he was the more determined to go back to Middelburgh.’

  ‘It might just be his imagining,’ Gil said. ‘I asked him where he was all day, and he talked about a journey again, though his wife said he was abed.’

  ‘Ah.’ Adam Forrest exchanged a glance with Mistress Bothwell. ‘He must be still taking the stuff.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ she said.

  ‘Taking what?’ Gil questioned.

  Adam looked disapproving. ‘Hemp. At least, a dose made from – it’s an intoxicant, a relaxant, it calms the system but confuses the mind, it prompts strange dreams.’

  ‘It’s right good for a vicious horse,’ supplied Mistress Bothwell. ‘I suppose the beasts willny be troubled by dreams.’

  ‘My mother’s groom puts hemp seeds in horse tonic,’ Gil recalled. ‘Now I think of it, there were folk that used it when I was in Paris. They would burn it and drink the smoke. One fellow swore it was better than wine for easing the mind of troubles. But I thought the hemp we grow here doesn’t have the same properties.’

  ‘No, potyngar’s hemp has to be imported,’ Adam said. ‘It comes from Araby, in the long run. And there’s some even stronger stuff, not the leaf but a resin of some sort, I think they call charas, we’ve had the dried leaf in the shop but never that. I’ve heard it’s put up in wee leather bags, and you make a drink of it or burn it.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Alys suddenly, and then, ‘Could that be what his drops are?’

  ‘Very like,’ agreed Adam, sounding struck by the idea.

  ‘He said I should ask you about it,’ Gil said to Alys, and she blushed darkly in the candlelight. ‘He’s by far calmer than when we were boys. Do you remember him at school, Adam? Who could have prescribed it to him, would you think? ‘

  ‘His father, most likely,’ suggested Adam. ‘I’d say it might help with his twitching and his odd ways, so if Frankie got his hands on some of the stuff, he might try if it worked.’ He pulled a face. ‘But it looks to me as if Nicol uses far more than he needs.’

  ‘Always the danger, with such a drug,’ observed Mistress Bothwell. She drew her plaid up over her shoulders again. ‘I must get home, Adam. There’s as much to be done in the morning, and food to take in for my brother and all. Will you get that letter away, do you think, maister?’

  ‘I’ll speak to Sir Thomas first thing,’ said Gil.

  Having seen the callers across the yard, Maistre Pierre extinguished his lantern and began barring the door, saying, ‘So have you had a profitable evening, ma mie? And how is John? What was this about a strange woman who fetched Mistress Grace?’

  ‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Catherine wished to talk to me. John is well, and sound asleep in his own cradle, and Nancy is recovering from her fright, poor girl, and will keep a closer eye on him from now on. As for who fetched Grace, I think we may never know. There was no such woman in the house, or on the High Street, today. Kate thinks it was Ealasaidh’s fetch.’

  ‘I think it more than likely,’ said Gil. ‘I have heard of such things. Ealasaidh herself may know nothing of the matter when we speak to her next.’

  ‘Do you tell me?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Extraordinary! But then, she is an extraordinary woman,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘I take my eye off the burgh for a day and what happens? Another pysoning, Frankie Renfrew’s lassie in the Tolbooth, John Anderson saying he’s done your work for you –’

  ‘Is he now?’ said Gil politely, suppressing fury. Sir Thomas blew his nose and dabbed at the organ cautiously with his handkerchief.

  ‘So tell me the tale yoursel, Gilbert, till I understand what’s going on.’

  Gil summarized the events surrounding Robert Ren-frew’s death, as carefully as he might. Sir Thomas listened, blowing his nose from time to time and fidgeting with the papers before him. His clerk, Walter, sat at the end of the end of the table, his pen squeaking as he copied something into a great book.

  ‘No that clear,’ said Sir Thomas when Gil had finished. He shook his head. ‘No that clear. The lassie was heard to say she’d get him for something, and she rejoiced when he was dead. What a way for a Christian lassie to behave! Frankie’s a worthy member of the council, but I’d no wed any of his bairns to any I cared for. But that doesny say she gave her brother the pyson. As for taking up the maidservant, only because the lassie accused her, I’m no convinced. What do you say, Gil?’

  ‘I’d say Agnes was the likeliest, but it’s all very circumstantial,’ agreed Gil. ‘It’s the poison still worries me. It seems the girl’s chamber was searched, and no sign found either of poison or of her working with the sweetmeats. If it was the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, which nobody in Glasgow seems to recognize, then where did it come from?’

  Sir Thomas dabbed at his scarlet nose.

  ‘Maybe this letter I’ve sent away for you will get us some result. Or maybe all the potyngars in Glasgow are in it thegither,’ he suggested gloomily. ‘Did John Anderson question the rest of the household? Did he search the shop and the house, or only the lassie’s chamber?’ He read the answer in Gil’s face, and grunted. ‘And how does it connect wi the other death, other than it was the same stuff that slew both?’

  ‘Have you questioned Nanty Bothwell yet?’

  ‘I have not. That’s for the day, St Thomas help me. Standing in a cold cell, watching Andro wi the pilliwinks and thinking what to ask next, it’s like to bring on a lung-fever. Confound this rheum!’

  ‘I’ve an idea about that,’ Gil offered.

  Nanty Bothwell was sitting on the bench in his damp cell, staring blankly at the chain which led from his ankle-iron to a hasp in the wall. He looked up when the captain of the guard unlocked the door, and got to his feet.

  ‘Provost,’ he said, with a nervous bob of a bow which made the chain clink. ‘Maister Cunningham. What – can you tell me how’s my sister?’

  ‘Well enough,’ said Gil, ‘considering she’s worried sick for her brother.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Sir Thomas, and blew his nose again. ‘We’ve taken up your accomplice now, Nanty Bothwell –’

  ‘Accomplice?’ he said sharply. ‘What accomplice?’

  ‘– for she’s used the the same pyson to slay Robert Renfrew, which is –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Robert was poisoned yesterday,’ said Gil, ‘by what seems like the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, hidden in a marchpane cherry.’

  ‘In a marchpane cherry?’

  ‘Clearly Agnes Renfrew’s work,’ said Sir Thomas, �
��and the Serjeant very properly –’

  ‘Or the girl Jess Dickson,’ Gil put in.

  ‘Jess Dickson? Who’s she? It canny be Agnes. How’d you make out it was Agnes?’

  ‘It’s certainly someone skilled in potyngary work,’ Gil said, ‘and Agnes had the chance to do it and to use the same poison as before.’

  ‘But she’d no – she never knew – she’d no idea –’ Bothwell bit off his words.

  ‘No idea?’ Gil repeated. ‘No idea what it was?’

  ‘If she’d no idea, how come she used it on her brother?’ demanded the Provost. ‘Where did she get it, anyway? Did you supply it to her?’

  ‘No! No, I –’

  ‘Either you gave it to her,’ Gil said, ‘or she gave it to you. One or the other, Nanty.’

  ‘Maybe we both got it from the same place,’ Bothwell offered desperately.

  The Provost pounced. ‘And where was that, then? The lassie Dickson?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You don’t know? You don’t remember how you got something that fatal?’ Sir Thomas blew his nose, with some diminution of his authority, and declared, ‘If there’s someone running about Glasgow purveying pyson that slays a man in minutes, I want to find him and stop him. Or her,’ he added scrupulously. ‘So out with it, my lad, who gave you that flask and the stuff in it, or did you brew it up and supply it to Agnes Renfrew for the slaying of her brother? Was that your aim all along?’

  ‘I think Agnes brewed it and gave it to him,’ said Gil. ‘Is that right, Nanty?’

  ‘No! I told you, she’d no idea!’

  ‘The lassie’s made a fool of him as well as her brother,’ said Sir Thomas.

  ‘No, she – she never –’ Bothwell swallowed, looking from one to the other in the grey light. ‘It wasny like that. We never –’

  ‘Never what?’ prompted Gil.

  ‘We neither of us knew what was in the flask. It was just something she found.’

  ‘Found where? Let’s have the story, my lad,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And be quick about it, so I can get out of here. It’s ower cold for a man wi the rheum.’

  Bothwell sighed. ‘We’d no conspiracy,’ he said, ‘I swear it. Only I forgot the flask I should ha carried, wi the stuff that smokes when you draw the stopper, and when I saw Agnes in the yard, on her way back to her own house, I asked her if she’d fetch me one of the wee painted ones from her father’s workroom. She brought me that one, but she never said where it was from, only that her father had locked his workroom. We – we thought it was almond milk, it looked – it smelled – when Danny fell down, I’ll never forget –’ He stared at Gil. ‘I’ll swear it’s the truth on anything you mention, maister. Agnes never knew it was pyson when she gave it to me.’

  ‘Why not tell us this earlier?’ Gil asked.

  ‘He’s only just now made it up,’ said Sir Thomas.

  ‘No, it’s the truth,’ said Bothwell earnestly. ‘I never – I didny want to bring the lassie into trouble.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas explosively. ‘She’s done that for herself, wi none of your help.’

  ‘I canny believe it,’ said Bothwell. ‘Why would she do that? Surely it’s been this lassie Jess, or another of the family – or some kind of an accident, maybe? Or that Grace? She’s a wise woman.’

  ‘Too wise to go about poisoning her brother-in-law,’ Gil said.

  ‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas again. ‘I’m away back to my fireside. I’ll leave you to it, Gil. Andro! Here and let me out!’

  As the key turned in the lock again behind the Provost Gil said, ‘Is that the plain tale? And the whole one?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Gil waited, unmoving. After a long moment the other man turned his head away.

  ‘I canny believe it,’ he said again. ‘She’s such a bonnie wee thing, wi such taking ways. How would she – and why? What way would she kill her own brother?’ Another pause. ‘And do you – I canny – do you suppose she kent fine all along what it was? That she kent what she’d got in that flask?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I canny believe it of her,’ said Bothwell, shaking his head. ‘And yet –’ He laughed, without humour. ‘Chrissie would say she tellt me. We’d words a few times, about my looking towards that family.’

  ‘What did Agnes say when she brought you the flask?’ Gil asked.

  ‘I don’t recall right.’ Bothwell thought for a moment. ‘We were on the stair up from the kitchen, and she handed me the thing and said, her father had locked his workroom, she’d to take what she could get. I smelled at it, just at the flask, I never unstopped it, you ken, and I said, What is it, and she says, It looks like almond milk. Which I thought nothing of at the time, but it came to me sometime yesterday, who keeps almond milk lying about in a wee flask? The kitchen has it in a bowl or a jug, no in a tottie wee flask.’ He held up fingers and thumb to show the measure of the object. ‘Then I wondered if maybe she’d put it up especial to bring me.’

  ‘If she put it up for you, she knew what it was,’ said Gil, ‘or else she was very neat about it, for it seems even a drop on her skin would have killed her like Danny Gibson. She didn’t say?’

  ‘We’d no more conversation.’ Bothwell sighed. ‘Tammas Bowster came up the stair and was on to me for upsetting Danny and the company just then, what would it do to the play, and Agnes says, I’ve saved your play, and off she went up the stair to her minnie wi the cushion.’ He looked anxiously at Gil in the dim light. ‘Has she no tellt you about it?’

  ‘She denied any connection with it,’ Gil said. ‘She’s not been questioned yet since the Serjeant took her up. She might change her tune once Sir Thomas gets to work on her.’

  Bothwell winced at the thought, but said helplessly, ‘I still canny believe it. It’s all tapsalteerie in my head, Maister Cunningham. And Danny’s dead, and now young Robert, though there’s no many will shed a tear for him. I keep hoping I’ll wake up.’

  Sir Thomas, huddled over his brazier again, sniffed gloomily and agreed with Gil.

  ‘If he’s telling us the truth, which is aye the question,’ he qualified, ‘then the lassie never knew what she’d gied him on Hallowe’en, that was Thursday. But having seen it was lethal she knew to go back to get some more on Friday to use it on Saturday, so there must ha been more of it. The question is, where? Is it somewhere in the house?’

  ‘It’s the place to start, at least,’ Gil said. ‘Otherwise it’s search the whole of Glasgow, wi the entire Gallowgate bringing us flasks of one shape or another for the reward. And what about Agnes and the maidservant? Has either girl anything useful to say?’

  ‘They’re both swearing they’ve nothing to do with it. I’ve no palate for a long stand down in the questioning-chamber,’ said Sir Thomas, sniffing again. ‘It’s gey cold down there, even wi the fire to heat the pincers, but I’d as soon have the quest on Robert Renfrew the morn as well as Danny Gibson, get them both out the way.’

  ‘It’s a bit –’ began Gil, but the Provost dabbed his nose and went on, ignoring him:

  ‘Seems to me whichever lassie’s guilty, she’ll talk faster if we have the evidence to show her, so I’ll have you and Andro go and search the Renfrew house yoursels, Gil, and make a thorough job of it. And maybe question the rest of the household while you’re about it. If John Anderson can do your work, you can do his,’ he added sourly.

  ‘You might as well have gone home for your dinner, for all the good that’s done you,’ said Grace Gordon with quiet sympathy.

  ‘It had to be done, just the same,’ said Gil, setting a stool for her. She sat down and looked up at him, folding her hands in her lap.

  ‘Aye, I see that,’ she agreed, ‘and though Frankie may not say it I will: it was good of you to make so much effort no to distress Meg. You were doing fine up till the man wanted to see into the cradle.’

  Gil grimaced. Young Mistress Mathieson had accepted his careful explanation of t
he need to search her chamber, and risen from her bed willingly enough, to sit clasping her swaddled infant with her mother on guard at her side. It was only when Andro had begun poking in the embroidered coverings of the cradle that she had grasped the reality of their intent.

  ‘I think what owerset her was that you might suspect her of hiding such a nasty thing among her bairn’s bedding,’ added Grace. ‘Will you not sit down, sir? It’s a long way up to see your face, I’ll get a kink in my neck.’

  ‘Is she calmer now?’ Gil asked. He sat down facing her, and drew his tablets from his sleeve.

  ‘Aye, she was asleep when I looked in on her. Now, what is it you’re to ask us all? Am I the first?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Maister Renfrew.’ Gil paused, assembling his thoughts. ‘We’ve gone through the house,’ he said, and she nodded, with a wry smile, ‘and found nothing that tells us aught about how Agnes came by the poison, either on Thursday or later. Can you shed any light on the question?’

  ‘What, you think I’ve been handing poisons out to the half of Glasgow?’ She met his eye, an ironic amusement gleaming in her expression. ‘I’ve no notion how Agnes got her hands on the stuff, maister. Do you know what it is yet?’

  ‘I do not. Have you no idea yourself?’

  ‘I’ve no suggestions to make, maister. It’s in none of Frankie’s books.’

  ‘Could it be something she brewed herself? Her father says not, but I think he underestimates her.’

  ‘I think he does and all.’ She considered the question. ‘She could have done, but if she had, you’d not find a trace of her working. Jess might have something to tell you about that, if you’re present when the Provost questions her, poor lass.’

  Gil nodded, thinking of what Alys had reported yesterday. ‘If Agnes did make the stuff up, does she have anywhere particular she might hide it?’

  ‘I’d not know if she did,’ Grace pointed out. She pulled the corners of her mouth down in a rueful grimace. ‘The likeliest to know where she hid her secrets was her brother Robert, aye spying on her and the rest of the household. Yet another reason for her to have poisoned him, if it was her that did it.’