The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘You do not understand,’ she said, as if any fight had gone out of her.

  ‘Oh? Do I not? After all the years of spite – deserved, I’ll grant you – you have harboured for me, do you not think I know a tryst when I see it?’

  This had been truly unexpected. ‘A tryst?’

  I had not the patience to humour her. ‘Dear Lord, Isabella, did you think no one would observe you going into George’s garden? Heavens, you have rarely been out of it. Who were you to meet there today? Guillaume Charpentier – a common gardener? William Ormiston, whose touch seems so to thrill you – and oh, I saw that touch. Or is it someone else?’

  It was only when I said the words aloud that it came to me. ‘Archie Hay.’

  Below her pallor, her face became paler yet. I knew it then.

  ‘Archie? Is it Archie you hoped to find there? Archie Hay, come back from the dead? How long have you known, Isabella? Have you always known?’

  The eyes that had looked on me in times past with such disdain, were brimming now, pleading. ‘I did not know, Alexander. I swear to God, I did not know.’

  The sight of this woman, scared, sorry before me, shocked me out of my anger. My voice became hoarse. ‘But you know now, do you not?’

  She nodded once, then lowered her head, a scarcely audible ‘yes’ escaping her lips.

  Into our silence came the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Not of Lumsden, still busied with his duties at the tolbooth, nor yet Lady Rothiemay, who on hearing of Christiane’s disappearance that morning had taken herself to the old town, thinking to find news of the girl there. It was some relief to me to see George Jamesone shown into the parlour by the young servant.

  He enquired briefly after Isabella, but it was soon clear that it was me he had come to see.

  ‘I am on my way up to the Castlegate with this for Lumsden. Louis found it in Christiane’s chamber when we returned to his house.’ He held towards me a small piece of paper, neatly folded in half. I opened it out to find a short message of some sort, neatly written in words I assumed to be French. But what was clear enough in any language was that the note was addressed to Christiane Rolland and purported to be from Guillaume Charpentier. I looked at it and turned to George.

  ‘This is his handwriting? His signature?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then some at least of what St Clair claims is true. He did send her a note.’

  I rang for the housemaid and asked her to stay with Mistress Irvine until Lady Rothiemay should return, then George and I went quickly across Broadgate in the direction of the Castlegate and William’s chambers.

  ‘I cannot understand it,’ said George as we turned in to the end of Huxter Row. ‘Guillaume was with me until well after seven last night, and yet this note from him, asking Christiane to meet him at the pond, arrived at Louis’ house before seven, delivered by a boy who had just been given it, according to St Clair. I swear to you, Alexander, I never saw him write it nor hand anything to any message boy.’

  ‘It is definitely his hand?’

  ‘I could show it to you. It tallies exactly with that on his labelling on my plans.’

  I had noted Charpentier’s neat careful hand before, marvelled at his very exact Latin. It had not seemed quite right to me even then, to find a gardener so well lettered. ‘And does he express himself well?’

  ‘It is just a brief note, Alexander, and my French none the best, but it looks well enough to me.’

  Lumsden was still with William and St Clair when we arrived at William’s chambers.

  The baillie was flustered on being shown the note. ‘So where is the fellow?’ he demanded, after having it explained to him. ‘Four hours now we have searched, and not the hint of a sight of him. Perhaps he never went there to meet her at all.’

  It was a possibility we considered amongst ourselves for a good while after Lumsden had gone to the tolbooth to check on the progress of the search.

  ‘He must have gone there,’ said William. ‘Why would she have taken her own life if he had not thoroughly rejected her? Hardly a reason, even that, but I do not know what goes on in a young woman’s mind.’

  George also was at a loss. ‘But it was an attraction, an infatuation such as we have all been prone to from time to time. I never saw Guillaume give the slightest sign of returning it. Only kindness and perhaps a degree of affection. Christiane was a sensible girl – surely she cannot have read it as anything more?’

  ‘But why would Charpentier flee? He would hardly have allowed her to hang herself in front of him?’

  ‘Unless he went back to the spot later and found her and panicked …’

  William and George were going further and further down a road that led nowhere, trying to work out an order of events that never happened. But I was scarcely listening to them for I was thinking of her dress, her pristine blue dress, unmarked save for a little mud around the hem. I looked at St Clair, silent in the corner of the room.

  ‘She would hardly have taken a rope. Ask him, William, ask him if she had a rope.’

  ‘What?’ said William.

  ‘Ask Jean St Clair if Christiane took with her a rope when she left Louis’ house last night.’

  The Frenchman had looked up at the mention of his name and seemed to be thinking before William even spoke to him.

  No. She had no rope. What young girl would walk through the streets of the town in her prettiest dress with a rope over her arm?

  ‘It was not dirty.’

  Now it was for George to look utterly lost. ‘Alexander, what are you talking about?’

  ‘You keep ropes somewhere in the garden?’

  ‘Yes, for hauling cut trees and the like. They are in a store near the workshed.’

  ‘And we are to think Christiane hauled a rope from the store all through the garden down to the pond, where she then climbed that tree, set a noose round her neck and let herself fall. Think, George: her dress – pale blue. Scarcely a mark and not a tear nor a caught thread on it.’

  William was staring at me. ‘What are you saying, Alexander?’

  But he already knew. The girl in the spotless pale blue dress whom we had found hanging above the ice less than two hours ago had not taken her own life over a rejected love. She had not taken her own life at all.

  Fifty yards away in the guard room of the tolbooth, Lumsden understood instantly. He took William with him for an inspection of Christiane’s clothing and then sent me to fetch Dr Dun from the college. Within twenty minutes the principal had arrived and completed his brief examination. We should have seen it ourselves from the start.

  ‘Her neck has been broken, all right, but not from hanging. Did you not notice her eyes, her tongue, the lack of lividity in her face?’ I thought of the face, so pale it had almost matched her dress. Dun closed her eyes tenderly. ‘The child was dead before she was ever hung from that tree.’

  15

  ‘Will I Tell You of Your Brother?’

  A night’s sleep and a hefty measure of George’s best port wine had done little to diminish the sense of shock among us as he, William and I met together once more the next morning in his studio. St Clair, at his own request, had been allowed to return to his work in the garden, albeit under the eye of one of Lumsden’s men. Every so often one of us would lift our heads as if to speak, but our words only went in circles, and we had all but given up.

  ‘But, he is a good man, I would have sworn it. I cannot believe he would have done this.’

  ‘Perhaps he did not,’ I said.

  William was almost annoyed at me. ‘Oh, come, Alexander. You cannot still be at this nonsense about Seoras MacKay. That boy is lying dead somewhere, and anyone with any sense knows it. When we finally get Hugh Gunn out of the precincts of that blasted college of yours without twenty of MacKay’s men around him, we will have the truth out of him.’

  ‘MacKay will never let you near him,’ I said, ‘and without a body, they can hardly charge Hugh with murder.’

&nb
sp; ‘We have Christiane’s body, though,’ said George, returning to the matter at hand, ‘and Guillaume fled or killed.’

  ‘Or pressed,’ I said.

  They both stared at me. In fact, up until I had said the words, I had not considered the possibility myself.

  Comprehension spread over their faces. ‘Ormiston?’

  I swallowed some port. ‘It’s possible.’ I remembered the night in Downie’s Inn, and how abruptly the two Frenchmen had left when I had been engaged with the lieutenant.

  ‘But why just him? Why would they not take St Clair too?’ asked William

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘Well, apart from the obvious. Do you think it was a question of chance?’

  I pushed at a log in front of the fire with my foot. ‘I think it is possible that Guillaume was pressed because of Isabella Irvine.’

  George sat back in his chair, opened his mouth as if he would speak. Closed it again.

  I could not help but laugh. ‘It is not often I render you speechless, my friend.’

  ‘It is …’ He was still struggling. ‘I thought I was out in the world more often than you, Alexander, saw more of its secrets, but I see that for all I know of the doings of marquises and kings, I know very little of what goes on under my very nose. I had never considered there could be any connection between Guillaume Charpentier and Isabella Irvine. They met in my garden only last week – indeed, “met” is hardly the apt expression, for it was to Lady Rothiemay that Guillaume spoke, and Isabella did not appear to take any particular interest in him, nor he her. Mind you,’ he said, almost shielding his face with his glass as though he might be caught in an indiscretion, ‘my wife never tires of telling me what a handsome man Guillaume is considered, and I would not put it past Isabella to bestow her affections on a gardener while treating every other man that comes near her with disdain.’

  ‘So it is not just me then?’

  He put down his glass, shaking his head. ‘Granted, you seem to be an especial object of her contempt, but she scarcely gives more encouragement to men she has never before encountered.’

  ‘There is something between her and Ormiston, I know that for certain, and if he suspected anything at all of Charpentier, he may well have taken measures to remove him from her circle.’

  I told them what I had witnessed by the pond on Saturday afternoon, and of the tryst I had come upon in the garden in the darkness not long before our own scrap there on the previous Monday night.

  ‘Ormiston?’

  ‘Probably.’ I told them also what I had glimpsed in the mirror at Baillie Lumsden’s house. ‘The lieutenant was greatly disappointed that she was not in attendance at his ship-board dinner the other night. She had been put to bed with a fever. Lady Rothiemay seemed distinctly against any encouragement of the lieutenant from what I could see.’

  ‘Well, pity help Ormiston, then, for Katharine Forbes is not a woman prone to ambiguity.’

  ‘No, but she is evidently not averse to the odd lie when it suits her purposes,’ said William, again in lawyer mode.

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, did Isabella Irvine look to you like a woman who had been put to bed of a fever only the night before when she appeared in George’s garden yesterday?’

  My unnecessary answer was interrupted by the arrival of the exhausted-looking Baillie Lumsden.

  ‘I think I must question this St Clair fellow further, George, and whether he knows anything more or not, I do not think it good that he should wander the town freely when there is a murderer abroad. Will you take me down to him?’

  George agreed, and while William reluctantly went to his own duties in the Castlegate, I, already having sent word to the college that I would not be there before dinner, went down into the garden after them. We went through the gate in the wall of the backland of George’s house and made our way towards the place St Clair had last been working. We found him with little trouble near the site of the maze, at his favourite pastime of hacking down trees.

  In a clumsy approximation of the French language, George told St Clair what the baillie wanted of him. The gardener still had the axe in his hand, and gestured in the direction of the workshed that he should return it.

  George himself was slow to move. ‘What has become of my sanctuary, Alexander? How can I think of making this a place of pleasure now?’

  ‘It was God’s will that Christiane helped you here. She worked with you to accomplish something good, and she took a delight in that work. You must do so also, so that her coming here was of greater significance than simply to find the place of her death. The spring will bring new life, and a memorial to her. You must reclaim this place from evil.’

  He smiled and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘You are right, my friend. Thank you.’

  Avoiding any glance in the direction of the pond, we followed Lumsden through the trees and out to the clearing between amphitheatre and pavilion where George planned to plant his avenue of fruit trees. It was a relief to be out in the open, and the greater light, further away from the place of yesterday’s grim discovery, but the relief was short-lived, for just as we were bidding farewell to the baillie with his charge, a party of a dozen armed men, headed by Sir Donald MacKay of Strathnaver, Lord Reay, came down the hill towards us.

  ‘Your Lordship …’ began Lumsden.

  ‘Where is the body?’ shouted MacKay.

  Lumsden appeared a little shaken. ‘Taken to the kirk, but it is not Seoras, your Lordship, it is not your son.’

  MacKay’s pace slowed only a little, and only for a moment. As he came closer I could see jaw muscles working as if he was trying to hold in some rage. The men behind him looked equally determined. They drew up in front of us and I saw that all the good humour of the night on shipboard was gone from the Highlander’s face as he addressed Lumsden without even acknowledging George or me. He spoke slowly, and in his voice there was something chilling.

  ‘Where is the body?’

  Lumsden tried again. ‘I sent it to lie in St Ninian’s Chapel. I can assure you, Sir Donald, the body is that of a young girl, the French master’s sister. George here will confirm it, Alexander too.’

  Lord Reay turned flaming eyes upon me. ‘The girl Christiane? The one of whom Uisdean spoke? Is everyone my son knew to be assaulted? Murdered? And I have to hear it on the street? I have seen better order in a Spanish brothel!’

  Visibly shaken, it took the baillie a moment to find his reply. ‘I am sorry, your Lordship. You should have been told. We have been busy …’

  ‘No doubt,’ said MacKay, his outburst evidently having calmed him. ‘But I would still see the body, and the place where it was found. I have read the dead often enough, and I may see something that you do not.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lumsden.

  ‘And my men will search this garden, Jamesone.’

  The baillie was perplexed. ‘But if they have done so already …’

  ‘Aye, well they will do so again. If this is to be a dumping ground for the murdered of this town, I will not have my son rot here. And if the man who put that child to death be still hiding here, he will not escape my vengeance!’

  There was nothing more to be said, and George and I fell reluctantly into line behind Seoras’s father and his men, the unfortunate Lumsden trailing behind them in the direction of the pond.

  ‘You come too,’ called George.

  I had forgotten about St Clair, as had the baillie, but I saw him now, stopped in his tracks on the way to the workshed. His face was a picture of uncertainty.

  ‘Venez,’ George said eventually. ‘Suivez.’

  The party ahead of us had paused for a moment when George had called out, but seeing it was an issue of no consequence, had soon continued on their way. All but one of them, a stocky, scarred man who might have been anything between thirty and fifty years of age. He did not follow his companions as they picked up their pace again, for the sight of the gardener had caught his a
ttention. Like a man suddenly finding himself in the wrong place, he stared at Jean St Clair. His mouth began to move, almost silently, as if he was speaking to himself, testing the words on himself, and I could not hear what he said. But then, somehow satisfied, he repeated them, louder, and the men closest to him also stopped.

  ‘Johnny Sinclair.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Johnny Sinclair, from Wick. You cowardly, runaway son of a whore.’

  St Clair gaped for a moment as if he had been struck to stone, but he quickly regained his wits, and before I fully understood what was happening, he had turned and begun to run. His hand still gripping the axe, he was making at speed in the direction not of the workshed but the east gate, and the centre of the town. But for all his knowledge of the overgrown garden, and the strength that years of physical labour had given him, he was no match for the barefooted Highlanders with ten years of fighting in the field behind them, and it was far from certain that he would be able to make his escape into the morning bustle of the town before they were upon him. Even so, it was not one of Lord Reay’s men who caught him, but Lieutenant Ormiston, who was just coming through the gate as St Clair reached it. Unlike myself, Ormiston needed no time to understand what was going on, and had the gardener lying on his back, the point of a sword at his throat, before Lord Reay’s men had come within twenty yards of them. St Clair, recognising a man for whom killing would not be a novelty, did not even struggle.

  By a small movement of his sword, Ormiston brought the gardener to his feet without ever giving him the chance of retreating from its point. The Highlanders had halted in their pursuit now and, regaining their accustomed order, waited.

  ‘What would you have me do with this detritus, your Lordship?’ The lieutenant prodded St Clair in the chest with the end of his blade, forcing him backwards towards the waiting soldiers.

  ‘Bring him to me that I might look at him. Neil Ross, come and tell me what you know of this man.’