‘Does one act more quickly than the other?’
‘It depends very much on the dose given. Either can kill within hours.’
‘And how can we tell that in this case it was arsenic, and not yew?’
Dr. Pagan looked thoughtful.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘to be perfectly frank, you have raised a few doubts in my mind. Are there yew trees about? Oh – at the end of his garden, of course. Oh, dearie me.’ He seemed fairly complacent about his possible mistake: after all, whichever diagnosis turned out to be correct, the prognosis was still the same. Professor Keith’s quality of life was not likely to be much affected either way.
‘But how could we find out? It might help – people – work out who the murderer is.’
‘It might indeed,’ Dr. Pagan drew out his large silver watch and thumbed it open. ‘I’m afraid I have no time to pursue this now. However, you might try Jamie Corsane, the apothecary on Market Street. He was given the claret jug to examine. If it was yew, it’s a vegetable kind of thing he should be looking for. Now, if you’ll forgive me ...’
‘Of course, sir. Thank you very much for your time.’
Dr. Pagan disappeared as neatly as he had arrived, presumably to carry out some last essential burnishing before his supper. The maid showed Charles out, leaving him in no doubt that she would be sweeping the hall forthwith. If she could have checked his pockets for stolen goods he was sure she would not have hesitated to do so.
Outside, the rain pattered once more on to his trencher and soaked secretly into his gown. He blew out mournfully, taking shelter under the eaves while he tried to remember where Corsane’s apothecary shop was. Then, avoiding the worst of the puddles, he set off.
He was just about to turn in to College Wynd when in the distance he saw a familiar figure, moving slowly despite the rain. It was his brother George. Changing direction he carried on up North Street to meet him.
It was not the George of that morning, setting out for the funeral, full of cheer and purpose. This was instead a dejected George, who barely saw the ground he stared at, who did not notice when passing carriages sprayed him with mud from their wheels. Even his boots had lost their shine. He did not see Charles until he was almost upon him.
‘George! What on earth’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ said George, not fooling anyone. ‘Ach ... nothing. I thought I might go home today, actually.’
‘Well, you’d better get on then, before dark.’
George looked up at the sky as if the possibility of night had not previously occurred to him. A large raindrop hit him in the eye.
‘And you’ll be drowned before you reach Guardbridge in this weather, for heaven’s sake. Stay till the morning.’
‘My back’s breaking sleeping on that chair.’
‘You haven’t complained about it before.’ Something had clearly gone wrong at the Keiths’: nothing else could have thrown George into this despair, and Charles was sure it would not last long. ‘And in the morning, remember to pay Mrs. Walker for your keep and the horse’s stabling.’
George grew petulant.
‘Even you don’t want me to stay. I’m just an inconvenience to you.’
‘George, just go back to Mrs. Walker’s, change your clothes and ask for a hot cup of chocolate. I’ll be back as soon as I can and we’ll discuss it all then. There’s no sense in standing out here in a downpour.’
‘Hot chocolate,’ said George thoughtfully, but with much less heart than he would usually have managed.
‘Come on: I’ll walk you through to Market Street and leave you there for now. I’m off to the apothecary’s ... George,’
‘Hmm?’
‘That cantharides you asked me to get for you in Edinburgh.’ Charles began walking, to be less easily overheard. ‘What did you do with it?’
‘Do with it?’ George was bewildered. ‘I never saw it. Where did you leave it? At Letho?’
‘No, I brought it here by mistake. It was in my parlour.’
George shook his head.
‘I never saw it,’ he repeated. ‘To tell you the truth, I’d pretty much forgotten about it.’
‘Maybe it’s best that way,’ Charles muttered. They had reached Market Street. ‘I’m off down this way. See you later.’
‘Mmm.’ When Charles turned away, George was still looking thoroughly puzzled.
The apothecary, Jamie Corsane, had withered legs from youth and the kind of hard face that grows out of too much limping. He spent most of his day on a high stool fitted with little wheels, so that he could reach the shop’s counter and pull himself about to fetch the large glass and earthenware jars that lined the shelves, disappearing into semi-darkness. Charles had always loved apothecary shops, with the mysteriously abbreviated Latin on the glinting jars, heavy mortars of graded sizes, little brass weights on the delicate scales with even stranger names than the jars, and a scent in the air that seemed to combine fresh cleanliness with an underlying darkness.
‘It wasn’t arsenic,’ said Corsane, after Charles had explained that Dr. Pagan had sent him. ‘No metal in it at all, bar the jug itself. Nobody tellt me to look for yew.’
‘Will you be able to? I mean, do you still have the dregs you examined?’
‘I do. Yon constable’s no been round yet to fetch it. Wait here now a minute.’ He wheeled himself back from the counter to a high table behind him where he pulled a dustcloth off a bright brass microscope. Taking a taper to a candle burning in the darkest corner of the shop, he lit a lacemaker’s lamp, the kind where the water magnifies the light, and tilted a mirror at the bottom of the microscope towards it, manoeuvring it minutely to focus the best light through the little slide above it. He stared down the brass eyepiece, and Charles longed to do the same. Then he opened a very large leather-bound volume beside him, flicked through the pages, glanced back down the eyepiece and back again at the book. Charles caught a glimpse of longhand writing and little watercolours before the book snapped shut.
‘It’s yew,’ said Corsane, ‘right enough. There are tiny wee bits to it that I’ve only ever seen in yew before. That’ll put the constable’s wee head in a fair guddle. Does it help you and Dr. Pagan?’
‘I think so, thank you. Now,’ he added, drawing the little package from Allan Bonar’s bunk out of his pocket, ‘can you tell me what this is?’
Jamie Corsane took the package, sniffed it, and laid it down on the counter.
‘Arsenic,’ he said, firmly. ‘What’s this, an examination?’
‘No – how can you tell so easily?’
‘Because those are my wrappings. I sold it to Ramsay Rickarton at the United College. Now, how are you?’
‘Fine, thank you, thank you. I’ll tell Dr. Pagan.’
‘Happy to help you,’ said Corsane, dismissing him.
He had helped Charles, certainly. Charles just wondered how much help this was all going to be to Thomas.
The students who lived in the college were wisely avoiding their damp rooms on a day like this, and most of them were huddled next to the fire in the dining hall, even though dinner was long over. There was an unmistakeable aroma of rabbit in the air. Some were studying or writing out their dictata in fair copy books; others were playing cards, and one had a scruffy copy of an Edinburgh newspaper from several weeks before. Henry Barchane, the son of a soldier from Perth, said he had not seen Thomas since dinner, and the others agreed. Charles asked if he had mentioned going to the library, but Henry gave it as his opinion that Thomas had been too bad-tempered to let near a book, and he had muttered something about walking things off. Charles sighed: that could mean West Sands, or East Sands, or the more sheltered walk along the mill lade to the south of the town, or, if he was lucky, Thomas’ favourite bench under the Keiths’ garden wall. Charles decided to try that first.
The rain had eased again, and it was easier to see other people on the street. Keeping an eye open for red gowns, the first person Charles saw was not Thomas, but
Boxie Skene. Under his gown he was dressed in funereal black.
‘You weren’t at the Keiths’ today, were you?’ Charles asked, greeting him.
‘Not at the Keiths’, no,’ said Boxie sheepishly, ‘but I did go to the kirkyard. I know we didn’t kill him, but I still feel bad about it.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Charles. ‘The night of the party he almost seemed to be friendly to you.’ It had struck him as strange at the time, but he had only just remembered it again. Boxie was frowning, too.
‘Yes, I never did find out what that was all about. I should ask Peter Keith, I suppose, but now doesn’t seem like the time. Peter was very pally at the party, and then he took me off to meet his father, and it was like some kind of interview for a job. I don’t know what they were up to.’
‘Maybe looking for a replacement for Allan Bonar as Keith’s assistant,’ suggested Charles. ‘Look, I’m walking round to the cliffs to see if I can find Thomas: do you want to come? Allan Bonar’s storming ahead in the race to win Patience Walker, my bunkwife’s daughter, and Thomas is a bit downhearted.’ Charles liked Boxie when he was on his own, and thought that two of them might diffuse Thomas’ wrath, if it was still strong. Boxie glanced up at the clock on Sallies’ tower.
‘Aye, I’ll come. I don’t much fancy being back at our bunk just now. Picket cowed is not a happy sight to see, and Rab’s as thick as mince.’
They walked almost in silence to Castle Wynd. Charles was thinking ahead to his meeting with Thomas, trying to decide what to say to him, what to ask him that would help him to work out what Thomas knew about Keith’s murder. He would have to calm him down about Patience and Allan Bonar first, of course, and that would be difficult enough. And if Thomas was not on his favourite bench, which would be the best place to try next?
As it turned out, however, Thomas was on his bench. They saw him as soon as they turned the corner, but did not call out, not wishing to give him time to develop his sulk before they reached him. He was leaning back against the wall, legs tucked under the rough seat, staring up at the sky: it was only when they came up level with him that they saw the pool of vomit on the ground beside him, partly diluted by the rain, and saw how his clenched hands had ripped the worn wool of his gown. His eyes were open, but the rain dripped into them unheeded from the dark yew trees above. Thomas was dead.
Chapter Twenty
Over the next few days, more people came to see Thomas than ever had before.
The constable and a couple of Rickarton’s junior janitors had moved him first of all: it did not seem right for him to be stuck there in the rain, and it was a public pathway which he was, to some extent, obstructing. He was taken unobtrusively back to United College, through the garden gate on the Scores, but there was a small, silent reception for him there already as if the news of his death was breathed in by the town along with the sea air. The students who had been in the dining hall earlier stood haphazardly by the door to the students’ stair, watching warily. The Principal and the Chancellor, hurrying across the college yard in damp gowns, removed their trenchers at the sight of the rough stretcher: Thomas lay on it covered in his scarlet gown, trailing darkly over the sides. The bearers paused, not sure where to go. The Principal stepped up and turned back the collar of plum velvet, staring for a long moment at the rough face below, while the students jostled silently for a view. Then he laid the collar back neatly, and with a nod dismissed Thomas from his keeping.
‘I shall write at once to his father,’ he said. ‘You may take him to his room, I suppose.’
Charles showed the way, with Boxie and the other students tagging behind. Thomas had had a small study with a bed recess, nothing much: his clean shirt and underwear lay on a bar shelf, along with his books – mostly borrowed. The basin and ewer belonged to the college, as did the worn sheets and blankets. On the stool that served as a bedside table lay a Bible and a book of sermons, and a candlestick dribbled with ill-smelling tallow. Charles ran a hand through his hair, trying to feel something, pity, guilt, grief, but nothing would come, not yet.
Dr. Pagan, shiny and new, came to visit Thomas in his dingy old room straight from the delights of his supper at the Keiths’. He told the constable carefully that it looked like arsenic poisoning, but that it was extremely difficult even for experts to identify it without an analysis of the stomach contents. The constable, used to stolen chickens and short weights at the market, and the occasional brawl when the Black Bull closed, went a little green and asked if the doctor would be good enough to arrange such an analysis with Jamie Corsane. Dr. Pagan agreed cheerfully, and nodded goodbye to Charles, almost winking.
The students assumed that Thomas’ father would want to come and take him home for burial. When the doctor and the constable had gone, they gathered together, half in and half out of Thomas’ tiny room as though they could involve him in the discussion, and settled a system of taking turns so that Thomas would not be left alone. A coffin would be something to be decided on by powers greater than they, Thomas’ father or the Principal, but there were other ways they could be useful. Thomas had no mirror to cover, but no curtain, either: Henry Barchane fetched a table cloth from the dining hall and he and Boxie tacked it up over the little window – white, they knew, was the next best thing to black. Charles said he would bring some of his own store of candles back later, and one of the tertians fetched one for now. The tablecloth was thick and cut the evening light out very efficiently. Boxie suggested awkwardly that Thomas ought to be laid out properly, which made them all stare blankly at their shoes – no one wanted to volunteer for that one – until Charles remembered Mrs. Nicolson, the midwife, and said that he would try to find her. Then they solemnly contributed what coins they could, to purchase a keg of beer for the watchers, and took an oath each not to drink more than their share. It seemed to be as much as they could decently do, and shaking hands with unfamiliar, adult formality, they went their separate ways, leaving the first pair of watchers settling down, uneasy and as yet beerless.
It was someone else’s job to fetch the beer. Charles went in search of Mrs. Nicolson, and eventually tracked her down to a prosperous-looking cottage by the mill lade south of the town. She agreed to come if she was not called away at once to Mrs. Shaw’s time of trial: if she was, she would send her niece in her stead. Satisfied, Charles went home to fetch candles.
To his surprise, Mrs. Walker was just about to put his supper by the kitchen fire to keep warm. George had finished his, and was managing to exude a sense of smug irritation, pleased to have cause to complain about Charles’ lateness and not the other way around. Mrs. Walker seemed prepared to be irritated, too, but something in Charles’ expression must have made her think again. She stopped halfway to the parlour door, and looked at him carefully.
‘Thomas Seaton’s dead,’ said Charles, still too dazed himself to show any consideration for her possible feelings. She gasped, and swayed. Patience, quicker than either man, steadied her and guided her gently back to her seat at the supper table. Even she had paled.
‘How?’ she snapped, before her mother had recovered the breath to speak. Charles, seeing Mrs. Walker’s shock, managed to speak more gently.
‘He – it seems that he might have suffered the same fate as Professor Keith.’
‘Poisoned?’
‘Indeed.’
There was a long silence while they took this in. Mrs. Walker poured herself what must have been the last half-cup of tea in the pot: it came out thick and black, and she swallowed it down in a gulp, the cup clattering again on the saucer. George asked,
‘He didn’t, er, do it himself, did he?’ Charles stared at him. ‘I mean to say, he was pretty upset earlier.’
‘Upset? What made him upset?’ asked Mrs.Walker sharply.
‘Oh, he and Allan Bonar –‘ George broke off, focussing suddenly on Patience. ‘They had a bit of an argument, after the funeral.’
‘What about?’ asked Patience, as if she thought she coul
d guess the answer. Whatever she thought, it did not seem to please her. George sat with his mouth open, head so full of the truth he could not think of a convincing lie. Charles was beyond helping him: he had not even sat down, and he could feel the muscles in his legs tightening in turn to hold him up as he swayed.
‘Never mind that now,’ sighed Mrs. Walker. ‘Charles, you’ll want your supper ... it’s maybe too cold, though.’
It was, but Charles ate it anyway, too tired and hungry to wait any longer. He felt better when the last flake of pie and smear of pigeon gravy was scraped from his plate, and when he had taken a small glass of brandy at Mrs. Walker’s insistence. He even felt strong enough to do his duty by Thomas, and defend him against a charge which would probably feature often enough in local gossip.
‘The constable wanted to know if Thomas had – had taken the poison deliberately,’ he said at last. ‘He thought it would save him a good deal of trouble if Thomas had done it in remorse after killing Professor Keith – public hangings cost good money, you see,’ he added sourly.
‘He wouldn’t have done it. Not ever, neither himself nor poor Professor Keith,’ breathed Mrs. Walker, aghast at the very thought.
‘He had nothing about him he could have taken the poison in,’ said Charles flatly. ‘Dr. Pagan smelled brandy about him, and it looks as if he must have taken it in that.’
‘Maybe he threw it over the cliff,’ said George, looking apologetic. Charles eyed him.
‘You know Thomas couldn’t through baps to a bairn.’ He sighed. ‘Besides, Thomas thought Professor Keith had been poisoned with arsenic.’ He ignored the puzzled looks of those around him. ‘I must go back soon: we are to sit with the body by turn, until his father comes to take him home.’
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 25