A Pig of Cold Poison (20 page)

‘Right, lads,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘I think that’s all we need to know. Away and take her up, and you’ll no accept any marchpane cherries off her.’

‘Who?’demanded Eleanor as the two constables left the room. ‘Take who up?’ exclaimed her father at the same time. ‘Her? Who – not – not Grace?’

‘Your daughter Agnes,’ said the Serjeant with satisfaction. ‘She was heard to say she’d get back at her brother, and she’d the means and the chance to put the dainties where he’d find them.’

‘Agnes?’ said Nicol, interested. ‘I’d never have thought she’d do that. Senna in his porridge maybe, but no pyson. She must dislike him worse than I thought.’

‘Agnes?’ said Eleanor at the same moment, but not as if she disbelieved it. She looked up at her husband, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

‘No!’ said Renfrew. ‘No, Serjeant, no my wee lassie! You canny mean it!’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘And I’m wondering if she’s responsible for what came to Danny Gibson after all.’ He smiled kindly at Gil. ‘There you are, Maister Cunningham, two deaths sorted and the miscreant taken up, all in less than half an hour.’

What was that line in the play? Alys thought.
I’ll rug you down in inches In less than half an hour.
Gil returned the smile with the politeness which meant he was deeply annoyed.

‘Sir Thomas will be impressed,’ he said.

‘We should have some light in here,’ said Syme anxiously. He looked at Alys. ‘Could I trouble you to call for candles, mistress? It would –’

She nodded, and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her and wondering whether to go out to the kitchen for lights. Overhead, suddenly, there was screaming, exclamations, running feet, loud voices. The two constables seemed to be having some difficulty with their capture. In the same moment she realized that the two younger maidservants were by the door which led out to the kitchen, clinging together and staring at the ceiling.

‘No!’ shrieked Agnes overhead. ‘It was nothing to do wi me! Get your hands off me! My faither will –’

‘What in Our Lady’s name are you doing?’ Grace’s voice.

‘Ah, you wee bitch! Mind her claws, Willie.’

‘Oh, mem!’ said Babtie. ‘What are they doing? Are they taking her up for it?’

‘A course they are!’ said Jess scornfully. ‘What else d’you think? Even if Isa wouldny tell them what she heard, I let them know it plain enough. Proof positive, that is.’

‘We need lights in the chamber yonder,’ said Alys. ‘Will one of you fetch candles?’

‘They’re here, mem,’ said Babtie. She crossed the chamber to the plate-cupboard and lifted two candles from the box on its lower shelf, a small two-branched pricket-holder from the upper shelf. Fitting them together she struck a light and lit the candles, their small flames blossoming in the suddenly darkened room. As she returned, the thumping and shouting overhead moved on to the stairs, the newel-post rocking in the approaching light. Booted feet appeared round the turn of the stair, stamping uncertainly, and then Agnes’s skirts and the rest of her person, writhing as she attempted to free herself from the grip of the two men. They all lurched gasping off the stair on to the flagged floor of the hall.

‘It’s nothing to do wi me!’ Agnes shrieked again. Behind her, Grace descended quietly, dismay in her face, and a frightened Nell Wilkie appeared at her back. ‘My faither will stop you!’ Agnes persisted. ‘Daddy, tell them! Make them let go!’

‘Ah, shut your noise,’ said one of the men, the one with the scratched face. ‘This way, and we’ll see what your daddy says.’

‘Why have they taken her? Have they proof of any sort?’ Grace said quietly.

‘Circumstantial only,’ said Alys. ‘Is Meg –?’

‘Her mother’s wi her.’

Alys took the candles from Babtie and followed the constables into the chamber, Grace at her shoulder, aware that the two maidservants were following them. Nell hurried after, clearly unwilling to be alone.

It was already a complex and noisy scene. Agnes was appealing again to her father, Eleanor was on her feet sobbing on Syme’s shoulder, Nicol was leaning against the wall beside Gil and giggling foolishly, and Maister Renfrew, his face alarmingly dark in the dim light, was arguing with the Serjeant, who alternately answered him and conjured Agnes to admit her guilt. By the settle, in deep bell-like tones, the Dominican priest whose name Alys had not caught was reciting prayers for the dead and intercessions for the bereaved and the guilty, a grace she felt they could have done without at this moment. Babtie slipped in behind her, shrinking against the door where she obviously hoped to be unnoticed, staring round-eyed at Robert’s body. Jess followed, gazing triumphantly at the struggling prisoner, and Nell Wilkie peeped timidly round the door.

‘It wasny me!’ repeated Agnes. ‘Where’s Grace, she’ll tell you, where’s –’ She twisted round to see who else was in the room, and froze briefly, staring at the group by the door. ‘It was you!’ she exclaimed in fury.

Next to Alys, Grace jerked as if she had been struck by an arrow. She turned to look at the other woman, and then over her shoulder at the two maidservants, who were staring back at Agnes, open-mouthed.

‘Who?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘What are you saying, Agnes? It was never Grace!’

‘It was you!’ Agnes said again. ‘You, Jess Dickson!’ She glared from one to the other of the men that held her, her eyes glittering. ‘Take her, no me. It was her poisoned my brother, she did it.’

‘No I never!’ Jess looked round her, alarmed, and edged towards the door. ‘How would I pyson anybody?’

‘Aye, hold the lassie!’ ordered Renfrew. Alys met Gil’s eyes across the chamber. Even in that light, she could tell that he was as startled as she was.

The Serjeant sighed. ‘We’ll just take them both,’ he said resignedly. ‘Hold her and all, lads.’

*    *    *

‘But why can they not release my brother?’ asked Christian Bothwell heatedly. ‘If she’s poisoned one man, she’s poisoned another, surely?’

‘The Provost must decide,’ said Gil, with sympathy, ‘and he’s abed with the rheum. It could still have been a matter of conspiracy between them, you must see that –’

‘Never! No my brother!’

‘I realize it’s not in his nature, but the law takes no account of such things.’

‘The law is a fool,’ said Mistress Bothwell.

They were standing in the street, where she had caught up with them on their way home after seeing a tearful Nell Wilkie back to the dyeyard. The news of Robert Renfrew’s death and his sister’s arrest had obviously spread rapidly in the lower town, and she was certain Gil could now secure her brother’s release.

‘This is not the place to discuss it,’ said Alys. ‘Will you not come home with us just now? If you could persuade your brother to confess where he came by the flask he used, it would help him. It would help us too.’

‘He’ll not hear me,’ said Mistress Bothwell, wringing a fold of her plaid in her hands. In the torchlight her face was pinched and her eyes huge and dark. ‘I got in to see him yesterday, afore they moved him to the Castle, but he’d not admit it was other than one of ours, I asked him where he’d got it and he never answered –’

‘He might tell us more when he knows Agnes has been taken up,’ Gil observed.

She shook her head. ‘No, if he’s decided to protect her he’ll not change his mind.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘I canny bear it if I’m to see him hang, only for the sake of a vicious wee trollop like Agnes Renfrew.’

‘Come back with us,’ said Alys again, ‘and at least have some company for the evening.’

She shook her head again. ‘My thanks, lassie, I’m bidden to the Forrests for my supper. It’s right kind of them, considering. And kind of you, too.’ She looked up at Gil. ‘So you’ll not see Nanty released?’

‘I’ve no authority,’ he said with reluctance. ‘I’d like nothing better, but the Provost makes his own decisions. He’ll not rise from his bed to question Agnes, I suspect, and he won’t release your brother till he has good reason.’

‘Is there more you need to know?’ she asked directly. ‘Can I find anything for you?’

‘I still haven’t learned what the poison is or where it came from,’ said Gil. ‘Anything you can think of that might help me to that would be valuable.’

‘Aye, I can see that.’ She gathered her plaid round her, preparing to walk on up the High Street. ‘I could – I’ll think on it more. I suppose Agnes isn’t saying anything that will help?’

‘She still denied everything, even when they put the chains on her,’ said Alys. She turned to put the platter of roast meat on the plate-cupboard where it would not tempt Socrates. Gil watched appreciatively as the high delicate bridge of her nose was outlined for a moment against the candlelight gleaming on the plate. Turning back she looked briefly down the table as she had been doing all evening to make sure John was safe on his nurse’s knee, and lifted the serving-spoon before her. ‘Catherine, may I help you to the applemoy?’

‘It is unbelievable,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I find it all too believable, and what Alys learned in the kitchen bears me out.’

‘But whether you find it believable, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘do you think she did poison her brother? Or was it the maidservant as she claimed?’

‘She accused the girl out of spite,’ said Alys. ‘When she recognized who had set the constables on to her. She is very vindictive.’

‘
Never yet I knouste non Louesomer in londe
,’ observed Gil, with irony.

‘So not the maidservant but the mistress.’

‘Her father thinks she did,’ said Alys.

‘He looked as though he would have a seizure when he saw her manacled,’ said Gil. ‘I was glad when Grace reminded him to take his drops, though they didn’t seem to help much.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Alys slowly, ‘it could have been any of them. Agnes is likely, I admit, but as we found last night, they all have as much reason as she does to poison Robert, they all have the knowledge, and the method was open to any of them. Or to anyone else who recognized the possibility.’

‘Except for Nanty Bothwell,’ said Gil.

‘Unless he had prepared the things earlier and left them in place,’ Maistre Pierre said, ‘and it only now came to light. But why would he poison Robert Renfrew if he had a notion for Agnes?’

‘To gain favour with her?’ suggested Gil.

‘It might work,’ said Alys critically, ‘but it would be out of character. None of his friends could believe it of him, that he might poison his rival, and it makes even less sense to poison his sweetheart’s brother. It was her father who objected to her choice of sweetheart, not her brother.’

‘And at the rate Robert ate the things, if they were left before the play on Thursday I’d have thought he would reach a poisoned one sooner than this. No, I think we can probably discount Bothwell,’ Gil agreed. ‘Which only leaves us the entire family. And the maidservant.’

‘Da Gil!’ said a forceful voice at his side. He looked down, to find John, who would usually have been in bed by suppertime, beaming at him under dark curls full of green sauce. Socrates reached an enquiring muzzle and licked the boy’s ear.

‘What a sight you are,’ Gil said, pushing the dog away and lifting John on to his knee. ‘He seems well enough now, after his misadventure.’

‘I think he’s unharmed,’ said Alys. ‘He slept all afternoon, Nancy told me. Only the adults were afflicted. I thought this morning I would never recover from the fright, and poor Nancy is consumed by guilt.’

‘He will be guarded more carefully now,’ observed Catherine.

‘Poon,’ said John, seizing Gil’s spoon.

‘It seems to me,’ continued Catherine, laying her own spoon in her plate, ‘that the key to the question is, what is the source of the poison.’

‘I think so too, madame,’ Gil agreed. ‘Whoever poisoned the cherries must at least have had access to the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, whether or not it was the same person.’ He wrestled the spoon back and silenced the shouts of indignation by using it to offer John a mouthful of applemoy.

‘But is that sufficient reason to kill her brother?’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly.

Gil suddenly recalled his sister Dorothea, of all people, a year ago in this hall saying,
You don’t need a sensible reason to want to kill a brother, just a strong one
. He repeated the remark, and Alys nodded.

‘And Agnes’s reasons were strong,’ she said. ‘But were anyone else’s as strong?’

‘Poj!’ said John, reaching out to Gil’s plate. Gil checked the sticky little paws and gave the boy another spoonful.

‘It isn’t porridge, John,’ he said. ‘It’s applemoy. Nancy,’ he called down the table, ‘bring me his wee dish.’

‘Moy?’

‘He never grasps the whole word, does he?’ Gil said. ‘Thank you, Nancy. You’re a good lass.’ Nancy gave him a watery smile, bobbed and went back to her own seat. ‘We should call you Tuttivillus, wee man.’

‘Have you still the list you made,
ma mie
?’ Catherine asked Alys. ‘You should study it after supper. It might prove of value.’

‘It was certainly no accident, by what you say,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘The sweetmeats were deliberately poisoned. Could they have been intended for someone else?’ He turned his head. ‘Is that someone at the door? Who would come calling at this hour?’

‘Syme,’ guessed Gil, as his father-in-law rose. ‘He’s the most likely.’

He was right. Admitted in a flurry of apologies for disturbing their supper, James Syme bowed to the company, refused a seat at the table, and begged a word with Gil when he was free.

‘I’m about done here,’ Gil said, ‘if Pierre will excuse me. John, go to Mammy Alys.’

‘Take dish,’ ordered John, sliding to the floor.

Gil obediently handed him the little painted plate with its mound of applemoy, and he pattered round the table to Alys. Gil rose, wiping food from his person, and Maistre Pierre said, ‘Go above to my closet, if you wish.’

Seated in his father-in-law’s comfortable panelled closet, with its shelf of books, its jug of Malvoisie left ready, Alys’s sewing lying on the windowsill, Gil handed Syme a glass of the golden wine and studied the man.