The Harper's Quine (26 page)

‘Aye?’

He recited the statement the harper had delivered.
Sempill glared at him.

‘Better than nothing,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Aye, I’ll meet him, and his conditions. Do you want to name someone
yourself to stand for the brat, or will I find a man?’

‘I thought to ask my uncle.’

Sempill shot him another look, scowling.

‘Aye,’ he said at length. ‘That makes it clear I’m dealing
straight with him.’

‘It does that, John,’ agreed Gil.

Sempill opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and finally
said in exasperation, ‘So when can we meet? I need to get
this over with.’

‘I have still to speak to my uncle, but if he was free this
evening—’

‘Not this evening. I’m promised to Clem Walkinshaw.’

‘Then it needs be a few days hence. I’ve an errand that
takes me out of town.’

‘What errand? I thought you were hunting down Bess’s
killer?’

‘I am. This is to that end. What can you tell me about
Bess’s property in Bute?’

‘In Bute? There’s the two farms from her father, and the
burgage plot from Edward Stewart, with the house on it.
Then there’s the two joint feus, which will be mine now,
I suppose, little use though they are. One’s a stretch of
Kingarth covered in stones, and the other’s between the
castle and the sea. Gets burned every time the burgh’s
raided, it seems. God, I’ll get back at him for that. Little
benefit she’ll have got from the rents, mind you,’ he added
thoughtfully.

‘And the other property? Whose is that now?’

‘What the devil’s it to do with you?’

‘It may have some bearing on her death.’

Sempill stared at Gil. ‘Are you still harping on that one?
It was some broken man, skulking in the kirkyard, that’s
obvious.’

‘Not to me. Do you know whose the other property is
now?’

‘I suppose,’ said Sempill, chewing his lip, ‘it depends on
how it was left. Alexander Stewart would know, he likely drew up both wills. Is that where you’re going? To poke
about Rothesay asking questions that don’t concern
you?’

‘They concern your wife’s death, which I am investigating,’ Gil said. ‘Another thing, John. Did you know that that
pair of gallowglasses knew your wife before?’

Sempill stared at him.

‘Of course I did, gomerel. Where do you think I got them
from? She hired them, after Stirling field when the country
was unsettled and I was away. John of the Isles was raging
up and down the west coast, and who knew what he’d do
next. So of course I sent Neil down with the message for
her on May Day. I knew he’d deliver it to the right
woman.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘You can not. They’re away an errand. Both of them.’

‘When will they return?’

‘When they’ve completed it, I hope. I’ll send them over
to you when they get back, but it’ll likely be Sunday or
Monday.’

‘Thank you. Then can I speak to Maister Campbell of
Glenstriven?’

James Campbell was in the chamber at the top of the
wheel stair, where Gil had first spoken to the household.
He was seated by the window, one expensively booted leg
crossed over the other, with a book of Latin poetry in his
hands, but he closed this politely enough, keeping a finger
in his place, and allowed Gil to take him back over the
events of May Day without revealing anything new.

‘Where is this leading?’ he asked at length. ‘I have
answered these questions before.’

‘Some new detail might emerge,’ said Gil inventively.
‘Now - do you have a green velvet hat? What shape is
it?’

‘This one, you mean?’ Campbell nodded at the gown on
the floor beside him, and lifted it to untangle a hat from
the folds of material. ‘See for yourself.’

Gil turned the hat in his hand. It was a floppy bag-like object, with a couple of seagull feathers secured to one side
by a brooch with a green stone. It smelled of musk and
unwashed hair.

‘And were you wearing this,’ he said carefully, ‘when
you were in Glasgow last market day? Not yesterday, but
a week ago?’

‘I likely was,’ said Campbell easily. ‘I stayed here, and
left that here with my other gear.’

‘How long were you in Glasgow?’

‘A few days - from the Wednesday to the Saturday. Then
I went out to Muirend where Sempill was, to persuade my
sister home. I’m still trying, without much success.’

‘And that was when you met Bridie Miller?’

There was a silence.

‘It was,’ said Campbell finally.

‘When did you last see her?’

The green eyes flickered. Gil could almost hear the other
man recognizing that it was useless to deny it. With a
barely perceptible hesitation, Campbell admitted, ‘On May
Day. Before Compline.’

‘That was why you were late to the service?’

‘It was. But Neil came in just ahead of me, and Bess was
live when he left her. That’s certain enough. And before
you ask, yes, I did see the two of them in the kirkyard.
They were just going into the trees as I came through the
gate, and Neil crossed to the south door and went into the
church before me.’

‘I am looking at what happened to Bridie,’ Gil said. ‘It
is likely but not necessary that the two deaths are
connected.’

‘Is that what it seems to you?’ said Campbell, his tone
challenging. ‘An exercise in logic?’

‘No,’ said Gil a little defensively, ‘but it helps. Now,
I saw you in the market yesterday,’ he continued, going on
the attack, ‘talking to another servant lass. What was in her
basket?’

‘Her basket?’ repeated Campbell. Gil waited. ‘Green
stuff. Let me think. A pair of smoked fish, a package of laces and a great bundle of something green. Long narrow
leaves.’ His fingers described them. ‘I know - leeks.’

‘You seem very sure of that,’ Gil commented. Campbell
grinned without humour, showing his teeth in the same
way his sister did.

‘I offer you the advice for nothing, brother: there’s
always a good line to be spun from a lassie’s marketing.
Believe me, they love it if you take an interest in what they
have bought.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gil politely. Try spinning that line with
a girl who reads Chaucer and Thomas a Kempis, he
thought. ‘What were you talking about this time, apart
from leeks and smoked fish?’

‘Where was Bridie.’ The handsome face with its lopsided
mouth twisted. ‘And she, poor lass, was probably getting
stabbed about then, by what you said. I had trysted to
meet her after Sext by St Mary’s down the Thenawgait and
she never showed. It was another lassie from the same
household I was speaking to, Maister Cunningham. She
said they had all left the house before Bridie, but she’d
seen her at first up and down the market. I looked further,
but I never saw her, and then you told me last evening she
was dead, poor wee limmer.’

‘So you never saw her yesterday?’

‘That’s what I have just said.’

‘Do you know the name of the girl you were speaking
to?’

‘No, but she was certainly one of Agnes Hamilton’s
household, for I asked that.’

Gil set the hat aside and said, getting to his feet, ‘Thank
you, Maister Campbell. That is all I wish to ask you just
now.’

Something like surprise crossed James Campbell’s face,
but he rose likewise and bowed. When Gil left he was still
standing, holding his closed Horace, looking thoughtful.

Gil made his way down the stairs and out to the yard,
which he crossed in a wide curve to avoid the furious
mastiff, with a nagging feeling of questions unasked. There was something he had missed, or not uncovered, or not
noticed, about the whole business. Perhaps in Rothesay, he
thought, crossing Rottenrow to his uncle’s house. All may
be clearer from a distance.

Maggie Baxter was disinclined to talk.

‘Aye, I did speak to Mally Bowen,’ she said, ‘but she had
little enough to tell me. Dead between Sext and Nones, she
estimated, no struggle, not forced. There was blood on the
front of her kirtle, quite a lot, and a kind of odd smell on
her hair. That’s all, Maister Gil, and I’ll thank you to get
out of my way till I get the dinner ready. Go on!’ She made
shooing motions with her floury hands.

‘Thank you, Maggie,’ said Gil, making for the door.
‘I noticed the smell on her hair too.’ He remembered the
kerchief in his purse, and pulled it out. ‘It’s on this. I don’t
know what it is, but it’s familiar. You try.’

‘I haven’t the time to be bothered,’ said Maggie, sniffing
at the kerchief. ‘Aye, I know it, but I can’t name it the now.
It’ll come to me. Now get out my way, you bad laddie, or
the dinner will be late!’

Gil left obediently, and went to look for his uncle. Finding him at prayer in his little oratory, he crossed the hall
quietly and went up to his garret to find what he needed
for the journey.

Over dinner, the Official gave out a. stream of instructions and advice about travel. Gil nodded politely from
time to time, and forbore to point out that he had gone to
France at eighteen and returned alone five years later.

‘I promised you a docket for the Treasurer,’ his uncle
recalled, ‘for funds for the journey, and I’ll give you a letter
for William Dalrymple in Rothesay. We were at the College
together, and I believe he is still chaplain of St Michael’s.
In the castle,’ he added helpfully. ‘And James Henderson
has given me a letter for you to take to the steward at the
Bishop’s palace. One of them should be able to offer you a
bed.’

‘And a bed for Maister Mason,’ Gil pointed out.

‘Indeed.’

‘He bade me ask if he might call on you after
Vespers.’

‘Did he so? Well, I’ll be here. And what have you learned
today, Gilbert?’

‘Little enough.’

Canon Cunningham listened to Gil’s account of his day
while Maggie cleared the table round him, and at length
said thoughtfully, ‘James Campbell knew Mistress Sempill
was out in the trees. Could he have gone out of the kirk
during the service?’

‘He could,’ Gil agreed. ‘He uses a wee thin knife, and he
admitted to having slipped away, he said to say a prayer
to St James.’

‘Reasonably enough.’

‘But though he might have stabbed the servant lassie,
I do not know why he should have killed Bess Stewart.
What could he gain from her death?’

‘Some benefit to his sister, perhaps? Many are unaware,’
said the Canon, settling into his lecturer’s manner, ‘of the
restrictions which canon law places on the remarriage of
adulterers. He may have thought -‘

‘He has studied at St Andrews and Bologna,’ Gil
interrupted.

‘Ah. Well, Gilbert, you must follow the scent where it
leads you, and hope you have not gone astray. Meanwhile
there is this matter of the harper’s bairn. Do you know,
I might act for the laddie. He needs someone to see him
right, poor bairn.’

‘That would be a great relief to me,’ Gil said.

His uncle shot him a look, and a crease appeared at the
side of his mouth. All he said, however, was, ‘You are
enjoying this hunt, aren’t you, Gilbert?’

‘I am,’ he admitted. ‘It seems wrong, when two women
have died, but I feel as if I have woken up after months
asleep, like the lassie in the old tale.’

‘I hope not,’ said his uncle drily, ‘considering what came
to the lassie. Well, well, you must make the most of what
God sends you. I will write you out that docket for the Treasury, and then I am for the Consistory, to look over
the papers for a matter tomorrow morning. I will be back
after Vespers.’

Gil, having exchanged the docket for a satisfactory sum
of money, returned to the house and finding his uncle still
out retreated to his garret again, to go over the evidence he
had collected and to consider what he hoped to find out in
Rothesay. Seated cross-legged on his bed, he worked
through what he knew, dogged by that same feeling of
something missed, or not noticed, or not asked. The man
with the best reason for killing Bess Stewart had witnesses
to show he had not, including Gil himself. The men with
the best opportunities had no reason that he had yet
uncovered for doing so. The death of Bridie Miller must be
connected, since as he had said to the mason it was not
logical to assume two killers with the same method of
working, loose at the same time in a town of five thousand
souls, but John Sempill had a witness to show he was on
his way up the High Street when she died, and if James
Campbell was telling the truth he had been down the
Thenawgait at Sext waiting for a girl who never showed.
Gil himself had seen him only a little later, just beyond the
Tolbooth.

‘If he killed Bess,’ he said aloud, ‘then he might have a
reason for killing Bridie. But if not the one, then not the
other.’

Glancing at the window, he was surprised to realize that
it must be well after Vespers. He unlocked his legs, and
rubbed the circulation back into them, reflecting that
Aristotle had less application to real life than he had
hoped.

By one of the hall windows, David Cunningham and the
mason were discussing a fine point of contract law over a
plate of Maggie’s girdle-cakes. They greeted him with
pleasure, but returned immediately to the question of what
constituted attendance on site, dark red head and black
coif nodding in time to one another’s words. Gil looked in
the small cupboard for a wine-cup, and failing to find one made for the kitchen. The mason’s voice floated after him
as he went down the stairs.

‘And at Cologne, a friend of mine …’

Maggie and the men were round the kitchen fire, gossiping. Gil found a cup and was returning to the stair when
one of the stable-hands said, ‘Maister Gil, did ye know the
serjeant’s planning to make an arrest?’

‘I did not,’ said Gil. ‘Who is it?’

‘He never said,’ admitted the man regretfully. ‘But it’s
someone for the lassie Miller, that had her throat cut in
Blackfriars yard.’

‘It was not her throat,’ said Maggie quickly, with a
glance at William the kitchen-boy. ‘I spoke to Mally Bowen
that washed her.’