A Pig of Cold Poison (14 page)

‘She’ll likely no be pleased,’ Babb warned, ‘she’s wanting to go next door to hear about the mistress’s groaning-time.’

‘Offer her my apology,’ Gil said guiltily, sitting down on a chair against the wall. ‘I didn’t mean to hold back your meal, Kate.’

Kate, reared as strictly as he had been in the principle that one did not upset the kitchen, merely nodded, and turned to clump over to sit beside him, propping her crutches across her knee.

‘I spoke to my lassies,’ she said as Babb left the room. ‘They noticed Agnes come in by the kitchen door, right enough, and they were both certain that she looked at young Bothwell as she came in, not at the lad who died.’

‘And yet she had spoken to Bothwell earlier, so it should have been Danny’s turn. It’s proof of nothing, but it is suggestive. Did she speak to anyone?’

‘No, they said she went straight to the stair.’

‘Thanks for this, Kate. I’ve another question for your kitchen.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Ask Ursel, if you would, if anything she served the mummers had almonds in it.’

‘Almonds? Like marchpane, or the like?’

‘Anything of that sort,’ he agreed.

‘I’ll ask her.’ She looked at him sideways. ‘Now why are you asking me if Alys was well? I’d my doubts about her myself, Gil. She seemed right shaken. She ate all the cakes on the tray, which is not like her, she usually takes one or two for manners, no more. She – it seems she witnessed the birth next door, and by what I hear Meg’s time was none of the easiest. I had to ask her direct before she’d admit it. I think she’s had a bad fright.’

‘Oh.’ He swallowed, dismayed. ‘What – I mean, how – how alarming would that be?’

Kate gave him another sideways look, amusement in her face.

‘I’d not have wanted Augie present,’ she said.

He digested this, and after a moment braced himself, saying, ‘Thanks, Kate. That must be it. I’d best be up the road and see what I can do.’

‘She may not want your help,’ Kate observed. He looked sharply at her. ‘Gil, how do you get a bairn in the first place? It might take another woman to comfort her.’ He stared, working out her meaning in growing embarrassment, and she bit her lip. ‘I’d come back with you, but there’s the men’s supper here –’

‘No.’ He rose. ‘See to your own household, Kit-cat. I need to sort this myself, whether she’ll let me or not.’

She looked up at him rather anxiously.

‘Bid her come down here the morn’s morn,’ she suggested. ‘I’d take it as a favour – the – the quest on Danny Gibson’s called for nine of the clock. I could do wi the company.’

He nodded. ‘Thanks, Kate,’ he said, and gripped her shoulder briefly.

‘Ursel’s saying,’ announced Babb in the doorway, ‘that the supper’ll spoil if she keeps it back any longer, so if Maister Gil’s no staying he’d best be off out the road, my leddy.’

‘You see where Ysonde gets her manners,’ said Kate resignedly. ‘Goodnight, Gil.’

To his astonishment, and initial relief, Alys was in the hall of her father’s house, overseeing the same tasks as had been in hand at Morison’s Yard. Socrates was lying on the hearth watching her carefully, though he scrambled up when Gil entered and came to explain his earlier dereliction of manners, tail wagging, ears deprecatingly flattened. There was no sign of Christian Bothwell; she must have decided to stay in her own house this night.

‘Am I late?’ he asked, acknowledging his dog’s apology.

‘No,’ said Alys lightly, with a tense note in her voice which he recognized. ‘We waited supper. I thought you were working.’

‘I was.’ He turned to wash his hands in the pewter bowl set by the door, peering into the sparkles of candlelight on the water as if they might tell him how to handle this. ‘I called by Morison’s Yard,’ he added, lifting the linen towel. ‘Kate asked me to bid you down there tomorrow, while the quest is held. I’d assume the men will all go up to the Castle.’

‘Likely.’ She finished setting out the spoons, added the small salt from the plate-cupboard, inspected the table, and nodded. ‘Bid them serve as soon as they like, Kittock. I’ll call the maister.’

Over supper she maintained the same light manner, discussing something Socrates had done during the day, to the dog’s evident embarrassment, and reporting what Nancy had said about John. Gil and her father, after an exchange of glances, supported her in this; Catherine silently absorbed stockfish-and-almond mould, and further down the table the mason’s men exchanged the day’s gossip with the maidservants. Gil caught two different versions of what Meg Renfrew’s mother had said to her son-in-law, and some speculation about why Danny Gibson had been poisoned.

‘Shall we have music?’ said Maistre Pierre as the board was lifted. ‘It’s a good time since you played the mono-cords for us,
ma mie
.’

‘No,’ said Alys unequivocally. ‘We have the case to consider.’ She brought the jug of wine over to the hearth and arranged herself on the settle, tense and upright. Socrates lay down heavily on her feet. ‘We need to compare what we know.’

Slightly to Gil’s surprise, Catherine joined them. The old woman would usually have retired to her own small chamber after supper, where he was aware she regularly spent some hours at prayer before sleep. Tonight she sat quietly in their midst, beads in hand, lips moving, eyes downcast under the black linen folds of her veil, although midway through Maistre Pierre’s account of their interview with Nicol Renfrew Gil realized that her attention was not on her beads but on Alys.

‘Can he really tell one flask from another?’ said Alys at the end of her father’s recital.

‘He seemed quite certain he could,’ said Gil. ‘We could test it. It must be part of the way his mind works.’ He ventured to put his arm along the back of the settle, behind Alys. She glanced up at him, with a tiny grimace which might have been a smile, then frowned at her hands. The dog looked up at them both, beat his tail twice on the boards and lowered his nose on to his paws again. ‘He thinks he last saw that flask, Allan Leaf he called it, in the workroom waiting to go up to Grace to be filled with Frankie’s drops.’

‘But the workroom was locked,’ Alys said. ‘Agnes must have found it somewhere else.’

‘He was also certain the poison was for his father,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘although Frankie himself found the idea ridiculous.’

‘One would, I suppose,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘What if I told you such a thing?’

‘I should laugh in your face,’ he agreed, ‘but then I think I am a good master.’

‘Probably Maister Renfrew does too. If it was not for him,’ said Alys, ‘if it was intended for Danny Gibson, then how could it have happened? Could Nanty Bothwell be lying? Could he have done it alone?’

‘I’d say not,’ said Gil. ‘There’s too much circumstance against it. He would have had to lay hold of a flask, not one of his own, and he had to have it ready before the mummers came to Morison’s Yard. And why go to so much trouble, why not use his own flask?’

‘If he used his own flask it would be known to be his doing,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘He could hardly avoid that, in the face of half Glasgow.’

‘But he claims it is his flask in any case,’ said Alys. ‘No, that doesn’t seem logical. Then could he be in conspiracy with Agnes?’

‘I’d believe it of her,’ said Gil, ‘but not of him. He’s quite clear-headed enough to see that he must be found guilty, as things stand.’

‘And if it was some other,’ said Alys slowly, ‘Robert for instance, conspiring with Agnes or not –’

‘Or Renfrew himself,’ Gil offered. ‘If he keeps such close control over his workroom as he claims, it’s hard to see how any other could make the stuff in his house.’

‘Yes, but whoever it was, they could not know in advance that the flask would be needed. No, that doesn’t hold up. Which leaves us with Agnes alone,’ she finished, pulling a face, ‘acting on the spur of the moment. Father says you spoke to her,’ she said to Gil.

‘She denied all,’ said Gil, and Maistre Pierre nodded agreement. ‘I thought she was more angry than distressed, though she put up a good imitation of it.’

‘I think she is genuinely distressed at the death of her sweetheart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She is also frightened. No doubt if she did provide Bothwell with the flask, she has seen that she must be suspected.’

‘Angry?’ said Alys. ‘But with whom? As if she had not expected what happened? She might blame Bothwell for her situation – after all if he had not forgotten the flask and asked her help, she would not be involved.’

‘Assuming he did ask her help,’ said Gil. ‘They both deny all this.’

‘The safest road for both of them,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘But when Renfrew announced that the boy had been poisoned,’ said Gil, the scene in his sister’s hall coming vividly to mind, ‘he asked Bothwell what was in the flask.’

‘And Bothwell,’ said Alys, clapping her hands together, ‘turned to look at Agnes!’ Socrates sat up expectantly.

‘Exactly,’ said Gil. ‘They gave no signal, but he clearly associated the flask with her.’

‘So where have we got to?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Catherine raised her head and looked at him, then went back to her beads. The dog lay down again with a resigned sigh.

‘It looks as if Agnes gave Nanty the flask,’ said Alys, ‘but neither of them knew it held poison.’

‘So if that is the case, who is guilty in Gibson’s death?’

‘I’d need to ask my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘I suspect the two of them must share some guilt, but if it was an accident, not murder, there would be a fine, kinbut, payable to Gibson’s father or kin, with the guilty parties all in their linen at Glasgow Cross for penitence, rather than hanging.’

‘Perhaps if we told Agnes that, we might persuade her to confess,’ said Alys.

‘I cannot see that young woman in her shift at Glasgow Cross,’ observed the mason.

‘Meanwhile, where did the poison come from, and why was it sitting about where Agnes could find it? I’d like to search the house, but Sir Thomas isn’t convinced, and without a direct order from the Provost Frankie would never countenance it.’

‘
Ah, mon Dieu
, what a thought,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Eleanor Renfrew,’ Gil recalled suddenly, ‘tells me they label poisons with a black cross. Agnes would have recognized that, I’d have thought. It must have had no mark.’

‘Simple carelessness?’ asked Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘To keep a pig full of poison standing about the place unlabelled? If that is the case, we do no more business with them, Alys, I think.’

‘But where did it come from?’ Gil repeated. ‘Nobody we spoke to has recognized what it is.’

‘Or at least has admitted to recognizing it,’ Alys put in.

He nodded at that. ‘You’re right. Whoever brewed the stuff, he would hardly admit to knowing it now. The Forrest brothers are probably safe,’ he added, ‘they seem to be testing the flask quite thoroughly. They found scraps of what looks like nutmeat at the bottom of it, as if it had got through the bolting-cloth.’

‘Nutmeat?’ said Alys. ‘Do you mean they think it was brewed from nuts? I wonder what that might be? I never heard of a poison like that.’

‘Nor had Wat.’ Gil grinned, and retailed the conversation about the pine nuts. Maistre Pierre guffawed much as Wat had done, but Alys listened seriously.

‘He is right, they are not poisonous except in vast quantities,’ she agreed. ‘But I had not heard of that virtue in them. I must check my
Hortus Sanitatis
. I wonder – Meg’s mother, Mistress Baillie, said something about pine nuts when she was abusing Maister Renfrew. Could they have been for his own use?’

‘Myself, I have no wish to ask him that either,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘No, but,’ said Alys slowly, ‘his wife was –’ She caught her breath. Catherine looked up but did not speak, and after a moment Alys went on, ‘Meg was in childbed, what was he doing preparing something of that sort?’

‘To be ready for later?’ Gil suggested. ‘Maybe he wants a son from her. Or perhaps he has a mistress, or planned to –’ he glanced at Catherine, but she had bent her head to her beads again. – ‘visit Long Mina’s, or some such place.’

‘The man has a new young wife,’ Maistre Pierre said. ‘How many women does he need, in effect?’

‘And does it mean he is planning to poison someone?’ asked Alys.

Gil sighed. ‘I think, from what Eleanor tells me, any of the Renfrew household is at least capable of making up whatever it is. Poison is a woman’s weapon, or so I’ve read, but in this case it seems to me the men must be included as well, even Frankie.’

‘Robert would be my favourite,’ said Maistre Pierre darkly.

‘Let us consider them,’ said Alys. ‘Who might wish to poison someone, who might be a likely target.’ Socrates opened one eye as she bent to draw her tablets from the purse which hung under her skirts, then closed it again when she sat back slightly and took the stylus out of its slot in the carved cover. ‘Maister Renfrew himself. Not a pleasant man, I think.’

‘He might wish to rid himself of Nicol out of dislike,’ said Gil slowly, ‘or of the wife if he thought she was cheating him, but surely not any of the others of the household? He seems to favour Robert, he has wedded Eleanor off, Agnes is his pet.’

‘The good-mother?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘Mistress Baillie, I mean.’

Alys nodded, and made a note.

‘Nicol himself,’ she said. ‘He hates his father, he dislikes his brother and sisters. Is he unbalanced enough to poison them from dislike alone? Or is there some benefit we can’t see?’

‘
Cui bono
? I suppose he could fear that Robert would take his place in the business,’ said Gil slowly, ‘but Nicol has changed since we were boys. It might be something he’s taking now has settled his mind, but he’s by far calmer than he used to be, almost out of the world at times. Just the same, I think his state is still what Aristotle called
akrasia
, or in Latin
impotens sui
, not master of himself.’

‘Behaving inconsistently,’ said Alys, ‘not in accordance with any discernible principles. Yes, I see. That would fit. So is he capable of killing, do you think?’

‘For something he cared about, maybe, and I wouldn’t think he would care enough about the business to kill for it. He’d rather go back to the Low Countries, I think.’