St Mungo's Robin (37 page)

‘How was he no recognized in the chapel?’ demanded the shoemaker.

‘It’s dark in the chapel, even by daylight, and this was well afore the dawn,’ said Gil. ‘He was seen in the shadows, and taken for the Deacon sitting out of his own
seat.’

‘And what happened to the garments?’ asked Sir Thomas, regaining control of his enquiry. ‘Since I take it he wasny seen in the street and taken for the Deacon, else you’d
ha tellt us by now. Did he plank them in the washhouse, or something, afore he went out?’

‘I think he took the risk of being seen,’ said Gil, acknowledging the witticism with a grin. ‘Since we’ve tracked them down.’

‘What, wi that dog o yours?’ said someone from the hall, and there was laughter. Gil shook his head, looking round for the three men of St Andrew’s. He found them near the
back, and pointed to them.

‘Sir John and his clerks found them,’ he said, ‘and took them for a donation to the lepers. Come forward, Sir John, and tell the Sheriff about it.’

The tubby little priest made his way to the front, his acolytes behind him carrying the two garments. One or two bystanders attempted to snatch the hat from the small dark clerk, until Sir
Thomas rose and snarled, ‘We’ll ha none o that now! Meddling wi the evidence is worth a fine, and I saw ye, Will Cowan, Jaikie Renton. Right, Sir John,’ he turned to the witness
in front of him, switching voices. ‘Tell us about this cloak and hat then.’

Backed up by his subordinates, Sir John identified himself and his charge, described finding the garments tucked into the rafters of his church, and agreed that it had been on Monday after Terce
and no later.

‘And you didny see who put them there?’ asked Sir Thomas. The three men looked at one another, shaking their heads. ‘No, I see you didny. How did they get into the roof,
Maister Cunningham? Are we looking for a man three ells high? He should be easy enough to discern in this burgh if that’s so.’

‘No, no,’ said Sir John through the laughter, ‘no need for a tall man, for they were stowed above where we keep the handcart. He’d but to climb onto it and stretch up, to
put his hand on the roof-beams. That was how Mattha here got them down.’

‘Aye, this handcart,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘We’ve heard a deal about it. When are we going to see it, then?’

‘When you like, sir.’ Gil nodded to Maistre Pierre, who nodded in turn to his man Thomas waiting by the nearest door. With some thumping and cursing, the little cart was handled
through the door, into the hall and up on to the dais, through a growing murmur of exclamations.

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ demanded the Sheriff as the cart and its burden emerged from the crowd in front of him. ‘What have you brought here, maister? This
should be on a garden fire somewhere, no cluttering up my court session. What is it anyway?’

‘It’s the mats from my hall, stained wi my servant’s blood,’ said Thomas Agnew angrily. ‘I gied them to a man to take and burn, yestreen! How did you no do as I
bade you, fellow?’ he demanded of Luke. ‘Your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity!’

‘My maister bade me itherwise,’ said Luke simply.

‘It’s the mats that Hob Taylor was lying on when he bled to death,’ Gil agreed, and gave Luke a hand to lift the bundle down onto the dais.

‘Get them out of here!’ exclaimed Agnew. ‘This has nothing to do wi the matter! We’re dealing wi the Deacon’s end now, no Hob’s, we don’t want all this
lying about. Take it away, clear it away out o here! Pluck it up from the land!’

‘The Psalter again,’ muttered Maistre Pierre. ‘Gil, be wary of this man.’

‘No, no,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘If that’s what they are, maister, we’ll let them alone the now and just get on wi the Deacon. So this is the handcart, is it, Maister
Cunningham?’

‘Yon’s the St Andrew’s cairtie,’ said the man Willie, still watching with Maister Sim at the corner of the dais, and his friend nodded agreement. ‘I ken it by the
pattern atwixt the shafts. It’s no like any other in the Chanonry wi they curlicues.’

Sir John, appealed to, confirmed this.

‘It’s been recognized by those same curlicues, as the cart that was by the bedehouse gate,’ Gil said.

‘So does that mean the man was stabbed in St Andrew’s?’ said one of the assize dubiously.

‘Surely no!’ exclaimed Sir John, crossing himself in dismay.

‘No, no,’ said Gil. ‘I think he was stabbed elsewhere. Maister Agnew,’ he said, turning to the other man of law. ‘You’ve told us you saw Deacon Naismith in
your chamber in the Consistory tower.’ Agnew nodded. ‘What were you discussing, maister?’

‘Why – as I said afore,’ said Agnew, a little impatiently, ‘his new will.’

‘Why did he need a new will?’ demanded Sir Thomas. ‘He wasny sick to death, was he? Nor like to be wed?’

‘Well, as it happens, he was like to be wed,’ said Agnew, ‘to a kinswoman of mine.’

‘Ah,’ said the Sheriff, nodding, ‘so he wanted to arrange his affairs. Very proper.’

‘And then he left you,’ said Gil. ‘What time would that be?’

‘Maybe an hour after he joined me,’ suggested Agnew.

‘And you went out after him?’

‘I did.’

‘Was St Andrew’s dark as you passed?’

Agnew looked sharply at him. ‘You don’t pass St Andrew’s leaving the Consistory tower,’ he said. ‘I went down the Drygate to a friend’s house,’ his
smile to the assize conveyed what sort of friend he meant, ‘so I was nowhere near St Andrew’s till I went home in the morning.’

‘What’s it to do wi the man’s death,’ asked the shoemaker, ‘where Maister Agnew was the rest of the nicht?’

‘No a lot that I can see,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘The light’s going, Maister Cunningham. Let’s get this over afore we have to bring in torches.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Gil, bowing. ‘We’ll take a closer look at this matting, then.’

Under the Sheriff’s scowl, he and Maistre Pierre arranged the rustling bundle as near as they could in the same stiffened folds he had displayed to Tib earlier. The assize were released
from their pen and stood round it, with members of the audience complaining loudly that they could not see, while Gil pointed out the way Hob had lain, the way the blood had soaked into the folds
of braided rushes, and where the pile of kale leaves had lain. He called Maister Sim up to confirm what he said, but Sir Thomas cut across his agreement.

‘Here’s these kale leaves again. What have they to do wi the matter, maister?’

‘Hob had cut them earlier,’ Gil said. ‘He cut them to use in cleaning this matting, which was stained. He and his maister separately told me Maister Agnew had turned it because
it was marked.’

‘Aye, wi a spilled drink,’ agreed Agnew loudly. ‘I spilled a glass of Malvoisie –’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘I think there was no spilled drink, though Hob had found a glass in a corner of your hall. What Hob found,’ he bent to twitch a corner of the matting
into a better position, ‘when he turned back the piece you had already reversed, was this.’ He pointed. Several members of the assize craned closer.

‘That’s blood and all,’ said the shoemaker.

‘It’s more of Hob’s blood, surely,’ said his neighbour.

‘No,’ said another man. ‘It’s older. That’s a different stain.’

Sir Thomas rose and shouldered his way between the assizers, to bend over the marks Gil pointed out to him. He studied them carefully, and stepped back, eyeing Gil.

‘Go on, man,’ he said. ‘Where are ye taking this?’

Gil waited while the assizers were led back to their roped enclosure, then looked round the faces at the edge of the dais. Alys, his sister, Marion Veitch at one corner; Andrew Millar, Habbie
Sim, the plump priest of St Andrew’s, all looked back him. Alys smiled as his eye met hers, and he turned back to the Sheriff, spirits rising.

‘It’s blood,’ he agreed, ‘a day or two older than the stains from Hob’s blood. How did it get there?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Sir Thomas. ‘How did it get there, Maister Agnew?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Agnew, with icy calm. ‘We’ve all heard enough of these dunderheidit blethers. I’ve a friend who’ll swear to where I was that whole night, and
it wasny wandering the Upper Town wi a corp on a handcart.’

Aha! thought Gil.

‘Aye, Ellen Dodd,’ said a voice from the hall. There was some laughter, and a few comments, until another voice rose over the rest.

‘Is that Ellen Dodd that dwells off the Drygate?’ it said. Gil turned to look, and found attention centred on a plump woman in a crisp white headdress, a grey plaid round her
shoulders. She coloured up as people stared at her. So Maggie found you, mistress, thought Gil gratefully. ‘Well, is it?’ she persisted.

‘That’s who I spoke to,’ Gil agreed. ‘She said Maister Agnew had been with her from the middle of the evening.’

‘Is that right, maister?’ Sir Thomas asked Agnew.

‘Aye,’ he said reluctantly.

‘She’s leein,’ said the woman bluntly.
Some can flater and some can lie
, thought Gil. So I was right. Agnew reddened, and made his gobbling gamecock noise again.
‘I’m Jennet Clark, sir,’ Mistress Clark curtsied to the Sheriff, ‘and Ellen Dodd was in my house the whole of that evening till near midnight, we were telling tales and
casting futures and she was at the crack wi the best of us. There’s four or five o my freens will swear to it, sir, and see if I ever let her across my door again, I’ll be coffined
first.’

‘You’ve mistaken the day, woman,’ said Agnew fiercely. ‘She – my friend will support me –’

‘Aye, maybe,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Maister Cunningham, I see where this is going now, but you canny get past one thing. There was two weapons slew Deacon Naismith, we’ve
heard that already. Who was the other man?’

‘What other man?’ demanded Agnew, alarm in his voice for the first time. ‘Sheriff, what are you saying?’

‘There was no other,’ said Gil. ‘Naismith was talking to his man of law. They were working on his will when they quarrelled. A scribe works wi his pen in one hand and his
penknife in the other.’

‘His penknife,’ repeated Sir Thomas. ‘You’re saying, Maister Cunningham?’

‘I’m saying, sir, that Thomas Agnew stabbed Naismith left-handed wi his penknife, and then drew his dagger and completed the task.’

‘No!’ shrieked Agnew as the noise increased in the hall. ‘No, I –’

‘Hold him!’ Sir Thomas rose, pointing. ‘Hold and bind him, Archie!’

‘
Why should the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
I did not –’

‘In his own hall, maister? Aye, there’s the blood to show it, I suppose.’

‘And the marks of the matting on Naismith’s face,’ Gil added, ‘where he lay on it as he began to set.’

‘No, no!’ shouted Agnew. ‘Not the ropes, not the ropes!’

‘And what about the servant?’

‘Thomas Agnew came home yesterday after Terce,’ Gil said over the uproar, stepping back from the rush as two of the men-at-arms dragged Agnew struggling to the wall beside John
Veitch, ‘and found Hob turning over the matting to clean off the stains he had talked about. Maybe Hob saw they were bloodstains and accused him of killing the Deacon, maybe he asked him for
money to keep quiet. Agnew stabbed him, and went away leaving him to die. He returned later, found John Veitch with the body, and set up a cry of Murder.’

‘So it wasny the madman at all?’ said one of the assize.

‘He’s just proved it wasny,’ said another. ‘Listen to what’s said, man.’

‘But why should Maister Agnew ha stabbed the Deacon?’

‘Aye, a good question,’ said Sir Thomas, and turned to Agnew, just as one of his guards struck the man a great buffet on the side of the head. ‘Why did you kill the Deacon,
man? What profited ye?’

‘No profit,’ shouted Agnew, spitting blood, ‘but vengeance, the vengeance of the fatherless and the orphan! Loose these ropes from me, for I am justified!’

‘I suppose it was the question of his brother’s support,’ said David Cunningham. He had demanded a dissection of the whole affair as soon as he came home from
the Consistory tower; Maggie was listening avidly, and it seemed likely the dinner would be late.

‘That’s it, sir,’ agreed Gil, and sat down beside Alys. She put her hand in his; he rubbed its back with his thumb, and they smiled at one another.

‘Has he admitted it?’ asked Tib.

‘Not yet,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘He may not,’ said Gil reluctantly. ‘I suspect he has inherited Humphrey’s madness. The way he was spouting vengeance and bloodshed from the Psalter at the quest, I
don’t see him being fit to plead.’

‘I think the Sheriff will put him to the question none the less,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘So how do you know it’s about his brother?’ Tib persisted.

‘Was it him that hanged his brother, anyway?’ Maggie demanded across the hearth.

‘No way to tell,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Humphrey insists that he recalls nothing.’

‘It’s not about his brother,’ Gil corrected Tib, ‘but about the land which was given to support Humphrey. Naismith was appropriating it to his own use, and
Humphrey’s dole was getting less and less. Bad enough the land going to the bedehouse, but if it was to end up in Naismith’s hands, I think Agnew couldny stand it.’

‘But is that reason enough to kill someone?’ Tib asked.

‘It’s a valuable parcel of land,’ Gil said, ‘but I think it was maybe the way Naismith planned to use it that angered Agnew. His notes for the new will end at that
property, though the Deacon had plenty more to dispose of.’

‘So he enticed Naismith round to his own house, you think,’ said Canon Cunningham, ‘to drink a toast to the marriage, and then stabbed him.’

‘I think so,’ Gil agreed.

‘Why not in the Consistory tower?’ Alys asked.

‘Too public. There was always the chance of meeting someone on the stair. Not to mention the problem of getting a corpse as big as himself down that stair,’ Gil added. ‘If he
got him back to Vicars’ Alley he could leave him in his house while he worked out how to get rid of the body. Then I suppose it occurred to him to try to put the blame on Humphrey by putting
the corpse in the garden.’

‘And after that he went round into the bedehouse and pretended to be the Deacon.’ Dorothea leaned back against the settle. ‘It’s been a right fankle, Gil, and
you’ve unravelled it well. I see now how Robert Blacader thinks you’re worth a benefice.’