The Redemption of Alexander Seaton (13 page)

‘Then was it grown here?’ I knew that many plants native to the Alps had become favourites in the gardens of landed and professional people who had returned to our shores after study abroad. Some grew them for further study, but many, I knew, simply for the joy of it.

Again Jaffray was doubtful. ‘That was my own next thought. I know little enough about the cultivation of flowers myself –
it is Ishbel who tends to Elizabeth’s garden – so I went and enquired of Gilbert Jack.’ As ever, the doctor had seen to the heart of the matter: if any man in Banff knew of the flower, it would be the laird of Banff’s gardener. The laird’s palace gardens ran down opposite the kirkyard and towards the Greenbanks, taking in much of what had once formed the yards and gardens of the Carmelites in the burgh. Three generations of gardeners – Gilbert Jack’s father and grandfather before him – had redeemed what was best in those gardens: the herbarium, the kitchen garden, the orchard with its many types of apple, plum and pear, and had created a garden that was the glory of the north. If Gilbert Jack could not grow something in Banff, it probably could not be grown here at all.

‘And?’

‘And it cannot be grown here. The winds and the salt air are too harsh. He knows because he tried once, many years ago, with bulbs the laird had brought from the continent, and failed. So that should have been an end to the matter.’

‘But it has not been.’

‘No, it has not.’ He went to light another candle against the failing light. ‘I fear that my examination is next to worthless. It has done nothing to bring us any nearer to discovering the identity of Patrick Davidson’s killer. And so it does nothing to open the locks of the tolbooth for Charles.’ He returned heavily to his chair.

‘It may yet do something.’

‘I do not see how.’

‘“James and the flowers”.’ I murmured it quietly to myself and then repeated it to him, more clearly this time. ‘ “James and the flowers”.’

Jaffray’s face was a study in incomprehension.

‘They were the last words Patrick Davidson ever spoke: “James and the flowers”.’

He looked at me, unable to understand something. ‘But Alexander, how do you know?’

I had forgotten, completely, to tell him of my encounters with the Dawson sisters – either on the night of the murder or with Janet Dawson yesterday. And, I now acknowledged, with a sinking heart, that I had utterly neglected to tell him of my own sighting of Patrick Davidson on the night of his death. And so I told him it all. Throughout the narrative he said nothing, but his eyes, when I told him of my abandonment of my fellow creature calling for help, spoke much of what was in his heart. I saw in him a deep and sincere sorrow and a disappointment he could not mask – the one for Patrick Davidson, the other for me. I made no excuses for I knew there were none. I finished my piece and he sat in silent contemplation of what I had told him. After a time, he spoke.

‘And you say it was a little before ten? Where was he heading to, or coming from?’

I shook my head. ‘That I cannot tell you. He was,’ I cleared my throat, ‘he was slumped against the wall of the Castle grounds, before he fell. He may have fallen before that – I do not know. I did not,’ and my voice fell, ‘I did not linger long enough to see a second time if he righted himself, or where he tried to go.’

‘And in those ten, fifteen minutes from where he’d parted from his killer, he might have travelled far enough.’ He sighed deeply, ‘No, it does not help us.’ He paused, and then roused himself again. ‘But what do you think it means, “James and the flowers”?’

I confessed that I had little idea – the matter had been
put almost entirely from my mind by the discovery of the maps, and the explanations that did suggest themselves to me I did not like.

Jaffray packed his pipe again and reached another spill from the fire to light it.

‘Evidently,’ he said, ‘the flowers refers to the
colchicum:
the boy knew exactly what he had been poisoned with. And as for the “James” – well, I fear there can only be one conclusion.’

I hesitated to say it; I had been avoiding the thought. ‘The murderer?’

‘Indeed, what else?’

‘Then it does not help us greatly. For every ten men in Banff, two will be named James.’

Jaffray smiled. ‘And one of them is myself.’

I looked at the loved old face. ‘And you, my friend, I discount. But as for the rest – how can we tell who had dealings with Patrick Davidson and who did not?’

‘We ask anyone who knew him. At the same time we must see where any other evidence may point, and if that also points to James, then so much the better.’ Jaffray was animated, for he had a scheme, a plan. He was not a man who liked to wait upon events.

I set my mind to work. The killer of Patrick Davidson must have a minute knowledge of plants and their properties – even than a physician and as good as an apothecary. Not only of native plants, but also of the more exotic alpine species that could not be found or grown on our harsh and windblown scrap of God’s earth. And to know of this
colchicum mortis
they must have travelled or have been in close commune with someone who had. As the doctor sat looking sadly into the fire, I went through the burgh in my mind, in search of
the most likely poisoner. There was the apothecary himself, Edward Arbuthnott. There was only his word to say that he did not have access to a stock of the
colchicum
roots. But then, why would he have pointed them out to Jaffray, and what possible motive might he have for murdering his apprentice? The doctor himself? I could not countenance such a thing. There was Marion Arbuthnott – might she have managed to obtain the plant without her father’s knowledge? Again, I could see no possible reason she might want Davidson dead. By all appearances she had loved him. Her mother? No. According to Charles, Marion’s marriage to Patrick Davidson had been her mother’s goal. And if there had been some scandal? Betrothal, not murder, was the answer to that type of scandal – for such as Marion and Davidson, at least. I was certain Charles had no knowledge of or interest in botany. True, he would have access to Arbuthnott’s stores, but if Arbuthnott did not store the poison – again, I was going around in a circle, and arriving where I had begun. I was tired and my head was beginning to ache at the temples. ‘I must go, James. The light is fading and I rise early tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I had almost forgotten myself. I must go into Aberdeen, about the business of the bursaries.’

Jaffray was interested. ‘Indeed? The bursaries? But yes, I recall now. And will you find lodging in the college, or in the town?’

‘The town. I will lodge with my old friend William Cargill—’

‘James Cargill’s nephew?’ The doctor interrupted. ‘Yes. William is married now and has his own home in the Green quarter. He has been building up a lucrative lawyer’s
business since his return from Leiden. He’ll be the town’s advocate in Edinburgh before long.’

Jaffray was unimpressed. ‘A great pity that he did not follow his uncle into medicine. The young—’ He was about to launch himself into one of his well-rehearsed diatribes on the laziness and thanklessness of my generation – not a word of which he meant – when he stopped suddenly. ‘Of course. James Cargill. Cargill’s notebooks – that is where I saw the sketch of the flower! If anyone in the north of Scotland ever knew that flower it would have been James Cargill.’

‘But the doctor has been dead these ten years and more,’ I protested.

He brushed this aside. ‘It matters little. His notebooks were the most exact I ever saw. He was an excellent physician yet his great pleasure, passion even, was the study of botany. He told me once that he was never happier than the summer he spent at Montbéliard with Jean Bauhin in the gathering and study of flowers. These troubles in the Empire would break his heart, if he lived today. Yes, I must see James Cargill’s notebooks. If his nephew has them, I trust you will manage to persuade him to lend us them awhile.’

‘I have no doubt. But how might they help?’

Jaffray muttered at my idiocy. ‘They will show us the flower. Arbuthnott has but a very hazy memory of its appearance, and I none. If we at least know what the plant from which these noxious bulbs are harvested looks like, then it may avail us something. Gilbert Jack may yet be proved wrong – perhaps it has been grown here, but we will never discover it if we do not know what it looks like.’ I felt Jaffray and I were leading each other farther and farther on the same wild goose chase, but we had nowhere else to go if we were to
help our friend. I assured the doctor I would do my best to secure James Cargill’s notebooks.

‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘But this business of the maps, Alexander, I doubt it will avail Charles Thom anything. If Davidson were spying for every papist from here to Madrid, what good does the discovery of it do Charles Thom?’

This was a question I had asked myself as I’d walked down towards the doctor’s from the tolbooth. ‘If Davidson was a papist spy, then that would at least allow of a motive for his murder other than this nonsense of jealousy over a woman. It may be that his activities had been found out – that he was murdered to prevent his maps falling into the hands of his sponsors. Yet in such a case, why not accuse and try him openly?’

‘Because it would cause panic, my boy. And it might expose others whom the authorities might not wish to have exposed.’

The pain in my head was now throbbing relentlessly. The faces of Patrick Davidson, the provost, Marion Arbuthnott, Baillie Buchan, Charles Thom, the unseen Gordon of Straloch were all crowding in on me.

For his part, on my mission, Jaffray took it upon himself to enquire into Patrick Davidson’s connections in the burgh and its hinterland – be they Gordons, papists or simply ‘Jameses’, while I was away. My headache receded after I swallowed a draught of laudanum he had given me from his own store, and he and I talked much later into the night than I had planned, of other things. Finally, having promised that I would leave fresh provisions from Ishbel for Charles at the tolbooth before I left Banff early the following morning, I bade the doctor’s household farewell until I should return from Aberdeen.

SIX

A Journey

There was already much business at the shore as I passed on my way to the tolbooth early next morning. The first boats since the great storm of Monday had put into port, and their wares had already been unloaded to make way for salmon, grain and woolfells destined for their entrepôt at Aberdeen. The shore porters who had spent Monday night gaming in the inn were now busily engaged on their proper labours. Traders and merchants’ boys ferried goods from the harbour to the market place in small carts or on their backs. The gulls were circling and cawing round the gutting station where the women cleaned the fish just landed for salting. Everything was as it had always been, as if the murder had been but a pedlar’s tale. The slight haar brought a smell of stagnant seaweed up from the shore; I had never liked it. I was glad that much of today’s journey would take me many miles away from the coast, almost till I reached Aberdeen itself.

The provost was not yet there when I arrived at the tolbooth, and I was directed instead to his house on the Castlegate. I had hoped to see Charles before I left, but the town serjeant was under strict instruction that no one – and
something in his manner implied that it was myself in particular who was meant – was to be permitted access to the jail. It was becoming clear that Charles was to be kept from any communication with his friends.

As I drew near to the provost’s house I saw him waiting for me in the open doorway. He hailed me from a distance of ten yards. ‘Mr Seaton. I am glad you are about your business early. You will reach Aberdeen in daylight?’ There was no apology for his lateness and I had expected none.

‘Easily. I have Gilbert Grant’s horse, and I will change mounts at Turriff.’

He cast a practised eye over the animal. It was no thoroughbred, but it was a sturdy and dependable beast. ‘Keep a watchful eye around you as you go. There are vagabonds aplenty on the roads who would not scruple to attack a schoolmaster. The map must not fall into the wrong hands.’

‘I can take care of myself well enough.’ There was nothing Walter Watt could tell me about vagabonds on the highways. Three times in four years Archie and I had been set upon as we returned from the college to his father’s stronghold of Delgatie. But Archie had been taught to manage a sword before he could manage a pen and, from the very beginning of our friendship when, small boys though we were, he had realised what a hopeless knight I was, what he knew he had taught to me. From each assault we had come away with our purses and our pride intact.

The provost seemed satisfied. He handed me a leather pouch with the chosen map inside. ‘You know what you are to ask Straloch. And remember that –
you
are to ask him. Our business here in this burgh is none of his.’

‘I know little of this burgh’s business, provost; only that on which I am sent.’

‘I’d wager you know more than that. I did not entirely speak the truth yesterday, when I told the minister I knew little of your ill repute. I know it all, Mr Seaton: the drinking, the whoring, the attempts at self-harm. You have had a wild time of it, six months or more.’

‘All that is past.’

‘Perhaps. The baillie for one is of a mind that it may be so, and that is something in your favour. I care little for the censure of the Kirk, but I have seen you in sack-cloth on the stool of repentance. I know nothing of the state of your soul or the extent of your repentance, but I know of your humiliation before the whole town. Better men have been banished from this town for little worse than you have done.’

‘I know as well as any man what I have been and what I am, provost. For the state of my soul I cannot answer, but my repentance is complete. If I had the choice, I would not still be here. But I have no other place in this world.’

He looked at me, but said nothing. As well as the map, and a private letter of his for delivery in Aberdeen, he held a written authority to Straloch to treat me as the representative of the burgh of Banff. He handed me them all with a final instruction. ‘You must tell no one of the purpose of your visit to Straloch. There will be bloodshed and dissent in this town should the fear of a popish plot become generally known. You have been entrusted with a matter of great importance. Do not disgrace this burgh. Or yourself.’