‘Not mine.’
She smiled quickly, hitched her skirts higher and set off towards the hazel stand, picking her way carefully through the rough grasses. He paused a moment to admire her ankles, then followed her, catching up in time to point out the footprints still visible among the tree-roots, and the place where the piece of linen had lain.
‘These are good boots,’ she agreed, studying the prints, ‘but there’s nothing distinctive about them, is there? Did you say John Veitch’s boots were the right size?’
‘Short of measuring them,’ said Gil cautiously ‘I’d say so. But so would Millar’s be, or Humphrey’s indeed.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and looked about. ‘And while he stood here, whoever he was, he dropped the scarf. Do you still have it with you?’ He produced it from his sleeve and she took it, turning it over carefully. ‘Marion Veitch knew it, you thought.’
‘She studied it as if every stitch was familiar,’ he confirmed. ‘And the man Elder recognized it as John’s neckie, though he tried to deny it afterwards.’
She turned the end with the initials over.
‘I wonder how else it might have got here,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it isn’t John Veitch’s then it has no connection with the death.’
‘It could be quite unconnected,’ Gil agreed. ‘But the initials are his.’
‘Yes, if it is I V,’ she admitted. She folded the strip of linen and handed it back to him. ‘And the cart. I wonder how the cart got here — what path it took to the bedehouse gate. There are these prints here, so could the tracks of the wheels still be there?’
‘They could,’ agreed Gil. He looked about. ‘There are three ways it could get on to the Stablegreen, assuming it didn’t come out of the bedehouse. The way we came in just now,’ he pointed, ‘or the vennel off Castle Street, or the path that comes in from the Port.’
‘Which is most likely?’
‘The Castle Street vennel is nearest.’
Socrates came loping back with a satisfied grin just as they found a single wheeltrack, in a patch of damp earth near the Rottenrow end of the path. He inspected the place they were studying, and turned towards the open ground again, nose down, apparently following a trail.
‘For a sight-hound,’ said Alys, ‘he seems to have a good nose. What has he found?’
‘I can’t believe the scent is still there,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder if he remembers finding the trail before, when I first brought him out here after the death?’
They followed the dog back out on to the green, hand in hand again.
‘So what did my sister mean?’ asked Gil as they approached the bedehouse wall. ‘What is it we’ve to dispute between us?’
‘Oh.’ Her fingers tightened nervously on his. ‘Well, it’s — I think it’s — ’
‘Symmetry,’ he said, into the pause. ‘We’d been saying, just before she came down, that we both lacked something. Was that it?’
‘Yes, but — I think she saw something more than that,’ said Alys doubtfully. ‘I think she wished to say that there is a symmetry in what we lack. That you and I have been praying for the same thing, or for something which matches. But it hardly seems — ’ She stopped again, face downturned, the bright colour washing over her cheek. Gil studied her for a moment.
‘Do you feel she’s meddling?’
‘No, no!’ exclaimed Alys, turning to face him. ‘No, she spoke out of concern for us, that was clear. I just can’t — ’
‘Can’t what?’ he coaxed.
She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘What do you lack, Alys?’
She shook her head again, and muttered something he did not catch. Before he could ask her to repeat it, there was a shout from the vennel behind them. They both turned, to see Maistre Pierre making his way towards them in the fading light, waving.
‘We have found a handcart!’ he announced as he came closer. ‘Well, we have found more than one,’ he added, ‘but this one is dark and has a pattern on the spar between the handles. I am certain it is the right one.’
‘Already?’ said Gil. ‘That’s good news. Where is it? Where did you find it?’
‘Ah. That is the strange thing,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It was in the chapel in Vicars’ Alley. What is it, St Andrew’s?’
‘In the chapel? Does it belong there?’
‘So it seems. Luke tells me that the man who informed him that it was there also told him they use it to collect for the leper-house.’
‘Of course they do,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve seen someone at the kitchen door from time to time, begging bread or meal or the like. I never thought of that — though of course we were looking for a ladder earlier.’
‘Exactly I have left Luke negotiating with the priest to borrow the cart, since I suppose we shall have need of it.’
‘If Tib sees it,’ suggested Alys, ‘she can tell us if she remembers the pattern.’
‘Very likely,’ agreed her father, with a note of disapproval. ‘What are you two finding out here? I thought we had gone over this ground to extinction. And what is this about the bedehouse? They seem to be talking of little else at the Wyndhead.’
‘Father, a miracle,’ said Alys, her eyes shining. ‘The brother who was dead, Humphrey, is risen and cured of his madness. The boy came for Gil, and we’ve been in and seen it all and spoken to him.’
‘Risen?’ her father repeated, staring at her. ‘But he was certainly dead. I found no heartbeat.’
‘There have been one or two half-hangit men in legal history,’ said Gil, using the Scots phrase. ‘And I suppose the shock might cure him of his madness,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘though it seems to me more than a simple cure.’
‘The man was dead,’ reiterated Maistre Pierre with emphasis.
‘The more of a miracle, Father,’ said Alys, her hand on his arm.
‘Hmph,’ said her father. ‘Does he recall anything that might help us?’
‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Nothing, he said.’
‘He was hanging for half an hour at least,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘There was no heartbeat, no pulse.’
Alys eyed him, and gave Gil a significant look. ‘We have found where the cart came on to the green,’ she said, pointing. ‘We found the mark of one wheel, yonder in the vennel.’
‘From Rottenrow,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning to look. ‘Does that tell us anything?’
‘It suggests,’ said Gil slowly, ‘it suggests the Deacon was not killed anywhere close to the bedehouse, because then the approach from Castle Street would have been nearer.’
‘More likely he was killed nearer to St Andrew’s,’ said Alys, ‘and someone knew of the cart, whether the murderer or his accomplice.’
‘So do we come back to the idea that the man was waylaid in the street?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘And by more than one individual, as we thought at first?’
‘Yes, I’d let that slip my mind,’ confessed Gil. ‘There were the two blades that stabbed him. I suppose we do come back to that, yes.’
‘I don’t know the chapel,’ said Alys. ‘May we go there now?’
They made their way back out on to Rottenrow, with Maistre Pierre still muttering at intervals, ‘I would have sworn the man was dead. No heartbeat, no breath.’
‘He had not begun to stiffen,’ Gil observed.
‘Hmph,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He halted as they reached the Wyndhead, and with a visible effort pointed out the wooden walls of the Caichpele above the rooftops of the Drygate.
‘There is where the man’s mistress lives,’ he said. Alys nodded, surveying the layout of the streets. They turned towards the cathedral, and made their way round the western towers, where the first of the senior men of law were just leaving. Here a rumbling of wheels on the cobbled way proclaimed Luke, with the handcart. Socrates pressed against Gil’s knee, head down and hackles up, until Gil reassured him.
‘Ah, good laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘He has persuaded the priest. But what has he got on the cart?’ He peered into the dim light. ‘Not another corpse, I hope.’
It was certainly a large, bulky bundle, loosely tied on to the cart. Luke saw them and halted, lifting his knitted bonnet and ducking in a general bow.