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Eck shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never heard him unlatch it. Just he pushed and it opened, and it squeaked the way it aye does, and he called out and stepped within. And I never heard another sound till Maister Agnew came round the corner o the chapel here to his own gate.’

‘And then what?’ asked someone else.

‘Why he went in at his door and began to cry Murder.’

‘As soon as he stepped in the house?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Tell the Serjeant,’ suggested another voice. ‘You’re a witness, laddie.’

‘No me!’ said Eck in alarm. ‘I never saw anything! I helped capture the madman, but I never even seen the mats that Maister Agnew took out his house,’ he added regretfully, ‘all wet wi Hob’s blood. A fellow hurled them away on the St Andrew’s handcart the now afore Vespers, and I never got a right look.’

Gil edged his way backward out of the group, and found Alys waiting at its margin, the dog at her side.

‘Useful,’ he said, and reached into his purse for his tablets to make a note of the young man’s name. He checked in dismay as his fingers encountered, yet again, the brocade cover of Thomas Agnew’s set instead of his own.

‘What is it?’ said Alys as his expression changed. He shook his head.

‘Not here,’ he said guiltily, and drew her away from the chapel. ‘Where is Pierre?’

‘He went to make sure the men had shut everything down. He said he would go home after.’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Does that fit, do you think? Is the boy a good witness?’

‘He seemed very clear,’ Gil agreed. ‘I wish we had a light — I never meant to be out so long. Come back to the house and get a lantern, and I’ll walk you down the hill.’

Maistre Pierre had not gone home, but was waiting for them in the house in Rottenrow, alone in the hall with a jug of spiced ale.

‘I knew you would come this way,’ he proclaimed, acknowledging Socrates’ greeting. ‘You would need to fetch a light. Your uncle is home,’ he added more soberly. ‘He is above just now, speaking with your sister.’

‘And Dorothea?’ Gil asked.

‘Has returned to the castle meantime, though she said she would be here for supper.’

Gil nodded. ‘I’m just as glad to see you here,’ he admitted. ‘Pierre, I’m still carrying Agnew’s tablets about with me. What on earth can I do with them?’

‘Agnew’s tablets?’ said Alys. ‘What do you mean?’

Her father grinned. ‘An object lesson in the perils of excess, ma mie. He purloined them last night from the man’s chamber, on our way home.’

Mon Dieu!’ said Alys. ‘No wonder your head ached today.’

‘I haven’t drunk so much since I left Paris,’ Gil said, a little defensively, annoyed to feel his cheeks burning.

She smiled, but held her hand out. ‘Give them to me, Gil. I can return them.’

‘You?’ he said involuntarily, but his hand went to the purse. ‘How can you — ?’

‘I’ll find a way. You have enough to worry you. Is there anything useful in them?’

‘The notes for the new will Naismith was to make. The family copy of the disposition for Humphrey’s support is in there too. I saw nothing more.’

She nodded, and tucked the brocade bag into her own purse.

‘I’ll contrive something. Now I must go down the road, or there will be no supper tonight. Are you coming now, Father, or later?’

‘Now, I suppose.’ Her father got to his feet and lifted a lantern from the hearth. ‘Lucky I left this in the lodge the other day. We need not borrow one. What will you do next, Gilbert?’

Gil shrugged. ‘Speak to the Sheriff after supper, likely. He should know what that laddie was saying.’ He recounted the kale-cutter’s tale, and Maistre Pierre nodded.

‘Certainly Sir Thomas should hear of that. It puts another view of the matter entirely. I wish there had not been so many witnesses to the trial by blood. And what of the matting?’

‘That,’ said Gil firmly, ‘can wait till daylight.’

Chapter Thirteen

Sir Thomas Stewart, extricated without visible reluctance from an evening’s music in his own lodging, heard Gil’s report of Eck Paton’s evidence with a frown.

‘I see what you mean,’ he agreed at the end. ‘If the laddie’s that certain, our man had by far too little time to do his business afore Agnew came home. The corp was last seen alive just after Prime, you say? Did his maister say when he saw him last? Had he left by that hour?’

‘You’ll need to get that from him, sir,’ suggested Gil. ‘I ken I saw Maister Agnew at the bedehouse no long after Terce the day. I can ask Andro Millar what hour he got there.’

‘Aye, do that. And the bedehouse. The bedehouse!’ said Sir Thomas impatiently. Small, neat and balding, he tipped back his head and peered at Gil across his cluttered desk. ‘What’s this I hear about the second man that died? That was the bedesman, wasn’t it no? The one that’s mad? Only now he’s rose up and cured of his madness?’

‘So it seems,’ agreed Gil with caution.

‘Did the poor soul do away wi himself first,’ Sir Thomas crossed himself at the thought, ‘or did someone else do it for him? And if it was murder, was it this fellow Veitch? He’s got kin in the bedehouse, hasn’t he, he’d have the run of the place likely.’

‘Humphrey doesny recall,’ said Gil regretfully. ‘He says the last he minds is going to his rest after dinner yesterday. There’s some doubt in my mind whether he hanged himself or someone else did it for him, and if it was someone else, then it’s surely linked to the Deacon’s death some way. As to the servant in Vicars’ Alley, I need to find out more.’

‘The Deacon!’ said Sir Thomas. ‘I ken you’re looking into it, Maister Cunningham, but are you anywhere near bringing me a whole tale for the quest on Deacon Naismith?’

‘I might be,’ said Gil circumspectly.

‘Are they all separate? Two deaths in the bedehouse is bad enough, another in Vicars’ Alley as well is too much to swallow, maister. It wasny this man Veitch killed all three, then?’ suggested Sir Thomas again, without much hope.

‘Likely not all three,’ said Gil. ‘May I speak to him? I’ve a thing or two to ask him.’

‘Aye, you might as well speak to him. He’s not been questioned yet.’ Sir Thomas rose. ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Gil, considering the point. ‘I’ve the matting that Agnew’s servant lay on when he died. I’ll get a look at that the morn’s morn afore the two quests.’

‘What good will that do?’ demanded the Provost.

‘It might tell us how he bled, which of the wounds was the most fatal.’

‘I suppose so.’ Sir Thomas contemplated the idea, and gathered his wine-coloured velvet gown about him. ‘Sooner you than me, laddie. Come down now, and I’ll bid Archie let you in to see the man Veitch. And then, I suppose, I’ll have to get away back to hear these musicians my wife brought in. Howling like cats, they are, and all in French or some such tongue. What her ladyship’s thinking o I’ve no idea.’

John Veitch’s clothes were already showing the effects of half a day’s imprisonment. The cell he lay in stank of damp and human waste, and the smell and the green mould clung to his hose and his brown plaid and short furred gown. His spirit did not appear to be daunted.

‘Aye, Gil,’ he said. ‘I looked for you sooner. What’s ado, then, can you tell me that?’

‘No yet,’ said Gil. He looked about him in the light of the candle Veitch had been allowed, and sat down cautiously on the end of the stone bench. ‘Tell me what happened, John.’

‘Tellt you that already,’ Veitch pointed out, sitting down likewise. ‘I found the door standing unlatched, so I pushed it open and went in, and found the poor fellow lying in his blood. Then while I was still trying to see if it was worth calling help to him, his maister came in and set up a cry of Murder.’

‘As soon as he stepped in the door?’ Gil asked. Veitch looked sharply at him, suddenly very like his kinsman in the bedehouse.