There was a rumbling and clattering in the passageway through the main range. Socrates growled warily, his hackles rising. ‘Quiet,’ Gil said to him, as a woman’s voice joined the sounds. Lowrie appeared, pushing a small handcart and hindered by a stout woman bundled in a blue checked plaid over her black gown and white linen headdress, who trotted beside him exclaiming in annoyance all the way down the path.
‘It’s no right, he should be washed and made decent, what need have you to meddle wi the corp anyhow? Maister Millar, can you no put a stop to this? It’s no right at all, my old men are fair owerset wi it, the souls, keeping him lying out here in the rain like this, and standing about staring at him — ’
Millar turned to look at her, opening and closing his mouth like a carp in a pond, but failed to produce any sound. Maister Kennedy gave him a moment, then broke in:
‘Deacon Naismith’s been stabbed, Sissie, no dropped down with a seizure. We need to find who killed him. Here’s Maister Cunningham, that’s Robert Blacader’s man and responsible for finding out what we can. He needs a sight of the place where it happened, afore we can do anything at all wi the corp. And I’d say your old men wereny greatly harmed by the excitement,’ he added, glancing at the windows of the hall, where a row of elderly faces peered avidly out at them.
‘This is not where it happened,’ said Maistre Pierre authoritatively. Gil nodded, but everyone else stared at him. Mistress Mudie recovered first.
‘Well, if that’s so, we can take him in-by, out this rain, and make him decent,’ she proposed. ‘At least somebody wi a sense o what’s right has closed his een, but what prayers he’s had I canny tell, what wi you heathens poking and prodding at him, no better than Saracens — ’
With some difficulty, the body was hoisted on to the cart and wheeled away by Maistre Pierre and Andrew Millar, with Mistress Mudie hurrying behind them like a sheepdog, talking unceasingly about the washhouse, the laying-out board and the bedehouse mort-cloth. Maister Kennedy watched them go, then glanced automatically at the unhelpful grey sky and said to Gil, ‘I’d best lift my gear from the chapel and be away down the road. Come by the college and find me when you get a chance, and I’ll tell you what I can.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Gil agreed.
‘Make it an hour when I’m no teaching,’ Maister Kennedy added, ‘and we’ll try a jug of the new Malvoisie.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Gil said, grinning. His friend nodded, and strode off, leaving Lowrie Livingstone standing by the gate to the Stablegreen.
‘What are we looking for, maister?’ he asked.
‘Anything out of place,’ Gil answered, noting the pronoun with interest. He hunkered down again and confirmed for himself Maistre Pierre’s finding that the grass was no more than damp where the corpse had lain, then leaned forward to sniff at the flattened blades. Lowrie had stepped back along the wall, away from the gate, and was looking along its length, fair head on one side.
‘You said,’ he continued, elaborately casual, ‘that is, Maister Mason said, he died yesternight. Or after sunset, anyhow. Is that sure?’
‘He was well set.’
‘Mm.’ Lowrie walked cautiously round the yew-tree and looked at the scene from the other end. ‘He couldny have set quicker for some reason? Does that happen?’
Gil sat back on his heels and looked at the younger man.
‘Possible,’ he admitted, ‘but unlikely. How much quicker?’
‘And you thought he might not have died here.’
‘That’s for certain,’ Gil said. ‘Even with all the trampling there’s been, the traces are clear enough, or the lack of them. There’s never a drop of blood on the grass, nor any trace of where he voided himself as he died, though his hose stank of it and his gown was up round his waist. And I can see no sign of either hat or cloak.’
‘I see.’ Lowrie looked about him. ‘You think he was carried here? When?’
‘That’s what I have to work out.’
‘None of these footprints is deep enough for someone carrying something.’
‘That’s what worries me.’ Gil got to his feet and stepped across the Deacon’s resting-place. ‘He can hardly have flown here, before or after death, unless he was some kind of saint.’
‘No,’ said Lowrie, in positive tones. ‘That he wasny.’ He was surveying the gate now, peering closely at its interlaced iron straps. ‘This was locked. It still is.’ Gil grunted. ‘And that was sometime yesternight he was put here, you think?’
‘All we can say the now,’ said Gil, ‘is that it was between whatever time he was killed and the time he was found.’
‘But do we ken when he was killed?’
‘Not yet.’
‘How will you find who killed him, then?’
‘By asking questions.’ Gil stood up. ‘Let’s go in out of the rain. I wonder what Pierre has discovered from the corp?’
Socrates was sniffing intently at the door of one of the little houses, but when Gil whistled he came to join him with an amiable grin. Lowrie offered his hand for inspection, then followed Gil into the main range, slipping past him to open the heavy wooden door to the outer yard. As it swung open, the sound of raised voices met their ears.
‘I canny believe it! Let me see my brother, he must — ’
‘- no the now, it’s no suitable, they’ll go to offer prayers for him in a — ’
Andrew Millar was standing by the chapel door, in lively discussion with Mistress Mudie and a stocky man in legal dress whom Gil had often seen about the Consistory tower. Noticing him emerge from the main range, Millar said in relief, ‘Here’s Gil Cunningham, that’s the man that’s dealing wi it. Maister Cunningham, here’s Humphrey’s brother, Maister Thomas Agnew, wanting to know what’s going on.’
‘- and I canny have him talking to Humphrey the now, I’ll not answer for it if his brother gets him worked up again, the soul — ’
‘I know you,’ said Agnew. ‘David Cunningham’s nephew, aren’t you no? Is it you that’s to be married soon? What’s been happening here?’
‘The Deacon’s dead,’ said Gil baldly. ‘Taken up dead in the garden this morning. It seems as if he’s been stabbed.’
‘Stabbed?’ repeated Agnew in amazement. ‘That’s what Millar said and all, but I thought surely — who would do a thing like that? I hope no my brother,’ he said anxiously.
‘- and what kind of a brother would make a suggestion like that about a poor soul like Humphrey, I’d like to know — ’
‘Humphrey’s been as vexed as any of them,’ Millar reassured him. ‘I canny think it was him, Maister Agnew. And it’s no a good moment to speak to him, for they’re about to go to Terce and Sext and then they’ll say extra prayers for the Deacon, as Sissie says, and keeping the Office hours aye calms him.’
‘Oh, aye, I suppose,’ said Agnew reluctantly. ‘And when did it happen? Naismith was wi me yestreen, but he left me after an hour. That’s the last I spoke to him.’
‘It must have been this morn,’ said Millar before Gil could speak, ‘or maybe in the night, for he was in his own lodgings when I came home about ten o’clock, and I canny think how it could have happened. Because,’ he added to Gil, ‘it’s just come to me, the door here.’ He waved at the door Gil had just stepped through. ‘I locked it when I came in and went to my own bed, and it was locked just as usual this morn when we came through to say Matins. Deacon Naismith had a key on his ring, but — ’
‘Locked?’ said Agnew. ‘You mean this door’s aye locked at night?’
‘- in course it is, and the gate locked at the other end of the garden, some of these poor souls would be away down paddling in the Girth Burn if they wereny watched at night, your own brother’s one of them, he’d a bad turn yestreen just after I’d got Anselm settled, he must have sung me out half the Apocalypse before I got the sleeping-draught down him — ’
‘That’s a relief to hear, Mistress Mudie,’ said Agnew warmly. ‘D’you ken, I don’t think Maister Naismith ever told me that. It’s a great comfort to me, mistress, that you’ve such a close eye to my brother.’