‘Hmm. A well-reared lassie. And the younger girls?’
‘Murray made fun of Bel and her lack of speech. He had slighted Phemie, who thought he would have married her until Joanna’s portion became known — ’
‘Aye, Joanna’s portion. That’s a strange matter. Why — no, we must think this through first. What about the older women?’
‘Mistress Weir and Murray were at odds over the running of the business.’ Alys looked down at her list again. ‘She only said that she was disappointed in him, but Phemie told me, and her brother told Gil, that the man had ideas of his own which did not suit the old lady. There was shouting, Phemie said.’
‘That might be enough. Money does strange things to people. As for our penitent down in Alan’s chamber, did she give a reason, or were you to work that out as well?’
‘She said Murray was annoying her lassies, and Joanna.’
‘No,’ said Lady Egidia after a moment. ‘She is a rational woman, and a healer. That makes no sense.’
‘No. I think we are agreed, Beatrice Lithgo may have confessed, but she is probably not the poisoner.’
‘So who is she protecting?’
‘We come back to that,’ agreed Alys.
‘And today,’ said her mother-in-law, with an abrupt change of direction, ‘you went to Dalserf. What’s your interest in Joanna Brownlie?’
‘I heard a lot about the family,’ Alys said. ‘Particularly about her father’s deathbed. And his will was very interesting.’
‘What, you think the man Brownlie was poisoned and all?’
‘Well, I wonder,’ she said earnestly. ‘His death was different from Murray’s, but it sounds very like the way Matt Crombie died.’
Lady Egidia studied her for a time, her long-chinned face solemn in the candlelight.
‘How many?’ she said eventually.
‘Four of the family, I think,’ said Alys. ‘And also Joanna’s father. Five all told, I suppose, though not all by poison.’ Her mother-in-law counted on her fingers, frowning, and finally nodded. ‘But what worries me is why there has been an extra death this year.’
Lady Egidia looked at her, pursed up her long mouth, and finally said, ‘And then there is this errand that has taken Gil to Elsrickle. It’s a long ride for something that won’t prove anything whatever the answer might be.’
‘It won’t prove it, but it adds to the picture,’ Alys began, and was interrupted. Socrates raised his head, and suddenly scrabbled to his feet, claws scraping on the tiled floor, and rushed out into the hall. There was a furious hiss, a flurry of movement, a yelp from the dog almost drowned by the clatter and crash of pewter dishes, and a long-drawn-out yowling.
The two women collided in the doorway, the streaming flame from the branch of candles just missing Alys’s velvet hood. Out in the hall, the light growing as Lady Egidia hurried the length of the chamber, they found the dog abased below the plate-cupboard amid the debris of the display, while the grey cat, all standing fur and round furious eyes, swore at him from the top shelf, tail lashing.
‘Socrates!’ exclaimed Alys. ‘What a bad dog!’
‘Silky has been teasing him,’ said Lady Egidia, magnanimous in her pet’s victory. ‘I dare say she taunted him from out here just now. Has she clawed him?’
‘He seems unhurt. Oh, no, here is a scratch on his nose.’ Alys dabbed at it with her handkerchief, while the dog rolled his eyes at her and at the cat. ‘Bad dog. Look at all the dishes you have brought down!’
She lifted the nearest, and stacked them up on the shelves. Lady Egidia set down the candles and joined her in the task, remarking, ‘I’m surprised they aren’t up from the kitchen to see what the noise was. It sounded like the clap of Doom. What’s this? Oh, that piece of stone Gil had in his purse. Will you take it? If you’re going up to the coal-heugh tomorrow you could give it back to the lassie.’ She retrieved a round dish which had rolled into the hearth, and blew the ashes from it. ‘And take both Steenie and Henry with you, my dear. Silky, you are a naughty cat.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘I’ve no recollection,’ said Phemie. ‘You’ll no tell me, Alys, that you rode all the way up here, and two of your good-mother’s men at your back, just to ask me did anyone go into the hall alone that day?’
They were seated in the room she called the window-chamber, before the great glass window, Phemie and her sister side by side on the cushioned bench and Alys on one of the backstools with Socrates’ head on her lap while he watched the girls intently.
‘No, no,’ said Alys hastily, ‘I have more reason than that. But Phemie, you must see, the quest will most likely find that someone here gave the poison to Thomas Murray, and you need to be ready with the right answers when they come to ask them.’
‘Oh.’ Phemie glowered at her, lower lip stuck out, in an expression which reminded Alys again of the younger Morison girl. Apparently she had not thought about this until now. ‘I’ve no recollection,’ she said again. ‘I was here, eating my porridge. What about you, Bel? You were here too, were you no?’
Her sister nodded, and pointed emphatically at the floor of the chamber where they sat.
‘And the others? Joanna, your mother?’ asked Alys innocently. ‘Where is Joanna just now? How is she today?’
‘My mother’s been called out, I suppose, or she could tell you herself and Joanna’s laid down on her bed again. I’ll go to her directly. No, she never came through till Murray did.’ Phemie’s tone was still disparaging when she referred to the man. ‘My mother was in here dishing out the porridge. The kitchen brings it in and sets it up there,’ she indicated the pale oak court-cupboard, ‘and we serve ourselves. Or my mother sees to it.’
‘And you all stayed in here till you went out to see them off.’
‘That’s right. What does it matter, anyway?’
‘We need to find out all we can about how the man died,’ Alys supplied. Bel turned wide blue eyes on her, considering her carefully, but gave no other sign. ‘I should like to look in your mother’s herbal, that she keeps in the stillroom. I wondered, too, if you would let me look at the great account book, the one your grandam showed me the first day we were here.’
‘It’s in her chamber,’ said Phemie. ‘Why? What will that tell you, just columns of numbers and names like that?’
Oh, my dear girl, thought Alys, and you a merchant’s daughter too. Aloud she said only, ‘It will tell me if Murray was an honest workman, as everyone says he was. If he was stealing from the business,’ she amplified, in answer to Phemie’s puzzled look, ‘it should show in the accounts, though it might be far to seek. How long was he here?’
‘Five year, maybe. If he was stealing coin, Arbella would notice,’ said Phemie. ‘Have you not seen yet that nothing happens up here by the Pow Burn that she doesny know of, one way or another?’
And that was not what you said before, thought Alys.
Bel stood up abruptly, gestured for Alys to follow, and led her out into the hall. Socrates’ claws clicked on the flagstones as they went the length of the wide space and through a doorway at the back, into another pair of chambers. This was, quite plainly, Arbella’s apartment. Alys looked about her curiously.
The chamber nearest the hall was panelled and painted, with several figures of saints on the wall by the fireplace and a garland of flowers round under the rafters. A curtained bed took up most of the floor, with a clothes-kist at its foot. There was a musty smell which made Alys wrinkle her nose. Socrates, pressed close against her thigh, raised his head, sniffing, and the hair lifted on his narrow back. Bel glanced at the bed, with its neatly bagged-up curtains of verdure tapestry, almost as if she expected to see it occupied, but went round it to the further door and opened that.
The inner chamber was small and gloomy. A bench at one end held a fortune in glassware, the delicate blown shapes reflecting light from the high tiny window. Alys identified flasks, two alembics and several curving tubes whose use she could only imagine. There was red wax to stop the joints with, and a stand below which one could place a small charcoal burner. This was more than a stillroom, she thought, recalling Mère Isabelle’s working quarters.