Mistress Mudie smiled at that, and the light, catching one plump cheek, showed a dimple that came and went. She crossed her arms below her comfortable bosom, the movement shedding a waft of a strong herbal smell Gil could not place, and rattled on.
‘- no more than my duty when all’s said and done, but I’ve a liking to your brother, maister, he’s a poor creature just like the others — ’
‘So what’s ado, Maister Cunningham?’Agnew asked. ‘Millar tells me you’re looking into this for Robert Blacader.’
Gil admitted this.
‘I’ve not had time to learn much so far,’ he added. ‘The man was found stabbed this morn, and we know he was home last night — ’
‘Aye,’ agreed Millar, nodding earnestly.
‘- and that’s about it. Might I come by and talk to you later?’ he asked.
‘To me?’ Agnew’s brows rose under his legal bonnet.
‘You may have been the last to speak to him,’ Gil pointed out. I hope you might be able to tell me something useful.’
‘I don’t see that,’ said Agnew dubiously. ‘If you ken he was here after he saw me — ’
‘- no doubt of that, his boots going up and down over my head, never troubled to put his house shoon on his feet, and when that man’ll be done in the wash-house I canny tell, I haveny all day to wait to lay him out, and I’ve still to put his chamber straight, what wi seeing to that stramash and finding the barrow, and answering Frankie’s kin that’s home from sea, that was here looking for the Deacon as well, though I canny see how he didny tell the lad himself, the dinner will be late if I canny get on — ’
‘None the less,’ persisted Gil, ‘I’d be glad of a word. Will you be in your own chamber in the Consistory later today?’
The washhouse was one of the outhouses leaning against the north wall of the yard. Led to it by Mistress Mudie in full tongue, they found the Deacon laid on a board balanced across two of the great washtubs, his outstretched right arm pointing accusingly at the rafters. Maistre Pierre, a lantern in his hand, was carefully examining so much of the corpse as he could in its present rigid state, but looked up as they entered.
‘Ah, Gilbert, there you are,’ he said, and nodded to Lowrie. ‘We have got the gown off him at least, which gives us a better look at the rest.’
‘- never have tolerated such a thing for any of the bedesmen, why any Christian soul should have to put up with it for himself I canny tell — ’ said Mistress Mudie behind Gil.
‘What have you found?’ Gil asked.
‘He had been drinking,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Not to excess, I am not suggesting he was drunk, but he had taken a refreshment. Also his supper, which one may clearly see was kale with lentils and meat of some sort.’
‘Sweet St Giles,’ said Gil. ‘Can you tell me the vintage of the wine?’
‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre regretfully, ‘though I think it was fortified. The smell is still in his mouth, very faint. Try for yourself.’
Gil bent, quelling his distaste, and sniffed at the open mouth. The cold lips and ginger-bristled jaw were still wet with rain and smelled of the man’s stale breath, and a faint scent of the yew-tree under which the corpse had lain clung to the flesh, but there was also an intimation of alcohol, the treacly savour of a fortified wine. Malvoisie, perhaps, he thought, or sack or that stuff from Xerez. A lentil, fragments of dark green matter and a wisp of meat clung unpleasantly to the back teeth in the lantern-light.
‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘And his death?’
‘Stabbed,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘as I surmised. See.’ He turned back the blood-stiffened folds of cloth fastidiously, exhibiting the wounds on the fleshy torso. ‘This one, and this, have bled quite badly, but I think this is the one that reached the heart.’
‘In the chest, no the back,’ said Gil. “And the weapon? No a large one, I’d have said.’
‘Well, for these, an ordinary small dagger, not much bigger than an eating-knife if that. But look at this.’ He pointed carefully with one big forefinger. ‘I checked the direction of the cuts. These two that bled are quite shallow, as if he was stabbed in anger by an opponent standing in front of him and using his left hand. The third is deeper, done with a bigger blade, and goes in direct, but also from in front, and has found the heart.’
‘Two assailants? And one of them left-handed,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘Has his own dagger been used?’
‘Quite clean,’ reported Lowrie, investigating both weapons where they lay by the corpse’s well-shod feet. ‘And so’s the whinger. And his boots are no worse than you’d expect if he was out in the burgh yestreen. Splashes of mud, no more.’
‘Anything else? What’s in his purse?’
‘I have not yet examined the purse.’
‘- the very idea, going through the poor man’s things like this, and all before he’s made respectable, lying there in all his dirt, the soul — ’
‘There is blood in the creases of his right hand, as if he put it to the wound, no more, but his fingernails are not damaged. And there is something else strange.’ The mason ducked round Naismith’s outstretched, accusatory arm to reach the head, and began to smooth the lank brown hair aside with a surprisingly delicate touch. ‘Bring the light here, will you.’
Gil took up the lantern and obeyed. Lowrie followed him.
‘- at least his eyes are closed, but can he no be left at peace under a decent length of good linen till he softens, with maybe a couple candles and one of my old men to — ’
‘There are these marks on his cheek, which I am not certain about, but also you must look at his other ear,’ said Maistre Pierre. He took the light and held it carefully to shine across the left side of Naismith’s face. ‘See, this pattern in the skin.’
‘Ridges and furrows,’ said Lowrie, craning round Gil’s elbow. ‘It’s almost like the marks on ploughland that’s been left to grazing for a year or two.’
‘It’s as if he’s lain on something uneven,’ said Gil. ‘After death, do you suppose? While he set?’
‘I thought so too,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, ‘though I cannot decide what. But there is also the ear. You see?’ He moved the lantern, and pointed at the edge of the corpse’s right ear.
‘It’s torn,’ said Lowrie in astonishment. ‘But there’s no blood.’ He looked from Maistre Pierre to Gil. ‘I nicked Ninian’s ear on the rim like that with a broken jug last year, and it bled all over him. Is it an old injury maybe?’
‘There are little tags of skin,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It has not healed in any way, but nor has it bled.’
‘So — ?’ Gil prompted, and recognized his uncle’s teaching methods. Lowrie bent to look closer at the injury.
‘So I suppose this must have happened after he died too. How? Is it related to the other marks? Are they both from some kind of rough treatment, maybe when he was moved to where we found him?’
‘It fits,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘Look at him.’ He stood back, gesturing at the length of the body. ‘Apart from that arm, he lies level from the feet to the shoulders, just as he was on the grass. But his head does not rest on this board, it did not rest on the grass, it lies as if on a cushion. A thin cushion,’ he qualified.
‘- as for sticking knives into him once he’s dead, I never heard of such a thing, even if he is asking for a cushion for the poor soul’s head now, and I don’t have such a thing — ’
‘Do you mean, maister,’ said Lowrie slowly, ‘are you saying that he was already part stiffened when he was moved?’
Maistre Pierre grinned approvingly his teeth showing white in his neat black beard.
‘Indeed, I think so. Face, jaw and neck, perhaps, were already set. Then he was disturbed, and taken into the garden, a task I would not care for myself, and fell into the position in which we found him. In which we see him now,’ he nodded at the unresponsive corpse. ‘I suppose if the shoulders lay differently when he was set down, the head would not touch the ground.’
Gil studied the face, still locked in its dream.
‘So he was stabbed in some other place,’ he said slowly, ‘and his eyes closed. Then he was kept there for some time, maybe an hour or two — ’