‘Does he think we suspect him?’
‘He seems concerned,’ Gil agreed. He waited a moment longer, till Craigie was well out of earshot, then said to Lowrie, ‘So what have you got there?’
Lowrie rose from where he had hunkered down in the shadows twenty yards along the bank of the Girth Burn. Socrates, who had been sitting beside him looking where he looked, splashed into the water and waited hopefully for a stick to be thrown.
‘Someone cut across there to the waterside,’ said Lowrie, pointing upstream of where he stood. ‘And I wonder if this is why? It looks like a garment, blue woollen cloth any road. It’s caught under the other bank here, where the Provost’s men would likely ha missed it. Could it be her gown? And someone came down this way to throw it into the burn?’
‘Ah!’ Maistre Pierre made for the burn, avoiding the line Lowrie had indicated. Gil followed him more slowly, picking out the signs the younger man had found. They were slight, a matter of bent and flattened grasses, the print of a heel in a softer patch; whoever left them had contrived to avoid the bluebells’ juicier, more easily damaged leaves. Was that luck, he wondered, or good judgement? ‘Or was it daylight by then?’ he said aloud.
‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. He was calf-deep in the burn, fending off the interested dog and gathering up the waterlogged cloth which Lowrie had seen. ‘Not if this was put in the water at the same time as the body we have was bound to the Cross. Lend a hand here.’ Lowrie sprang to help him, with a quick apology. ‘She was put there within perhaps an hour of her death, and then she was throttled, and left to stiffen like that. After midnight, but long before dawn, I should say.’
‘Someone who kens the kirkyard well?’ Lowrie offered. He and the mason splashed out of the burn with the heavy wet garment between them and began to spread it out.
‘This has been cut off her,’ said Maistre Pierre, unfurling a ragged sleeve. ‘See, cut the whole length from cuff to neck, and the braid at the elbow too.’
‘And the other sleeve,’ said Lowrie, unfolding it to match. ‘The laces are cut and all.’
‘So likely she was dead already when she was brought here,’ said Gil. He stared about him, then moved carefully back to the Cross and began quartering the trampled area about its foot. Socrates joined him, and after a moment so did Lowrie, while Maistre Pierre continued to arrange the folds of wet blue wool.
‘It is a working woman’s kirtle,’ he said at length, ‘with such short sleeves, and in this cheap woollen stuff, though this bit of braid at the sleeve may help us to identify her. The hem is much worn and stained. And also- Pah! Full of insects. The seams are thick with their eggs. Lice, I suppose. I wonder where she worked.’
‘A flesher’s? One of the cookhouses?’ Gil suggested. ‘Somewhere the floor is wet and dirty, at any rate, and not in the better parts of the town either.’
‘Peut-être. Do we seek her in the alehouses, perhaps?’
‘That would certainly account for why nobody has come forward yet to name her.’ Gil was crouched, peering at the ground. ‘We might learn more once they open up for the day’s trade. Lowrie, come and tell me what you see here.’
Lowrie obeyed, elbowing the dog aside to study the scraps of colour caught under the flattened stems.
‘That’s it,’ he agreed. ‘That must be it. She was cut out of the gown here.’
Gil used his fingernails to extract one wispy blue thread, and laid it on his palm, trying not to breathe on it.
‘Or at least, the gown was cut,’ he amended scrupulously. ‘She was probably still in it, but we have no proof.’
‘Here’s a bigger bit,’ said Lowrie, now on hands and knees. He pinched something up from a mat of grasses, and turned back to Gil. ‘Look, Maister Gil, it’s a bit of the weave, not just an odd thread.’
Gil took the fragment, turning it over carefully.
‘How did that happen?’ he wondered.
‘He used shears,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘One sleeve has been cut using shears, quite small ones such as a needlewoman carries, and the other using a knife.’
‘Two people, then,’ said Gil.
‘Mistress Gibb herself, with the scissors from her hussif?’ Lowrie said in surprise, and answered his own question. ‘Hardly, she had naught on her but that sacking gown I suppose. Unless whoever freed her brought her clothes to her. No, the tirewoman said her clothes were all in the hostel.’ He looked down at the wisps of cloth in Gil’s hand. ‘I wonder they never kept this whole for Annie to wear, at least till she found shelter.’
‘Not so easy,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to strip a corpse in the dark. I suppose it was quicker this way.’
‘Nonetheless,’ said Gil, ‘it fits. We have our two people at least, as we reckoned it would take to bind the corp to the Cross, and one of them carried a pair of small shears. Our corp was dead when she was brought here, and then stripped of that blue gown, the sacking gown put on her, and I suppose one held her up while the other tied the ropes.’
‘Well, that is clear enough,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, straightening up cautiously. ‘It only leaves the one question, and that greater than all the rest together.’
‘Well, I think there are others we’ve not asked yet,’ said Gil, ‘but that is certainly the biggest one right now. Why? What did they gain by it? Why that lassie in particular, why any corp at all, why change her dress? What was the purpose?’
‘Time,’ said Lowrie, sitting back on his heels. ‘Did the man Sawney no say he came down to the gate wi a light every hour or so? If he’d found nobody here he’d surely ha raised the alarm immediately. They must have won several hours that way, between making the exchange and Sawney and Rab finally coming to free their mistress.’
‘And if we knew how long that was,’ said Gil, ‘we’d have some idea how far afield we’ll need to search for Annie Gibb. I think you must be right, Lowrie.’
‘Do we seek her?’ asked Maistre Pierre, still studying the wet kirtle. ‘It is not against the law to run from friends and family.’
‘Mistress Gibb, or whoever freed her,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘kens more than we do about the lassie in St Catherine’s chapel and how she died. I want a word wi her and her friends.’
Lowrie nodded. Maistre Pierre cocked his head, and said,
‘Well, for now you may seek her on your own. It is more than time I went back to work if those pillars are to be set up this side of Judgement Day. I have not heard a chisel for the quarter of an hour. Moreover,’ he added, ‘that boy Berthold is no use today. Boys will be boys, I accept that he and Luke went out last night after supper, but Luke came home at a reasonable hour, just before midnight indeed. Saints alone know when Berthold came in, and this morning he cannot lift so much as a mell without dropping it. I wish you joy of him when he serves you, young Lowrie.’
‘The good Doctor Chrysostom has told me the news,’ said Sir Edward in the thread of a voice. Chrysostom Januar, fingers on his patient’s pulse, nodded encouragement, and a man in the decent plain clothing of an upper servant, presumably a body-servant, stood by watching jealously. Sir Edward breathed carefully, in and out, in again, and went on, ‘Maister, I couldny say where Annie might be. I hoped,’ another cautious breath, ‘to meet her again freed of her ills, though no as I shall be of mine afore long.’
Gil studied the sick man with sympathy. This was the wreckage of a warrior, he thought; the flesh had fallen away from a broad frame with a sturdy ribcage and big-boned hands. Silver scars on the yellowish flesh of neck and brow below the linen nightcap told their own story.
‘She never said anything to you about friends in Glasgow or hereabouts?’ he asked. Sir Edward considered briefly, but answered a soundless No. ‘Did she speak of her future at all?’ Another No. ‘What had you intended for her, sir? Lockhart thought you planned to treat her the same as your own lassies when you divide the property.’