This time the answer was Aye. Sir Edward collected himself, lifted a hand slightly and added, ‘My will. Show him.’
‘In the small leather kist, I think,’ said Doctor Januar, and received an infinitesimal nod.
The men’s hall was a big, open chamber with two rows of beds, wide troughs of Norway pine set on short legs against the long walls. Most of them were bare but one opposite and three at the far end held straw mattresses which now, by daylight, were humped up like caterpillars to air, with a clutter of bags and boxes on the floor round them. Here, nearest the door and the light, Sir Edward lay on good linen, propped on a mound of pillows, a featherbed under him and a fine woollen blanket about his shoulders. More kists were stacked on either side of the bedhead; there was a tray with spoons, a beaker, a jug of water on top of one pile.
Turning away, the servant extracted a leather-bound box from the other stack. He searched briefly in it and drew out a folded parchment, which he handed to Gil, returning to his post. Gil unfolded the document and tilted the writing to the light. It was not the original, which was presumably lodged with the man of law Lockhart had mentioned, but a full copy.
‘This is well drawn up,’ he said after a moment. Sir Edward’s thin mouth twitched in a faint smile. ‘It makes matters quite out of doubt.’
The will was also very wordy, but the testator’s intentions were unmistakable. There were bequests to the servants, to Dame Ellen, to the parish kirk and its priest; then in a long preamble Sir Edward’s affection for his daughters and his good-daughter were set out in terms which could only gratify the four women concerned, and the quite significant property which Sir Edward held was allocated, feu by feu, with reasons given for each bequest.
‘Would you by any chance,’ Gil asked, still perusing the list, assembling the blocks of land in his head, ‘would you by any chance have any of Annie’s papers wi you? Her contract, the lands from her own faither, that sort of-’ He broke off, as Sir Edward signalled with one finger and pointed at the kist again.
The servant, searching through it as if he knew what he sought, extracted several documents which he bundled together and handed to Gil. Over his head as he did so the doctor met Gil’s eye with a significant look. Significant of what? wondered Gil, preserving a blank expression. He turned to the papers, skimming through them. Anna Gibb, daughter of James Gibb and Mariana Wallace his spouse, was a wealthy woman, that was immediately obvious; she had no need to live in one room like an anchorite. These documents were the originals, and seemed to be the complete set of her titles to everything that was hers outright, along with a short copy of the deeds to several conjunct fees and a number of properties in which she had the life interest. He raised his eyes to the three men watching him, and met another of those intent looks from the doctor.
‘Well, that all seems very clear,’ he said after a moment, and Januar looked away. ‘I’ll make some notes, if I may.’ He drew his tablets from his purse and began a careful list of the properties and their respective values. The doctor moved quietly about while he worked, pouring a spoonful of something from a flask, something else from a jug, into the glass beaker on the tray by his side. The servant lifted the glass and stepped to the bedside, and the sick man accepted the dose gratefully, drinking it in small cautious sips.
‘Who has a mind to Annie’s property?’ Gil asked eventually, stacking the documents into their bundle again. ‘There must be more than one family would be glad of the alliance. Who have you turned away?’
Sir Edward gazed at him unreadably for a long moment. Eventually he said, in that thread of a voice,
‘Most of Ayrshire. Half Lanarkshire. Boyds, Muirs, Somervilles.’ One of those faint smiles. ‘Lost count a while back.’
‘None of them seemed more determined than others? More persistent?’
A soundless No. Whether that was the case or not, Sir Edward was clearly not the one to ask. Gil was considering his next question when hasty feet sounded in the courtyard, Socrates wuffed a greeting beneath the window, and Lowrie entered, rattling at the pin as he opened the door.
‘Forgive me, maisters,’ he said, bowing briefly. ‘Maister Gil, I think we have a name for the dead lassie.’
Out in the yard he was a little more explicit.
‘One of the alehouses out near the Stablegreen Port. Seems the bellman stopped there to wet his thrapple, and cried his tale by the door as he came and went, and naturally they all came up here to see the sight, and recognised her kirtle where we’ve spread it out to dry on the grass.’ Gil nodded, acknowledging his dog’s salutation. ‘They think it’s one of the lassies from the next tavern, just inside the Port. Someone’s gone out there to tell them, fetch her man, maybe get the alewife here too. I thought you’d wish to witness that.’
‘You’re right,’ said Gil. ‘What is her name, then? Assuming they’re right, and assuming the dead lassie is the owner of the kirtle,’ he qualified.
‘Peg, they called her. Peg Simpson. She works at the sign of the Trindle, so they thought, and her man’s a porter in the town.’
In the chapel, a small group who might or might not be different from the previous group was discussing this, while the woman who had been praying earlier sat on her heels, her beads wrapped round her hand, listening to the comments. Her husband had vanished, presumably to his duties about the hostel.
‘Likely one o their regulars tried it on a bit far,’ said a man in a cowhide apron as Gil entered. ‘You ken what the place is like, after all.’
‘I don’t know it,’ said Gil. ‘Tell me about it.’
All the heads turned, and the man in the apron, taken aback, swallowed once or twice and then said,
‘Aye, well, it’s no the most- It’s no a- It’s no like the Mitre that Ep Davison keeps, that’s a clean house and well ordered.’
‘A true word, Willie,’ agreed a woman in a striped kirtle. ‘Eppie keeps a well-ordered house, right enough. Her las sies are all decent folk, a woman can take a drink in there and never be troubled by other folk’s husbands. Unless she wants to be,’ she added thoughtfully.
‘Jean Howie’s ale isny the wonder o the town neither,’ said a man with a bright green hood rolled down on his shoulders. ‘That’s her that keeps the Trindle,’ he added.
‘Aye it is,’ contradicted someone else, ‘it’s a wonder that folks goes back there after they’ve tasted it once.’
‘That’s no what they go back for,’ said another voice.
‘I heard that, William Pringle,’ said a stout woman at the chapel door. She pushed past Gil without apology, taking her beads in her hand as she went. ‘Now what’s this about Peg? She should ha been at her work hours since. What’s she doing here, and dead wi it?’
‘Here she’s, Jean,’ said the man in the hide apron. ‘That’s if it is her, she’s been beat that bad you wouldny ken her.’
Mistress Howie halted at sight of the dead woman’s face, crossed herself, and went forward more slowly.
‘Oh, in the Name,’ she said after a moment. ‘What a beating she’s taen. The poor lass. I’ll wager it’s that man o hers, raised his fist to her once too often.’
‘More than his fist, I’d ha said,’ offered the woman in the striped kirtle. ‘She’s black and blue, head to foot. Take a look, Jean.’
Bessie, the hostel servant, got to her feet and raised the shroud, glaring at the male bystanders. Mistress Howie cast a cautious glance under the linen at the hunched length of the corpse, and nodded grimly, pursing her lips.
‘Have you sent to take him up?’ she demanded of Gil, unerringly scenting authority. ‘Her man. Billy Baird. Makes his living carrying other folks’ goods on his back, such as doesny fall into his pouch on the way to where he’s going. Scrawny black-haired creature wi a scar across his lug.’ She raked one finger across the folds of her linen headdress, over her ear and down her cheek. ‘It’s hardly murder, if a man slays his own wife wi his fists, but he should face the Provost for it any road.’