‘Likely she did,’ agreed Mistress Howie with another of her abrupt changes of direction. ‘You could ask at them, maister. I’ll bid them tell you the truth.’
‘Aye, where are your lassies, Jean?’ asked the man in the green hood. ‘I’m surprised they’re no here and all, to see the show. Pay their respec’s,’ he corrected himself.
‘I tellt them to get the house swep’ and the day’s kale on the fire, that’s how they’re no here,’ retorted Mistress Howie.
‘So are you going to take him up, maister?’ asked the man in the hide apron. ‘I’d say he slew her, myself, he should come afore the Provost for it, though I suppose he’ll no hang.’
‘Whoever killed her tied her to the Cross in place of Mistress Gibb,’ Gil said. ‘That could be seen as attempting to conceal it, which makes it secret murder-’
‘Secret? Out in the open at the Cross like that?’ said the woman in the striped kirtle, laughing.
‘At the Cross?’ repeated Baird incredulously. ‘Are you saying that was my Peg they were talking about? Bound at the Wyndheid and left in the midnight? Will you two let me go?’
‘No the Wyndheid,’ several voices contradicted him. ‘St Mungo’s Cross in the kirkyard,’ added the man in the green hood. Baird stared at him, then looked at Gil, who nodded confirmation.
‘She was tied to St Mungo’s Cross in place of the mad lady,’ he agreed.
‘What was she doing in the kirkyard?’ Baird asked blankly. ‘She hated the place, she’d never ha gone there in the daylight, far less in the dark, no for any money. She was feart for bogles, ever since someone tellt her some daft tale about a hand coming out a grave. What would take her there, maister?’
‘That’s right,’ affirmed Mistress Howie. ‘She’d never go near the High Kirk, aye worshipped in St Thomas’ wee chapel out ayont the Port.’
‘She’d ha been feart to death,’ said Baird, his voice sounding constricted. ‘Bound there and left to die. St Peter’s bones, if I find who did that to my lassie I’ll throttle him mysel, I’ll no wait for the hangman to do it.’
‘You stop that, you filthy leear,’ said the man in the hide apron, shaking him. ‘Right, maister, will we just take him round to the Provost the now while we’ve got our hands on him? Saves hunting for him later on.’
‘No,’ said Gil. There were indignant exclamations. ‘No, let him go. I need a right word wi him, and I’m not doing it here with half the upper town looking on.’
‘He’ll run as soon as he’s loosed,’ said the woman in the striped kirtle.
‘I will not, Agnes Wilkie,’ said Baird, ‘for that I’ll be hunting for him that did that to Peg.’
‘Let him go,’ Gil repeated, and was obeyed with reluctance. ‘And leave me wi him.’
Lowrie began to clear the chapel of the various bystanders, eventually persuading them that there was no more excitement to be had. When all that remained were Gil and Lowrie himself, the hostel servant Bess, and the man Baird, Gil led the porter over to the head of the bier and deliberately turned back the sheet to show the dead woman’s face.
‘Tell me when she went out,’ he said. Baird looked down at the battered countenance, his mouth twisting.
‘No much to tell,’ he said, with fractured bravado. ‘She cam round fro the alehouse when they’d put up the shutters, lifted her plaid and said she’d be away out.’
‘Her plaid?’ Gil repeated. ‘What like is her plaid? You’re certain she took it?’
‘Well, it’s no in the lodging, I’d to sleep cold. Just ordinar. Kind o brown checkit thing. Aye, that’s it.’ He nodded at the bundle Gil lifted from below the bier. ‘That’s hers. Can I get it back, maister? I was- I was right cold last night.’
‘And what did you say when she said she would go out?’ Gil prompted.
‘I said, Away out? At this hour? and she said, Aye. There’s someone back in the town I need a word wi.’ He paused, scratching at his groin again, his face sour as if the memory tasted bad. As well it might, Gil thought. ‘So I says, Who would that be? and she says, Nobody you ken, Billy, though he’s afflicted the both o us. Then she goes away out. Don’t wait up, she says, I’ll likely be a while. And I never,’ he dashed impatiently at his eye, ‘I never seen her again. Till now.’ He put out a hand and touched the bruised cheek with surprising tenderness. ‘Peggy, lass, who was he? What did you do that he slew you this way?’
‘She didny tell you who he was?’
‘No a word.’
Gil went back over the man’s statement in his mind.
‘She said there was someone back in the town,’ he repeated, ‘and someone who had afflicted both of you. What did she mean by that? Your landlord, maybe?’
‘No likely,’ said Baird dismissively, ‘it’s Jean Howie rents us the place, or rents it to Peg any road. Likely she’ll want me out o there now,’ he added, ‘seeing I canny bring in custom to her alehouse.’
‘You think it might have been a matter of picking a fight with this man? Of having something out wi him?’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it no?’ retorted Baird with grim humour. ‘No, I canny add aught to what I’ve tellt you, maister. The lassies ’at worked wi her might have more to say, she maybe told them whatever it was that was eating at her.’
‘You’re saying she was worried about something?’
‘No worried,’ contradicted Baird. ‘More like annoyed. Something wasny right. I never asked her,’ he said a little desperately, ‘I thought she’d tell me when she cam in, maybe wi money in her purse. I’d naught but those few words wi her afore she went off into the night and I never seen her again till this. It’s no right, maister! It’s no justice!’
Following Gil out into the sunshine again, leaving Baird standing in baffled anger by the bier, Lowrie said quietly,
‘Was she maybe putting the black on someone? Is that why she was killed?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder how this fellow had afflicted them both? And when he came back into the town?’ He glanced at the sky, and snapped his fingers for Socrates, who obediently left the doorpost he was inspecting and came to his side. ‘I think we need a word wi the lassies at the Trindle, and then it’s high time we went home for the noon bite.’
Chapter Five
Jean Howie’s alehouse presented itself much as Gil expected. It stood with its sagging stone gable facing the street, at the top of one of the long narrow tofts north of the Castle walls and just within the Stablegreen port. Tumbledown thatch lowered over the doorway, a similar building stood just beyond it, and a straggling line of sheds and shacks further along the path must include the lodging Billy Baird had shared with Peg. Beyond the fence at the far end of the toft was a stretch of common ground, and then the foot of the gardens of Vicars’ Alley, where the songmen of St Mungo’s dwelt. There was a sound of women weeping, and two gloomy men standing outside the house.
‘Is this it?’ said Lowrie doubtfully.
‘The sign says it is,’ Gil answered. The younger man looked at the weather-worn board hanging crookedly over the door; just recognisably it depicted a trindle, one of the long candles matched to the donor’s height and coiled into a spiral which were pledged to one saint or another in return for favours granted.
‘They aye make me think of dog-turds,’ he remarked, following his superior along the path. ‘Trindles. The way they curl round about.’
‘Thank you for that,’ said Gil. He nodded to the two men at the door, and rapped smartly on the doorjamb. Socrates returned from a brief jaunt down the path and sat down grinning at his feet.
‘You’ll get no assistance, neighbour,’ said one of the bystanders. ‘A man could die o thirst in there the day, if he wasny drowned first wi them weeping.’
‘Aye, well, they’re a’ owerset,’ said his companion. ‘One o their hoors is deid,’ he explained to Gil, ‘strangled to death at Glasgow Cross in the night so they’re saying. It’s only natural they should be out o sorts.’