‘But why?’ asked Maister Sim from where he still stood near the corpse. ‘He was a right scunner, never did aught you asked him without arguing, and times no even then,’ Galston stirred; Sim glanced at him, and went on, ‘but that’s no reason to throttle the man. He must ha done something to provoke it!’
‘Did anyone know he was here?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Did you fellows know?’
‘He should ha been off duty by now,’ said Galston, ‘seeing he’s on early this week.’
The two vergers still standing by the Chapter House doorway looked at each other in the candlelight.
‘Aye, he was here first thing,’ said one of them, ‘he was, it’s- It was his turn to open up this week, he was here afore the songmen cam in for Prime.’
‘That’s right,’ said Maister Sim. ‘He was.’
‘He’d ha been free to get off home an hour or two since,’ Galston continued, ‘unless Maister Jamieson had work for him. When did you see him last, Davie?’
‘Afore Vespers?’ the man offered.
‘And who of the clergy should have been down here?’ Gil moved past the two men into the chapel of St Nicholas next to the Chapter House door, holding the candle high to look about him. Nothing seemed to be out of place here either. ‘There’s these four chapels, there’s Our Lady, there’s St Mungo himself.’ He nodded towards the other two shrines, placed in the middle of the pillared space, their banked lights showing gaps now as the candles set by the faithful burned out. ‘Which of the canons or their vicars is responsible for these altars? I’ll need to ask them when they said Mass, though I suspect none of them would be late enough in the day to be any help.’
‘I could do that,’ offered Maister Sim, ‘though maybe no till the morn’s morn now.’
‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘surely the most of them will be under their own roofs, thinking of retiring for the night by this.’
Or of going out to start the evening’s drinking, thought Gil, not meeting his friend’s eye in the candlelight.
‘Aye, Habbie, if you would,’ he said with gratitude, and would have continued, but beyond St Mungo’s shrine hasty feet sounded on the north stair, the stair which led out to the Vicars’ hall as well as the main church.
‘Maister Gil?’ Lowrie’s voice. ‘Here’s Maister Jamieson. He’s something to tell us.’
‘Indeed aye!’ Jamieson was right behind Lowrie as they threaded their way through the forest of stone, to emerge in the candlelight beside the corpse. ‘What’s this? Is the man deid in truth? How can that be? I was speaking wi him no an hour since! Galston, is that right?’
‘Aye, deid right enough, Alan,’ said Maister Sim.
‘An hour since?’ said Gil, hastening to join them. ‘Are you certain, man?’ Behind him he could hear his father-in-law rumbling dissent, and was aware of relief. An hour was hardly possible, given all that must have happened here. Jamieson, bending to look closer at the body of his henchman, said,
‘Aye, aye, Gil, it canny be longer, I’d stake my- How is he all wet like this? What’s come to him? Has he had Conditional Absolution?’
‘Tell me when you last saw him,’ Gil said. Jamieson straightened up, crossed himself, muttered a brief prayer and turned away.
‘No that long since,’ he said, frowning. ‘Let me see, it was afore Vespers I’d say, but no so long afore it.’ So at least two hours since, thought Gil. That’s more like it. ‘We’d been telling the dry stores, him and me, and trying to account what might ha gone missing this week. And it seems to me,’ he frowned, ‘as if something he saw, or something one o us said to the other, put him in mind o a thing, for he suddenly up and said, It canny be! It canny be! Like that, ye ken, all astonished. Surely no, he says. What canny be, Barnabas? says I, but he stood there like a stock wi one o the sack-ties in his hand, and then he says, Forgie me, Maister Jamieson, I’ll no be long, and starts out the door. I cried after him, Where are ye going, and he says ower his shoulder, I’ll no be long, I see it now, and that’s the last I saw him.’
‘What did you do?’ Gil asked, fascinated.
‘Oh, I gaed on wi the task. The poor we ha aye wi us, after all, I need to be sure o how much I can gie out in alms. To tell truth,’ Jamieson looked down at the corpse again and crossed himself, ‘I forgot about him, and about the time. It gied me quite a start when your man here chapped at the almonry door, let alone what he had to tell me.’
‘The length of cord, the sack-tie you called it,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Did he take it away with him?’
‘Aye, for I’d to find another to the second boll o barley. Canny leave it lying open all night.’ He bent to touch the corpse, tracing a cross on the darkened forehead. ‘Poor fellow, I canny believe it. Talking wi me, he was, no an hour since. I canny believe it. What came to him, Gil? You’ve no tellt me yet. He’s dreadful to see, he looks as though he’s been throttled, but he’s wringing wet forbye. Was he in the Girth Burn, or something?’
‘He was in the well,’ said Maister Sim. ‘St Mungo’s own well, yonder in the corner.’
Jamieson looked at him in astonishment, then turned to Lowrie who was watching quietly from the top of the steps.
‘You said that!’ he said. ‘I mind now. Throttled and put into the well, you said that, I mind it. Why? Who’d ha done that? It makes no sense!’
‘We need to find out,’ said Gil. ‘By what you say, it looks as though he left you to find someone. Given that he’s been dead well over an hour, I think it’s likely that person killed him, probably throttled him wi the sack-tie he was carrying. Aye, that one,’ he added as Maistre Pierre produced the cord he had unwound from the corpse’s neck. Pausing to acknowledge Jamieson’s shocked identification, he went on, ‘Can you mind anything more about when the fellow left you? What were you talking of? Did either of you say something that set him thinking, or was it something you handled, or-?’
‘No, no that I can think,’ said Jamieson doubtfully.
‘Maisters,’ interrupted Galston, ‘maisters, would you maybe take your questions away somewhere else?’ Gil looked round at the man, startled, and he bowed politely. ‘We’ll ha to shift Barnabas out o here, Maister Cunningham, and get tidied up, all afore locking-up time, and there’s no denying it would be a help if you clergy wasny here.’
‘I can see that,’ said Gil. He looked about him. ‘Aye, I think we’re done here, but I need a word afore I leave the building.’
Galston nodded.
‘We’ll be in the vestry,’ he said, and gestured his minions forward.
Lighting the way out to the Vicars’ hall, Gil was suddenly aware of the empty spaces round him, of the echoes from the upper church, the air movement between the squat pillars. The atmosphere of the place was tense, watchful, as if the whole building was waiting for him to move, to ask the right questions, to find the truth of what had just happened. As if its patron himself was looking for an answer. He paused as he went under the arch to the stairs, and glanced over his shoulder at the brightly painted shrine within its wrought-iron fence. Blessed St Mungo, he said to the saint in his head, I’ll do what I can, but you’ll have to help me. I need to know what to ask, who to speak to.
Just for a moment the shadows shifted in the elaborate vaulting above the shrine, like a stirring of tree branches in the wind.
The Sub-Almoner led them into the undercroft of the Vicars’ hall, and picked his way between the pillars and the stored ecclesiastical bibelots to the far end, where he unlocked a padlock which fastened a sturdy door.
‘This is the dry store, you see,’ he said, ‘and there’s the Vicars’ store alongside it. I’ve the key here, but there’s still goods walking out when my back’s turned, and out the Vicars’ store and all, so they tell me.’