The Stolen Voice (22 page)

‘Did they part on good terms?’ he asked.

‘Oh, aye, the best,’ agreed Benet. ‘They embraced like brothers, so they did, and my maister showed me a siller badge the other fellow had gied him, and tellt me the tale of it and bade me stitch it to his hat first chance I had.’

‘A badge! What like was it?’ Gil demanded.

‘Oh, right strange. A lassie, a saint I suppose wi a sword, but it’s never St Catherine. It’s some strange tale about a princess out of Ireland, but her shrine’s in the Low Countries. Seems this fellow Stirling had been there.’

Gil stared at the man. That was the hat Andrew Drummond had been wearing the first time he saw him, he realized. With the missing badge stitched to its brim.

‘It’s a right shame the man being murdered,’ said Benet, looking uneasy. ‘I wish I’d a known afore we went to Dunkeld –’

‘Dunkeld?’

‘Aye, that was what I was saying, sir, after you called on him my maister rose up and came out of his melancholy, and set out for Dunkeld that same day to speak wi the Precentor there, that he was at the sang-schule wi, and parted wi him next day on the like terms, all tears and embracing on the doorsill. And if I’d a known of Maister Stirling’s being dead,’ persisted Benet, ‘I’d a tellt Mitchel when I saw him in Dunkeld.’

By the time supper was over and they had retired to their chamber and dismissed Seonaid the day seemed to have been very long already, but neither Gil nor Alys was sleepy. Sitting on embroidered cushions, he sipped Rhenish wine from the dole-cupboard and watched her comb down her hair by the window while he described the interview with Andrew Drummond’s servant.

‘They talked about David,’ she summarized thoughtfully, the honey-coloured locks slipping through her fingers. ‘And about forgiveness, and Judas. They wept, both of them. Stirling gave Andrew the badge off his hat, and they parted on good terms, or so it seems.’

‘The woman Ross said Andrew was
elevated
when she saw him. It must have been something important they had out between them.’

She nodded at that, and went on plying the comb, moving her arms cautiously as if she was stiff, and gazing out at the summer twilight gathering blue over loch and hills.

‘Then that evening Stirling was shot with a crossbow and put in the tanpit. I wonder if it was a consequence of that? Who else might have put him there?’

‘More than one might have reason to, I’d have said,’ said Gil.

‘Andrew Drummond,’ said Alys. ‘The old priest. The man Mitchel. The tanner, do you think?’

‘We have to include him,’ Gil agreed, ‘though I think it unlikely.’

‘Can you think of anyone else?’

‘Mistress Doig, I suppose, though I don’t know that she could use a crossbow. It was a neat shot, right in the lethal spot at the base of the skull.’

She shivered, and crossed the room to put her comb back in its case.

‘So any of those four could have killed the man, but when? How? How did they have the chance? You told me the tanyard is in the midst of the suburb, surely there must have been people about!’

‘Nobody had come forward before I left Perth to say they had seen anything.’ Gil poured wine for her, and drew her down beside him. ‘One thing about a crossbow, it means the murderer need not have been close to Stirling when he struck.’

‘Yes, but he still had to dispose of the body.’ She sipped at her wine. ‘But why, whoever it was – what reason? And why the tanpit?’

‘It must have been convenient. Presumably he couldn’t be left wherever he was killed, and the tanpit presented a way of concealing his death, for a while at least.’

‘How long?’ she wondered. ‘If the tanner’s man had not found that badge, and so chanced to see the bubbles rising in the pit, how long before they found Stirling?’

‘Long enough for him to be unrecognizable, I would think,’ said Gil. ‘He was well on his way already. The – the skin is well preserved, but the flesh within has gone, and the weight of the skins and planks over him has –’ She grimaced, and he left that and went on, ‘Cornton knew his clothes. Once they rotted there would be little to go on, particularly since whoever put him there took his hat away with them.’

‘Whoever put him there,’ she repeated.

‘Whoever it was,’ he agreed.

‘Consider them one by one. Why should Andrew Drummond kill James Stirling? What linked them? I suppose it might have been what they were discussing on the meadow.’

‘David,’ offered Gil. ‘The sang-schule. The past.’

‘To which we have no real access. That would mean David is a part of the tale – so the two matters are linked.’

‘They’re linked by Andrew Drummond anyway.’

‘True.’ She tipped her head back, gazing up at the panelled ceiling. ‘If Andrew slew the man, was it for guilt, or revenge, or because either he or Stirling knew too much?’

‘Any of those, I should think,’ he said ruefully. ‘If Andrew disposed of David, for instance, and Stirling finally showed him that he guessed he had done it, that might provoke Andrew into getting rid of him.’

‘And you said Stirling was prone to making jokes at people. Perhaps he made the wrong joke about it. Or if he had disposed of David himself –’

‘I never thought of that!’

‘Or perhaps he was given a part Andrew had wanted to sing, after his accident.’

‘Ancient envy, you mean.’ Gil poured himself more wine. ‘You see, there are so many possibilities. But if it was Andrew who killed him, why now? Why not any time the last thirty years? I think if we consider that, it might tell us more. What had Stirling seen or done in his –’

‘Or said.’

‘True, or said in his last hours that provoked someone to kill him and hide the body?’

‘Which takes us back to this conversation on the meadow again. I wish Benet had heard more. It’s obviously important. And what about the others? The old chaplain, for instance.’

‘The chaplain? He has a crossbow, so he says, but if he could hit a barn from inside it I’d be much amazed.’

‘He had quarrelled with Stirling in the morning. Did anyone see them together at the noon bite? Did they really make up their difference?’

‘I suppose even if they seemed to, he could still have wanted revenge.’

‘Could he get the body into the tanyard?’

‘Not alone, I’d have thought. He must be past sixty, and looks frail, I’d not have said he had the strength.’

‘If he practises archery,’ Alys observed, ‘he may be stronger than he appears.’

‘True. Then there’s the steward’s servant, the man that’s now in Dunkeld. I need to send Tam for him tomorrow, with a couple of men, to fetch him to Perth for me.’

‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Why is he in Dunkeld, I wonder?’

‘I wondered that too. As for why he would kill Stirling, we know no more than for any of the others, maybe less. He told Benet that Stirling was considerate. That’s no reason for murder.’

‘And the tanner. You know, Gil, the tanner would find it easiest of all of them. He could arrange to meet his landlord at the yard, shoot him there, put him in the tanpit –’

‘But why? He seemed to have no quarrel with the man either, he said Stirling was a good landlord –’

‘One of those sharp remarks? A sudden quarrel?’

‘I suppose it’s possible. But he also said he was at home all evening, which I must check, and we know Stirling was still alive at sunset.’

‘Do we?’ said Alys. ‘Do we?’ She turned to face him. ‘Mistress Doig recognized the hat, not the man! Gil, do you suppose –?’

He stared at her, turning this over in his mind.

‘Sweet St Giles,’ he said. ‘That leaves it wide open, doesn’t it?’

‘How does the time work? The man in the hat went towards the town, and then Andrew Drummond was seen going away from it. Could Andrew have worn the hat?’

‘I think Mistress Doig would have recognized the Drummond hair, the way it sticks out below his hat, even at that distance.’

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed. ‘So does that mean we can strike him off the list?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘for I think there must have been more than one person involved. Getting him into the tanpit and covering him up would be done easier and quieter by two than by one.’ He thought of the planks and their nets of stones which covered the soaking hides. ‘Near impossible for one, in fact.’

‘When was he last seen?’ Alys asked. ‘Before Mistress Doig thought she recognized him, I mean.’

‘I suppose when Drummond parted from him,’ said Gil, thinking it through. ‘Benet said they all separated about the same time, and Stirling said he would stay and walk on the meadow for a while. I wonder if anyone saw him there later? Drummond, perhaps, or Mistress Ross and her friends when they went into Perth?’

‘They parted about seven o’clock, by what you said,’ Alys recalled. ‘And he was probably dead, or at least he no longer had his hat, by sunset. Perhaps two hours.’

‘But what happened?’ Gil slapped his knee in frustration. ‘Where was he killed, and who killed him? The most of Perth seems to have been at supper during that time, but surely somebody saw him?’

‘You need to ask more questions,’ said Alys seriously.

‘I do. I must speak to Andrew Drummond before I leave for Perth tomorrow, and then the other three – if Tam can fetch the man Mitchel from Dunkeld, it will help.’

She was silent for a little, while he sipped at his wine, turning the questions he must ask over in his mind. Then she said, ‘Does Andrew believe that Davie really is his brother?’

‘No. Nor do I.’

‘Nor I,’ she agreed. ‘But who is it? And who taught him? Oh – the sister has not been out of the glen for three years.’

‘She has small children, I suppose,’ Gil said.

‘I expect so. But Mistress Drummond –’ she bit her lip. ‘When she was dying, Gil, she gave me a message for you.
Tell your man
, she said,
Davie is truly my bairn
.’

‘That’s the crux of the whole problem,’ he pointed out.

‘No, but then she said,
Just as Patrick
, and then she named all of her children and grandchildren and called them her bonnie bairns too, and then the two good-daugh-ters. Though not her good-son,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘And – oh!’ She clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘She named the boy Iain after she named his brother and his uncle who are dead, and he was dead by then, though none of us knew it.’

‘An accident? Forgetfulness? The woman was dying, Alys.’

‘She was clear in her mind,’ she protested. ‘I think she – she would have known. The dying sometimes know things we can’t know, Gil, so close to the next world as they are. My mother –’ She bit that off. He waited, but when she did not speak he said:

‘Drummond dreamed she summoned him home, standing in his chamber with the boy Iain at her side.’

She nodded at that, but returned to the main point: ‘I think Davie is close kin to the family.’

‘So if he’s not some bastard of her husband’s, and he hasn’t been taught by the daughter, we’re only left with one real possibility. He must be the son of David himself.’

She turned her head to look at him, held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It seems the most likely solution.’

‘It’s the only one I can see,’ said Gil. She nodded, still looking away. ‘Who else could he be, sweetheart?’

‘But where is David?’ she asked, not answering his question.

‘What do we know?’ Gil set down his glass, and began to count points on his fingers. ‘He – this David, if that’s his name –’

‘He swore that he is Davie Drummond,’ she said. ‘He always calls himself Davie.’

‘Yes. Well, firstly, he was set down by a group of horsemen, the other side of the pass from Dalriach, and secondly Billy Doig was one of the party if we can believe Euan Beag. Doig certainly seems to feel responsible for Davie. But where had he come from before that? What did you think of his clothes, Alys?’

‘Not Scots made, I would say,’ she pronounced. ‘The linen was good quality, but the cut of the shirt was not the same as yours. Not French either,’ she added, ‘the sleeve-band was set on differently from the shirts my father had when we came to Glasgow. But the plaid he was wearing was certainly old Mistress Drummond’s weaving, they all recognized that, even Caterin.’

‘You mentioned something he said about where he lived. Was it about food?’

‘Oh – yes! Where he was, he said, they have no great love for kale, and they eat bread of wheat and rye. And less meat than they do here, which would not be difficult,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Rye bread. The Low Countries,’ he said. ‘High Germany, the Baltic lands.’

She nodded. ‘The Low Countries would be nearest, and the most convenient to find a ship, wouldn’t it? So do we assume that David, the older David I mean, is there now?’

‘If he still lives, it seems likely.’ Gil moved on to another finger. ‘You know, it fits. If it was Doig enticed the singer in Dunblane away, rather than the Devil himself, it seems most likely he called away the two in Perth as well, and if he then took them to the Low Countries he could well bring young Davie back with him.’

‘I wonder if brother Andrew knew about Doig,’ said Alys.

‘He certainly knows him. He went to the yard at Perth looking for him.’

‘It’s all supposition,’ she said, ‘we’ve no firm evidence, but you’re right, it does fit. It makes a structure.’

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Andrew said the same thing. What gain is there in pretending to be his own father? Why not just –’

‘It might have begun as a joke,’ she said doubtfully, ‘or a game. Or even –’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘Old Mistress Drummond told me the first thing he said to her was,
Are you my grandmother?
’

‘Oh!’

‘And then
she
said,
No, it’s your own mother
. So he can’t have intended the pretence when he arrived.’

‘That makes better sense,’ he said. ‘He said Euan Beag
gave me my name
, assumed he was David. He didn’t correct that either, but it wouldn’t be easy to disabuse Euan of an idea he’d settled his mind on, I’d think. And having let Mistress Drummond assume he was David, it could be very hard to confess that he wasn’t.’

He sat turning these conjectures over in his mind. As Alys had said, it was all supposition, there could be a separate explanation for each of the points they had considered, but placed together they did offer a coherent story.