Crucible (7 page)

The final name in the register, other than my own, was that of Adam Ingram, the sleepy scholar whom I had finally released from his labours over Aristotle to go and join the others on the Links. I had expected him to enter the library immediately after the latter of the others had left it, but it was almost five minutes later that I finally heard a step on the bottom of the stairs. I did not think it was him at first, so slow was the trudge that brought him to the library door. I turned to face it as it opened and could not stop the sound of shock that escaped my throat: he was hunched slightly, holding himself awkwardly to one side, and taking slow and painful steps. He was not looking at me, but down and away to the floor like a frightened dog, and the hand that held his cloak across him had two long and angry gashes across the top and knuckles. I recovered myself quickly and hurried over to take him to the nearest seat.

‘Adam, for the love of God …!’ And then I realised:

Matthew Jack. My voice fell flat. ‘Mr Jack did this to you.’

He swallowed with difficulty and nodded.

‘I cannot believe Dr Dun allowed it.’

‘He … he did not,’ said Adam, his voice hoarse, as if he did not trust himself. ‘He was not there for the start.’ I could believe it: the principal did not like to see the boys punished, and often found a reason to absent himself from their public whippings. He swallowed again. ‘I was the fourth. By that time Mr Williamson had gone to fetch Dr Dun; he put a stop to it as soon as he saw. Too late for me and the other three, but the rest were spared it, thank God.’

I put my hand over his but removed it instantly as he flinched under the pain of the open wounds. ‘Adam, I promise you this: if my word bears any weight with the principal, Matthew Jack will never again lift his hand to a boy in this college.’

He nodded again, looking at me at last, with bloodshot eyes rimmed with red. He took in the room, as if adjusting to where he was, and why we were here. ‘It seems different now,’ he said at last. ‘Everything looks the same, but it is different.’

He was right. There was the same curved wooden ceiling, the same fir beams supporting it above the rows of shelves and high glass-fronted presses that lined the walls. Windows, tall, narrow and arched as in a church, let in just what light they had always done at this time of the day, at this point in the year, but the absence of the constant presence of the
librarian, the knowledge of what had happened to him, rendered the place crypt-like.

I poured him a beaker of water and waited as, with trembling hand, he took some. ‘Now tell me about Saturday,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the time between your arrival and my own. Who else came to the library during that time? Did anything occur that struck you as strange? Did any change in manner overtake Mr Sim whilst you were here?’

He thought back. ‘I came in shortly after midday. I had taken my dinner in the hall with the others but wanted an hour or two of quiet study before going down to the Links. I met the porter and two of the college servants coming down the stairs; they had just delivered some books that had been waiting a few days down at the docks, while the town and the college wrangled over who should pay for their transport up to the library. The servants were grumbling greatly about the weight of one of the boxes. When I got up to the library Mr Sim was bent over a large wooden chest and was lifting a letter from it. And he was smiling, at the books themselves almost. He put the letter – or list, I think it was by the look of it – down on top of an open ledger on his desk, and fetched my book for me. I thanked him, and he bent again to the box, and started to lift the books from it, one at a time. I think he had soon forgotten I was there.’

I had seen Robert in this state many times myself, when he was at his most content. ‘And that was it? No one else came into the library between then and when I came up myself, at around one?’

He was, like me, looking at the names on the register. ‘No,’ he began, and then, ‘but wait, yes. Malcolm Urquhart. You would have passed him on the stairs.’

‘I did. And a foul enough mood he seemed to be in. But Mr Sim did not write his name in the register.’

‘He did not stay. He had not come in to consult a book – he did not even sit down. He only wanted to speak with Mr Sim.’

‘And did he?’

Adam nodded. ‘He kept his voice low – I don’t think he wanted me to hear, but I had a good idea what it was about, anyway.’ He looked a little uncomfortable.

‘Adam, sometime between when I last saw him alive and when I found him dead, Mr Sim was murdered down in that courtyard, a few yards away from where we now sit; he was left to crawl on the ground in his own blood. His killer then came up the steps and walked up and down this room, opened these presses, scanned these shelves. If anything you saw or heard in here might lead us to the identity of that person, you must tell me.’

The boy looked frightened, for which I was a little sorry, but I had the feeling that soft words might not unlock his tongue. ‘It was not Malcolm Urquhart, Mr Seaton, I am sure of that. He can have a fiery temper, but he would never have done such a thing. ‘

‘What did he want with Mr Sim?’

‘He wanted him to allow him off with the final library payment. He has not the money to pay it, nor any of the
other expenses of his graduation. Malcolm has only what his brother can afford to give him, which is very little – he is schoolmaster at Banchory – and some help from the laird of Crathes, who is his brother’s patron. It would have been enough to see him through his studies had Malcolm lived as other poor scholars must.’

‘But he has not, has he?’ I knew Malcolm Urquhart, with all his wit and dangerous charm, had run with the highborn. I had assumed that, just as I had been myself, he had been supported by the family of one of them.

‘He is heavily in debt. He will not graduate if he cannot pay his fees, or persuade the college to wait for them.’

‘Has he gone to the principal yet? Or his regent, even? Dr Dun and Mr Williamson are good men. Malcolm Urquhart would not be the first scholar to find himself unable to pay his fees.’

Adam shook his head. ‘He could not. He was cautioned twice last year, threatened with removal, after being found in a tavern in the Old Town, both times with a woman. He was not … wise … with what money he had, and now he will pay the price. He thought that Mr Sim might have been more lenient with him over the library dues than those who better know his past transgressions and the cause of his misfortunes.’

I remembered the ill-humour in the boy’s mumbled response to my greeting as he had gone past me. ‘I take it Mr Sim did not turn a kindly ear to his plea?’

‘I do not think so, for Malcolm seemed very angry; he –
he knocked something from Mr Sim’s hand before making off down the stairs.’

‘Then I hope he has cooled his heels by now, for I intend to talk to him next. Do you know where I might find him at the minute?’

The apprehension in Adam’s eyes turned to genuine surprise.

‘Do you not know, Mr Seaton?’

‘Know what?’

‘Malcolm Urquhart is missing; nobody has seen him since Saturday afternoon.’

EIGHT
The Round Tower

I was glad to get out of the college, away from its damp corners and crumbling walls into the bright sunshine of the June afternoon. The cawing of the gulls, white pennants gliding and curling against the endless blue of the sky, mocked the men moving silently beneath them along the gloomy passageways of our citadel of learning.

‘Will you be back today, Mr Seaton?’ called the porter, as I went past his lodge and out onto the Broadgate.

‘No, Stephen, I do not think so. Why?’

‘Because Dr Dun has told me I am to lock the gates when the bell at the Grayfriar’s Kirk tolls six tonight, and not to open them again before six tomorrow, should even the bishop himself come banging on the doors.’ Such hours were common in the winter, but in the summer months the gates were not usually locked until ten at night. The principal was clearly in fear that the murderer of Robert Sim had not yet finished his business with the Marischal College.

On another day I might have gone by the King’s Meadows and out past the Links to Old Aberdeen, but it was no
pleasant errand I was on, and I had not the leisure to enjoy the afternoon sun as its rays sparkled like crystal on the waves chasing each other to the shore. Instead, I would take the more direct route between the two burghs, out along the Gallowgate and past Mounthooly, to ascend the Spittal hill and come down the other side on to College Bounds and the Old Town.

It was not yet three when I crossed the Powis Brig on to the High Street of Old Aberdeen. It was quiet here, so much quieter than the New Town that I had come from. It was not a market day, so what trade there was took place in booths at the fronts of people’s houses, their gables jostling for space around the market cross. I turned off the High Street and through the archway into the King’s College. The gatekeeper hardly lifted an eyebrow to see me pass; he had held his post over twenty years, and remembered me still as a young scholar there myself, struggling to keep the misdemeanours of Archie Hay from the sight and ears of the college authorities.

‘A fine day, Mr Seaton.’

‘Aye, Geordie, a fine day.’

I crossed the quad and sat on a bench outside the door to the common school of the college, from where I could see all comings and goings in the students’ and masters’ lodgings. Many of the students had abandoned their chambers to study and dispute with one another on the grass, while others sat talking quietly on benches. It was with some reluctance that I passed through the doorway to the
round tower of Dunbar’s building and began to ascend the steps to John Innes’s chamber.

None amongst the students I passed questioned me; from my frequent visits here, my figure was almost as well known to the scholars of King’s as it was to those of Marischal. I came to the top floor, and knocked lightly on John’s door at the far end of it. There was no reply, and I tried once more, louder this time. I heard a shuffling noise on the flagstones, and the sound of an iron bolt being drawn back. The door opened as far as the chain linking it to the jamb would allow and a voice, John’s, but low and cracked, called, ‘Who is there?’

‘It is me, John – Alexander. Will you let me in?’

The chain was dropped, and the door drawn back further. I stepped carefully over the threshold and into a place more gloomy than the corridor I had just left. John’s chamber faced south, but today its one small window was shuttered fast against the bright mid-afternoon sun, and little light found its way into the room. The air inside was fusty and stale. It was a moment before I could see my friend: he was standing, hiding almost, behind the door. When he saw that it was indeed me, he pulled me further in and shut the door quickly behind me.

‘John,’ I said, ‘are you all right? What is the matter, man?’

‘Who saw you come here?’

‘Who? I don’t know … nobody. Everybody.’

He sat down on his narrow bed in the far corner of the
chamber and ran his hands through his thinning hair. ‘It cannot be long,’ he said. ‘It cannot be long.’

I drew up a stool in front of him and forced him to look at me. ‘What cannot be long? John, what is this about?’

He shook his head and continued to mutter.

‘John, tell me, what is it? Is it something to do with the rumpus down at the Links between the students on Saturday? Are you being blamed for it?’

‘The students? Hah!’ he laughed a moment, as if I were stupid, and continued to shake his head. Something in his look recalled me to the reason I had come here today in the first place. I let go the hands I had taken hold of, and sat back a little. ‘John, has this something to do with Robert Sim?’

The name seemed to pull him back, instantly, to where we were. He lifted his head and looked directly at me now, his pale blue eyes unflinching. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘I fear it has everything to do with Robert Sim.’

This at least cut through the awkward preliminaries. ‘Tell me what you know about Robert’s death.’

He looked away and drew a hand across his forehead. ‘I know nothing of Robert’s death, save what I have been told: that you found him in the library close on Saturday night, with his throat cut.’

‘It was less a cut than a stab in the neck,’ I said, ‘but … the effect was much the same, although Principal Dun thinks he perhaps lived longer after the attack than he might otherwise have done.’

John was hunched, and seemed to cower a little further in on himself. ‘How long …?’ he began. ‘How long do they think he might have lived?’

‘Twenty minutes, perhaps, little more.’

‘And no one heard him call out?’

‘No one. I doubt it would have made any difference had anyone done so in any case. So great was the loss of blood, Dr Dun thinks nothing could have been done for him.’

‘No,’ answered John, not seeming convinced. ‘Has his killer been found?’

I shook my head. ‘We are scrambling in the dark. Talking of which, can I open these shutters? I can hardly see you.’ It was then, when I pulled back the shutters and let the light flood in from the window, that I saw what a truly dreadful condition John Innes was in. His hair was dishevelled, and his normally clean-shaven chin covered with what looked like two days’ stubble. His eyes, pale and watery under their sandy lashes at the best of times, were pink, from sleeplessness or weeping. The air around us, such as it was, was foul.

‘When did you last leave this room?’ I asked eventually.

‘Last night, for the Sunday service. Andrew Carmichael took my classes for me today. He told the principal I was ill.’

‘And does he – Carmichael – know what it is that is the matter with you?’

‘I told him it was grief over Robert Sim, and God knows, he was a friend and I do grieve over him.’

‘But there is something else, is there not? Something you are afraid of?’

He stood up and went to the washbowl on the deal table beneath the window and splashed some water on to his face. ‘It is nothing I can tell you about, Alexander.’