Hue and Cry (36 page)

Tibbie sighed. ‘She makes a show of winding wools, she says for when my uncle comes. But the shop is closed. Boys throw stones at the windows. Yesterday, a man came offering to buy the looms. My mother turned him out of doors. This morning, the coroner came.’

‘I read the libel in the marketplace,’ he told her gently. ‘That is why I’m here.’

She nodded. ‘It has happened, then.’

‘The trial will not take place until the spring, at the next circuit court. But I must talk with her.’

‘You can go down the backstair. Tom has gone. I don’t know where.’

‘Thank you. Are you hungry? Would you like to buy some bread?’ Hew felt for his purse.

Tibbie hesitated, shaking her head. ‘Is it not we who are meant to pay you? No thank you, sir. I do not care to go to market, with my mother’s scandal blazoned on the cross. It is not only those that read, that can throw stones.’

He was touched by her dignity. But there was something else he had to ask of her. ‘Tibbie, when your cousin died, what happened to his clothes?’

‘I expect my mother gave them to the poor. It’s what she did with our old things.’ She smiled a little at the irony. ‘Now we are poor ourselves. I remember there were some things that my uncle wanted kept. He could not bear to part with them.’

‘There was a green cloak. It was lying on the floor by Alexander’s bed,’ he prompted her.

‘Aye, that’s right. I think that that was one of them. He said that he would have it for himself. I never saw him wear it, though. Perhaps he changed his mind. Sir, when you have finished with my mother call up and I’ll open the door. We have to keep it locked now. Times have changed.’ She turned her back to him and knelt before the fire.

He found her mother in the shadow of a single candle, in the bare hull of the back of the shop. It was where they found the boy. Yet there was nothing to remark it, no pervasive sense of violence. As if she read his mind, she said, ‘It is an ordinary place.’

Unconsciously, she smoothed her belly with her hand. He saw the swell.

‘I did not think it would come to this,’ she faltered, ‘for I did not mean to kill him.’

‘It has come to it,’ he told her. ‘We must work on our defence. You wanted to provoke your husband’s lusts.’

‘He would not lie with me.’

‘And yet you were with child.’

‘For I was raped,’ she answered simply.

‘Tell me about the rape.’

‘It happened here.’

Perhaps he had looked sceptical. She read his mind again, for she went on. ‘You wonder how it is that I can sit here, winding wool? People imagine that ghosts inhabit places, engraved in walls or blood-drenched beds. Ghosts do not haunt places. They haunt souls.’

‘Whose ghost? Alexander’s?’

‘
Alexander
? Ah, poor boy. I almost had forgotten him. And the day we found him – aye though, you remember – I forgot the rape. It hardly mattered then.’

Hew was startled. ‘That day? You were raped the day that Alexander died?’

‘Aye.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘Did I not say so?’

‘I must ask you what happened.’

Agnes sighed. ‘The men had gone to market. It was after kirk.’

‘What time did they leave?’

‘Before the bells, at daybreak. I remember Archie grumbling, and I waited in the house. Tom was loading up the cart. Afterwards, he locked the doors and brought the keys to me. We keep them on a chain behind the curtain in the hall. And at the second bell I went to kirk.’

‘You did not see your nephew?’ Hew demanded.

‘No. How should I, though?’ Agnes seemed surprised. ‘I thought that he had gone to Crail with Archie. When they left, the house was still. I did not know he was the cause of all the fuss. Well then, I went to the kirk, and after the psalms and the sermon I came back here to the house and sat before the fire. I may have dozed a little, for the day was warm. I was awoken, I know not when, perhaps at twelve, by a knocking on the door. It was George Dyer. He had come, he said, upon the order of the session, to inspect the shop and see no work was done there on the Sabbath day. I protested my man had gone to Crail, which has statutes still
for Sunday markets, which he knew, detesting it. But he insisted he was required to go to all the booths and workshops in the town and make report. There could be no exceptions. He was an elder in the kirk, and most assiduous. And so to appease him I took the key from the chain and unlocked the shop.’

‘Did you come here, through the house?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I took him into the front of the shop, where the shutters were drawn and the counters closed up, lighting the lamps to let him see that no one was there.’

‘You are certain that no one was there?’

She looked at him curiously. ‘For certain. The place was in darkness. Then he examined the back of the shop, where the looms were kept, idle on that day as they are now, and then he came here and looked at the spinning wheels, fingering the threads. And of course he found no sign of industry . . .’

‘And then?’ Hew pressed.

‘Then he turned his back to go. And then . . . and then he turned again. He called my name, he called me names. He said . . . most filthie things. He pushed me to the floor and raped me.’ She fell silent, staring at the ground.

But Hew persisted urgently, ‘What happened next?’

The words came very softly. ‘The rage had left him. He was gentle, coaxing. To hear him, you would not have thought … He was standing in his shirt, his britches on the floor. And I ran into the house, by the backstair, locking the door behind me. I took off my clothes and scrubbed my skin raw, and where his vile hands had defiled me were blue spots of dye. He had stained me. Yet the next day, when our boy was dead, he came with his condolences, lifting off his cap, as if the rape had never happened. And when we found the boy, I thought it had not happened, that I had imagined it. In that deeper horror, it seemed like a dream.’

‘You accuse a dead man,’ Hew observed, ‘who may not speak his answer. Some will say that is convenient; others, that it is no mere coincidence.’

‘I know it,’ Agnes answered. ‘Yet I speak the truth.’

He nodded. ‘Well, what happened then? When your husband came from market?’

‘Archie had done well that day. But he had had a drink or two. He called for Alexander, spoiling for a fight. When we found him missing we sent for Master Colp. You know that, you were there. And the cloth was gone. We were looking in the shop. The master found the body in the closet bed. The horror is, the poor boy must have lain there all the while. And while . . .’

She paused a moment; closed her eyes. Hew prodded gently, ‘While the dyer raped you? Aye, perhaps. Go on.’

‘We were looking for the cloth,’ she whispered, ‘and Master Colp had opened out the bed, and there the cloth came falling, and he opened up the cloth, and in it was the boy.’

‘Agnes, do you recall Doctor Locke, who is to give evidence for you at your trial?’

‘I remember,’ she acknowledged, ‘though I do not understand him.’

‘He is a learned man. He swears that since the corpse was limp when we discovered it, Alexander must have died that afternoon. He was not long dead. Therefore he could not have lain within the closet all the night.’

‘But then … but he was not at home.’ She looked perplexed. ‘Where was he, then?’

‘Perhaps he was alive, and hiding in the room.’

‘He would not hide there,’ she objected. ‘He was feart of closed-up spaces. It was what tormented Gilbert, when they nailed him in the kist. Archie used to threaten him; he’d shut him in the press.’

‘He was quite a man, your husband,’ Hew said dryly. ‘May I look about the shop?’

‘Aye, if you will.’

The place, once so neat, had begun to accumulate dust. Hew looked beneath the counter where the floor was bare.

‘Once there were blankets,’ commented Agnes. ‘No one sleeps there now.’

He felt into the corner.

‘What is it? Have you found something?’

‘It’s nothing. Only dust.’ And he withdrew his fingers, scraps of fabric, threads and fluff, and a scattering of sand.

‘Do I have a defence?’ she asked him at the door.

‘I know not. You have lied to me.’

‘Lied? I have not lied!’ she objected. ‘Everything that I have told to you has been the truth.’

‘I almost could believe it. Yet you lied about the father of your child.’

‘I was raped. I swear it.’

‘I believe that you were raped. The conundrum, though, is this: it is not three months since the day that Alexander died, since you say you were raped, and yet your child has quickened in the womb. I saw the midwife with you in the kirk. She said that you were four or five months gone. Therefore you have lied to me.’

‘The midwife was mistaken,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I carry low and large. Tibbie was a big child for her time.’

‘I do not think so,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me, Agnes, who is the father of your child? Is it Gilbert Strachan?’

‘My brother?’ Agnes started ‘Why would you think that?’

‘He is not your brother, but your husband’s. And I heard you in your sleep. You spoke his name.’

‘In my sleep?’ she challenged. ‘When my wits were gone? You know that I meant nothing.’

‘I did not mistake the meaning. You have pinned your hopes on him. And yet his brother’s death was at your hands. How can you be sure of him?’

‘What you suggest,’ she protested, ‘though he is not my brother, the law would count as incest. If it were proved, we should hang.’

‘I am aware of it. You do know he has abandoned you?’

‘He would not.’ She stared at him.

‘Madam,’ he said gently, ‘have you heard from him?’

‘I think my letters have not reached him. When they do, he will return.’

‘He received your letters. Did you know that he has sold his share in the
Angel
to my cousin Robin Flett?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because he does not mean to return. He told my cousin there was nothing for him here.’

‘You lie,’ she said uncertainly.

‘Do I? Well, perhaps you know. Perhaps you’ve heard from him.’

Her eyes were bright with tears. ‘I did not lie,’ she said, ‘about the dyer. Only I did not tell all the truth. He said he had observed me with my husband’s brother, and he knew I was adulterous, a whore. And he would denounce me to the kirk unless I lay with him.’

‘He blackmailed you?’

‘I know not how he had discovered it. We were so careful.’

‘Aye, perhaps you were. Yet somehow he had guessed it and your face confirmed the guess. Forgive me, you do not dissemble well. How long have you had converse with your husband’s brother?’

‘You do not understand,’ protested Agnes weakly. ‘Gilbert was not like his brother. He’s a gentle, loving man. And when his wife died young … Archie was coarse, and has always been cold to me. It was Gilbert I loved.’

‘It was for your sake that he brought Alexander here?’

‘It was.’

‘And for your sake that he sold his brother’s wool.’

‘Aye. But understand, though Archie was unkind, we did not wish him dead.’

‘You might have wished the dyer dead, I think.’

She flushed a little. ‘Well, we might have done. And when the tutor killed him, it seemed providential.’

‘I’m sure it did. But then you knew the tutor had not killed him.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do,’ he chided quietly. ‘You swore a statement to the Crown that Nicholas Colp had murdered George Dyer. You condemned a man to die for it, knowing he did not commit the crime.’

‘I thought it made no difference,’ Agnes whimpered. ‘He killed Alexander. He had murdered Gilbert’s son.’

‘Suppose that I could prove to you that he did not kill the boy. Would you still condemn him?’

‘But I saw him take the letters. And I saw him find the corpse. You saw it too.’

‘And you believed you owed this debt to Gilbert, to relieve him of the burden of his crime. I ask again, if I can show he did not kill your nephew, will you still let him die?’

‘Can you prove it?’ challenged Agnes.

‘I wish I could,’ he sighed. ‘The truth is that the law forbids my answer. I may not, in defence of him, accuse another man.’

‘Then you may not say,’ she answered cunningly, ‘that Gilbert killed the dyer.’

‘Yet we both know that he did.’

She whispered, ‘It was an accident. You must not think that Gilbert meant to kill him. He is not a violent man. He was provoked.’

‘You told him that the dyer raped you?’

‘I did not, at first. He was distraught at Alexander’s death. The dyer scarcely seemed to matter then. But when he turned up at the lykewake, he insinuated he would make report of our affair. He’d tell Archie everything. Gilbert would be ruined.’

‘So Gilbert went to see him.’

‘Aye, but not to kill him!’ she protested. ‘We had hoped to buy him off.’

‘Men like that are not bought off,’ he told her sharply. ‘Doubtless, Gilbert knew.’

‘He did not mean to kill him. He charged him with the rape. The dyer mocked him. He vilified his son. Gilbert lost his wits, and pushed him in his rage. He fell into the dye, and Gilbert could not save him, though he tried.’

‘Was that how he told it?’ Hew snorted.

‘That is how it
was
,’ she answered stubbornly. ‘He fell into his pot. It was an accident.’

‘Then Gilbert must have walked home dripping dye.’

‘He was spotted, aye, though less than you’d suppose. There was a blot upon his cheek, blue like a bruise. We scrubbed it till it bled. He was wearing gloves, and his long green cloak that covered all his clothes was violet-stained. He wrapped it round a stone and dropped it in the Kinness Burn.’

‘Convenient, then.’

‘I do not understand you,’ she insisted. ‘He was vexed about the cloak, for it was Alexander’s.’

He nodded. ‘Then the cloak would not be missed. Katrin saw him, did she not?’

‘Poor lass, aye. She was wearing one of Tibbie’s cast-off plaids, and Gilbert called to her. He recognised the cloth. At first he took her for his niece, and after, felt afeared that she might know him. She came here to the house in search of Tom.’