A Pig of Cold Poison by Pat McIntosh Page B

Renfrew myself, I suppose, and the men of the household. I can hardly disturb the women just now. I called on Maister Hamilton and Maister Wilkie before I spoke to Kate, but neither of them had much more to offer, and of course their wives were from home.’
    ‘Morple,’ ordered John, extending a hand, fingers wriggling. Gil handed him another slice of the apple, and Socrates’ nose quivered in indignation.
    ‘He must say If you please ,’ Alys prompted.
    ‘Pease,’ said John obligingly, and beamed, displaying some well-chewed fragments. He was a handsome child, with a strong look of his father the harper, and seemed to be intelligent as well as musical. Gil, who was his legal guardian, was beginning to think in terms of the universities of Europe, and set aside each quarter as much as he could of the income the boy had from his dead mother’s property towards that end.
    ‘Ed ockies,’ announced John, holding up one foot so that his red stocking showed.
    ‘Red stockings,’ Gil agreed. ‘Mammy Alys knitted them.’
    He caught sight of Alys’s expression as she watched the child, but before he could say anything Catherine announced, ‘Then we must all go about our various tasks. You may tell Mistress Mathieson I have prayed for her, and also for her infant, ma mie .’
     
    ‘Well, if it’s one o mine,’ said Maister Renfrew sharply, ‘he must ha stole it. I’ve no wish to go through my books to prove it, for such a one as him, and I see no point in adding the charge of theft to a charge of murder forbye, but that’s the beginning and end of it, Maister Cunningham.’
    ‘Do you think?’ said Gil mildly.
    ‘Aye. Or else the sister’s lying.’
    ‘My wife said she saw the six still in their straw,’ said Gil, ‘and the docket itemizing six flasks of Araby ware in your own writing, lying beside them. That seems clear enough to me.’
    ‘Aye.’ Renfrew tapped irritably on his tall desk. In his workaday clothes of brown wool he was a less flamboyant sight than yesterday, but the two grouse feathers pinned in his felt hat by a brooch with a huge chunk of amber suited well with his bearing. Elbows out, shoulders squared, neck stretched, he had met Gil’s question about the painted flasks with lively indignation. ‘So he must ha stole it, whether from my shop or from one of my customers.’
    ‘The curious thing is, he says it’s one of his,’ said Gil.
    ‘The man’s a pysoner. Small wonder if he’s a leear as well.’
    ‘You’ve made good use of the shipment, I think. They’re bonnie things. I saw you had one about you, yourself.’
    ‘Aye,’ said Renfrew. ‘There’s two sizes, see, though I kept all the bigger ones for my own business, and the wee one holds a good quantity for the kind of draught that’s taen in a minimissimal dose. I’ve gave out a few in the last year.’
    ‘Have you any thoughts about what the poison itself might be?’
    Renfrew blinked slightly at the change of subject, and his high colour lessened as he applied his mind to this question. He stared distantly at the shelves of his workroom for a space, while Gil looked round him. This business, as the other apothecaries had made clear, was aimed at the higher end of the market, with an emphasis on such luxury goods as cosmetics and perfumes, dyestuffs and sealing-wax and the more expensive foodstuffs. The outer room, which was the shop, was lined with sacks of raisins and rice, almonds and figs, pigs of honey and treacle, glass jars of lavender water. The workroom was laid out differently from Wat Forrest’s, but held a similar assortment of alarming equipment. Some of the jars on the crowded shelves were marked with a black cross, some had parchment or paper covers with writing on them. The nearest mortar held a quantity of large pale seeds which Renfrew had been pounding at when Gil came in; the box beside it was labelled with a flourish Nux pines . Do pines have nuts on them? he wondered. Not in Scotland, for