Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [254]
‘Once,’ said Thompson calmly. ‘In the better part of a year. I have a wee rule. I’ll do no business with a sober man. I’ll tell ye this more. I’ll no do business with Francis Crawford again, drunk or sober. I had a stound in my brain-pan the next morning and a second-hand feel to my own affairs that I didna relish. I talked. I dinna doubt it.’
‘Some of it to purpose,’ said Lymond, smiling a little, and came back and sat down, as Janet said flatly, ‘If we’re to be as fussy as yon, I might mention that according to Wat ye fair reeked with whisky that night ye know of. Not that I blame you.’
The night that Lymond, their brilliant archer, had given his bow at Liddel Keep to Will Scott, Adam thought, because his hands were not to be trusted. The night Will Scott died, and Lymond had brought through a flagon of neat aqua-vitæ, full.
‘If I can speak?’ said Archie Abernethy woodenly from the door.
‘No. You are partisan,’ said Lymond quietly.
‘But,’ the brown, scarred little man persisted. ‘Mr Hoddim there will recollect. We tried to rouse you, when the laddie was dying. The spirits got all over the place. That was Sir Graham.’
‘Someone,’ said Lymond slowly, ‘left the flask beside me?’
‘That was Sir Graham,’ Fergie Hoddim, his face absorbed, confirmed. ‘But a reasonable thing to do, under the circumstances.’
‘Under the circumstances,’ said Lymond, ‘an act of God-damned calculated bloody-mindedness that.…’ He halted.
‘That completed the alienation of Buccleuch, you would say,’ said Alec Guthrie blandly. ‘But Graham Malett, surely, has never knowingly caused you pain. His affection for you has never been hidden. He stood up for you in all his talks with me; he’s sometimes been the only one who did. The only grief of his life, we all know, is that he canna bring you to the light as well. You’ve proved maybe that he’s ower skilly with other folk, and maybe ambitious, and maybe with a quirk or two in him he tried to conceal. But you’ve proved little more.’
‘I haven’t started yet,’ said Lymond, and the soft intensity of it silenced them all. ‘Bear with me.… Only bear with me.’
The sun moved. Inside the great hall, the coloured light moved over the ten intent faces and the centre of their attention as he talked, watching them all: referring occasionally to one or other of them; making each point with cold clarity.
‘Let us consider the siege engine,’ he began. ‘The siege engine, built lovingly by Plummer and Bell, which had run out of control and capsized, killing a boy and trapping Effie Harperfield and her four children. The siege engine which had required Gabriel’s special skills to raise and free them. Thomas Wishart had discovered the accident, and had helped to free the unfortunate family.… Tosh?’ directed Lymond.
Buccleuch’s bodyguard, nimble, grinning, got up from his hunkers beside Abernethy. He’d examined the engine. The brake had been off. He’d also looked for the wheel-marks. It had been left standing at a level point near the top of the small incline. From that position, the ridged earth indicated, it had been levered to the top of the hill and allowed to run. ‘Yon was no accident,’ said Tosh with positive enjoyment. ‘Yon was engineered, and be damned to Effie Harperfield and her weans.’
‘It may have been, but Sir Graham had no chance to do it alone,’ said Fergie Hoddim sharply. ‘Someone was with him all that day.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lymond. ‘However, let us turn now to the curious matter of Philippa Somerville. Philippa discovered, never mind how, that George Paris is a double agent, working for England as well as ourselves. I hope you’ve severed your connexion with him, Thompson my friend, for his time is running out very fast now. She knew also that Graham Malett was aware that Paris was an English agent. She did not know, as I did, on Tosh’s advice, that Malett had seen Paris several times in France and knew that he was supposed to be working for Scotland and Ireland as well. For some reason he does not wish it known, it seems, that he possesses this knowledge. For one thing the