Free 3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery by P. F. Chisholm Page A

enough.”
    Dodd met the piercing blue eyes and knew that both of them were thinking of Long George and his mysterious pistol.
    They rode back to the castle in silence. Carey went straight up to the Queen Mary Tower, still holding the caliver and also taking the one that hadn’t been fired. When Dodd came up to fetch him, ready for duty at the muster, he found the Deputy Warden still in his doublet and bent over his desk.
    “What are ye doing, sir?” asked Dodd cautiously, wondering if Carey had gone mad. The desk was covered over with bits of metal and various tools.
    Carey was muttering to himself. “Look at this,” he said eventually. “The barrel metal’s not thick enough and it’s not been hammered out straight. And the forge-welding of the underseam is appalling. Look, it’s got a hairline crack along its length, see, where the wood can hide it.”
    “Is that the one that was faulty, sir?”
    “No. This has never been fired.”
    Never mind Carey, Henry Dodd himself might have pulled its trigger and ended up worse off than Long George. He felt queasy again.
    “Ay.”
    Carey was peering squint-eyed at another piece of metal. “This is very cheap and nasty,” he said, prodding it with one of his little tools. “See how it scratches. I doubt it was case-hardened at all. I can’t believe they ever came from the Tower. Nor even Newcastle.”
    “Nor Dumfries, sir,” added Dodd, puzzling his poor aching head.
    “Eh?” said Carey.
    “Dumfries,” Dodd repeated for him. “Where the best guns in all Scotland are made, though ye’ll pay through the nose for them.”
    Carey was staring into the middle distance, at the painted hanging of a siege which warmed the stone wall of his chambers.
    “Interesting,” was all he said as he piled the bits into a cloth and wrapped it up, put it in a drawer of the desk.
    “Are ye coming to the muster at all, sir?” asked Dodd hintingly.
    “Hm? Oh yes. Barnabus !”
    Dodd went to wait at the foot of the tower while Carey speedily changed out of his black velvet and into his second best cramoisie suit, plus his newly cleaned jack and straightened morion helmet. He came down the stairs two at a time and Dodd fell in beside him as he strode across the yard to where their troop was lining up.
    “Do ye think they’re all alike, sir?” Dodd asked in a mutter.
    “Almost certainly. I didn’t even look at which calivers I was taking.”
    “The pistols too?”
    “I think so.”
    “But who could have done it?”
    “I’ve no idea. Never my brother, nor anyone at court. Maybe not Lowther either.”
    “Why not, sir, seeing how he’d laugh if ye was maimed?”
    “Because he was so quick to put his man in as acting armoury clerk. If it was him got at the guns, he would have made sure I appointed the clerk.”
    “Your man might have spotted the difference.”
    “I doubt it. I didn’t. On the outside they look fine.”
    “What shall we do?”
    “Nothing for the moment, since we’ll be late for church if we don’t move ourselves.”
    Most of the men were hungover but relatively clean, their horses groomed and their lances and helmets polished. Dodd still didn’t see what the connection was between good soldiering and the state of your jack, providing it kept off swords, but had to admit it pleased him to see that his troop easily outshone Lowther’s and Carleton’s men who were dingy by comparison. Carey had them line up, checked them over, told one that his tack was a disgrace and so were his boots, complimented their latest recruit on the fact that he already had a morion and a jack and led them down early to the cathedral for Sunday service.
    Sunday 9th July 1592, morning
    The young King of Scotland rode into the West March town of Dumfries by the Lochmaben Gate at about eight in the morning, to be met by the old Warden, the mayor, the corporation and both major local headmen, Lord Maxwell and young James Johnstone. There was tension in the air between the headmen