Crucible by S. G. MacLean

boots looked wrong in the well-ordered room. I lifted the left one to straighten it, and was surprised by the weight of it. I balanced it against the right and found that it was indeed heavier. I slid my hand down inside the leg of the boot and my hand closed around something hard and smooth which turned out, when I extracted it, to be a small replica of the walnut box whose contents I had already examined. This one, evidently missed by the baillie’s men, was locked. Nowhere in the room, or about the pockets of Robert Sim’s clothing, could I find a key. And then I remembered: I searched in the pocket of my breeches and drew out the library keys found near to Robert Sim’s body. Nestling amongst the larger college instruments was one very small key of finely worked brass. I slipped it in to the lock and it turned without complaint. I had not stopped to think what I might find in that box, but when I opened the lid, I felt only a surge of disappointment, for all that was there was a scrap of paper, folded. When I opened it I saw that there were only two words on it, written in Robert Sim’s own, precise hand. The words were known to me from somewhere, the knowledge of them tantalisingly close and yet I could not place them: Jachin and Boaz. I folded the slip of paper and put it in my own pocket. Then locking the box, I slipped it back into the boot and under the bed once more, not forgetting, as Robert’s landlady hadinstructed me, to lock the door of the dead man’s chamber as I left it.
    ‘All will be as it should be, Mr Seaton?’ was all she said to me as I passed back out into her yard.
    ‘Yes, Mistress,’ I said. ‘All is at it should be.’ I held up the bible to show her. ‘I am returning this book to the library – it is college property.’
    I was about to turn up the close leading from her small courtyard to the street when the silhouette of a man appeared at the end of it. I squinted against the sunlight to make him out. As he emerged in to the light I saw that it was Richard Middleton, a physician not many years older than myself who had settled in the burgh while I had still been in Banff. He stopped short a moment when he saw me.
    ‘Mr Seaton, I … it is … I had not thought to find you here.’ His accent still held traces of his Lanarkshire childhood, and had not been hardened by our harsher northern tongue.
    Nor I you, were the words that came to my mind, but I managed to stop myself from uttering them. Richard Middleton, tall, fair, graceful and elegantly dressed, was known to be a favourite amongst the rising families of Aberdeen; I doubted that he had many patients down here amongst the widows and lower craftsmen. ‘I am here on college business. You will have heard what happened to Robert Sim?’
    He nodded. ‘At the sermon, yesterday – the people couldtalk of little else. What a horror to happen, within the college walls.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was.’
    We appeared to have reached the limit of our conversation, and Middleton did not look anxious to prolong it.
    ‘Well,’ I said, putting on my hat, ‘I will leave you to your business. Good day, Mistress. Doctor.’
    ‘Good day, Mr Seaton,’ said the widow, never for a moment taking her eyes from the physician.

SEVEN
The Register
    I was shown in to the principal’s private chamber a little before mid-day. He looked weary, and I guessed he had not slept well.
    ‘The sight of Robert Sim as we found him is before my eyes every time I close them. It would have been a thing bad enough, had it happened in a back street of the town, some silent and dark alleyway where men forbear to wander after dark, but somebody came deliberately within our college walls to murder him. It is an evil I do not understand.’ He looked at me and his eyes were red-rimmed. ‘But we must seek to understand it, Alexander. What have you found?’
    And so I told him of my visit to Robert’s lodgings, and what I had learned from his landlady. He looked