A Knife in Darkness

by Lexie Conyngham

  But if she thought about it, and did not just blindly accept what Patrick had said, had he indeed been out on the Sunday evening? Her stomach churned a little just thinking about the possibility, and she tried to concentrate on the arrangement of the paintings. After a moment in which neither she nor Basilia said a word, Hippolyta tapped her foot sharply on the floor and declared,

  ‘You know, I believe there are altogether too many paintings here, and several of them simply will not suit this room. Perhaps the hall would be better for – for this one, for example.’ She snatched up a dark oil painting depicting what her family had always thought to be an Italian prospect in a thunderstorm (and had, she suspected, never much liked), and went out into the hallway. The white walls were bare, and she spent some minutes holding the heavily framed painting up in one space or another, tilting her head and considering the light on it, all the while straining her ears to listen for any voices she might hear coming from the study. Why would they not speak louder? It was really most unfair. She crossed the hall and tried the painting against the walls on either side of the study door, then nearly dropped it as the door opened suddenly and Durris backed out right beside her. He was still speaking.

  ‘As I say, Dr. Napier, I’m giving you fair warning. If you can think of what you might have been doing, then – oh, Mrs. Napier, good day to you.’ He stopped backing, turned and bowed, his face bland.

  ‘Oh, Mr. Durris! I had no idea you were here. Will you stay for some tea?’ she asked, as innocently as she could manage on the spot. Durris gestured with his hat.

  ‘I thank you, no. I had to see Dr. Napier on business, but I must carry on. Good day to you,’ he said again, this time in farewell. She saw him to the door, then went back to the study. Aware of the fact that the parlour door was still ajar, and as alert as all eavesdroppers are to the possibility of being overheard, she closed the study door gently and went to Patrick at his desk, taking his hand. He looked deeply concerned, his pale brow wrinkled.

  ‘My dearest,’ she said softly, ‘is something the matter?’

  ‘The matter? No, not really,’ said Patrick unconvincingly. She cleared her throat a little.

  ‘Is it perchance that Mr. Durris thinks you might have been out in the village the night that – that everything happened at Dinnet House?’

  He started, and stared up at her.

  ‘How – why should you think that?’

  ‘He mentioned something yesterday – just in passing. It was only afterwards that I thought – what with the Colonel’s will, as well – that maybe he thought that you had – had something to do with the Colonel’s death.’

  Patrick was even more shocked.

  ‘I’m not at all sure that such thoughts are appropriate in a wife!’ he cried, and then after a moment a colder note entered his voice, one that she did not care for. ‘And do you think I had something to do with it?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you think such a thing? And you yourself said you were here, at home, on Sunday evening, and Miss Verney agreed with you. It never even occurred to me to think about it until now!’

  ‘I did say I was in on Sunday evening,’ said Patrick, flatly. ‘I told him that, for what with Miss Verney saying so I thought I must have been. But now I think I was mistaken. Don’t you remember? A messenger came from the inn, to call me to a patient, whom I then could not find? Remember?’

  ‘Was that Sunday?’

  ‘I believe it was: we were out on Saturday night at Colonel Verney’s, anyway, and of course by Monday night everything had – happened. When I think about it I feel sure that we had been to the service in the morning, and we were singing hymns, I think, when the messenger came. Something like that, anyway. But because I’ve told him one thing, and then another, I believe Durris is suspicious of me – and of course, there was no patient.’

  ‘But others in the inn will know you were there!’

  ‘Well, I hope so,’ said Patrick, although he did not look hopeful. ‘I cannot believe I muddled my nights like that. It was very foolish.’

  ‘It could happen to anyone,’ she said, soothing him like a nervous horse. ‘And I should have remembered, too: but then I’m always terribly muddled.’ She knelt down beside him, both his hands in hers, and bowed her head against him. He kissed her hair, and they sat in silence for a long moment, their breathing matched, drawing comfort from simple touch, until a little too soon he shifted away.

  Hippolyta barely noticed, though: her unruly mind was skipping on: who did he say he actually had seen at the inn? Would they remember? Should she go and see them? It would not please him to know that she was going to question strange travellers and inn servants, but then, he did not need to know. And it was for his own benefit, after all – and hers. She did not like the looks Durris had given her, all the more because she believed that Durris was a good man, possibly an intelligent man. He needed to know that Patrick was innocent of all harm, and if she had to prove that herself, she would.

  She returned to the parlour in a thoughtful mood. It would require some good excuse for her to leave the house this morning in this damp mist, and instead she took up her sewing and applied her mind to her problems. Durris seemed to think that Patrick might have had something to do with the Colonel’s murder. She did not believe that he had. Therefore, someone else had done the deed – or deeds – and then, another person had broken into Dinnet House afterwards, too. It was just possible, she thought now, that they had been the same person. What if the murderer had taken something, but afterwards found it was the wrong thing? She stabbed sharply at the cloth. No use pursuing that idea for the moment, when they had no idea even if anything was missing, or when it might have gone.

  Durris would have to have the minister, or Mr. Strong, or Dr. Durward, or Mr. Strachan, or all four, go through the mortification papers and see if there was anything amiss. But then, if there were something amiss, presumably one of them already knew about it: she had heard of no one else who had a concern in the trust, or a right to see the papers. The four trustees were the only men who would notice something wrong, and the only four presumably who would have had the chance to make something wrong. She stabbed again, and wondered if her father would like to pay his youngest and favourite daughter a visit and give her a little advice. But if Durris had any sense, he would find some other local lawyer to look through the trust papers and see if anything was wrong with them. In any case, he would probably not accept the word of the father-in-law of his chief suspect. How could she persuade Durris that Patrick could not be responsible for Colonel Verney’s death?

  The obvious way to do it would be to show Durris who had, in fact, carried out the killings. That would be tricky: it was not exactly a job for the respectable new wife of the local physician, particularly one who was not well acquainted with the town. But then, it seemed likely that the miscreant was someone known to Colonel Verney, as they had not been a common burglar, so there was a high chance that she had already met, or heard of, the murderer in the few days she had been here. Belatedly, a chill ran up her spine. In her anxiety over Patrick and for Basilia’s well-being, it had not occurred to her that the murderer was likely to be someone she knew.

  If there was indeed something wrong with the trust, then the four chief suspects, she thought, trying to be orderly, were the four existing trustees. It would be a matter of working out which of them might have done something wrong, and how they might have tried to hush it up. Mr. Strong the lawyer, Dr. Durward the physician, Mr. Strachan the merchant, and Mr. Douglas the minister: Mr. Douglas seemed wary and clumsy, Mr. Strachan bad-tempered and probably against Colonel Verney’s appointment as trustee, Dr. Durward seemed careless of anything serious, and Mr. Strong had been incisive and a little fierce. He clearly knew his way about Dinnet House and Colonel Verney’s study: he might well have been familiar with the Colonel’s night time routine. She suddenly spoke out loud, as if she had been carrying on an audible conversation.

&
nbsp; ‘Miss Verney, was Mr. Strong a frequent visitor at Dinnet House?’

  Basilia, not unreasonably, raised her fine eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘Mr. Strong? Ah, yes, I suppose so. My uncle’s man of business is in London, of course, but Mr. Strong advised him, I believe, when he wanted to have a more general conversation about business. Or for anything Scotch, for I gather that your Scotch law is different from English law.’

  ‘Yes …’ Hippolyta frowned, trying to remember what else she had planned to ask Basilia. ‘Oh, yes: another question. Was the Colonel ever posted to the West Indies?’

  ‘The West Indies? I don’t believe so. And I think he told me, or I heard him tell others, every detail of his military service from his first commission onwards, so I should be surprised to find that he had been there and I did not know. Why do you ask? And why did you ask about Mr. Strong? The Misses Strong used to call, too: my uncle found them very amusing, though he thought the elder might have marriage in mind!’

  ‘Oh, I thought it was the younger who was on the hunt for a husband!’ They laughed a little, pleased to have happened upon a lighter moment, and Basilia seemed to forget Hippolyta’s odd questions. Hippolyta rang for tea and then paced the room a little. Basilia eyed her.

  ‘You are not happy to be kept indoors like this by the weather, are you, Mrs. Napier?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Hippolyta agreed. ‘I have grown too used to all that lovely sunshine. But I must decide on these paintings, for Mrs. Riach said she could bring a man in tomorrow morning to hang them if I can decide where they are to go.’

  She had placed a few more of them before the tea arrived, and afterwards, with Basilia’s help, arranged the rest in a flurry of swaps and swoops. By the time their guests arrived tomorrow evening, the Napiers’ house would look much less like bachelor accommodation and much more like a home – complete with seven cats. But instead of calming her, all the activity had made Hippolyta even more impatient to be doing something useful. She snatched up her most water resistant bonnet and her darkest gloves, and made for the door.

  ‘Miss Verney, I shall not ask you to accompany me, for you are not yet well, I fear. But you must excuse me for at least half an hour, or I shall simply faint with impatience!’

  Basilia laughed at her.

  ‘I should be delighted to accompany you, if you have no objection! I feel I need some fresh air myself. This – ’ She made a gesture at the low ceiling of the parlour and then stopped suddenly, apparently catching herself in the act of making some negative remark about the house again. ‘This is very comfortable, but in the summer surely we should not be held prisoner in our houses!’

  Hippolyta bit her lip, glancing up at the ceiling when Miss Verney had passed her. There was nothing wrong with it, as far as she could see. It was just a ceiling, slightly low, yes, not as grand as those in Dinnet House, perhaps, but a perfectly serviceable ceiling. Her eyebrows twitched. She liked her new home. If Miss Verney wished for something better, she could go back to her own house.

  But in the moment it took Basilia to run upstairs for her own bonnet, Hippolyta’s mood had recovered, and they set out into the misty air arm in arm.

  ‘Where did you think to walk?’ Miss Verney asked.

  ‘Um, I had thought to go to Strachan’s shop, first of all,’ said Hippolyta, thinking on her feet, ‘and then I had an enquiry to make down at the inn.’

  ‘At the inn?’

  ‘Yes, so I am glad you have come with me, to add respectability to my venture!’ Hippolyta grinned, so that Miss Verney had to smile back, puzzled though she seemed to be. ‘But first, Strachan’s. It’s up past the church, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right: you’ll have passed it a few times, I should think.’

  They set off up the green, quiet today with most of the town’s visitors staying indoors, and the sounds of the people going about their business muted by the damp air. No one lingered to chat as they met, and men’s hats were pulled low and women’s shawls bound tight. Though no rain actually fell, the trees they passed were lined with silver droplets amongst the leaves, and the ground underfoot had lost its summer dustiness.

  Strachan’s merchant house was on the left not far up from the green, a low building with a coomb-ceiled upper floor, but much less restricted in width and depth. Strachan had evidently taken over the shops to left and right of his original site, and perhaps built back, too, for the shop within was dark and cavernous, smelling of spices and paper and cured meats and sharp cheeses, of soap and wool and polish. Not a speck of dust could be seen anywhere, though it must have taken a team of boys to dust the endless shelves and racks, and to sweep the smooth wooden floors to a sheen like the flank of a well-groomed thoroughbred. Hippolyta looked about with curiosity and some delight, an expression on her face which Mr. Strachan had no doubt interpreted as he hurried forward to greet his customers.

  ‘Mrs. Napier! Delighted to see you in my shop! And Miss Verney, too: I trust you are both quite well?’

  He was a different man from the sharp, angry character Hippolyta had met or seen before, and it was almost a moment before she could persuade herself that he did not have a twin brother he kept in the shop.

  ‘Thank you, yes, Mr. Strachan. And you and Mrs. Strachan?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed: we are to dine with you tomorrow night, I believe? Very much looking forward to it! Very much. Please, come and take a seat and make yourselves comfortable, ladies. Is there anything I can show you today? We have some very fine gros de Naples just in from the Glasgow warehouses, Mrs. Napier, in l’Eau de Tiber: if you’ll forgive me I am quite sure that the effect that shade would have with your appearance would no doubt be very pleasing for a husband! And Miss Verney: some Norwich crape? It is the very thing worn at Court when the late Duke of York was so sorely missed.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Hippolyta, used to this almost-impudence from certain Edinburgh shopkeepers but surprised to find it here, ‘I was hoping to see what hams you have.’

  ‘But of course! Immediately. Alexander!’ A senior shopboy was summoned, and directed very particularly by Mr. Strachan in the samples of ham he was to fetch. In a moment he was back with two plates, two forks and napkins, and offered the plates to Hippolyta and Basilia so that they might try the tiny cubes of pink arranged on them.

  ‘Oh, heavens, they are all quite delicious!’ said Hippolyta after a few minutes. ‘How am I to choose?’

  ‘Will it be contributing to tomorrow evening’s feast, Mrs. Napier?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Then may I be so bold as to suggest this one?’ Strachan gracefully indicated one that Hippolyta had indeed especially liked. ‘Dr. Napier has always enjoyed it at our own table, I believe.’

  ‘Then that is the very one,’ said Hippolyta. Now all she would have to do would be to persuade Mrs. Riach to serve it. It struck her that if it was delivered to the kitchens, Mrs. Riach was quite capable of ‘losing’ it before it ever reached the table. She added quickly, ‘I know it is a little unconventional, but I should like to take it with me now.’

  ‘But of course.’ Mr. Strachan did not bat an eyelid, but hurried the shopboy off to wrap the desired weight of ham. Hippolyta hoped she had estimated the weight correctly, but at least the merchants had not blinked at that, either.

  ‘You have a very fine business here, Mr. Strachan,’ she commented. ‘Has it been here for long? It has the air of an establishment of many years’ stability – though of course entirely up to date.’

  Mr. Strachan purred a little, she thought.

  ‘My father started the business, Mrs. Napier, but I was lucky enough to be able to expand it considerably. We take a pride in being able to supply anything our customers desire at very little notice: I have built up connexions very extensively, which of course is of benefit when we have so many visitors in the town, with tastes which perhaps are less familiar to us so far north.’

  ‘Of course: how very fortunate. Do you often receive unusual r
equests?’

  ‘Oh, I could not possibly say!’ Mr. Strachan replied with alarming archness.

  ‘Of course not: the soul of discretion. Oh: before I forget, my husband asked me to find out if you had by chance some good brandy in stock? He particularly wanted to have some before tomorrow night.’

  ‘Brandy?’ Mr. Strachan coughed suddenly. ‘Ah … I shall have to investigate the cellars. Brandy …’ he murmured, as though she had asked for something much more obscure. He frowned. ‘If it please you, Mrs. Napier, I shall send a boy round to tell you if we are able to provide it.’

  ‘Very good: but I should like to know today, in case my husband wishes to make other plans.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘Then that is all for now, I believe. Miss Verney?’

  ‘Yes, I am quite content,’ said Basilia, and they both rose to go.

  ‘Oh, Miss Verney,’ said Strachan suddenly, ‘perhaps we could have a little word some time about your lease? No hurry, no hurry at all: just when it might be convenient for you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Strachan.’

  They left the shop and turned back towards the green, Mr. Strachan seeing them off personally at the door, Hippolyta carrying a brown paper parcel full of admittedly delicious ham. A dog which had been sheltering in a doorway sniffed, and watched them wistfully.

  ‘Is Mr. Strachan your landlord?’ Hippolyta asked, trying not to sound too surprised.

  ‘Yes, yes, he owns Dinnet House.’

  ‘A grand sort of house, for a merchant, if he has his new house, too.’

  ‘Yes, but then, Dinnet House was never his own, if you see what I mean,’ said Basilia. ‘It came to him through Mrs. Strachan, I believe.’

  ‘Through Mrs. Strachan?’