She looked down at her lap, biting her lip. Hippolyta found herself biting her own, too.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘for this is all so strange to me. You were not married at the time?’
‘No, we were not: and there were rumours that my father had objected to Allan’s suit, which would give him a reason to murder him. But that was not the case: Allan had not declared himself,’ she gave a little shudder, as if it hurt her to be so open. ‘But his intentions, his wishes, were, ah, fairly clear, and my father would certainly have received him very happily as a son-in-law. He had said so to me in private. And I am glad he had, for it felt as if we had his blessing when we did marry, a year later.’
Hippolyta considered a moment, trying to phrase her next question in a way that did not imply her own suspicions.
‘No doubt,’ she began carefully, ‘Mr. Strachan had some good reason to show for his not having been near Dinnet House on the night of the murders? For if the sheriff was suspicious, even when Mr. Strachan was innocent, he would need a good defence.’
She swallowed, not sure if she had gauged it correctly. Mrs. Strachan paused, and Mrs. Kynoch shot Hippolyta a sharp glance which Hippolyta could not quite read, out of the corner of her eye.
‘Allan and his friend Dr. Durward had been drinking in his father’s cellars. It was not a good reason not to be near Dinnet House, but it was a fortunate one. They were found unconscious in the cellar the next morning together, much the worse for drink, when everyone was looking for Allan, thinking he had murdered my father and absconded in shame.’
‘They were young men,’ Mrs. Kynoch broke in gently. ‘Every young man has his daft moments: this one was just very well timed.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs. Strachan. She lifted her teacup with a rattle, and took a long reviving sip. Hippolyta reached out a hand to take and refill it.
‘But they never found the person who really carried out the crimes?’ she asked again, trying to grasp the parallels in her head. Mrs. Strachan shook her head.
‘Never. I moved into the manse with dear Mrs. Kynoch to take care of me, and in a year I married Allan, and we put the house up for rent. Uneventfully, as it happens, until the recent terrible events.’ She looked round at Basilia, who was white as a sheet, eyes startling red.
‘I don’t understand!’ whispered Basilia. ‘What has happened here? Was my uncle killed for something he did, or just because he was in the wrong place? And what does it have to do with something that happened twenty years ago?’
‘We’ve all been wondering that,’ said Miss Ada, with only the least hint of macabre glee. ‘Would it be the same mannie striking again?’
‘Ada!’ snapped her sister.
The gentlemen joined them soon afterwards, and Hippolyta was alert enough to note an expression of intense relief on her husband’s face. Clearly the gentlemen had been continuing their heated discussions on the Burns Mortification, and while Dr. Durward was as serene and entertaining as usual, the minister had a look of baffled discomfort and headed straight to sit by his wife, taking his hand in hers as much for his own consolation as hers. Strachan scowled furiously in a general manner around the room, and Hippolyta could well see how any self-respecting sheriff would like to investigate him for any murder in the vicinity. He must have been an uncomfortable person to live with, she thought, comparing him unfavourably with her lovely, peaceable Patrick: in society Strachan seemed generally to look as if throat-cutting would be the only thing that could relieve his feelings.
‘Shall we have some music?’ Patrick asked. ‘Who would like to play?’
‘There is no room to dance, though!’ Hippolyta spread her hands to indicate the size of the room. ‘But Miss Strong, I should be delighted if you would oblige us.’
Miss Strong was perfectly willing to oblige: the days must be gone, Hippolyta thought, when her skills might be helpful in attracting her a husband, and so presumably she played only for the love of it. She played a few Scottish and Irish airs with skill but without pretensions, and in one Mrs. Kynoch and Miss Ada sang with her, Miss Ada taking the alto and Mrs. Kynoch squeaking the soprano line with surprising accuracy but limited artistic effect. Nevertheless, the audience clapped appreciatively.
‘Now, Miss Verney,’ said Hippolyta generously. Basilia did not hesitate, but seized her violin and caught Patrick’s eye.
‘Dr. Napier?’
‘Of course,’ he said, snatching up his flute. Mrs. Kynoch took the piano part, to Hippolyta’s surprise, and the effect was really very pretty, if relentlessly old-fashioned. Basilia kept her gaze firmly on Patrick, presumably for the rhythm, though how anyone could catch the right rhythm from a flautist had always been a mystery to Hippolyta. She watched as Patrick put the flute to his lips, considered, dropped it again, blew silently into it, shook it and rubbed it between his hands, and all the while Basilia watched him closely, eyes fixed on his face and hands, and for a miracle they came in united on their notes as if they had been playing together all their lives. When they finished, and Patrick bowed to the two ladies, Basilia curtseyed prettily and beamed all over her flushed face, eyes sparkling, and it was as much as Hippolyta could do to applaud and praise with the rest, and with a good grace. How long would it be until Miss Verney found herself somewhere to go? Hippolyta decided that she might try to assist her, and soon.
The guests did not stay very late, as it was a Saturday night: Mrs. Strachan in any case looked exhausted, though somehow easier in herself than Hippolyta had previously seen her. There were no carriages: the manse was next door, Mrs. Kynoch five minutes’ walk away up the hill, the Strachans further up again, the Strongs across the green and Dr. Durward down by the river, so that they would all be in their own houses in less than a quarter of an hour. Hippolyta, used to a queue of chairs and carriages taking guests across Edinburgh, thought it very relaxed and pleasant, and hardly like the end of a dinner party at all.
Back in the parlour, they talked over the evening in a desultory way: Hippolyta described the incident with the dead blackbird and the painting, and Patrick told them how the debate on the management of the Burns Mortification had taken over the gentlemen’s conversation again, but only in a circular, irritable, useless fashion that had succeeded in annoying everyone except the minister, who was simply baffled by the whole thing. Franklin the kitten wandered in, looking superior, with a couple of his siblings, and gradually the atmosphere in the house seemed to lose the tension of hospitality and revelations and quarrels, and Hippolyta rang for tea. It was only after it had arrived and Patrick had settled at the table, a cat on his lap, and Basilia had pulled out her sewing and curled into the arm of the daybed, and Hippolyta had pulled out her sketchpad and begun a drawing of the window with its pattern of leaves outside in the evening light, that she had found herself able to tell Patrick what they had discovered about the murders of twenty years ago – and even then she made sure to glance over at Basilia now and again, to see that she confirmed the story and was not made more anxious by it than she had been already.
‘But what an outlandish thing to have happened!’ said Patrick, when they had done their best to explain it. ‘To have an unsolved pair of murders happen once, in such a fashion, is strange enough: but to find then that the very same thing had happened twenty years before, in the same house, in the same way, and also to a manservant and his master, is more than extraordinary!’
‘You never found its match in any of your medical jurisprudence lectures?’ Hippolyta asked hopefully.
‘Good heavens, no, never. It was not the kind of thing we looked at, in any case. Twenty years ago … Well, I was a child, and you two were barely thought of! No wonder we did not know of it. I had heard stories that a murder had been committed at Dinnet House, of course: your uncle frequently mentioned it, but I never realised that the murder had been within living memory.’
‘I’m not even sure my uncle did: I don’t know that I should have cared to live in the house if I had kn
own.’ Basilia shivered.
‘But for it to be so similar …’ Hippolyta still found it inexplicable. ‘Do you think it means that the same murderer who carried out the first attacks also killed Colonel Verney and Forman? Or is it someone who was well aware of the story, and copied the method?’
Patrick shrugged.
‘Impossible to tell, until we find the person who did it.’
‘But what could possibly be the reason?’
They all stared at each other, but no suggestions were forthcoming. Hippolyta could only think to herself that if the murderer turned out to be the same person that had committed the crimes long ago, Durris could not possibly suspect Patrick. That was one crumb of comfort.
She lay awake thinking about the matter long into the night, alone, for Patrick had announced that he needed to finish some work in the study. If the murderer were indeed the same person, now and in 1809, did that rule anyone out besides the three of them? Strachan, Dr. Durward, Mr. Strong – they had all been here then, but not Mr. Douglas, the minister. Strachan and Dr. Durward were tall enough, but Mr. Strong would have had to stand on that kitchen chair, the action she found so improbable. She found it even more unlikely it was the serious, severe Mr. Strong that she tried to picture, suddenly leaping up on a chair and asking Forman on some odd pretext to stand with his back to him: could he have pretended fear of a mouse? The thought made her smile, but at the same time it seemed more unlikely than ever. Strachan had, of course, proof that he was somewhere else during the first murders – and so, then, did Dr. Durward, who had produced proof for the second murders, too. The thought struck her that Mrs. Strachan, with her willowy elegance, was also tall enough to have attacked Forman without the aid of the chair, but the mere idea was abhorrent – but she had been in the house when the first murders had been committed, and who knew what quarrel she might have had with her father? She shook her head briskly. The idea was ridiculous. Mrs. Strachan was not a killer, and Mrs. Kynoch and the Misses Strong – either of them, she thought, could slip strong poison into a cup of tea if they felt the situation required it – were all too small and again, the chair would have to come into play. She tutted to herself.
Who else could have been here twenty years ago, of the people she knew? Of the people she had been thinking about? If anyone had been acting suspiciously in the village, Mr. Brookes came top of the list, but he was a newcomer: unless he made a habit of visiting Ballater and carrying out a couple of violent murders, then disappearing again for twenty years, then returning to do it again, he seemed an unlikely candidate.
An idea struck her: had Colonel Verney had any previous connexion with Ballater, or with Dinnet House? Basilia had said that he had come to the place for the wells, after finding Bath unpalatable, but how had he heard of the place? It was not on everyone’s map. What was her reasoning here: was it that Colonel Verney might have been known to the murderer all along, or that Colonel Verney, who would have been an active, fit army officer in 1809, might have carried out the first murders and the second ones were some kind of revenge? She wondered if Basilia knew anything (though she could hardly suggest to her that her much-missed uncle had been a murderer), or perhaps Mrs. Strachan might know. What had Mrs. Strachan’s name been when she had lived at Dinnet House? Would Colonel Verney have mentioned it ever? She must ask Basilia.
Her mind wandered into a side street. Basilia … It was all very well that Basilia had been used to playing duets with Patrick, and no doubt at all played them much better than Hippolyta ever would, but that did not give her any rights to ogle him like that across the dinner table, or indeed along her violin. Hippolyta had been pleased to find a friend of her own age in Ballater, but not so pleased that she could not give her up if Basilia continued to behave in quite such a possessive way. Hippolyta scowled into the darkness, and wondered if Basilia was sleeping well – or was dreaming, perhaps, of Patrick! Furious, she sat up sharply – and just as she did so, she heard the click of the front door shutting.
She flung back the covers and marched across to the window. Yes, there on the path outside, complete with bonnet and, as far as she could see, gloves, was Basilia Verney. Hippolyta had to restrain herself from stamping her foot. She would swear to it that Miss Verney had never suffered from sleepwalking in her life. Miss Verney reached the gate, and paused: some instinct made Hippolyta duck quickly behind the shutter, and peep round. Basilia looked back at the house carefully. Was she bidding it farewell? The hope jumped into Hippolyta’s heart, but then she dismissed it. Basilia’s close examination of the front of the house had been much more in the nature of someone checking to see she was not being followed. Well, if a follower was what Basilia Verney did not want, then a follower was exactly what Basilia Verney would get.
She was down the stairs and in the hallway before she wondered if she should think better of her idea. It was hardly the act of a respectable married woman, hurrying off into the night on her own: on the other hand, it was something she had always longed to be able to do, and here, in quiet Ballater, she might be less likely to be caught than she would have been in busy Edinburgh. Her cloak and bonnet were in the hall press, taken off in a hurry earlier, and there was an old pair of boots there, too. She was still wondering as her feet seemed to find their own way into the boots, and the cloak slipped eagerly around her shoulders and the bonnet seemed to fall directly on to her head: it felt odd sitting loose there when her hair was down, but she tied the strings tight and hoped it would not slip sideways. Then she tried the front door in one gentle hand: it was, as she had expected, unlocked. She pulled it open, slipped through as soon as she could, and eased it shut behind her. Then she trotted quickly down the path to the gate, and surveyed the open green in front of her.
It was a clear night, after the hammerstrike showers of the day. The moon was a mere sliver, but there was still a pallor in the sky from the day, deep grey blue above shading to a film of yellow in the western horizon. The shapes of things were easy to see: the white roses in the garden, and their petals pummelled to the ground by the rain, stood out almost glowing, but further away the details were hazy and colours indistinct. It was a movement, however, that caught her eye: to her left, downhill from the gate, she saw Basilia in her bonnet, heading for the main street down to the river, the bridge, the inn, and the road to Aberdeen. What was her goal?
Hippolyta tried to judge the best moment to leave the shelter of the gate, not too soon that Basilia would turn and see her, nor yet too late that she might lose her. When Basilia disappeared around the corner of the first house on the street, Hippolyta darted after her at last, feeling a blissful freedom not to be weighed down by bustling skirts. She was almost silent as she ran, but she kept an eye open, nevertheless, for the night watchman, in case she was spotted.
At the corner, she paused and peered round it. For a moment she could not see her target, then Basilia stepped out of the shadow of a building, making steady progress down the street. Hippolyta hurried into the same shadow, using it to hide herself while she watched Basilia approach the turn in the road that led off to Aberdeen. Basilia passed it, not even glancing to her left. Next there was the inn, rising up like a confused heap of crates beyond the road, a few windows still lit this late. It seemed quiet, though, and Basilia again passed without giving it more than half a look. She had to be heading for the bridge, the broad stone bridge that would take her over the Dee to Pannanich.
There would be no hiding places on the bridge, but on the other hand Basilia could hardly change direction on it, either. The only thing she could do would be to haul herself on to the parapet and fling herself into the Dee, and Hippolyta could not quite see Basilia doing that, certainly not in her bonnet and gloves. She edged after her, taking shelter where she could, keeping her eyes close on Basilia as she emerged from the shadows and began to cross the bridge. Hippolyta tiptoed to the end of the parapet, ready to duck down behind it if Basilia – or anyone else – happened to look in her direction.
It was a man, no doubt about it: a man in a tall hat, pale breeches and, as far as Hippolyta could make out, a brown coat. She watched closely. The man neared Basilia, removed his hat politely, and then swept Basilia into a passionate embrace. For a moment, Hippolyta considered running to her friend’s rescue – but only briefly. It was immediately clear that she welcomed the embrace completely.
A brown coat, walking in from Pannanich at night: perhaps now she knew what he had been up to wandering around the village so secretively. It had to be Brookes.
Chapter Seventeen
Hippolyta, tired though she was, was shocked awake on Sunday morning by the sudden alarming recollection that church, that morning, was coming to them, rather than the more usual other way around.
A fear that by some mischance Miss Verney should return to the house first, from her secret assignation on the bridge to Pannanich, and lock the front door again to cover the traces of her night-time expedition, had left Hippolyta scuttling back almost as soon as she had observed the couple meet. Her head was full of faintly exciting visions of having to climb in through a window of her own house – exciting, but not entirely desirable, and tricky to explain to Mrs. Riach, should she find out. Or indeed to Patrick – if he ever noticed.
A Knife in Darkness Page 21
