‘Papa! Papa!’ the girls called, and with a sigh he picked them both up again and waddled on up the hill. Then there were cries from beyond the church, and a great stream of water surged down the hill, catching everyone unawares.
‘River’s broken its banks further upstream!’ someone cried out. ‘Coming down through the town!’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Hippolyta was growing tired of all this. The new wave of water was heading down the hill along the street: though it was washing over the green it was not going much further to each side. She tugged the father with his girls so that he turned around, and pulled Mrs. Strachan, too, and all of them made for the Napiers’ little cottage with the candles in the window.
Patrick pushed the door open to be greeted by Mrs. Riach, perched halfway up the stairs with Ishbel on the step above. The cats watched the proceedings from the landing, wondering what strange things were happening now. Franklin appeared to have a fish.
‘Fit time o’ the morn div ye call this to be coming in again?’ demanded the housekeeper. ‘This is no a well-regulated household, no at all.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Patrick toyed absently with the piano keys. He looked exhausted.
He was currently sharing the study as a bedchamber, with Mr. Durris and the father of the two girls, who had offered to become a kelpie. The daughters were in Basilia Verney’s room. Basilia, with much mutual strained courtesy, was sharing Hippolyta’s bed. Ishbel and Tabitha were in the second attic room, and a family of twelve, including one set of grandparents, twin babies in arms and a distant cousin, were in the two bedchambers in the servants’ wing, along with their three terriers. No one else in the house had met any of them before, but the older girl children had proved clever at finding sources of food about the town, while the older boys broke several windows.
Mrs. Riach, in the confusion, had come to Hippolyta to explain why she herself could not share a room. The explanation was vague, and on any other day Hippolyta might have queried it, probably to no effect. However, she was tired, too, after several somewhat disturbed nights, and so she merely sat in silence, wondering what to say next. The silence seemed to stimulate some level of guilt in Mrs. Riach, and she finally confessed that her elderly aunt, who was to say the least confused, had been living in the servants’ wing for several years undetected and was now sleeping in Mrs. Riach’s own bed, driven out by the boys and the terriers. Hippolyta tried to look as if she had known all along, and nodded thoughtfully. Shame-faced, Mrs. Riach retreated, and turned out some of the best meals she had ever made for three solid days, despite the meagre supplies.
The village was battered and bruised, and the land around had been much bereft of both cattle and crops. Every house that could accommodate extra people had them: the place had been crowded already, but quite a number of visitors had called short their stay as soon as they could make their way out of the town, which eased the crowding a little. Every able-bodied person seemed to be involved in sweeping, draining, drying, tearing down where the water had done too much damage, scrubbing and airing: the variety of smells about the place, from midden to soap, was fascinating and occasionally more than overpowering.
Mrs. Strachan had stayed with them for a night, but in the morning the door had been almost battered in and Patrick, opening it mildly, found Mr. Strachan on the doorstep, demanding to know if his wife was safe. Being reassured that she was, he claimed her back, much to their satisfaction, and they went home. Strachan had left Pannanich earlier than any of them had thought, thinking that his wife was not there, and so had been in Ballater all along. Strachan’s cellars had flooded, so the word went, and so any trace of blue paint that might or might not have marked any barrel of brandy had been washed away.
Another barrel, this time of whisky, had been found on a new island formed by the retreat of the river waters, a mile or so below the town. Accompanying the barrel, which was miraculously unbreached, was a heathy and happy pig, and the sodden corpse of one of the spa town’s two noted physicians, Dr. Durward. Fortunately it was possible to cross to the island and remove the corpse before the pig grew hungry, though there was some debate amongst the boatmen as to which it would be proper to remove first: several argued for the corpse, others for the pig, and a few convincing voices opted for the barrel. It was a close thing, but Durris was on the bank, and the corpse was removed first and taken into the sheriff’s custody.
‘You’re sure of your facts, Mrs. Napier?’ he asked, sitting in the parlour as Patrick dozed at the piano.
‘I think so,’ said Hippolyta. ‘And surely the most telling thing is that he went for me with the scalpel.’
‘Is that healing all right?’ Patrick roused himself to peer over at his wife’s arm.
‘I don’t think the dip in the river did it much good, but it looks clean now,’ said Hippolyta, though the cut was long enough to make movement in the arm painful. Luckily it was her left arm: any spare time she had at present was employed in sketching scenes of the floods and the aftermath. She moved her sketchbook off her lap just now, and stroked two of the kittens - they were all hiding in the parlour in protest at the terriers.
‘So Durward’s wealth came from the Jacobite silver, and not from his practice?’
‘Everyone said he was a lazy man, and there weren’t so many visitors when he was starting out,’ said Hippolyta, softly pulling a kitten’s pink ear. ‘And he had no family money. He spent a good deal of time in the garden, though. We don’t know whether he refused to go halves with Rab Lattin, but my feeling, from the way Mrs. Strachan described him, is that Lattin told Dr. Durward that he would tell Mr. Tranter, who would of course claim the money as his own as the owner of the house.’
‘Poor fellow,’ Durris remarked, making a tiny note in his notebook.
‘I feel even more sorry for Forman, though, and for Colonel Verney: they probably had no idea why Dr. Durward attacked them. Colonel Verney was simply in the way, in the hall when Dr. Durward arrived, for the back door was already locked. Forman of course had been instructed to tidy out under the floorboards: we don’t know if he ever saw the scalpel, or whether he would have made any connexion with the old murders if he had.’
‘And Durward had the scalpel? Why didn’t he just throw it away?’
‘I think he was waiting to be able to throw it somewhere where it would not be connected to him.’
‘And this is it?’
Durris fingered the rusty item on the table.
‘It’s just an ordinary scalpel,’ put in Patrick. ‘Any doctor could have dropped it in the last fifty years.’
‘Guilt, I suppose,’ Durris observed. ‘Well, he’s beyond the reach of earthly justice now, anyway.’
Rumours of Dr. Durward’s guilt circulated as quickly as the news of his death, and no one did anything to stop them. The Strachans, indeed, had a kind of glow about them over the matter, and Hippolyta wondered just how much the mystery of Mrs. Strachan’s father’s death had affected them over the years. She visited Mrs. Kynoch, who had the families of two of her pupils staying with her, and they shared a pot of tea in the kitchen.
‘He’s a different man,’ Mrs. Kynoch confided in her. ‘I’ve never seen him look so – well, relaxed.’
‘An ill wind, then,’ said Hippolyta, and they raised their cups to toast it.
When the waters receded a little more, boatmen started to ply a lucrative trade across the river where the bridge had been. One day when Hippolyta was making a sketch of the picturesque ruins, the south side now gone as well and a great spike of pillar surviving alone in the centre of the river, a familiar figure was landed nearby her on the shore. It was Julian Brown.
‘Mrs. Napier, I’m very glad to see you!’ he exclaimed, bowing.
‘I’m glad to see you well,’ said Hippolyta. ‘How are matters at Pannanich?’
‘Not too bad, considering,’ he replied. ‘The waters have gone down in the Lodge, but the whole place stinks like a midden.’
‘The same could be said for much of the town,’ said Hippolyta wryly. There was some worry about disease, and Patrick was being kept very busy.
‘Is – ahem – is Basilia still staying with you?’
‘Why?’ she asked, warily.
‘I had thought I might come and see her, see how she was doing in all this: maybe take her off somewhere?’ He finished uncertainly. Hippolyta felt sorry for him.
‘Miss Verney left yesterday, on the Aberdeen coach,’ she said gently. ‘I believe she had plans to go further, but she said she would write with an address and of course there has been no time.’
‘Oh.’ Julian screwed up his nose, dismayed. ‘I don’t suppose … did she mention me, at all? Perhaps?’
Hippolyta was not going to give him the precise message that Basilia Verney had left for him: she was not that unkind.
‘She just said she wished you well, but hoped you would allow her to go her own way, and not pursue her.’
‘Oh.’ His amiable face fell.
‘To tell you the truth, Mr. Brown, I think you are as well off without her,’ said Hippolyta bluntly. ‘If you will take some advice from a woman –’
‘Oh, of course!’ he said eagerly.
‘Then find yourself an interest in life that is not cards, or other gambling, don’t assume that you need to be at the height of fashion for anyone to like you, and live a useful life,’ she said. How easily her mother’s voice seemed to be coming to her these days!
‘Oh. Yes, yes, I think you may be right,’ he said, but he did not look entranced by the idea, and bidding her good day he wandered off into the town, stepping clear of the worst of the mud and debris. As she watched him, a familiar figure appeared, glasses on his nose, medical bag in his hand, absent look across his handsome features. Patrick looked up, focussed, and saw her, and in a few long strides was beside her on the shore.
‘That’s good,’ he said, seeing her sketch book.
‘Thank you, kind sir!’ She curtseyed.
‘Coming home to dinner, though?’ he asked. ‘If we’re not there in the first rush, those children will eat everything.’
She slipped her arm into his with a grin, and they headed up the hill of the little battered town, home.
‘So, my dear Charlotte, you may perhaps excuse my lapse in writing – besides that the carrier could not get through along the road to Aberdeen for several days! It has been exciting and distressing in equal measure. I pray you if you meet a Miss Basilia Verney you give her a wide berth. But we still do not know if anything is really wrong with Mrs. Strachan, or if she will ever turn to Patrick for help and lead the rest of Ballater society his way!’
About the Author:
Lexie Conyngham is a historian living in the shadow of the Highlands. Her Murray of Letho and Hippolyta Napier novels are born of a life amidst Scotland’s old cities, ancient universities and hidden-away aristocratic estates, but she has written since the day she found out that people were allowed to do such a thing. Beyond teaching and research, her days are spent with wool, wild allotments and a wee bit of whisky.
The cover illustrator, Helen Braid, is lovely, and can be contacted at www.ellieillustrates.co.uk.
If you’ve enjoyed this, the first book in the Hippolyta Napier series, then you can go straight to the sequel, Death of a False Physician.
The dreadful day is approaching for the Napiers in Ballater: Hippolyta Napier’s mother is coming to stay.
But Mrs. Fettes is not just in Aberdeenshire to visit her youngest daughter: she has other reasons, and one will draw the whole family in, with deadly results.
Reviews are important to authors: it would be lovely if you could leave a review where you bought this book, particularly if you liked it!
If you’d like the chance to follow Lexie Conyngham’s meandering thoughts on writing, gardening and knitting, take a look at www.murrayofletho.blogspot.co.uk, or on Facebook or Pinterest (Lexie Conyngham).
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The Hippolyta Napier series:
A Knife in Darkness
Death of a False Physician
The Murray of Letho series:
Death in a Scarlet Gown
Knowledge of Sins Past
Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder
An Abandoned Woman
Fellowship with Demons
The Tender Herb: A Murder in Mughal India
Death of an Officer’s Lady
Out of a Dark Reflection
Slow Death by Quicksilver
Also by Lexie Conyngham:
Windhorse Burning
The War, The Bones and Dr. Cowie
Thrawn Thoughts and Blithe Bits (short stories)
A Knife in Darkness Page 32
