Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)

by Huber, AnnaLee

  Mr. Wallace considered the matter, rubbing his fingers over his pointed chin. “Nay. Munro is a loud complainer, but he’s no’ violent. And if ye considered him, you’d also have to consider Mrs. Ogston, and she was just overcome wi’ grief. She didn’t mean her threats.”

  Gage glanced at me. “What threats?”

  Mr. Wallace pressed his lips together, and I wondered if he wished he hadn’t said anything about the woman. “Sometimes Mary has visions that are no’ so happy.”

  I frowned. None of her visions thus far had seemed particularly pleasant, unless she hadn’t liked Mr. Munro. Then the prospect of his breaking his leg might have given her some kind of enjoyment. But I refrained from making this remark.

  “She saw that Mrs. Ogston was going to lose her bairn before its time. All she could do was warn her to be careful, but it happened anyway. And Mrs. Ogston blamed her for it. Called her a witch and accused her of telling the devil to take her bairn.”

  “And threatened to what?” Gage persisted.

  Mr. Wallace faced us grimly. “Send her to hell.”

  I blinked. That was quite extreme.

  “But as I said, she was overcome by grief. I dinna think she meant it, though I ken she doesn’t wish my daughter weel.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “A few months. Less than half a year.”

  Gage looked to me with a skeptical gleam in his eyes, and I knew he would want to question this Mrs. Ogston. I was of the same opinion as Mr. Wallace—grief could make people say terrible things—but I decided it couldn’t hurt to find out what her attitude toward Miss Wallace was now.

  “Is there anything else we should know about your daughter?” Gage asked. “Anyone you think we should talk to while Mr. Paxton is away? We may not get another chance.”

  Mr. Wallace settled back in his chair with a sigh. “I s’pose you intend to visit the island.”

  “Yes. And speak to a few people in the village, as well as the ferrymen.”

  “I canna think of anyone else in particular, except maybe Calum MacMath and his ole cronies. They sit ootside the inn on fair days, gossiping like a bunch o’ magpies while they watch the ships come in.”

  I cracked a smile at this affable description. Every village in the British Isles must have had at least a trio of these older men who congregated in the public inn or tavern to while away their hours. They were often the best source of gossip in any village, even more so than their wives.

  “We’ll speak to them, then,” Gage said, hiding his own grin of amusement. “Now, before we go, if we could see Miss Wallace’s room and speak to her maid, one of them might provide a clue that Mr. Paxton has missed.”

  Mr. Wallace sat up in surprise. “But why would there be anything in her room? She couldn’t have kenned she was going to go missing.”

  “No, but she might have come into contact with someone suspicious and made a note of it or kept a record of her visits and we can deduce a pattern from them. I don’t ask to alarm you.” Gage’s voice lowered to a soothing tone. “There may be nothing there at all. But I do have some experience with this sort of thing, and I would rather have a look now than discover later that there was a clue waiting for us there all along.”

  Mr. Wallace nodded tentatively at first and then with more certainty. “Aye. I dinna think she kept an appointment book, but you’d best look. And I spoke to her maid the moment I kenned she was missing, but I reckon ye should speak with her, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Miss Wallace’s maid was a stalwart Scottish lass, and I was relieved to be facing a composed woman and not a timid, sobbing mass of petticoats, though I could tell from the red rims and puffiness around her eyes that she had wept at some point, and recently. She perched on the edge of a ladder-back chair while Gage and I searched Miss Wallace’s bedchamber.

  “Nay, Miss Mary doesna keep a ’pointment book. She keeps it all up here.” Kady tapped her head with her forefinger. “Has a mind like a trap, that’n.”

  “What about a journal or a diary?” I asked as I glanced back and forth between the maid and the bookshelf I was perusing.

  The maid shook her head.

  “Something to write her visions in?”

  She hesitated to respond, drawing all of my attention to her. Kady didn’t seem to know how to answer, and I suddenly realized her dilemma.

  “Mr. Wallace told us about her second sight.”

  She searched my eyes and, apparently finding me trustworthy, replied, “She doesna write them doon. No’ those horrible things.” Her brow lowered into a fierce frown. “They’re a curse, I tell ye. And she’s told me more than once she wishes she could make ’em stop.”

  I abandoned the bookshelf and moved forward to perch on the edge of the bed closer to the maid, leaving the search to Gage. Somehow I could sense that this conversation was far more important than whatever we would find in this room.

  “I understand that most of her visions are quite unpleasant.”

  “Aye. Many o’ ’em come as nightmares. When she was but a wee lass, she would wake up screamin’ like a banshee, puir dear. I took to sleepin’ at the foot o’ the bed jus’ so I could be here when she woke.”

  “Are they always like that?” I asked in some concern. What kind of existence was that, to fall asleep afraid to dream? Unbidden, an image of Will pacing his floors in an effort to outrun sleep flashed through my mind.

  The kindhearted older woman reached forward to pat my hand where it lay on my knee. “Nay. The older she grew, and the better she got at understandin’ ’em, the less they troubled her. The real bad ones still upset her somethin’ awful, but she’s learned to live wi’ the rest.” Her face clouded with worry and her gaze turned distant. “That is, ’til recently.”

  I glanced at Gage, who had looked up from his search of Miss Wallace’s desk drawer at the change in the maid’s tone of voice.

  “Why recently? What happened?”

  Kady looked up at me, her face lined with worry. “I dinna ken for sure. Maybe it’s because she seemed so happy the few weeks afore it happened. Happier than I’ve ever seen her. But then the nightmares began again.”

  My heart clenched in dread.

  “Worse than ever afore.” Kady clasped her hands together in her lap, the knuckles turning white as she relived her memories. “She’d wake up thrashin’ and screamin’, beggin’ for whatever it was to stop. Woke her da’ a time or two in his room doon the hall. I asked her what it was . . .” She sounded like she was pleading with her charge again. “But she wouldna’ tell me. A time or two when she’d just waked I heard her babblin’ aboot the cold and the darkness, but that’s all I ken. And all I could think to ask her was if they were aboot her da’. She told me nay. That’s when I realized . . .” She broke off, unable to speak the words.

  So I spoke them for her. “That it might be her.”

  She nodded. “I didna want to ask her. Didna want to even think it.” Her face crumpled, and she came close to losing her composure. But she took a deep breath and swallowed her grief and guilt. “But it might’ve been.”

  I pressed a hand to my chest, where my heart pounded furiously, having trouble coming to terms with the information the maid had just given us. If Miss Wallace had foreseen her own death, and if it had been as unpleasant as her reaction to her nightmares suggested it was . . . heavens! How could she live with that knowledge? How could she go about living her life, day after day, knowing it was only a matter of time before her nightmares came true? The very thought made me dizzy with fright.

  I jumped at the feel of Gage’s hand on my shoulder. He squeezed gently, reassuring me, and I inhaled sharply.

  Kady offered me a tight smile in commiseration. “Aye. The an da shealladh is a dark thing,” she told me, using what must be the Gaelic term for “second sight.
”

  “Did Miss Wallace mention anyone she might have quarreled with?” Gage asked, turning the subject. “Someone who might wish her ill or hold a grudge?”

  Kady lifted her eyes in contemplation and then shook her head. “Nay. Though she doesna talk to me much aboot people. She mostly keeps her opinions to hersel’.” She squinted one eye. “But I can read her reactions fairly weel. Like when that fool Munro yelled oot his window at us after he fell off his roof ’cause he didna listen to her warnin’. Tried to blame her, the sod. I could tell she didna feel the least bit sorry for the man, though to all else she looked fair concerned.”

  I felt a measure of my equanimity return during her story, especially considering the fact that I had had a similar thought about Mr. Munro and what Miss Wallace’s reaction should be to him. I even felt a certain amount of calm. Until Kady spoke her next words.

  “And then there was that doctor. Miss Mary didna like him,” she added, shaking her head.

  The hairs stood up on my arm. “What doctor?” I demanded.

  “I dinna ken his name.” Her eyes had widened at my sharp reaction. “He approached her in the village and she refused to talk to ’im.”

  “When was this?” Gage asked. I could hear the same heightened level of interest in his voice as mine but his had taken on an angry edge, which I wasn’t sure he was even aware of.

  “A few weeks ago, I guess it was noo,” Kady said, stumbling over her reply.

  Gage nodded to her and then turned to me. “I think we need to speak with Mr. Wallace again.”

  I rose to follow him to the door, but before going I paused to ask the bewildered maid one more question. “Just out of curiosity, did Miss Wallace encounter the doctor before or after her nightmares began again?”

  “Why, I think it was afore,” she replied in surprise.

  I thanked her and turned back to Gage, who was watching me with an expression that said we would be having a conversation about this later.

  * * *

  “His name was Callart,” Mr. Wallace told us in reply to Gage’s query.

  We had found him in his study where we had left him, deep in unhappy thought, if the frown on his face was any indication.

  He rose to cross the room to his desk. “He came to call one afternoon, offering his services to help my daughter. Said he was some brain specialist and he’d heard of my daughter’s ‘affliction.’” He lifted his gaze, a martial gleam in his eyes. “I told him to sod off.”

  I had to smile at that, despite my uneasy suspicions.

  “Did he try to pressure you?” Gage asked.

  Mr. Wallace bent forward to rummage through the papers in a drawer. “Aye. Had to threaten to throw him off my property to get him to leave.”

  “Did you know he accosted your daughter in the village?” I inquired.

  He straightened and moved back toward us. “Nay. Who told you this? Kady?”

  I nodded.

  “Impertinent leech,” he growled. He handed the card he’d taken from his desk to Gage. “Dr. Thomas Callart. Noo I’m glad I kept his card. Do ye think he’s behind my daughter’s disappearance?”

  “We don’t know,” Gage replied cautiously after making a cursory inspection of the business card and tucking it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Can you tell us what he looked like?”

  “Short, round, rather like a partridge. No’ particularly attractive.”

  “Well, then, let us know if you think of anything else,” Gage told him. “We’ll send word as soon as we have any news.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Do you think Dr. Sloane used an alias?” I asked, having to hurry to keep up with Gage’s long stride down the hall. “Do you think this Dr. Callart could be him?”

  “No.”

  I was so taken aback by the certainty in his voice that it took me a moment to respond. “What do you mean?”

  I had to wait for his answer, as the Wallaces’ butler appeared and handed us our hats and gloves. It took me but a moment to affix my hat atop my head and pin it at its jaunty angle, but Gage was already outside, taking the reins of our horses from the waiting stable boys.

  “How can you be so certain?” I persisted.

  I allowed Gage to boost me up into my saddle, looking down at him expectantly while he fiddled with my stirrup, the length of which had been perfectly fine on our ride over to Lambden Cottage.

  “Because Dr. Sloane is tall and thin,” he finally replied. “There is no way he could be this short, round man who calls himself Dr. Callart.”

  Gage mounted his gelding while I digested this bit of information. “You know what Dr. Sloane looks like?”

  He cut a look of annoyance in my direction as he directed his horse to walk on. “It isn’t difficult to ask. After all, Michael has seen the man.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Everything he was saying was true, but it didn’t explain his restless movements or why he was avoiding looking into my eyes. So I decided to be direct. “Have you ever seen him?”

  It took a moment for him to respond—the silence that fell between us broken only by the clopping of the horses’ hooves and the jangling of their harnesses—and when he did it was barely louder than a murmur. “Yes.”

  A bolt of alarm ran down my spine and I sat straighter. But before I could voice my next question, he spoke again.

  “We can’t discuss it right now.” He turned to look at me, his eyes earnest but also commanding. “I promise you, I will tell you. But not here.” He gestured with his head to the old tower of the kirk and the pale stone buildings that lined the street at the base of the hill just coming into view out of the trees that shaded the road.

  I bit back the words forming on my tongue, for I knew he was right. Whatever argument was brewing between us, whatever revelation Gage was about to make, would have to wait until we’d interviewed the villagers about Miss Wallace. We had to present a united front in our inquiries. And though it tied a knot inside me not to know, I did not try to force the words from him. However, I could not stop my mind from conjuring up all manner of possibilities.

  We left our horses at the livery stables behind the Cramond Inn and walked through the village on foot. We stepped into the shops and stopped people on the street. The general consensus seemed to be that Miss Wallace was a kind, well-liked lass with a good head on her shoulders. Several people had seen her cross the land bridge to Cramond Island at low tide on Thursday last, but none of them had seen her return, not even Calum MacMath and his cronies. They swore they had been seated in front of the inn from midday through sunset, and that if anyone had seen her return, it would have been them. MacMath also made it a point, as several others did, to tell us that Mary Wallace was no fool to be risking her life crossing when the tide was already coming in, but that Mr. Paxton might just possibly be.

  If nothing else, the local constable seemed a bit unpopular, but that was not an uncommon reaction to policemen in small towns, whose people liked to handle such matters in their own ways. I couldn’t see Mr. Paxton exercising compromise or compassion. He enjoyed his power too much.

  No one seemed to flinch at the mention of Miss Wallace’s second sight, and the majority, even the reverend at Cramond Kirk, seemed to look on it with favor rather than disapproval. There were a few that frowned and shook their heads or rolled their eyes, but no one voiced a harsh opinion of her or her supposed ability. Even Mr. Munro and Mrs. Ogston seemed contrite over their earlier condemnation of her, though it may have been our positions as investigators into Miss Wallace’s disappearance that kept their tongues civil.

  Whatever the truth, Mr. Munro’s leg was mended and Mrs. Ogston was round with child again, and I suspected these developments had done more than anything to heal any lingering animosity.

  We ate luncheon at the inn, waiting for the tide to finish going out, and then traversed the m
ile-long trail, slick with seaweed and shingles washed smooth by thousands of years of ocean currents, to the island. I felt a little bit like Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, though there were no walls of water surrounding us, only a wide stretch of wet sand on either side and the gently undulating ocean lapping at the edges. I was grateful for my kid leather riding boots and the extra layer of woolen socks I had donned that morning as our feet sank into the sand and shale of the ocean bottom.

  The island itself was green and gold with brush and lush grass and gently sloped toward a small wood roughly at its center. As we drew closer, I could see white fluffy sheep dotting the fields, nibbling at tufts of grass. The briny air whipped at my little hat until I feared I would have to remove it or else watch it blown out to sea.

  When we reached the island, we followed the little path that wound up toward the wood, where we had been told the McCray farmstead rested. Nestled among the trees, the stone buildings were crude, but snugly built.

  When we entered the yard, Mrs. McCray was already at her door, hands on her hips. “Are ye here aboot Mistress Mary, then?”

  “Yes,” Gage replied, removing his hat. “We’re investigating on Mr. Wallace’s behalf.” He introduced us while the farmwife looked us up and down as if we were bits of useless frippery.

  “Ye’ll already ken I’m Mrs. McCray. Ye’d best come in.”

  We followed her through the door, ducking our heads so as not to smack them on the low lintel. She offered us a seat at the scarred, wooden table at the center of her kitchen and then turned to the great stone fireplace to swing a kettle over the fire. The room was worn, but cozy and clean. I cringed at the sight of our muddy footprints on her otherwise spotless flagstone floor.

  She reached up high inside a cabinet and pulled out a lovely china teapot and three cups. I could tell from her handling of them that they were cherished possessions, quite possibly the nicest things she owned, and only brought out for special company. She set the tea things on the table and began spooning some of the precious leaves inside the pot. When the kettle whistled, she was ready for it.