Akin to Murder

by Alanna Knight

  She nodded, her expression grim. ‘I hope you are right, then.’

  And there was something in the way that she said those words that Faro realised her thoughts were on a similar line to his own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  As the train approached the halt at Belmuir, Faro had not yet composed in his own mind how he would extract any information about Tibbie, as well as having the interview with Annie’s sister, Nora.

  Poorhouses had a bad reputation as forbidding institutions whose powerful image cast grave shadows over people’s imagination.

  ‘Going to the poorhouse’ was an awesome whisper, a last resort to be avoided at all costs. Not only poverty but also respectability was threatened by such a move. Even if one’s finances recovered, it was never forgotten, the poorhouse stain remained. Folk would shake their heads and whisper and say he will never make good, he was in the poorhouse, you know.

  As he left the train and wandered across the courtyard to the grim, tall, grey building, entering it from this angle must have put little hope into anyone’s heart. For those inside possibly watching, stepping through those doors carried an enormous social stigma. For the elderly it was a place that you never came out of again, except in a coffin for burial in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

  Such was the fate of Agatha Simms. From that bungled burial had sprung the death of her sister who had, against all legal rules, taken the coffin from the grave to fulfil her sister’s dying wish to be buried in the family vault at Gifford. To her horror the coffin, when opened for a last glimpse of her sister’s face, revealed no corpse, only large stones. This had set in motion her indignant enquiry, followed by Celia’s own death, accident or murder, by a runaway cab on the Mound, witnessed by her maid Tibbie who fell off the train in the Pleasance tunnel before she could reveal what she knew to the superintendent’s housekeeper, Mrs Brook, who had offered her a situation as a living-in maid at Sheridan Place.

  Looking round the gloomy entrance with a glimpse of rambling corridors, he guessed that he should have approached by the front door. He was lost and stopping the first person he met, he noticed that all wore an identical grey uniform. But they looked well fed, their expressions cheerful, not at all distressed or demented, with the appearance of ordinary folk he might meet any day in Princes Street.

  This reality presented a very different picture from that supplied by the eminent author, Mr Charles Dickens’ in his novel Oliver Twist, a great favourite of Faro’s, which had coloured a succession of readers’ ideas and accounts of middle-class ‘social explorers, who clothed themselves in dirty old rags to gain admission for a night’s stay and to witness conditions for themselves’. That was England, of course, and conditions in Edinburgh were certainly less grim he decided, waiting at a reception desk respectable enough for a hotel or a hospital, with people going about their own business, many clutching papers. Most had some connection. If they were not living under the roof, they were supplying it with goods, or buying the firewood the inmates had chopped.

  ‘I got lost,’ he explained to the man at the reception desk. ‘I was looking for Nora, one of your nurses, and I took the wrong turn.’

  The man pointed. ‘Well, you’ve found her.’ He grinned. ‘There she is. Nora, a gentleman to see you.’

  The woman who approached, walking briskly towards him, was in her late thirties or early forties and must have been at least a decade older than her sister. Thin, with pulled-back grey hair, a mouth of the kind described by his colleagues as like a rat-trap spoilt a face that even in its best days could never have been described as pretty. Before she spoke a word, he could see the perfectly natural reaction of why she must have envied and despised that young sister who had been a beauty and so desirable to men. Annie, he guessed, for all her faults, when she still lived at home must have needed a generous and forgiving nature.

  ‘Well, what is it you want?’ Nora was asking.

  He decided his official role might be the one most acceptable and produced his identity card. She looked at it briefly and scowled. ‘What has that to do with me?’ This wasn’t going to be easy, and looking around, he said: ‘Just a moment of your time, if you please.’

  With an impatient shrug she led the way into a small, glass-windowed office and regarded him defiantly. ‘Well?’

  ‘It is about your late sister Annie.’ That was enough to make the scowl deepen. ‘I have no sister Annie. I lost her long ago.’

  ‘We are aware of the sad details.’ The word ‘sad’ brought a mocking gesture.

  ‘We all thought she deserved all she got, been leading up to that for a long time, sooner or later—’

  Faro held up his hand. ‘The police are aware of the details, Mrs Rickson,’ he said patiently. ‘There have been some slight changes—’

  ‘We all know that. Charlie is on the run. And good luck to him is all we have to say,’ she ended with a triumphant nod. ‘If only he hadn’t been such a soft mark and put up with her goings-on—’

  As she ranted on the subject of unfaithful wives in general and how God punished Jezebels, he realised that here was one very unlikely person on McLaw’s side, but he did not enjoy the prospect that he was related through marriage, by even the remotest thread, to this harridan.

  When she paused to draw breath he nodded, he hoped sympathetically, and said, ‘A terrible blow for the rest of the family. I trust her father and brother have recovered from the shock of all this.’

  ‘Recovered? There was nothing to recover from. Our mother married Joe, it was his second marriage. He had Frank by then.’

  ‘You got along well together?’

  She thought about that for a moment. ‘Pa was fine; he owns the local, the Coach and Horses, so we had a good life, that was why it was so sickening for Annie to go off as she did. If he had been cruel to her, anything like that—’

  She was off again, he realised, and put in hastily, ‘What about her brother Frank?’

  ‘You might well ask. Idiot that he was, he worshipped her. Right from the beginning, he thought she was God’s greatest creation. Even when he got married – he still couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Miriam with their two bairns, and her a helpless invalid since the last one was born. It was a disgrace.’

  ‘Did she respond to his attentions?’

  ‘Anything in trousers would do for her. Even Frank, her own stepbrother.’ She added in a shocked voice, ‘He was always the one she wanted—’

  Faro decided these revelations were casting a new light on the case. He wanted to know more when they were interrupted as the door opened.

  A suddenly changed Nora dropped a curtsey. ‘Excuse me, master. This man’s a policeman, wanted some … some information,’ she stammered.

  The tall man Faro recognised from their earlier meeting as Sir Hector Belmuir turned his back on Nora and said sharply to Faro: ‘Something we can do for you?’

  ‘I met Mrs Rickson on my way to the reception area. I’m afraid I left the train at the back entrance and got lost. I am looking for information concerning accommodation for my mother. She lives in Orkney and is elderly now, and becoming frail. As we can no longer visit each other as often, I would like to have her somewhere near Edinburgh and your establishment has been highly recommended.’

  The man addressed as the master nodded and without looking in her direction said: ‘You may leave us, Mrs Rickson.’ She did so, with a sweeping curtsey.

  ‘Take a seat, Mr … Faro, isn’t it?’ Sir Hector sat at the desk. ‘I deal with such matters. Perhaps before allowing your mother into our care, you would wish to know something of our reputation.’ A thin smile. ‘Regard it as reference,’ he added and opening a drawer, took out some booklets. ‘To save you reading all these, I should explain that although poorhouses have gained a bad name, they are a valuable addition to the community and the poor would be much poorer without them.’

  Faro found that hard to believe as he went on: ‘A complete overhaul of poor relief administration cam
e with the 1845 Scottish Poor Law Amendment Act, or the New Poor Law, of great assistance to able-bodied men, and a safety net for those in genuine need – the elderly, the sick, and orphaned children. Once taken care of by monasteries and religious houses, after their dissolution by Henry the Eighth, assisting such people became the lot of the better-off and the landowners like ourselves.’

  Faro guessed he was talking about the Belmuirs as he continued:

  ‘The Poor Relief Act formalised how the poor were to be provided for, revolving round the parish, the area served by a single priest and his church to which every householder was required to contribute, an annual tax based on the value of their property. The able-bodied were expected to work while a place evolved to accommodate the impotent poor – those too old, lame or blind who could not work.’

  As he waxed eloquent on the subject, Faro had a chance to study the speaker, a more businesslike friendly version of the angry, frustrated rabbit-hunter flourishing a rifle at their first encounter at Belmuir.

  Tall, good-looking, with the look of breeding that he shared with his sister, there was nevertheless a difference: although Sir Hector would be under forty, there were already lines that hinted to the dissolute life Honor Belmuir had indicated. Something about his eyes, a slackness in the mouth and a heightened complexion indicated that the master of the Belmuir’s poorhouse had a less creditable side to his nature than goodwill to all mankind.

  Faro hoped that the dire future his father, the last laird, had predicted, that had made him wisely leave all to his daughter, was being overcome by Sir Hector’s enthusiasm and dedication to being master of his own small community.

  ‘A hundred years ago almost one in seven parishes in the country was soon running a poorhouse, or a “workhouse” as they are more commonly called in England,’ Sir Hector continued, ‘and it was economic to house all their paupers under one roof, and offering what was called the poorhouse test resulted in many fewer claimants as life outside as a free man appeared more attractive, even for the lowest of labourers scraping by on meagre wages.

  ‘The stigma remained, the fear that they were entering a kind of prison for life with no hope of ever getting out meant that it was often a last resort. Some were put off by the formality of an interview with a Relieving Officer, like myself, who regularly visited designated places in each parish and applicants would explain their circumstances, probably hoping for an offer of “out-relief”. If this was refused, an “offers of the house” was provided for the applicant, together with any dependants.’

  Pausing to fill a glass from the crystal decanter on the table, Faro guessed its contents were whisky or brandy. Hector drank deeply before replacing the glass and continuing: ‘Travelling can involve a walk of five or ten miles and after a lengthy admission process, new arrivals are placed in a reception area known as a receiving ward. Come, let me show you.’

  Faro followed him out along one of the corridors where Sir Hector threw open the door into what bore a suspicious resemblance to a hospital ward in its austere appearance.

  The master clearly did not see this as he continued cheerfully, ‘Here their details are taken, their own clothes taken away and put into storage, and a uniform is issued. Then a bath is provided in the washhouse outside, which for many is a new and often a quite terrifying experience. Then they undergo a medical examination, in case they are carrying an infectious disease.’ Glancing at Faro to see how he was taking all this, he said: ‘As you can well imagine, living closely in large numbers, we live in constant fear of infectious diseases, like consumption, which spread like wildfire. In the last year several of our residents have succumbed and died,’ he added sadly, leading the way back into the corridor and closing the door.

  ‘Finally, all admissions have to be formally approved by the Board of Guardians, on which I also serve. We have weekly meetings. Come, Mr Faro, I trust you are not weary. We have more to see.’ As they continued down the corridor he said: ‘One of the most unpopular aspects we have overcome is the separation of male and female, children from parents and whole families living in separate sections with virtually no contact.’

  Opening a door, a rush of fresh air and they were in a three-sided courtyard with a succession of doors and small windows.

  Turning to Faro he smiled proudly. ‘As you see, there is none of that with us, we keep families together so that it is like living in their own familiar home. That is one reason why ours is so very popular. Our poorhouse is not a prison, Mr Faro, as you can see for yourself. Inmates are at liberty to leave at any time, merely giving us notice so that their own clothes can be retrieved and formalities carried out.

  ‘As with entry, however, families have to leave together so that an uncaring man cannot abandon his dependants to our care. They are also, with permission, allowed to leave for a brief period to try and find work outside. We find this is often popular in summer when there are harvests to gather in and fruit to be picked. The old and infirm are merely content and grateful to spend the rest of their days being cared for.’

  As he was speaking, Sir Hector opened yet another door into another corridor, an area larger than the rest. Near to the kitchens, judging by the smell of cooking.

  ‘This building,’ he said ‘was once part of the castle, a modern innovation decided upon by Lord Belmuir some 150 years ago.’ He shook his head. ‘As you see, a rather plain and unattractive addition, which detracted from the original castle built in the sixteenth century. Our father, the late laird, disliked it intensely. It mostly lay empty and we can now provide for 200 persons, thanks to his great plans in transforming it into workshops, stores, a laundry, a bakehouse and even a mortuary.’

  Mention of the mortuary made Faro think of Agatha Simms. How long had she lain there before being rushed off into a pauper’s grave and how many suffered the same fate? Was the master aware of that or was it in the hands of some lowlier member of the administration?

  Sir Hector opened double doors to reveal rows of tables and chairs. ‘This is our dining room, a communal area which serves as a chapel where we have daily prayers, morning and evening.’ And closing the door, ‘No work on Sundays, when I myself officiate at divine service,’ he added proudly. ‘Cleanliness is vital with a large number living together. Daily ablutions from the hand pump in the yard is not for us, we have male and female washrooms and an earth closet, which provides excellent fertiliser for our garden produce. Chamber pots are still accessible for the staff, but there is a water closet similar to that inside the castle.

  ‘Some of our board believes that we should decorate our plain but substantial building, but I am firmly against such a measure, with today’s architectural weakness for turning every new building in Edinburgh into a mini Balmoral Castle.’

  He smiled. ‘As for daily duties, women do domestic duties, cooking, sewing or working in the gardens, with the men producing our extensive and may I say quite famous market produce. And then there is the farm. Pigs kept fattened on kitchen waste, two cows for the milk and chickens for our eggs, taken care of by the women.’

  Pausing, he looked out of one of the passing windows. ‘I would have liked to take you across, but alas, the weather!’ A fine drizzle shadowed the glass.

  Ushering Faro along the corridor, he opened a door and Faro found himself back in the reception area. ‘I hope you have enjoyed our little tour. We like the anxious relative to feel that their loved one being relinquished into our care will be happy and content, and the elderly, if necessary, tenderly nursed to the end of their days with us. The demented, too, are well cared for. They need considerable sympathy and understanding.’

  ‘I believe I saw one of them from the train when I was passing through the halt returning to Edinburgh.’ That remark was safe enough, for the man he had seen with Tibbie that day was certainly not the master of the workhouse.

  About to take his leave, Faro turned and said: ‘There is one other matter on which perhaps you could assist me.’

  ‘Wil
lingly, if I can, Mr Faro.’

  ‘It concerns a young woman, an orphan, whose early days were spent here. We have an acquaintance, a housekeeper, who had it in mind to take her on as a servant after her mistress died.’

  ‘And this housekeeper wishes for a reference, of course.’

  ‘Not exactly. The young woman wrote a letter of acceptance but failed to appear and the housekeeper was very concerned about her non-arrival—’

  ‘Ah yes, sadly that frequently happens,’ Sir Hector interrupted.

  Faro continued: ‘The housekeeper was so anxious that she asked my advice about notifying the police about a missing person enquiry.’

  Sir Hector smiled. ‘A little premature, I’m sure.’

  ‘It was too late. The woman was dead, killed in an accident on the railway.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sir Hector, shaking his head. ‘That poor unfortunate who died by falling off the train in the tunnel. Such an unfortunate accident. I read about it in the newspaper.’

  Faro paused for a moment and continued: ‘As the housekeeper identified her and is prepared to take on the funeral arrangments, perhaps you could assist by supplying some details, date of birth and so forth from your records.’

  Sir Hector considered this, tapped his fingers on the desk and frowned: ‘That would be before I took over the management and I’m afraid I cannot help you, as my predecessor was a little lax in such matters. I will do what I can to trace this Tibbie person but I’m very doubtful if any of our early records still exist.’ He stood up. ‘Now you must excuse me. It has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Faro, and I look forward to welcoming your mother once the paperwork is completed.’

  Sir Hector followed him out to the desk where he said the clerk would take details regarding Mrs Faro. With a slight bow, he departed, leaving Faro the unpleasant duty of giving information he had no intention of fulfilling.

  Toying with the application form and wondering how he could decently escape without committing his mother as a prospective resident, the door burst open and a well-dressed man in his late fifties rushed in, red-faced and very angry.