Robert blinked and stared at his brother.
‘Who’d have thought our poor old tutor owns this?’ He waved a hand around.
‘I suppose.’ Henry wondered if he could go to visit his ferrets. They had been removed to the stables after an incident with a maid.
‘Do you think it’ll be good food today? I’m starving,’ Robert added, but Henry did not reply.
Mr. Blair was torture to shave. Robbins was used to the broad, smooth face of old Mr. Murray, who sat perfectly still and silent, rigorous with physical discipline. Mr. Blair jiggled endlessly, and the folds of untidy flesh that plumped out Mr. Blair’s jawline were tricky. He also sighed, talked and occasionally whistled, but despite all this, Robbins decided he quite like the old piece of buckram. Mr. Blair asked interested questions, and found out more about Robbins’ work and how he felt about it in twenty minutes than Mr. Murray would have done or cared to do in years. And while they talked, Charles stared from his window above at the dawn touching the cold, grey waters of the Forth.
People began to arrive, summoned by the letters, around eleven. Charles left the dead room again soon after, and went to the drawing room to see who had answered his letters. The room was already crowded, knotted with subdued groups. He almost fled at the door, but he was too slow and those who saw him drew him into the room, growing more solemn at the sight of him. Some muttered a sympathetic remark when he approached, others simply shook his hand, or some of the older women gave him a little squeeze on the upper arms, careful not to dislodge their shawls and wraps before the room warmed up.
Charles tried to find faces he was particularly expecting, not so easy when he had not seen any of them for at least four years. Most of the guests were friends of his father’s from his days as an advocate, notably the Armstrongs, the Thomsons, the Balneavises and John Douglas, a close circle with whom he had stayed friendly even after he had inherited Letho and a fortune. Some of his acquaintance had not been so lucky.
Andrew Balneavis was there, with his plump, cheerful wife and one or two of their everlasting brood of children, released for the day from a close set of tiny chambers in the Old Town that served as office and home alike. Their clothes were not the most elegant, and Balneavis’ elbows were shining a little in the lamplight. Mrs. Balneavis had not the figure to be flattered by the girlish, high-waisted fashion, particularly when her dress had been economically cut. Nevertheless they and their children were relentlessly smiling, clustered together, looking as out of place at a January funeral as a starving undertaker would look at a July wedding.
John Douglas still lived in the Old Town, too, but had elected, not without some considerable temptation to the contrary, to remain unmarried. Narrow and swarthy, he sat silent with David Thomson and Alistair Blair’s widowed sister, Mrs. Freeman, conveniently, for the lady, close to a dish of sugar biscuits. There had been some gossip, Charles remembered, many years ago, that Andrew Balneavis had tried to make a match between Douglas and Mrs. Freeman, from which David Thomson had managed to extract a reluctant groom. All the interested parties had ended in laughter except for John Douglas himself, who had seemed to take it as a sign that any connexion with the fair sex was bound to lead him into the receipt of favours he could never fully repay.
David Thomson was clever, witty and comfortably handsome, but in all these he was outshone by his wife. Kitty Fleming, slender in fine black with seed pearls on her matching slippers, was posing with her sister and their daughters by one of the long windows, as if expecting to be sketched for The Muses Bereft, or Naiads in Sorrow. Her sister Elizabeth Fleming was married to Archibald Armstrong, and the families were close. Miss Catherine Armstrong, seventeen years old and just recently out, was particularly well-polished this morning, perfectly aware that black flattered her complexion immensely, and utterly conscious of every angle of her throat and cheekbones in the winter light of the window. She was at no disadvantage, therefore, when there was a movement at the door and the Dundases entered. Never mind whether or not Charles was in the room: now the social event could begin.
The Dundases made a grand procession, parents and sons, and walked as if they knew it. Touched by some of the fine appearance of his distinguished cousin, Lord Melville, William Dundas had built his career on his looks, his name, and his wife’s money. Lady Sarah Dundas, daughter of an earl, had been the greatest beauty in Scotland in her day, toasted even in London and Bath, but Dundas had proved the perfect complement to her and the pair were never found wanting in any elegance. Their sons, Harry, Gavin and William James, were as yet bachelors, and there were not many young ladies in the room or in any other part of Edinburgh who would not be prepared to take on the name of Dundas for any of these three. Charles knew the youngest a little, having sometimes played with him as a child, but he saw the elder two still with the respect that one associates with the glory of those so far as three or six years older than you when you are young. In the same way, he knew Miss Balneavis and her older siblings, but as mere infants of nine and ten when he was already a man of fourteen. Patrick Armstrong he knew, and knew that he, like Henry and Robert, was missing lectures at the University today to be standing sombre in the drawing room. For Robert, this was little sacrifice, but for scholarly Henry, and for Patrick, driven by a passion for mathematics, it was akin to withholding a pipe from a dedicated smoker, and he fidgeted with his spectacles and played with his watch chain as though carrying out complex calculations on the abacus of its links.
Charles, feeling like a storm cloud on the horizon, wondered when to start. He badly needed his father to come up behind him and take his rightful place as host. Everyone seemed so beautiful, so elegant, so sophisticated: he felt his four years in the country like mud on his breeches. After a moment, he heard the door creak behind him and Dr. Inglis, who had had pressing duties at home, returned.
‘Should we – that is, would you do us the honour of saying grace, sir?’ Charles asked. The room, already quiet, hushed still further, and gentlemen who had been seated rose, folding their hands before them. The clock on the mantelpiece gave a muffled musical clink for the quarter hour, and Dr. Inglis cleared his throat.
The clock had clinked, pointedly, twice more when the Amen was finally said: Dr. Inglis, his status, style and indeed stature precluding any attempt to encourage brevity, had toured a wide range of subjects with a loose association with Charles Murray of Letho and mortality in general, and by twenty minutes to twelve Gavin Dundas, who had had a small bet with his brother William James concerning the number of times foreign missions might be mentioned, had won eight shillings. There was a responding Amen, not quite in unison, across the drawing room; shoulders relaxed, devoutly lowered heads rose, and Archibald Armstrong was nudged discreetly into wakefulness by his wife. Her sister caught her eye and raised her eyebrows sympathetically.
The servants began to produce the first of the onslaught of traditional funeral dishes that every prosperous household was expected to serve, cheese, cold meat, and porter. Charles took one look, and felt sick.
Out of the corner of his eye Henry saw the tall, dark shadow of his tutor Mr. Murray slip out of the room, and knew he was going back to his watch downstairs. He was standing with Robert near the Dundas gentlemen, and he heard the middle one, Gavin, muttering the words ‘Eight shillings, I think,’ at Willie Jack, the youngest. Willie Jack, porter at his lips, sputtered slightly and looked as if he would dispute Gavin’s calculations, but saw his father’s eye on him and swallowed, with difficulty. Henry and Robert had been introduced to the Dundases and made much of – their father was a lord, after all – but they had already recognised Willie Jack from the university, and knew that they had to be respectful to this family or suffer the consequences.
In conspiracy with the good fire blazing at each end of the room, the porter was having its effect even on those who had judiciously broken their fast before arriving at the Murrays’ house. A few sporadic remarks, mostly concerning Charles Murray, Dr. Inglis’ grace or the weath
er, broke the silence like a swimmer slipping cautiously into a cold river. Conversation, hushed, tested the water, backed off, tried again a little more bravely, failed again. Henry and Robert went to talk to Patrick Armstrong, whom they knew a little. The waters rose gradually around them.
Chapter Two
After a suitable interval, Robbins nodded at the other servants and they cleared the table of the meat, cheese and porter, leaning back against the weight of the stacked dishes. Another wave of conversation in the room rose a little, still solemn, but ebbed again when the servants returned with trays of shortbread and glasses of rum, the next service in the relentless waves of funeral meats. The warm scent of the spirit mixed with the sweetness of the shortbread fought briefly with the aftermath of porter and cheese, struggled, and overcame. Robbins directed the two manservants and two maids, crisp in fresh mourning livery, with the air of a man who wants it to be thought his job is difficult, however easily he does it.
Once the second service was distributed, Robbins and the others had a moment or two to return to the kitchen and have their own funeral meats. Robbins led the way back down to the basement, aware as he went of how the four behind him relaxed by degrees the further they were from the drawing room. William gave a little skip to land flat-footed as hard as possible on the stone-flagged hall, and once past the solemnifying door of the dead room and safely on to the back stairs, Daniel ran his buttoned cuff loudly along the stair rods. Robbins turned and scowled at him past the maids, which stopped the noise, at least, though the gesture was felt rather than seen in the dim passage. Ahead, the kitchen’s candles and fire put out feelers of light towards them through the open doorway. Robbins, the girls and the manservants were drawn into it, each silhouetted briefly against it as they passed into the room whose heat, on a day like today, was a brutal shock. The cook, acclimatised, was at the table, pulling brown paper and string from a series of dark fruity cakes and occasionally slapping the hands of the two kitchen maids who, while ostensibly helping her, picked stray currants from the paper and conveyed them almost absently to their mouths. The cook looked up at Robbins, alarm in her little eyes.
‘They’re no ready for the fourth service yet, are they?’
‘No, no,’ said Robbins, ‘it’s our turn for a wee bit.’ He fetched himself some of the cheese and ale laid out at the other end of the bleached table, and ate the cheese as he stood. William and Daniel seized their share – Daniel perhaps slightly more than his share – and they retreated to a couple of creepie stools in a quiet corner like dogs with a bone, wary of being disturbed. Jennet pecked at a morsel of cheese while Mary, tall and dark, took her draught of ale like a man, then offered the jug again to Robbins and to the groom Dunnet as he sat by the fire.
‘Any well-kent faces?’ Dunnet leaned forward, staring oddly at Robbins. Robbins swallowed his cheese and reflected.
‘I think they’re all well-kent, in this house, anyway. The Thomsons and the Armstrongs and the Dundases – who were late, of course – the Balneavises, Mr. Douglas, about seven parts of the Faculty of Advocates and their ladies, a few merchants. Mr. Scott is here, which would do us some honour were he not so generally kind. Mr. Hammond has stooped to attend. Oh, and Mr. George, who was in town from Fife anyway. He was good enough to pass on his regards to all who know him in the servants’ apartments.’
The cook sniffed.
‘And well he might,’ she snapped. ‘From all I hear, there are a few servants’ apartments around the East Neuk he kens better than most masters.’ She began slicing cake forcibly, using her left hand to press the end of the blade firmly downwards. ‘Take heed, Effy,’ she said in parenthesis to one of the kitchen maids, ‘cut the cake straight down to the table. It’s no a loaf of bread to be sawed up like a piece of firewood.’ Effy tried, but omitted to extract her fingers from below the descending blade, and there was a moment’s diversion as a cloth was found to stop the blood and Mrs. Mack, tutting, trimmed the edges of the cake where she felt it might be stained.
‘Aye, he was a good master, our one,’ she continued, following her own train of thought.
‘Aye, I suppose,’ Robbins responded, his mind on calculating the number of port wine bottles to be opened.
‘You suppose?’ growled Dunnet from his chair, his face reddened in the firelight. ‘You suppose? You’re an awful young man to be in your position of responsibility in a household, with many an older man still cleaning boots, and just supposing you had a good master!’ Robbins raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Dunnet stared into the fire, and took a long draught of ale. ‘I mind when his old horse Juniper was having her first foal, and no doing so well out of it. All night we sat with her, and when the foal came it was back end foremost.’ He ignored Jennet’s genteel little gasp and Mrs. Mack’s tutting at such stableyard details. ‘He was there with her and as clarty as me and the farrier when we brought that foal out, and to see his face when mare and foal were seen to be living and breathing was pure joy. And I’ll tell you, Henry Robbins,’ he turned and waved his ale jug at Robbins, ‘I made a friend that night, where I looked only to find a master, and that’s why, that’s why it was me he chose to walk with him of an evening, and I’m proud to say it.’ His dark face contorted into a ferocious scowl. Jennet gave another little squeak. Iffy and Effy were transfixed, clinging on to each other’s apron fronts, blood still dripping from Effy’s finger. William and Daniel, mouths open, waited eagerly for a fight. Mary, thoughtful, chewed on her cheese and watched Robbins. The clean, hard planes of his face were cut sharp in the unevenly lit room, his gaze on the floor, standing very still.
There was a scuffle at the door and the moment passed. Jamie, the stable boy, smelling strongly of horse, scuffed his boots across the flag floor and reported to Dunnet that all the guests’ horses were watered and warm. Oblivious to the tension that his arrival had deflated, he went on,
‘And Patie next door says that Mr. George’s groom is going back up to Fife tomorrow and could take any horses back up to Letho, if you were to ask him.’
With Dunnet safely distracted, Mrs. Mack nodded and tried the conversation again.
‘Aye, a good man. And a good church man, too.’
Iffy nudged Effy, who giggled.
‘He gave us our names, too,’ said Iffy unexpectedly.
‘Oh, aye?’ said Daniel, managing to invest it with a certain indecent inflexion. Iffy, innocently, was encouraged.
‘When our Ma was expecting us, our Da was thinking about enlisting because he wanted to before when the land was so bad but then the land was better and then Ma didn’t want him to go but he thought he would and then she was expecting us and all the others weren’t old enough anyway.’
‘Well, they weren’t,’ whispered Effy, as though someone had objected.
‘And then when we were born, well before, because he thought there’d be only one of us –’
‘He could only live in hope,’ muttered Mrs. Mack.
‘Mr. Murray said he was like A – ga – memnon,’ she said carefully, ‘and if we were a girl we should be called Iphigenia, so I am. But then there was two of us, so he said we should be Iffy and Effy, so we are.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said William, inspired by Daniel. Daniel jiggled his stool forward.
‘I always had my doubts about that story. I mean, he was taking a bit of an interest, wasn’t he?’
Iffy looked puzzled. Mrs. Mack slammed her ale jug on the table and snapped,
‘We’ll have no talk like that here, young man!’
‘Like what?’ Daniel was all wide eyes, glinting in the shadows. ‘Well, I’ll give Mr. Murray this: he always remembered your name. I’ve heard tell of masters who call all their servants John or Jean, because they couldn’t fash themselves to remember.’
‘Mr. Charles remembers, too. Or Mr. Murray now, we should say.’ Robbins drew open another port wine bottle, and drove William and Daniel to the door with a jerk of his head. Mary and Jennet took up the plates of fruit ca
ke and preceded them into the dim passage, accustomed feet finding the dark steps with no call for a candle.
‘Aye, I wonder what kind of master he’ll make?’ Mrs. Mack asked of no one in particular as she handed the folded brown papers from the cakes to Effy to put away. ‘Now, what next? Where did you put the currant bread, girl? It’s nearly the half hour already.’ Iffy flapped a hand to her mouth and scuttled into the pantry.
‘So will he stay in town or go and live in Letho?’ Mr. Dundas asked generally, taking a large piece of fruitcake between fine fingers. The conversation was definitely thriving now.
‘He’ll stay in town,’ said David Thomson, as if it were obvious. ‘He’s a young man, and he’s been off in the country for four years – of course he’ll want to stay in town.’
‘He might have acquired a taste for the country way of life,’ suggested Archibald Armstrong, with just the least hint of wistfulness.
‘What was he doing there, anyway?’ asked Dundas, unable to fathom why anyone might acquire such a taste. Thomson stared into the fire for a moment.
‘Well, he won’t have much putting in order to do, here or at Letho,’ he remarked, knowing Murray’s affairs better than Dundas. ‘I was talking about this very thing with Lord Braeburn yesterday. Old Murray never let much slip by him, and it isn’t as if he was ill for long.’
‘No, it was very sudden,’ agreed Armstrong.
‘Thank the Lord,’ said Dundas absently. ‘He didn’t suffer long.’
‘It’s a fine estate, right enough,’ said Thomson, after a respectful pause. ‘He’s done well out of it.’
‘And by it,’ added Armstrong. ‘From what I hear, when his grandfather had it first, he chose his tenants himself, and like the farmstock they almost all bred true. And Murray’s father rebuilt the steading and half the house himself.’
‘Fancied himself a farmer, did he?’ asked Dundas. Thomson looked at him expressionlessly, his globular eyes wide.
Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3) Page 2
