Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3)

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘Yes, Mamma,’ was Margaret’s dutiful reply.

  ‘And did you meet with anyone else on your travels?’

  ‘I do not believe so. I left shortly after the gentlemen. Wait, though, I saw Mr. Charles Murray on George Street, as I was coming away, and he walked with me to the Tron Kirk.’

  Mrs. Balneavis beamed. She thought again of the paradisiacal Letho, and spring weddings, with Mr. Murray mysteriously free of mourning.

  ‘All that way?’ she prompted.

  ‘Yes, well, he said he was bound for the Grassmarket. An errand to do with an accident to his stable boy.’

  ‘A very responsible young man,’ Mrs. Balneavis decided, after a pause, ‘and confiding towards you. And how was he?’

  ‘Very pleasant and charming, Mamma,’ Margaret replied obediently. The patch was pinned and she began to sew, in the neat, economical stitches that she had learned so young she could not remember learning them. She thought of Mr. Murray and the ready smile that even when it evaded his mouth was trapped in the sideways flicker of his eyes. She thought of their walk along Prince’s Street and up the North Bridge, how he had shortened his stride discreetly to hers even though she felt sure he had business to be about. She thought of her passage up the High Street from the Tron, lingering at the forbidden luxuries of the flower stalls as Murray, bright black in fine mourning, vanished into the crowds of the South Bridge. She remembered delaying about the law courts and coffee houses to greet her father’s friends and acquaintances, smiling at neighbours, feeling the cobbles through the soles of her boots. She looked down past her mending at the sensible dark grey cloth of her winter day dress, purchased not to show wear as warmer velvet would, and she felt like weeping, not for her own fate, but out of pity for the shabby, mended, cosseted and dearly loved family belongings around her that Miss Thomson and Miss Catherine, in their fashionable extravagance, in their brittle wit and their privileged beauty, would have gazed at in proud bewilderment. When her mother left the parlour to talk with the maid, she allowed herself another moment to stare out of the window and see, not the tenements opposite, but dark hair and dark eyes that she had seen in living truth only that afternoon, seen to adore forever – but that she had not, despite her mother’s daydreams, seen on Mr. Charles Murray of Letho.

  Murray almost immediately regretted leaving the amiable Miss Balneavis at the Tron: not, it must be said, for her fair company alone. If he had not had the strong impression that she was tiring of him, his route to the Grassmarket might more easily have gone via the West Bow at the top of the High Street, rather than along the Cowgate Strand, a street he had never liked, or past Greyfriars Kirkyard, the memory of which was a little too fresh in his mind so soon to be revived. He reluctantly selected the Cowgate in preference, and descended by Niddry Street to its cavernous gloom, glad at last to have Dunnet with him. A visit to an old uncle in the decaying gentility of a flat in the Cowgate was one of his earliest memories of Edinburgh, and it was accompanied by memories of the nightmares that followed it, in which his uncle’s stuffed owl had featured significantly.

  The central drain, fortunately, after so little recent rain, was not as deeply flooded as it could be, and the children of the troglodyte denizens played in it quite safely, where at other times they could have been lost in the flow. Murray kept his gaze on his feet and his hands on his pockets, and his passage meandered, moving to the left to avoid a woman seated with her infant in a doorway, right to dodge something fascinatingly putrid a child had just dragged from the drain, left again to circumambulate the curling tail of a staircase outside the ground floor of one of the older tenements, climbing to disappear into the building on the first floor. When he glanced up, sometimes he saw fine buildings with ancient carved lintels in pious Latin or bold Scots, ornamented gables and delicate finials, and sometimes he saw wrecks of tenements thrown together with little love or care, impossible to date to a century ago or last week. But all were tall, all filthy, cliffs that undercut the distant sunshine and barred it from entry. Once, pausing at the foot of the Parliament Stairs, Murray looked up and saw golden light on the fine south window of the Great Hall of the parliament buildings, but it was so far away that it seemed like an insubstantial vision. He was aware, as so often before, that the old town was not a place for which a map was sufficient: an elevation was also essential.

  The same people that bustled around or lurked on corners or sprawled in doorways in the Cowgate spilled into the Grassmarket. Here the street finally broadened, making the air easier to breathe and the heart settle to a steady beat. The stern, iron-crossed buildings of the Temple lands on the south side, built long ago on the property of the Templars and Hospitallers, were as tall as any in the Cowgate, but here the cave-dwellers saw the light of day, the brewers and the innkeepers, the faded gentry, the soldiers with queues of hair they could grease their muskets with, the water caddies with cloth bound about their hands against the rough straps of their barrels, the small traders and the stall holders calling out their wares. Dunnet moved through it all as though through a dream, almost tripping on a protruding front step had not Murray caught his elbow, as they approached the curious assortment of buildings west of the Temple lands. Murray, who had thought that Dunnet knew where Jamie’s parents lived, found out at this point that the groom was as vague as he was himself, so he stopped one of the busy old water caddies and asked her where the Patersons lived. ‘Their son has just died,’ he added, knowing that that would help. The caddie did not know, said that they were not her customers, sir, but passed the question on to an even older woman who pointed them without hesitation to a tenement on the corner of the Vennel, a long stair climbing south from the Grassmarket, and intimated with the aid of very few teeth that the family was on the ground floor. Murray thanked both ladies appropriately and followed the directions.

  The street door of the flat stood open, but Murray knocked and waited for an acknowledging voice before stooping and entering, as awkward here as no doubt Jamie would have been in his own drawing room in Queen Street. The door opened directly into the living room. A woman who sat in a chair by the fire glanced up and rose, alarmed, at the sight of him, and reached across the small room to shake the shoulder of a man crouched on a creepie stool. He looked about him in shock and stumbled to his feet, nodding automatically. Murray bowed, and the woman made a curtsey, both seeking refuge in custom.

  ‘Mrs. Paterson?’ Murray addressed the woman. ‘My name is Murray. My father was until lately your son’s employer, and I have come in his stead, with your permission, to pay my respects.’

  There was no question but that this was the right house. Had he not known it from the piece of black cloth hung over the fireplace, the faded, shiny mourning of the two adults and the near silence of the three or four children about the place, he could not have failed to see in the recess bed the small, pale figure of Jamie, lying as if asleep in his hayloft, his blonde hair brushed and his grave clothes sitting new and crisp about him. There was no coffin yet: his mother, helped no doubt by the daughter only a little older than Jamie, and perhaps a neighbour, had laid him out and washed him and bought the white cloths to make him look his best. Murray, black weepers trailing from the hat in his hands, felt the echoes and the pathetic contrasts until it was almost too much for him to bear.

  ‘Will you sit down, sir?’ asked Mrs. Paterson, showing the seat she herself had vacated, and going to the fire. Murray paused for a second, then explained the shadowy figure behind him.

  ‘May I present William Dunnet, my father’s groom, for whom Jamie worked?’

  Mrs. Paterson bobbed a smaller curtsey and a look of understanding passed across her face. Here was someone of whom she had heard, someone whose presence she could comprehend. Mr. Paterson, bereft of his creepie stool, hovered by the recess bed, staring down wide-eyed at the corpse of his son, disbelief blotting out all other expression from his face. Murray looked at him for a long moment, taking in the older man’s blonde hair and red
dened skin, the cheery blue quilt inadequately covered in cheap black cloth, and then he sat in Mrs. Paterson’s fireside chair. She brought him ale and oatcake with cheese, and served Dunnet with the same before perching on the creepie stool. She was as pale as her husband, though her hair was darker, and her eyes were red-rimmed and dark-ringed from her enforced wakefulness.

  ‘You find us at a quiet time, sir,’ she began cautiously. ‘Our neighbours have been good to us, watching with us last night, but they must needs do their work during the day. They will be back this evening.’

  ‘I make no doubt your neighbours are good to you, when you have lost so fine a boy.’ Murray thought of the neat hayloft, the well-swept stable. ‘I did not know your son well myself, and I am sure that had this tragedy happened before his own death, my father would have raised a fine eulogy for your son. But I can say that he did his work in a manner any man would be proud of, and the other servants weep for him as a friend.’

  Mr. Paterson’s head sank on to his chest, and he pressed one hand to the wall for support. Mrs. Paterson nodded her acknowledgement of Murray’s compliments, and signalled to her daughter to bring the gentlemen more cheese and oatcakes. The oatcakes were homemade, and very fine.

  ‘We were sorry to hear of your own loss, sir, begging your pardon,’ said Mrs. Paterson, with an effort. ‘Jamie always spoke well of him.’

  Murray waved a hand in acknowledgement, and then hoped it had not seemed condescending. He was not helped by the ensuing awkward pause.

  ‘Paterson is a porter for the brewery at the far end of the Cowgate,’ Mrs. Paterson tried again. Murray smiled and nodded, though as Jamie had evidently inherited his light frame from his father he found difficulty in imagining Paterson at one end of a barrel pole. ‘But Jamie was always the one for the horses, ever since he was a bairn. He always said Mr. Murray’s horses were the finest in the New Town.’

  ‘If they were, he contributed to that himself,’ said Murray, though he knew his father would have been eager to take the lion’s share of the credit. ‘He must have found it convenient to visit you, being situated not so far away?’

  ‘He was a good boy. He came every week, and more if Mr. Dunnet here gave him a little time. You were kind to him, Mr. Dunnet, and I am glad to meet you.’

  Dunnet grunted, and his shoulders slumped slightly. She waited for more, but when she saw it was not to come, she went on with arranging oatcakes on a blue and white plate. Murray watched Dunnet’s gaze flicker to the recess bed, and then meet his own eyes, only to drop swiftly to the floor.

  ‘How did he come here?’ asked Murray suddenly.

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’ Mrs. Paterson looked up from the oatcakes, puzzled.

  ‘Jamie. Did he come up the High Street, or down the South Bridge and to Candlemaker Row, or along the Cowgate Strand? Which was his favourite path?’

  Mrs. Paterson sat on a hard chair and gripped its edges, frowning into the fire. Clearly here was one of those gentlemen that was a bit odd, but you had to put up with it because he was a gentleman and quite possibly harmless. And after all, losing his father as he had done, he was probably as distracted by grief as she. In any case, she was happy to talk of her fine son, happy to look over her memories of him and see what had to be refreshed before he was gone completely out of her reach. She, too, glanced at the fair head on the pillow of the recess bed.

  ‘He generally came here along the Cowgate, but went home by the High Street, sir, for he kenned I was worried about him in the Cowgate when it was dark. Besides, he liked to see the lights on the stalls in the High Street and walk by the luckenbooths, taking his time to look about him. You ken what young lads are like, sir. As if he had all the time in the world.’ There was a wretched sound from her husband, who still stood by the bed. He turned, and spread his hands wide.

  ‘Who killed my son, Mr. Murray?’ the man demanded. ‘Why can nobody tell me who killed my son? Accidents happen, aye, and illness, and bairns die like the rest of us die, but what has a child done to get himself murdered? How could he ever have deserved it?’ At this he began to sob, and Mrs. Paterson rose and went to him, taking his hand and holding it close within her own hands, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Murray looked away. Dunnet was staring out of the small window with a look of white-lipped desperation, his knuckles bloodless around the handle of his ale mug. Murray looked away again, and stared at the fire.

  The silence was made more tangible by the mobile contrast of the background noise from the street, and after a long minute Mrs. Paterson freed herself to pour tea from the fireplace kettle for her husband. He obediently sat to drink it and to take an oatcake.

  ‘The burial is tomorrow,’ said Mrs. Paterson at last, trying to sound normal. ‘You or any of your household is most welcome, sir.’

  Murray inclined his head, then rose and felt in his pocket for the handkerchief containing the objects he had found in the hayloft.

  ‘These were Jamie’s, I believe,’ he explained, handing them over. ‘You’ll want to collect, too, everything else you know about – clothes, and so forth. I wasn’t sure, in the dark.’

  She stared at him as she took the warm linen package from his hand, and then looked down at it, confused.

  ‘I think,’ added Murray, ‘that they were his treasures. He had laid them out very carefully along the window ledge.’

  She undid the package then, carefully, and took the pieces out one by one, passing them each to her husband, the leather and the driftwood and the shells and pebbles. At some she gave a little smile and nod of recognition, and at others a shrug. But when she came to the button, she picked it out and held it up to the light.

  ‘I do not know this. This is too fine, sir, he should not have kept it.’

  ‘It seems to me that it was lost in the street, and had been there for some time when he spied it.’ Murray thought the button of little consequence, but it was causing Mrs. Paterson some anxiety, and she turned to her husband for support.

  ‘John, this was not something we knew he had, was it?’ Paterson shook his head. She continued. ‘It may be gold. It may be valuable. Perhaps it fell from a waistcoat of Mr. Murray’s. I mean – your father, sir,’ she qualified, looking up at him.

  ‘I must say I do not recall it,’ Murray replied. Rose pink was not one of his father’s preferred colours, but who knew what he might have worn in the last four years? He had not been the good son, visiting his father once a week.

  ‘Perhaps from one of his friends, then?’ She was not to be swayed. ‘Jamie should not have kept it. Please take it, sir, and you may find its owner grateful.’ She held it out firmly, and he could not without discourtesy refuse it. He replaced the button in his pocket, but declined the return of his handkerchief.

  ‘Jamie was in the habit of showing you his prizes, then, was he?’ he asked, with an encouraging smile.

  ‘Yes, oh, yes, sir. He was forever picking up other people’s leavings! He would come with his breeches pockets full of all sorts of trifles, half of them still wet from the drain in the Cowgate.’ The Patersons both smiled in recollection.

  ‘When did he visit you last?’

  ‘Tuesday evening, sir.’ She gave the answer quickly, having gone over it in her head already, the last time they had seen their living son. ‘He came with sad news, for Mr. Murray had died and Mr. Dunnet had told him he could run here and tell us, for he had an errand to Mr. Blair’s stableman in George’s Square, and he came here on the way back.’

  Mrs. Paterson seemed still to find talking a release, and Murray decided to press on, gently.

  ‘And how did he seem to be, then?’ he asked.

  ‘He was just his normal self, sir. Sad, you ken, about Mr. Murray, sad indeed, but apart from that he was just –’ She stopped. ‘I – I beg your pardon, sir, but you ken yourself – you can be fine the one minute and the next you remember – everything you have lost.’ She bowed her head, and Murray realised his time was over. He set his ale mug on t
he table.

  ‘I must leave you now, Mrs. Paterson. I shall pass on your kind invitation to my household. And thank you for your hospitality here.’ He bowed, and the Patersons rose and responded. Even Dunnet managed a stiff nod, and gave a last lingering look towards the recess bed.

  At the door, Murray was struck by a thought.

  ‘Do you know the family of a Matthew Muir, a notary? I understand he lived near the Grassmarket.’

  ‘So he did, till recently.’ Mrs. Paterson tipped a thumb backwards. ‘He and his brother Andrew lived just up the Vennel till last month. They flitted at the New Year to the Canongate, I believe, west of the Kirk. There’s no other family with them, that I kent of.’

  ‘The Canongate, very well. Thank you, Mrs. Paterson, and God be with you and your family.’ He bowed again to her curtsey, and left, followed by Dunnet. His head was busy with thoughts, facts, beginning to piece one or two things together, though he still felt the great dark chasm in his mind trying to suck in his thoughts. He turned to walk back east along the Grassmarket to the West Bow and the steep curve of the ascent to the Lawnmarket and High Street. Their shadows walked far ahead of them: the sun, after its unaccustomed burst of energy, was already resting on its elbows on the horizon, and if he took the diversion he intended, by the time they reached the Canongate it would be dark.

  It was not a logical diversion, but the matter had been preying on his mind. He led Dunnet back down the Lawnmarket but instead of crossing straight over to the Canongate, he crossed South Bridge and entered the familiar half-finished walls of the College. At this time, Henry and Robert should be sitting in a lecture on natural philosophy, and he just wanted to satisfy himself that that was indeed where they were.

  He left Dunnet in the quadrangle and tiptoed up some steep wooden stairs to enter, silently, a door at the back of the lecture room. He glanced around quickly, doing his best to attract no attention, looking for two well-kent heads or, at best, one: he would not have been surprised to find Henry here on his own.