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

by Lexie Conyngham

  He was surprised, however, to find that Robert was there on his own, slumped in his seat and playing with his slate. Where was Henry? Murray was so taken aback that he almost called out to Robert to ask where his brother was, but shut his mouth and retreated just in time, closing the door softly.

  Out in the quadrangle he paused, puzzled. Where on earth could Henry be? He loved natural philosophy, and never missed a lecture anyway. He frowned, and was about to leave, hoping to ask the boys later, when he heard a little sigh from behind one of the tall columns at the front of the building. Following some instinct, he leaned around the column, and found Henry, head pressed against the cold stone, propped over a pool of his own vomit. His face was white as a handkerchief.

  ‘Henry! What’s the matter?’

  ‘It must have been something I ate,’ said Henry, just as shocked to see his tutor peering round at him. ‘Dinner ... something like that.’

  ‘You’d better come home.’

  ‘No, sir, I’ll be fine now.’ He did not look it, and Murray had severe misgivings as he watched Henry pull himself upright, wipe his lips with his handkerchief, and disappear back towards the college door. He would have to write to Lord Scoggie: he was far from sure that Edinburgh was agreeing with the boys, and anyway, was it right to be keeping them in a strange house full of death?

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Scoggie?’

  Henry glanced round at the sound of his name, but the only person he could see of his acquaintance was Patrick Armstrong, the bespectacled mathematician. He was presumably on his way to a late afternoon lecture, although Patrick Armstrong was quite capable of turning up at this hour for a morning lecture and wondering where his classmates were. He was about to dismiss what he had heard as a mistake when Armstrong called him again, and came trotting towards him. Henry halted, happy to have a few more moments in the cool air, and spent the second or two it took Armstrong to reach him – Armstrong gave little time to exercise and was not, in any case, naturally designed for exertion – in pondering what on earth could have provoked the man to go out of his way to speak to him. Patrick Armstrong was two years above him, and Henry would ordinarily have been prepared to wager that as he himself was not a mathematical theorem Armstrong would have been hard pressed to remember he existed. However, here he was.

  ‘Scoggie, good day.’ They bowed. ‘I hope I find you in good health.’

  ‘Yes, I thank you, and you?’

  Armstrong nodded dismissively, as though health were really not a consideration.

  ‘Is the news true?’

  Henry frowned, wondering what he could mean, and almost instantly decided that only one thing could possibly have had this extraordinary effect on Patrick’s social aptitude.

  ‘There’s been an invasion? The French are at Dunbar?’ he demanded, wondering if Robert would run off to fight them. His heart bucked with alarm.

  ‘The French?’ asked Armstrong, frowning in turn. ‘Why on earth should they be at Dunbar?’ Henry’s heart settled, but his breath was temporarily abstracted by Patrick’s general innocence. ‘No, it’s not the French. Was Mr. Murray’s stable lad found dead last night?’

  ‘Dead ...’ said Henry, feeling his head reel now.

  ‘Murdered!’ Armstrong’s eyes, behind his spectacles, grew glassed like a fish’s. ‘Is it true, then? What do you think it means?’

  ‘Means?’ asked Henry, now feeling rather stupid himself.

  ‘Well, Mr. Murray your tutor’s father died, and the circumstances were, shall we say, open to interpretation. And now this is a definite murder! Do you not think it a strange coincidence?’

  ‘A very strange coincidence,’ said Henry firmly. ‘So strange I think it unlikely to have any significance at all.’ If he said it firmly enough, it must be true. ‘Where did you hear about this?’

  ‘Oh, my mother told me when I went home to eat.’ He seemed to break off, and Henry waited politely for him to continue. There was a prolonged pause, and he was eventually forced to carry on himself.

  ‘The funeral went well yesterday, did it not? A fine turn out.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Armstrong stopped again, drew breath to add something but again did not continue.

  ‘I trust your family reached home safely after supper?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite without mishap.’

  Henry, who was not at his best, felt as if he were feeling around on the floor for something he might not have dropped in the first place.

  ‘It was an honour to meet your family – we had had no idea that Mr. Murray was an acquaintance there.’

  ‘Oh, yes – I had not recognised him when he brought you to classes. I had not seen him for some time.’

  ‘Well,’ Henry gathered his notebooks firmly in his hand and dabbed at his lips again. ‘I must return to my lecture, if you will be so good as to excuse me. Good day to you, Armstrong.’

  ‘Ah, yes, good day.’ Henry left him standing in the college quadrangle, still with the air of being about to speak. Henry wondered if it would help if he were to go back and count at Armstrong for a while, until the soothing sounds of the numbers brought him back to himself. Then he went behind a column, and was sick again.

  Although the Muirs had not lived long in the Canongate, the brief notoriety of Matthew Muir led to their flat being well known, and Murray obtained directions to it without difficulty. It was on the first floor of a clean, bright stair with few of the lingering odours that so often permeated an area without direct ventilation. As at the Patersons’, the stair door was ajar, and Murray knocked, quite loudly, to be heard above the row from within.

  For the third time in two days, Murray found himself in a dead room. In this case the corpse, that of an unexpectedly young man, was already kisted and the coffin lay open on a fir table at one side of the room. The coffin lid was propped beside it, and the screws lay handy on the table, ready to be slipped in by the joiner. He was squatting on the floor, tools at hand, and a tankard of ale at his mouth. The walls were hung in tatty black, some of which seemed to have had a past lift as a woman’s skirts, and already parts of it had come away, giving the impression that someone had lurched against it and grabbed at it for support. Every available seat and most of the floor was taken up by bodies scarcely more lively than the corpse itself, except for the constant flow of unhushed conversation and one man sitting cross-legged by the hearth, showing very neatly the inadequacy of his breeches in several respects, and singing a dirge-like appreciation of an individual named ‘Fair Footed Nellie’, apparently addressed to the poker.

  The one visible armchair in the room was taken up by a man with overlong hair and disjointedly sprawling legs, whose new black coat had already ripped under one outflung arm with the pressure of too little cloth or too hasty stitching. He clutched a whisky bottle in one hand at an angle that would have proved disastrous had there been more whisky in the bottle. He fixed Murray with the over-accurate stare of a man with only one unsteady finger on the reins of sobriety, and raised his voice above the din.

  ‘Come in, come in! Help yourself, everyone else in Edinburgh’s doing it!’

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Muir?’ asked Murray, hesitating before picking his way over the first few revellers by the doorway.

  ‘Oh, aye. But there’s two of us, ye ken. There’s myself, Mr. Andrew Muir, and there’s my brother, Mr. Matthew Muir, late lamented, over yonder in that fine box. Here, Matt,’ he addressed the corpse from a distance, ‘you’ve attracted some fine gentlemanly friends to drink their fill at my expense!’ He turned his precarious focus back towards Murray. ‘Who are you, then? Did you ken my brother well or did he owe you money?’

  ‘I did not know him at all,’ Murray replied honestly. Andrew Muir’s eyes blurred and refocused.

  ‘Man, you’re the bold one. Have a glass on me.’ He waved his bottle grandly.

  ‘My name is Murray of Letho. My father was injured, I believe, in the same unfortunate accident in which your brother met his dea
th. I came to offer my sympathies, though I must confess to being surprised that the funeral has not already taken place.’

  ‘Come here, then, Murray of wherever, and I’ll tell you. Where’s your father, then?’ he asked as Charles decided to obey the summons. The man was beyond half-drunk and incapable of standing, and although none of the other mourners seemed to have taken any notice of their conversation as yet, it was not comfortable continually to be shouting across the room.

  ‘My father died of his injuries on Sunday,’ he replied, once again making it real for himself. He worked his way into a half-space beside the armchair, folding his lengthy frame down towards the bereaved brother.

  ‘And you’ve buried him?’ Muir tried to look up at him, but could not succeed without squinting.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday. Aye. Well, we had to wait for him.’ He jerked his precious bottle at a man in the opposite corner, whose face was whiskered and dimpled with fat. He seemed sound asleep.

  ‘Your own father?’ Murray hazarded, though there was no resemblance.

  ‘Ach!’ Muir spat. ‘That’s no our father, he’s dead long since. That’s John Pollock, Matt’s master.’

  ‘His master?’ Light was beginning to dawn. ‘Then your brother was still an apprentice lawyer?’

  ‘Aye, he was. The newspapers picked him up as a notary, and I had no desire to correct them. What difference does it make now?’

  Murray nodded in polite agreement.

  ‘So how did Mr. Pollock delay the funeral?’

  ‘Old bastard.’ Muir offered this almost as an alternative name. ‘He’s been at death’s door these past three years, and knocking to get in. He went up to Montrose one winter on business and came down with who kens what, and he’s been there ever since. Now he chooses this week to be restored to the land of the living, which is as well for him as Matt was the only one seeing to his interests here, and with him away there’d be no one very much interested in his interests.’ He began to chuckle at his own wit, and the chuckle turned into laughter verging on hysteria which rendered him even more useless for a number of minutes. He began to recover as a small, frightened-looking woman of indeterminate position in the household came up with a tray on which were ale and oatcakes for Dunnet and Murray, and a chunk each of heavy funeral cake. Muir scowled at her, all laughter gone, and went to slap her arm, but she dodged him.

  ‘No, Dandy Muir, I’ll no have you so unkindly to a guest as that – and a gentleman, too. For all you may say about poor Matt, he knew how to be polite to gentlefolk.’ She turned her back defiantly and scrambled over the mourners the way she had come, to what seemed to be some kind of kitchen, where she vanished once more. Murray took a mouthful of indifferent oatcake and diluted it with ale.

  ‘The woman will have me eaten out of all my money,’ Muir muttered. ‘So here we are, anyway, Mr. Murray of Wherever, sir,’ he added loudly so as to be heard in the kitchen, ‘on Thursday, and my brother’s no keeping very well.’ Murray had already observed the twists of half-burned brown paper that had been wafted against the smell of decay. The flowers by the coffin must not have come cheap either, in January.

  ‘Do you know if your brother was acquainted with my father? Charles Murray of Letho, that is.’

  ‘I never heard the name before,’ Dandy admitted. ‘But then I didn’t always listen to what Matt had to say. He was always the one for the wild plans that would make his fortune – with the least effort on his own part, I should say – but who’s paying for his funeral? I’m no saying he never had any money, but it never lasted long.’

  Murray, perceiving a slight change in Muir’s attitude, perhaps a play for sympathy, pressed on.

  ‘Did he tell you where he was going on the night he died?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Dandy, in tones of disgust. ‘He was away to meet a gentleman, one he’d met before. He was his partner, or so he said, in something big, something that would make him all the money he’d ever dreamed of – and that would have been a fair bit, for Matt was good at the dreaming. But what gentleman would ever have taken Matt as a partner? A half-finished apprentice with a sick master? What could he have done for them? It wasna you, was it?’ he asked, suddenly suspicious.

  ‘No, no,’ said Murray, ‘I was in Kirk o’Field.’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Muir seemed reassured, and did not ask what Murray was asking himself – what about his father? ‘Matt had ideas above himself. He was at me for months to move to a better flat. Well, the Vennel was good enough for me, but Matt says no, the Canongate has a nicer ring to it. So here we are, and there he is, and in no position to appreciate it. You can be kisted as well in the Vennel as you can in the Canongate.’ He flung his arms about to emphasise his point. Murray leaned away from the increasingly mobile whisky bottle. ‘Now me, I’m a tinsmith. A master tinsmith, mark you, my apprenticeship served and I’m in the Guild. But that was not good enough for our Matt. He had a fine clerk’s hand, and a fine way with the gentry, and he said he was in business with one of the finest gentlemen in town. That’s what he said, but I never met the gentleman, and ach, Matt was all talk.’

  Having partaken of the funeral meats in the form of oatcake and funeral cake, that even now were stuck solidly between throat and stomach, Murray felt obliged to attend the interment itself, particularly as the assistant minister of the Canongate Kirk appeared warily at the open door as Murray himself was about to leave. Since Dunnet appeared not to care, Murray decided that a little burial would do him good – after all, he had been too drunk to attend Murray’s father’s interment. They stood, therefore, while others did little more than lounge, as the assistant minister said grace and the joiner screwed down the coffin lid, accompanied by a steady muttering of imprecations as his hand slipped again and again. The minister affected not to hear, but drew the grace to a hasty close. He stood back to remain in prayer with the few women in the room, while the men who could stand – around three quarters of them – rose and straightened their black coats and five came forward to carry the coffin. A sixth had evidently been selected previously but was now hors de combat with his knees tucked up cosily to his stomach under the fir table. Dandy, rapidly sobering, replaced him hurriedly with a man of around the same height, and the coffin was manoeuvred down the closely curled stair and out into the street.

  Here, as the cold air hit the mourners, one or two fell by the wayside and sat heavily on the road, or slumped in defeat against walls. The rest mustered, propping each other up in comradely fashion, and led by the coffin, they began the short walk to the kirkyard. The body was swiftly interred, the earth filled in, and the whisky bottle brought out again, causing several of the mourners to lurch for the nearest discreet corner to relieve, one way or another, their overburdened stomachs. Murray replaced his hat and nodded to Dunnet, and began the walk back up the Canongate to North Bridge and across to the New Town and home.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about that poor wee lad,’ said Mrs. Mack suddenly, slamming down her pastry cutter. ‘I just can’t get it out of my head.’

  Mrs. Chambers, who had come into the kitchen ostensibly to return a teacup from her room, was lingering near the fire, looking as if she would love to fidget with something.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ she agreed. ‘We were all just starting to get used to the idea of Mr. Murray leaving us – although there’ll never be another like him, God rest him, and I miss him at every turn – but the bairn dying like that is just too much, coming on top of the other.’

  Mrs. Mack pulled a handkerchief from behind her apron and applied it to her tiny eyes, then stuffed it quickly back and took up her cutter again. From the scullery, Iffy and Effy could be heard sobbing softly as they prepared vegetables. There was a clatter of buckets from the maids’ room next door, followed by a step at the door and Mary returned from seeing to the study fire, settled herself near a tallow candle and took up her mending. After a moment she looked out from under her triangular ey
ebrows and surveyed the rest of the room, but when Mrs. Chambers glanced at her, Mary’s eyes were only on her mending. Mrs. Mack looked hard at her.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ she said sharply. ‘I ken what you’re thinking, but don’t say it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mary innocently.

  ‘You Islanders with your un-Christian-like ideas, that’s what I mean. You gar my flesh grue.’ She scooped the pastry shapes efficiently on to a baking sheet, and waddled round the table to slide them into the closed-in oven.

  ‘All I said was where there are two deaths, there’ll be a third,’ said Mary, not looking up. ‘That’s not only an Island saying.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ Mrs. Mack restrained the urge to slam the oven door. She checked through the glass at the pastries, and wiped her hands on a cloth. ‘Iffy and Effy have had their teeth yattering since you said that this morning, and everything they touch is sodden with tears. And you’ve me looking in dark corners and over my shoulder, too.’ She shuddered expressively.

  ‘It was quite an upsetting thing to say,’ agreed Mrs. Chambers, ‘but we ought perhaps not to take it too seriously, Mrs. Mack. I’m sure Mary did not wish to cause you distress, did you, Mary?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mary amiably. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Mack.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Mrs. Mack.

  Robbins appeared and at almost the same moment the bell rang for the front door.

  ‘That’ll be the master,’ he remarked, and turned back to climb the stairs to the hall. Murray was already in, removing his hat and gloves, and Robbins, who was something below average height, reached up to help him off with his coat. Dunnet had vanished to the stables.

  ‘Mr. Blair sent round a letter for you, sir.’ Robbins went to the hall table and brought the letter on a tray. Murray took it and tore round the wax carefully.