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

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘You will be courteous to Mr. Douglas this evening, dear Ella, won’t you?’ asked her mother, innocently. ‘You know he is a good friend of your father’s, and of your uncle Thomson’s.’

  ‘Yes, Mamma,’ said Ella politely.

  Mrs. Armstrong sighed. She had heard that particular politeness before.

  ‘And who else is to be there?’ she asked.

  ‘Some female cousins of Mr. Dundas’ mother, I believe, from Harrogate. A mother and two daughters.’

  ‘Hum. Here in search of husbands, no doubt!’ said Mrs. Armstrong, somewhat hypocritically.

  ‘And I believe that Mr. Murray has been invited.’ Another significant look passed between the sisters, but this time, Catherine Armstrong did look slightly interested. After all, whatever she and Davina might say in private, Mr. Murray was quite a catch, and had the additional merit of being, as it were, new on the market. She would not have rejected him as a brother-in-law, and even as a suitor for herself he bore contemplation.

  ‘We shall see,’ said her mother, as if she had read her thoughts. Knowing the Fleming sisters, she probably had.

  Oblivious to this important discussion, Murray arrived home to the recollection that there was no point in ringing the doorbell. However, having brought out his key, he found that the door had been left unlocked for him. He set his hat and gloves on the hall table and unbuttoned his coat, shaking the snow off it, and wondered where Robbins usually put it. In the end he settled for draping it over a hall chair, since, after all, he would have to put it on again in about an hour.

  He felt that a bath would be in order after his rather muddy return from seeing the boys back into the college, and assessing the situation he decided that preparing a bath for himself was not something that should be beyond the capabilities of a healthy man of two and twenty. Hot water was the principal requirement – and deliciously plentiful here compared with Scoggie Castle – and for hot water in bathlike quantities the descent to the kitchen, with which he had threatened Mrs. Chambers, had to be faced.

  He could not remember having used the back stairs since he was thirteen or fourteen until the night before last, when he had carried Jamie’s body into the kitchen and used the back stairs to return to his part of the house. Then, their darkness had seemed appropriate and somehow inevitable: now he wished he had brought a candle. He stumbled twice between top and bottom, but by the end the glow from the kitchen fire, seen around the cracks of the door, guided him past Mrs. Chambers’ room and Robbins’ pantry and the maids’ room where they kept their buckets and shovels and aprons, and into the bright, blue-green walled kitchen. The rancid smell of homemade grease candles slithered through the air.

  There was a squeal and a sudden scuttling noise from the pantry, and Murray, taken by surprise, crossed the room in four long strides and pulled open the pantry door. At the far end was a small scullery maid, a biscuit in her trembling hand, hiding her mouth behind the other fist and her eyes open nearly to popping. Beside her, wearing an equally long, terrified face, was Squirrel, the deerhound. Murray tried hard not to laugh.

  ‘Hello,’ he started kindly. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Effy, sir,’ came indistinctly from behind the tight fist. Euphemia, presumably: he had seen her name in his father’s papers.

  ‘Why are you not gone to Jamie’s funeral, Effy? And try and take your hand away from your mouth, I can hardly hear you behind it.’ He spoke as though to a nervous horse, and almost felt himself putting a cautious hand out for her bridle. She was stringy and wispy, perpetually unravelling at the ends. Still, she made an effort to pull her hand away from her mouth, whence it descended to the waist of her apron and seemed to become attached there. The other hand gripped the biscuit hard.

  ‘Mrs. Chambers said you weren’t to be left without anyone, sir, and as I’m the youngest I was to stay.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat? Besides the biscuits, I mean.’ He smiled, but she took it badly.

  ‘Oh, no, sir! Not a thing, honestly! I’m no like that!’ She was almost hysterical.

  ‘My dear Effy, please calm down. You must eat properly or you’ll be cold and hungry.’ She seemed to suspect a trick, but was prepared to listen to him. Is there any hot water?’

  ‘A little, sir.’

  ‘Then put on some for a bath for me – do not worry,’ he added, glancing at her waif-like arms, ‘I shall carry it upstairs. In the mean time, give Squirrel some meat – too many biscuits aren’t good for her - make some tea and bring it to the study – do you know where that is?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Mrs. Chambers showed us when we came here.’

  ‘And use some of the hot water to warm some ale for yourself, and I’d recommend a couple of the larger biscuits with it. Can you manage all that? Feed Squirrel, bring me the tea, have some warm ale yourself, and then come and tell me when the bath water is hot.’

  Feeling like a trespasser in his own house, he left her in the pantry and went slowly back through the kitchen, noting the well-kept copper, the scrubbed tables, the neatly stored crockery for the servants. He hoped that none of the neatness had been occasioned by the threat of his visit, but there was something about it that made it look habitual, and knowing Mrs. Chambers he was sure it was.

  The tea arrived with an example of the servants’ crockery, which would have shaken Mrs. Chambers to the core, but it was good, and was accompanied not only by a plateful of sugar biscuits but also by a curtsey which Effy had clearly been practising downstairs. Squirrel, too, had followed her upstairs and vanished under the sofa. He waited politely until she had closed the door, when silent laughter overtook him and made him no good for anything for five whole minutes.

  The bath was more successful: Murray did as he had promised and carried the water up to the second floor himself, to the dressing room he shared with the other front bed chamber. The bath tub was there, and towels, and the steam rose gloriously as he soaped away the mud and sweat of the Bridges. He was used, at Scoggie Castle, to bathing without an attendant, and he had even thought to light his bedroom fire before he had started bathing so that his bed chamber was warm when he returned to it. He felt very capable.

  Once dry, he returned to the dressing room to shave and to find appropriate dinner dress, complete, again, with a black neckcloth. He noted that one or two new ones had arrived as ordered from his tailor and had been put away by Robbins, and hoped that the second suit of mourning day clothes for which he had been measured was also on its way. He knotted the neckcloth, buttoned his high-collared, double-breasted black waistcoat, eased his coat over his shoulders, and examined himself critically in the mirror. No, he felt, he would not let Robbins down too badly like this.

  Chapter Ten

  Guests began arriving at the charming home of Mr. and Lady Sarah Dundas at the appetite-whetting, fashionable hour of a quarter to three, and shivered as they mounted the shallow steps to the open front door. St. Andrew’s Square had seen some of the earliest building work in the New Town, and it was here that Sir Lawrence Dundas, distant cousin of this evening’s host, had played a sleight of hand with the planning committees and built his town house, with its star-pierced dome, on the very spine of the New Town where the town planner, James Craig, had intended a church. The building was now the Excise House, but that did not stop the envious glances cast at it by the neighbours.

  The guests in their fine evening footwear pretended to defy the snow that was now quite thick on the ground as well as in the air. Dundas had had the servants put down straw and earth on his steps and on the street outside. The ladies tried to keep to the straw and avoid the earth, which was now stiff mud, even in the cold. There was no wind, and apart from them the Square was oddly silent, the light from the flickering lamps falling in soft pools freckled by snowflakes.

  Murray arrived on foot, among the first to appear. Inside, the Dundases were arranged in force, husband, wife and trio of sons, waiting in the drawing room to welcome their guests into the war
mth. The Thomsons had arrived just before him, and were in the midst of being introduced to William Dundas’ cousin from Harrogate, Lady Warwick, and her two unmarried daughters, all at present visiting Edinburgh. Mrs. Thomson and Lady Warwick eyed each other like the masters of two adjacent hunts, after the same fox. Murray greeted the Dundases and was snatched into conversation by Gavin, who was already tired of his lady relations. Murray was happy to let him talk for a little, while his fingers thawed around a glass of negus and the pain in his face diminished, skin tingling in the heat.

  The room was very attractive, he decided, only half-listening to Gavin’s account of his recent card games. The three tall windows overlooking the Square would have a pleasant prospect in the daylight, but now were well wrapped in thick damask curtains in warm coral, a nice compromise between Blair’s hot colours and his father’s cool ones. Above the large fireplace, well stocked to heat the room’s ample proportions, was a Raeburn of earlier date than his father’s portrait. This one showed a younger Dundas standing and a Lady Sarah, while she was still the reputed beauty, holding an infant in her lap that had to be Willie Jack. You could almost see the runny nose. Gavin and Harry, their hair curling past their wide ruffled collars, stood in self-consciously adult poses, Harry solemn, Gavin bored, on either side of their mother, and their father’s hands rested lightly on the shoulders of his wife and eldest son. Behind them were a sturdy tree and a vague landscape: no one paid Raeburn for landscapes. But it was Lady Sarah that drew the eye, with an exquisite, compelling beauty. Murray wanted very much to turn and look at the lady as she was now, but sternly resisted: he could only barely imagine what it must be like to have that kind of beauty, and then to lose it, to lose the power it held. But how infinitely worse it must be, he thought, to have that daily reminder, and always to have people look, look again, and compare.

  ‘And he was so drunk he didn’t even notice!’ Gavin was saying. Murray grinned, not sure what the rest of the story had been. ‘I laughed so hard I could hardly get home, but you know what it’s like when you’ve had a bit much, and the road just flies past under your feet.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Murray, who had indeed watched the streets of St. Andrews fly past more than once in his student days. ‘The Warwicks, are they to stay long with you?’

  ‘Why, fancy one of them, do you?’ asked Gavin, basely. The two Misses Warwick were pale blonde and dressed in white, looking, Murray thought, like rather chilly angels.

  ‘Hard to tell,’ he said, non-committally.

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to both as far as I’m concerned,’ said Gavin, with uncousinly decision. ‘According to them, the Scots are all savages. I’ll swear they were surprised we had plates and did not simply eat roast mutton straight from the fire with our hunting knives. In their book, Harrogate is the centre of the civilised world, with London in the season a near second. I don’t know why they bothered coming here, unless they were short of men down south. Even the journey was just one long whinge.’

  Murray looked at the family with renewed interest, to see how they were taking their first dinner engagement in the land beyond civilisation.

  ‘And when we reached Berwick, well! The weather!’ the mother was saying, as if to prove Gavin’s point.

  ‘I’ll introduce you,’ said Gavin, cruelly, and drew Murray over to the circle. There, he completed the introductions and then adroitly cut Davina Thomson out and made conversation of his own with her.

  ‘Well, Mr. Murray, and are you also an Edinburgh man?’ asked Lady Warwick. Murray felt himself being tabulated.

  ‘No, ma’am.’ She began to smile. ‘I am from Fife.’ The smile vanished.

  ‘And have you a profession?’

  Murray could see, from the corner of his eye, Mrs. Thomson raising a gracious eyebrow at this direct approach.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should find yourself one.’

  Murray, choosing to be amused by her rudeness, decided to tease.

  ‘I am a little occupied at present, my lady, with my late father’s estate and his house on Queen Street. He died there last Sunday.’

  Lady Warwick, for whom Murray had risen several points on the mention of a house in the New Town, was shocked. Her voice rose to a slight shriek.

  ‘And you are keeping a dinner engagement with your father not yet in the grave?’

  Even the Armstrongs, who had just entered the room, paused at that.

  ‘In Scotland, we manage things a little differently, ma’am,’ said Murray clearly. ‘My father was buried on Wednesday.’ He bowed stiffly, and left her. Mrs. Thomson nodded reassuringly at Lady Warwick, and told her,

  ‘He has a large estate in Fife, and eight thousand a year.’

  She smiled sweetly. Murray, who had heard her, nearly laughed out loud.

  The Armstrongs had brought John Douglas with them, rather a crush in their carriage, but as everyone was now present the Dundases waited a few respectful moments before leading their guests downstairs to dinner. Murray found himself seated between Miss Armstrong and Miss Lily Warwick, and was reasonably satisfied with the arrangement: so were Mrs. Armstrong and Lady Warwick, who was rapidly and visibly retabulating Murray. Gavin considered himself wasted where he was: Mrs. Armstrong on his left, and Miss Armstrong, who was pretty enough but nothing to her younger sister, on his right. He would willingly have changed places with his brother Willie Jack, who had landed the great good fortune of being between Catherine Armstrong and Davina Thomson, and not sensible enough, Gavin reckoned, to appreciate either.

  Davina was also feeling slightly frustrated, and amused herself by giving an impromptu and very quiet verbal laceration of Miss Warwick to Patrick Armstrong, who sat between Davina and Miss Warwick. Patrick was therefore unable to give either lady his full attention. Miss Warwick, fortunately, was more occupied with responding to Mr. Thomson’s polite enquiry as to how she found Scotland.

  ‘Mamma brought us as a distraction, really, and we have seen so little of the country or the town that it seems hardly fair to comment.’ This at least was more diplomatic than her mother. ‘You see, it is a year since our beloved brother Melville died, and naturally we are all quite upset.’ She said it in a tone suggesting that questions would be received with favour, and Mr. Thomson obliged in a smoothly avuncular fashion.

  ‘What a dreadful tragedy, my dear. How did your brother come to meet his untimely end?’

  ‘Melville was in the Horse Guards, and rising very quickly in the estimation of all who knew him in that connexion,’ Miss Warwick was pleased to recount. Murray thought he heard Gavin Dundas mutter:

  ‘Rising from a very low base, I imagine,’ but he might have been mistaken.

  ‘But alas!’ Miss Warwick continued, ‘one day he was riding in Hyde Park – in London, you know –’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Armstrong, tingling with irony.

  ‘- when he observed a young lady who was having difficulty controlling her horse. As he watched, the horse bolted, leaving the lady’s groom far behind. My brother spurred his charger to full gallop and made to rescue her. He was always most gallant, you know, quite the dashing young officer.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ remarked Mrs. Thomson.

  ‘Indeed, ma’am, if you could but have met him! Then you would know what it was to meet a young gentleman of the first degree.’

  Probably consideration of this tragically-missed opportunity caused the profound silence around the table at this point.

  ‘So how did the sad tale end, my dear?’ asked Mr. Thomson, first to recover from his disappointment.

  ‘Oh! as he galloped so gallantly, his horse stepped in a rabbit hole and he was felled in an instant. The injury to his head was so great that he died in a fever only hours later. Attended, of course, by his loyal fellow officers.’

  ‘So really,’ Murray definitely heard Gavin this time, ‘he just fell off his horse.’

  ‘And what became of the unfortunate young lady?’
asked Mrs. Armstrong, almost as if she were interested.

  ‘Oh, she was quite safe, as it happens. But devastated, of course, on hearing what had happened to her intending rescuer.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’

  ‘But death often seems so senseless,’ Mr. Thomson remarked. ‘And so random. Poor young Murray, down the table there,’ he gestured, and lowered his voice. ‘Lost his father this week, scaffolding fell on him on Friday night at the far end of Queen Street, and he died on the Sunday. Now, I was walking along that very street myself that night – had to see a client in St. James’ Square, you know the one, Armstrong – and I even met the party bringing my dear old friend back to his home. It could have been me under that scaffolding, but instead it was poor Murray. A tragedy.’

  ‘Hardly for my sister Mrs. Thomson and your children, my dear Mr. Thomson,’ said Mrs. Armstrong drily. She noticed that Lady Sarah, silent in the midst of this conversation, looked even more unwell than usual.

  Mr. Thomson might well have lowered his voice, but at the mention of his name Murray, who was not at that moment engaged in conversation, could not help but listen. At the finish, to prevent his mind from dwelling on it, he turned to Miss Armstrong and asked her how she did. Her mother had chosen for her the shade of pale blue-green she wore, which brought out the depth of her sandy hair, and though such things were not a priority for her she was not above knowing that she looked her best this evening.

  ‘Tolerably well, I thank you,’ she replied with a friendly smile. ‘I hope you are not too overwhelmed by your responsibilities at this busy time.’