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

by Lexie Conyngham

  Murray stared at him.

  ‘Well, the Dundas servants can’t have got their hands on that. What happened to it?’

  ‘The messenger lad brought the package this morning, sir, but when I took it in I found that was soaked all down one side. The messenger lad claimed that he had fallen in the snow, and indeed he looked more than a little damp himself, but then Daniel reported that he had seen the boy set down the parcel in the snow, the better to defend himself against a snowball attack.’

  ‘In which Daniel was involved?’ Murray had few illusions as to Daniel and William.

  ‘Curiously not, this time, sir.’ Robbins continued to concentrate on the razor. ‘The attacking snowball came, it appears, from an upper floor of this house.’

  ‘Robert,’ said Murray instantly. Robbins nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir. On investigation, it appeared he had collected snow from the garden and taken it upstairs in two buckets. The grocer’s boy had also suffered. Your clothes are now drying, as are the coffee beans and the sugar.’

  ‘Dear Lord,’ commented Murray, and wiped his face with a towel.

  When Robbins had departed, leaving him again dressed in his old black, Murray wandered back into the bedchamber, wondering how shocked Mrs. Chambers would be if he refused point blank to go on sleeping here. The bedhangings here were a cool cream, embroidered by his mother before her marriage with pale blue cornflowers and pale yellow daisies, summer flowers in winter colours. There was a drawing of his mother as a young girl over the mantel, and Murray knew that a secret compartment at the back of one of the night tables contained his mother’s jewellery, put aside for his wife or for George’s. He crossed the room to the bed and felt in the hanging cloth watch pocket for his watch, but the pocket was empty. He looked about the bed stupidly for a moment, and then remembered that his watch had been placed in the watch pocket of his own bed upstairs. Since in any case he felt an urge to inspect the damage in person in the cold light of day, he left the bedchamber and turned the corner to go up to his own room.

  Mrs. Chambers, watched from a safe distance by Iffy and Effy, was cautiously poking the contents of the tin bath with a pair of wooden laundry tongs as Murray entered the room. The bed looked curiously bare: the end curtain had gone, along with the counterpane and the quilt, and there was a singed stain on the topmost blanket. The smell was not at all pleasant, and Mrs. Chambers’ mouth was slightly open as if she were trying very hard not to breathe through her nose. She heard his step on the pine boards and hurriedly straightened. Iffy and Effy, nudging each other, curtsied carefully.

  ‘What is the extent of the damage, Mrs. Chambers?’ Murray asked, advancing and peering into the bath.

  ‘I fear,’ she replied, pulling out the end of a piece of green silk in her tongs like a piece of pond weed from a dubious source, ‘that the curtain from the foot of the bed is quite ruined. The flames went up it very quickly, it appears, and we are indebted to Mr. Robbins and to the grace of our heavenly Lord that the canopy did not catch.’

  ‘Mr. Dunnet, too, moved very quickly to pour water on the flames.’

  ‘True, very true, sir,’ Mrs. Chambers agreed, ‘and I believe it is thanks to him that much of the counterpane can be saved. We can use some of it to patch the damage on the quilt cover, and the rest can be saved to cover cushions. The window seats, for example, could do with new covers. I shall visit Jackson & Niven today to see if there is any silk to match for a new counterpane and curtain. One blanket is lost, though with some patching it could be used as a rough blanket elsewhere.’ She straightened again, and contemplated the damp heap.

  ‘I am sure that Daniel was very well-intentioned,’ she sighed, ‘but I do not think that he should be allowed to drink quite so much ale, even at a funeral.’

  Murray nodded.

  ‘Well, I fear it will mean a good deal of work for you and the maids, Mrs. Chambers. But there is no urgency to it.’ He tried not to grit his teeth. ‘I am quite happily settled downstairs.’ But he could not resist crossing to the window and taking in, like his first breath, the view of the snow-covered carpet to the Forth.

  ‘Right, then, girls, take this downstairs.’ Mrs. Chambers dismissed the twins who between them struggled out on to the landing with the tin bath. Mrs. Chambers waited until they could be heard closing the door to the back stairs, then spoke.

  ‘Please excuse me asking, Mr. Charles, but how did the fire start?’

  At first she thought he had not heard, for he remained at the window, gazing out at the Forth.

  ‘I am not sure,’ he said at last. ‘I had woken, and had come here to look out at the moonlight, when I heard a noise within the room and looked back to see the bed on fire.’ He paused again, wondering how much more to say, wondering indeed if he had dreamed it, though as he himself had not lit any candle he could not see how else the fire could have started. He crossed back over to the bed, felt in the watch pocket and drew out his watch, tucking it into his waistcoat pocket to arrange properly later. ‘It seems to be a mystery,’ he finished, not looking at his housekeeper but fingering the singed blanket.

  ‘Your breakfast is ready in the street parlour, sir.’ Mrs. Chambers seemed to acknowledge his silence on the subject with something like relief, and he held the door open for her to precede him on to the landing. Yet as he was about to close the bedroom door behind them, he noticed again the tuft of white thread on the lock housing in the door frame, where Dunnet in his rush to put the fire out had caught and torn his nightshirt. Something, however, did not seem quite right, and as he paused to think about it, it dawned on him that the sharp edge of a nail holding in the lock plate had caught the threads on the bedroom side, not the landing side. At some point, it seemed, Dunnet had run not into the room, but out of it, and as the tear on his nightshirt had been on his right sleeve, the sleeve next to the lock plate as he would have left the room, that would seem to confirm it. Murray tried to think what Dunnet had done after he had tossed the two jugs of water on the fire, and beside the thought, like a companion piece, he saw a glimpse of the white-robed figure fleeing from the room as the fire caught in the middle of the bed.

  Breakfast as usual had been laid in the street parlour, and as was indeed not uncommon, it was accompanied by an intensive interrogation and reprimanding of Robert Scoggie. Robert wore a look of bored contrition on his face along with some boiled egg, but his excuse was a novel one.

  ‘I thought it might cheer Henry up,’ he claimed, and indeed Henry was as wan as ever, pushing his food around his plate without enthusiasm.

  ‘Henry, would you rather remain at home today? Here, I mean? You could go back to bed if you wanted to.’

  ‘I’m not feeling well, either, Mr. Murray,’ Robert claimed at once. ‘My head’s very bad, and I could just go back to bed this minute.’

  ‘The only thing wrong with your head, Robert,’ said Murray, eyeing him, ‘is that it devotes its time to divilment when it could be doing something more useful. Henry, what do you think?’

  ‘I’d rather go to college. I feel fine.’

  ‘You’re sure? You look very pale.’

  ‘It’s the winter. I always look pale in the winter.’

  Murray had taught them for three years, and did not remember having noticed this as a particular phenomenon before. But he sighed, and left the subject.

  There was a note by his plate from Andrew Balneavis, asking if Murray would be so kind as to dine with him at Stone’s. Murray had no other engagement, and was assured by Robbins that hat and clothes would be approximately presentable by then, so William was sent up to the Old Town to say that Mr. Murray was pleased to accept Mr. Balneavis’ invitation, and would see him at two. William was also therefore able to escort the boys to the College, and Murray retired to the study.

  He drew out a piece of paper intending, once again, to write to his brother George, but again, no words would come, and he found himself writing instead:

  ‘To Lord Scoggie of S
coggie:

  ‘My Lord,

  ‘Thank you for your kind condolences on the death of my father. I do indeed feel the loss most acutely.

  ‘As I informed you in my previous note, I have brought Henry and Robert here to my father’s house in Queen Street and they have since the funeral continued with their studies at the College. Henry derives great benefit from these and I believe that Robert, too, is’ - he paused, and considered for some time - ‘acquainting himself to some degree with the subjects taught.’ He grimaced, and then drew a deep breath as though he were about to put the next point to Lord Scoggie face to face. ‘However, since the boys have been brought up gently and for the most part peaceably in the country,’ – barring the odd spate of violent deaths, he thought – ‘I am anxious that the pace of life in the city is rather upsetting for Henry and a little too distracting for Robert. They are each in their own way not quite ready for Edinburgh,’ – nor Edinburgh for them, he reflected, thinking of the ferrets and the chairs. ‘Henry is not enjoying particularly good health at present, though he insists on continuing with his studies. I feel that a period in the country would be beneficial to him and might restore some calm to Robert.’

  He continued the letter with a more detailed account of what the boys had studied so far, for Lord Scoggie valued learning above all else, and finished with the usual civilities. He was not quite sure where he stood, and struggled for a little to find a delicate way of asking Lord Scoggie if his services were still required: on one level he longed to hand Henry and Robert over to someone else, but on another he found that he still had a profound sense of responsibility for the boys – in moments of deep emotion he could almost find it in himself to say that he was quite fond of them.

  Ignoring the beginning of the letter to George, he turned once again to his father’s papers, to mark, if he could, any possible connexion between Charles Murray senior and the late Matthew Muir. However, no legal papers appeared that did not seem to have gone through the hands of the gingery Mr. Simpson. Murray wondered then if perhaps his father had purchased, or intended to purchase, one of the feus at the building site as an investment, although property speculation was not normally his preferred way of making good returns on his money. Again, there was no evidence of any intention or any transaction carried out, which proved nothing.

  Murray sat back in his chair and pondered. Why would his father have gone to look at the building work? Whether his father intended to purchase a feu or not, it might be helpful to know who had bought them: one of the owners might know something, or might be the ‘gentleman’ partner of whom Matthew Muir had spoken to his brother. Or he might be the murderer. He wondered if the records would be with the Council, who sold the feus, and whether or not he might be allowed to look at them, but then he remembered that it was Saturday, and he could do nothing about it now until Monday at the earliest. He tapped on the desk and sighed impatiently, and rang the bell to find out how near Robbins was to finishing his hat.

  Balneavis followed Old Town ways and tended, when left to his own devices, to dine quite early. Dining early meant that one could sup early and therefore retire early, with a consequent saving on tallow and firewood in the winter months. Such considerations were important when one had four daughters to marry and three sons to school.

  He was already seated at the corner table at Stone’s when Murray arrived, his usual pot of coffee at his elbow and a number of case papers before him, through which he worked his way slowly and methodically: there was rarely any rush with his work. He saw Murray almost immediately and the characteristic beam spread across his face as he rose and bowed with dangerous enthusiasm in the small coffeehouse.

  ‘Please, come and sit down, Charles, my dear boy! It is a pleasure to see you looking so well and healthy. You have looked mightily strained this week past what with one thing and another.’

  Murray felt the smile stiffen slightly on his face in mild confusion, wondering how to respond, but there was little chance.

  ‘Come then! Two dinners here, please, Colin my man! Mrs. Stone is one of the finest cooks in Edinburgh, you ken, Charles.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I believe my father used to mention the quality of the food here.’

  ‘Indeed, my boy, he ate here with us long after he gave up advocacy and took to being a gentleman.’ He paused as soup arrived, a finer quality than the broth in the Scoggie boys’ favourite haunt. Murray tasted and admired it, and caused a flurry of wrinkles to pass over Balneavis’ face. ‘Do not cause yourself distress, Charles! This is my treat, no need to concern yourself with the depth of your pocket!’ He beamed and seemed to expand on the bench seat, plump and happy. It was nearly impossible not to smile back.

  ‘So, my boy, have you settled yet what you are to do with your time, now that, you know, you are independent?’

  The question seemed to obsess all his father’s friends, though whether from concern or curiosity it was difficult to tell. He went through once more, with some speed, his reasoning and his lack of decision on the matter.

  ‘So you have no absolute plans to quit Edinburgh, then, and live entirely in Fife?’

  ‘Not at the moment – I am fond of both places.’

  ‘And yet both are large properties, and I believe your good lady housekeeper is not as young as once she was. Have you no plans to marry, and ease both her burden and your own solitude?’

  Murray laughed.

  ‘I have scarcely been solitary this week! And after tutoring two boys for a number of years, solitude is often a precious state. And I think Mrs. Chambers would take it very much amiss if I married purely to relieve her of her duties!’

  Balneavis chuckled and nodded agreement. He noted with satisfaction Murray’s new black suit of clothes and the presentable black neckcloth about the collar of his bright white shirt. It did not make him ashamed of his own yellowing cuffs: he was comfortable with what he was, but eager to achieve better for his family.

  ‘But should a young lady catch your eye?’ he prompted. Murray was unsuspicious.

  ‘Perhaps, if I were very taken with a young lady, I might consider marriage. But at present there is no one ...’ His mind dwelled fleetingly on Ella Armstrong, and even more briefly, as if running down a list, on the other ladies at the Dundases’ dinner. He smiled faintly at the memory of Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Thomson and Lady Warwick, seen from the corner of his eye, studying and analysing his every moment in Ella’s company.

  ‘You are wise to take your time,’ agreed Balneavis, ‘although I myself married young and have dwelt in perfect happiness with my dear Mrs. Balneavis, and we had not, if I may make mention of it, the financial advantages which you have.’ Murray felt embarrassed, and wondered if he ought to pay for dinner. ‘No sense, though, of course, in pushing your own children into the same thing simply because it worked for you.’ He scraped his soup plate clean and pushed the wine jug towards Murray. Balneavis himself adhered to ale out of impecunious habit, which did not make Murray feel very comfortable about pouring himself another glass of burgundy.

  ‘Take my girl Margaret, for instance, my eldest,’ Balneavis went on, folding his arms and leaning back. ‘She’s a lovely girl, beautiful complexion as if she’s spent her days in the countryside, and such an agreeable nature as you never came across –’ Murray began, unaccountably, to feel slightly nervous, and took a rather larger sip of wine than he had intended. ‘And only a few years younger than you. Your good father and I used to draw parallels, you know.’ Murray deeply doubted it. His father had had no intention, as far as Murray knew, of his son marrying anyone who would not bring a very good dowry to the occasion. ‘It’s such a good balance of ages, a good combination, yours and hers. It’s the ages my dear Mrs. Balneavis and I were when we were wed. Now, Mrs. Balneavis,’ he went on hurriedly, evidently sensing that he had stepped a little too far, ‘Mrs. Balneavis is eager to have her married off, Margaret, that is. I think it is perhaps something too soon. What do you think?’

  Murray w
as cautiously relieved.

  ‘Oh, certainly, there is no rush, I should have thought.’ He managed to sound quite composed, he thought, but greeted the interruption of the arrival of the next course with the delight of a doting parent seeing a favoured child return home safely.

  ‘No, no need to rush her,’ Balneavis continued, when the taciturn Colin had once more retreated. ‘And truth to tell, we should all miss her very much at home, she is such a dear girl. But there! it would be good to have her settled, to see her happy. Daughters are such a trial, as I am sure you will one day be lucky enough to discover, Charles, but they are a joyful trial, all the same. I do not know, as I said, what we should do without her, for her mother has her so well trained and her own in-born skills – well, such needlework as you never saw, as in my handkerchief, for example.’ He showed Murray some discreet white threadwork which made the cheap linen a little more luxurious. ‘And so practical in the household, she could run it herself if my dear Mrs. Balneavis chose to become more leisurely! She is such a help, but then eldest girls often are, I believe: Mrs. Balneavis was the eldest of nine, you see, and it always tells. Well-trained from the start, and then eager for a household of their own.’ He sighed, and wove his plump fingers over his plate, his worn elbows propped on either side. He peered at Murray over the tops of his knuckles.

  ‘It is undoubtedly a great virtue in a young woman to be able to run a household well,’ Murray responded dutifully, remembering his conversation with Ella Armstrong. The faint sounds of the street were suddenly dominated by the noise of a company of soldiers marching by to a solitary drum and a few flutes, accompanied by the shouts of the crowd that had increased over the months in friendliness and encouragement in direct proportion to the threat from France. For a wild moment, Murray considered running out to join the soldiers.