‘And it is good to see an eldest daughter married,’ Balneavis continued, as the flutes faded and Murray’s fantasy with them, ‘for it encourages the others, as often as not, and allows them a little more into society. But there! Mrs. Balneavis has the whole thing planned, for she is so fiercely protective of them, of their interests and their prospects! For money may be one thing, and one path to attracting a husband, but a good character is a surer one, and will attract a better husband, however wealthy he may be, and all the money and finery in the world cannot buy a reputation. And Mrs. Balneavis is keen, you may imagine, to see her established in the very best of households.’
Murray, who was reflecting belatedly on the risks of accepting unexpected dinner invitations from impecunious fathers, wondered briefly if he were being offered a wife or a domestic servant.
‘Oh, she is so like her mother at the same age!’ Balneavis enthused. Either he is ignoring me completely, or I’m better at hiding my feelings than I thought, Murray noted. Surely no man, however determined, could carry on with his efforts if Murray’s reluctance had been clearly visible. ‘And you, my dear Charles, you remind me so much of myself at your age, poised on the threshold of life!’
But that was enough. Balneavis had to be disabused of this notion, before it went too far.
‘Mr. Balneavis, I feel I ought perhaps to have made my position clearer at once, and yet to tell the truth I am not sure of it myself in some respects. Miss Balneavis is indeed a delightful girl, but for that very reason I should hate to see her forced to wait an indeterminate time for someone as yet not sure of his future, while she might well have the pleasant opportunity of offers far more worthy. It is not right,’ he finished firmly, ‘for such a charming girl, from such a fine family, to be the victim of any false hopes.’
‘Oh, aye, aye,’ agreed Balneavis cheerfully. ‘As I say, I’m no so willing for her to be handfasted to anyone just yet. I was just airing my problems, you ken.’ His speech, which had been becoming more refined as he envisaged his daughter becoming Mrs. Murray of Letho, relaxed again as he accepted that this round, at least, had gone to Charles – though it was, of course, not necessarily the end of the fight.
‘Well, exactly,’ said Murray, feeling his pulse slowing. ‘And speaking of problems, Mr. Balneavis, have you ever heard of a man named Matthew Muir?’
‘Matthew Muir ...’ Balneavis pondered, happy to accept the change of subject. ‘I seem to recollect that I have heard the name somewhere recently, but I just cannot mind where.’
Murray thought about it.
‘Mr. Dundas mentioned him at my father’s funeral supper. And the name was in the paper at the time of my father’s accident.’
‘Oh?’ said Balneavis vaguely, a brief frown of confusion twitching his eyes and vanishing as quickly as it had come.
‘He was the notary killed when my father had his accident. An apprentice notary, as it turns out. Do you know of any reason why he would have had dealings with my father?’
Balneavis was tipping more wine into Murray’s glass and at that moment his hand slipped, knocking the glass with the jug and sending the wine in a pink arc into his own lap. There was a moment’s confusion, as Murray snatched the glass and Balneavis tried to save the jug and dodge the wine. The attempts were moderately successful: the wine spilled mostly on the table and on the bench beside Balneavis, and the glass was secured without breaking. Murray reached for his napkin to soak up the puddles and found it had slipped off his lap. He leaned under the table and retrieved it from its perch on Balneavis’ well-worn shoes.
‘Now, John Douglas might ken him,’ said Balneavis. ‘He knows every notary from Ebenezer Hammond down. Are you well acquainted with Douglas?’ Murray shook his head, privately doubting that many were well acquainted with the gentleman at all. His own father had always spoken of him with respect, but rarely with intimacy. ‘He’s a fine man to know well,’ Balneavis asserted. ‘Perhaps we could invite him to meet us for dinner next week, if you have no objections. Would Tuesday be suitable, for example?’
‘Tuesday is, I believe, quite suitable,’ Murray agreed, wondering if the dinner time blandishments of Balneavis were going to become a regular occurrence. If they were, he might just return to Scoggie Castle, whether or not Lord Scoggie wanted him.
‘Then I shall ask Douglas this very day,’ said Balneavis happily. ‘He is good company, and besides, if you ever chose to enter the law he has great influence among the powerful here.’ He beamed at Murray, who again, despite himself, found it impossible to do anything but smile in reply.
Chapter Thirteen
The wine had been strong and, apart from what had gone on the table and off it, had been generously poured. Murray found himself a little light-headed as he emerged from Stone’s and began a slithering descent of the High Street in over-trodden snow, to attempt his intended visit to Dandy Muir. There was still enough virgin snow at the sides of the road for the occasional snowball fight between gangs of boys, causing him to wonder obliquely if the coffee beans had yet been dried in the kitchen, and to feel a brief pang of guilt over the Scoggie boys. Should he offer to keep them here in Edinburgh with him? If he did, he would have to devote much more time both to overseeing their studies and to keeping them in check.
He ducked instinctively as a snowball whistled past his hat, then realised that it had been aimed with solemn concentration at a shop sign painted high on the wall of a tenement, showing a picture of a black hat on a red ground. It was now speckled with white where the snow adhered, and the hatter, who had come in for one of the wider shots full in the chest, shook his fist at the boys from his window as he wiped muddy snow from his coat. Murray smiled, and found himself thinking of Jamie, wondering what he might have played or what mischief he and his friends might have done on his way to and from his parents’ home.
The stair to Dandy Muir’s flat was still as fresh and clean as it had been the day of his brother’s funeral. A well-dressed, elderly maid was leaving the building as Murray entered, and he drew back to let her past, then mounted the stairs again to the first floor, and knocked on Dandy’s now closed door. After a moment Dandy, sober and tired-looking in a suit of better black than he had worn to the funeral, came to the door and treated Murray to a fairly hostile stare.
‘Aye?’ he said, non-committally.
‘Dandy Muir,’ said Murray, half to reassure himself that this was, in fact, the same man with whom he had spoken on Thursday.
‘Aye?’ repeated the man.
‘My name is Murray. I attended your brother’s funeral.’
‘Oh, aye?’
Murray sighed shortly.
‘Do you remember me? Do you remember why I came?’
Dandy shifted in the doorway, transferring his weight from one foot to the other and propping a shoulder against the doorpost. He folded his arms.
‘Aye, I ken well who y’are and why ye came. I was no sae drunk as you thought, see.’
‘I see,’ said Murray, rather cross but trying not to show it. ‘I wondered if perhaps you had remembered anything more about what Matthew said concerning his gentleman friend?’
‘No,’ said Dandy briefly.
‘Well,’ said Murray, mentally counting slowly to ten, ‘would you be kind enough to reflect for a moment, and see if there is anything you can add to what you told me?’
‘No,’ said Dandy. The doorpost looked fractionally more moveable than he did. Murray contemplated him for a long moment. The man’s eyes were definitely bloodshot, but his fingers, gripping the new black cloth of his coat, were tense. Murray glanced down at his feet. His stockings were thick wool, warm and still unworn. He wore no boots, though the stockings would never have fitted into shoes. Dandy watched him in return, and met his eyes again.
‘You were eager enough to talk on Thursday,’ Murray remarked, in a slightly lowered voice.
‘Was I, then?’ asked Dandy, quite loudly, then more quietly, ‘Well, maybe I was towards the edges
of being drunk, after all. So it was my only brother’s funeral, and him the last family I have in the world.’ It seemed to Murray that, just briefly, the defiance in his eyes turned to a kind of plea. Murray blinked, and tried to think quickly.
‘And of course,’ he said quite clearly, ‘you could tell me nothing of your brother’s business even then, for as you said, it was something of which he never spoke to you, and in which you took no interest.’
‘Look,’ said Dandy angrily, though his face was friendlier, ‘I tellt you all that on Thursday. You’re a mighty slow learner, for all you’re a gentleman,’ he finished loudly, then took Murray quickly by the sleeve and whisked him through the door, slamming it behind him.
‘Now hear this,’ he hissed, waving a finger at Murray, ‘I dinna ken what you want, but you tellt me on Thursday your own faither was killed where Matt met his end, and I’ve taken you in good faith on that, aye, maybe more than I should have. But I made mention of things to you at Matt’s funeral that I shouldna have said, and if the word gets out about them there’s more than me will suffer. Matt wasna the only family I have left, you ken. I have a sister, Margit – you saw her at the funeral – and she has bairns that are as good as my own to me.’ He took a shaky breath, and moved away from the door. Murray said nothing, but turned as he moved to keep facing him. He noticed, absently, that there was now a second armchair in the shabby room, and a decent enough bottle of whisky on the table beside it. Dandy nodded at him, seeing where he was looking.
‘Aye, it seems Matt had the power to leave me some money after all.’
‘But not, I should say,’ said Murray quietly, ‘through his will in the normal way?’
Dandy gave a smile that was closer to a grimace. He gave the new armchair a kick.
‘It came under the door the night of the funeral,’ he admitted at last, without looking at Murray. ‘There was a wrapper, with money in it and a letter. Now, Matt might have been the one for the writing but I can read well enough, and that letter said if I talked to anyone about any of Matt’s business, there would be trouble for me and for mine.’ He scuffed his stocking soles along the leg of the armchair, hands in his breeches pockets.
‘How much money?’ asked Murray curiously.
‘Fifty pounds.’ He looked up. ‘Oh, I’m no like Matt, you see. I bought this and that, but the rest of it is safely away. You never ken the minute, do you?’
‘Very true,’ Murray replied automatically. ‘This letter, do you still have it?’
‘No. It said to burn it, and I always do what I’m told by nameless strangers that threaten me.’ He grinned again.
‘Was it a good hand? An educated hand?’ asked Murray. Dandy thought about it, picturing the letter, his foot still for a moment.
‘Aye, I would say so. The paper was ordinary, like, but the hand was I suppose you’d call cultivated.’
Murray asked the obvious.
‘And no name or address on it?’
‘Not a thing. Just ‘By hand’ on the wrapper.’
‘And fifty pounds in coins?’
‘Aye, guineas and such, and small bits too. All good, ye ken.’
Murray nodded.
‘I’d better go now,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr. Muir.’
‘Aye, well, I think I’m a better judge of a man than Matt was,’ said Dandy, his foot on the move again. ‘Do not prove me wrong.’
Murray went to the door and opened it.
‘Well, since you have nothing of value to tell me, Mr. Muir,’ he said loudly and crossly, ‘I shall take myself elsewhere. Good day to you.’ He left and pulled the door behind him. His last glimpse of the flat showed him Dandy’s grinning face and a hand reaching for the whisky bottle.
Outside on the landing, he took a deep breath, which turned to a gasp when he heard a step behind him. He spun around, to find the elderly maid whom he had met downstairs, once more descending the stair. He found a smile and drew back to let her pass, but she shook her head and he noticed belatedly that she was wearing neither cloak nor bonnet, but had her apron on over a decent black gown.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she began with a somewhat coy smile, ‘my mistress would be happy if you would step upstairs to share a cup of tea with her.’
‘Your mistress?’ queried Murray. ‘Am I acquainted with her?’
‘Perhaps not, sir, but she would be happy to remedy that situation. She is Miss Gordon, sir, and as she is elderly,’ she whispered the last word forcibly, ‘she does not receive as many visitors as perhaps she once did.’
‘Then I should be honoured to make her acquaintance,’ said Murray politely, and waved the servant up the stair in front of him to show the way. Miss Gordon might, he reflected, have been a friend of his father’s and have recognised him from the window, but in any case there could be no harm in visiting an old lady. She or the maid might even be able to tell him something of the Muirs and their dealings.
In accordance with the Old Town way of living, so curious now to the airy dwellers in the New Town, this tenement stair held people from different strata of life. Dandy, as a tradesman, occupied rooms on a lower floor, but Miss Gordon’s elevated station in life was indicated by the fact that her rooms were at the very top of the building, where one emerged at last from the dark coils of the staircase on to a landing lit by a final high window. Here, herbs nursed through the winter’s dark and cold grew in little pots and the doorstep was clean from the passage of few feet. The walls had been washed white to reflect all the available light, and the door was a surprising blue. It stood ajar, and the maid pushed it to lead the way inside.
If Blair’s house was a relic of the 1780s, this place made it look as modern as Bath. The walls, where one could perceive them, were washed white, but covered in tapestries that shrank the size of the tiny hallway and enveloped all the other rooms that he could see. The curtains were rough and heavy, and had been designed for much larger windows than those in a Canongate tenement: great folds had been taken up with tacking thread and pinned back to let in some venturesome daylight. Murray had hardly walked two yards before he had rapped his shins on the ferocious studded corners of an oak chest and narrowly avoided a second one. The carpets seemed also to have been folded to fit the rooms and were several layers thick, irregularly shaped and lumpy. The maid, who moved amidst the obstacles easily, relieved him of his hat and top coat and led the way to a tapestry which she pushed back to reveal a door, through which she went. Stronger than she looked, she held the tapestry back on both sides for Murray to stoop beneath, and curtseyed to the occupant of a large chair, saying:
‘Your visitor, ma’am.’ She closed the door behind her, there was a faint sweep of falling tapestry, and Murray stood alone in the middle of the room.
A fine fire was blazing in the fireplace, above which a gap between tapestries allowed room for a slightly faded plaid. It framed like lambrequin an oval portrait of a young man of sixty years ago, fresh-faced and powder-wigged, with the pop-eyed, narrow-lipped smile so fashionable in portraits of the time. On the mantelpiece lay a sword, untarnished and without so much as a suspicion of dust on it. He had already drawn one or two conclusions when the figure in the chair spoke.
‘Well, good day to you, my bonny lad, and what do they call you?’ Her voice was high and clear; she was small and upright, with a face nearly as rosy as the one in the portrait, though soft with wrinkles.
Murray bowed.
‘Charles Murray of Letho, ma’am. Have I the honour of addressing Miss Gordon?’
‘You have. Christian Gordon of Balkiskan, and last of my line.’
‘Ma’am.’ Murray bowed again.
‘You may sit, laddie,’ she laughed. ‘There is a stool behind you. Jessie will bring refreshments in a moment. You have time to stay for a cup?’
‘Certainly, ma’am, if you wish it.’ Murray busied himself finding the stool and arranging his hard-won new coat tails behind it as he sat.
‘A well brought up young lad
, and with a good name.’ She gave him a satisfied smile. ‘Charles was always my best-favoured name. Many a fine man has borne it before you, and not brought it shame. How came you by it?’
‘It was my grandfather’s name, ma’am, and my father’s,’ Murray explained.
‘And is it for one of them that you now wear mourning?’ He noticed as she spoke that she too wore black, though it was older by far than his.
‘For my father, ma’am, but lately dead. His funeral was on Wednesday.’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ she replied, and plucked irritably at the end of her shawl. ‘There are too few good Charleses left.’ She sighed, then caught his eye and nodded up at the wall above the fireplace. ‘I make no doubt but that you can tell who one of them was, now long gone, can you not?’
Murray was embarrassed. He had been brought up not to talk much about the events of 1745, an episode that polite society preferred not to remember, when Scot had taken up arms against Scot. The few Jacobite supporters still left were treated by society with distant respect, and Murray had had little to do with them. He had, however, guessed from the plaid and the portrait that he might now be faced with a more direct encounter – he hoped that information about the Muirs might be his reward. He drew a breath.
‘I should say, ma’am, that you were amongst the supporters of – of Charles Edward Stuart.’ He had been about to say ‘the Young Pretender’, but decided that it would be less than tactful. She smiled wickedly, as though she sensed his dilemma.
‘You are a laddie born long after such events, and consequently have had to rely on your elders for histories of them, so I hold no blame to your account that you look as though you would draw your coat tails up from my carpet.’ She laughed as he made to shift on the stool and stopped himself again. ‘Aye, it’s no your fault. It’s your loss, instead, to live through a time of fighting for the mad old man in London against the country as closely allied to the Kingdom of Scotland as any other, rather than to fight for the finest young charmer ever to take Edinburgh and lead his men to glory! And the man you see up there, above the fireplace, that was the lad that would have followed the Prince to the ends of the earth, and I would have walked beside him.’
Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3) Page 15
