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

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘And even though it’s started to rain,’ Robert followed helpfully, ‘the body will have gone off a bit by now. They won’t be so interested in it if it’s reeking.’

  ‘Thank you, Robert.’

  They walked back through the drizzle to dinner.

  The afternoon sermon was given by a visiting preacher from Ireland with a weaselly face and front teeth that seemed designed to prop up his thin whiskers. Murray knew many members of the congregation, but his mourning seemed to deter them from all but the most distant salutations. Halfway home he discovered that Henry had his ferrets with him, but he was too enervated to feel anything more than relief he had not discovered this during the church service. By the time they reached Queen Street he was depressed and rather grumpy, and the rain descended in a steady torrent that promised no end and permitted no visiting. Evening, almost indistinguishable from afternoon, drew in. Supper was served and cleared, and Murray could not have said ten minutes later what he had eaten. He made the boys read to him by the street parlour fire afterwards, but did not object when they lapsed into a backgammon game and the ferrets curled up on an armchair. He spent a little time trying to coax Squirrel out from under the table, but without success: Squirrel raised her bitten nose in reproach, as though the ferrets were his idea. He went to bed early, feeling the day had for the most part been wasted, and dreamed of endless sermons in rainy mission stations.

  Monday morning, however, promised at least a rudimentary brightness, and after the boys had been sent off to college, Murray took two horses and Dunnet, with some caution, and rode out. He felt a desperate cramped closeness about the town, a slowing constriction, and he longed to shake off the streets and find somewhere where he could view the town from a distance, and put his various preoccupations into their respective bundles and stop seeing them as one vast complex problem. He followed the streets south through the Old Town, and Dunnet followed him, past the University (he resisted the impulse to check to see if Robert and Henry were at their lectures) out to the Meadows, where a morning mist made the leafless trees shadowy fence posts. The Council had men at work on a new central drain running the length of the low-lying park, and the thawing muck in the exposed old one gave off an odour all of its own which added a sharp edge to the morning air. The horses flared their nostrils in protest.

  On the other side of the Meadows, they passed the dilapidated, dripping Cage where in the summer ladies would sit to rest during their walks, glad of the shade. Murray veered slightly east, and struck out into the wintry fields between Edinburgh and Nether Liberton. Already Murray felt the ride doing him good, the exercise of controlling the trotting horse on the rough road, the damp air with its promise of sunshine, the freshness of the light breeze beginning to lift the mist away from town and country. He led the way, slowing to a walk along Nether Liberton’s street of low cottages, through the warm scent of the distillery and the muddy ruts scoured by distillery carts, and began the steep climb through fields once more, up the brae to Kirk Liberton. Here they paused at last, next to the kirkyard. The comfortable, angular old church was settled at one corner to their east, with the forestairs to its various galleries winding down the sides of the building like roots worming down firmly into the good earth of God’s acre. To the west, towards the Braid Hill, lay the farmland of Tower Mains, while north of them, spread out now in the wet sunshine, lay Edinburgh town, decently shrunk by distance to a manageable size. Murray grinned and took off his black hat, holding it so that the weepers blew away from his horse’s side, and felt the breeze on his brow. He drew a deep, relieved breath, knowing he had rushed here but feeling that the haste had been worthwhile: this was what he had needed.

  Below, the flattish town was slashed by the jagged line of the Castle rock and stopped by the shadowy cliffs of Salisbury Crags, and in the distance was the green punctuation of Calton Hill, marking the east end of the New Town and the head of the road to Leith. Where Queen Street had once been the neatly hemmed northern border of the New Town, now the edge was becoming frayed and uncertain, the gardens on the north side of the street no longer the beginning of the countryside but a threatened bastion of green between two rows of building. As Murray looked, he began to see the Old Town with eyes more like those of Miss Gordon of Balkiskan, his Jacobite acquaintance. He saw the grid of the New Town as an uncompromising, iron siege engine, driving against the town from the north, while on the south the elegant villas beginning to appear like squadrons of cavalry harried the Old Town’s retreat.

  It was no good: his brief sensation of tranquillity was gone. Dismally Murray replaced his hat and began a slow descent back to the town, into the blue haze of winter smoke like the powdery air of the battlefield after the fighting, and as Dunnet, silent and grim, followed behind, Murray felt like a soldier who had tried to desert, but whose conscience had won him back before even his crime was discovered. His sense of urgency returned, as though he would lead a charge if anyone would give him a sword and direct him to the enemy. But no one did, and he returned home as frustrated as when he had gone out.

  Andrew Balneavis climbed the last turn in the worn stairs and the maid, who was polishing the door handle, curtseyed in a careless fashion as he passed.

  ‘Is everyone ready?’ he called in the little dark hallway. There was a small panicky shriek from the bedchamber shared by the girls. Balneavis smiled happily, knowing he had roused one of his daughters from dreamland again. He went to his wife’s chamber and found her struggling to button herself into her pink dinner gown.

  ‘The maid’s fingers were so groosie from the brasses that I said I’d manage by myself,’ she explained, as her husband came to her rescue. She was quite breathless with the effort, and when he had secured the buttons she subsided on to a stool, hands on her knees, face reddened as she beamed her thanks up at him. He smiled back, and touched her chin with his fingertips.

  In the next room, one of the younger Balneavises was frantically searching the limited storage space for her other slipper.

  ‘Meg, will you not help me, instead of standing there with your two arms the one length! Oh, where is it?’

  But Margaret stood by the window, gowned and groomed, her eyes far away and a little smile on her lips.

  The Armstrong ladies, better provided with maids and space, were sitting ready and waiting in the street parlour. It was not in the nature of Fleming females to be late. Catherine was reading to Ella and her mother from Titus Andronicus, a fact which she was comfortably sure would shock the dreadful Warwick girls. It served, too, to distract at least part of their minds from the fact that when Mr. Armstrong had appeared home to change for dinner, he had been met at the door by his elder son Patrick who had an unusually intense look on his freckled face, and father and son had been closeted in the study ever since. Mrs. Armstrong regretfully doubted that they were discussing mathematics.

  Lady Sarah Dundas, arranged in careful satin and with her velvet pelisse conveniently by, at last drew a deep breath.

  ‘My dear, I do not feel that I am well enough to go to dinner. Pray make my excuses to the Thomsons.’

  William Dundas did not look up from his newspaper.

  ‘Nonsense, Sarah,’ he said with empty kindness. ‘You simply need to go about a little more. Dr. Falconer said you required only distractions and changes of scene.’

  Lady Sarah was silent. Dr. Falconer had indeed recommended distractions, and Dr. Harker had suggested a strict diet of white meat and raw vegetables, which was difficult when one had to be about in society. Dr. Lamb had insisted on purges and bleeding, Dr. Macdonald had recommended sea bathing, but only in the summer and when the wind was from the west, and Dr. Hope had rather alarmingly produced evidence that a treatment with electricity had worked well in such cases. Fortunately Mr. Dundas had drawn the line at that one. It had been altogether too expensive.

  She sighed inwardly and waited for her sons to return home with the Warwicks, so that they could all go out again. Her gloves were a
crumpled heap in her working hands.

  Mrs. Thomson, resplendent in deep green velvet, paid her last visit to the kitchen before dinner and was assured by a selection of terrified servants that everything was in perfect order. She was suspicious, but chose not to investigate, and when the sound of her footsteps had died away the scullery maid under the table hurriedly continued to mop up the remains of what had been a full tureen of soup. The cook, cleverer than she was given credit for being, was improvising furiously over a saucepan.

  Mr. Thomson was standing before the fire in the street parlour, snow-perfect hair capping his heavy head, warming his coat tails and contemplating his dinner with pleasure. A good selection of guests, he thought: rich and poor, fashionable and unfashionable, interesting and eager to be entertained. He had finished his newspaper, and would pass it on later discreetly to Andrew Balneavis.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Murray changed into dinner dress and walked fast to the far end of George Street, to the Thomsons’ house where he had been invited to dine. Despite his speed, there were quite a number of people already there, he was pleased to see, and it was easy to slip into the crowd, and look about to see who was talking to whom. He nodded with a smile at Ella Armstrong across the room, but found himself beside her brother instead. Patrick had Ella’s sandy colouring, with his father’s pale blue eyes, too. He was the same age as Murray, and as children they had shared an interest in collecting rocks, he suddenly remembered. Mathematics had, however, taken over as Patrick’s passion, and Murray wondered how he was going to reconcile it to the career in law that his father probably expected of him. Patrick blinked at him as he approached, and gave an uncertain smile as if out of practice.

  ‘Hallo, Murray,’ he said. His pale eyes looked weak and weary behind his spectacles. ‘How do you?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you. And you?’

  ‘Ah. Indeed, yes.’ His gaze wandered to another corner of the room, and Murray was about to move on when he remembered a reason to speak to Patrick. He felt in the pocket of his breeches and drew out the button that Blair had said he thought belonged to Archibald Armstrong, Patrick’s father.

  ‘I wonder,’ he began, ‘if you wouldn’t mind looking at this?’ He laid it on his flat hand under Patrick’s nose. Patrick refocused and fixed on the button, and his eyes opened wide with alarming speed. His mouth popped open but no sound came out.

  ‘Have you seen it before?’ Murray prompted. ‘I think it is quite unusual.’

  Patrick Armstrong breathed in sharply and out again.

  ‘No,’ he said, definitely. ‘I have never seen it before.’ His fingers, pale on his watch chain, carried out complex calculations on the abacus of its links. ‘And anyway, he never goes out at night, never at all, he’s always in.’ His voice was urgent, tight. His gaze was back on the other corner of the room, eyes still wide.

  ‘Who is?’ asked Murray, a little puzzled at Patrick’s reaction.

  ‘My father,’ said Patrick, over-loudly, ‘never goes out in the evening.’

  Andrew Balneavis appeared suddenly at Patrick’s elbow. He had left John Douglas in the middle of the room, it seemed, frowning at them, as if he had overheard Patrick’s curious statement. Murray felt himself shiver at the expression on Douglas’ face, but Andrew Balneavis merely looked interested. Patrick abruptly walked off, and Murray discreetly pocketed the button. Balneavis had brought Margaret with him, and Murray smiled brightly to stop himself sighing in despair.

  ‘My boy, with all your long sojourn in Fife, you and my dear Margaret here have never really had the chance of a proper conversation. You really have so much in common, it seems a shame not to share it!’ he finished brightly, leaving Murray to try to patch together some kind of a dialogue with a girl who, though pleasant enough, clearly had her mind on other things – or other people. He wondered how soon he could decently run howling from the room. Mrs. Thomson and Mrs. Armstrong noted them from the fireplace, Mrs. Thomson with an acid remark about milkmaids, Mrs. Armstrong with some anxiety. Charles Murray could be much better employed following up on that smile he had exchanged with her daughter Ella when he came in – Mrs. Armstrong had seen that. Ella instead was apparently tending to Lady Sarah Dundas, who had just arrived. That was not going to find her a husband.

  Alester Blair, emerging into the room blinking like a mole from the earth, arrived with his sister Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs. Thomson had to leave her sister to greet her last guests. Blair beamed at her and let his watery eyes swim through the crowded room, and leaving his sister in the capable hands of David Thomson, he ambled, via Lady Sarah, across the carpet to Murray and Miss Balneavis.

  ‘Excuse me, Charles.’ He bowed, folding himself up untidily. ‘Miss Balneavis, may I say how lovely you look this afternoon? It is undoubtedly an honour my young friend here does not deserve, to have your solitary conversation. Please allow me to intrude.’

  Miss Balneavis laughed in surprise, and Murray grinned, observing with some pleasure what a difference the unaccustomed compliment made to her rather diffident bearing. She could indeed be very pretty. However, he recognised, too, Blair’s intuitive rescue attempt, and was both glad and ashamed of being glad. He glanced around the room to find where Patrick Armstrong had gone, and could not see him. He saw Harry Dundas attending to the Warwicks, the girls just as colourless as ever while the mother surveyed the room with her bitter currant eyes, calculating and critical. Ella was still with Lady Sarah, her calm kindness seeming to envelop Lady Sarah protectively. The younger Dundases were flirting with Catherine Armstrong and Davina Thomson. When dinner was announced, he turned to find Blair escorting Margaret Balneavis safely away, and found himself instead paired off with a Warwick, without much interest on either side.

  The soup had been served by modishly-clad servants, and the lids were replaced on the chunky blue and white tureens. Mrs. Thomson swooped a kestrel-like gaze around her guests, hovering and passing on, making certain that all were well provided for and comfortable in their places. She had been obliged to put the rather difficult Mr. Blair on her right, but was more than pleased to find that he was devoting his energies to Margaret Balneavis on his other side. It allowed Mrs. Thomson to indulge in conversation with Mr. Dundas, who was in his usual good humour, tempered of course with the aloof dignity becoming his position as the distant cousin of somebody very important indeed. The pleasures of such a conversation did not distract her, however, from the conversations of the rest of the table: she noted, for example, that her brother-in-law Mr. Armstrong was unusually quiet this evening, even for him; that her beautiful new broad mahogany dining table was effectively cutting the conversation in half as no one could be heard across it; that despite its width, Miss Warwick and Harry Dundas exchanged one or two meaningful smiles across the polished expanse; that her daughter Davina was not too pleased at being placed so far from Gavin Dundas; that young Charles Murray was by contrast quite happy to sit by her niece Ella; and that her husband was struggling, at the far end of the table, with a combination of Lady Sarah’s silence and Mrs. Freeman’s nonsense. His tactic appeared to be not to stop speaking himself.

  ‘You may have met my cousin Thomas Thomson?’ he was saying, his food mostly untouched. ‘Always has his head in books. I believe he lives more in the sixteenth century than in the nineteenth. They’re to make him Deputy Lord Clerk Register, you know, a new post. I said to Lord Frederick myself – he’s the Lord Clerk Register, and the work he has had to organise the Register House is astonishing. My cousin, on whose behalf I take leave to boast, has been indispensible to him. Lord Frederick was just telling me how indispensable Thomas has been.’

  Lady Sarah smiled weakly and tried to push away some of the preserved apricots from her chicken. One doctor, although she could no longer remember which, had told her that preserved fruit held too much lethargy. Mrs. Freeman eyed Lady Sarah’s plate. She had already finished all her apricots and looked likely to offer to dispose of Lady Sarah’s, too. Mr. Thomson, wi
th a practised glance at each of them, moved smoothly on.

  ‘Of course, Register House is the jewel in Edinburgh’s crown of the New Town. Mrs. Armstrong,’ he called down the table to his sister-in-law, ‘have you managed yet to persuade Mr. Armstrong to take up a feu here? You see, as you always do, how prettily situated we are, in the best of society and the cleanest of air.’

  ‘Indeed, sir, but I believe that between Adam’s Square, Brown Square, George’s Square and our own St. Patrick’s Square we have society and titles enough to fill your New Town! And besides,’ she added more kindly, for she was not at all averse to moving to the New Town herself, ‘if we lived in the New Town, such close familiarity with it might lead us to disregard it as merely ordinary, while coming to it from the Old Town we can wonder afresh with each visit at its charms and society.’

  Further up the table from his mother, Patrick Armstrong looked at her from behind his thick spectacles and seemed about to cry. Murray might not have noticed but that Ella suddenly broke off their conversation to stare at her brother. A moment of slightly awkward silence was not made any better by a heavy groan coming from Gavin Dundas – stuck between Lady Warwick and Mrs. Balneavis, he seemed to be the object of a tug-of-war for marriageable daughters. He reddened and sat back suddenly.

  So many of the guests were dissatisfied to varying extents with their positions at the table that there was more relief than usual felt when the ladies rose and retired upstairs to the drawing room. There was much pushing back of chairs and undoing of waistcoat buttons, particularly around Blair and Balneavis stomachs. Archibald Armstrong felt in his pocket and slipped a peppermint into his mouth, praying that it would cool the fires of his dyspepsia.

  ‘And are you in the end to buy anything at Wordsworth’s auction on Wednesday, then?’ David Thomson called up the table to him.