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

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘No,’ said Armstrong. ‘Canna afford it, dinna need it.’

  Andrew Balneavis grinned encouragingly. He had lived by that maxim for many years.

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Harry Dundas with deliberation, ‘of buying a saddle horse. A quiet one, was what I had in mind.’

  ‘Suitable for a lady, as they say, eh, Harry?’ suggested his brother Gavin.

  ‘Something of that nature,’ Harry agreed calmly. His father smiled, and remarked,

  ‘Murray used to have a good one. Charles, what happened to that keir black one your father had?’

  ‘It was hardly quiet,’ Murray remembered. ‘It used to funk and yunk, as they say at Letho. The quiet one is the bay.’

  ‘I didn’t see it last week,’ commented Dundas.

  ‘Last week?’ Murray asked curiously. Thomson and Balneavis looked slightly sheepish.

  ‘When we were going, ah, to the funeral,’ said Balneavis, grinning awkwardly.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Thomson. Embarrassment was unfamiliar to him. ‘We had each arranged to leave the Courts and meet our families at your house before going in, and we were early, so we walked round to the mews to see your horses. You know, sometimes with all the fuss in a household, the groom is forgotten about, and he can become a little lax, you know? And we wanted to make sure you weren’t being taken in by him, for example. So we had a word with him and took a look at the horses, and came away. But the little bay wasn’t there.’

  ‘No, I gather she’s up at Letho. She does not care for cobbles,’ said Murray, automatically. On the one hand, he was rather annoyed at this invasion, however well-intentioned – or were they just seeing what horses might soon come up for sale? On the other, it was true that Dunnet could not be trusted. Why had the groom not mentioned this visit?

  ‘So have you any plans for the beasts?’ prompted Dundas.

  ‘I shall keep them, for now,’ Murray answered. Dundas looked disappointed. Murray glanced up the table at him, and was surprised to find John Douglas staring at him, with what looked suspiciously like sympathy.

  Mrs. Armstrong had noticed Lady Sarah Dundas’ velvet pelisse on her arrival, and wanted to know all about it.

  ‘They really are the very latest thing, are they not? Quite the ton.’

  ‘Are they?’ asked Lady Sarah, looking as if she could not quite remember what she had been wearing. ‘Mr. Dundas gave it to me.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Mrs. Thomson, eyeing a portrait of her husband speculatively. ‘And the best ones are those with the embossed velvet ribbon all around them, I believe.’

  ‘I should love a purple one,’ sighed Mrs. Armstrong, ‘and Catherine would look pretty in blue, and Ella in brown. Ah, well, we can but dream!’

  ‘It could be worse, dear sister,’ said Mrs. Thomson quietly. ‘I am sure Mrs. Balneavis has had that pink gown for five seasons at least.’

  ‘Oh, no, dear; surely it is only four,’ Mrs. Armstrong countered charitably.

  ‘And last week I met her in the High Street, and I’d swear she was wearing tartan ribbon in her bonnet – you know, the kind that was popular two whole years ago!’ Mrs. Thomson said in tones of delicious horror.

  ‘Perhaps it is to come in again,’ Lady Sarah suggested vaguely. ‘Oh, here are the gentlemen.’

  The gentlemen made themselves immediately useful by pulling the box pianoforte into a more prominent position and arranging some chairs to form a little auditorium, having fixed it that some of the young ladies at least would be expected to show off their accomplishments. Catherine Armstrong was the first to play and sing, setting the tone of jollity with ‘Miss Fitzgibbon’s Lament’, a witty Irish song brought over early in the season and very much suited to her high voice. She played again for Gavin Dundas to sing, better than Murray had expected. Then the Misses Balneavis were ushered to the box piano, and Catherine retired on Gavin’s arm to the applause of the house.

  Miss Helen Balneavis, a younger sister, settled herself nervously at the piano, one far superior to what she was used to, and played a tentative scale on the keys, faintly surprised to find that none of them stuck. Margaret handed her a sheet of music, and she started to play, while Margaret drew breath and smiled, and began to sing.

  As I went out from Duns one day,

  I heard a lovely lassie say

  ‘I’m waiting at the kirkyard lea –

  Ah Johnnie, will ye no wed me?’

  Murray grinned to himself: he had heard a particularly scurrilous version of this song at university. There appeared to be some kind of disturbance on his left, where the Balneavis parents were sitting: perhaps they, too, knew of the other version. Margaret sang on.

  ‘You said you’d wed when May was come,

  When leaves were green and winter done,’

  There was a definite feeling of something in the room now, which Murray could best describe as concern. Margaret’s gaze seemed very fixed, and Murray realised that it was focussed on someone or something just behind him. He could not remember who was sitting there.

  ‘The blossom’s fair on hill and tree –

  Ah Johnnie, will ye no wed me?’

  Ella beside him shifted uncomfortably in her chair and looked at the floor. Beyond her, Catherine Armstrong smiled but looked faintly guilty. Davina Thomson was grinning as wickedly as a proper young lady could, while nearer the piano her mother contrived to hide her amusement rather better. Only Helen Balneavis, concentrating at the piano, seemed oblivious.

  ‘My gown is white sprigged all wi’ green

  The tears flow from my mother’s e’en,

  But not a sign of you’s to see:

  Ah, Johnnie, will you no wed me?’

  Margaret sat down to relieved applause, looking very satisfied. Helen followed, blushing prettily. Mrs. Thomson, suddenly remembering her duty as a hostess, hurried the two Misses Warwick to the piano and bade them play something, quickly. Murray, still puzzled, was beckoned over by a scarlet-faced Balneavis. He excused himself from Miss Armstrong and went as he was bid.

  ‘My dear boy, my dear boy,’ Balneavis said quietly but urgently as he approached. ‘You must not be dismayed, no indeed.’

  ‘Dismayed?’ asked Murray. Miss Warwick, accompanied by her sister on the piano, had begun to play a guitar. It seemed a likely source of dismay, but not one that Andrew Balneavis would necessarily comment upon.

  ‘My daughter Margaret. She’s very young, you know, and she doesn’t understand such things – though such a sweet girl! so innocent! But she doesn’t see. I mean to say, he’s one of my dearest friends, but ...’ He tailed off, glancing around him. Margaret was being talked at fiercely by her mother. Helen Balneavis was leaving the room in tears.

  ‘But what, sir?’ Murray asked. He still had no idea to whom Margaret had very pointedly addressed her song.

  ‘But he has no money, and he looks like a fiend from hell,’ finished Balneavis in frustration. He waved a hand towards John Douglas, who sat impassively watching the Misses Warwick. ‘How could any father want that for his daughter? But she’s been like this since she was fifteen, and the more he ignores her, the more she dotes on him. What am I to do, Charles? What can I do with her?’

  The guitar music was actually quite bearable, and Miss Warwick courteously refrained from singing. Mrs. Thomson and Mrs. Armstrong sat and scowled at both Misses Warwick, under a veneer of polite interest. At the end of the piece, Miss Lily retired from the piano to be replaced by her sister, and Harry Dundas, to everyone’s amused surprise, came out to sing a duet with her. No one could remember having heard him sing before, but he had his father’s voice, deep and rich, and they sang well together. Miss Warwick’s eyes shone. So did Ella’s, Murray noticed, but not perhaps in quite the same way.

  After the performances the chairs were moved back and dancing was hastily arranged for the young people. Murray watched in disgust. As he was still in deep mourning, it was inappropriate for him to dance, which he very much enjoyed: in parti
cular, at this point he would have liked to have danced with Ella and to escape from Mr. Balneavis. Balneavis had indeed fallen silent, but it was a silence of near despair and it seemed unkind to leave him.

  A Thomson brother took Ella to the floor instead, while Harry Dundas led out Miss Warwick, who had to be nudged through what was to her an entirely unknown dance. Harry, too, was not entirely confident. Davina Thomson derived great amusement from them and shared it with her partner Gavin Dundas: the pair danced with supercilious ease, aware of the elegant show they put up. Catherine and Willie Jack made up the set for a Strip the Willow, while the two Misses Balneavis sat out with their mother between them, a picture of anxiety.

  Patrick Armstrong unwittingly helped by taking out Miss Helen Balneavis for the next dance. Patrick liked to dance, as he liked music, for the mathematics and the geometry of it. When Miss Lily Warwick, as unfamiliar with this dance as her sister had been with the first, made a mistake and set to the wrong person, he scowled horribly, leaving Miss Helen rather frightened. At the end of the set he left Helen rudely in the middle of the floor and seized Miss Lily by the arm.

  ‘Look,’ he said fiercely, ‘it is a pattern. It followed a pattern of circles interlocked with triangles, and the outside edges of the triangles form curlicues, like – like this. Look.’ He snatched his handkerchief from his pocket, walked her over to a table with a drawer, drew out pen and ink and in a few careful strokes produced for her a little diagram, perfectly drawn, like an ornament in plaster or parquetry, pretty as embroidery on the heavy linen. He returned the pen and ink to the drawer, handed her the handkerchief and strode off. Miss Lily took it almost reverently in her white fingers, and gazed at it and its author until she could see the pattern even when her eyes were fixed on him.

  Dancing and more music kept the younger folk occupied until supper, while some of the older members of the party gossiped or played cards, commenting occasionally on the performances. The Dundases and Warwicks, promised elsewhere for supper, took their leave with Mrs. Armstrong going down with them particularly to torment herself with the loveliness of Lady Sarah’s velvet pelisse. Murray finally managed to dislodge Balneavis without offence, and contrived to find Blair on his own for once, having just bid goodbye to Lady Sarah.

  ‘My dear boy.’ Blair shook his hand as if they had not met for months. ‘How do matters go with you?’

  ‘In an interesting fashion, sir, but not fast enough,’ Murray replied. ‘Your friend with friends who work for the Council, have you spoken to him?’

  ‘Alas, I only found him this morning.’ Blair’s eyes widened and his pursed mouth drooped in a horrible mask of dismay. ‘But the enquiry is in train, dear boy, progress will and must be made, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ said Murray, ‘I know. And thank you for your help, sir.’ But inside, he could still feel the need to fight, to run, could feel the waves agitating, a clock ticking, marking the time from his father’s death to the capture of his murderer, ticking too fast for Murray to catch up with it.

  He walked home along George Street, following a wretched link boy with a failing torch. The rain had begun again, an invisible soaking blanket in the darkness. He could hear its constant patter on his hard hat, feel the light pummelling on his shoulders. He strode quickly, passing other hurrying figures, huddled against the penetrating damp cold or bundled into sedan chairs. Even when the ice was thick on the ground, the cold was not like this, not this seeping chill in every limb.

  Why had his father’s three friends really visited the stable before his father’s funeral? It seemed such a strange thing to do, but perhaps that was because he was looking at the event with eyes that had seen Jamie dead in the same stable. Perhaps at its most malevolent the visit really was a reconnaissance for a future sale. Had they often visited the stable? Did they know Dunnet by sight, and Jamie? Or was it, for one of them at least, perhaps the first time they had seen Jamie there and realised where he worked, so that later that gentleman came back and killed him?

  But that would not work. All three gentlemen had come inside the house to the funeral meats with their families, and Jamie was still alive at that point. Later, all three had gone to the burial - he had seen them himself, there could be no doubt – and Jamie had been murdered while they were there. None of the three could have killed him.

  Why had Dunnet not told him that they had called?

  On the other hand, had Dunnet spoken to him at all since he came to fetch him to his father’s death bed?

  A lamp still burned outside his own front door, and he hurried up the steps, reaching at the same time for the doorbell. Robbins took a moment to answer it, and let his master into a somewhat duskish hallway.

  ‘And now the lock as well,’ he muttered. ‘Something has happened to the candles, sir,’ he explained. I just noticed it as I came up now. I looked in the hall table for a spill or flints, but they are not there.’ He looked apologetic but efficient: there was a problem, but it was recognised and the solution in hand, and in a very short time it would have been dealt with. Murray nodded, and said,

  ‘Well, don’t worry about it now. I intend to go straight to bed in any case. Are the boys back safely? We shan’t need much more light here tonight.’

  ‘Mr. Henry and Mr. Robert have retired. At least, sir, I shall go and fetch fresh spills and flints, in case it is forgotten about.’ He disappeared towards the back stairs.

  Murray followed in the same general direction, taking his gloves off and laying them with his hat on the table under the stairs. He was pulling out the drawer in a half-hearted attempt to look for the missing spills when he heard a step behind him, and turned, expecting Robbins, to see Mary’s pale face in the dull light, framed by the dark twists of hair loosed from her cap. She carried a tray with, as far as Murray could see, a glass and decanter on it.

  ‘Sir,’ she began with her curiously unrespectful curtsey, ‘Mrs. Chambers asked that I bring you some brandy, against the damp of the night.’

  ‘Very well, Mary, that was good of her to think of it.’ He turned back to push the drawer of the hall table back in place, then realised that she was walking past him towards the street parlour door.

  ‘Ah, Mary,’ he said, intending to direct her to leave the brandy in the study. She turned carefully with the tray, looked back at him, then cried,

  ‘Sir, look out!’

  There was a crash. Her tray hit the stone floor. Murray lunged to save it as the long-stemmed glass seemed to bounce and hover in the air a single, long second, then burst into a thousand pieces. The crash echoed behind him, too, in the angle of the stair, and it came to him that there had been two crashes, not one. He spun round. On the floor was a heap of fragments which had been a Chinese vase on the first floor landing. It lay just where he had been standing when Mary had cried out to him. Above it, on the stairs, shivering in the half-light, stood the shadowy figure of Dunnet, the groom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The decanter lay in pieces on the hall floor in a pool of tawny brown brandy that was fast becoming a damp stain on the stone slabs. Robbins had, however, fetched another bottle in a prudent manner from the cellar, and had opened it without dusting it and poured a substantial quantity of the contents into three glasses, as he had been bidden, in the street parlour.

  Murray took up the nearest glass and handed it to Mary, who was sitting, straight-backed and pale, in an armchair by the fire. The shawl which had covered the back of the chair was around her shoulders but she still looked cold. She took the glass in long fingers and sipped the liquid as if she knew it would do her good but otherwise could not sense it. Murray took up his own glass and gestured to Robbins to sit as well, at the table where he himself was. Robbins paused and then sat uneasily, knuckles white around the glass but not drinking.

  Downstairs, Dr. Harker was still with Dunnet, escorted by Mrs. Chambers and both Daniel and William, in case of any further violent outbursts. It seemed unlikely that there would be any. When Mur
ray had run up the stairs towards him, Dunnet had simply subsided to sit on the steps, and started to cry. It had been much more distressing than any violence could have been. Robbins, appearing from the basement with a handful of tapers, had been aghast at the sight of the crouching figure, Murray’s white face, the smashed vase, glass and decanter and Mary, statue-still with her hands to her throat. Murray and he had virtually carried Dunnet down to his room, and Robbins had stayed with him when Murray ran to the kitchen to send William for Dr. Harker. The doctor had been downstairs for some time now.

  ‘I am – more than grateful to you, Mary.’

  She shook her head sharply, but said nothing. Murray leaned forward towards her to emphasise the point.

  ‘No, it is the truth. Had you not seen Dunnet on the stairs I fear I should not be here now.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ she said quietly, without immodesty. Her eyes were downcast, her lashes dark crescents under her triangular brows. The usual suggestion of a smile was missing for once. She looked angry.

  Robbins rose from the table but went nowhere, standing rubbing the pad of his thumb along a line on the tablecloth. He was stunned by his own failings: Dunnet must have escaped from his room, he thought over and over, William or Daniel must have failed to lock the door. It was his responsibility, they were his staff. He had promised Mr. Murray to prevent Dunnet from endangering anyone, and it was Mr. Murray himself who had been put at terrible risk. Daniel had said Dunnet was asleep: he must have escaped from his room, fiddled the lock, Daniel must not have locked the door. He himself should have gone along to make sure. He should have been suspicious when he found the candles blown out in the hall, he should have known that something was wrong. When he knew that something was wrong he should not have left the hall, he should not have left Mr. Murray unguarded. His thumb rubbed up and down the line, starting to burn against the thick cloth. He had failed, failed, failed. He would be sent back to Letho.