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

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘Is Miss Gordon at home?’ asked Murray, as they were ushered into the over-packed hall. Blair began to peer closely at the tapestry on the wall beside him.

  ‘I shall just enquire, sir.’ She curtseyed, and vanished in folds of tapestry in the direction of the parlour.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Blair rather loudly, but Murray persuaded himself that the wall-hangings would have muffled the sound. In only a moment, the maid returned to bring them in to see her mistress. On the way, Murray walked into the same sharp-cornered trunk as he had before, bruising his shin in the same place. Blair, ahead of him, bumbled between the various obstacles without touching them.

  The parlour had not changed, except that the over-sized curtains were drawn and the candles lit. There was a faint smell of cabbage soup, a residue of dinner, perhaps. The old Jacobite painting, sword beneath it, was still above the fireplace, and the old Jacobite lady looked at him with amusement from the depths of her tall chair.

  ‘Mr. Charles Murray of Letho, again!’ she sang lightly. ‘Such attention! Should I expect you to be asking to visit my father soon?’

  Murray, with his mind racing away, was confused for a moment, then grinned.

  ‘I might, at that,’ he said. ‘Miss Gordon, may I present my old friend, Alester Blair?’

  Blair bowed deeply.

  ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, ma’am,’ he said from the lowest point of his obeisance.

  ‘What’s your will, ma’am?’ asked Jessie.

  ‘Some tea bread, Jessie, and here is the key to the brandy. You will both stay for a glass, gentlemen?’

  Murray, with a sinking feeling, smiled and thanked her. He was waved to the same low stool as before, but Blair was offered an oak chair with an angular flat seat, worn with age.

  ‘And what brings you here again, Mr. Charles Murray?’ asked Miss Gordon.

  ‘Two reasons, ma’am, the first being the better, and that is the pleasure of seeing you again.’

  ‘Aye, Charleses always do their best to charm, in my experience,’ she nodded. Jessie returned with the tea bread and the glasses, and fetched the brandy from the cellaret. Murray tried hard to resist the temptation of watching Blair’s face as he bit into the spirited tea bread.

  ‘And the second reason?’ asked Miss Gordon, ignoring the watery eyes of her guests as the brandy fumes hit them.

  ‘Ma’am, it is something of a personal matter. I believe you told me when I last visited you that you are of Balkiskan, in Perthshire.’

  ‘That is quite correct. And proud of it, though my father would doubt it.’

  ‘And your Christian name is indeed Christian, is it not?’

  ‘It is, laddie. It was my grandmother’s name.’ She had the air of humouring him without much sign of curiosity, like a kindly father listening absently to a child’s anecdote.

  ‘Ma’am, do you own land north of Queen Street gardens?’ Murray asked, and held his breath.

  ‘I own land in several places, and if Queen Street is that merciless rod enclosing the north of the New Town, then yes, I own land there or thereabouts. As I told you, all my father’s property came to me, with my brother dead. ‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers also.’ Come clean, now, with your reasons for all your queesivity.’

  Murray looked at Blair, who nodded encouragement.

  ‘I am afraid, ma’am, that you may have been the victim of a deceitful action. Can you tell me, to confirm what I suspect, the name of your father’s cousin who, you said, was to inherit your lands from you?’

  ‘Her name is Sarah Gordon,’ said the old lady, looking now somewhat cross. ‘Although I should prefer you to tell me what is the nature of this defame.’

  ‘There is no slander concerning you, ma’am.’ Murray hastened to reassure her. ‘Do you know where this Sarah Gordon is now?’

  ‘Aye, I ken well. She was married on some cousin of him they call Harry the Ninth, Lord Melville. William Dundas, I believe his name is. She was the granddaughter of my father’s older brother, who was made first Earl of Baillie. But the Balkiskan lands were separate, they were my father’s own, and they came down my way. They live in Edinburgh, in that swine cruive they call the New Town. They willna be there long: the whole lot will fall down in fifty years. The modern buildings will never stand firm against the weather the way these old ones do.’ She seemed to realise that she had wandered away from the subject, and came back sharply.

  ‘And Sarah has something to do with whatever has happened?’

  ‘That I cannot say, but it does seem that somehow, William Dundas has gained control over some of your lands. I take it you never made any land over to him or to Lady Sarah?’

  ‘Never. I never clapped eyes on him, and Sarah I have not seen since she was a bairn. Control over my lands? Not for long!’ She was excited, and Murray felt it might be time to leave.

  ‘Do you have a man of affairs to see to your business?’ he asked.

  ‘I do. I shall send Jessie for him this instant.’ She was breathing quite quickly, and her face was becoming rosier. She rang for the maid, using a heavy handbell.

  ‘Jessie!’ she cried, as soon as Jessie appeared. ‘I want you to go at once to Mr. Hammond, and bring him here to me! It is most urgent!’

  ‘I will not, ma’am,’ said Jessie firmly, after one look at her mistress’s face. ‘I canna leave you in this state. You’re hysterical.’

  ‘Now you listen to me, you hizzie!’ cried Miss Gordon. ‘Go at once and do as you are told!’

  But Jessie ignored her and poured her a glass of brandy, holding it to her mouth.

  ‘Where is the house of this Mr. Hammond?’ asked Murray. ‘We could fetch him for you on our way.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Jessie with authority. ‘I’ll send a link boy in a minute.’

  In the end they did this themselves, leaving Jessie dealing competently with the old lady who was not so much hysterical, Murray thought, as downright furious. He hoped that she would suffer no ill effects from her passion.

  ‘Will you return home with me for supper?’ asked Blair. ‘Mrs. Freeman would be delighted to see you, and we could send one of the lads to let your household know.’

  ‘It is very kind of you, sir,’ said Murray, as they walked back up High Street, ‘but I must return home. I have some papers to put in order before I see my own man of business tomorrow, and I am hoping that my man Robbins might have some information for me. Although in some ways it seems almost redundant, with all we have learned, there are still things to discover about this whole terrible business.’

  ‘What we seem to have ascertained so far,’ Blair stopped, and made a little pantomime of looking about him for possible eavesdroppers, ‘is that Dundas and Matthew Muir conspired in some fashion to sell the land to the Council, land that would come to Lady Sarah Dundas eventually but has not done so yet, as Miss Gordon of Balkiskan is still alive. To do this, Muir undoubtedly used the circumstances of his master’s prolonged illness, forging his master’s sign, probably, and keeping on his business. Perhaps he did a good deal of work at Pollock’s direction, but he must also have been branching out on his own account.’

  ‘According to Dandy Muir,’ Murray remembered, ‘it seemed unlikely that John Pollock would live at all, let alone be in a condition to return to Edinburgh and make examination of his affairs. Muir presumably did quite well from the whole thing, for a while.’

  People hurried by with hats and hoods held in place. No one paused to listen to two cloaked gentlemen silly enough to stand and talk in the weather. It was completely dark now, and lamps hissed and spat at the rain.

  ‘So we have a connexion between Matthew Muir and a gentleman, and Dundas was undoubtedly a gentleman who was out and unaccounted for on the night that my father was injured.’ Murray breathed out heavily, feeling the mist from his breath on his face. ‘Can you see Dundas killing someone?’

  ‘I am not sure,’ said Blair, scowling. ‘And,
of course, he could not have killed your stable boy. He was definitely at the burial at Greyfriars Kirkyard.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Murray. ‘On the other hand, a servant was sent to kill Dandy Muir, so why could not a servant have been sent to kill Jamie?’

  Blair pursed his lips and looked up at the dark sky, blinking as the rain fell on his sagging face.

  ‘Yes, that would work,’ he said. ‘Although while Dandy Muir presumably died because he was thought to be talking about his brother’s business, notably to you, we have no reason that I have yet heard for the killing of young Jamie.’

  ‘Indeed that is true,’ said Murray. ‘As I say, we still have much to learn.’ He felt a large gout of water drop down on his nose, and blinked. It was definitely time to be indoors. ‘Perhaps we should consider this overnight, and decide tomorrow what to do. Will you dine with me tomorrow at Baird’s?’

  They parted company at the foot of the Tron Kirk, Blair to meander along South Bridge and Murray to move swiftly through the crowds down North Bridge and back to the New Town.

  It was still early for supper when he arrived home. Robbins opened the front door to him, complaining that there was something wrong with the lock and promising to call a locksmith.

  ‘I have been to call on the servants of several households, sir, as you requested, and have despatched Daniel to some others. He has not yet returned, sir.’

  ‘When did he set out?’ asked Murray anxiously. Ultimately, the household was his responsibility.

  ‘Around three o’clock, sir. He should return at any moment.’

  ‘Then tell me when he does, and you can make your report. I shall be in the drawing room.’ He made for the stairs.

  ‘The drawing room, sir?’ asked Robbins in a shocked voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Murray, lighting a candle from one of the hall sconces. ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Robbins, ‘only that there is no fire lit there.’

  ‘I shall have to thole, then, shall I not?’ said Murray rather crossly. ‘Some tea to the street parlour in a quarter of an hour, please, Robbins: that should warm me through.’ He took his candle and went upstairs. By the time he had reached the drawing room he already regretted his cross words.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  He had not been in the drawing room since the day of his father’s funeral. The double doors leading from the main room to the smaller adjacent one had been open then to allow the crowd some space: now they were shut. The four tall windows still had their shutters and curtains open, and he walked over, compelled as ever to look out over the gardens to the darkness beyond. All that was Council land now, he thought. Soon it would all be houses, broad stripes of streets, as far as he could see. It felt as if the town were closing around him, suffocating him, and he turned away quickly to look back at the room. He could feel his father’s portrait watching him from over the fireplace, and he frowned up at it in the shadows.

  ‘I’m trying my best,’ he whispered.

  The candle did not light much. He set it on a table before a pier glass to reflect some of its light, and stood in the middle of the room, picturing it crowded with people.

  The Dundases had been just here, he thought, remembering Willie Jack’s face during grace. The Thomsons and John Douglas and the Armstrongs were there, and the Balneavises there. But people wash about, form different groups, break away again, and he had not been in the room long that day.

  He opened the lid of the box piano and played the left hand of a Bach toccata, standing absently beside the piano stool. The notes sounded hollow in the empty room. Then he picked up the candle and crossed the room to the door that led not to the stair but to one of the bedchambers. From there he would get a view of the stable block. Caught inside the dual doorway in his hurry, he nearly had the candle blow out with the draught from one door closing before he could open the other one, and was stopped for a moment in the insalubrious closet of the privy in between, waiting for the candle to steady itself. The privy was another example of his father’s love of practicality: situated in this short passage between drawing room and bedchamber, it took up little space and yet had a modern, convenient air. What one left in the bowl set into the polished wooden seat was swept in a controllable burst of water into a tray beneath, so that several guests in a row could use it without offence, even ladies. Murray grinned at the thought of comparable facilities in Scoggie Castle, and opened the door into the blue bedchamber beyond.

  The stables were lit from within, and Murray could just see the shadow of William sweeping half-heartedly at the floor, pausing to lean on his broom and apparently, though Murray could not hear him, conversing with the stable cat, a large tabby with a sociable disposition. Murray suspected that Jamie had fed it more scraps than were good for it, but as its very presence appeared to keep rats from the stable, it did not seem to matter much. He wondered if the cat missed Jamie, and who fed it now. He hoped that the stable lad and the groom that Thomson was to find for him would be kind to the cat.

  It was cold up here, Robbins was quite right. Murray took the candle and went back out through the landing door and downstairs to the street parlour, trying not to shiver. The tea was ready by the fire, Squirrel peered out from behind a chair, and the table was already laid for supper.

  It was another half hour before Robbins appeared to report that Daniel was home safely with a look about him that spoke of dallyings in servants’ halls which had not been without their reward. Murray sighed, and Robbins looked stony-faced.

  ‘However, sir, he had to report that there were few servants amongst the households he visited that were out on Monday night or early Tuesday morning, when Dandy Muir was killed. In the households I visited it is the same thing, sir: four servants were from home on the night in question. That is, from the Scott household the cook was absent and has been for a week, to see her daughter through her confinement. The daughter is well-known in the household, sir, and is indeed at that time. In the Blair household, a young lad went out to deliver apples to a neighbour, and is said to have lost his way, being new to Edinburgh, and was returned in tears by a water-caddie the next day. I have seen the lad myself, sir, and he is an ill-thriven child, very slight and small. I do not think he could have done what you describe.’

  ‘So that is two accounted for,’ said Murray. ‘What of the other two?’

  ‘One is of the Armstrong household,’ said Robbins slowly. ‘This news is from Daniel, but it seems sound. A man that does odd work for them was out all night that night, and returned the worse for drink after breakfast the next day. He has been known to do this before, and has been warned. The last time he did it was only last week – on the day of Mr. Murray’s funeral, sir.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ said Murray softly. How did Armstrong fit into all this? And what did his son Patrick know about it?

  ‘There is one little problem with this man, sir. Oh, he is braw, and black of hair, too, as you said, but he has only the one hand, and the other has been missing these twenty years.’

  ‘Oh.’ Murray was disappointed. He could still see the large, pale hands of the killer, clear in the lamplight, and definitely a pair.

  ‘However,’ said Robbins, with a fine sense of drama, ‘you may like the fourth servant best. This man I saw myself, and he is large and dark and with both hands. He was out all night till early, but says he was helping a friend with a sick horse.’

  ‘He is a groom?’ asked Murray.

  Robbins contemplated his boots.

  ‘Of sorts, you could say, sir. He is employed by Mr. Dundas in St. Andrew’s Square, and it is known among the servants in the town that Mr. Dundas – if I may say so, sir – has been, ah, economical with his servants for some time. His last groom was a fine man, sir, with a very fine reputation, but he was given notice and this Irishman was brought in instead. It is the same with many of the other servants, particularly the ones less seen above stairs. The only ones I ken well there now are the c
ook and the manservant, and all the rest are new – and cheap. His scullery maid is a noted girl of bad character. The cook, a very respectable woman, has told me that she is looking for another place.’

  ‘So, Mr. Dundas’ Irish groom was out on Monday night?’ mused Murray.

  ‘Aye, sir. What made me think he might be the man you are looking for, is that he is from County Down.’

  Murray looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Well, sir, you said the killer had pale hands. That’s not so common among servants, sir, but this man is from linen country. Before he left Ireland he was a bleach worker. His hands are quite white.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Murray had not slept well again. Shadows seemed to creep and scuttle amongst the bed curtains, and each time he began to sink into a doze, some distant noise in the house had shaken him back to wakefulness. When he had at last fallen asleep, he dreamed that he had already confronted Dundas, but that his father had swum up in the middle of the conversation and told him not to be so silly.

  Breakfast was over, and he was now sitting in his father’s study, surrounded by his father’s possessions, stared at mournfully by his father’s dog, wondering how to deal with the man he believed was his father’s murderer while he was supposed, in fact, to be waiting to meet his father’s man of business. It seemed to have been some time since he had lived his own life. He was briefly resentful, but then wondered how many people did live their own lives. Not as many as he thought, he suspected. He opened his reluctant eyes and tried to finish the note he was composing to Blair.

  ‘Further facts have accumulated,’ he wrote, ‘which point in the same direction as yesterday. I intend to deal with this matter directly after dinner, as I do not feel that the business should be allowed to rest any longer, and would ask therefore if we could postpone our dinner engagement at Baird’s? Perhaps instead you would favour me with your presence at supper here tonight. Please present my kindest regards to Mrs. Freeman. Your obedient servant, Charles Murray.’