‘Do you know,’ said Lady Scoggie, ‘that seems infinitely more likely than someone wanting to kill Mr. Tibo. As I said, Major Keyes used to have a bad temper. Who knows how many enemies he must have made in his life? One of them could have followed him here and, as you say, made a mistake.’
There was a tap at the dining room door, and the maid came in.
‘Mrs. Spence says she’s done, my lady.’
‘He’s ready?’
‘Aye, my lady.’
Lady Scoggie sighed.
‘I shall go back in now.’ The maid bobbed and left. ‘Beatrix said she would come and keep me company later, if Mr. Tibo’s brother is delayed.’
‘She is a kind girl,’ Murray remarked.
‘Yes.’ Lady Scoggie eyed him briefly. The words ‘And too good for you, my lad,’ seemed to him to snap through the air after. He tried to look suitably servile.
‘Shall I take the basket back, or leave it with you, my lady?’
‘Leave it: there is plenty in it yet.’ She rose, and he opened the door for her, following her into the bedchamber to pay his respects to Tibo. The village woman had done a fair job, though the lawyer would never look as spruce in death as he liked to in life. He touched Tibo’s hand to ward off his ghost, bowed to Lady Scoggie, and left.
Tibo’s short carriage drive decanted him on to the main road again. He stopped and spent a moment wondering whether to go straight home to the castle, or whether to take a walk down to the village. These days he often only saw it with its Sunday face, and he wondered just how it was that Lord Scoggie came by all his information on village happenings and gossip, knowledge that he had shown so clearly during the interviews with the fishermen and the Kinkells and their associates. He wished that Keyes would tell Lord Scoggie about the anonymous letters: he was sure that Lord Scoggie would be able almost at once to say who was sending them. And how did they arrive? That was a question he should have asked before now. It was all very well for Keyes to say that Naismyth handed them to him, but where did Naismyth get them? Murray was in a good position, halfway between servants and family, to find out: at least, that was, if Naismyth was now in a fit state to speak. He liked his theory of mistaken identity, and was unreasonably pleased that Lady Scoggie had not poured scorn on it: quite the reverse, in fact. If he could explain it to Lord Scoggie, perhaps without breaking Keyes’ confidence over the letters, perhaps everything would be cleared up quickly, as Lady Scoggie wanted and as presumably everyone else did, too. It would be difficult for the ladies to go about as freely as they did if there was a murderer loose in the neighbourhood, and the boys would never really calm down until someone was caught – preferably not a headless horseman, or other kind of ghost.
Ghosts ... he suddenly remembered the figure he had seen in the distance last night, just before he had met Deborah outside the front door, frozen and miserable. The figure had looked like a fisherman, but with a bad limp – another limp. It could not have been Tibo, not dressed that way, nor even Keyes, for the same reason. Who else in the neighbourhood had such a limp? Not, he insisted to himself, Hugh Farquhar’s ghost.
He was just about to push himself away from the gatepost and continue down to the village in pursuit of his thoughts, when they took a sudden turn from ghosts and spun in the direction of elves. Just turning the corner, walking towards him, was Beatrix, coming, no doubt, to sit with Lady Scoggie. With her were Mr. and Mrs. Bootham.
They were more soberly dressed than usual, so he assumed that they had already heard about Tibo’s death. Under her blue cloak, he could see that Mrs. Bootham was wearing a gown of a deep brown like autumn beech leaves, so that he expected it to rustle as she approached him. The frost had pinched her cheeks berry-red, and her eyes were bright.
‘Mr. Murray! How are you on this beautiful morning?’
‘Quite well, thank you.’ He bowed, trying not to remember the feel of her hand in his as they had danced last night. ‘I hope you are well.’
‘Very well, but much saddened to hear of Mr. Tibo’s death.’ She pursed her lips into a solemn look. ‘We have learned from our mistakes, and are here as quickly as possible to pay our respects.’
Mr. Bootham, who had been a little distance behind with Beatrix on his arm, tipped his hat, letting the frosty sunshine melt over his white-gold hair. For just a second, the angle of his head seemed very familiar.
‘Good day, Mr. Murray. A sad day, is it not?’
‘Very much so. But I am glad to see that you both reached home safely.’
‘I think we must have left long before the drama began,’ said Bootham smoothly. ‘We left directly after our visit to the servants’ dance.’
‘We huddled together safely in our little carriage,’ said Mrs. Bootham, with a sweet look at her husband, ‘and guarded each other all the way home. But do you think we are all in danger?’ She turned quickly back to Murray. ‘Is it some dreadful gang in the neighbourhood, robbing people?’
Murray smiled.
‘I don’t believe so, but Lord Scoggie will be the best person to ask. In the mean time, perhaps it is best to be wary when at all possible, and particularly at night.’
‘Then it is as well that we found you, Miss Pirrie, and were able to escort you safely here.’ Mr. Bootham bent over Beatrix in an intimate way that turned Murray’s stomach. He glanced at Mrs. Bootham, but she seemed unconcerned, smiling at them both. Beatrix, on the other hand, was glowing, and it was not just the effect of the cold, bright air. Bootham glanced back at Murray.
‘We were concerned when we saw Miss Pirrie on her own, for we wondered if Miss Scoggie was unwell. I didn’t remember seeing her at the dance, or afterwards, last night.’
He ended on a slight query, to which Murray did not feel like responding.
‘She seemed quite well this morning, though of course shocked at what has happened,’ he answered.
Mrs. Bootham gave a quick little skip.
‘Oh, Miss Pirrie, why will gentlemen talk so when it is so cold outside? Come, let us at least go and find a comfortable fire, and show them how sensible people behave!’
She seized Beatrix by her free arm and snatched her away from her husband, hurrying her away up the drive to Tibo’s front door.
‘A charming girl,’ Bootham remarked, absently straightening his sleeve. ‘Really very sensitive. Yet it is Miss Scoggie who really interests me, don’t you think, Mr. Murray? A very great deal of pent-up emotion in her, I believe.’
‘As Lord Scoggie’s private secretary I cannot, you will understand, make such profound observations. Please excuse me: I must return to my pupils.’
Murray stalked off. He was convinced that behind him, Bootham was laughing at him, but he did not turn round. If he had done so, he knew he would have gone back and hit him.
The boys, when he found them, were in Robert’s room, playing pachisi with listless venom. They had completed the work he had left for them with such exactitude that he knew they were still angry with him even before they glared up at him from the carpet and the pachisi board.
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Henry.
‘We thought you might have been murdered,’ added Robert, sounding slightly disappointed.
‘I went to take food to Lady Scoggie.’
Henry at least looked as if this was a reasonable excuse. Robert looked more dubious.
‘Is he all laid out and everything?’
‘Yes.’ He sat down on the edge of Robert’s bed, watching the progress of the game without much interest. ‘Ladv Scoggie intends to remain there until Mr. Tibo’s brother arrives to take over.’
‘Do you think,’ said Robert, in a dangerously even tone, ‘that if one of us was dead, she would sit with us at all, or would she find some better things to do?’
‘Of course she would,’ snapped Henry angrily. ‘She’s very good.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Robert. Henry snatched up a wooden sword that was lying on the floor beside them, and hit him hard.
/> ‘Henry!’ cried Murray. ‘Stop that!’
‘I’ve stopped,’ said Henry sullenly.
‘Mr. Murray,’ said Robert, rubbing his new bruise, ‘we were talking to Father about you.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Murray was guarded. Would Lord Scoggie take any of their complaints seriously?
‘He said you’d caught a murderer before. When you were a student.’
‘Oh.’ A serious of thoroughly unpleasant memories sped through his mind. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly catch the murderer.’
‘Father says you did.’
‘There’s no arguing, then.’
‘Are you going to catch this murderer?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Father says you might.’
‘He’s very kind to think I might.’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’ asked Henry. ‘It must be easy to find a murderer. He would be all covered in blood and he would be desperate.’
‘Um. Maybe not, Henry. Think about it:’ he wondered if this was sensible, but he might be able to appeal to Henry’s scientific leanings. ‘We think that Mr. Tibo was hit on the head with a stick or some similar weapon. It might have been quite long. It is quite possible that no blood splashed on the killer at all, and he probably threw the weapon into the lake. You said he would be desperate: well, he would indeed, but he would be desperate to hide his deed. He might not be all wild-eyed and terrible. He might just be keeping very quiet, and trying to act as if everything is just as usual.’
Henry looked thoughtful. Robert, on the other hand, looked slightly frightened.
‘So we don’t have any idea at all who it is?’ he asked.
‘At the moment, no.’ He stood up, stretching his back from leaning over for so long. ‘I don’t suppose for a moment that either of you can help.’
He glanced back just in time to see Robert and Henry meet each other’s eye, and sighed.
‘Well ...’ said Robert, poking at the dice on the board.
‘You won’t like it,’ added Henry. ‘Or you won’t believe it. Grown-ups don’t believe anything they don’t want to, but they expect us to believe all kinds of things.’
‘That’s cheeky, but quite perceptive,’ said Murray, beginning to forgive the boys. He smiled at Robert. ‘What is it you think I won’t like?’
Robert sat back on the floor, leaning on his hands, and not looking at Murray. He sighed heavily, and looked to Henry for a little support. Henry shrugged.
‘We saw a ghost,’ said Robert. ‘I know you say there aren’t any, but we did.’
‘If you mean the headless horseman –’ said Murray, annoyed again.
‘No, not the headless horseman. It was someone else – I mean, it was really someone.’
If the boys could place someone near the lake around the time of the murder, the information could be invaluable.
‘Who?’
‘We saw Hugh Farquhar’s ghost. He was in his fisherman’s clothes, and he was limping.’
‘He must have been hurt when the boat sank.’ added Henry. They had obviously been discussing it in some detail.
Murray remembered the figure he himself had seen – and over which he had drawn the same instinctive conclusion. He could hardly blame the boys for believing in ghosts. But he had only seen it for a second: perhaps the boys had more information.
‘What was he doing, then?’ he asked. Robert and Henry both examined his face, estimating the degree of scepticism there, and were satisfied.
‘He was walking across the grass.’
‘We thought he was heading towards the village road, to that bit where you can climb the wall, and save having to go all the way round to the drive.’ Murray knew the place they meant, that was constantly being mended and just as constantly mysteriously tumbled again. It would have let the figure out of the park near the woods that bordered the lake. When he had seen it, it had been heading towards the castle, if a little lower down the hill. Perhaps the boys had seen it going back the way it had come, when it had done whatever it had come to do. The thought made him shiver.
‘Are you absolutely sure it was Hugh Farquhar?’ he asked.
‘See? I said he wouldn’t believe us,’ said Robert, rolling over to lie with his back towards Murray in a gesture redolent with disgust.
‘No, no. I only mean – I’m sure you saw a figure, in fisherman’s clothes, with a limp. That’s fine. I’m not arguing, Robert. But I just want to know if it was definitely Hugh. Did you know him?’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘One of his crew, for instance. They all died.’
The boys looked at each other, uncertainly, with Robert squirmed round like a prawn. Then he sat up properly and faced Murray.
‘There could be ghosts all over the place,’ he said, shakily.
‘There are a lot more people dead than living, if you think about it,’ said Murray.
‘We didn’t see his face,’ Henry admitted at last. ‘He was going away from us. We just saw his back and his clothes.’
‘But you believe there was someone there?’ Robert asked hurriedly, needing to know.
‘Oh, yes, I do, Robert.’
Robert, not needing a reason, sat back and grinned. But Henry, who needed his scientific evidence, watched Murray anxiously as he left the room and headed for the stairs.
There was no sign of Lord Scoggie in the library. In the hall, Murray met Andrew, and stopped him in surprise.
‘You’ve been released!’
‘Aye. Mr. Naismyth changed his tune when he came round. Maybe because he didn’t want word getting round of the state he was in last night.’ Andrew grinned as he lowered his voice.
‘Well, we couldn’t quite see why he turned you in in the first place,’ Murray admitted. ‘Why do you think he did?’
‘Oh, that’s easy! Grisell,’ said Andrew, with a laugh, in which there was a good deal more of ease than there had been the last time he had mentioned Grisell to Murray. The conversation through the cell door must have been a profitable one. Andrew was about to head towards the door to the servants’ corridor, but Murray stopped him.
‘Any idea where Lord Scoggie is?’ he asked.
Andrew tilted his head towards the door of the other room off the hallway.
‘In there,' he said, ‘with Mr. Naismyth. I think he was looking yourself earlier, too.’
The other door off the hallway led to a room with no name. In his time at Scoggie Castle, Murray reckoned he had been in there twice. The room took up the ground floor of the Lady’s Tower, but did not accommodate much that would interest the ladies of the household: in the days when the castle was built, the ladies would have retreated to the upper floors for safety and this room would have contributed to the castle defences, with its slit windows and narrow doorway. In some ways, it still did: when Murray knocked and entered, he found Lord Scoggie and Naismyth cleaning guns from the cabinets against one wall.
‘Ah, Mr. Murray.’ Lord Scoggie did not greet him with his usual smile. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Taking provisions to Lady Scoggie, my lord.’
Lord Scoggie nodded sharply.
‘I take it you know how to fire a gun?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ His father had made sure of that, with both handguns and shotguns, till their hair had smelt spicy with powder and their shoulders were stiff with the recoil.
‘I want each of us to carry handguns, and Naismyth is to make sure that all the shotguns in here are loaded and ready.’
‘Just the three of us, my lord?’
‘Keyes has his own pistols. Try the weight of those?’ He handed over a pair of pretty Spanish pistols. ‘No, you need something heavier, don’t you? Naismyth, you take those ones. Yes: I’ve released Andrew,’ - Naismyth had the grace to look sheepish – ‘but he’s young and has no experience of firearms. I’d ask you to keep it fairly quiet, though: I’m sure Deborah will want some if she knows we have them.’
‘She can shoot?’
‘Moderately well. Lady Scoggie insisted she learn when she was old enough. It’s not an unuseful skill. I think we have a muff pistol in here somewhere that is hers.’ He looked around the room. There was a billiard table in it, but it was not a billiard room, and gun cabinets, though it was not a gunroom. The stone floor had patches of oiled cloth on it, but no carpet, and the hearth had not seen a fire for many years, to judge by its cleanliness and the damp air. One or two family portraits of the kind no one wanted to see hung about the panelled walls, as if they had been barred for some social indiscretion. The three armchairs in the room were ill-assorted and looked uneasy, caught walking into the wrong room. A stopped clock lurked in the darkness between the slit windows. Murray shivered involuntarily: there was something in between about the room.
‘What are the boys doing?’
‘Playing pachisi. They’ve worked quite hard this morning.’
‘Do they need your attention?’
‘Not at present, my lord.’
‘Good. There’s something I want you to do. Naismyth, will you finish in here, then bring me the keys? Come into the library, Mr. Murray. I don’t like this room.’
Murray followed him across the hall. A fire had been lit again in the library hearth, and there was no trace of the papers he had seen there earlier. Lord Scoggie went to sit in the high chair behind the business table. Murray wondered if for some reason he was about to be admonished, but when he looked at Lord Scoggie’s face he decided that the use of the high chair was Lord Scoggie’s effort to take control of the situation: probably a futile attempt.
‘Have you reached any further conclusions about Tibo’s death?’ Lord Scoggie asked, once he had arranged himself.
‘No, I don’t think so, my lord. Except that I think there is a chance that he was killed in mistake, with the killer intending harm instead to Major Keyes.’
Lord Scoggie raised his eyebrows.
‘You mean, perhaps, some enemy he has made in the past?’
‘Yes, I think so, my lord. I put the suggestion to Lady Scoggie and she thought it was more likely than Mr. Tibo being the real target.’
Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2) Page 25
