A Grave Matter

by Anna Lee Huber

  My uncle nodded, following my train of thought.

  I turned to pace the small space in front of the door. “If Dodd surprised them and they wished to remain undiscovered, they might have shot him. That seems a logical enough explanation to me. At least, the most logical we have so far.” I frowned. “But why was someone digging in an old grave to begin with? What were they looking for?”

  I glanced at Lord Buchan, but he merely shrugged. “Most of those graves belong to old monks, local commoners, and a few members of my family. But as I said, the most recent burial was almost twenty months ago.”

  I furrowed my brow and resumed pacing. When several moments passed without anyone offering an explanation, I wondered aloud, “I suppose the body snatchers could have just been incredibly stupid and unaware that a body that long buried would be far too decayed to be of use to a medical college.”

  Trevor’s mouth twisted in skepticism. “I have a hard time believing anyone is that ignorant. Especially if body snatching is your chosen trade, so to speak.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and turned to face them. “I agree. It’s far more likely they were looking for objects buried with the bodies—clothing, jewelry, what have you.” Seeing the distressed expression on Lord Buchan’s face, I added, “But there’s really no way of knowing until you find out which grave was disturbed and examine it to see if anything was taken.”

  Uncle Andrew nodded in agreement.

  I noticed he didn’t correct me. It would be they who examined the grave, not I. But absurdly, I had been hoping against hope that I was wrong. That he would insist I come along.

  My uncle leaned in to confer with Lord Buchan, and I stifled a sigh and resumed my perusal of the landscape. It really was an incredibly dull and uninspiring piece.

  Trevor shifted closer to me. “Perhaps we should return to the ballroom.”

  I glanced up at him, wondering if I could, or even should, try to stall him.

  He arched an eyebrow in sarcasm. “Don’t tell me you’re actually interested in that landscape. I don’t have nearly your artist’s eye, and I can still see that it’s dreadful.”

  I couldn’t stop a smile from quirking my lips. “Hush. I think one of Uncle Andrew’s relatives may have painted it.” I darted a look over my shoulder to see the other two men still deep in conversation.

  “Well, someone should have done us all a favor and kept the paintbrush out of his fingers,” he drawled.

  “How do you know it wasn’t a woman?”

  “Her fingers, then. Now come,” he urged, cupping my elbow.

  I knew there was no use arguing, yet still I found it hard to comply.

  But before we could move more than two steps toward the door, a footman from Uncle Andrew’s staff rapped softly on the door before opening it.

  “I’m sorry, m’lord. But Dr. Carputhers appears to be a bit . . . indisposed,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

  Uncle Andrew frowned. “How indisposed?”

  The footman cleared his throat. “Very.” And as his employer was waiting for a more specific response, he added, “He’s drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

  Uncle Andrew sighed heavily. “Well, we did invite him to a ceilidh. The man wouldn’t expect to be on duty.”

  He dismissed the footman with a wave of his hand and began to pace, rubbing his pointed chin. Meanwhile, Trevor tugged on my arm, urging me to return to the ball. I hesitated a moment longer, wondering if I should offer to help, but my brother glared down at me, seeming insistent that I not say a word. So I gave in, allowing him to pull me toward the door.

  “Just a moment, Trevor,” our uncle called out behind us.

  My brother glanced at me, and I tried to keep any of the anticipation I felt from showing on my face, but I must have failed, for he lifted his eyebrows in gentle reproach. “Yes, Uncle,” he replied, turning us toward him.

  Uncle Andrew stood stiffly in his formal coat and blue and black tartan kilt with his arms behind his back, studying me across the short distance that separated us. I could tell he was wrestling with himself, much as my brother-in-law, Philip, had wrestled with his conscience before he asked me to assist Sebastian Gage during our first investigation together four and a half months prior. Uncle Andrew likely rebelled at the notion of exposing me to such an unsavory thing as murder, and yet he knew I possessed the skills he needed to help him understand the crime. Had I been a man, he would not have hesitated. But I was a female, and what’s more, his niece. He was supposed to protect me from such things, not encourage me to speculate on them.

  He grimaced and turned away. “I know I shouldn’t be asking you such a thing, but . . .” he sighed, almost angrily “. . . it seems I have no choice.” Gathering his courage, he looked me squarely in the eye. “Kiera, would you be willing to assist us? Perhaps it’s not necessary,” he hurried on to say before I could answer. “But I’m not so experienced with murder, or anatomy and those things . . .” He waved his hand vaguely in the air. “And I would rather be sure. I know that once the body has been moved . . .”

  “Yes, Uncle,” I replied before he stammered on. “I will do what I can.”

  However, Trevor was not as resigned to the necessity of my lending them assistance. “Isn’t there another surgeon you could ask? What of your local physician?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Uncle Andrew replied. “And Dr. Kennedy is visiting family in Ayrshire.”

  My brother frowned.

  “Believe me, Trevor, if I thought there was any man near enough and capable enough to lend us their assistance in this matter, I would not have asked your sister.” His eyes hardened in censure. “I didn’t approve when Cromarty asked her to assist in that murder investigation at Gairloch, or when she got dragged into that mess with the Dalmays. But . . .” he turned his head to the side, and I could see the tendons standing out in stark relief “. . . I begin to understand the predicaments those gentlemen were in.” The expression he fastened on me was tinged with reluctant admiration. “Kiera is nothing if not discreet. And she did receive instruction from one of the foremost anatomists in England, unwanted as that was.”

  Trevor turned to study me, his brow heavy and his eyes clouded with uncertainty. I thought I could guess at some of his distress. After all, I was his baby sister, and he had been looking after me all my life. That he believed he had failed me once, in regards to protecting me from Sir Anthony’s nefarious intentions, was bad enough. And he had no intention of letting me come to harm again. At least, not while I was living under his roof.

  He had heard about my involvement with those previous investigations, and likely felt just as much disapproval as our uncle, though he’d not told me so. The fact that I had come to him angry and broken following my last investigation did not help matters. I had been poor company these past seven weeks, but that had more to do with my grief over the death of my friend Will than the investigation itself, disturbing as that had been. I wondered if he understood that. Or did he blame my melancholy on my continued involvement with corpses and murder?

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, searching my face. “You do not have to help, no matter what he says.”

  “I know,” I replied, holding his gaze steadily with mine. “But this is something I want to do. Something I can do.” I moved a step closer and lowered my voice. “I need to feel useful. And I want to help find whoever killed Dodd. For Dodd. For Willie. If I just walk away . . .” I left the sentence unfinished, knowing he recognized the guilt I would feel.

  He continued to regard me, and then just when I thought he would argue further, he reluctantly nodded. “All right. But I insist on accompanying you.”

  I agreed and we turned toward our uncle.

  “Of course. If you wish.”

  Trevor scanned me from head to toe in my evening gown. “You’ll need your cloak, and gloves or a muff. What of your slippers?” he fussed. He suddenly sounded so much like our nursemaid growing up that I couldn’t help but smile
.

  “These shoes will be fine. But I would appreciate a pair of gloves,” I told my uncle. “Preferably an old pair. If they should be ruined . . .”

  He nodded, understanding the implication. Blood was not easy to wash out. “I shall send a servant to fetch whatever you require.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The drive to the abbey took less than ten minutes, down a road bordered by winter fields of trampled hay and barley. For several minutes before the road turned away from it, I could see the Hogmanay bonfire blazing in the distance, a beacon in the darkness with the hazy shadows of the dancing villagers whirling around it. I huddled in my corner of the seat and tried not to shiver. I knew the night breeze would slice even colder once we stepped out of the carriage.

  Trevor sat stiffly beside me, staring out the opposite window. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but I knew he wasn’t pleased with this turn of events. Neither was our Uncle Andrew or Lord Buchan, both of whom seemed reluctant to meet my eyes. I did my best to ignore them, but it wasn’t easy when my nerves were already stretched taut with a disquieting mixture of dread and anticipation.

  I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Willie had heard a gunshot, just one, so Dodd had likely died from a wound to his head or torso. From the amount of blood on Willie’s clothes, I surmised Dodd had bled out, so the scene could be quite gruesome, or not. It depended on the wound and how much movement Dodd had made while dying.

  As far as the disturbed grave, my guess was no better than the next person’s. The body would be all or mostly bone and perhaps some hair, which would save us from the uncomfortable sight and smell of decomposition.

  If the body was even still there.

  Had the body snatchers taken it as planned, or abandoned their work after shooting Dodd, worried about the arrival of reinforcements? I supposed it depended on how close they were to being finished, and how ruthless they were.

  If the bones had been left behind, then I presumed there would be two victims for me to examine. Such a thought didn’t cause me as much discomfort as I’d expected. But the thought that I might be growing accustomed to all of this did.

  After the horrors of my marriage to Sir Anthony and my enforced involvement with his work—observing his dissections and sketching the results for his anatomy textbook—I had been keen to escape anything associated with that world. I had viewed the victims’ corpses from the previous two investigations I had been involved with only out of necessity and a desire to see justice done for my friends and family. But this crime had nothing to do with me. I had no relation to Dodd or Lord Buchan. I should have no desire to be near this tragedy, despite my uncle’s reluctant request for my assistance. Instead, not only had I allowed myself to be coaxed into lending my aid, but I could also feel an undercurrent of excitement running through me at the prospect.

  My late husband’s colleagues had called me unnatural when they discovered my contribution to his anatomical work, and not for the first time, I wondered if they might be right. Or else why would I be running toward a dead body and a disturbed grave when by all rights I should be fleeing in fright?

  Trevor’s shoulder bumped against mine as the carriage made a sharp turn to the left into the grounds of Dryburgh House. Through the dark outline of the trees, I could see the pale stones of the Earl of Buchan’s manor gleaming in the moonlight. The coach made another turn onto the gravel of the house’s drive and then rolled to a stop.

  My heart jumped as I felt the manservant leap down from his perch on the back of the carriage. A moment later, the door opened and Lord Buchan pulled himself forward to descend. I was the last to disembark, with the assistance of my brother, and was instantly grateful for the kid leather half-boots loaned to me by my cousin. I had changed into them before we left and my feet now sank into the mud at the edge of the drive. I grimaced at the realization of what my gown’s hem would look like after this midnight foray, and silently said an apology to my new maid, Bree.

  Dryburgh House stood some distance away from us to the right, farther up the gravel drive. Its west front, on the far side of the house, bordered the River Tweed, whose waters rambled southward only to sweep around in a wide curve to flow north again, forming the small peninsula on which the old abbey had been built. The carriage had stopped on the drive just short of a well-trampled trail that led south, paralleling the river, and straight into the trees bordering the manor’s lawn.

  I had visited the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey with my family several times as a girl, and also once with William Dalmay ten years ago, the summer he acted as my drawing master. I felt a twinge of pain as the memory of Will’s earnest joy and excitement also brought to mind his recent death. It sometimes seemed impossible that he had been gone just ten short weeks. And now I had to face this place that, until now, I had forgotten I last visited in his company. It was almost too much to bear.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to push aside the image of Will’s haunted gray eyes.

  Someone gripped my elbow, and I opened my eyes to find Trevor watching me closely, a look of concern tightening his features. I offered him a smile of reassurance, grateful he couldn’t know the real source of my distress. Let him think I was nervous about viewing Dodd’s body, for that was where my mind should have been focused.

  Young Willie hefted one of the lanterns the men had removed from the coach and set off down the path into the trees with Lord Buchan trailing close behind him. Uncle Andrew followed next, carrying the second lantern, while Trevor and I brought up the rear. The dirt of the trail was soft from the recent rain, but the temperature had also cooled considerably in the past few days, hardening the earth just enough so that it wasn’t a muddy mess as the drive had been. Even so, I was forced to take care where I stepped, and to heft the skirts of my gown and chocolate brown cloak to keep them from trailing in the muck.

  I was grateful for the fur trim of my hood surrounding my face, for it kept the chill from my head, but unfortunately, it also obstructed my view. I could see little more than straight in front of me, but the sounds of the nighttime were all around. Every pop of a twig or creak of the barren branches made me glance about to locate the source of what I had heard. The low rush in the distance I knew to be the river, but the scratching and clattering and creaking in the gloom of the forest surrounding me I could not always immediately name. I was reminded of a Scottish proverb I’d often heard quoted: The day has eyes, the night has ears.

  Suddenly, in a break through the trees, I could see the moonlight illuminating the gable of the south transept with its large five-light window, now empty of all glass. Little else remained of the Dryburgh Abbey church, but for a fragment of the choir and the north transept, and the reddish-brown sandstone bases of the pillars that once held aloft the soaring roof of the church.

  When the eleventh Earl of Buchan, the current earl’s uncle, acquired the monastic ruins forty years earlier, it was little more than an overgrown wreck, true to the name of ruins. The earl set about preserving what was left, adding a large formal garden within and around the stones. The effect was charming and romantic, but my father had noted that Buchan, who had been an eccentric antiquarian, also couldn’t resist adding a few “improvements,” namely an inscription and an obelisk south of the abbey. His nephew, the current earl, seemed much more practical, but as we approached the ruins, I could tell he was at least maintaining the abbey grounds.

  I had been rather fond of the Gothic pile of Dryburgh Abbey, and its air of peace and tranquility, of nature merged with the fallen creation of man. But at night, with only the faint gleam of our lanterns to light the way, and the moon casting strange shadows across the faces of the crumbling ruins, I felt less assured.

  We skirted the edge of the abbey cemetery, which we were divided from by a row of hedges and then the remnants of the abbey wall. It rose in jagged portions from waist-high to forty feet above our heads before it met up with the decorative rounded arches of the west door.

/>   There, at the edge of the door, lay Dodd’s body propped against the stone frame. His head had fallen back to rest between the small niche created by two of the arches, exposing his neck to the light of our lanterns. One hand trailed across the ground beside his body while the other sat cradled in his lap, as if he had tried until his final breath to stanch the blood flowing from the wound in his upper chest and the hand had dropped with his last gasp to where it lay. His eyes were blessedly closed.

  “Poor Dodd,” Lord Buchan murmured, the first to break the tense stillness.

  I glanced up at him, and then Willie, whose cheeks were streaked with silent tears. Biting back an answering surge of emotion, I moved closer to the body, determined to remain unaffected. My tears would do neither Dodd nor Willie any good, but my reluctantly accrued knowledge of anatomy just might.

  “Bring that lantern closer,” I told Willie, hoping that by giving the young man a purpose, it would help him collect himself.

  He sniffed loudly and shuffled closer, nearly treading on my skirts.

  I pushed the hood of my cloak back and knelt carefully beside the body. The air was cool enough to mask most of the odors, but I still breathed shallowly through my mouth, as I’d learned in Sir Anthony’s surgeries. My finely tuned nose could still smell the old caretaker’s musty body odor and the metallic tang of blood. I pushed back the edge of Dodd’s coat to see that his coarse woolen shirt beneath was, as expected, soaked with blood. The hole torn into the right side of his chest was quite obviously the cause of the bleeding. I quickly scanned the rest of his torso and his limbs, but could see no other signs of injury.

  “One gunshot to the chest,” I said, stating the obvious in case one of the gentlemen could not see.

  I reached a hand around Dodd’s shoulder, trying to pull his body forward to see his back. Willie passed his lantern to one of the other men and leaned over to help me.