A Knife in Darkness

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘Well, you didn’t find anything, really, to link Mr. Strachan with the murder, did you?’ Patrick asked, already sleepy. He lay on his back with a wet flannel on his eye, and it trickled a little cooling path on to the pillow where Hippolyta held his hand.

  ‘Not with the murder, perhaps, no,’ Hippolyta admitted. ‘But that brandy barrel – well, it has to have been on the cart with our belongings, doesn’t it? So at the very least, Mr. Strachan is selling smuggled spirits!’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Ugh,’ Patrick remarked when he opened one eye the following morning – or the following morning proper. Hippolyta, reluctantly, had staggered to the window and opened the shutters on a dripping wet day more suited to October than August, the skies leaden, the air heavy.

  ‘It’s foul, isn’t it?’ Hippolyta mumbled. She felt as if her head had been stuffed with sheep’s wool, and it was tangled at the back of her throat. Her eyes seemed oversensitive to what daylight there was. She turned back to the bed. ‘Oh, my.’

  ‘It hurts.’ Patrick touched his closed right eye cautiously. ‘I’d better take a look at it, I suppose.’ He levered himself out of bed, holding his head. Hippolyta gave a wary laugh.

  ‘We look as if we’ve been to a riotous party in Edinburgh, and danced till dawn. Actually,’ she reflected, ‘I’ve felt much better than this after most parties like that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Patrick squinted at himself in his shaving mirror. ‘No permanent damage, I think. I’d hate to have to tell our grandchildren I’d been blinded by a hen house.’

  ‘And that’s not a story we’d better tell anyway,’ said Hippolyta, waking up a little. ‘What shall we say?’

  ‘That you caught me making eyes at Miss Verney and punched me?’ Patrick asked. Hippolyta scowled.

  ‘Not funny: not yet, anyway. Better to keep it simple: say you tried to get out of bed in the middle of the night, tripped on the eiderdown and hit your head on …’ She scouted around the room for something likely. ‘On the knop of the poker there. It looks about the right size and shape.’

  Patrick turned round and eyed her with his good eye.

  ‘You’re rather clever at making up stories, my dear. Perhaps I should watch you more closely!’

  ‘You just need to be careful of the details,’ said Hippolyta briskly, pulling on her wrapper. ‘Now, I should go and face Mrs. Riach before she starts wondering why so many of our clothes are wet. I’ll tell her one of the cats brought in another bird and we had to try to chase it out, and were caught in a shower. All right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I hope you don’t expect me to remember which cat?’

  She grinned.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to remember which cat even if it had actually happened, so no, don’t trouble!’

  Hippolyta and Patrick were quiet over breakfast, still trying to waken up fully, and Basilia Verney ate her food and drank her cocoa with a kind of self-righteously delicate silence and the slightest of smirks. Hippolyta felt almost strong enough to tell her she would help her to pack as soon as she liked, but not quite.

  ‘What are your plans for the day, Miss Verney?’ she asked instead. ‘I’m afraid the weather is not conducive to much outdoor activity.

  ‘No indeed,’ said Miss Verney primly. ‘I rather thought this morning I should practise my music, though.’ She flashed a look at Patrick from beneath her dark lashes. Patrick ignored it.

  ‘I must go and see Dr. Durward about one or two business matters,’ he said, rubbing the half of his face that did not hurt. Basilia heroically refrained from asking him about the bruise, and he did not mention it, but the sight of it seemed to evoke another little twitch of satisfaction to the smirk.

  Mrs. Riach entered and squatted into something like a curtsey, before starting to clear plates.

  ‘Strachan’s boy,’ she began, and Hippolyta felt herself tense. She did not look at Patrick. After a dramatic pause Mrs. Riach finished, ‘says the river’s rising.’

  ‘It looked high yesterday,’ Hippolyta agreed, her voice steadier than she had expected. ‘Do you think it will breach its banks?’

  ‘It has done it plenty times afore,’ pronounced Mrs. Riach darkly. ‘I’ll no be going to Pannanich the day – nor the inn, neither.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you frequented the inn, Mrs. Riach,’ said Hippolyta. ‘Well, let us hope that it does no damage. It may well go down again before anything happens.’

  ‘Aye, that’d be likely.’ Mrs. Riach jerked her head towards the window, through which steady rain could be seen drenching the garden. She stalked out of the room with two plates and a sugar bowl, just as Patrick was about to spoon sugar into his last cup of tea. He shrugged, meeting Hippolyta’s eye.

  ‘I can’t imagine the wet weather is doing much for her rheumatism,’ Hippolyta remarked lightly.

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Basilia asked. ‘I thought it was just insolence.’

  ‘She’s a very good cook,’ Hippolyta found herself saying defensively, though whether she was defending Mrs. Riach or her own management of her it was hard to say. Patrick drained his teacup, lips pursed a little.

  ‘Well, I must be going,’ he said. ‘I hope the day improves!’

  Hippolyta went to the door to see him off, and returned smiling to herself. Patrick’s farewell had been very satisfactory, and a thought had occurred to her: the rain should keep Basilia indoors, but there was nothing to stop her popping out for a little on her own, was there? She knew exactly where she wanted to go, and she particularly did not want Miss Verney with her.

  Patrick had gone out in his wet coat, though it was going to make very little difference, and it meant that they had no need to spin their yarn about cats and birds for Mrs. Riach or anyone else. In a similar way, Hippolyta swung her cloak around her and hurried out before anyone saw that it was still heavy with damp from the night before. It was not pleasant, but it was tolerable, particularly as she darted up the road and away from Miss Verney’s insistent piano practice. Once again there were few people in the street for a Monday morning, and no one was lingering to watch who was passing and who was not. She slid past Strachan’s shop, trying not to pay it too much attention, and hurried on up the hill to the edge of the town. The gateway of Dinnet House stood open as usual, the driveway unwelcoming amongst dripping trees tumbling in the rising wind, and the house itself grey and miserable as though it knew well what had happened within its walls, and was helplessly sorry for it.

  The gravel squelched wet under her feet but there was no sign of life about the place to be disturbed: not even birds flew on such a soaking day. The front door was locked, as she had expected: she circled the house with interest, having never seen the sides and back before except as glimpses through the windows. There was the summer house, collapsed in on itself, as Basilia had described (and had hinted at all kinds of goings on within it, too, she thought crossly). There were the vegetable gardens in which Forman had worked and his cats had no doubt played. She came to some lawns, rather ill-kept, the soggy grass silver with rain and flattened by the wind, and as she stepped carefully along the back of the house she checked each window she passed, to see which room she was next to. It did not take long before she reached the Colonel’s library, with its broken window frame. She put out a hand to it, testing to see how easy it would be to open.

  ‘Trying a little burglary yourself, Mrs. Napier?’

  She jumped. Turning, she found Dod Durris rounding the corner of the house after her, a polite frown on his broad face.

  ‘I was – just interested,’ she said quickly. ‘If Mr. Burns admits he broke in here, and climbed over the windowsill, he must be stronger than he looks.’

  ‘That’s true. Are you wanting to go inside?’ he asked without emphasis, and she blushed.

  ‘If I may,’ she admitted. He led the way back to the kitchen door, pulled a small bunch of keys out of his pocket, and let them both in to a scullery, which in turn led to the main kitchen where Forman’
s body had been found.

  ‘What did you want to see?’ he asked.

  ‘Where did you get the keys?’ she asked in turn, ignoring his question. ‘You had them before, didn’t you? Miss Verney took her uncle’s keys away, but she left her own upstairs, and we left you in the house alone!’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nodded. ‘It seemed more polite.’

  ‘Polite?’

  ‘I needed to take a look around on my own. I’m sure if Miss Verney had thought about it she would have realised.’ There was a very slight twinkle in his grey eyes, Hippolyta suddenly noticed.

  ‘You wanted to take a look at her uncle’s papers without her there, didn’t you?’ she asked slowly. ‘That was why you didn’t seem to care that someone had broken in. You had already looked at everything!’

  He shrugged very slightly.

  ‘I did. I had. Fortuitously, as it happens,’ he added.

  ‘Because,’ said Hippolyta, ‘you knew that she removed something herself, that day when the three of us were here together.’

  ‘You saw that, did you?’ he asked. ‘I missed it, I must confess. But I know what she took: she took her uncle’s old will, the one that had been superseded. And then she told us the Colonel always destroyed old papers!’ There was the least hint of admiration in his voice, and Hippolyta found herself quite annoyed by it.

  ‘She’s an untrustworthy little –’ She stopped. Durris looked at her with interest. ‘I found out one or two things she has been doing. Nothing to do with the murder, but still …’

  ‘I see,’ said Durris. ‘Deceitful?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Greedy?’

  She considered.

  ‘Not as such, no. But it did cross my mind that she might have been very interested in the contents of her uncle’s will.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The old will split the bulk of the estate with Julian Brown, her cousin, you see, but the new one gives it all to her. That’s how I knew what his name was when you pointed him out - I had seen it in the old will.’

  ‘You don’t suppose,’ said Hippolyta, ‘that she had been leading poor Mr. Brown on in the hopes of keeping the money together?’

  ‘It would not surprise me in the slightest,’ said Durris blandly.

  Hippolyta remembered the convincing embrace on the bridge by night.

  ‘Hm,’ was all she trusted herself to say out loud.

  ‘But anyway,’ said Durris, ‘what was your interest in the house?’

  ‘I just wanted to see everything again,’ she said. ‘Not from some gruesome curiosity, I assure you: if I had my choice I’d never come to this house again. But I felt I needed to see the two places again, the hall and the kitchen. Something is not quite right in my head – if you see what I mean – and I need to settle it.’

  ‘Then settle away. Do you need me?’ he asked, taking a step towards the scullery again.

  ‘No, I don’t think so, thank you.’

  ‘Then I have something I want to do in the garden, if you will excuse me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He left, closing the back door gently behind him, and she went on into the house, to the hall where she had found Colonel Verney in his chair.

  The difference – a difference – between this murder and those in 1809, she thought, was that presumably Mrs. Strachan’s father, Mr. Tranter, had been able to move about of his own freewill, and Colonel Verney had not been able to move without Forman’s – or somebody’s – help. Mr. Tranter had been found outside in the garden, but Colonel Verney was inside, here. She sat on the stairs for a moment, considering, then rose and went back to the kitchen. She pulled out a chair, and sat down, staring at the stains on the floorboards where Forman’s body had lain.

  The attacker had come into the house – which would not have been difficult, because Forman would not have locked the front door, though he had already locked the kitchen door beyond the scullery – and what? Did the killer walk in the front door and find Colonel Verney in the hall? Did he chase Forman into the kitchen and attack him?

  What was Colonel Verney doing in the hall on his own? Had Forman left him there for a moment while he fetched something? She pictured Forman’s body lying there, on the floor. There had been something lying on the floor in front of him: what had it been? Whatever it was, Mrs. Kynoch and Martha had probably cleared it away when they tidied. She concentrated hard, trying to picture what she had seen when Forman had been lying there. There had been milk, she realised suddenly, remembering the coppery glow of a pan and the beginnings of a sour smell. There had been a pan of milk, spilt on the floor.

  There, that was it. Forman could not have been running away from the killer, because he would not have been in the hall to see the Colonel’s murder while leaving a pan on the fire unguarded. He must have come into the kitchen to fetch the milk for Colonel Verney’s bedtime drink, knowing he would only be a moment, and leaving the Colonel in the hall. But there would no doubt have been enough time, then, for an intruder walking into the hall and unexpectedly or deliberately finding the Colonel there to kill him, in his chair, and leave again. He had locked up Tabitha. Why then had the murderer gone to the trouble of walking into the kitchen and killing Forman?

  There was only one explanation that made sense to Hippolyta. The murderer had killed Forman because it was Forman he had come to kill. The Colonel had only been killed because he could identify the killer.

  They had been looking in the wrong place: it had nothing to do with Colonel Verney’s will, or Basilia’s greed, or anything Mr. Strachan might have been doing with the Burns Mortification funds. Now they had to think about why someone would want to murder Forman.

  And, she thought quickly, did that shed any more light on what had happened in 1809? When Mr. Tranter had been murdered, was it simply because he knew who had killed his manservant? What was the man’s name: Rab something. Rab Lattin, that was it. Was the killer still following the pattern? Or could the latest murders have been more directly connected with Forman himself? She reflected: she knew almost nothing about him, except that he had been a soldier and that he liked cats. Oh, and Basilia Verney had said that she thought he had no relatives. But how reliable was that?

  She had to tell Mr. Durris what she had worked out. She glanced outside. The wind was stronger now, and rain was lashing at the garden’s lush, weedy greenery. She could just see Mr. Durris’ hat somewhere near the summerhouse. The idea of going outside was not appealing, but it had to be done. She went to the kitchen door and called out to him, but he did not hear her over the wind. Instead she pulled her cloak tight, grabbed the wing of her sail-like bonnet, and slammed the door shut after her, making her way by what turned out to be a circuitous route to the collapsed summerhouse.

  Mr. Durris was round the side of the structure, which looked like a badly-folded letter on a grand scale, covered in moss and lichen. He looked round at her voice.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she half-shouted.

  ‘Looking at,’ he corrected. ‘Just wondering about these holes.’ He kicked at the rotting feet of the summerhouse’s wooden walls. There were holes of various sizes dug into the earth there.

  ‘Badgers?’ asked Hippolyta. ‘Foxes?’

  ‘No smell. But I suppose they are old ones,’ he added. ‘Have you finished in the house?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Can you come back inside? I want to tell you something, and I can’t hear myself think out here.’

  He nodded, and waved her on ahead of him back to the kitchen door. Once they were inside, the silence of the empty house shouted at them after the wind.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, standing in the kitchen by the empty fireplace. She went through with him what she had concluded, and waited to see what he would think. It was a while before he answered.

  ‘Aye,’ he said slowly, nodding. ‘It maybe makes sense.’

  ‘Of course it does!’ she exclaimed, though she was delighted to have him even acknowledge the possib
ility. She pointed down at his feet on the floorboards. ‘The milk pan was there, with the milk spilled. He would have been fetching it for the Colonel, wouldn’t he? He would not have stopped with the Colonel waiting in the hall to warm milk for himself or for Tabitha, and Miss Verney had already had hers. He –’ She stopped, staring at the floor.

  ‘What is it, Mrs. Napier? Are you all right?’

  ‘The milk had run down between the floorboards. The kitten had got under the floorboards and he had lifted them to rescue it. He found it was all full up with rubbish underneath, and Miss Verney told him to clean it out … What if he found something under there?’

  ‘What kind of something?’ Durris did not look as if he quite followed her, but he was willing to try. ‘Oh: something to do with the first murder?’

  ‘They never found the blade, did they?’ Hippolyta went on, her mind galloping. ‘A very sharp knife, and they never found it.’

  ‘Those boards have been moved already,’ said Durris. ‘Probably that was when Forman was tidying up.’

  ‘No,’ said Hippolyta quickly, ‘no, it can’t be. Not the last time. That stain there is spilt milk, even though someone has tried to clean it up, But look: it’s only half of the stain. The other half is here.’ She pointed under the table. ‘Someone that night, after Forman was killed, lifted this floorboard and searched underneath it, but put it back the wrong way round.’

  ‘But presumably,’ said Durris, nodding, ‘that means that whatever the murderer feared he would find, the murderer then recovered for himself and took away? And whatever it was, even now, it would link him to those murders in 1809.’

  ‘Does that make sense?’ Hippolyta looked anxiously at him.