Lady Tinbough's Dilemma

by Clare Jayne

  She came downstairs to greet him, as serious as ever and beautiful enough to take his breath away. “Mr MacPherson, I owe you an apology,” she said at once.

  “I expressed myself badly,” he said. “I did not mean to imply that working class people acted any differently to the upper classes.”

  “I was reminded of the death of my parents,” she said quickly. “You made a logical comment about the murder but I was not being rational and I was unfair to you.”

  “Perhaps we could put it behind us,” he suggested, touched by her apology.

  “I would be grateful for that.” She led him into the drawing room and rang the bell for a footman to get them hot drinks. “We have been looking into this matter from the point of view of the theft of the emeralds. Perhaps we should reconsider what we have learnt knowing everything actually began with a murder.”

  They sat down and he thought this over. “If the locket was not stolen then I do not see how the necklace theft ties in with the murder.”

  “Perhaps they are not connected,” she said, “or only inasmuch as they took place in the same household.”

  “That would be a strange coincidence.”

  “We cannot know for certain but it looks as if Aileas was already dead by the time the necklace was taken.”

  “Perhaps she saw the thief committing a different robbery or found out he was dishonest and threatened to tell someone and that is why he killed her,” he suggested.

  “Or, as much as the possibility shocks me, you could have been correct yesterday in suspecting that Aileas’s father found out about the pregnancy and killed her in a rage.”

  “It is possible she was not murdered at all,” he said, reluctant to discuss the subject with her but knowing she would want him to.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your student friend said she might have died as a result of losing the baby. It is possible that it was a simple miscarriage and that no one hurt her.”

  “You said that unethical doctors sometimes ended a pregnancy?”

  “Not just doctors. She could have even been so afraid of having a baby unwed that she did it to herself.”

  “Then why did she flee from Lady Tinbough’s home?” Miss Campbell said. “I feel certain that that ties in with her death which, once again, suggests murder rather than a natural or accidental death.”

  “It must be possible to find out if any of the servants have committed a theft before.”

  “But remember that Lady Tinbough said how careful she was about employing people, that she looked thoroughly into their backgrounds and the butler seemed equally diligent.”

  He grimaced. “I had forgotten that. Then our main suspect would have to be the father of the child. We should speak to the man whose address her parents gave us.”

  “Yes. It sounds unlikely that he gave her the locket but he might have found out someone else did and reacted badly.”

  “That could have been why she did not wear the locket,” Ewan said. “Not because she disliked the person who gave it to her but because she was already close to someone else so she had to keep it a secret.”

  “That is a definite possibility,” she agreed. “Then the man her parents said she was being courted by would seem to be someone well worth questioning.”

  He held out his arm and, when she took it, said, “Let us find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  BEATHAN MACNEE, the man who had been interested in Aileas, worked as a baler in one of the city’s mills so Ishbel and Mr MacPherson asked permission of the owner to speak to him, standing in an elegant office in front of a portly gentleman, known as Laird Stewart to his people, meaning that he was actually as far away from being a lord as the sun is from the earth.

  “We have no reason as yet to suspect him of any crime,” Mr MacPherson said, “but he might well be able to give us useful information to help us catch the killer.”

  “And what connection does the young lady have to this business?” Mr Stewart said, indicating Ishbel.

  “We are attempting to solve the murder and theft together,” Ishbel said.

  Mr Stewart looked her up and down in an insulting manner and said, “Then I won’t hold my breath on it being solved any time soon.”

  He gave Mr MacPherson a look as if asking why he was humouring her in such a ridiculous notion but Mr MacPherson simply thanked him for allowing the interview.

  As they left his office Ishbel was in less than the best of moods, but she thought with relief that, in not marrying, she would never have to answer to a man in any way. Why any woman would willingly give a man such control over her, she could not understand.

  A boy took them into the mill and pointed out Beathan, who was a strong-looking man of around thirty, a good deal older than Aileas had been. When they introduced themselves and asked to speak to him outside he agreed reluctantly, viewing them with a distrustful expression as he followed them into the cool drizzle outside, just far enough out to avoid being overheard and be away from the worst of the noise and bustle.

  “Have you been told about Aileas Jones?” Mr MacPherson asked.

  “What is it?” he said, looking from one to the other of them. “What’s happened?”

  “We regret to have to tell you that she is dead,” Ishbel said.

  “No.” He shook his head, expression dark but with a growing worry in his eyes. “No, that’s crazy. I saw her a few weeks ago and she was fine.”

  “Her body was discovered and her parents identified her yesterday,” Mr MacPherson said.

  “Discovered where? She worked at one of the fancy houses. She was there.”

  Mr MacPherson explained what had happened, from when she had vanished from her job to her corpse being taken to the university and Beathan’s tanned face grew pale. “Her death might have been an accident but probably not. Medical evidence suggests she had been expecting a child – were you the father?”

  One moment he was standing speaking and the next Mr MacPherson was on the ground with a hand over his face. It took Ishbel a moment to realise he had been punched. Mr MacNee turned in her direction and she took a couple of steps away, heart beating overly fast.

  “We are not accusing you of anything,” she said as a couple of the mill workers ran out and grabbed Mr MacNee.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” one of them asked.

  “I am fine. I was not the one who was struck.” She held out a hand to Mr MacPherson and, with a chagrined expression, he took it and let her help him up.

  “Do you want us to arrest him and take him to the Tolbooth?” the worker asked, a grey-haired man whom she guessed had some authority over the others.

  She turned to Mr MacPherson, leaving the decision to him since he was the one wounded, his cheek red and beginning to swell. “No, Mr MacNee has had an unpleasant shock,” Mr MacPherson said, brushing the dirt from his coat. “I do not wish to charge him at all.”

  The other workers left, one of them glancing back at them all in curiosity, and Mr MacNee offered a quick apology to Mr MacPherson before saying, “You’re wrong. Aileas is – was my lass and I loved her. I would never have done that and she wouldn’t have let another man touch her. We were saving money to be married.”

  “Did she say anything about getting unwanted attention from anyone else?” Mr MacPherson asked.

  “No. I woulda killed any bastard who tried anything on with her. She cannae have been pregnant.”

  “We do not have conclusive evidence,” Ishbel said, “but it seems probable. Did you give her this locket?”

  She indicated Mr MacPherson who held out the jewellery.

  Mr MacNee stared at it, noting the initials on the back with widening eyes and pursed mouth. “So she really was running around with someone else?”

  “We do not know that,” Ishbel told him. “She never wore the locket nor spoke of another man, which could indicate that she did not want his attention.”

  “We do not mean to upset you,” Mr MacP
herson said. “We want to catch her killer and we are still in the dark as to why anyone would harm her.”

  “How is it two quality folk have anything to do with Aileas?” Mr MacNee said.

  “We were asked to look into a different crime by Lady Tinbough – the theft of an emerald necklace – then we learnt Aileas had vanished from her job in the middle of the night, then she was found dead,” Ishbel said. “When we find the guilty person we will send word to you as well as her parents.”

  “That’s good of you.” Mr MacNee gestured to Mr MacPherson’s cheek. “I really am sorry about punching you. Aileas was special...” He tailed off, broad shoulders slumped.

  Mr MacPherson patted his arm and they headed back to the curricle, leaving Mr MacNee to return to his job, another person whose life had been devastated by Aileas’s murder.

  “Should you see a physician?” Ishbel asked Mr MacPherson who smiled.

  “No. I will have some ice put on it later and it will be fine. What was your impression of Mr MacNee?”

  “He seemed sincere about not having known she was dead nor having seen the locket.” His grief over Aileas had struck her as genuine and there had been no sign of guilt from him.

  “There are quite a few jewellers in Edinburgh but the one who engraved the locket might remember who paid for the work.”

  “Perhaps.” Ishbel could not help thinking that there must be a simpler way to find the man. He had paid a great deal of attention to Aileas so surely someone must know who he was.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ISHBEL WAS once more dressed in her evening finery, meaning she was buttoned into an enormous dress that hindered her every move and would soon be wobbling about in high heeled shoes. Harriette wanted her to attend the ball and at least Mr MacPherson would be there to talk to, which was her only consolation.

  Lucy dressed her hair, pinning it up and teasing it to fullness then decorating it with flowers and feathers and dusting it with white powder so it was appropriately ornate. Finally she said, “Finished, Miss.”

  “Thank you, Lucy.” Ishbel stood up and glanced with disinterest in the full length mirror. The woman looking back was not her or at least not who she wanted to be. She felt like a puppet and was not even sure who was pulling the strings. “You must think such extravagance is ludicrous.”

  “Not at all, Miss. I’d love to get dressed up and have a bunch of men admire me.”

  Ishbel turned to stare at her in shock, taken aback by this. “Really? Would you not feel self-conscious and uncomfortable?”

  “I don’t think so, Miss. I gather there’s fancy food and dancing. I like to dance.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Don’t you want Mr MacPherson to see you looking so lovely?”

  She quelled an unexpected desire for just that and said, “Of course not. We are friends and colleagues, nothing more. I could never do all the things I wish if I were married.”

  “Mr MacPherson doesn’t seem to mind your studies or you helping with this whole creepy business. He might suit you very well.”

  Ishbel thought of some of the more bitter arguments between her parents and shuddered. “No, it would just make us both miserable.”

  She walked downstairs to the hallway and she and Lord Huntly exchanged dejected looks, both preferring an evening with their books to any more outgoing entertainment. His wig and brightly coloured formal clothes made him almost unrecognisable from the sombrely dressed scholar but the ink stains on both their hands said who they really were. Harriette was not yet ready so Ishbel wondered if she had time to go over her chemistry notes from this afternoon’s lecture. She had not been putting in sufficient time to such work recently and did not wish to fall behind.

  “Lady Huntly says the missing emerald business has turned into a murder,” Lord Huntly said in his quiet, refined voice and she turned towards him.

  “Yes. It is not what we set out to deal with but we must get justice for the dead girl.”

  “I see. Be careful, Ishbel. People are not as rational as books – they can behave in an unnerving manner.”

  “I will,” she said, remembering why she liked him. He was so often silent that she almost forgot he was there, his role as head of the household long ago relinquished to Harriette. Despite their utterly different personalities, he and Harriette actually seemed happy in their marriage. Ishbel sincerely hoped that it would never fall apart, although she lacked faith in an institution that tried to weaken and chain women.

  Harriette descended the staircase preceded by the fragrance of rose water and the chemical smell from the make-up she insisted on wearing, even though Ishbel had warned her of the dangers of the lead in the face powder. She was dressed in an enormous-skirted blue and gold concoction that made her look more formidable than ever.

  “You look lovely, my dear,” Lord Huntly told her and she took his arm so they could walk in regal manner to the carriage with its liveried coachmen, Ishbel trailing behind them.

  The ball was being held in the public assembly rooms in the New Town and was already half full of richly dressed gentlemen and ladies when they arrived. They were a little late so the orchestra was already playing and the rooms were overly warm. Harriette was at once surrounded by a group of women, who seemed to accept her commands and insults as a matter of course. Mr MacPherson and the two gentlemen she recognised as his friends immediately came over to bow and exchange greetings before Lord Huntly left to join a group of university professors and the two younger men went off to find dance partners.

  “I am somewhat unpopular with Chiverton and McDonald at the moment,” Mr MacPherson said, watching them bowing to a group of ladies. “They think I should give up our investigations and return to my old life, spending more time socialising with them.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I will feel strange when the case is solved, that it will be odd to go back to spending my days as I used to with visits to friends and my tailor and gambling. It all seems a little frivolous. How will you feel?”

  “I had not considered it,” she said, doing so now. “I had no idea what I was doing at first and felt a bit of a fool.”

  “You too?” he exclaimed with a grin, handsome face lighting up. “I felt the greatest of frauds and you had far more ideas about what to do than I did.”

  She did not recall events in that way at all but was pleased at his response. “I think we have both learned much and you have certainly had a number of ideas that impressed me greatly, such as sending your footman into Lord Tinbough’s household and hiring Mr Cassell, the caddie. We would not even know Aileas was dead but for him.”

  “I have certainly seen more sides of the world than before,” he said with a note of chagrin and touched the bruise on his cheek.

  She would probably see less of him when the matter was over. “I suppose I will miss it.”

  “I believe I would like to move forwards rather than back to old interests – marry and have a family.”

  Ishbel listened to this with a hollow feeling. A wife would almost certainly put a stop to their friendship. “Are you not young for such thoughts?”

  He looked startled. “You sound like Chiverton.” The orchestra began to play the tune for a new dance. “Will you join me or would you prefer not to dance at the moment?”

  “I would rather not,” she admitted. Had she been a better dancer she thought she would enjoy doing so with him, sharing the light touches that were permitted at no other time between unmarried people, but as it was she hated the idea of her clumsiness making her look a fool to him. “I do not wish to spoil your pleasure, though. Perhaps you should ask another lady.”

  “My aunt insisted on introducing me to a couple of young women and their parents,” he admitted, looking uneasy. “It would be polite to dance with them tonight.”

  He looked uncertain so she gave a smile she did not entirely feel and reassured him. “Certainly it would.”

  A few minutes later
he was stepping out onto the main ballroom floor with a lovely girl who was dressed to perfection and blushed and gazed admiringly at Mr MacPherson in a way that must be flattering. Ishbel would not have known how to behave like that and win over a man even if she wanted to. Which, of course, she did not.

  Mr MacPherson had an estate, an important family name and he was an attractive, charming man. He was at home in the setting which she loathed. He had wealthy friends and money of his own. If he made up his mind to marry she had no doubt that any sensible young lady would be delighted to say yes to him.

  He would marry and she would go back to devoting herself whole-heartedly to her studies. For the first time, she saw something lonely in her old life but she could see no way around that: the only way to study and live the life she wanted was to always be alone.

  She wrapped her lace shawl more tightly around her against a chill in the air.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “WHICH WAISTCOAT will you wear, sir?” Rabbie held up two options.

  “Whichever you like,” Ewan said, barely glancing at them, and received a sour look from his valet. His clothes had been in a soiled state after he was punched and landed on the grimy cobbled stones at the mill yesterday, although Rabbie had generously shown more concern over his injured cheek, wrapping ice in linen and insisting Ewan keep it pressed to his face for at least half an hour to reduce the swelling. It still felt tender and a bit sore today but nothing to complain about, certainly nothing to have warranted the fuss Chiverton and McDonald had made last night. Chiverton’s reaction had, at least, been worry for Ewan whereas McDonald seemed only bothered about how such unorthodox behaviour would affect his reputation, which was far less important to Ewan than letting a killer go free. He found it frustrating that his oldest friends made no effort to understand his feelings on the subject. Chiverton, at least, should comprehend the need to be true to oneself given that he had a male lover and refused to marry.