The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

by Shona MacLean

  The notary turned to Jaffray. ‘Doctor, how did she die?’

  Into Jaffray’s eyes came an image of eight years ago, and of two weeks ago, and of four days ago. His words were slow and deliberate, as the revelation came to him. ‘She died quickly, and in agony, of a sudden vomiting through which she had not the strength to crawl. That is how it was described to me, for I came too late.’

  ‘You were not there?’ I asked.

  He closed his eyes as realisation took him. ‘I had been making my summer visit to Glenlivet, to the mountain people. I was away from Banff longer than I had planned to be, for on my journey back to the town I was waylaid perhaps twenty miles from home by Lang Geordie and his crew. They begged that I would treat their needs – and indeed they were many – before I returned to the burgh, for at that time they were not allowed to show their faces in the town. I was with them two days.’ Jaffray lowered his voice and spoke almost to himself. ‘And that was the only other time I saw Walter Watt shaken as he was two weeks ago. Both times I thought it was for grief.’ He sat down on the end of the bed, his head in his hands. I could not lift my arm to comfort him.

  ‘He has played too easily upon your goodness, doctor. Hold fast to the good you have done, not to the evil that was beyond your power to change.’

  Jaffray looked up wearily at the baillie. ‘And have you not spent your life in fighting evil, William Buchan?’

  ‘It is my calling,’ was the simple answer.

  The notary put down his paper. ‘There is something here that I do not understand. You are telling us, if I have the thing to rights, that Walter Watt murdered his first wife, poisoned her in fact, and that it was because his nephew discovered this and confronted him with the knowledge that he too was murdered?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is what I believe.’

  ‘But he loved Helen. He grieves for her yet; I know it, for I have seen it myself in his unguarded moments. I cannot believe that he could have killed her. Why would he ever have done such a thing? What did her grief over her children signify in this?’

  There was a silence in the room. I could guess the answer, and I understood now that the other two knew it also. It was a cold, sharp answer, and across the room I saw it cut into old wounds. It was not for me to respond to Thomas Stewart. ‘He killed her,’ began the baillie, ‘because she could not give him a dynasty. And so she knew it, and spent the last months of her life in terror and despair.’ His voice fell away. ‘He killed her because he did not love her enough.’ There was a complete silence in the room, and through it the baillie’s words echoed to a time and a place long past, and to a love long dead. His head fell forward on his chest and his shoulders heaved as he struggled for breath. The doctor went to him and kneeling before him grasped both his wrists in his own two hands, counting the breaths with him until the struggle subsided. I knew now who the H.B. was that had lovingly stitched the hanging on the baillie’s wall, so many years ago. I cursed my stupidity that I had not realised it before.

  The sound of horses and wheels on the bumpy track broke into the rhythm of the breathing and gradually thundered over it as the new arrivals came closer. A clatter of hooves in the courtyard was soon followed by a shout for the doctor, and assuring himself that the baillie’s crisis was over, Jaffray got up and made for his next patients. I studied William Buchan, unnoticed, but what his thoughts were at that moment I could not tell. Thomas Stewart pulled up a chair at the side of my bed, and spoke in a low voice. ‘Tell me again about these flowers you spoke of, and how they told Patrick Davidson of his uncle’s crime.’

  I tried to sit up a little, the better to get my breath, and to speak. ‘You know the portrait of Walter Watt and Helen that hangs in the great hall of the provost’s house?’

  The notary nodded. ‘I have often seen it, but never taken great notice of it.’

  ‘In that painting, Helen is holding flowers in her hand – are a symbol of her hopes, her children. But the flowers are falling from her hand, and many lie already crushed on the floor.’

  ‘Her lost babies,’ said the notary.

  ‘Yes. Jamesone himself told me, if I had had the wit to listen properly. The point is, those flowers are not – or were not – grown in these parts. The laird of Banff tried many years ago, and failed to cultivate them after bringing some specimens back from his travels abroad. But another did not fail. Walter Watt did not fail. And Walter Watt knew, probably from the mouth of James Cargill himself, that these plants were utterly lethal in all their parts. I believe he grew them at first for love of their beauty, and that is why they are there in the painting, as something beautiful. But when, sometime afterwards, he could no longer stand the strain of his wife’s repeated losses of their children, when he came to realise that this woman, whom he is acknowledged to have loved, would bear him no heir, he took the roots of that same plant and poisoned her with them. He was safe until the day someone else came and looked upon that portrait and saw the flowers for what they were.’

  ‘His own nephew,’ said the notary, understanding now. ‘And he never thought to take the painting down? He did not think discovery possible? Truly, the man’s arrogance was monstrous.’

  ‘Monstrous, yes, but I think also, in spite of all he had done, he loved her still. And just like Walter Watt himself, all that Patrick Davidson saw when he looked at that portrait was his beloved aunt’s face. It was not until he had been to Darkwater, and considered the wise woman’s words, that he questioned his aunt’s state of mind before her death, and that led him back to the picture, painted in her last weeks on this earth, and the flowers that she held in her hand. I think he confronted his uncle with his suspicions, but where he intended to take the matter from that point, I do not know. Perhaps he did not know himself. In the end, it was immaterial: he died because of it.’

  He pressed me further. ‘How do you think the thing was brought about?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps there is someone else who can,’ murmured the baillie, who had been listening throughout. ‘No matter, though. Continue, Mr Seaton.’

  I reached for another sip of water which Thomas Stewart helped me to. ‘I do not know that there is anything left I can tell you,’ I said.

  The notary, though, had more he would know. ‘Do you think Patrick Davidson revealed his knowledge to Marion Arbuthnott?’ His line of thought was logical; it was what Marion had feared and what Charles Thom had soon come to understand – that the possession of this knowledge would be as a death warrant to whoever came to own it.

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I am certain he did not.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked the notary.

  ‘Because she would not have kept on searching if he had.’ It was the baillie who had spoken. He had got up from his chair and now began to pace the room. ‘She would not have needed to continue searching for the truth of his death if she had known it already.’

  He had said exactly what I had been thinking. ‘That was why she went back to the wise woman of Darkwater after his death,’ I said. ‘Because she still did not know. The crone told me that. That Marion had gone back to her, asking about the colchicum, and she, the old woman, had been able to describe it to her. She had described to her the flower that, in the course of her duties as nursery maid to Geleis Guild, the girl must have seen, captured in oils on canvas, a dozen times a day. And now Marion is dead. She, too, must have confronted the provost.’

  Again the baillie demurred. ‘I do not think so. As soon as she returned from Darkwater she sent word by her father that she wished to see me. It was just after noon. The council had convened as a matter of urgency, to discuss the defence of the burgh in the event of foreign attack. The meeting was to be held in the utmost secrecy, and the town serjeant had been warned that it was not to be disturbed. It was almost five by the time we had finished with the business and, fool that I was, instead of going directly to the apothecary’s, I made my usual evening inspection of the tolbooth.’
He was revisiting the scene in his mind. ‘By the time I reached Arbuthnott’s, the girl had gone. Her mother told me she had gone in a distracted state to meet with Geleis Guild shortly after sending me her note. She had returned later, in a worse case than she had left in, and would tell her mother nothing of the cause, but said only she must speak to me. A little after four, a messenger had arrived from the provost’s house, requesting her to go there as a matter of urgency. Marion had set out immediately, and her mother never saw her alive again. She was found not two hours later by Geleis Guild in the castle grounds. Dead, dead.’

  Images of a young woman gazing towards the waves from the height of the Elf Kirk, of the same woman softly singing to the children of Geleis Guild in the garden of the provost’s house, of the same woman, dead and burning on a stake at the market cross of Banff filled my mind. At the last, they merged, horribly, with the indelible memory of Patrick Davidson lying, grass in his hands and his mouth, sprawled and dead across my desk in a pool of his own vomit.

  This was not right. There was something that could not be right. ‘It was Geleis Guild who found her?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said the notary, ‘and her children.’

  And her children. She could not have done that, knowing what was to be found. And why, only last night at the lykewake, had she urged me on in my searches?

  The baillie interrupted my wonderings. ‘Something puzzles you, Mr Seaton.’

  ‘Aye, it does. It is Geleis Guild. I do not understand her. She is a woman distraught, and yet she must have joined with her husband in his murderous doings.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ quizzed the baillie.

  It was evident to me. ‘Because I do not see how the provost could have been murdering Marion Arbuthnott while he was with you in the council chamber.’

  Comprehension came over the baillie’s face. ‘But Walter Watt was not there. The nature of our discoveries about his nephew’s activities caused some alarm amongst those few who knew of it, and it was adjudged best to keep the meeting a secret from the provost until such time as we had a clear knowledge and understanding of his nephew’s activities and connections hereabouts. Walter Watt was not in the council chamber when Marion Arbuthnott died. To judge by the carriage of his wife these last days, I think it very unlikely she was an accomplice in his deeds.’

  A soft voice drifted to us from the doorway. ‘You are wrong, baillie, you are wrong.’ And there, like a wraith from another world, stood Geleis Guild herself. Her pallor was complete, her eyes rimmed in red, then black, her hair loose and dull on her shoulders. She had the air of one further from the living than the dead. She could scarcely support herself in the doorway, and around her wrists were thick bands of linen, applied, as I later learned, a few hours ago by the doctor, in a desperate effort to stay the harm that she had determined to do herself.

  Jaffray came in behind her. ‘Take a seat, my dear; you are not well enough to be up yet.’

  ‘It matters little,’ she said, but nevertheless allowed herself to be led to a chair.

  The baillie watched her, carefully, and with a strange curiosity on his face. ‘I cannot fathom it, mistress. Indeed, I cannot believe it. Would you really have us believe that you were the willing companion of your husband’s deed?’

  ‘Not willing,’ she said. ‘No, never that.’

  I saw it now, I thought. ‘Nor witting, either?’ I asked.

  She looked over to me with a terrible desperation in her eyes, and made as if to speak but stopped, at a loss.

  ‘Did you know what your husband was about, mistress?’ asked the baillie.

  She shook her head. ‘Not at first. Not at all. I did not know all until Marion told me.’ She looked down at her wrists and began to pick at the bandages, speaking almost absently as she did so. ‘I should have realised long ago. Sometimes I think I should have wondered.’ She trailed off, and then, having lost herself a few moments in her musing, she was recalled back to the present. ‘I was little more than a girl when Helen died. In truth, I remember very little about her. She was a married woman, the wife of one of the magistrates with whom my brother, Robert, was keen to curry favour – for even then it could be seen that Walter would be a man of importance, and my brother liked to be counted amongst the men of importance. My brother had hopes that I might make an impression on Helen – become her companion, help her in the nursery – be to her in fact what Marion was to become to me. But Helen had her own friends – older women – like your mother,’ she said, looking at me with an effort at kindness in her eyes.

  ‘And as for the nursery – there was to be no nursery.’ She paused and made herself leave off the picking at the bandages. ‘When she died, my brother made a great show of sorrow, which I knew was not real. He would imagine himself perpetually required to give succour and counsel at Walter Watt’s house, but I know Robert is an object of contempt to honourable and intelligent men, and such I could clearly perceive to be the case with Walter also. And yet, invitations came to us often from the magistrate, and soon I came to understand that it was not my brother’s but my own company that Walter sought. I could not understand it, for he was deep, so deep in grief and love for his wife. He spoke little of her, but her face was always in his eyes, her name always ready to fall silent from his lips. I was not yet seventeen when it was agreed between him and Robert that we should marry, that I should take Helen’s place.’ She gave a small, humourless laugh. ‘What a mockery! That I should take her place? He was kind to me, I can never deny that; he took pleasure – took his pleasure with me, and I came to love him beyond measure, and child after child though I bore him, I knew I would never take Helen’s place. And so it went on, and by the grace of God, as I thought, our family thrived and Walter rose higher and higher in the burgh. I knew of no one better blessed, yet there was still a dark emptiness within him that I think was only truly filled when he looked at Helen’s portrait. I thought she haunted him, and perhaps she did, and the memory of her tormented him.’

  ‘And in all that time, mistress, you truly suspected nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘And then Patrick came home. I must confess,’ and here, for the first time, she allowed herself a real smile, ‘I felt a little anxious at the prospect. He had come to visit us once before, but just for a few days, before he left for the continent, but this time he was coming to stay. For years, I had heard nothing but the praises of this boy – this young man as he was to be. To Walter he had been as a son. He had once said to me, before he could stop himself – for he was always careful not to hurt me – if he could have had such a son, of Helen, he could have asked for nothing more. There was a joy in him when he heard Patrick was coming home that I had rarely seen, and I know he left Arbuthnott in little doubt as to how the boy was to be treated – it was impressed upon the apothecary what an honour it was for him to have and house such an apprentice.’

  ‘And when the boy did return, how were things between them then?’

  A light came into her eyes as she replied to the baillie. ‘It was a thing lovely to behold. They were as father and son reunited. And in truth, for myself, I could not be jealous. Walter was so happy and so proud to show off his own little ones to Patrick who, he said, would be as a brother to them. And so it was. I have seldom met such a good, loving young man, and I know from Walter, and Arbuthnott – and indeed Marion – that he was greatly gifted. I had never seen my husband at such peace. That Patrick and Marion then became attached made it all the sweeter for me. There was true happiness in our household. It was our time of true happiness.’

  I had known such a time. ‘And then?’ I said.

  She looked at me directly and spoke bluntly. ‘And then, it came to its end. Patrick was invited to take his dinner with Walter and with the doctor, who had just returned from Edinburgh, and who was very desirous to meet him.’ The doctor, I could guess, had not been subtle in pressing for an invitation. ‘Patrick had been that day with Marion out to Sandend, then ont
o Findlater and Darkwater, gathering plants as she told me. He did not go back to the apothecary’s to wash or to change his clothing when they returned, but came directly here. A change had come over him – he was not his usual, easy self, but nervy and agitated. He was most desirous of seeing Walter privately before the doctor should arrive. I asked him to rest, or to take a little refreshment while he waited, but he would have none of it, and spent the whole time in gazing intently at the portrait on the wall – the one of Walter and Helen.’

  ‘And did they have this private interview?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They did. I heard nothing of it – I was in the kitchens – but within half an hour of Walter arriving home, it was over – Patrick had left. Walter looked ill, shaken. He would have put off the doctor if he could have done. He would not tell me what was wrong or why Patrick had left, just that the boy had been upset, but he had managed to calm him and would speak with him the next day.’

  ‘And was that the last you saw of the boy?’ The baillie was watching her keenly.

  She looked at her hands again and then directly at William Buchan. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was not.’

  ‘He came to the house again?’

  ‘I think so. That is,’ she hesitated, unsure how to proceed. ‘I did not see him come, but I saw him leave.’

  ‘When was it?’ asked the baillie.

  She shook her head and began to weep.

  ‘It was the night of the storm, was it not?’ I said.

  She nodded and then began to weep all the more uncontrollably. ‘I had scarcely seen Walter all day. He had spent much of the morning in his business room and then the afternoon out and about in the town. He was drenched and muddy when he returned home. He said he wanted no supper, and was not to be disturbed in his work, although I heard him later go down to the kitchen where a pot of stew had been left on the hearth. I had much trouble with the children that evening – they were in such great fear of the storm. I was concerned about Walter, and sat at my needlework for as long as I could, but a little before ten, tiredness overwhelmed me and I decided to retire without having seen my husband. As I was mounting the back stairs, I saw a hooded figure come out of Walter’s work room and leave the house by the side door, directly onto Water Path. I thought it was Patrick by the height and gait of him. I was so anxious to put right whatever had gone wrong with him and Walter, I threw a cloak around my shoulders and went out without even a lantern to try to overtake him. I had not expected the tempest outside to be so bad, and I made little headway in catching him up – the streets were near enough turned to rivers. I kept him in my sights, but then he started stumbling, falling, grabbing out at walls, banks, even the grass, it seemed to try to steady himself. I knew he was not drunk, because he had walked straight enough when he had left Walter’s room and our house. I started to run, to go to his aid and then I saw …’ She stopped, and bit her lip.