‘You mean,’ said Blair slowly, ‘that he might know something about the murders but not have told us, because he hoped to make money from it?’
‘Exactly!’ said Murray, examining his theory for flaws.
‘No, I cannot believe that,’ said Blair with sad finality. ‘Balneavis was very fond of your father. He would not hide his murderer simply for the sake of money.’
‘But you yourself pointed to his desperation,’ Murray insisted. ‘I think we should ask him. We can tell him that we know about his blackmail, and if he does not tell us anything he knows about the murders, we shall inform Douglas who his blackmailer is.’
‘And thereby become extortionists ourselves,’ Blair reminded him gently.
‘But this is different – oh, well, I suppose not.’ Murray sighed. ‘Yet we must prevent him from further torture of poor Douglas. If you had seen the man this morning, it would say all that needed to be said of the evil of Balneavis’ activities. I can hardly bring myself to believe that a gentleman could wilfully do such harm to one whom he regards as a friend.’
‘As you say,’ said Blair. He pondered, lips pursed and eyes on the ceiling, drumming his fingers on the swathed arm of the chair. ‘A warning, I suppose, need not be a threat. We can make it plain to him that if he makes any further demand on Douglas, we shall tell Douglas the identity of the extortionist and leave the rest up to him. Douglas may prefer to deal with the matter privately than to see Balneavis in court, when any secret he is paying to protect might well come out. Then we go to Douglas and say that we have warned off the blackmailer and he is to let us know if anything further transpires. It is not entirely satisfactory, but I fear that for the moment it will have to suffice.’ He jiggled his knees, and looked distressed.
The interview with Balneavis was easily as painful as anything either of them had anticipated. For a while, he adhered firmly and cheerfully to his story of a rich client on the Boroughmuir, and when confronted by the story of the note addressed to Douglas and the sequence of events witnessed by Murray, the smile continued, forgotten, on his lips, while his eyes became anxious. Murray would almost have called them puzzled.
‘But, my dear Blair,’ Balneavis explained, ‘Douglas has a great deal of money, for he lives like a country minister – you’ve seen it, Charles, dear boy. He has no desire to spend all that money he makes.’
‘You told me he was poor, sir,’ Murray objected.
‘Yes, well, so I did. But I did not wish Margaret to marry him, and I was afraid that social pressure, if it were seen to be an eligible match, might persuade him to marry her, in spite of all my objections.’
‘That was hardly likely, sir,’ said Blair, surprised. ‘John Douglas is the last person to be affected by public opinion.’
‘Well, I had to give a good reason to people. After all, Douglas is my friend. I could hardly persuade people I disapproved of him as a husband for my daughter. Not without telling them what I knew about what he did, and if I told people that, Douglas would be very unhappy.’
‘And you would have lost your income,’ Blair pointed out. He was pacing the parlour carpet, his banyan trailing behind him softly. Murray stood very still by the door, while Balneavis sat in the chair Murray had vacated by the fire, his smile distributed equally between them.
‘Oh, but I don’t think of it that way,’ he said. ‘I should never tell Douglas’ secret to anyone.’
‘Yet you threatened to, in order to extort money from him,’ Murray pointed out.
‘No, I never threatened him!’ Balneavis was shocked. ‘I just sent him a little note, you know, like that one you have there. I told him I knew, and asked if I could have some money. It seemed only right, when he has so much and I have so little, and I have all my lovely daughters to see settled, and I wasn’t going to tell anyone, anyway. My loyalty should have some reward,’ he finished reasonably.
Blair and Murray regarded each other over Balneavis’ head.
‘We have decided,’ said Blair, ‘to tell Douglas that we know the identity of his blackmailer, and if he is asked for further money he may obtain from us the name of his torturer. Until or unless he does so, we shall remain silent. You will cease your practices forthwith.’
Murray could have sworn in that minute that Blair was three feet taller than Balneavis.
Balneavis departed George’s Square very shortly thereafter, wearing some of Blair’s less startling clothes. Murray stayed to supper, but his mind was not much on the conversation. He excused himself early, found that the servants had dried and warmed his greatcoat, and walked back home through the mist.
Robbins was at the door to meet him with a look in his pale eyes that was as clear as a note on the hall table: there was news. Murray led him into the study, but Robbins asked if he might also call for Mary to be present before he told what had happened, as it was Mary’s visitor that had brought the news. Murray, relieved that it was unlikely to be bad news of Dunnet or of the boys, was only too happy to agree, and waited impatiently while Robbins fetched her.
Mary arrived looking fresh and calm, as though she had spent the previous night in blameless sleep rather than parading around the Grassmarket. Murray sat, and looked expectantly at the two servants.
‘You remember Donald, sir? The lad that you met this morning in the Cowgate, that works in Stone’s.’
‘Yes, yes, I remember. I saw him in Stone’s at dinner time.’
‘Aye, he was working there today. When he was let out of work, he came here – around an hour ago now, sir. And he brought us some news. You mind we saw that fight last night? Not the one with wee Archie, that was just a bit of crack. But the one in the alley, when we ran.’
Murray nodded. Robbins was stony-faced, as if he had already voiced his disapproval.
‘The man that fell in front of us was as dead as he looked, sir: they found his body lying there this morning, by all accounts just as we last saw it. Now it was night and not good light, sir, and he was head towards us when he fell, so it’s not so surprising that you did not recognise him, sir –’
‘In the name of Heaven, who was it?’ demanded Murray, losing patience.
‘It was a man, sir, whom you say you have met. A man called Dandy Muir.’
Murray caught his breath, then let it out again in a long sigh. Dandy Muir, whom he had last seen scared in the Canongate flat. Evidently his fear had not been ill-founded.
‘Did you know the man we saw there, Mary? It was not a face I recognised.’
‘Nor I, sir. But if you are looking for a gentleman as your murderer, sir, it was not he. He was no gentleman.’
‘I agree with that. Robbins, you know many of the households of my father’s friends here in Edinburgh. It occurs to me that a gentleman wishing to dispose of a man in the Grassmarket might well send a servant to do his work for him.’
‘Even the most loyal of servants would refuse such an office, sir!’ said Robbins, shocked.
‘Of good servants, yes, Robbins, servants who were themselves good people. But here there seemed to me to be a degree of satisfaction in the man’s face – and perhaps an air of custom?’
‘Perhaps, sir,’ Mary confirmed. The man had known when to step coolly back into the shadows, had looked confidently down at his opponent’s body on the ground. She felt, too, that he would know her and her master again, and she shivered. Murray, in the midst of describing the man to Robbins, noticed and drew her closer to the fire, still talking. Their eyes did not meet.
‘Dark hair, I think, and a heavy jaw. And his hands looked unusually large, although perhaps it was simply the light on them. They were pale. If you can find a servant who looks like that, or who was out and unaccounted for last night, it might help. Is that possible?’
‘Yes, sir, I believe it is. Do I take it that you would rather I carried this out myself, or can I send William or Daniel?’
‘Whichever of you has the most acquaintance and can question most discreetly,’ said Murray.
Murray nodded, and Robbins hurried out. Murray looked at Mary.
‘Did anyone know Muir was back in the Grassmarket? Had anyone seen him alive last night, apart from us?’
‘Donald did not say, sir.’ She looked at the fire. ‘He was probably back to see friends. I hear he hadn’t settled well in the Canongate.’ The air in the room was warm, and very still. The candle flames sat motionless, each like a topaz shining in the firelight. Her cap, mourning grey, had been tied on in haste at his summons, and the ribbons lay like ash against her white neck, ready to crumble at his touch. Her head was slightly bent, eyes on the fire, the penstrokes of her eyebrows black and clear. The lace of her gown moved only as she breathed. The mantelpiece clock ticked softly, and he felt his pulse beat in time with it, conscious of every drop of blood moving inside him. He found himself at last saying, gently,
‘Mary.’
She did not move. He took a step towards her, hand out to touch her. Without moving away she turned her head and looked at him, eyes bright under fiercesome brows.
‘Ah, no, sir. That would not be right,’ she said firmly. ‘It would be something that we should both regret.’
He returned her look for a long second, then broke away, ashamed of himself, embarrassed, feeling his face redden.
‘And besides,’ she added, with a sudden triangular smile, ‘I don’t even fancy you!’
Murray started, and burst out laughing. Her smile had become smug, and then purely friendly. Without waiting to be dismissed, she curtseyed and left the room, and Murray, feeling much better, rang the bell to let Robbins know he was going to his solitary bed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The wind rose in the night, blowing away the haar and bringing in proper rain clouds. When dawn could be said to have broken, the sky was a pale, silky grey aloof from the spattered window panes. In Murray’s dreams, the scaffolding was blown down by the driving wind, and the rain fell on his father’s yellow face as Charles dragged him out from the tangle of fallen wood. He woke on his back, staring at the cold cream canopy, waiting for the images in his mind to go away. It was a struggle: whatever he tried to think of, it always came back to his father, yellow against the black and white of this very bed.
At last, as he searched for a different image, he remembered the news that Donald the pot boy had brought to his kitchens the previous night, and the memory of his father’s corpse changed abruptly to a memory of Dandy Muir’s body flailing backwards in the dark alley. Not much improvement there: in his mind now it seemed that he recognised Dandy, knew the long, disjointed body even as it fell hard on the stone paving, and the thin, dark, unshaven face staring lifeless upside down out of the pool of lamplight.
It suddenly seemed quite reasonable to him that he should feel afraid.
Robbins knocked at the door and entered. His eyebrows were definitely returning now, looking rather prickly. Murray sighed and dragged his dressing gown towards him as he pulled himself out of bed, and followed his manservant to the dressing room. Robbins poured some of the hot water he had brought into the wide blue and white basin, and attended to the shaving things while Murray washed with the soft white soap first used by his father. He found now that when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Dandy Muir, dead and white as the soap.
He sat while Robbins arranged a towel beneath his chin, and sighed again.
‘I hope you are feeling quite well, sir,’ said Robbins politely.
‘Yes, Robbins, thank you.’ He replied almost without thinking, but then added, ‘Except that I cannot help considering the matter of poor Dandy Muir.’
‘Aye, it was a tragedy.’
‘Well, it’s not just that,’ Murray went on, twisting his face to accommodate Robbins’ razor strokes. ‘It is that I feel responsible, somehow. His death has something to do with the death of my father, I am sure of it, and I cannot convince myself that I did not endanger his life by visiting him that day after the funeral. Someone may have seen us together and thought that he would betray his brother’s killer to me.’
‘But even if that was true, sir, you could not have known before you visited him what effect it might have. And that happened the moment you met him. If you will forgive the word, sir, it was predestined.’
It was not a word that Murray liked, for various reasons, but Robbins was not to know that. Murray frowned.
‘But I still feel responsible. I must be partly to blame.’
Robbins stood back from him and directed his pale eyes for once straight into Murray’s own.
‘The only men to blame, sir, for Dandy Muir’s death, are the man you saw in the alley and the man that sent him there.’ He finished with absolute firmness, and went back to scraping bristle intently from Murray’s abashed face.
He thought again of the man in the alley, his large pale hands in the lamplight, his dark face, half-shadowed, as he glanced up at them and stepped back coolly into the darkness. A shiver ran through his heart. Mary was right, anyway: the killer was not a gentleman.
But the footprints he had found in the hard earth floor of the stable, while they had waited for Dr. Harker to attend Jamie, they had been from good shoes; not a serving man’s boots, but the footwear of gentlefolk, tapered at the toe. It seemed that the master did not send the man to do all his work for him.
Jennet served his breakfast, during which Robbins brought in one of Blair’s elegant notes asking him to supper again. The breakfast table seemed very quiet without the boys, and he sent back his acceptance straight away. The note reminded him of something he had to do that morning, and as soon as he had finished his meal he called for his hat and heavy cloak, and clutched them close to him as he edged out into the blustery rain.
The North Bridge and the High Street were crowded, with people hurrying from stall to stall, from law court to coffee house. Hats and bonnets were pinned down by gloved hands, or shawls, on men as well as women, were lashed about heads and shoulders and drawn forward over faces.
Murray hoped he could catch Douglas alone, either at Stone’s or at home. Instead he finally tracked him down in Baird’s, the coffee house less frequented by his father’s friends, on the edge of a group of swaying and noisy individuals who seemed to be celebrating some litigious victory. Since Douglas, as was his custom, was only slightly of the crowd and not at all in it, it was relatively easy for Murray to reach him, touch his elbow, and say enough quietly to persuade him into some more private conference. As his flat was across the street, it was obvious that they should go there, though Murray shivered at the thought of sitting in a wet cloak and boots in that bare apartment. Here, however, he misjudged Douglas slightly: the advocate must not have spent so long with his lady friend the previous night, for this morning the flat was clean and comparatively tidy, and a fire was laid in the grate. Douglas knelt to light it, and set a kettle over it when it was healthy enough. He turned to take Murray’s cloak and, without looking at him, said,
‘You are surprised. But I keep no servant, so if I sleep too late to red the place out myself, no one else is here to do it for me.’
‘A very logical conclusion,’ said Murray, slightly taken aback. He sat where Douglas indicated, on the fireside chair, and wondered quite how to start. Douglas pulled his hard branderback nearer to the fire, and waited patiently, legs crossed.
‘It has come to my attention,’ he began hesitantly, wondering how Blair would have put it. He should have left it to Blair. ‘There is a certain person – in Edinburgh – who has been eking out his income by receiving sums of money from other people.’ Thinking of Blair had been a mistake: he was starting to talk like one of Blair’s discreet notes. It would give Douglas the chance to stop him if he wanted to, he thought. Douglas, however, experienc
ed advocate that he was, was betraying no emotion or indeed anything beyond a polite curiosity. Only his remarkable eyes burned a shade brighter, like wax candles in a midnight window.
‘Ah, this may sound like a charity,’ Murray went on. ‘But although those who give the money have the choice, the chance to decide whether to give it or not, the threat of what might happen, what secrets, carefully hidden, might be exposed if the money is withheld, is, I believe, often too great, and the victim, for that is what this donor is, is obliged to pay to save his reputation in the eyes of his employers or of society.’ Damn it, he thought, where on earth has my thread gone? He found that his hands were clutching each other until the knuckles were white, and deliberately tried to relax them before taking a deep breath. ‘In short, sir, this person is a blackmailer, and I have reason to believe that you are one of his victims.’
Without seeming to move, Douglas’ face had become like a mask, slightly disjointed from the expression behind it. His hands, Murray noticed, were completely relaxed in his lap, and yet at the same time they looked unnatural, belonging to someone else. At last he spoke, his voice as searing as ice.
‘I am not entirely sure that I want to know how you reached this extraordinary conclusion, Mr. Murray. Are you in league with this alleged extortionist?’
‘I am not, sir.’ Murray was shocked. Douglas smiled a slight, horrid smile, and gave a little nod.
‘Moral outrage, I see,’ he commented calmly. ‘And does he have a name, this charming individual, this happy recipient of others’ generosity?’
‘He does, sir, but at present that is not something I am at liberty to divulge. There are those innocents, sir, who may be injured by such revelations.’ He felt his voice fading.
‘Oh, there are innocents, are there?’ Douglas asked. He still had not moved, but there was something about him that was filling with menace. Murray felt his heart begin to throb. Perhaps he should have made Douglas stay in the coffee house.
Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3) Page 25