The Unquiet Heart

by The Unquiet Heart (retail) (epub)

  ‘Assuming Aurora hasn’t been poisoned as well. How did she seem to you?’

  Aurora Greene’s company had always been something to be endured more than inspected, and I wished now that I had paid closer attention to her.

  ‘She looks delicate but I don’t think she is really. She’s patron of half a dozen charitable organisations and sits on the board of more, although I don’t know how much good she actually does. Wilson’s death and the fact that she was stealing from her seems to have upset her more than I would have imagined. I don’t get the impression that they were close – she couldn’t even remember her first name – but I think she trusted her.’

  I had an excuse to call on her now, though. What dutiful future daughter-in-law wouldn’t want to bring comfort to a grieving widow? And if a few strands of her hair happened to find their way into my possession, it would be easy enough to test for arsenic afterwards.

  ‘I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a good thing that you’re engaged to Miles,’ Elisabeth said. ‘If you hadn’t been there, no one would even have known there was something suspicious about the colonel’s death.’

  Privately, I wasn’t entirely sure that the sacrifice was worth it – and from the look on Merchiston’s face, neither was he.

  Chapter 15

  I arrived at the university with half an hour to spare, even with a stop to buy a cup of tea and some toast. The extra time felt like a luxury; I seemed to spend my time rushing back and forth between my aunt’s house and the medical school – or a crime scene, for that matter. And although I should by rights have had no appetite after what I had just witnessed, I found that my hunger had returned with a vengeance. At this rate, I wouldn’t fit into whatever monstrosity of a wedding gown Mother and Aunt Emily were concocting for me.

  Brushing the buttery crumbs from my coat, I waited outside the lecture theatre reading over my chemistry notes until the others arrived. Feeling virtuous, I was first in line as I rummaged around to hand over the attendance card that proved I was a fully matriculated, fee-paying member of the university corpus.

  A card that was conspicuously absent.

  ‘Gilchrist, move out of the way. It’s a miracle you can find anything in that thing. It probably has more bacteria than the entire biology department – didn’t you pull out a stale sandwich instead of your textbook the other day?’

  I was barely listening as I frantically searched though my belongings. I never took the card out of the bag – as Julia pointed out, I never removed anything from it unless I absolutely had to – but there was no denying that it wasn’t there.

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor Neuwirth, I seem to have mislaid my card. I’ll get a replacement tomorrow, I promise.’

  ‘Then you may attend my class – tomorrow,’ he replied in his stiff German accent.

  ‘But you know I have it! I’ve presented it every day since last September.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, of course she can. You’ve seen her! She turns in her essays, passes her exams, and she’s always spilling dangerous chemicals everywhere,’ Moira grumbled.

  ‘That may be, but I cannot allow you to enter my lecture theatre without your card.’

  Tears pricked behind my eyes, but I refused to shed them.

  ‘I’ll lend you my notes afterwards,’ Alison whispered apologetically.

  I stood helplessly in the corridor as the day began without me. I couldn’t even return home – I had spent any money I could have used for cab fare on breakfast. In any case, my mother would find some way of stopping me from leaving the house again.

  Lacking even the identification required to use the library, I retreated to a deserted lecture theatre, where I curled up on one of the benches and let myself collapse, hot tears spilling out.

  ‘Miss Gilchrist!’ Gregory Merchiston turned from the blackboard. I hadn’t seen him there – so much for my powers of observation. ‘I have twenty-five third-year students arriving in fifteen minutes.’ He looked at me, taking in my distressed state. ‘Such a pity that the hot-water pipe burst and the lecture is now cancelled.’

  I glanced at the perfectly intact copper pipe running up the wall, and then at Merchiston as he strode over and unscrewed something, yanking the pipe off the wall and jumping back as hot water sprayed all over the floor.

  ‘I’ve probably caused untold damage to the building and deprived half the faculty the privilege of washing their hands in hot water. Not to mention the deleterious effect on these poor men’s education.’ He glanced at me. ‘Still. Needs must.’

  He stuck his head into the corridor and hailed the redoubtable Miss Brown to act as chaperone, and I tried to hide my disappointment.

  ‘Sit there, my good lady, and guard Gilchrist’s virtue while I pour her a cup of tea.’

  I snuffled quietly into my handkerchief while Miss Brown looked impassively on until he returned with a chipped china mug and pressed it into my hands.

  ‘Now. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I forgot my attendance card.’ It seemed faintly ridiculous now, certainly nothing worth ripping a hot-water pipe off the wall.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And . . . everything! It’s all so easy for the rest of them. Even Julia and Edith. They get up every day, come to lectures and go to the library, and then go home and spend their evenings as they wish. They can study or go to a talk or the music hall or just read a novel in front of the fire. My life is dictated by other people, morning, noon and night. At every turn, someone is standing in my way. I have to go to bed early just to wake up and finish my essays before the maid comes in so she doesn’t tell my aunt I’m ruining my eyesight and not getting enough sleep. I leave things at home and I can’t dash back to my rooms because I live on the other side of Edinburgh. I can’t go to evening lectures because my aunt has organised yet another dinner party, and all of this is luxury, because when I’m married I won’t be able to do anything at all! These could be my only years of freedom and I can’t even enjoy them because I’m exhausted.’

  ‘And on top of all that, you’re trying to solve a murder.’

  I snorted ungracefully through my tears. ‘I’m an idiot. I should be focusing all my spare energies on my studies, but I can’t leave well enough alone. No wonder I barely scraped through my first term.’

  ‘You’re a capable student, Sarah. More than capable. You could be brilliant.’

  ‘Could be. The story of my life, Professor. I could be brilliant. I could be happy. I could be at home with my parents and not the family disappointment. But I’m not.’ I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my gown, much to Merchiston’s amusement. ‘If I were a man, I could do both. I could even marry and not worry about that holding me back.’

  ‘At least once you’re married you only have to win over one person. And he might not be as hard to convince as you think.’

  ‘He said he admired me.’

  ‘Then he’s a clever man.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m encouraging you to neglect your studies after accusing you of not taking them seriously. I would ban you from investigating if I thought it would do any good.’

  ‘It wouldn’t.’ I smiled through my tears.

  There was an awkward pause. Not so long ago, on a blustery November morning, I had called him my friend. But I was an unmarried woman – at least for now – and he was my professor. Propriety, not to mention the university regulations, dictated that I shouldn’t be alone with him for more than a moment outside class, even with a chaperone present. Gregory Merchiston was famous for barely tolerating his students, and yet beneath the mercurial temper and our tangled history, I knew he thought well of me. Perhaps too well.

  ‘I’ll write a note telling my colleagues that you must be admitted to lectures, unless they want to deal with me.’

  I could well imagine how intimidating Merchiston must be to even the most self-aggrandising of his fellows. For all his education and brilliance, there was a roughness that no amo
unt of authority could conceal. Even someone who hadn’t witnessed him stripped to the waist and grappling with an ex-convict in an illegal Grassmarket boxing ring could see that.

  I had thought him dangerous, once. In some ways I still did. It would take so little for me to cross the barrier that Miss Brown and her ilk were so desperate for us to steer clear of. And no one would ever know – my reputation might have been patched up to look as good as new, but my physical state wouldn’t fool anyone, not even someone as unworldly as Miles. Why not take advantage of that, a little voice in my head whispered, and take your pleasure while you can?

  No wonder we were chaperoned every minute of the day. Had I been left alone with him, I think I would have kissed him.

  Had we been alone, I think he would have let me.

  Chapter 16

  ‘What in the blazes are you doing, Gregory? She’s your student, a young woman engaged to be married, and you’re treating her like an assistant!’

  ‘I assure you, Randall, Sarah Gilchrist is perfectly capable of getting herself into trouble without my help.’

  ‘Give me your word that you won’t be alone with her again.’

  If he did, it was too muffled for me to hear it, and I crept closer to the door.

  ‘You have to stop this. You look exhausted, man! Get a good night’s sleep, give up all that other nonsense and stick to coffee like the rest of us. Williamson commented on it the other day. You skate on thin ice as it is, and there’s only so much self-administering a man can do in the name of research.’

  It was easy to forget with his work for the police and his teaching that Merchiston was a man of science. Pulling late nights for research was normal in the halls of academia, but on top of a murder investigation? I was surprised he was keeping up with whatever it was he did in the privacy of his office.

  I lost myself in my studies for a while. I tried to write my materia medica essay, but my pen jabbed through the paper so roughly that it tore in too many places to be worth turning in. I finished a Latin translation, although it could have been Greek for all the sense it made to me. I labelled the anterior muscles of the human body from sternocleidomastoid to extensor hallicus, and every time I thought I was going to cry, I closed my eyes and made myself recite them all in order.

  That night, Elisabeth’s friendship – so often a source of comfort and camaraderie, not to mention far better food than my aunt’s cook was capable of providing – was grating. Randall’s concern felt paternalistic and Merchiston . . . Gregory Merchiston could go to hell, and I was perilously close to telling him so. I’d say it in front of a packed lecture theatre if I thought it would do any good. He had saved my life and sometimes I thought he believed I owed him for it.

  The next day, I let Agnes dress my hair as prettily as she knew how. I could have done it myself – if I could stitch an incision in a man’s thorax together, then I could manage a plait – but every morning she came in and it had never occurred to me to stop her.

  My aunt’s servants had disapproved of me when I arrived – a scandalous past and a loose-lipped uncle who never lost an opportunity to humiliate me meant that it had filtered below stairs – and my intended profession must have horrified them. And yet I had never stopped to wonder what they thought of the household’s other inhabitants, or of each other.

  ‘Do you have a sweetheart, Agnes?’ The question came out awkwardly. I had mastered anatomy, Greek and the finer points of the cardiovascular system, but small talk still eluded me.

  Her lips pinched tightly. ‘Your aunt has no concerns about my behaviour, miss.’

  Another misstep. Of course. Ladies of my station were courted; women in service would only meet other servants or tradesmen, and the slightest hint of impropriety would be enough to see them dismissed without a reference. And who in that position would have the time? When there was a household to see to and family at home to take care of, how could romance flourish? It was a lot to cram into a half-day every month.

  ‘Forgive me – I simply realised that you’ve been doing my hair and dressing me for months now, and I know so little about you.’

  She met my eyes in the mirror warily.

  ‘Where did you grow up?’

  ‘Queensferry, miss. By the Firth of Forth.’ The answer was grudging, but I felt a flicker of warmth.

  ‘I’ve never visited. It must be beautiful, living by the water.’

  ‘It’s fair enough, if you don’t mind the smell of fish. Nothing to London, I’m sure.’

  ‘Have you never visited with Aunt Emily?’ I remembered as soon as I said it that Aunt Emily rarely travelled to London. She had come for my grandmother’s funeral, but not since.

  ‘No, miss. I’m not sure I’d care to.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that she dispense with the honorific and just call me Sarah, but I suspected that for Agnes, that might be a step too far.

  Once I was dressed in the elegant but sober outfit slightly more apt than the one Agnes had laid out for me – a light rose silk that would stain if I so much as looked at a cup of tea – we set out for the Greenes’, all unsure as to what we would find.

  The parlour we were ushered into bore no resemblance to the room we had been in two nights before. That death had visited the house was clear before we stepped over the threshold, with the black crêpe ribbon on the door and the ever-present ticking of the clock in the hall stopped. The whole house felt suffocatingly silent and dark, the curtains closed and the mirrors covered. Somehow it even smelled like death – although that was as likely because I had been handling formaldehyde before Mother had demanded my presence and pulled me out of lectures. Not that Merchiston would complain, when it gave me a chance to find out whether Aurora was likely to follow in the footsteps of her husband.

  The grieving widow herself looked almost impossibly changed. Gone was the sparkling, winsome hostess and in her place was a pallid, black-clad creature. She was wrapped tightly in a crocheted black shawl beaded with jet, the fire roaring in the grate and the curtains preventing any air from moving around the stuffy room, but she was still shivering.

  She had loved him, I realised with a jolt. He had been boorish and patronising, but beneath all his army bluff and bluster there must have been a tenderness, something kept hidden from all except his wife, a side of his character that she and only she was privy to. I wondered if there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t see the spark in whatever mediocre man other women swooned over. I had always privately assumed that it was pretence, that married women shared the open secret that their husbands were not the gods they believed themselves to be, but smelly, coarse mortals with insistent desires and a myopic view of the other gender.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘Alisdair and Miles went out for a walk – they felt cooped up, I think, and there are so many errands to run.’

  Aunt Emily hugged her tightly. ‘You poor dear. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.’

  ‘They took him away yesterday. They said . . . they suspect . . . Oh, I can’t! It’s too much!’ She collapsed in tears, and I realised that in my eagerness to see Colonel Greene dissected, I had not given one thought as to how it would affect his widow.

  Aunt Emily took the bible from her reticule. ‘Perhaps this could offer some comfort?’

  Mother looked irritated – had she wished she had thought of it? Aurora just nodded, and we bowed our heads as Aunt Emily read.

  I had seen death up close, and murder even closer. I had never truly encountered grief before. Had my studies – not to mention my extracurricular activities – really made me so hard? I hadn’t come here to offer comfort; I had come to pry, to see if I could steal a few strands of a distraught woman’s hair so I could take them away and experiment on them. For the first time, I saw my mother’s point about medicine making me unwomanly.

  And yet all Aurora’s tears didn’t bring her any closer to finding out who had murdered her husband, o
r who had killed her maid, a woman who had had her own family and friends and yet whose death was treated as a mere inconvenience.

  ‘Oh, where is that wretched girl with the tea?’

  I stood, relieved at a reason to escape the stultifying atmosphere and Aunt Emily’s sermons. ‘I’ll fetch her.’

  As I left, something on the antimacassar caught my eye. Glinting in the sunlight were golden hairs. Not just strands, but a clump. Aurora’s hair was falling out.

  In the hallway, I saw Blackwell carrying a precariously balanced tray. She looked worse than Aurora, with dark circles under her eyes and hands that had been scrubbed red raw, though the tips of her fingers were the colour of a week-old corpse.

  I examined them in horror. ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Bless you, miss. Mrs Greene didn’t have any mourning dresses with her, so we’ve had to run out for some dye and make do until her dressmaker can come for a fitting.’

  The image of Blackwell sitting at the kitchen table well into the wee hours, soaking all Aurora’s pretty dresses in dye as black as pitch unsettled me. I wondered how she felt about this gross display of household mourning when her friend’s death had been cause for scandal rather than grief.

  My own dress was a sober slate grey, intended for university social activities that I was rarely permitted to attend, and as such had seen little use. Had the colonel been my father-in-law, I too would have carried the faint aroma of still-fresh dye. As it was, I felt positively festive in a house that had turned into a mausoleum overnight.

  ‘I can’t imagine what she must be going through.’

  ‘And with her health too. Poor woman.’ Blackwell shook her head.

  ‘Has she been ill as well?’ Aurora had certainly looked pale. With her small appetite she could never have consumed the same amount of arsenic that her husband had, but even a few grains could have made her ill.