She looked tired. ‘Sarah, what am I to do with you?’
‘The same as you did when you sent me here, I imagine. Tell me how ashamed you are and leave me to fend for myself.’
‘You are not the only person in this family. I have another daughter to protect, I have your father’s reputation. Believe me, if he loses any more of his business investments because you’ve been embroiled in yet another scandal, you’ll be affected as well. And it isn’t just him who’s feeling the strain – we’ll see how welcoming your aunt and uncle are when you’re leeching off them until you’re old and grey.’
I had never wondered how Aunt Emily’s household had absorbed the expense of a third occupant, and it had never occurred to me that her frugal spending was due to anything other than a parsimonious nature. How much trouble was Uncle Hugh’s business in?
‘You came here to celebrate my engagement. The first time I had set eyes on you in nearly a year, and it was because I’d suddenly been cleaned up and made respectable by some man wanting to marry me. Well, I’m not engaged any more. There’s no reason for you to be here, so leave.’
Aunt Emily rose. ‘Diana, please. If Sarah returns to London now with a fiancé arrested for murder, the scandal will be even worse than last time. Give it time to die down at least.’
‘And you’re the expert in avoiding scandal, aren’t you, Emily?’ Mother spat the words across the room, and for a moment they were not two grown women discussing an errant daughter, but sisters at loggerheads over something else entirely. ‘My family has been subsidising your husband’s business for far too long. Let Sarah do as she pleases, and heap shame on someone else’s head for a change. If you think you can cope so admirably without my guidance, perhaps you will reconsider if you have to cope without my money.’
At Mother’s request, I helped her pack – or rather sat while she criticised the maid’s packing. A dozen day dresses were neatly folded, scent bottles carefully wrapped up, shoes stuffed with newspaper so that they would keep their shape on the journey home. And somewhere in all the paraphernalia was the telegram I had seen, discarded by the tea tray before she could hide it. RETURN HOME IMMEDIATELY STOP DO NOT BRING S STOP YRS AFFEC PG STOP.
So I would not be leaving Edinburgh after all. Was this my fate, to get what I wanted in the most horrible way imaginable? I was allowed to study medicine because a man had attacked me, my engagement was broken off because my fiancé was arrested for murder, and now I was permitted to stay in the city I was slowly learning to see as my home because my own father couldn’t bear to lay eyes on me. What more could I have expected from a man who was too cheap to write ‘yours affectionately’ in full in a telegram to his wife?
The next afternoon, we stood awkwardly in the hall next to her suitcases.
‘We’ll accompany you to the station,’ Aunt Emily said.
‘Really, there’s no need.’
‘I insist. You can say a proper goodbye to Sarah.’
The journey felt interminably long and the station was freezing. The sisters embraced on the platform and I had never seen two women look more alike or more different. I had been haunted by my mother during my time in Edinburgh, seeing her shade in Aunt Emily: the quirk of her mouth, the way she pinched the bridge of her nose as she read, flashes of familial resemblance that cut me to the quick, remembering what I had lost. Now they only emphasised the differences between them. If Aunt Emily was a battleaxe, my mother was a scalpel – polished to a gleam and fatally sharp.
I kissed her cold cheek. ‘Give my love to Gertie.’
She took my face between her hands. ‘Take care of yourself, Sarah.’ It felt like a goodbye more permanent than simply seeing her off on the train.
Without looking back, she stepped into the carriage and we watched in silence as the train clattered and clanged out of the station, returning her to her one unspoiled daughter.
Back at home, rain lashed against the window and wind shook the trees in the garden. Inside, the atmosphere was no less inclement. I was alone with Aunt Emily for the first time in weeks. In all the whirl of recent events – the murders, Mother’s arrival – I had barely seen her.
‘Don’t blame your mother. Diana . . . Well, she was doing what she thought best. If you must be angry, be angry with the right person. The operation wasn’t her idea, you know. The letters she wrote to me . . . She went back and forth for weeks about whether it was the right thing to do. In the end, the doctors insisted. You were so unwell, Sarah.’ Aunt Emily took my hand and pushed the sleeve of my dress up. She stroked the scar on my wrist. ‘She didn’t want to lose you.’
‘She did,’ I said hollowly.
My aunt sighed. ‘Sarah, you may not think that she loves you, but your mother left me with strict instructions as to your behaviour, and what she has seen here did nothing to assuage her fears. If she thinks you are associating with criminals and lunatics, she will remove you from this house.’
‘As she removed me from hers? Tell me, Aunt Emily, what will she do then when I fail to fall in line like a good little girl?’
‘You thought being sent here was a punishment. Believe me, child, your uncle and I are far better than the alternative.’
The alternative, I knew, was the madhouse.
‘A university education is hardly a sign of insanity!’
‘It is in a woman.’
‘Do you think I’m mad?’ I asked quietly.
‘I think you’re wilful and wild. I wish you’d listen to me, to your mother – to anyone! I think this whole foolish enterprise of yours will end in disaster.’ She sighed, and began to unpick her embroidery. ‘I don’t think you’re mad, but it isn’t my opinion that will matter in the end.’
It would be a doctor’s opinion, and it wouldn’t be hard to find a doctor in Edinburgh so set against women joining his profession that he would sign the papers saying that I was out of my wits to be considering it.
‘If it were up to me, women wouldn’t be sent away for failing to conform. We wouldn’t have our most intimate areas examined by a man; we wouldn’t be carved up in the name of curing our melancholy. Can you really say that medicine wouldn’t be better off in the hands of women?’
Aunt Emily was silent for a long time. ‘I wish I could for your sake. But I would never feel as safe as I do in the care of a man. You have your education and your fine speeches, but women are too flighty, too easily upset. Men are dependable, pragmatic. I could never fully trust someone I only saw at best as my equal.’
I was used to her lectures and criticisms, but something about her finality, the way she had tried to find the answer I wanted within herself and failed, stung so sharply it took my breath away. What came next was worse.
‘If you hadn’t told everyone, if you had only comported yourself with some dignity and restraint, none of this would have happened. Your father could have spoken to his father, a mutually convenient date could have been set and nobody would have been any the wiser.’
‘She would have married me off to a man who took advantage of me and I’m supposed to be sorry I was too upset to be stuck with that bastard for life?’
To her credit, she didn’t argue. ‘Don’t put her on a pedestal simply because she’s a woman. We’re not all angels, but we aren’t all devils either. It isn’t just you emancipated girls who understand that.’
I stared at her in surprise and she gave a chuckle that brought back memories of being dandled on her knee as a child. There were some ideological chasms that might never be bridged, some fights that might never be won, but she suddenly felt like more of an ally than I had ever expected.
Chapter 24
With my mother gone, I was free to spend my time focusing my attention where it was most needed: Clara Wilson’s death and the murky family secrets that surrounded it. There was no way that Aurora’s condition would have escaped her personal maid. She would have administered salves for the rash, set aside clumps of hair and dressed the rest so that any thinning patches
were disguised. And yet Colonel Greene hadn’t even been able to remember her first name, if he had ever bothered to learn it. In grander houses, the servants would have to turn to face the wall rather than make eye contact with their social superiors. The rest of the time we let ourselves forget that they had eyes and ears, that they were neither blind nor deaf. That nothing in our lives went unseen, no matter how private we thought they were.
Mrs Logan, Merchiston’s redoubtable housekeeper, knew him better than I did, perhaps better than I ever would. If he was a disease, she would have studied him in all its stages, from incubation to recovery. She knew how he liked his coffee, how his breath smelled in the morning, whether he preferred jam or marmalade on his toast. Did he hang his coat up neatly when he arrived home in the evening, or toss it carelessly on a chair? Mrs Logan would know, and would be there ready to scoop it up and put it away properly, so that the next morning he would assume he had hung it up himself.
How many lazy habits did we fail to recognise because there were always servants to put things right? As an experiment, I raised my hand to my hair and tried to remember which hairpins Agnes had put it up with that morning. Was it the tortoiseshell or the mother-of-pearl? She would know – would probably have spare pins in her pocket to tidy things up as soon as I walked into the hallway tonight. I thought for a moment. Pearl, perhaps? I pulled one out. Tortoiseshell. My professors praised my attention to detail, but when it came to personal matters, someone else was the expert.
I found myself wishing I had paid more attention when Mother had forced me to watch her go through the process of hiring servants. How much did we really know about the people we invited into our homes, made privy to our most personal secrets, entrusted with the care of our children?
They took away our chamber pots, cleaned stained bed-clothes, laced our stays a little looser after a few too many heavy dinners. Higgins, the maid who had taken over my care once I was out of the schoolroom and no longer needed a governess or a nursemaid, had known when my monthly cycle was due before I did. My aunt’s maid was practically her spy – I knew that so much as a splash of mud on my hem would be reported back.
The night of my assault, the servants all knew within an hour of my arrival home that I had lost whatever honour I had left the house with. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the gossip hadn’t circulated below stairs: that Miss Sarah had finally gone too far and wouldn’t even accept the blame for her own behaviour. It had been the footman who had been sent to fetch the doctor who had examined and then pacified me with laudanum, the maid who had brought my mother smelling salts, our driver who had driven us, me crying so hard I was sick all over my ripped gown and my mother pinch-lipped, dry-eyed and silent. And as news of my disgrace had moved from drawing room to drawing room, so too would it have happened behind the green baize door that separated our two worlds.
Just as we liked to believe that our servants were automatons, we didn’t think of them as having friends. But with all those fine town houses sandwiched together in crescents that arched around private parks to which they were not admitted, surely there must be some camaraderie; surely the servants must have the same friendships and rivalries and confidences as their upstairs employers.
If Clara Wilson was involved in the blackmail, or if she was another victim, someone must have known about it. Perhaps not every detail, but if she had needed money or to make a quick escape, or if she had let slip something about Aurora’s condition, then who else but a fellow servant would know?
I was stretching the limits of the Greenes’ patience as it was, and my aunt’s household staff had made it very clear over the past seven months what they thought of me. But if I wanted to understand the intricacies of the world that Clara belonged to, there was one other person who might help me.
I stood on the doorstep of the house in Newington for the second time in as many weeks, the sleety drizzle dripping off my umbrella and splashing into the puddles at my feet, listening to footsteps from the other side of the door.
If Mrs Logan was surprised to see me, she was too well trained to show it.
‘The professor is at the university, Miss Gilchrist.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘As you should be, if I’m no’ mistaken.’
I winced. She was right, but somehow I didn’t think that missing a botany tutorial would seriously affect my medical knowledge, unless I ever had to operate on an orchid.
‘Actually, I’m here to see you. Might I come in?’
She stepped aside and let me through. When I turned automatically to the parlour, she took my arm and guided me gently through the house to the kitchen. I blushed at my mistake. She seemed so utterly in charge here that I had for-gotten whose house it really was, and although I doubted Merchiston would mind if we sat there, Mrs Logan had a servant’s sensibilities and would never permit it.
‘Tea?’ she asked, indicating the kettle on the hob. ‘Or do you modern lassies prefer coffee? I’m sure the professor won’t notice if I raid his private supply. And if you don’t mind waiting a wee while for them to cool, there are some ginger biscuits fresh out of the oven.’
She bustled around, and in short order I was provided with a pot of delicious-smelling coffee and a plate of biscuits that looked almost as good.
‘Now, Miss Gilchrist, to what do I owe the honour of you missing your lectures?’ Her expression was kind but stern, and I knew that however welcoming she was, this was not a woman I would want to cross. ‘Before we go any further, I should warn you that Gregory Merchiston is my employer and my friend. I’m loyal to him, and silent as the grave to boot. As I was to Isobel, his late wife – and poor Lucy, not that it did her any good.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Some servants may like to gossip, but I’ve never been one of them. My previous employers appreciated discretion and the habit has never left me.’ She caught my gaze. ‘You may find yourself glad of that in time.’
I flushed. Was she picturing me as Merchiston’s wife or his mistress? And what did it say about me that I wasn’t sure which one I preferred?
‘I would never ask you to betray a confidence,’ I promised, ‘but I am wondering how often that happens. I know that there’s a rumour mill that goes on between households below stairs, and that servants might confide in a friend rather than someone they work with. This isn’t my world, Mrs Logan, and polite enquiry will only get me so far. A man’s life hangs in the balance and the only person I know who has any answers is dead. But if she had shared the details with someone . . .’
‘Your fiancé’s maid.’
So she knew I was engaged. I wanted to explain, defend myself, tell her I wasn’t some heartless flibbertigibbet who craved the attention of men. But somehow, although I sensed her disapproval, I also felt that she understood.
‘He wasn’t my choice, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him hang. Two people are already dead, and if I can’t find the person responsible then who knows where it will end. We like to think of our homes as private spheres, but they aren’t. Servants leave, or complain about their employers – if Clara Wilson had had a sweetheart or an accomplice, surely someone in her circle knew about it. I can’t access that circle, but perhaps you can.’
Her greying eyebrows rose to meet her hairline. ‘You want my assistance in a case, do you? Honestly, you and the professor are peas in a pod. It starts out with “Can you get the blood out of my favourite shirt, my good woman?” and ends with me in a music hall dressing room stripped down to my unmentionables armed with nothing but a prop knife.’ She caught my dumbfounded gaze. ‘That’s a story for another time. As it happens, I have an acquaintance, a Mrs Fredericks, who runs an agency placing staff in good positions, and she makes it her business to be aware of everything her girls get up to. Celia and I have known each other . . . well, let’s just say it’s been a while. Long enough for me to know that the husband she still wears black for belonged to someone else entirely. She owes me a favour or two . . . I can tell her you’ll be calling it in on my behalf.’
‘And you think she’ll speak to me?’
Mrs Logan shrugged. ‘She will if she doesnae want all her fine clients to know what business she used to be in, back when she was Celia Taylor. That’s the first favour she owes me.’
I was beginning to realise that Merchiston’s housekeeper had as many secrets as he did.
‘And the second?’
‘I’m the only one living that kens who the gentleman she’s in mourning for was really married to.’ Her mouth gave a wry, sad twist that almost resembled a smile. ‘I should do, after all. He was my husband.’
Chapter 25
The office of the hiring agency was an airy, pleasant room a short walk from Princes Street. Occupying the first floor, it was a picture of civility, from the framed photographs of demure staff to the testimonials from satisfied employers to the leather-bound copies of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management on the shelves. Although they had been dusted, I doubted that they had been opened, and suspected that their purpose was decorative as opposed to practical.
Practical was the only way to describe the woman in front of me, however, looking as though I had brought a bad smell into her office.
‘Jessie Logan is no better than she ought to be. I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl – but I won’t, and not just because she has nephews who are on first-name terms with the polis.’
‘I suspect she could say the same thing. If she’s that dreadful, I’m surprised her husband caught your eye.’
She conceded the point and smirked.
‘He was handsome and I was stupid, and in any case, Jessie and I have been squabbling over each other’s possessions since we were in swaddling clothes.’
The Unquiet Heart Page 17