The Unquiet Heart

by The Unquiet Heart (retail) (epub)

  The aquiline nose, the piercing blue eyes, the full mouth that could go from smiling to severe at a moment’s notice – I had seen them before, and recently. So too the salt-and-pepper hair, although Mrs Logan’s was more salt these days whereas Celia Fredericks’ leaned more towards pepper in a shade I suspected wasn’t entirely God-given.

  ‘You’re sisters.’

  ‘She’s the elder, bossy-britches that she is. Oh, she’ll deny it in public, Lord knows we were never the best of friends. But she was there for me when I needed her, even after Ruaidhri and I had our . . . indiscretion. Our brother was a bad lot and his sons are turning out the same way, but Jessie was always a good girl even when she was doing something bad.’ She smirked. ‘Or did you think she got her position with a doctor who solves murders for the polis on account of her cooking? She’s broken more laws than you’ve had hot dinners, and she’d pick the lock on the Pearly Gates if that dreary lummox she mothers asked her to.’

  Much as I wanted to delve into the scandalous past of Mrs Logan – and dear Lord, how I did! – I had my own investigation to focus on.

  ‘I need information about Clara Wilson, the servant who was murdered at the Greene residence.’

  ‘She wasnae one of my girls, but she palled around with some of them. Kept herself to herself mostly, but she seemed happy. Mrs Greene treated her well and the colonel didn’t take advantage, which is more than some people can say. She always had a kind word for your young man, though I don’t think she was sweet on him. You’re standing by him?’

  ‘I think he’s innocent, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Aye, you’re probably right about that. Women in service, we get a sixth sense when a man is dangerous. They can hide it from their wives, but never the women laundering their clothes. We’re trained not to ask questions, so they assume we don’t think about them.’

  ‘But someone was hiding it. Someone murdered Clara. Either she was helping them blackmail an employer you say she was happy with, or they stole the jewels and made it look as if she had taken them. Did she have a sweetheart, anyone she walked out with?’

  ‘If she did, she kept her cards close to her chest. But that’s not unusual – the quality demand standards from their servants they wouldn’t expect from a nun. Begging your pardon, Miss Gilchrist.’

  She didn’t look as though she meant it, but I agreed with her in any case.

  ‘Do you know how she spent her days off? One of the other maids mentioned her family.’

  ‘I heard she sent money back to them, but she always looked well turned out, so she must have kept some of it back.’

  ‘Or she was getting it from somewhere else.’

  ‘She was never one to act above her station, like some girls do. They’d steal from their employers soon as look at you if they thought they could get away with it. Clara liked nice things, but she never fancied herself a lady.’

  ‘Most of her family are in service. Do you know where? If she was blackmailing Aurora Greene, she might not have been the only one.’

  ‘I can find out. For a price.’

  I met her gaze coolly. ‘Would that price be not letting my aunt and her friends know that the woman they use to hire their maids used to run a brothel? I can read between the lines, Mrs Fredericks, and while your sister might spare your blushes about your previous employment, I have no such familial impulses.’

  ‘Look at that – the kitten has claws. What makes a nice young lady like you want to dive around in the filth and muck, hmm? That doesn’t sound like something that aunt of yours would approve of, even if it is to save your sweetheart’s life.’

  I was getting very tired of being on the receiving end of threats.

  ‘He isn’t my sweetheart and I’m not a nice young lady. I’m a medical student working with one of the police surgeons because a woman has been murdered and no one seemed to care until her killer targeted a man with money and connections. You can help me or you can stand in my way, but if you do the latter then know this – there will be conse-quences.’

  A smile illuminated her features, like the sun bursting out from behind the clouds.

  ‘I had you down for a prissy miss, looking to turn her nose up at the misfortune of others. But you’re a different sort, aren’t you?’

  I ignored the compliment – if that was what it was – and forged on ahead. ‘What do you know about Mrs Greene’s health? Did she ever complain about rashes or a more . . . intimate discomfort?’

  Mrs Fredericks’ eyes narrowed and I wondered if I had shown my cards too early. To my surprise, she chuckled.

  ‘So Aurora Greene has the pox. Who would have thought it? She looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, with all her charitable works and church three times a week. The colonel philandered, but what man doesn’t? Nothing more than the odd discreet visit to a certain kind of establishment once in a while and the occasional tumble backstage with an opera singer. Never heard of her having a wandering eye, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to tire of her husband. There are ways to avoid infection, but your class never worry about that. I’ve seen tarts take more care with their intimate encounters than a titled lady.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about the family,’ I said, wondering how much she knew about mine.

  ‘I don’t keep all this knowledge to hand in case some chit of a girl with more brains than sense comes chapping at my door with questions, lassie,’ she tutted.

  I grinned. ‘But you keep it somewhere.’

  ‘My sister sent you and she wouldnae do that without good reason, let me tell you. There’s a lassie dead and a lad accused who you claim is innocent – to me, that says that we havenae seen the last of whoever killed her, and I won’t see my girls in danger. Take a seat, for heaven’s sake, and I’ll see what I have.’

  As she moved into an adjoining room, I looked around the place. Its elegant, discreet style was fitting for someone who staffed the houses of Edinburgh’s gentry, but for a woman who had once run a brothel and who had a sister in service, it was a considerable step up in the world. Celia Fredericks had built a life on knowing everything about everyone, and I had no doubt that in her first years of legitimate business, she reminded her former patrons of the fact. If she had stooped to blackmail once, why not do it again?

  But somehow I couldn’t see this straightforward woman, who so enjoyed the theatre of her interactions with people, hiding behind anonymous letters. Not when all it would take was the reminder of services once rendered and enjoyed, or the threat of a rumour spreading around the city faster than cholera. Her former employees may have done their best work in the dark, but this was a woman who had worked her way into the sunlight and intended to stay there.

  I moved to the closed door and peered through the keyhole. It had been blocked up – quite sensibly, since I was doubtless not the only person to come nosing around. I could hear drawers being opened and papers shuffled, but little else to sate my curiosity. By the time Mrs Fredericks reappeared, I was sitting on the overstuffed horsehair sofa, seemingly admiring the decor.

  She had put on spectacles in the intervening moments, and her similarity to Jessie Logan was even stronger. I cautioned myself against warming to a woman simply because she reminded me of Merchiston’s housekeeper.

  ‘There’s no’ a great deal I have on them. As I said, Clara Wilson was never one of my girls and she wasnae one to break a confidence.’

  I slumped back in my seat, defeated. So I had made a wasted visit and missed my afternoon lectures for a wild goose chase.

  ‘Dinnae look so disheartened, Miss Gilchrist – I said she was a close one. But families like that, they pay calls. They visit friends for an afternoon. And those friends? They have servants too. Now, let’s see . . . Nothing on your young man, you’ll be glad to hear. If he’s ever touched a woman in his life, he went elsewhere. And nothing from the valets and footmen in case you wondered if he buttered his bread on the other side.’ I stared at her blankly bef
ore comprehension dawned, and from her wicked cackle and the heat of my face I guessed that I was blushing. ‘The elder brother, though . . . he’s been acting like the head of the family for years. He might be the favoured son, but I placed a footman with them a wee while back who said he and his father were at loggerheads. Seems Pa wasn’t ready to take a step back and Alisdair was champing at the bit to gallop forwards. Wouldnae be hard to bump the colonel off and make it look like an accident.’

  It had, until I had involved myself. Had I not voiced my suspicions about his father’s murder Miles might be walking free. Yet even if I had known that calling for justice would see a man imprisoned for something he didn’t do, I might have done it anyway. Stubborn as I was, I would see justice done, and not only for Miles.

  ‘As for the lady of the house, she kept herself busy. Paid calls, threw parties, endowed this charity and that almshouse with her money and other people’s.’

  ‘But she could have had a lover?’

  ‘If she did, she was discreet. Stained sheets are hard to hide when you don’t know how to wash them yourself. Of course,’ she added with a filthy laugh, ‘clean-up’s far easier if you don’t do it in a bed.’

  I felt a hot flush of shame as two images fought for my attention – one a fantasy, one a memory. Merchiston’s mouth against mine, the edge of his desk digging into my back. The juddering, jarring sensation of Paul Beresford inside me – and afterwards, his handkerchief offered to mop up the evidence of his pleasure and my virginity.

  ‘Steady, lass. You’ve gone a bit green. Aren’t you doctors supposed to have strong stomachs?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I forced a smile. ‘Just a little warm. Could I have a glass of water?’

  She nodded and rang the bell before eyeing me with a penetrating stare.

  ‘You don’t like me, I can see that. You don’t like what I do, what’s in those files of mine. But it’s my business to know what goes on in other people’s houses. I’ll no’ send one of my girls in only to find her darkening my door six months later with a swollen belly from a master exercising his droit de seigneur, or beaten black and blue because some hoity-toity madam loses her temper every time her tea gets cold. I know more about the quality families in this city than they do themselves. If someone treats a girl poorly, I can make sure it doesn’t happen to the next one. And my girls look out for each other. There’s not a gentleman in this city whose wandering hands I don’t have an eye on, and it’s saved more than one young lady from ruin.’

  A servant arrived with my water and I gulped it down gratefully, rinsing the bile from my mouth.

  ‘You see everything, Mrs Fredericks. So tell me this: who killed Clara Wilson?’

  She sighed heavily. ‘Someone desperate. And there’s plenty of those around, I can tell you.’

  ‘If you hear anything . . .’

  ‘I’ll send a note via my sister. That master of hers helped me out of a tricky spot once before. She and I may only talk to argue, but I owe him the kind of debt that’s not easy to repay.’

  As I walked out onto North Castle Street, I felt the sun on my face but I couldn’t shake off the shadows. My gut twisted, and I remembered the fate of the last woman I had asked for help. Ruby McAllister hadn’t been so very different from Celia Fredericks, beyond not trading in her role administering the oldest profession for something less sordid. But she had given me answers when I needed them and wound up dead for it. If anything happened to Mrs Logan’s sister now, it would be on my head.

  Chapter 26

  The sheet of paper fluttered in the breeze. It should have been innocuous, just another announcement from the powers-that-be in amongst the timetables, advertisements for public lectures and reminders that any borrowed medical equipment must be signed out, approved by a professor and returned within two days.

  But it might as well have been an incendiary device.

  ‘Congratulations, Baxter! All that swotting over books while the rest of us were out enjoying life clearly paid off.’

  Baxter looked more than a little unsettled by the attention, a ruddy blush covering his cheeks, but I was sure that the two hundred pounds awarded to the student with the highest marks in first-year biology would compensate for that. Except that his hadn’t been the highest marks and the Matthew Harkup prize should by rights have gone to Julia, whose name was nowhere to be seen.

  Nor, for that matter, was Julia.

  ‘She’s locked herself in the cloakroom,’ Alison whispered. ‘She won’t speak to anyone except Edith, and even she’s been thrown out. I heard her cursing the entire university at one point, and I think she broke a chair.’

  ‘She needs to calm down,’ Moira grimaced. ‘The last thing any of us needs is accusations of hysteria and getting overemotional about our work.’

  If I were in Julia’s position – unlikely, since a good few marks stood between us – I would have broken more than a chair. And if she had won the Harkup, fair and square though it might have been, the men would have rioted. We hadn’t even been permitted to sit in the same examination room; of course our work was judged as lesser. The university might have patted itself on the back for its enlightened attitude in helping shape the modern woman who would enter the next century with a prestigious education under her belt, but it was all talk. A full term had not acclimatised the men to our presence. Even now, our cloakroom was invaded by the odd man who claimed to have forgotten its new purpose. We were constantly shuffled out of sight, only to have the small spaces we were given resented by students who had the run of the place, who didn’t need to be followed around by chaperones, who were never on the receiving end of disapproving looks from professors simply for getting an answer right, and who were rewarded for worse performance.

  It was clear as day that while the medical school enjoyed its reputation as a progressive institution open to all, it didn’t actually want us to take up the invitation. Julia might not have needed the money, but when we would have to compete with the men for the same jobs in an environment no more welcoming than this, the prize would have been a boon.

  We trooped into our next lecture, mutinous and spoiling for a fight. Luckily, Professor Williamson was on hand to put flame to touchpaper as he stood looking genuinely bemused that we were even objecting.

  ‘As the female students benefit from smaller class numbers and therefore more individual attention, it was felt that it would be unfair not to take that into account when awarding the Harkup,’ he said slowly and patiently, in a tone we hadn’t heard since he had explained the skeletal structure of the body in our first week in a manner more suited to a child or a simpleton. ‘Therefore Iain Baxter, who had the highest mark of any student taught in the . . . ah, conventional manner, took this year’s prize.’

  ‘We’re only taught separately because the faculty insists!’ Edith snapped. ‘We learn the same things, sit the same exams and work just as hard. If you threw us in with the men, Julia would still have received the highest marks and you know it.’

  ‘It is no use speculating on what marks Miss Latymer may or may not have received, particularly since she is absent from today’s lecture.’

  I had thought it would take wild horses or plague to stop Julia attending classes – none of us wanted to miss a moment of this chance we had been granted, and as a consequence the same cold had been passed around the female student body since November. Little Caroline Carstairs – herself currently stuffed up and sniffling for the fourth time – had once attended class with a vomiting bug that left us all faintly revolted and Professor Turner’s shoes significantly worse for wear.

  ‘It’s her monthly,’ Edith said with a sweet smile that showed nothing in her eyes and all of her teeth.

  Williamson went ashen. He was more than happy to see women bleed on the operating table, and I had seen him perform a flawless hysterectomy, scooping the organ out with so delicate a touch he could have been holding a child, but the reality of us occupying his space with our messy bodily f
unctions unsettled him to his core.

  Moira nodded in sympathy; I knew for a fact that she currently had a hot brick wrapped in muslin pressed against her belly to ease her own aches. I had never expected to miss my cycle, something I had always found messy and inconvenient until it had been taken from me by doctors in the hope that it would subdue my rage against a world that treated women – that had treated me – with such disdain. Now I felt as though there was yet another experience my peers shared that excluded me. I tried not to resent them for it – a task made easier when the faculty had provided me with such an excellent target for any pent-up emotion – but it was a relief when Williamson pulled back the sheet from the dissection table and provided us with a nice severed arm to focus on.

  We were not permitted to dissect it ourselves today – he had clearly decided, probably wisely, that a gaggle of angry women should not be allowed to play with knives. Although we worked assiduously, there was a restlessness beneath the surface, a desire for rebellion, and when Julia returned to us ready for a botany lecture, no trace of her feelings evident save in reddened eyes and white knuckles, she offered the perfect outlet.

  ‘We need a meeting,’ she announced. ‘We can’t let them treat us like this, and if we don’t fight back then that’s exactly what they’ll do. I propose we sit down and plan our next steps. I’ve asked Elisabeth Chalmers if she can find out which professors voted on the decision, and then I say we boycott their lectures.’

  ‘And whom does that benefit exactly?’ Moira asked. ‘They won’t reverse the decision now they’ve announced it, and we’ll end up weeks behind, which is exactly where they want us anyway.’

  ‘Then you come up with a better idea,’ Julia snapped.

  ‘No one’s coming up with any ideas standing out in the freezing cold,’ Alison groaned. ‘I heard it was going to snow tonight and I plan on getting in front of the fire before that happens. After Christmas my brother John helped me smuggle a bottle of brandy from my father’s cabinet by hiding it in a hatbox. I haven’t had a moment to open it, but it could be just the thing for a cold night and a bad mood. Better than the glorified dust my landlady passes off as cocoa, at any rate.’