The Unquiet Heart

by The Unquiet Heart (retail) (epub)

  ‘They were a gift for my wife. Mother must have been confused.’

  ‘You killed Clara Wilson. Why? Did she grow tired of your threats? She may have dosed your father with arsenic, but his death is on your hands.’

  ‘Breathe a word of this and I’ll tell everyone I had you anyway. I’ll say you came to me offering your services as my mistress before my brother was even arrested.’

  ‘Arrested for a crime you committed,’ I spat. ‘And I’d rather be thought a whore than a murderer.’

  He leaned heavily against the bed and pulled something from beneath his pillow. I thought that he meant to bribe me, but the object he drew out was intended to threaten – and worse.

  I didn’t look away from the barrel of the gun as I grabbed hold of the cord that would summon a servant. ‘Put that down or I’ll tell the entire hotel you tried to rape me.’

  He laughed, but I saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes. ‘Yes, that’s rather your modus operandi, isn’t it, Miss Gilchrist? Tell me, what did Paul Beresford do to warrant such an accusation?’

  The shock of seeing the gun had driven all thoughts of the scalpel hidden in my dress from my mind, but somehow I found myself with the cold steel in my hand. The flat of the blade pressed lightly against his carotid artery, but it would take a fraction of a movement to pierce the skin.

  The only sound in the room was Alisdair’s shallow, terrified breath. He shook like a leaf, but I was still as stone.

  In that moment, I could have done it. It wouldn’t have solved anything. Any sense of satisfaction would have been fleeting, and then all I would have had would be a blood-soaked dress and the corpse of a man who was almost my brother-in-law. Had Alisdair recovered more swiftly from the arsenic’s effects, I would not have left his room untouched. Then, he would have deserved it. Then, I might not have been able to still my hand.

  Chapter 33

  The City Chambers stood back from the cramped Royal Mile, which wound its way from the castle to Holyrood Palace, opposite St Giles’ Cathedral in all its Gothic splendour. I wondered if the saint himself extended his influence to the police station his church faced, or if the beggars, madmen and outcasts he patronised were left to their own devices once they were in front of Edinburgh’s constabulary.

  Although it was late afternoon, the station was already full of the inebriated and the immoral and it was impossible to tell who was the criminal and who the victim. I pushed past the people waiting, much to their annoyance, but I didn’t have time to waste.

  ‘Mind yersel’! I’ve been waiting ten minutes to see the polis after this witch snatched my bag!’

  ‘Haud yer wheesht, you daft besom. That was my bag and you’re the thief!’

  I reached the desk unimpeded once the drunken women’s attentions were turned back on each other. From the look of the bag itself, it was far more expensive than either could afford, and I suspected that whoever’s possession it had been originally was long gone.

  ‘My name is Miss Sarah Gilchrist and I need to speak to your superior immediately. Alisdair Greene has confessed to murdering his mother’s maid and letting his brother take the blame for it.’

  My hair was falling down and my skirt was soaked with rain, mud and heaven knew what else, but my accent and the fabric of my coat were enough for the harried constable on duty to overlook my dishevelled appearance. In a moment, he was on his feet ushering me into a side room.

  ‘A lady to see you, Detective Inspector Murdoch. Says she has information about the Greene case.’

  The detective looked up from his papers and my heart sank as I recognised the man sitting ready to take my statement. He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Another murder to report, miss?’

  I had tried and failed to convince him once before of a crime that had taken place, and his refusal to act had nearly cost me my life.

  ‘Alisdair Greene is the man you’re looking for. He killed Clara Wilson and I believe he was responsible for the murder of his father. He blackmailed his mother for money and was trying to blackmail me as well – see for yourself.’

  I handed Murdoch the evidence I had purloined and the letter I had received and realised too late what they implicated me in.

  A salacious grin spread across his face as he read the filth that had come out of Alisdair’s pen.

  ‘Lovers’ tiff, was it?’

  ‘None of what he says there is true! He thought he could seduce me, but—’

  ‘He didn’t catch your fancy?’

  ‘He repulses me,’ I said, disgust making my lip curl. ‘Detective Inspector, he was furious! He threatened to kill me like he’d killed Wilson. Even if she was stealing Aurora Greene’s jewellery the night she died, he’d been extorting his mother for months. He has mountains of unpaid debts and a child on the way – he’s desperate.’

  Desperate enough to make him kill again if this idiot man couldn’t see reason.

  ‘That’s quite the tale you’re spinning, lassie.’

  I wasn’t some silly little girl jumping at shadows. Had I been a man, they would have listened. But all they saw was my sex, and that was enough to dismiss me.

  ‘With respect, sir, I’m not some overwrought, hysterical female, and I’m a damn sight more reliable than some of your other visitors today. I’m studying at the University of Edinburgh. I’m a medical student, among the top in my class. You have to listen to me! If you speak to Professor Gregory Merchiston, he’ll vouch for me.’

  ‘Oh ho! You’re the lassie he brought into the morgue. Tell me,’ he smirked and ran his tongue over yellowing teeth, ‘did you find the bodies . . . stimulating?’

  I bit my tongue so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood. I would not rise to his bait. It would take very little for him to have me escorted off the premises, and I had to make him see. I had escaped a killer’s knife once before; I did not relish the thought of facing Alisdair alone unless I absolutely had to. But my faith in the man standing before me was dwindling by the minute, and part of me knew that when I left the station I would not be returning home safe in the knowledge that they would apprehend the murderer.

  Murdoch frowned and looked at the letters again.

  ‘Gilchrist, you say? Not the same wee lassie engaged to the murderer?’

  Oh God. They were never going to believe me, and if I didn’t make it to the Greene residence in time, Alisdair would have his mother convinced I was a lunatic or a slut – if she was even still alive by the time I got there. Thoughts of forged suicide notes, of one too many swigs from the laudanum bottle or the sharp edges of embroidery scissors pressed against wrists crowded my mind.

  ‘Miles didn’t do it,’ I insisted. ‘Alisdair Greene confessed – he has a motive! Miles wouldn’t hurt a fly. Ask any of the servants – they’ll vouch for him even if his family won’t. His brother has killed at least once, and I believe he’ll do it again.’

  Murdoch sighed. I could see his dilemma – he might not believe me, but he had no more wish to see a murderer stalking the streets of Edinburgh than I did. And yet they had their man, apprehended and facing the gallows.

  ‘I can see you’re distressed, Miss Gilchrist. But you see, I’ve no proof he even wrote these letters you’re waving about. For all I know, you could have written them yourself – you’re a smart lassie; I’m sure copying someone’s handwriting is no difficulty. Maybe you were hoping to start your married life with a nice inheritance, or maybe you’d just do anything to save your beloved from the hangman’s noose. Either way, you’re no’ exactly what we call in the trade a reliable witness. Stick to playing at doctor and keep your legs closed, that’s my advice.’

  On the other side of the office wall, a scuffle broke out. I heard the sound of swearing and the smack-crunch of fist against face. I sorely wished I had the nerve to strike the man in front of me, but instead I seethed silently, forced to see myself through his eyes. A hysterical woman babbling about a murder that had been satisfactorily solved, trying to clear her fianc
é’s name by spinning whatever outlandish story she could. A woman in a dress designed to catch men’s eyes, confessing to having been in a man’s hotel room. He could have had me arrested for prostitution and no one would have batted an eyelid.

  No matter what I said, the police were never going to listen to me. Even if I convinced one of them, it would be like chipping away at a glacier. I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook and hastily scribbled a note to Merchiston. Let them think it was some sweetheart’s love note so long as they delivered it.

  ‘Can you make sure Professor Merchiston gets this? Please, you don’t have to believe me, you don’t even have to listen to me, just make sure he reads it.’

  ‘Sure he’ll want to hear from you when he kens you’ve been running around with other men?’

  I had endured too much today already. If he didn’t think that I was a lady, I saw no reason to behave like one. I spat in his face and ran in the direction of the New Town like the devil himself was at my heels. There was only one other person who might listen to me, but I would have to reach her soon – and even then it might be too late.

  It was a little past four o’clock, but already the night was drawing in. Gas lamps illuminated the New Town, with its smart Georgian buildings and well-kept gardens, and the sky was fading to a bruised purplish-black. When I had left Alisdair’s hotel, it had been daylight.

  As I mounted the steps to the Greene residence, I felt strange, detached, as though I were watching myself from a distance.

  I could walk away from this. I had done all I could, alerted the relevant authorities and given them what proof I had. I might feel guilt over not being able to save Miles, but I wouldn’t truly grieve him, and surely his scandal would taint me sufficiently that Aunt Emily would abandon all hope of marrying me off. The Greenes were not my family and now they never would be. Walking into that house as good as signed my death warrant – even if Aurora believed me over her own flesh and blood, Alisdair was strong.

  And abandoning her now would make me so very, very weak. Fuelled by a stubbornness and an anger I hadn’t felt since I paced the Cowgate slums in pursuit of Lucy’s killer, I took the door knocker in my hand and slammed it back against the wood. Let him know I was coming. Let him be afraid.

  Blackwell answered the door, and behind her I saw a familiar coat and hat. He was already here.

  ‘Mrs Greene, where is she?’

  ‘In her room, miss, but she’s not at home to visitors.’

  I wasn’t going to let etiquette stop me from saving her life, if it wasn’t already too late.

  As I burst into her room, Aurora let out a shriek of alarm. Alisdair put his arm around her possessively and glared at me.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the police. They’re on their way.’ A lie, but it might keep us both alive. Aurora whimpered.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Alisdair said softly. ‘Nobody’s fault. The police can’t blame her for that, can they?’

  In her son’s arms, Aurora started to sob.

  ‘I shouldn’t have helped dispose of the . . . of Wilson, but what was I supposed to do? Mother was hysterical – she’d only meant to frighten the girl off. And really, Wilson was the real criminal. Blackmail! She knew exactly what she was doing.’

  ‘Then why blame Miles? Your own son, Aurora!’

  ‘Someone had to be found responsible. God knows I love my brother, but he’s never been the sharpest, and it isn’t as though the two of you would have had children. That’s one of the qualities that endeared you to us, in fact.’

  Alisdair smiled as though he had paid me a compliment rather than remind me of my barrenness. But it didn’t reach his eyes.

  ‘What happened, Aurora?’ I asked gently. ‘If it was really an accident, you won’t be arrested.’

  ‘That horrid girl,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I found her leaving a note. Ghastly little poison-pen letters, threatening to stir up trouble that was well in the past.’

  ‘Aurora, she didn’t die of the blow to the head. She was suffocated.’

  I had a picture of it now. Aurora frantically calling Alisdair in, the motionless body of Clara Wilson on the floor. Him promising he would take care of it, smuggling her out in the dead of night only to realise that she was still alive.

  Perhaps she had regained consciousness, or perhaps he had felt the flutter of her faint pulse, the warmth of her breath on his skin. Either way, it had been his hand that extinguished the life from a woman whose only crimes were ones he had manipulated her into committing. His hand that had pressed against her mouth, fingers pinching her nose so that no air could enter her nostrils.

  For the first time, Alisdair looked uncertain. ‘You’re lying. Or if she did suffocate, it was because I’d put her face down. That must have been it.’

  Aurora let out a broken cry.

  ‘I helped perform the autopsy,’ I said coldly. Aurora might not have killed her maid, but she thought she had and she would have let her younger son swing for it.

  ‘What kind of woman are you?’ Alisdair asked in disgust. ‘What kind of ghoulish, unnatural—’

  ‘Fine words coming from the man who smothered the life out of a woman he had forced to commit a crime. Tell me, Aurora, how much jewellery have you had to give away to pay off your blackmailer? And how much was found with Wilson’s body?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

  ‘This afternoon, I found some of your necklaces in your son’s hotel room. Along with a blackmail letter addressed to me, trying to extort money in exchange for his silence about the affair that he somewhat overconfidently assumed we would have.’ The look I levelled at Alisdair was full of all the revulsion and contempt I held for him, and I was satisfied to see him quail slightly. ‘Before I left to report him to the police, he threatened to kill me like he’d killed Wilson – and, I presume, he would have let someone else take the blame again.’

  ‘I told you, my mother gave me that jewellery as a gift for my wife.’ Sweat was beading his upper lip, and for the first time I realised that his charisma lay not in his looks but in his confidence. Without it, he was nothing but a pathetic excuse for a criminal. He turned to Aurora. ‘Tell her!’

  She closed her eyes, and I saw a tear slip through her lashes and fall down her cheek. I felt sorry for her, in a way. I knew what it was like to feel backed into a corner.

  ‘If you needed money, why not just ask for it?’

  ‘I tried,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I asked Father time and time again, but he said that I had made a rod for my own back and had to fix the situation myself, like a man.’ He snorted. ‘As though that puffed-up old duffer knew what being a man was any more.’

  ‘Your father was a good man. He was a soldier. A hero.’

  ‘And he died twitching on the floor and shitting himself at one of your bloody dinner parties,’ he snarled. ‘All because the pathetic bastard was too cheap to pay off a couple of creditors. He was wasting my inheritance on celebrating the marriage of my idiot brother and his bluestocking bride when I needed it! I’ll make a better head of the family than Father did, I promise. Just the two of us, without him holding the purse strings and lecturing you about every charity you support.’

  Was she tempted in that moment? There was a far-off gaze in her blue eyes that I couldn’t read, and I could see every muscle in her body tense, from the rigidness of her shoulders to the way her knuckles clenched bone white around the base of the candlestick.

  I jumped back as soon as she moved, but she wasn’t aiming at me.

  The candlestick cracked against Alisdair’s skull, and I heard a howl of pain – but not from him. He lay motionless, slumped back against the bed as a tiny trickle of blood seeped down onto the coverlet.

  Aurora stared down at him, her chest heaving with sobs and her face lit up as if with some divine light.

  The curtains were on fire.

  The flames spread quickly, hot against my cheeks. I yanked her up and away from them, searching fruitle
ssly for so much as a glass of water I could douse them with. It was spreading too fast, the heat a physical presence that sent me reeling. But I wasn’t going to die in here, and neither was she.

  As we stumbled into the hallway, she swayed and I saw her legs give way beneath her in a dead faint. She was smaller and slighter than me, but it was still a struggle to scoop her up and carry her downstairs as I screamed for help.

  Blackwell came running.

  ‘Mrs Greene’s room is on fire and it’s spreading fast. How many servants are home? You need to get them all out, as fast as you can.’

  She nodded, and banged her fist on the dinner gong with all her might, shouting for her companions. As I dragged Aurora out of the front door and into the street below, her house and all her beautiful things – her fabrics, her dresses, the miniatures of her sons, and Alisdair himself – were curling into ash and smoke.

  What happened next I can recall only in fragments. The clanging of the fire engine bells and the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles. The shouts as the neighbouring houses began to evacuate in panic. And Gregory Merchiston, miraculously there, holding me in his arms and promising never to let me go.

  Chapter 34

  The weather was mild. Winter was giving way to spring, and outside I could see snowdrops scattered across the garden. Pale afternoon sunlight shone through the window, making Miles’ mousy hair, recovering from the assault of the prison barber’s blade, glint with strands of gold.

  We sat in my aunt’s parlour, pale amber tea untouched in china teacups in front of us, as though we were any other young couple with our lives ahead of us. As though he didn’t have a bruise healing in yellows and browns on his jaw, as though my voice wasn’t still hoarse from the smoke I had inhaled the day I confronted his mother with Alisdair’s crimes. Aunt Emily had left us unchaperoned for once, and I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to witness the conversation that was about to take place.

  Miles looked better than he had in prison – a week of proper food had filled out his hollow cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes had begun to fade. And yet he wasn’t the man he had been before, either. I had thought he would have emerged a wreck, a shadow of his former self, and it was true that there was a solemnity about him now that I had not seen in the early days of our courtship. It was as though the weight of his family’s expectations, the unbridgeable divide between younger son and elder, had kept him small and scared. In the end, it was that difference that had saved him; where Alisdair’s confidence had hardened into arrogance, Miles’ self-consciousness had made him a gentler sort of man, one who listened rather than held forth like his father had done.