The Dead Duke

by Clare Jayne

  Campbell & MacPherson 2: The Dead Duke

  Second Novel of the Historical Mystery Series

  By Clare Jayne

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2017 Clare Jayne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior permission in writing of the author, except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews.

  All names, places, characters and incidents in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, business, place or event is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Kanaxa.

  Chapter One

  Edinburgh, October 1788

  EWAN HAD not expected to be calling on Miss Campbell one day after she turned down his proposal of marriage. She and Lady Huntly were in the drawing room when he was announced and Miss Campbell looked very much as if this was not what she had anticipated either. A blush stained her cheeks as she put aside the book she had been reading and stood to curtsy to him, and there was a discomforted look in her dark eyes she had never directed at him before. He should have waited. Perhaps this whole idea was a terrible mistake.

  “Please tell me there have been no new developments in the emerald necklace matter,” Lady Huntly said, rearranging the folds of her dress as she sat back down on a chaise longue, and for once he was grateful for her presence and that she apparently knew nothing of his proposal. As much as she had always found fault with him, and indeed with everyone else, she eased the awkwardness of the encounter. “You were not wrong in accusing the Viscount Inderly of murder?”

  “No,” he responded, accepting the seat she waved him towards with her fan. “I am reasonably confident of that business being entirely resolved.”

  “Then I am reasonably relieved,” she said dryly.

  “Our help has actually been requested in a new matter.” He glanced at Miss Campbell as he spoke and saw her eyes brighten with curiosity. “A murder.”

  “No,” snapped Lady Huntly, with the air of authority of someone used to being obeyed. “Certainly not. The two of you stumbled about offending everyone around you and putting yourselves in danger over the last investigation. When will you remember that you are both members of good Edinburgh society and not the kind of riff-raff who associate with criminals and other unsavoury characters? As for any so-called skills you may believe you possess for such work...”

  Miss Campbell interrupted the tirade that looked set to continue for some time, saying sharply, “Do you not have a dress fitting to attend this morning?”

  Lady Huntly turned her frown towards the elegant table clock then stood up. “I forbid any more talk of such sordid work.” She aimed a stern look at first one then the other of them. “If Mr MacPherson wishes to continue calling here he should do so for the acceptable purpose of courtship and nothing else.”

  She swept out of the room leaving behind a silence so awkward that Ewan could not bring himself to meet Miss Campbell’s eyes.

  After a pause of what felt like the longest duration imaginable, Miss Campbell said, “So tell me about this murder. Who brought it to your attention?”

  Her intrigued response was exactly what he had hoped for when he told Mr Fillinister they might be able to work on the matter, but her cousin’s reaction worried him. “It did not occur to me yesterday but Lady Huntly may not be entirely wrong about society objecting to us looking into this. An actress has been accused of murdering a gentleman and has gone on the run. A friend of hers, another actor, has asked us to prove her innocence.”

  “Then perhaps we should speak to this friend and get full details of the matter, then decide whether or not to proceed,” she suggested. She seemed to feel comfortable with his presence here again, the awkwardness earlier left behind, for which he was relieved. However, it belatedly occurred to him that in his eagerness to have a reason to keep spending time with her, he had never thought about the unpleasant comments she might be subjected to if they took on what would be considered a vulgar, scandalous problem.

  “There must be other crimes that need solving. Perhaps this is not an ideal matter for us.”

  “You are not afraid of my cousin, are you, Mr MacPherson?” She spoke lightly but he could not help but recall that she had started to call him Ewan before his unwanted proposal.

  “Terrified,” he admitted readily, making her laugh, “but it is the unpleasant reaction of others towards you that I fear now.”

  “I attend lectures at Edinburgh University,” she reminded him. “Society already thinks that I behave in a peculiar, unladylike manner. The thought of a few slights does not worry me and I presume the actress – what is her name?”

  “Kenina McNeil,” he supplied, “and her friend is Mr Joe Fillinister.”

  “I presume Miss McNeil is in serious need of our help? That there is no one else in the legal profession who might be able to prove her innocence?”

  “I doubt she or Mr Fillinister could afford a good solicitor, but we should find out if anyone in Duke Raden’s family has hired someone to properly look into it.”

  “If they have, it is probably they who have assumed Miss McNeil’s guilt.”

  “Then you are right. We must find out the full details from Mr Fillinister so as to know whether or not we can help. Should I ask him to call on us here?”

  “Yes, certainly, but I do have lectures I wish to attend later today. Would early tomorrow be suitable for you?”

  “It would,” he said.

  “Then tomorrow we can learn the story of the murdered duke.”

  Chapter Two

  ISHBEL GREETED Mr MacPherson warmly when he entered the drawing room at eight o’clock the next morning, grateful to put a halt to a second argument with Harriette. Ishbel had known that her cousin would not be happy that she still intended to consider looking into the murder, but that had proved to be an understatement.

  Fury sparked in Harriette’s eyes as she made a brief curtsy then fixed Mr MacPherson with a glare. “It appears you are never far from our door these days, nor that you hesitate to damage my cousin’s reputation by involving her in trying to unravel the basest of crimes.”

  “It was you yourself who first suggested that Mr MacPherson and I work together to solve a case,” Ishbel intervened. “It is highly contrary of you to find fault now that we find we enjoy working with one another.”

  Harriette’s glower deepened as her attention fell once more on Ishbel. “I asked you to find a missing necklace, not go running about, mixing with ruffians and murderers!”

  “We have not yet agreed to take this case,” Mr MacPherson said quickly, clearly trying to calm Harriette down, which Ishbel could have told him would be a waste of time and would only result in him incurring her cousin’s wrath. But perhaps that had actually been his kind-hearted intention. “And it is entirely my fault rather than Miss Campbell’s that we are even considering it. It should have occurred to me that this might cause her unpleasantness from members of society.”

  “Yes, it should,” Harriette agreed.

  “I care nothing for society’s opinion of me,” Ishbel told her. “And I will not allow you to make my decisions for me, no matter what threats you make.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr MacPherson start at this, clearly worried about just what had been said, but that was a family matter for her alone to handle.

  “How you behave also has an effect on Lord Huntly and myself...” Harriette began heatedly but was interrupted by the arrival of Gallach, the family’s butler.

  “There is a person here asking to speak to Miss Campbell and Mr MacPherson,” Gallach said to Harriette, as if he disapproved of the visitor and expected the lady of the house to refuse to allow the meeting.

  Not giving H
arriette the chance to respond, Ishbel said, “If it is a Mr Fillinister then he is most punctual. Where is he waiting for us?”

  The butler looked from Harriette to Ishbel with consternation. “He is still in the hall at present, Miss.”

  “Then I will show him to the library myself,” Ishbel said, heading to the door, Mr MacPherson falling into step beside her.

  “Isobel!”

  Ishbel stopped with one hand on the door handle, the English version of her name sounding as foreign as ever to her.

  “Do not forget what I said last night,” Harriette told her in a low, forbidding tone. “I always follow through with my promises.”

  “I know.” If Ishbel went against Harriette in this matter then she would suffer badly for it, but she would not allow even her cousin to control her, no matter what the consequences were. She opened the door without looking back and walked towards the strange man waiting for her, hat in hand.

  “I am Miss Campbell,” she told him with a welcoming smile. “Will you come into the library, Mr Fillinister?”

  He gave her a graceful bow, bending low. “I’m very grateful to you for agreeing to see me, Miss Campbell.” He spoke with an English accent, she noted.

  He followed her into the large room where every shelf and table as well as much of the floor space was taken up by hundreds of books. Indeed, she had to move several large medical volumes – some of her own contributions to the collection – in order for them all to have a chair to sit in. Once she had sat down, the gentlemen followed suit, Mr MacPherson at her side and Mr Fillinister on the other side of a small table. Ishbel slid an unsteady pile of books to one side so she could see more of him than his head and observed him to be an attractive, slender man in his mid-twenties with brown wavy hair and blue eyes that currently held an expression of hope.

  “Would you tell us everything you know of this murder, Mr Fillinister?” she said.

  “Kenina – Miss McNeil – and I have worked together in the same acting company for more than a decade. As actors, no one expects a particularly high standard of moral behaviour from us – that is, if you’ll forgive me for being blunt, Miss Campbell – no one cares or judges us for sometimes taking a lover. Kenina and Duke Raden were such companions and they were devoted to each other. You might think, as many people will, that if Kenina doesn’t show high class morals then she could be capable of murder too, but she isn’t. I know her better than anyone and this isn’t something she could ever do. She has the kindest of hearts.”

  The impassioned speech made Ishbel wonder if he could be in love with Kenina. If so, then he might not be a good judge of what she might or might not do. “Neither Mr MacPherson nor myself would form any negative opinion of Miss McNeil’s character because she has a romantic attachment,” Ishbel reassured him, assuming from Mr MacPherson’s willingness to take on the case that this was in fact true. She herself had read enough newspapers and heard sufficient conversations between male students at Edinburgh University to know more of the realities of human behaviour than most unmarried women of her age. Harriette would no doubt see this information in a different light, but Ishbel could worry about that later.

  “How exactly did the duke die?” Mr MacPherson asked.

  Mr Fillinister fidgeted in his chair and looked away from them. “He was found stabbed to death three days ago in the house he had bought for her.”

  Ishbel saw why Miss McNeil was accused of the crime. The information also made it clear that this case would be every bit as scandalous as Harriette had feared if they did accept it. “Was Miss McNeil present in the house at the time?”

  “Yes. She was asleep in her room upstairs. He was in the parlour below.”

  “Did the servants see anything?” she asked.

  “No. They have instructions to stay out of the way whenever the duke called on Kenina but she said she never let him into the house. He must have unlocked the door with his key. She only knew of his presence when a maid found his dead body early the next morning. Kenina knew she couldn’t prove her innocence, so she fled Scotland, but she didn’t have much money – I gave her all I had on me but it wasn’t much – so she might not be able to get out of the country. If she’s caught, based on him being in her house and her running, they’ll hang her for definite, and I swear to you that she can’t have killed him.”

  “Does the Duke have any other family who might have already hired someone to look into his death?”

  “He had an unmarried daughter, Lady Sarah Halsted, no one else. I went to her first to see if she could help Kenina but she ordered me to get out, saying she would gladly give any testimony needed to make Kenina hang.”

  Ishbel winced in sympathy even as she thought that it could not have been an easy encounter for the daughter either, fresh after the death of her father.

  “I don’t have a lot of money,” Mr Fillinister went on urgently, “but I’ll find a way to pay you anything you want if you’ll help prove Kenina’s innocence.”

  “We have no interest in money,” Mr MacPherson said, speaking in a gentle tone to the distraught man, “only in justice. It is possible, though, that the evidence we find could actually help establish Miss McNeil’s guilt.”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “I’m not afraid of that.”

  “Mr MacPherson and I will talk over what you have told us,” Ishbel said, “and we will let you know if we can accept this case.”

  Mr Fillinister got up and bowed to them both. “I beg that you will. You have my deepest thanks for hearing me out and considering it.”

  Ishbel watched him leave, aware of a pleasant thrill of anticipation at the idea of solving such a case and proving his touching faith in Miss McNeil well-founded. She had been tempted to suggest to Mr MacPherson that they agree to look into the murder right away, but there were matters that needed to be resolved between them first.

  Chapter Three

  “HOW DID Mr Fillinister hear that we had begun to look into criminal problems?” Ishbel asked, curious, when she and Mr MacPherson were alone in the library.

  Ewan looked uneasy. “There is a tavern that Chiverton, McDonald and I sometimes frequent that is popular with actors. One of my friends must have mentioned our previous case. Mr Fillinister said when he came to see me that he knew Alex, an actor friend of Chiverton’s.”

  Ishbel listened to this with interest, curious to hear about a part of Mr MacPherson’s life of which she had not previously known. She had, of course, never entered a tavern herself but knew that alcohol was consumed and card games were played in them. She had had a vague idea that they must resemble the games rooms at balls, but they clearly allowed the different classes to mingle freely in a way that would not happen at a ball. That sounded pleasant. It was a shame that ladies could not visit taverns.

  “If you are willing, then I would like us to try to solve this,” she said, “but there is something that needs to be resolved between us first.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, clasping his hands together tightly on the table and finding some difficulty in meeting her gaze.

  Embarrassment swept through her as she realised his misapprehension. Of course, he was assuming she was talking about his offer of marriage. “I am talking about the wreath,” she said quickly.

  He blinked at her, his wide green eyes blank.

  “You recall that the Viscount Inderly sent a wreath to scare you which you did not inform me about?” she said and he gave a nod of understanding, expression clearing. “I must ask that you promise never to keep such a secret from me again, if we are to continue working together. I am sure you did it with good intentions but I need no one to shield me from unpleasant information and we cannot rely on each other if we are not utterly honest.”

  “I understand,” he said. “You have my word that I will not hide anything about a case from you again.”

  “Thank you. Then are we agreed to go ahead with the investigation?”

  “What about Lady Huntly?” he
asked, frowning. “The last thing I wish for is to cause a rift between you and your cousin.”

  He had reason to be concerned, but she wanted to take on this case. She liked Mr Fillinister and wished to help him. Even more importantly than that, she wanted to continue her working relationship and friendship with Mr MacPherson, something she had feared impossible after she said she could not marry him. This was a way to spend time with him and to strengthen their friendship. She might even be able to find the words to explain why she would be so unsuited to matrimony, so as to heal his unhappiness over her rejection.

  “Harriette does not make my decisions for me and I do not doubt that we can resolve this.” That was an exaggeration that bordered on a lie. She had grave concerns, but nothing could ever make her give up her freedom of choice.

  “Then what is our first step in the investigation?” he asked with a smile that she responded to, her almost overwhelming sense of relief and happiness making her realise that she had been even more sorry than she had realised at the thought of losing him.

  * * *

  “Well?” Harriette asked, striding into the library as soon as Mr MacPherson had left. “Did you turn down the case?”

  “No.” Ishbel got to her feet. “We have agreed to solve it.”

  Harriette halted opposite her, eyes turning cold. “So my reputation and feelings on the matter mean nothing to you?”

  “Of course they do. You are my family – I love you. However, this is something that means a lot to me. I will not give up this work.”

  “First, the university lectures and now this. I should have refused to indulge your whims far sooner!”

  “You could not have done so,” she said, angered at the very idea. She tried to reason with her cousin. “Can you not see that we are alike? You would never permit anyone to control your behaviour and decisions and neither can I.”

  “Is that what you believe? When you are more mature you will understand that even the most determined woman must sooner or later make compromises in order to be accepted by society. Its members do not tolerate such behaviour as you are contemplating.”