‘Careful!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘The floor’s thin, and the Walkers can’t afford to replace their ceiling plaster downstairs.’ The less so if I cannot pay my rent, he thought, but managed not to say. It was not George’s fault, after all, if he happened to have the interests their father took seriously and Charles had the ones he did not understand.
George mumbled an apology through the towel with which he was vigorously rubbing his face and head, and emerged looking more cheerful than ever. He saw Charles holding the book.
‘What’s that, then? Lecture notes?’
‘No, it’s Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars. Have you ever read it?’
George shrugged.
‘It sounds political. Is it political?’ he asked, in the tone of one who boards a ship in the full expectation of seasickness. Charles laughed.
‘In places.’
‘Girls in it?’ asked George.
‘Not many,’ Charles admitted. He thought that George would enjoy the book, all the same, but doubted that he would ever bring himself to read it. He sighed, and sat on the bed, undoing his neck cloth and pulling a fresh one from a drawer. The room was so small it was possible to reach almost anything one required from the bed, particularly if one was Charles’ height.
‘I’ve been reading a bit of poetry, myself, recently,’ said George, his casual tone spoilt by the way he looked sideways at Charles to see his reaction.
‘Poetry?’ Charles was impressed. ‘Whose?’
‘Oh, a bit of Robert Fergusson,’ George tossed off the name as if he had drunk with the fellow himself, ‘and some Burns, of course. I like Holy Willie’s Prayer, don’t you?’
Charles had read some of Burns’ work, but by no means all: modern verse could leave him cold. He made a face at George to tell him to continue.
‘It’s just a poem all said by Holy Willie himself, like a prayer, you know? I don’t think the minister would care for it much. Holy Willie’s a terrible old fellow, though, and he just gives himself away line by line. He’s one of these ones – here, wait, I think I can remember a bit: ‘Yet I am here a chosen sample To show Thy grace is great and ample’, you know, thinking he’s chosen and can do no wrong, you see? He’s one of those predestined types. And all the time he’s at it with the girls and cursing the Presbytery, and saying that if he looks good God’s glory will be all the greater! Oh, it’s a great laugh!’
Charles grinned: he had met the type himself a few times, and wondered how they could look themselves in the eye in a glass. But at the moment, he had more curious matters on his mind, and he thought they would not be unpleasant to George, either.
‘So how long have you been taken by Alison Keith, then?’
George grew solemn again at the thought, trying to look older than his years. He was all of seventeen, Charles reflected: he would change his mind a few times yet, anyway.
‘Well, it was the last time I was up, you know, in January, when it started snowing. Do you remember? We met her and her brother on the Scores, just as the snow was starting, whipping in from the sea like a burst pillow, and I held my hat out over her head as we escorted them home, and I caught an awful cold.’ This act of extreme heroism on his own part seemed to have been enough in George’s eyes to bind her to him for eternity, and his broad chest swelled with pride at the memory. ‘I’ve never sneezed so much in my life, and Mrs. Chambers had to make me hot punch for a fortnight before the cough went. Miss Keith was wearing a brown velvet bonnet and a matching pelisse thing, and she looked like a heroine from a Gothic romance, pale and beautiful in the snow, with the snowflakes catching on her sleeves and her skirts.’ He gave a sigh of considerable wistfulness: he had obviously been practising. Charles hoped he had not been trying his hand at poetry himself.
‘Her father is – not popular,’ Charles amended. Professor Keith had never been particularly vindictive to him, saving his strength for the poor, the uninfluential, and the not over-bright.
‘I’m sure there are lots of professors whom their students hate, but who are kind and loving husbands and parents.’
‘Probably. I have a feeling that Professor Keith is rather more consistent in his behaviour, though. You know he sacked one of his maids for stealing a cravat-pin, though she was of impeccable character and the pin turned up stuck in the dining room carpet later the same day. He wouldn’t take her back, either.’
‘Maybe he had his reasons,’ said George, blandly. ‘How is it that so many maids seem to have impeccable characters after they are sacked?’
‘This maid had one both before and after: she is the daughter of Ramsay Rickarton, the janitor at United College, whom we met earlier, a most honourable man, as you know, and there is no doubting her side of the story.’
George shrugged reluctantly, as one whose nature would be to believe him but whose feelings were not his own to command.
‘He is a proud man, no doubt, and not anxious to admit his own mistakes. It shows he is human, anyway.’
Charles sighed, and finished tying his cravat. George was combing his damp hair with one hand and smoothing his eyebrows with the other. Charles tried not to laugh.
‘Anyway, how did you come to be invited to tea by Mrs. Keith?’ he asked.
‘Oh, after I had recovered from my terrible cold,’ George was constrained to refer to his heroic struggle once again, ‘I wrote a note to Mrs. Keith to ask after Miss Keith and her brother and hope that they had taken no harm from their chilling, and she wrote me a very kind reply, and I took the liberty of sending some fruit from the hothouses at Letho, and she asked me to tea, and I asked if I might bring my brother, and she said yes. Quite a little flurry of correspondence, you know: she is a charming lady. One can see from whom Miss Keith has her own charms.’
‘Is that something you said in one of your notes, then?’ Charles asked sarcastically. George blushed.
‘A little flattery goes a very great distance with mothers, and does no harm to the daughters, either,’ he said, as though he had been expert for many years in the matter of seduction. Charles did laugh this time, and wondered where on earth George found his ideas.
As far as he himself was concerned, he was not particularly struck by the Gothic beauty of Alison Keith. She was certainly elegant, perhaps a little too thin, but pretty enough. There was that in her face, though, which, charmingly Gothic though it might have been, made Charles anxious. It was a nerviness, a spiritedness that was a little too wild to be a good sign of a stable character underneath. It reminded Charles of a horse his father had had some years before, sold to him as fine and indeed spirited. His father, liking a bit of a challenge in his horseflesh, had bought it readily, but had found that the beast was dangerously sensitive, springing wildly away at the slightest noise, and with no steadiness or staying power beneath to make it worth calming and training. He sold it again quickly, but the impression of the horse’s blinking eyes and nervous muzzle had stayed with Charles and he seemed to see them again in the face of Alison Keith, though a less horse-like human it might be hard to find.
‘Good heavens – is that the time?’ cried George, catching sight of the little clock on the mantelpiece. ‘We shall be late. What kind of impression will that create?’
They hurried down the stairs, George’s boots winking like melted toffee in the dim light and his footsteps resounding hollowly. In the hall, not surprisingly, Mrs. Walker appeared suddenly, to see what the racket was. She was wafted towards them on a cloud of washing soda, and George involuntarily reeled back, trying not to let the smell attach to him.
‘Oh! Charles, my dear, and my dear Mr. George: you look so splendid!’ George smiled and made a tight little bow, edging towards the door and fresh air. ‘Where can you two be off to, looking so fine, at this hour of the day?’ Her voice was nervous still, hurried, as if she was trying to fill a certain time before something important she had to say.
‘We are engaged to tea at Professor Keith’s house, with Mrs. Keith and Miss Keith,’ sa
id George splendidly. Mrs. Walker visibly winced, so much so that Charles found he had put out a hand to support her in case she fainted.
‘At Professor Keith’s?’ she repeated slowly, and as if seeing it for the first time she observed in detail all the glory of George’s outfit, the brushed coat, the snow-pale breeches, the well-tended cravat, and the marvellous boots. She swallowed, a little too noisily.
‘Mrs. Walker,’ said Charles gently, ‘please tell me what is the matter. If I can help at all …’ He tailed away, sure that the only way he could help would be by paying his rent as soon as possible. She seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to say this, her mouth working as she stared at the floor. George edged again towards the front door, and Charles turned quickly to glare at him before looking back to Mrs. Walker. She drew a long breath.
‘It was only,’ she said quietly, ‘that I have lost my brooch – you know, the one I always wear, here?’ She pointed to her collar, and at last Murray realised what he had failed to miss earlier. She always wore a fine miniature at her throat of a clergyman, bewigged in the style of twenty years before, framed in old gold, and it was not there. ‘It is a beautiful thing, and of some value in money, but it is of my dear late husband, you know, and no money could replace it.’ She seemed to hear a noise from the kitchens, gave a little gasp, and went on. ‘If you should see it – in the gutter, perhaps, when you are walking along the street, or perhaps in the house somewhere – you will know it, Charles dear, won’t you, and will pick it up for me?’
There was something in her eyes, when she said this, that gave Charles the impression that she was trying to tell him more than she was saying, and that she was praying that he would understand. He frowned for a moment, and then gave her a little nod, trying to reassure her without really knowing if he could.
‘If we find it, we shall make sure it is returned to you,’ he said firmly, sure he could at least promise that. She smiled a little distantly, and at that moment Patience emerged quickly from the kitchens.
‘Mother, here you are!’ she said. ‘I wondered what you had found out here to detain you so long.’ She turned and curtseyed to George and Charles. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, quite self-possessed. George and Charles bowed back.
‘Now, if you will excuse us,’ said George, his hand already on the door handle, ‘we are already late, Charles. Ladies,’ he finished, bowing again, and stepped grandly out of the doorway. Charles was left to bid mother and daughter a slightly apologetic farewell, before hurrying to catch up with his little brother.
Chapter Three
The customs of the past had changed considerably in St. Andrews. Once all those associated with the University, staff and students alike, had lived in the colleges of St. Salvator, St. Leonard and St. Mary, but now St. Salvator and St. Leonard had united and the St. Leonard’s buildings were abandoned near the Cathedral. St. Salvator’s premises were hardly less ramshackle, but were still in use on the United College site in North Street. Only fifty years ago, things had been so bad at the university and relations with the townspeople had deteriorated so much that there was talk of moving the whole affair to Perth and trying again, but the usual St. Andrean apathy had overcome, and here they still were. Married professors had probably been the first to eschew the accommodation provided by the colleges, but now few lived in the old dilapidated rooms at all.
Professor Keith had had every excuse to leave. His house, near the ruins of the Castle on the Scores Walk, was large, but friendly and rambling in appearance. It was understood in the university that he had acquired his property from his wife’s family, and the house was seen as evidence of this, since it was assumed by all the students that nothing which had originated with the dreaded Keith would have appeared in the least bit friendly, or indeed rambling. The house was perhaps a couple of hundred years old, but with rooms attached whimsically here and there as required or desired, built of bumbling great balls of sandstone or little bits and pieces with more mortar than stone, roofed at odd angles with stone or slate or tile and with every shape and fashion of window or door. The whole was well-maintained, however: a type of unity had been forced on it by the application of bright white paint to every inch of woodwork and the creepers that seem irresistibly drawn to such a building were kept clipped and neat, and were just now showing the unbelievably fresh green of their new leaves. The gravel to the front door was swept and smooth behind a stern gate – a sign, no doubt, of Professor Keith’s governance – and it seemed almost a crime to step on it. George, however, who had stalked through the humble streets of St. Andrews in the full confidence that his outfit was infinitely superior to everyone else’s in the burgh, now strode ahead with some determination, the sunlight flashing off the calves of his boots, and Charles had to step up to catch up with him. They arrived together at the low, shiny white, front door, where George tugged the doorbell with the air of one who is expected. A maid came and collected their cards – probably the same one who would have opened the curtains to find the dead crow outside the window, Charles thought – and in a moment, true to George’s expectations, they were ushered into a small, sunny parlour at the back of the house, overlooking a pretty garden within old sandstone walls. Already in the parlour were Mrs. Keith and her daughter, who seemed surprisingly delighted to see them. Charles wondered if they really considered George to be such a suitable match for Miss Alison that they were keen to snare him even at his young age: all modesty aside, George was a younger son, and it was Charles who might have expected to be considered the more promising candidate.
Mrs. Keith was a thin but neatly made woman of just an age to have grown-up children. Her hair still showed a little of its original chestnut in the curls at the front of her cap, though it was threaded through and through with grey till the effect was that of a dappled horse, and no less attractive for that, Charles thought. She wore, with good taste, a deep blue gown with Egyptian trimmings, neither too humble for her station nor too flamboyant for her age, though she had a penchant for rings, chiefly with cabochon stones, which cluttered her long fingers. Miss Keith, making a pretty curtsey just now to George, was also thin, but took more after her father for looks: he was a handsome man, whatever his faults, and it had done her no harm. She had light brown hair with an almost reddish hint to it and eyes of a remarkable dark blue, flecked like the sea at dusk as if the stars had risen to reflect themselves in it. They laughed easily, and her mouth, if a little wide, joined in to complete the effect. Charles glanced quickly at his brother: it was clear straightaway that George was smitten.
‘Sit, do,’ Mrs. Keith was saying, gesturing to several appropriate chairs as if to give them a choice. ‘We are just at our embroidery here, as you see. I shall call for tea at once, I think, don’t you, Alison? For sometimes the maid can be slow, or the kitchen fire won’t draw properly for the water, and then we could be waiting an age …’ She looked slightly helplessly at her daughter, who obediently rose and pulled the bell. Charles and George selected two of the offered chairs and sat when she had returned to her seat, and George slid his chair over closer to Alison Keith so that he could more easily admire her embroidery – at least, that is what he said he was admiring.
‘An exquisite pattern,’ he remarked, almost as if he knew what he was talking about, ‘and marvellously well worked. You must have extraordinary eyesight to work such fine stitches,’ he carried on, taking the opportunity to check her eyesight personally by gazing into the flecked blue for a few significant seconds. Charles groaned inwardly. He had no wish whatsoever to be here, but he knew his place: talk to the mother, and allow George his way with the daughter. In his turn he shuffled a little closer to Mrs. Keith, and gave her a bright, affable smile which felt painfully artificial on his lips but, he hoped, impressed his professor’s wife.
‘And how are you, Mrs. Keith?’ he asked, contriving to make it sound like the opening to a long conversation.
‘Oh, passing well, passing well, thank you very much, Mr. Murray,�
�� she replied rapidly. ‘We have been busy for part of the morning with the spring pruning in the garden, and with checking over the summer sheets and pillowcases, but you can’t want to know about all that, can you? You want to know about Cicero and Plato and natural philosophy and all kinds of excitement!’
Charles laughed and admitted that Cicero was indeed more his forte than summer sheets and pillowcases.
‘I read them all, you know, when I was a girl, but it was so long ago!’ she added, with a wistful smile. ‘I think I could barely construe a sentence now.’
‘Oh, you read them in the original languages?’ Charles said, trying not to sound too surprised.
‘Oh, indeed I did. My dear father was my dear husband’s predecessor here, you know, and as I was his only child he taught me a very great deal. We were close, you know, and he loved to teach, and I loved to learn … I was not so interested in summer sheets and pillowcases then, either, I assure you!’
‘But no doubt it has helped you in the education of your own children, and in helping Professor Keith with his work,’ Charles said, because she seemed so sad at her lost learning.
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 3