‘So you are Miss Keith?’ he said. ‘Miss Alison Keith?’
Something in his tone surprised her, and she sat up straight, smiling her wide smile with less confidence.
‘Yes, sir, I am. My mother will also be with us shortly,’ she added, as if that would protect her from whatever threat she seemed to be feeling.
‘I see,’ said Mr. Murray, seating himself with dignity in the middle of a sofa. He did not take his eyes off her. Eventually, as if musing to himself, he said ‘A happy period in a woman’s life, is it not, Charles?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ Charles jumped, completely bewildered by his father’s remark.
‘The moment when she can see herself with an establishment of her own, perhaps – forgive us, Miss Keith,’ he added. ‘It is simply a hypothetical question which has formed in my mind recently: the happiest period of life for a man or a woman. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to a woman’s views on the subject?’
Charles looked at his father as if one of them must have gone mad. Alison Keith, red to the roots of her hair, sat with her hands clenched on her lap so hard that the knuckles shone white. Mr. Murray opened his mouth to speak again: Charles saw it with dread, but at that very second, the door opened, and Professor Keith strode in.
The battle between Mr. Murray of Letho and Professor Helenus Keith was not a pleasant one, and Charles spent most of its short duration wishing fervently that he was elsewhere. Phrases such as ‘with the greatest respect, sir,’ were flashed like newly-sharpened daggers. Though Professor Keith had no particular attachment to any of his students, he objected greatly to any interruption to university routine or to the removal of anyone from his sphere of influence. In addition, he suspected the students universally of laziness and stupidity, and thought none of them above talking their parents into making excuses for them. Mr. Murray, on the other hand, had several weapons at his disposal, not least of which was his son’s general inclination to obey him in order to live a relatively quiet life. Another was a trust, of which he was the principal trustee, which had been set up many years before and which contributed money to the university. In the end, Professor Keith, deciding that Charles was probably intelligent enough to catch up after a fortnight’s leave, granted permission and immediately went into a sulk. The Murrays left, abandoning the Keith household to confusion and general grumpiness.
After that, Charles’ only concern over Professor Shaw’s consent was that he should not be too much injured in the granting of it. However, Professor Shaw knew well enough how much Charles enjoyed his studies, and that he was not encouraging his father to take him away: Shaw knew, too, that as soon as it was in Charles’ power to return he would do so, and that Thomas Seaton would probably lend him his lecture notes. Consequently, the interview was swiftly over, and well before the dinner hour Charles and his father were on the road to Cupar, Charles, in spite of himself, thoroughly enjoying his reward of the use of the gelding Cobweb.
George was waiting for them at Letho, anxious on the shallow front door step with a collection of dogs about him. When he had Charles to himself, after dinner in the garden, it was not difficult for Charles to encourage him to talk. George was appalling at keeping things to himself.
‘So what happened at St. Andrews? Has he made you leave?’ was George’s opening concern.
‘Not definitely: not yet, anyway.’
‘Oh, good!’ George was breathless with relief, but not for long.
‘I’ve paid my rent, too, which is a considerable weight off my mind. George, what’s the matter?’
George had started swinging his stick and was taking the heads off the crocuses with an absent ruthlessness. He stopped when Charles spoke, and looked sheepish.
‘Did you see Miss Keith?’ he asked, watching Charles out of the corner of his eye.
‘Oh, is that all! Yes, yes, we did.’
‘We did? You mean our father was there, too? And met her?’
‘Yes – though come to think of it, he was very odd when we were talking with her. He kept going on about the best time of a woman’s life.’
‘What?’ George was genuinely bewildered.
‘The time of life when she is setting up a home of her own, I think he meant,’ Charles went on, though he was far from sure himself. ‘She went absolutely scarlet: I think she must have some man in mind. It’s not you, is it?’ He turned to George with a laugh that was only half-humorous.
‘Well, I haven’t said anything to her, if that’s what you mean.’ George looked tetchy. ‘I might have, but she didn’t seem inclined to listen. But the problem is … your problem, that is …’
‘What?’ asked Charles, suspiciously.
‘Well,’ George began, toeing the gravel path and fidgeting again with his cane, ‘it’s just a stupid little thing, you know …’
‘What is?’ Charles felt he was being remarkably patient.
‘Oh! Well, when Father asked me why you hadn’t come back with me on Tuesday morning, you know, as he wanted – well, he was gey angry.’
‘With me, though, not with you.’
‘Yes, well, that doesn’t always make much difference. I was there, and you were not.’
‘True, yes. I’m sorry about that. But you told him about the funeral?’
George gave a sick smile with eyes that almost met Charles’.
‘I forgot. And anyway,’ he added quickly, before Charles could interrupt, ‘I didn’t think it was a very good excuse. I know you’d rather just be reading books, but you know he wouldn’t take that at all. So I told him you had a sweetheart.’
‘You did what?’
‘All right, all right, no need to shout!’ George giggled nervously.
‘And did you think to give this sweetheart a name?’ Charles asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer.
‘It was the first name in my head,’ George admitted. ‘It usually is, these days.’
‘So now Father thinks I have it in mind to court Alison Keith,’ Charles snapped, ‘and presumably that isn’t good enough for the heir to Letho. No wonder he was so peculiar. He probably thought he was wounding us with every jibe, and punishing her for her presumptuousness.’
George sighed.
‘I probably haven’t done my own cause much good, either,’ he said. ‘Now he’ll feel ill-disposed to her as a wife for either of us. And she has quite a good portion, you know: her mother has lots of money.’
‘I know. George, you aren’t really determined on her, are you?’
He did not have the chance to hear the answer.
‘Charles! George!’ their father’s voice interrupted from the terrace. ‘Come along! No time for meandering amongst the flowerbeds: let’s take the dogs out for a run!’
It was at supper that evening, a casual, usually relaxed meal, that Mr. Murray broached the superficial reason for his removing Charles at such short notice from St. Andrews.
‘I want you to go down to Edinburgh, boy, and meet with Mr. Simpson, our man of business there. You remember him?’
Charles met George’s eye: old Marmalade Head, they thought at once.
‘Yes, sir,’ Charles replied.
‘I have papers to send him which I do not wish to entrust to the mails, and you may learn something of financial matters from them and from your dealings with him. You may stay in the Queen Street house, though do not expect it to be much opened up for you: you can take a manservant down with you. Daniel, perhaps, is the best suited: it will be good for him, too.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Charles.
‘You may attend the Assembly on Monday, and you can take my invitation to the Dundases on Tuesday for a reception: it is not as formal as a dinner and they will be pleased to see you. I have sent them a note to expect you. It is time you started to take your place in society, Charles. George is far in advance of you in that.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Charles. George looked pleased with himself.
‘The mail passes the village tomorrow
at mid-day. Fenwick has acquired a ticket for you. You will have the morning free to pass some time fencing and boxing with George: it will do you both good if you can pass on to each other what you have each learned from your teachers.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Charles. He did not wish to fence, box or go to Edinburgh, but at least he could try to read his copy of Vergil in the mail coach.
George evidently did not trust to Charles’ enthusiasm for fencing or boxing either, for he knocked on the door of Charles’ room late that night after the household had retired. Charles, taking advantage of his father’s excellent lamps, was still reading, and hid the book under the pillow before calling out, ‘Come in!’
George was clutching a torn piece of paper, which turned out to be a tailor’s bill. He handed it, almost shyly, to Charles.
‘Could – could you get me some of that when you’re in town?’ he asked, and cleared his throat noisily.
Charles looked at the bill: it was for silk cravats.
‘Another silk cravat?’ he said with a grin. ‘All right: what colour?’
George looked agitated.
‘No! No, the other side.’
Charles turned the paper over. On it, in George’s careful hand, was one word: ‘Cantharides’. He frowned, thinking ‘Cantharus, canthari, tankard. Cantharis, cantharis, - beetle?’ He looked up at George.
‘What is it?’
‘You can get it at an apothecary’s, one of the big ones, maybe, that would be best.’
‘A drug? George, what’s wrong? Is something the matter with you?’
‘No, no,’ said George quickly, ‘not with me. I mean –‘
‘With Father, then?’
‘No, I mean, there’s nothing the matter with anybody, and it’s not for me, and it’s not for Father. All right?’ He sounded defiant, but he could not meet Charles’ eye. Charles sighed.
‘All right, then, I’ll get it for you, whatever it is. Do you want the account send here?’
‘No! Look,’ George rummaged in his pocket and came up with a couple of shillings. ‘Take these. I don’t think you’ll need more than that, no, I shouldn’t think so.’
George paying cash was not a common phenomenon, let alone George volunteering cash before it was asked for. Charles’ jaw dropped.
‘Good night, then,’ said George rapidly, and left the room. Charles sat with the tailor’s bill in his had, staring at the closed door. What on earth was George up to this time?
The mail coach arrived at Letho’s only, slightly ostentatious, inn at mid-day the next day, and Charles was waiting for it. No one had come to see him off, but Daniel, a somewhat haphazard boy in his father’s household, carried his bags, not unpacked since they had arrived late the previous evening from St. Andrews. Charles, not entirely trusting Daniel, saw to him seeing to the stowing of Charles’ bags on the roof, and then saw to Daniel finding his own perch in the fresh air: Charles handed him up a plaid to cover his knees, for the breeze stirred up by the mail horses’ speed could chill even when the day was mild. Then, the only inside passenger to alight in Letho, he climbed into the body of the coach.
Inside, grinning in welcome, were Picket Irving, Boxie Skene and Rab Fisher, the Sporting Set.
Chapter Eight
‘But how on earth did you get away?’ asked Charles, when they had set off. ‘The last I heard of you three, Ramsay Rickarton was to send someone round to Mutty’s Wynd to keep you under arrest!’
Rab Fisher laughed good-naturedly, though a little frown crossed his perfect brow, and Charles wondered if Rab had realised how much trouble he and the others were in. He was not endowed with the sharpest of minds.
Picket, however, with a wicked gleam amidst the wrinkles of his eyelids, was only too happy to share his triumph.
‘That would be Thursday morning, would it?’ he asked, his thin voice dripping with glee. ‘What a shame: we left on Wednesday night. I’m very sorry to have missed Ramsay’s man. I’m sure we would all have got along just fine.’
‘But if you left on Wednesday night,’ said Charles, ‘how are you only this far on Saturday?’
‘We had to wait for the stage coach, of course,’ Picket explained impatiently. ‘We left our bunk on Wednesday night, set up our little surprise for dear Professor Keith, and strolled on to an empty bothy Boxie here knew of, and hid ourselves there for a while.’ Boxie looked gratified that his contribution had been appreciated, though if any University officer had happened to glance into the coach at that moment in search of a fugitive, he would have chosen Boxie at once. The man was pale, hunched and tense, and seemed to expect to be caught at any second. Picket was too shiny with triumph to notice – or to care.
‘We had our tickets in advance, and this morning we simply emerged from our comfortable priest’s hole, waved the coach down just outside the town, near the Swilken Bridge. My one mild dissatisfaction with the affair,’ Picket went on, a cool, self-critical campaigner after the battle, ‘was that the trap somehow failed.’ His gaze fell lightly on Boxie. Boxie went paler. ‘You heard, I suppose, that he found a skeleton on the ground outside his gate in the morning?’
‘Yes – he had great fun putting the whole thing back together. Where did you get it from? It’s a shusy, I take it, but it’s not as if we have a medical course at the University.’ It was something that had been bothering him slightly – he did not like to think that the Sporting Set would stoop to grave-robbing, but he wanted to be reassured.
‘No, but my guardian knows some of the senior anatomists at Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh,’ said Picket, with a smile. ‘One of them obtained it for me – of course, he may not be aware of that just yet ...’ His grin became wider, his narrow yellow teeth disconcertingly horrible, spaced in his mouth like the bars of an ivory cage. ‘Probably the result of some resurrectionist’s industrious excavations. Anyway, we had set it up to fall on him when he came home that night – we had phosphorus in the skull so that the eye sockets glowed, another of Boxie’s excellent notions.’ Boxie now looked faintly sick. ‘It was wired to the gate, but it must have blown down or something, before he reached it, and then he didn’t see it in the dark. Quite annoying, don’t you think?’
‘Frustrating,’ Charles agreed. His heart still leapt when he thought of that ghostly skeletal face bearing down on him in the moonlight, but he was not going to tell Picket that. He wished to run no risk of finding Picket his enemy. ‘So where are you off to now?’ he asked at last, his mind so full of skeletons that he thought it would look less suspicious if he simply talked about something else.
‘To Edinburgh, of course.’ Picket sat back in satisfaction, though his gangly form was awkward on the coach’s hard cushions, and he was clearly trying to look more comfortable than he was. ‘We shall return in a few days, contrite, ready to receive any contrivable punishment – and with a banker’s letter for a substantial sum from my guardian for the use and benefit of the University.’
‘And the other!’ said Rab, who had been exercising his intellect in the mean time by watching Picket’s face and mouthing some of his longer words after he had said them. ‘Tell him about the other!’
‘Rab, Rab,’ said Picket soothingly, ‘you should be careful what you say when you are excited, eh? You leave no surprises! Mind you, Murray, he has his moments: you should have seen him shin up that gatepost with the skeleton like a monkey on his back, and never a bone broken! Yes, Rab, yes: we’ll tell Murray about the other. I think we can wait, though, until we are sure of our facts, all right?’ He gave Rab an indulgent pat, and looked to Charles as if for sympathy. ‘Yes, we do have another little treat up our sleeves for dear Professor Keith, but it is uncertain as yet. We shall see, eh, Boxie? We shall see!’
Boxie’s ordinary face was shot through with red for a second, then turned white again, like taffeta twisted in the light, and Charles, pitying him, wondered what Picket was landing them all in this time. What could they bring back from Edinburgh that was worse than a skeleton?
It was only as they were all leaving the coach later that another question occurred to Charles, but he decided not to ask it. If the Sporting Set had gone into hiding straight after planting the skeleton on Wednesday night, how did they know that Professor Keith had found it on the ground on Thursday morning?
Edinburgh was polished grey and black with rain as he showed Daniel how to hail a porter to help them with their bags. Daniel, too, was sodden from sitting outside the coach, and Charles was keen to get him home and into dry clothes before he caught cold. He led the way at a brisk pace, forgetting how much taller he was than either Daniel or the porter, up and out of the Grassmarket and the crowds around the coach.
The West Bow wound them up on to the steep ridge of the Lawnmarket, where Daniel, who had been growing almost dizzy looking about him at all the new and fascinating things he could see, drew in a deep breath and stared. The High Street sprawled before them, down and down again to the Canongate, swarming with people, bright with stalls and coloured clothes, and here and there sprouted an umbrella like a mushroom: Daniel had only seen one or two before, but here it was like a fairy ring. He gaped at the women, loud-voiced stall holders, non-committal shoppers and ladies aloof in chairs, alone or in pairs, gazing blandly out at the rain-soaked passersby: Daniel had set himself up as having quite an eye for the girls, but suddenly found that up to now his scope had been painfully limited. He stared and stared, until the crowd buffeted him back to his senses. Then, like a man who gazes at a picture and then sees the frame, Daniel looked up and from side to side. Tenements of unbelievable height rose at either side of the street, with shops at their ground floor, and windows above, where more signs hung to show where cobblers, hatmakers, musical instrument sellers, teachers, had their premises and probably their homes, too. As the rain eased, at one window a man leaned out, polishing the great gold boot that showed his trade – then twisted and let out a cry of profane alarm as a maid on the floor above tossed out a carpet to be beaten, the dust tumbling damp on to his head and the boot. Daniel laughed out loud, and Charles smiled, watching his amazement. The porter, hauling his load up the steep West Bow, finally caught up with them and Charles set off again down the hill.
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 10