Though it was only just dusk, the drive at the Keiths’ house, short as it was, was lit on either side by torches, which also flared on the gateposts and at each doorpost. The door was open, and the maid Barbara welcomed them in, taking their coats and hats until she seemed ready to disappear under the heap. She deposited them quickly on a settle and hurried upstairs ahead of them to announce the new guests at the drawing room door before going back to sort the coats out.
The drawing room was fine, with yellow draperies and a good fire going in the plain marble fireplace. Already several guests, students and staff, were gathered in small groups about the room. Professor Keith and his wife held these soirées a few times during each academic year, inviting only the most senior of students, the intent being to prepare them for the outside world by introducing them to polite society and encouraging them to regard their tutors as pleasant acquaintances rather than slave-drivers of evil intent. That the success of these social occasions varied tremendously was something that passed by the Keiths’ consciousness: they had done their duty, honed their lucky subjects to their idea of perfection, and felt the satisfaction of the charitable. A few suitably marriageable girls would be asked to provide musical entertainment. Often, too, some patron of a parish would be invited, and appropriate candidates introduced to him or her, or some advocate in need of an apprentice, or minor noble anxious for a tutor for his sons. The magistrands would be paraded like ponies in a sales ring, sometimes tested for their learning, sometimes observed for their sobriety, more often questioned about their background, parentage and station. It was not a happy experience, and on previous occasions Charles had felt uncomfortable watching its progress, but this time he himself was hoping to find some position in the same way and found the prospect daunting, as well as distasteful.
Charles was not surprised to see Thomas there with his hair brushed and his uneven jaw shaved quite neatly, for once: he hoped to have a second chance with Lord Scoggie, and was determined, in the face of all obstacles, to make the most of it this time. For the moment, however, Lord Scoggie had not arrived, and Thomas was standing peaceably with Allan Bonar. Charles, determined to have a reasonable conversation with them both before they noticed that Patience Walker had arrived, excused himself from the Walkers and their hostess and went to join the men.
‘Few people realise that lily of the valley is actually quite poisonous,’ Bonar was saying as Charles approached. ‘Oh, good evening, Murray, good to see you.’ They bowed to each other.
‘We were just talking about Mr. Bonar’s researches,’ Thomas explained. He had a glass of wine in his hand, and was looking much more cheerful than usual, if a little nervous. ‘He’s working on the extraction of certain substances from plants – just ordinary plants!’
‘And lily of the valley is poisonous, is it?’ Charles asked, quite interested. He thought he had seen some somewhere, recently, but could not call it to mind.
‘Oh, yes: it is sometimes used in small quantities for medicinal purposes, but in larger doses it is quite deadly.’ Bonar, his dark eyes alight, had the look of a man just checking the saddle girth on his hobby horse, and preparing to mount. ‘It’s not unlike arsenic, in that respect, of course: many people take very small doses of arsenic for stomach complaints, and find a palliative effect, but of course we use it for all kinds of deadly purposes, too. Rat-killing, for example.’
‘Indeed. I think I would have to suffer from very bad stomach pains before I would risk taking even a small dose of arsenic,’ Charles laughed, and Thomas and Bonar agreed. ‘But arsenic is not taken from plants, is it?’
But the conversation, promising as it was, was not destined to continue, for at that very moment both Thomas and Bonar spotted Patience Walker, and she saw them. Thomas and Bonar instantly shifted slightly further apart, as if driven by an electrical charge, and the air of mutual intellectual discussion was gone for good. Charles waited until Miss Walker had approached and joined the conversation, and gently manoeuvred himself out of it.
He looked around the room, which was already quite busy. Peter Keith, jittering beside his mother and sister, tried to look as if he was unaware that he had two neat black eyes on either side of an uncomfortably bulky nose. Alison Keith was also fluttery, clinging to her father’s arm. She was wearing a soft cream silk dress, very pretty, with a paisley shawl in brown and cream, and on her bare arms was a pair of bracelets. They caught Charles’ eye and he stared at them for a moment: they were of an unusual design, of dark brown stones chained together, and made him think instantly of Imperial Rome. He wondered why, and then remembered where he had seen such bracelets before: they had been in the window of the jeweller’s shop behind the Tron in Edinburgh on Tuesday. He wondered how common they were, and how Alison Keith had come by them. They suited her.
The drawing room door opened again, and another guest arrived. Charles turned to see – and was astonished to find his brother George, splendid in the most fashionable of evening waistcoats, striding in with beaming face to greet his hostess. His cravat was so extravagantly tied that his head seemed to ride on a seafroth of linen, and as he bowed to Mrs. Keith Charles half-expected to see it float away.
George had flowers for Mrs. Keith, straight from the hothouses at Letho, and to Alison he presented, with eager anxiety, a tray of what Charles could just see were crystallised fruits. He wondered if the poor Letho cook had had to make them to George’s specifications, and grinned at the idea. George was disposed to linger around Alison, but she set the fruits aside with a wide, noncommittal smile, and seemed to dismiss him. Professor Keith, close beside his daughter, also nodded at him, as though kindly to reinforce the dismissal. Still beaming, as one who feels there is hope yet, George turned to survey the room, and immediately saw his brother.
‘Charles!’ he exclaimed. ‘Excellent! Did Daniel arrive all right?’
‘He did,’ Charles admitted, ‘though I’m still not quite clear about what is going on. Where exactly does Father think I am?’
‘In Edinburgh, of course,’ said George proudly. ‘I worked it all out. As long as you were in Edinburgh, he would be pleased, and he would not forbid you to return to St. Andrews. If he forbade you to return here, he would not look favourably on me coming up here, for whatever purpose, and just at present, Charles, I really do need to come up here. Persistence is all-important in these matters, isn’t it? So I hid Daniel, and sent him to you, and I hid the papers – they were not really important, anyway, he just used them as an excuse to send you to town –‘
‘I suspected as much.’
‘- and there we are!’ George was shining with self-satisfaction.
‘But don’t you think,’ said Charles gently, ‘that when he finds out he has been deceived, that he might be even more angry and inclined to forbid me to come back?’
‘How could he find out? I bribed the groom to say nothing about bringing you back up here.’
‘Well, old Marmalade Head could write to him, or old Mrs. Grant, or he could ask me straight out – and I wouldn’t lie to him, George, I don’t think I could – or he might come up here for some other reason and happen to see me.’
George dismissed such possibilities.
‘None of those will happen for ages, and by then who knows what might have happened? You might manage to graduate, or make a rich marriage, or Father might just find something else to worry about.’
‘Like you not making a rich marriage, eh?’
George turned irresistibly to look again at Alison Keith.
‘She is lovely, isn’t she? So much life!’
Charles made an ambiguous noise, which seemed to be enough for George.
‘Come on,’ Charles tugged at his brother’s arm, ‘we’d better do the rounds a bit. If you spend the evening staring at the host’s daughter you’ll be thrown out.’
‘Oh, well, then: who’s here?’
‘Thomas is, and Allan Bonar.’
‘Thomas is very dreary,’ George objected
.
‘He is at the moment, anyway: he and Bonar are battling for the affection of Patience Walker, and all they do is score points against one another and grow irritable. Look, there’s Professor Shaw and Mungo Dalzell: are they good enough for you?’
‘I suppose so, though I did not come all the way up here to talk about philosophy or theology,’ George grumbled. ‘I want to talk to pretty girls.’
Unrepentant, Charles guided his brother over to where Professor Shaw was standing near the fire with Mungo Dalzell, each of them nursing a glass of wine as if they did not intend to drink. Professor Shaw beamed up at Charles as he came over.
‘I believe you may have met my brother, George.’ Charles presented him just in case, and all three men bowed low. Beside George’s splendour, the two academics looked very shabby, but rather more comfortable. ‘May I enquire after Mrs. Shaw, sir?’ Charles asked. Professor Shaw looked pleased.
‘She is very well, very well indeed, in general,’ he said, ‘but disappointed not to be here this evening. She has had much discomfort today, and is constrained to stay at home with her feet up. Her mother is with her, though.’
‘I believe that is a great comfort at a time like this,’ Mungo Dalzell said sagely, and they all nodded, three bachelors and a man to be a father for the first time.
‘Her time of trial is at hand,’ Professor Shaw went on, ‘but she is young and healthy, and there is no reason, no reason at all why she should not survive it well.’ Again they nodded, and George added a little sigh, as of sympathy with the whole female race.
‘Cats are so much more simple,’ came a voice, and they looked about to find Professor Urquhart hovering at the edge of their circle. ‘They vanish into a corner, and within a day or two are hunting again, and in the mean time have produced any number of offspring at one go. Have you seen this extraordinary watercolour, Mungo?’
He led Mungo Dalzell off to view, with apparent derision, some work of art on Professor Keith’s drawing room wall, leaving George and Charles with Professor Shaw. Charles nodded towards Mungo’s back.
‘Is he all right now, sir?’ he asked.
Professor Shaw frowned.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘He has gloomy moments, but they seem to be overcome by a visit to the College Chapel. I do not think I have ever seen him there so much before: I think before he considered it a somewhat Papist edifice, but just now it seems to give him great consolation. Perhaps he will be drawn back into the fold of the established Church, and good will have come of the whole thing in the end.’
‘Excuse me,’ said George suddenly, ‘- an acquaintance.’ He bowed hurriedly to Professor Shaw, and vanished.
The drawing room was really very crowded now, and there were few seats to be had. Charles glanced round to see where George could have gone, and to his surprise realised that the Sporting Set were amongst the guests.
Alison must have strayed from the door into the body of the room, and at that moment Picket Irving was presenting her with a box of sweetmeats. He was on his own: Rab Fisher was near one of the windows, smiling his vague but handsome smile at George, and Boxie was near the fireplace, watching Picket with burning eyes. Picket seemed to feel his gaze: he smiled his lupine smile and turned to wave Boxie over. He seemed to be trying to persuade Alison to eat one of the sweetmeats there and then, but she, with a polite smile, was flapping her hand in denial. Boxie, too, was refusing to yield to Picket’s will, and half-turned away, though he watched still. Alison had not noticed Boxie, for she was concentrating on trying to escape from Picket without being actually rude. Charles could see the broad smile fix on her face, stiffly, while she turned and twisted the bracelets on her arms, eyes downcast, feet edging away.
Charles turned to look at Boxie again, and was surprised to see Peter Keith hurrying over towards his erstwhile sparring-partner with a welcoming hand outstretched. Since Picket had made it clear to Charles that he, Rab and Boxie were not invited to Professor Keith’s soirée, Peter Keith’s clear enthusiasm seemed even more unlikely, and Charles moved over to his brother George to share the gossip about the fight.
No supper as such was to be served, but little trays were laid about the room containing pastries and other manageable food, and they were occasionally replenished by the maid under Professor Keith’s watchful eye: it was not unknown for impoverished students to starve themselves for a few days to make the most of his largesse, a practice he had no wish to encourage. George, who had no excuse, had annexed one of the plates and he and Rab were making neat surgical excursions into its contents at an unnatural rate, gossiping as they went. Charles broke in at a good moment, when they both had their mouths full.
‘You see Peter Keith’s fine nose?’
George glanced around, trying to locate Peter. Rab had no need to, and laughed.
‘Aye, a grand one, is it not?’
‘Did you hear how it happened?’ Charles asked.
‘Ouch,’ said George, catching a glimpse of it. ‘That looks fresh. What was it?’
Charles looked at Rab to confirm his story.
‘Peter attacked Boxie this afternoon in Mutty’s Wynd, and had to be dragged off him. What was it all about, Rab?’
Rab looked completely blank.
‘Boxie did it?’ he said. ‘He never told us. Why would he do that?’
‘Well, Peter was giving him laldy,’ said Charles. ‘He had no choice. He was down on the ground with his back against the wall.’
‘Grand!’ said George. ‘I wish I’d seen that!’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t know,’ said Charles to Rab. ‘Boxie took him up to your lodgings to wash his face –‘
‘Boxie did what? To a man who had just laid into him?’
‘The wind seemed to go out of Peter after a minute or two, and he apologised to Boxie, and all was sweetness and light,’ Charles explained, though he did not understand it himself. ‘Anyway, you mustn’t have been in. There was blood everywhere. You were sure to have noticed.’
‘No, I was out this afternoon – with Picket. We were out,’ said Rab, with slightly unnecessary emphasis.
‘They seem friendly enough now, anyway,’ said George, watching the two men talking together near the fire. Peter had his hand on Boxie’s shoulder in an affectionate manner, but the talk seemed to be of a serious nature: they were staring at the floor, frowning, and talking out of the corners of their mouths at each other. No one nearby was paying them any attention. Nor was George, after a second or two, for there was a piano in the bay of the big window, and Alison Keith was turning the pages as Patience Walker began to play.
There was nothing frivolous about Patience Walker’s performance. She had the air of a girl who knew she had to have some accomplishment and had chosen this one, had devoted to it precisely the amount of time it took for her to be proficient, and had then spent her time on more useful things. She played a suitable piece of music, as it had been written on the paper with neither error nor embellishment, smiling pleasantly but not excessively as she did it, and did not sing. When she had finished, she thanked Alison for her help, raised an eyebrow and gave a small curtsey at the applause she received, and returned to her seat between her mamma and Thomas Seaton. If she tossed a little glance at Allan Bonar as she passed him, it was probably also for purely practical purposes.
Bonar, presumably instructed as her father’s assistant, was to turn the pages for Alison Keith’s performance, though there were other more eager candidates for the role: George was almost panting to dash to the piano, but Charles, trying to teach him decorum as he would teach a spaniel restraint, had both hands on his arm. Instead George had to content himself by watching adoringly from the other window, resting his head on the full curtain, and tapping one discreet foot in time to the music.
This in itself was a feat of devotion, as Miss Keith did not choose to allow exact rhythm to cramp her sense of expression. She sang as well as she played, in a thready soprano that reminded Charles of the wind
on sand dunes, hissing slightly when she went too fast. Her eyes were mostly on Boxie, though her expression was ambiguous. He noticed that the sweetmeat box and George’s tray of crystallised fruit were both on top of the piano, both untouched. No wonder Alison was thin. He smiled.
Other girls took Alison’s place when she had finished, and played on, but conversation had started quietly again amongst the less musically inclined. Professor Keith had watched his daughter from the doorway, and was about to go over to her now but he was intercepted by his son, Peter, and Boxie. Charles watched, letting his mind drift to a German flute solo. Professor Keith looked astonished, and then managed a strained smile as he acknowledged Boxie’s bow. Charles wondered what was going on, particularly when the three men, after a moment’s discussion, turned and left the room.
He looked round further. Professor Shaw, now seated beside Mungo Dalzell, was trying a discreet look at his pocket watch, probably wanting to return to his expectant wife. Mungo Dalzell appeared to be enjoying the music, a slight smile on his face, arms folded as he leaned back in his chair with his long legs sticking out in front of him. Professor Urquhart was poised by the mantelpiece, a glass of wine in his elegant hand, adjusting some invisible imperfection in his wig as the firelight twinkled on his coat buttons. He seemed to have been in conversation with Lord Scoggie, who was at the other side of the fireplace like the other half of the fire irons, gazing into the distance. Thomas had left Patience Walker and was propped against the wall, staring hungrily at Lord Scoggie as if he himself was the living he had it in his power to bestow. Mrs. Walker, observing that Allan Bonar had returned not to his own seat but to Thomas’, beside her daughter, did not look pleased, but was not in a position to do much about it, and Bonar and her daughter talked quietly between themselves as the music played on.
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 14