Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1)

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘Next time we’ll take up a collection,’ Picket said solemnly, and at that even Boxie laughed. ‘But that wasn’t all the joke, was it, Boxie? There’s more to come!’

  ‘Oh, what?’ asked George eagerly, but Picket tapped the side of his thin nose, eyes half-closed. He looked remarkably like an underfed goat, and for a second Charles shivered. Picket glanced at him and grinned, as if he knew.

  ‘We’d better be getting back for our breakfast, George,’ Charles suggested, feeling like a coward but unable to persuade himself to stay. There was something about Picket this morning that was even worse than usual. George frowned, but Charles took him by the elbow. ‘Mrs. Walker will be eager to see you. Remember how good her oatcakes are?’ A beatific light, rarely associated with anything but food, spread abruptly over George’s face, and it was suddenly easy to bow to the Sporting Set and guide George away along the damp sand and back to the town. Charles could feel Picket watching them all the way, though he knew it made no sense, and he would not look back. He only relaxed when they were safely round the corner and out of sight, heading for the town gate at the bottom of North Street.

  Even North Street seemed quiet and still in the early morning: a few maids scrubbed steps, and those sent out to the wells for water did not linger, eyes still full of sleep. A cart taking flour to the bakery in Mutty’s Wynd sat in a little white cloud of its own by the side of the road, while the driver hauled the sacks in silence into the lane. Hens wandered undisturbed across the highway, sharing forgotten food scraps with rock doves from the trees nearby. A dog on a doorstep did not even look up as they passed, but hid his nose under one paw, and a cat, pacing along a high stone wall, ignored a sparrow as it flew just above it. Only the crows disturbed the peace: a flock beat across the sky, cawing urgently, and as one detached himself from his fellows they cried out to it in alarm. Charles looked up. The crow flew over, close to their heads, then swerved and swept over the wall where the cat was. It vanished from sight.

  Just at that moment, Charles noticed a figure in the distance, tall and narrow, sweeping down the street towards them in a black gown. For a second, he thought it was another crow, leaving the flock. Instead, it was Professor Urquhart. He was beside them in an instant.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, bowing almost without stopping as they paused to greet him.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ Charles replied. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Matter? Well, now, that’s a moot point.’ The Professor had overshot them and now stood facing up the street, back the way he had come. His feet were eager to be away. ‘Matter enough, I suppose, and it’ll be round the town by dinner, if not before. It concerns Professor Keith.’

  ‘What has he done now?’ asked George, incautiously: his mind was on Mrs. Walker’s oatcakes.

  ‘Well, he’s died, that’s what he’s done, not to put too fine a point on it.’

  ‘Died?’ said Charles.

  ‘But he can’t have,’ added George. ‘We were at his party last night.’

  ‘I’m afraid that even such an honour as that could not protect him,’ said Professor Urquhart sarcastically. ‘He is indeed dead. I am on my way for the physician – why on earth do we not have a medical professor? – and in the mean time, Professor Shaw is with Mrs. Keith. He might be grateful for a little help, you know.’

  ‘Of course: we shall go at once,’ Charles agreed.

  ‘Farewell, then. I shall be back directly – tam vicina iubent nos vivere Mausolea, cum doceant ipsos posse perire deos!’ he added, bowing as he swept on down the street.

  ‘I suppose that was Greek,’ said George, looking grumpy.

  ‘Latin. Martial. ‘The neighbouring tombs order us to live, since they teach us that the gods themselves can die.’ I think we can take it he meant it ironically.’ He watched the Humanist for a second, and then turned back up the hill.

  ‘We don’t really have to go now, do we?’ George pleaded. ‘After all, Keith won’t be going anywhere.’

  ‘Alison may be in want of comfort, of course,’ Charles murmured, quite as if he had not heard his brother, and walked on. He was not surprised to find that George was right beside him.

  To anyone who did not know, the rambling white house with its shutters closed looked as if it was still undisturbed after the excitement of the night before. The daffodils in the garden were a little battered, but the wind was combing them out again and it would not be long until the damage done by Picket and Rab would be gone. Charles knocked quietly on the door, and then thought that mourning did not necessarily make servants more acute of hearing. He was about to knock again at a more normal volume, when the door opened, and Barbara the maid, her apron untied, appeared.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, apparently unable to recognise them.

  Charles tried to look sympathetic.

  ‘I am very sorry to hear about the misfortune which has affected the family, and we should like to present our cards.’ He nudged George hard, and they both presented the little scraps of pasteboard that could intrude where they could not. ‘Also,’ Charles added, as she accepted them, ‘Professor Urquhart said that Professor Shaw was here, and might be in need of our assistance.’

  For a moment she looked even more blank, then her face cleared.

  ‘He’s in the parlour,’ she said, with a sense of achievement, and stepped back to let them in. In the pleasant little room in which they had met Mrs Keith and her daughter only a couple of weeks ago, Professor Shaw was waiting.

  ‘Oh, my dear Charles,’ said Shaw, as Barbara backed out. ‘My dear George. This is a very terrible thing!’

  ‘How are the family?’ George asked hurriedly.

  ‘That is another matter again. Mrs. Keith is terribly shocked, of course. Peter is with her constantly.’

  ‘And Miss Keith?’ George persisted. Professor Shaw looked at him strangely for a second, and then quickly turned to the window. One blind had been lifted, and in the distance they could see the summer house.

  ‘Christopher Urquhart offered to go for the doctor – did you meet him?’ They nodded. ‘It seemed the best thing.’

  ‘But for whom? Who is sick?’ George’s broad face was ashen. Professor Shaw looked up at him again, nervously.

  ‘For Miss Keith. Did not Professor Urquhart say? She has been poisoned, too.’

  ‘Poisoned!’ Charles exclaimed, as George sagged on to a chair. ‘Steady, George: we may be needed. But Professor Urquhart said nothing about poison!’

  ‘Well, that’s what it looks like,’ said Professor Shaw, apologetically, as though it had all been his own idea. Charles found his head was swimming, and touched the back of George’s chair to steady himself. It did not help: the chair was shaking.

  ‘But what kind of poison? And how? And how do they know?’

  Professor Shaw signalled to him to sit down, and perched himself on the very edge of the sofa. He fidgeted with his hands.

  ‘Christopher Urquhart and I were supposed to be meeting him this morning to talk about – about some students. The maid said he was in his study, and we should go up. When we knocked on the door there was no reply, and Christopher – Professor Urquhart – tried the handle. I did say he shouldn’t,’ he added longingly, as though none of this would have happened if Professor Urquhart had paid more attention to his manners. ‘There’s a kind of campaign bed in the study, and he’s lying on it. Mostly.’

  Charles swallowed hard. Professor Shaw met his eye, and they shared a horrified look.

  ‘Was he – already dead?’ George asked, unexpectedly. He did not look up from the floor, and Charles wondered if he was going to be sick.

  ‘Oh, yes, very much so,’ Professor Shaw assured him.

  ‘But what had done it? Had he eaten something, or what?’ Charles asked.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said Professor Shaw. ‘I asked Mrs. Keith, very gently, because, you know, it could be in anything, and anyone else could take some – well, Miss Alison must have, I suppose, too.’ Her
e George groaned softly, and Charles put out a hand to rest on his shoulder. Professor Keith looked curiously at him. ‘I hope – is there an understanding? If so, I am very sorry to have broken the news so badly.’

  ‘There is nothing fixed,’ Charles reassured him. ‘You could not have known. But he has – hopes, I suppose.’ George’s head sank lower between his hands. ‘What did both Professor Keith and his daughter eat that no one else touched, not even the servants?’ he asked, his mind already past the shock and on to questions.

  ‘As to that, I don’t know,’ said Professor Shaw. ‘As I said, Mrs. Keith is not – at her best at the moment, and with’ he lowered his voice and nodded towards George ‘with her daughter so ill, too. But Peter said he saw someone give Alison a box of something during the evening, and there are sweetmeats and candied fruits, both in pretty boxes, on Professor Keith’s study desk.’

  George flung up his head and gasped. Charles stared at him, and then remembered: when George had arrived, he had presented Alison Keith with a box of candied fruits. But surely they had been harmless? He remembered thinking that the Letho cook had probably made them, and nothing unwholesome came out of Letho’s kitchens. Then he remembered something else: Picket Irving, bowing very low, proffering a pretty box of sweetmeats to Alison Keith, and trying to persuade her to take one. He thought of Picket’s hideous grin that morning, and felt sick.

  ‘You were there, Charles,’ Professor Shaw was saying quietly. ‘Do you remember anything? Did anyone give him the sweets?’

  Charles stood up slowly, thinking hard. George was his brother. The Sporting Set, however unappealing, were his fellow students. He could not believe that they had intended murder – injury, perhaps, but that was all. What would happen to them if they had accidentally killed Professor Keith as part of one of their pranks? They were only young, only his age. He avoided looking at Professor Shaw, but he knew that the lecturer was watching him. He glanced at George, and wondered what he knew. He remembered the Sporting Set on the sands, remembered Boxie’s look of dismay, guilt, confusion: Boxie’s look, the same look, last night when he saw Picket offer the box of sweetmeats to Alison. He remembered Rab’s delight, half-innocent, half-vicious, not a strong enough mind to know truly the difference between entertainment and evil; and he remembered Picket’s face, Picket’s sick, laughing, leering face, as he pressed the sweetmeats on Alison, as he gloated this morning, as he read the very thoughts in Charles’ mind. If Picket could be guilty, but not the others, he thought … could he? He did not know the niceties of the law. A judge would take one look at Picket and send for the hangman. Perhaps he would be right. Charles went to the window and stared out at the summerhouse, remembering the day he and George had stood there with Alison and Mrs. Keith – with a widow, and a fatherless daughter, herself perhaps near death. He saw the crows again, swooping in a low cloud across the garden, black against the beaten daffodils, and then up into the dark yew trees that nearly hid them but for their ceaseless cawing. They seemed to be waiting for something.

  He turned back to Professor Shaw.

  ‘I saw Picket Irving giving the sweetmeats to Miss Alison, so I suppose he brought them,’ he said, and sat down again near his brother.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Professor Shaw.

  Charles nodded. He folded his fingers in front of him, elbows on his knees, half in prayer. George stared at him, expressionless.

  ‘Picket Irving was no admirer of Professor Keith, but I cannot see him intending to kill him – can you?’ Professor Shaw asked. Charles shook his head. ‘It may have been an accident, I suppose,’ Professor Shaw went on, a little hope entering his voice. ‘He worked on natural philosophy – some poisonous substance, perhaps? Arsenic, now: they say that’s very poisonous …’

  He had a look of optimistic desperation in his eye, and Charles suddenly realised that Shaw was out of his depth. It was a shock. He had always recognised that Shaw was a little reluctant to be part of the real world, but to find him thus adrift in it, without direction, was distressing: Professor Shaw actually seemed to be looking to him for reassurance, which Charles did not feel ready to give. It did not seem right: he was only a student.

  George was not being very helpful, sitting heaped like a misbuilt stookie with his arms flopping down between his knees, a look of fear on his face. Professor Shaw, little vulnerable frog, perched on the sofa, twiddling his fingers and looking helpless. What did they want him to do? What could he do?

  ‘Maybe I should go and see Picket and friends,’ he said at last, into a mature silence. Instantly Professor Shaw brightened.

  ‘That’s a splendid idea. That’s really a very good idea, Charles: you know where they live, and everything.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea?’ Charles asked, suddenly not at all sure it was. What on earth would he say to them?

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Professor Shaw happily. ‘Far better you than the town sergeant: it’s more of a University matter, isn’t it?’ Charles forbore to point out that if it were a University matter, it might be better to send Ramsay Rickarton, maybe with some of his janitors with large sticks. What if Picket attacked him?

  ‘Will you come with me, George?’ he asked instead, but George looked up at him blankly.

  ‘No, thank you, I shall stay here.’ He stood up, slowly, shaking his heavy head as if the contents would settle down into some more manageable form. ‘I shall stay here,’ he repeated, ‘in case they can make use of me. I should consider it a very great honour – a very great honour – if I can be of service in any small way.’ He blundered his way to the end of the sentence without seeming to have much awareness of having started it, and stopped. Then he turned to Charles with a pleading stare that shook Charles to the heart. ‘If her father is dead already, then it must be quick acting, must it not?’ he said quickly. ‘So if she isn’t dead already,’ his voice shook at the words, ‘then maybe – maybe she will be all right? Isn’t that so?’ He gasped, as if he found breathing hard. ‘I shall stay here, in case she needs me.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Charles was hurrying back down North Street towards the sands when he saw Boxie, Picket and Rab just turning in to the end of Mutty’s Wynd where their bunk was. He broke into a run, and caught up with them at the bottom of the stairs leading to their rooms.

  ‘Murray! Here amongst us again so soon?’ said Picket grandly. ‘Come in for a bite of breakfast, do: we have just bought bread, and our bunkwife is grand with the cold ham and beef.’

  ‘I –‘ Charles hesitated. He was starving, he suddenly realised, but was he in a position to accept their hospitality, given what he had come to say to them? He decided quickly that it all depended on how he said it, and nodded. ‘I should be delighted.’

  The little house was dark and hot after the cool fresh light outdoors, and Charles was glad to see Boxie open a window. The air did not move much in the lane outside, though, and it provided little relief. Indoors, their shared living room’s dirty white-washed walls were bare except for a series of political cartoons, less notable for their consistent support of any particular party than for the liberal portrayal of unlikely women which they shared. There were no curtains, only shutters, and the floor was decorated by a carpet so small Charles assumed it had been made as a cover for a chest of drawers. The whole room echoed sharply. Charles stood, awkward, while they disposed of their trenchers and rearranged the sparse furniture to have four seats at the small round table, and Rab ducked quickly underneath it to replace the folded newspaper that held it steady. In a few moments their bunkwife, an angry-looking woman with movements like a Fife coalhewar’s pick, flicked a cloth on to the table and distributed the ham, beef and mustard before them, followed by a tall pot of coffee. She left them again like a blade withdrawn, and slammed the door.

  ‘Dear Mrs. Mutch,’ said Picket with a smile. ‘The sweetest of landladies.’

  ‘She’s not too keen on having us about, that’s the trouble,’ said Boxie, who seem
ed if anything more relaxed than he had earlier. ‘Here, take a seat, Murray.’

  Charles sat, finding the table a little too low for his frame. Picket seemed to have the same problem.

  ‘And to what do we owe this honour?’ he asked, passing Charles the bread which he had now sliced. Charles took a piece.

  ‘Well,’ he said, trying to decide how to begin, ‘I come with some news, though you may already have heard it: if you have not, you should hear it, for it may nearly affect you.’ How would Cicero have tackled this? That was easy, he thought, on reflection: that wily old conspirator-catcher would point a bold accusing finger at the party, outline the case against them in an eloquent, well-rounded and probably pre-written speech, and then call in the heavily-armed guard he had sensibly arranged outside. He would, of course, also be sure that his accusation was just.

  ‘Oh, aye?’ said Picket, with a brief glance at Charles. ‘Pass the mustard, would you, Rab?’

  ‘It concerns,’ said Charles, trying to look at them all at the same time, ‘the Keith household.’

  Picket laughed.

  ‘News from there? How can that nearly affect us, unless he is on his way here with Ramsay Rickarton and the town sergeant together?’

  Boxie, however, had paled.

  ‘They are – all well, are they?’ he asked, as if it was an effort to get the words out. Rab and Picket doubled up with laughter.

  ‘Is Peter well, he means!’ cried Rab. ‘Poor Peter – is he lovesick?’

  At this extraordinary example of Rab’s ready wit, Picket laughed even harder, and had to lay down his knife and fork, fanning himself with his napkin. Boxie went scarlet, but kept his gaze on Charles, who for a moment did not know how to answer him. What was Boxie expecting? He waited for Picket and Rab to recover.

  ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘only Mrs. Keith and Peter could be considered to be well.’

  ‘It’s worked!’ shrieked Rab. ‘She ate it!’