Almost opposite it, past the end of Castle Wynd, some well-meaning citizen had placed two large sandstone boulders and a partially-smoothed log, to serve as a seat. It was Thomas’ favourite spot on a pleasant day: the wall against which the seat was set was a high one, with yew trees bundled at the top of it and dropping, in season, their jelly-red berries around his feet, and the view of the bay and the castle as the cliffs dropped away from the other side of the path was as calming as the breeze was refreshing. If he had ever taken the trouble to work out that the high wall in whose reflected warmth he basked was the wall of Professor Keith’s garden, it seemed not to bother him, and here Charles found him now, notebook fluttering forgotten in his hand, head back, snoring gently with his gown wrapped round him.
‘Chemistry cancelled, then?’ asked Charles, rather more loudly than was kind. Thomas jumped, and dropped his notebook in the mud, and leaned forward, cursing, to pick it up before he replied.
‘No chemistry. No Allan Bonar,’ he explained briefly. ‘We sat around for a bit then gave up. Is it time for Latin, then?’
‘Nearly.’ Charles sat at the other end of the rough bench and stared out at the sea. The sky was high and clear, the palest of blues, and the ruined castle had a bleak, battered look. Legend had it that there had been a great feast in the banqueting hall one night, as the storm blew and the rain lashed, and the whole banqueting hall, guests, feast and all, had crashed down the cliff into the sea. The ruins had the air, today at least, of having been taught a lesson.
‘What do you know about arsenic, Thomas?’ Charles asked eventually. He was not looking at him, but felt Thomas shift quickly in surprise.
‘From Chemistry, you mean? Well, er ... it’s poisonous, but some people take it in small doses for years for stomach troubles. Wait, though: that wasn’t from Chemistry class, that was what Allan Bonar was saying the other night, at Professor Keith’s party.’
‘So he was.’ Charles was thoughtful. ‘So you haven’t done any work in class on arsenic?’ Both Picket and Boxie did Chemistry – Rab’s father could not afford it.
‘Not that I can remember. We did that bit in Latin, though, when we read Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars.’
‘Yes.’ Everyone did Latin, overseen by Professor Urquhart, no matter what year they were in. Everyone read Suetonius. How many people knew you could find arsenic in Sallies Chapel, though? The Sporting Set regarded the Chapel more as a prominent place with a good tower for hanging out embarrassing objects during their pranks than as a place of worship, but they were almost always there for Sunday services as they were expected to be. Thomas himself was always there, as if there were some exchange arranged whereby the more services he attended the more likely he was to become a minister himself. The staff, of course, had to set an example: Professor Urquhart, Allan Bonar, the Principal, the Chancellor, were all there week in, week out: Professor Shaw attended the Town Kirk with his wife, as Professor Keith had done. But the Chapel was there, central to their lives geographically, if not spiritually.
‘You didn’t happen to see,’ he began slowly, ‘a tray with a claret jug on it? On the landing at Professor Keith’s, just as we were leaving the party.’
Thomas thought about it, wiry eyebrows drawn close together, his eyes half-closed against the wind.
‘I think so,’ he said at last. ‘There was something else on the tray, too: biscuits. They looked nice. I nearly took one, thinking they were for the guests.’
Charles half-smiled: anything to eke out the College meals.
‘You didn’t notice anyone else near the tray, did you? Anyone touching it, or touching anything on it?’
‘Oh, come on, it was last Friday! I never remember anything like that!’
‘Well, where were you standing when you saw it? Were you waiting to say goodbye to Mrs. Keith, or were you on the landing waiting for your coat?’
‘No, I didn’t say goodbye to Mrs. Keith. I squeezed out round the queue. I was waiting for Miss Walker. Remember, we all walked back to your bunk together, a great procession of us!’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘So I just noticed the biscuits when I was looking round for Miss Walker, and then Mrs. Walker came out so I knew she couldn’t be far behind, and then I remember seeing someone lifting the jug ... oh, who was it?’
The frown was back for half a second, before they heard footsteps above the hum of the wind, and both turned. It was Mungo Dalzell.
‘Good day to you both, gentlemen! No Latin today?’
‘Oh, heavens, is it that time already?’ Charles scrambled to his feet, bowing to Mr. Dalzell. Thomas began to gather up his untidy notebook.
‘I heard Sallies ring the hour five minutes ago at least,’ Mungo looked on with kindly dismay. ‘With everything in a guddle today, though, I’m sure Professor Urquhart will not be much concerned if you are a little late. Shall I walk with you?’
‘Please do, sir,’ said Charles politely, positive that Mungo Dalzell was only ensuring that they did go to class and did not fetch up in a coffee house. They set off at a smart pace back along the Scores.
‘I have just been to pay my respects to poor Mrs. Keith,’ said Mungo Dalzell. ‘It is very difficult to know what to say on such occasions.’
Thomas and Charles nodded, each trying to look as if he had a wealth of experience of such adult things.
‘Poor lady,’ Dalzell went on. ‘She has two kindly children, but they must be so overwhelmed themselves with their father’s death, and Miss Alison so ill, even now ... I believe her own family are all dead. Who does she have to turn to?’
‘Professor Urquhart and Professor Shaw were being very kind on Saturday,’ Charles ventured.
‘Of course, of course, I had forgotten. But Professor Shaw has his own worries: perhaps Professor Urquhart is better placed to help, but he is not – forgive my indiscretion! - perhaps the most sympathetic of men.’ He smiled at them, knowing they were unlikely to betray him to Urquhart, and they smiled back, knowing it too. Mungo had time to be kinder than Professor Shaw, Charles thought. Professor Shaw spent so much time being anxious about whether or not he would do the right thing that he had no chance to do anything. Mungo Dalzell simply went ahead and did it, unselfconsciously.
‘Is there much hope of finding the murderer, do you think, sir?’ he asked. Thomas coughed. Mungo looked severe.
‘Oh, yes, I should think so,’ he said firmly. ‘In a small town like this, it would be very difficult for anyone guilty of a serious crime to escape detection for very long, surely.’
Thomas dropped his notebook, and they had to stop while he gathered its errant pages once again.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Charles when they were moving again, though he was a little disappointed to think that someone else might solve the puzzle before he did. ‘I should not like to think of others suffering the same way.’ Then he thought of George. ‘But what if it was an outsider, sir? Someone who did not belong to the town?’
‘But Mr. Murray,’ said Mungo kindly, ‘as I understand it, the poison was introduced in a claret jug which was on the landing at the end of last Friday’s party. The murderer must be of the Keith household, which is unthinkable, or among the party guests. Did you not study Logic in your Semi year?’
‘Yes, sir, of course,’ said Charles humbly.
‘Maybe it was Lord Scoggie,’ Thomas suggested, with a suspicion of bitterness.
‘Now, Mr. Seaton, we should be very careful what we say in jest, should we not?’ Mungo grinned, and so, after a moment, did Thomas.
‘So they are sure the arsenic was in the claret jug.’ Charles returned to his own concerns. Surely he would have noticed George tampering with the jug?
‘I believe so. The town constable took it away for the apothecary to examine, I believe. The wine glass, I hear, was broken.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles blandly, ‘Professor Urquhart stepped on it.’
‘Indeed,’ was Mungo’s equally bland response. T
hey did not look at each other. ‘Well, here we are: no doubt Professor Urquhart is waiting for you. I shall see you later for Hebrew, Thomas, yes?’
Thomas nodded and bowed, and they scuttled in to the Latin classroom, to face Professor Urquhart’s well-practised sarcasm.
Christopher Urquhart was not on form, however. He nodded at the two of them from his desk at the front of the room, and while they found spaces at the end of the back form he toed a coal in the dismally dark fireplace, as if the lesson had not even begun. He seemed abstracted. Thomas, dropping his notebook on the floor in his haste to be ready, made him jump, and he glanced up at the twenty or so magistrands before him, and down at his notes.
‘Ah ... Juvenal. Yes,’ he began, with none of his usual confidence. He looked out of the window. In the row in front of him, Charles noticed the three members of the Sporting Set seated in unaccustomed attentiveness, not even taking advantage of Professor Urquhart’s distraction to pass a note or scribble an irreverent cartoon. It seemed that by being murdered, Professor Keith had, for a time at least, achieved a level of good behaviour he could never manage when he was alive.
‘Little is known of Juvenal. He lived and worked in the period of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian, and it is generally agreed that he spent some period of his life in exile, and was more prosperous in old age than he was in his younger years, a blessing, no doubt. No need to write that last bit.’
The class paused, pens over ink wells.
‘His Satires are sixteen in number, and tradition divides them into five books. They are –‘ he stopped, as if searching for the right word, though he was as usual reading a prepared text. ‘They are bitter and cynical, the work of a man to whom life has dealt nothing but the lower cards of a minor suit, to whom the rich and powerful are corrupt and vicious enemies, and to whom women have been sour, cruel and disdainful. In the sixth Satire you will find a full denunciation of women: a good woman is a rara avis, a rare bird. Consider this: there are twenty of you, and more in the first, second and third years. How likely is it that each of you will find a rara avis of your own? One untainted by nagging, possessiveness, small-mindedness, chronic stupidity or gross ugliness? And if you are lucky enough to catch sight of such a fowl, who is neither too old nor too young, too high nor too low, too open with men or too shy, the chances are high that she is already in another man’s cage, singing for him and eating seed from his fingers.’
Several members of the class looked up, grinning, Rab included, ready to laugh at one of Urquhart’s frequent displays of wit. But Urquhart himself was not laughing. He pushed his chair back from his desk and rose in a movement too sharp to be graceful. Again he stared out of the window, hands clasped tightly behind him: the sun, smothered now by rain clouds that the wind was flinging at it, blurred his profile and picked out grey shadows amongst the white folds of his cravat and wig. The glass in the window shook and squeaked. He looked as if he were about to spit.
The slightest chink of a student’s pen against his inkwell roused him, and he turned abruptly.
‘The Principal has asked me to announce that Professor Keith’s funeral will take place tomorrow from half past ten at his house. Morning classes will be cancelled. He – the Principal – expects all of you to be there and not to eat more than is polite.’ He pressed his fingertips together close to his stomach, and avoided looking at anyone in particular. ‘I, on the other hand, require a translation from each of you of Juvenal’s third Satire, and a version in Latin of Dr. Johnson’s poem, ‘London’, which was inspired by it. Points will be awarded for good vocabulary and deducted for untidy work: no doubt for some people the one will balance the other. Now, some further words about the first Satire.’
Pens were redipped and there was a collective shuffle as the class relaxed: whatever had been amiss with their lecturer seemed to have passed, and they copied out their dictata obediently as he explained the poem to them in the manner to which they were accustomed, occasionally grinning at his sarcasms. Latin class, for Charles anyway, usually passed quite quickly, and today was no exception. It was soon one o’clock, and the air was filled with the distinct scent of rabbit stew emanating from the college kitchens. The few who lived in college caught one another’s eyes with looks of resignation, as Sallies rang the hour and Professor Urquhart wound up his remarks. Thomas packed up his notebooks very unenthusiastically, no doubt thinking of the rabbit stew, and Charles, waiting for him at the front of the classroom, nodded to Urquhart.
‘I hope Mr. Bonar is well, Professor.’
‘Bonar? Why?’
‘Oh,’ said Thomas, ‘he didn’t come to Chemistry today. No sign of him.’
Urquhart moved towards the door, ushering them out before him. He was frowning.
‘I have no idea. I have not seen him since ... no, he was not even at Chapel yesterday, was he?’
‘Not that I remember,’ Charles agreed.
‘Then I cannot have seen him since Friday night. He lodges near the West Port, does he not? Perhaps he has gone away for a few days: his bunkwife could tell you, no doubt.’
‘Aye, probably,’ said Charles, equally carelessly, though Urquhart looked worried as he left them to meet his dinner.
‘He’s the one I saw with the claret jug,’ said Thomas suddenly.
‘What, Urquhart? I know: he said he had admired it.’
‘No, Allan Bonar. I remember now, because I realised he was waiting for Miss Walker, too.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Charles.
‘Why?’
‘Because it is greatly to Allan Bonar’s advantage that Professor Keith should be out of the way. Allan succeeds to the Chair of Natural Philosophy, has the money to carry out his experiments, and the position to marry Patience Walker.’
The scowl on Thomas’ face would have turned milk sour.
‘The blackyirtly, ill-deedit, meschantly gallow-breid,’ he muttered.
‘Oh, now, don’t hold back, Thomas. You’re among friends here,’ Charles remarked.
‘Huh.’
‘And you should be getting along in case you miss your dinner. It smells good.’
Thomas sniffed bitterly.
‘The last few rabbits in the kingdom must be running scared,’ he said. ‘Here, I have a notion – why don’t we go and see if we can find Allan Bonar instead? If he’s in, his bunkwife might give us a meal.’
Charles laughed.
‘Is that concern for Allan Bonar speaking, or desperation for a good meal?’
‘Why can’t it be both? Just a minute, though: I want to see if I can catch Ramsay Rickarton. My window’s coming out of its frame.’
He trotted over to the Chapel and disappeared inside, leaving Charles to hum to himself till he returned a moment later.
‘Success?’
‘Aye, all done. Come on, then.’
His enthusiasm increasing with every step he took away from the rabbit stew, Thomas led the way out of the gate and down the road. Allan Bonar lived near the West Port, the old gateway out of the city at the west end of South Street, and as they passed the Walkers’ house Charles darted in to excuse himself from dinner and leave his book satchel upstairs. Three minutes further down the road, they found themselves outside a tiny confectionery shop, and went in. The smell of sugar and violets was delicious, and the woman behind the counter looked as if she seldom resisted sampling her merchandise: she was round and red and cheerful, with extraordinarily bad teeth. Charles winced to look at them.
‘Mr. Bonar?’ she said. ‘Aye, he lives up the stair. I havena seen him since ... oh, Friday, I imagine, but he comes and goes as he pleases, ye ken.’
‘Then you don’t cook for him?’ Thomas asked, disappointed.
‘He doesna like to be bound to mealtimes, ye ken,’ she explained, her smile undiminished. ‘Do yous want to see if he’s up there the now?’
‘Would you mind?’ Charles asked.
‘Not a bit of it. On you go, it’s no locked.’
They pu
shed past a curtain at the back of the shop, and found themselves at the foot of a narrow stair. On the landing there were two doors, one to each side. One turned out to lead to Allan Bonar’s bedchamber, and one to his parlour. Though Charles had held his breath as they had opened each door, both rooms were empty of their occupant, dead or alive.
‘I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed,’ he sighed, as they stood looking about the parlour. The bunkwife must have done little to try to mitigate the effects of her lodger’s lifestyle: the place was a dusty mess, with jars of strange substances, branches covered in crispy leaves jammed upright in stone bottles, presumably for his experiments on plants, mashed-up leaves stinking on shallow dishes, books, open and closed, on every chair and shelf. As far as Charles could judge, there was no sign of a struggle in either the parlour or the bedroom. Allan Bonar must have left of his own accord: there was no sign of a coat or hat, but his gown was on the back of his bedroom door, and his usual boots were not to be seen.
‘Well, no chance of a meal here, then,’ said Thomas, looking about for any sign of edible remains.
‘No,’ Charles admitted. ‘We’d better go and find ourselves a bowl of soup somewhere.’
Indecision and meandering led them back to Sallies again, with the intention of eating fish broth further up North Street at one of the places used by the fishermen. Thomas said he would leave his book satchel in his room first, and they went into the yard together.
Death in a Scarlet Gown (Murray of Letho Book 1) Page 22