‘You’ll see. Let’s walk for a little.’ Tessa smiled, pleased with the plan she’d come up with, and they set off west along Heriot Row. They passed several neighbours and Tessa smiled and wished them a good afternoon although she did not stop to exchange introductions.
‘You know so many people. London is so much more anonymous. I barely know the names of the people who have flats in my building.’
‘Edinburgh is a small place. It might be a capital city but gossip flies around as fast as in the most provincial market town. By dinnertime it will be common knowledge that the recently widowed Lady Kilpatrick has been seen out walking with an unknown gentleman, aged around thirty and with the bearing of an officer, albeit one with a very slight limp, and it will be surmised that you sustained that as part of your wartime service. Other people will fill in the gaps and work out that you must have known either James or myself during the war and that, as you’re out in a vaguely social manner with me, it was probably me that you knew. No-one really knows what I did during the war, and that in itself is seen as rather suspicious, and so they’ll make up heaven knows what. You wait and see.’ Tessa knew her city and its inhabitants very well. ‘In a few days, there’s a drinks party at the Inveries’ house. I do hope you’ll come to it with me. It will create the most spectacular gossip.’
‘You enjoy this.’ Bill smiled. ‘You take great pleasure in teasing these people.’
‘Frankly, it is rather fun. I spent far too long trying to please James by being someone I wasn’t. Now, I see no reason not to do as I wish.’
‘I’ll be intrigued to see what stories people come up with. That feeling of belonging must be rather nice in a way though, less impersonal than somewhere like London.’
‘Hmm. You think that now.’ Tessa shook her head. ‘By the by, you and Papa took a while over your port last night. What were you talking about?’
‘You, mostly. He’s worried about all this stirring up memories, which might bring back the problems you had before.’
‘I’ll be fine. These casualty lists are pretty grim but there’s enough distance now that I don’t think it will affect me. When I came home before, I felt as though my efforts had been futile and that all I had to show for them were my injuries. It’s not the same now. I know that what I did was important in some way.’
‘You know this could be dangerous, don’t you? If James was a target then you could be too. We don’t know what the murderer’s motive is.’
‘That’s not likely though, is it? Whatever James and McKenzie got up to it was nothing to do with me.’ Tessa thought about this. ‘I feel dreadful saying it, but this has given me a sense of purpose that I’ve lacked since I came home. I thought that the war had broken me, but actually I think it was the making of me. It’s as though I’ve missed making a difference, missed the excitement even.’
Tessa turned into Royal Circus and waved a hand at a house in the middle of the terrace.
‘We’re home. Do come in.’ Tessa fished in her pocket for the key and skipped up the steps to the front door. ‘I’ll tell you my plan.’
Chapter Eighteen
It was the first time that Tessa had shown anyone other than her parents how her house had been decorated. James had been completely uninterested, save for enquiring about the wine cellars and ensuring that there was somewhere to store his shotguns and fly-fishing rods.
The hallway, curling up the inside of the building, was full of light from the glass cupola on the roof, but that was intensified by the white paint on walls, doorframes, cornices and skirting boards. Bill looked dazzled by it and Tessa knew that for someone used to the heaviness of Victorian decorating and the only slightly less cluttered style of the Edwardian era, it was quite a shocking digression. But instead of leading him through the white rooms, she turned down the stairs to the basement, a space painted in more traditional shades.
‘This is the part of the house I particularly want you to see.’ She opened the door at the bottom and they were in a long hall that ran from front to back. Tessa walked along this central corridor and indicated the rooms. ‘Sitting room, bedroom, another bedroom, kitchen, housekeeper’s room, laundry room. It’s for the staff, you see – it’s completely separate apart from that door. They can have their privacy down here when they’re not working and so can I, upstairs. And I’m only going to have a cook-housekeeper and a housemaid. I can engage a daily woman to help with the rough. But you see what I’m thinking, don’t you?’
‘Not really. Do you want me to be your housekeeper?’ Bill raised an eyebrow, smiling.
‘Of course not, you idiot.’ Tessa retraced her mental steps. ‘But it’s a separate flat. If we put some furniture down here it will be very nice, don’t you think? I can put the staff on the top floor instead. You can stay down here.’
‘I can’t see that your dear mama will be ecstatic about my moving into your house.’
‘So we won’t tell her. She’ll think that you’re staying in some fearfully respectable hotel. Some of the furniture is arriving tomorrow and the rest the day after. I can move in myself in a few days.’
‘And when you do, you hope that your mother won’t notice that I’m living in the basement? And that there’s only a door and a couple of flights of stairs between our bedrooms?’
‘Absolutely. She’s not very observant.’ Bill pulled a face as though he doubted that very much, despite Tessa’s confidence. ‘Besides, we don’t have time to search out somewhere else for you to stay. We have a murderer to catch.’
Irritated by Bill’s hesitation when she’d thought that he would immediately see the sense of her suggestion, Tessa turned back towards the stairs to show him the rest of the house. She led him into the dining room with its bare floorboards and enormous chandelier. Then she took him into the morning room beyond that, at the rear of the house, and through another door into a tiny kitchen.
‘The proper kitchen is downstairs as you saw, but I wanted to be able to make a cup of tea without having to ring for a maid. Come and see the rest.’
Bill followed her up to the first floor and into the large back room with its tall sash windows looking out to the Firth of Forth. It was lined with bookshelves and had a black slate mantelpiece.
‘This will be my library. I have a sofa to go in front of the fire and my desk will be by the windows. And here,’ – she flung open the double doors flanked by marble pillars – ‘is the drawing room.’
It was very similar in proportions to the drawing room at Heriot Row, with three windows to the front stretching almost the height of the room and a huge marble fireplace, veined with pale grey. Empty of furniture, the room seemed vast, with what appeared to be acres of polished oak beneath their feet.
‘I have two sofas that will face each other by the fire and my grandmother’s grand piano will go in that corner. I don’t play but Mama says that I must have it.’
‘It looks incredible. Like a ballroom.’ Bill turned, taking in the wedding cake plaster on the ceiling, still getting used to the purity of the white walls. Tessa looked around too. She rather liked the idea of a ballroom of her own.
‘Then we should dance.’ Laughing, she unbuttoned her coat and slipped out of it with a slither of silk lining, throwing her gloves and hat on the floor. Bill looked at her for a moment, a question hovering in the air, and then dropped his outer garments beside hers and bowed slightly before taking her extended hand and sweeping her into his arms.
The pair whirled around in perfect time to music neither could hear. Their foxtrot grew faster and faster and they fairly flew across the floor until they came to a standstill, laughing and breathless, by the fireplace.
‘It’s a long time since we danced together.’ Bill’s voice was low, tickling the short hairs on her neck. They remained touching: Tessa’s left hand on his shoulder, Bill’s right hand on her back.
‘A lot has changed since then.’
‘You haven’t, not really. Your time with James, that unhappin
ess, was an aberration, just a detour.’ Tessa dropped her eyes, a little surprised by Bill’s frankness, but she didn’t draw away.
‘I’ve changed since we met and since we last danced together. I used to be optimistic and carefree. I was someone who thought she had a happy marriage and children ahead of her. Now, I’m covered in scars, I can’t have children and my marriage was a disaster even before my husband was murdered. I’ll be happy again, one day, but I’ll never be that girl again.’ Tessa smiled, but there was a crack in her voice.
‘And you shouldn’t try to be her again.’ Bill was serious now, no longer laughing. ‘You’re the same in the ways that matter. You’re clever and funny and brave. You lost your spark when you were married to James. Now that he’s gone – it’s starting to come back. I think that when you know what happened to James, you’ll be happy again.’
Bill looked down at her, a question she couldn’t be sure of in his eyes. His hand was still warm on her back. It was a long time since she’d felt the warmth of a man’s touch, and Tessa knew that if she just raised herself on her toes and leaned forward a little, she could kiss him.
She knew that he would kiss her back and she wanted that very badly. If she wished, she could take Bill as a lover and for a while they would be content. But she was equally certain that one day – a few months, maybe a year hence – he would want the things she couldn’t give him and he would leave her. The thought of that was an almost physical ache and she knew that she could only avoid that pain by keeping him at arm’s length. To have Bill and then to lose him would be worse than not having him in the first place. She couldn’t bear to be rejected again. She drew away and bent to retrieve her coat and hat.
‘I hope you’re right. In the meantime, my house is finished and I can move in as soon as my furniture is delivered.’ Tessa led Bill briskly from the room and showed him the upper floors briefly, not lingering in the room that would be her bedroom; although, it struck her that in her newly single state, she could now appropriate the interconnecting dressing room for her clothes instead of it being occupied by James. She showed him the bathroom, of which she was very proud: a temple to white enamel, shining chrome and limitless amounts of hot water. She waved a hand in cursory manner at the top floor with its three bedrooms and another bathroom.
‘It’s far too big just for me. But it will be lovely to have so much space and to be away from Mama. She was wonderful when I was injured and sat up night after night when I was in too much pain to sleep, but we’re very different people. Appearances matter so much to her.’
‘She means well.’
‘I know. But it will be better to have her meaning well from three or four streets away.’
They returned to the hall, the light less brilliant now as the afternoon moved towards dusk. Tessa had been a little annoyed when Bill had not seen her idea that he should move into the basement apartment, as the brilliant suggestion she thought it to be. Still he was hesitantly agreeable, and she was confident that she could manage this sleight of hand without her mother noticing. Their outing over, it was time to get back to work for a couple of hours before dinner.
The envelope lay on the flagstones, just inside the front door and Tessa saw it as she opened the inner door. No address, no stamp, hand-delivered. Her name was written on the front, or a version of her name at any rate. Tessa Kilpatrick. She wasn’t bothered about her title, but it was unusual for other people not to use it. Ripping the envelope open and unfolding the single sheet of paper, Tessa gave a sharp intake of breath at the message written there.
Your husband got what he deserved. Stop interfering. You won’t like what you find out.
‘Tessa?’ Bill had noticed the way she froze. She passed him the note and heaved open the front door. Tessa looked up and down the street but no-one was in sight. Bill looked puzzled. She snatched the note back, scrutinising the handwriting.
‘This must been delivered while we’ve been here. It wasn’t on the mat when we arrived.’
‘No.’ Tessa thought about that. ‘Do you think someone followed us here?’ She shivered. Having assumed that his murder was due to his complicated love affairs or some aspect of his army service, it had never struck Tessa that she might be at risk from whoever had murdered James. The word ‘interfering’ was interesting, she thought. Whoever wrote this seemed to know that Tessa was taking an interest in the case that went beyond what had happened to James. Did they also know that she’d been at McKenzie’s murder scene, or that she and Bill were searching for a link between the two men, or that Inspector Rasmussen was considering their theories?
However disconcerting it was to find this on her doormat, Tessa took some comfort in the fact that this note wasn’t a threat in itself, just a warning that she might discover truths she’d rather not know. All the same though…
‘Come on, we need to get back and get cracking. We have a murderer to catch and this letter,’ she took the envelope from Bill and stuffed it into her coat pocket, ‘rather indicates that they know we’re looking for them.’
Chapter Nineteen
The following morning, Tessa woke a little before seven o’clock and stole upstairs to Bill’s room. She knocked softly but there was no answer and so, not wanting to make more noise and draw attention to herself, she slipped inside, closing the door silently behind her.
Bill was asleep, and she looked at him for a few seconds. He looked younger in repose with his chestnut brown hair rumpled, the experiences of the last few years wiped from his face, and she realised that despite his resolutely cheerful manner, the war had no doubt affected him as deeply as it had the rest of them. Perhaps her own face looked different too when she slept, the memories of cold and fear and pain all washed away.
‘Bill.’ She spoke softly and he mumbled and went to turn over, so she touched his shoulder and repeated his name, a little louder. This time he woke instantly, and looked surprised before smiling sleepily.
‘Tessa, unexpected and delightful as it is to have you visit my bedroom at dawn, I assume it’s not for any romantic reason?’
‘Of course not.’ He looked a little abashed at this. ‘I want you to get up. I thought we’d drive out somewhere and get some fresh air before we get back to work. I’ll see you in the hall in ten minutes.’
Tessa felt a little guilty for waking Bill so early, but she had had a restless night, unsettled by the note they’d found on the doormat. Well before dawn, she had given up on sleep and decided that fresh air would make her feel better.
Who could have sent the letter was a mystery and that it had been delivered to Royal Circus, the house where she’d expected to feel safe and at peace with her life, made her feel nervous. It had arrived there in the time it took for her to show Bill around the house and that was also unnerving, as though the letter writer had followed them or been lying in wait. In addition, for all that the note made no direct threat, there was an undertone of menace and she wondered what might come next if she didn’t back off as instructed. Would someone who sent a message like this be willing to escalate things if it didn’t get through?
Tessa was sure that James’s murder was not linked to anything in her own past, nor was the death of Callum McKenzie, a man she knew absolutely nothing about before she saw his body on the bathroom floor. However, despite everything, it seemed her determination to find James’s killer had – literally – brought trouble to her own door.
When they met downstairs, Tessa was once again wearing her tweed trousers, heavy boots, and crimson muffler as well as the disreputable greatcoat so loathed by her mother. Bill was wearing tweed and a Guernsey and carrying a well-worn shooting jacket. He thought Tessa looked much as she had when they’d first met at that desolate French farmhouse, and although he remembered the pain of his injury, he also recalled that he had never been so pleased to see someone in his life.
Holding a finger to her lips, not wanting their voices to echo up the stairwell and wake her parents, Tessa set off down the sta
irs to the basement where Mrs Forsyth and Florence were already at work in the kitchen.
‘Miss Tessa! What are you doing up so early?’ Mrs Forsyth, fiftyish and surprisingly lean despite her skilled hand as a baker, had been with the family for as long as Tessa could remember, and she had many memories of eating cake in the kitchen and learning to make biscuits. While Kincaid made a point of remembering to call her Lady Kilpatrick, to Mrs Forsyth she would always be Miss Tessa.
‘We’re going to the beach for a walk. Major Henderson hasn’t seen much of Scotland beyond Edinburgh. We won’t be back for breakfast, so I don’t suppose you could make us a Thermos of tea, please?’ Tessa knew better than to get under Mrs Forsyth’s feet when she was busy.
The cook sent Florence off to find a flask, and produced fresh bread and sausages sizzling from the range.
‘I’ll make you some sandwiches too. It’s brisk out and you’ll need some sustenance. I’ll cook some more for your father. Does he know you’re off gallivanting?’
‘No. Could you tell him please? By the way, I don’t think you’ve been introduced. This is Major Bill Henderson. We met in France. Bill, this is Mrs Forsyth – my father claims she’s the best cook in Edinburgh.’
‘If the food I’ve been eating since I arrived is any indication, he’s surely right. How do you do, Mrs Forsyth?’
Mrs Forsyth dimpled despite herself, although pleased to be complimented on her cooking, and handed Tessa the parcel of sausage sandwiches, tied up in greaseproof paper and string and wrapped in a tea towel. Tessa put them in a basket with the flask of tea, and led Bill back to the hall and out through the back door. Mycroft the Labrador leapt to follow her, desperate not to miss out on a walk, while Bosun the spaniel opened an eye to see what was happening and then snoozed on, deciding that he was too old for early morning outings.
Death Will Find Me (A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery, Book 1) Page 12