The Convenient Murder

by Clare Jayne

  “I will be careful,” Miss Chiverton promised and finished the tale leading to her fake engagement, ending by saying, “It was exceedingly kind of Mr McDonald to offer to mislead my family in this way. I know it will cause him some difficulties but, with my father determined that I should announce a marriage right away, there seemed nothing else to be done.”

  Ishbel thought with sympathy of Mr McDonald, who had supported his friends even when they behaved in the most unconventional ways and whom she suspected loved Miss Chiverton, and would likely feel torture at pretending an engagement he wanted to be real.

  “McDonald’s a good man,” Ewan said. “He has never let down a friend, no matter what we have asked of him.”

  “Yes,” Miss Chiverton agreed, her expression thoughtful. “He is.”

  It occurred to Ishbel that if anything could make Miss Chiverton see the best in Mr McDonald, this might be it. Perhaps the situation was not as bleak for him as she had supposed. That was not in her hands, though. “What was it that you and Mr Chiverton found out at Lord Strand’s estate?”

  “Firstly, a physician had come to the house and had given Lady Strand a potion to help her sleep after her husband’s death. I do not know what you can discover from that but I thought it interesting in terms of the poison having to come from somewhere.”

  “It is,” Ishbel said.

  “The servants seemed to agree that Lord Strand was an evil person but it did not seem as if any of them had a reason to kill him. After all, they were not compelled to stay in his service if they disliked his treatment of them and a number of people did get jobs elsewhere.”

  Mr Williamson had said something similar to this.

  “The main thing we discovered was about Lady Tabor.” She was the suspect they had known the least about, so Ishbel listened eagerly as Miss Chiverton said, “She was seen looking for something in Lord Strand’s room after his death and the footman who saw her had formed the idea that Lord Strand was blackmailing her over something.” Miss Chiverton looked from one to the other of them, clearly just as keen to solve this as they were. “What will you do now?”

  “I think we must speak to Lady Tabor,” Ewan said and Ishbel gave a nod of agreement.

  Chapter Forty

  EWAN AND Ishbel called on Lady Tabor the next day. After the woman had refused to speak about Lord Strand’s murder to Miss Chiverton and had spoken in an offensive way to her, she and Ewan had agreed that there was no way to convince her to talk to them, but now that had changed.

  She kept them waiting for nearly twenty minutes before walking into the drawing room to greet them. Ishbel guessed that she knew exactly why they were there and wanted to put them off. She was a beautiful woman but they had discovered nothing to make Ishbel like her and it would make their lives easier if she turned out to be the killer.

  “My time is extremely valuable,” Lady Tabor said to Ewan, sitting down, “and I have never even had an introduction to your wife before today, so I cannot see what we would have to discuss.”

  “We know that the late Lord Strand was blackmailing you,” Ishbel said and watched Lady Tabor go pale, her eyes darting nervously to the door, perhaps fearing her husband would come in and hear this. “Did you kill him?”

  “No!” Lady Tabor got up and walked to the window, before turning restlessly and facing them again. “I suppose you will not be happy now until you know all, but I will be relying on your discretion.” She folded her arms. “Lord Strand was a vile man and I was a young fool. I had a flirtation with him when I was barely seventeen, long before my marriage to Lord Tabor. It was innocent. I did nothing wrong – you have to believe that.” She looked beseechingly at them, her coolness of a few minutes ago gone.

  “We do,” Ewan said at once, never happy at causing someone distress.

  Her expression calmed a little at this. “My husband easily becomes jealous, although I have never given him reason for it. I had written Lord Strand a letter years ago that might have given the impression that our relationship was more affectionate than it was and he threatened to show it to my husband.”

  “What did he want in return?” Ishbel asked.

  Lady Tabor swallowed and sat down again, hunching forward. She looked away – not meeting their eyes – as she said, “He wished to share the intimacy with me that I had previously denied him.”

  “What a loathsome man,” Ewan said with feeling and Ishbel felt a stab of sympathy for Lady Tabor. She had certainly had a good reason to not wish to disclose this to them or to Mr Williamson, her secretiveness and insistence that she barely knew Lord Strand now making sense.

  “I was desperate and I would not consider doing what he asked of me. I begged him to behave in a more honourable way the day before his murder but he laughed at me. I had good reason to want him dead and, when I discovered he had been poisoned I felt nothing but pleasure, but it is not in me to kill a person, no matter how much he deserved it.”

  “Did you see anything at the dinner party on the night he died to suggest who the murderer might have been?” Ishbel asked.

  Lady Tabor took a deep breath, growing less agitated now that the discussion had become less personal. “There was something between Lord Strand and Mr McIntoll: Lord Strand acted as if he was mocking him. He seemed to be avoiding having a conversation with Mr Gell, for some reason.”

  That made sense. Lord Strand had got the better of Mr McIntoll by winning something valuable from him and had likely not wanted to be further pressured by Mr Gell for an investment. It did not help them, though.

  “How well did you know Lady Strand?” Ishbel watched her for a reaction that might suggest guilt but saw none.

  “I had been introduced to her and we sometimes saw each other at social events but, if we spoke at all, it was only to make light conversation. I felt sorry for her being married to such a man but my past relationship with him made it impossible to spend much time in her company.”

  “Did she know about you and her husband?”

  “I hope not. She was not overly friendly to me but she never spoke of that subject. It is possible he could have told her something of it to humiliate her – he was capable of that.”

  He seemed to have been capable of much and Ishbel wondered if there could have been more he had done to harm others than they had discovered. It would not account for Lady Strand’s death, though, which was a mystery she could make no sense of.

  They got up to leave and Lady Tabor said, “You will not repeat what I have told you about my past?”

  “As long as you are innocent of the murders, we will forget this conversation,” Ishbel said. “Also, the young Lord Strand seems like a good man. If you tell him that Lord Strand had a letter that could cause you embarrassment, I believe he would be happy to return it to you.”

  Lady Tabor blinked back tears, a completely different person from the haughty woman who had greeted them. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  MISS CHIVERTON’S family, her father in particular, had been delighted at the news of her engagement and she had felt guilty over deceiving them, but not to the extent that she ever intended to tell them the truth. Apart from Eddie, of course, who knew everything.

  Mr McDonald had made a formal request to her father for her hand in marriage, which had been granted and now they were all assembled for a meal together, which was proving to be every bit as awkward as she had feared. She was on edge every second, fearing she would say the wrong thing and accidentally reveal the truth.

  “You must set a date for the wedding,” Anne said, as helpful as ever.

  “Yes,” her father agreed. “I do not see any reason for a long engagement.”

  Fiona glanced at Mr McDonald, who returned an equally uncertain glance. After a brief pause, during which she sought in vain for a good reason to delay doing this, Mr McDonald said, “My family is only slightly acquainted with Miss Chiverton and, since she will be coming to live in the same house as my parents when we are mar
ried, I would like your daughter to have the time to form an affectionate relationship with them.”

  That was a convincing excuse. Mr McDonald was better at deception than she would have guessed, although of course he had had to deceive people over Eddie’s secrets for years. She had dismissed Mr McDonald as dull and conventional in the past but she was beginning to see how badly she had misjudged him. He might not like to see his friends involved in solving murders, but she had seen him defend them to others and she got the impression that he was not happy over Eddie’s unusual relationship with Alex, but he still remained friends with both men. And here he was, put in the difficult situation of lying to her family, when she had only ever been rude to him and had given him no cause to show such generosity to her. It occurred to her to wonder why he had not yet married. He was only a couple of years older than her brother and Mr MacPherson and men did not always marry young, but an early marriage was the traditional action. Perhaps, like her, he was looking to fall in love, instead of marrying for profit or title.

  “Yes, of course,” her father was saying and she returned her attention to the conversation. Papa did not press Mr McDonald over when the wedding should be held, not that there was actually going to be a wedding.

  “Have I met all your family, sir?” she asked Mr McDonald, hoping to lead the conversation away from their non-existent affection. “I recall briefly meeting a female cousin of yours when I was a child but I do not know if she is married or if you have other relations.” She knew from his years of friendship with Eddie that he did not have any living siblings.

  “I have a number of cousins, on both my mother and father’s side of the family. Two of the men are married and have made their homes elsewhere. Clara, the young woman you met, is not yet out in society and George is several years younger than her, so they are both still in Edinburgh with their parents. I will ask my mother to arrange a party so that you can get to know them.”

  “Lovely,” she said, thinking the opposite. How would all these people react when they had got to know her and suddenly the marriage was called off. They would be left with a poor view of her character, but there was no way of avoiding it: this was what she had agreed to and if it would be unpleasant for her, it would be doubly so for Mr McDonald.

  A false engagement had seemed an easy solution to her difficulties when she had accepted his offer, but there were far more difficulties arising from it than she had anticipated.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ISHBEL RETURNED from the house of her sister-in-law in a good disposition. It had seemed impossible when she first met Matilda that they might ever be friends, given the lady’s dislike for the solving of crimes and her doubts about Ishbel’s character, but she had grown very fond of the whole family. It was extremely pleasant to have more kin than Harriette and Lord Huntly, although after the years she had spent living in their house, she would always feel the closest connection to them, not including Ewan, of course.

  She dressed for dinner, taking more time over her appearance than she had in the past, since she loved to see the look of admiration in her husband’s eyes when he first saw her wearing an elegant gown. She wore a deep sapphire dress tonight and wore her red hair curled over one shoulder. She walked down the stairs towards Ewan and smiled to herself, happy to see that he could look at nothing but her. When she reached him, he took her hand and kissed it. He might have said something loving but MacCuaig was standing by the drawing room door, a dour oppressive presence.

  They took their seats at the dining table, not sitting at either end of the long table as convention dictated. When it was just the two of them they preferred to sit closer together. They talked about their families for a while then, as their soup plates were removed by the two footmen, they returned to the subject of murder.

  “I am not absolutely convinced that Lady Tabor did not kill Lord Strand but I can think of no motive for her to kill Lady Strand.” Lady Tabor might have lied to them about her real feelings for Lord Strand, but – remembering her fear over the letter he possessed – Ishbel doubted it. In any case, if she had cared for him she might have murdered Lady Strand out of jealousy but that would mean she would have had no reason to harm Lord Strand. Ishbel sighed and played with the edges of her napkin while they waited for the next course of the meal to be served. “I can come up with no one who had any reason to want Lady Strand dead.”

  “What about her words to her son about her belief that Lord Strand was killed to help them?”

  “It is possible, but then we are back to her own death which would make even less sense if that were true.”

  “I spoke to Jed when you were out,” he said, “and he will find out what he can on the subject of revenge. He had no new information for us at present. Perhaps we have failed to suspect the true killer.”

  “I think Lady Strand’s death must give us the solution. Everyone hated her husband, so too many people might have wanted him dead, but no one has said a word to us against her character or actions, so there can be only one culprit. If we can work out why she died, it must lead us to the person who killed them both.”

  “Could she have seen or discovered something that made her realise who killed her husband?”

  “What she said to her son might suggest that to be true but, in that case, she would have had plenty of opportunity to tell her son or Mr Williamson who it was she suspected. If she did not do so then it suggests she was grateful to the killer for freeing her from her husband, in which case why would he or she harm Lady Strand?”

  “I can make no sense of it either. Perhaps we should arrange another meeting with Mr Williamson,” Ewan said as a fresh plate of food was placed on the table in front of him. “He had the opportunity to observe Lady Strand and might know more of her past than we do.”

  “Yes. That is a good idea.” Since there seemed little to gain in making unsubstantiated guesses over the identity of the killer, she changed the subject. “What do you think about Miss Chiverton’s engagement to Mr McDonald?”

  He frowned, clearly not happy at this development. “I fear he will end up having his heart broken by her. I think he cares for her more than she realises.”

  She had suspected for some time that Mr McDonald had a fondness for Miss Chiverton and, although their personalities were entirely different, she thought that they might come to suit each other. “He has behaved extremely chivalrously. I hope that Miss Chiverton might in time come to see him in a more affectionate way.”

  “I very much hope you are right.”

  They were both good people, deserving of happy futures, and perhaps fate would be kinder to them than it had been to Lady Strand. She had had a miserable life with her husband and, just when she was finally free of him, she had died. Why, Ishbel wondered, running through everything they had so far discovered. Why had she been killed? They had met the person responsible for both murders, Ishbel was certain: they were just failing to put the pieces together correctly.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  MISS CHIVERTON accepted the offered flowers with bemusement. “They are beautiful.”

  “It seemed an appropriate gift,” Mr McDonald said stiffly as they stood by the small folly in her garden. “Your family would doubtless think it strange if I did not visit you.”

  “Of course.” She struggled for something else to say, for once wanting to be careful not to start an argument, since they had had few conversations that had not led to one. “I was impressed at the way you dealt with my family’s questions last night. They have a good opinion of you.” Her father’s endorsement of Mr McDonald’s personality was not a winning argument, where her opinion of the man was concerned, but she believed she was getting to know previously hidden sides of his character. Her father thought Mr McDonald would force her to live an ordinary life with only ladylike hobbies, but she was not so sure now that this gentleman’s ideas were as commonplace as she had previously imagined.

  “I hope you will not be nervous about spending ti
me with my relatives,” he said as they began to stroll along the path that led either to the house or in a circle back to the folly, with winter foliage and flowers on either side of them. “They cannot help but like you.”

  “As long as I do not try to discuss the solving of murders with them?” she said with a teasing smile.

  He laughed, something that made him look quite handsome. “That might not be the best topic. I must be missing something but I cannot see why nearly everyone I know wants to be involved in such macabre matters.”

  She paused to consider this. “I suppose it reveals a lack of satisfaction in the everyday aspects of our lives. We want something more than balls and dinner parties, clothes and gossip. Is there not something more in life that you want than you currently have?”

  “My father has never been good at managing business matters, so that fell to me at a time when other young men were going out drinking to excess or engaging in other light-hearted activities. I had an older brother who died when I was one and ten, and he should have been the one to take responsibility for the family. Instead it fell to me. Do not misunderstand me: I make no complaint over this. What I am saying is that there has always been a more serious purpose in my life than attending society’s entertainments, which is perhaps why I look for nothing more.”

  “Thank you for telling me that,” she said as they began walking again at a leisurely pace. She could see what had led him to become the man he was and she liked him better for knowing it, but she could have no future with him. They were simply too different. She had the same wildness running through her that Eddie had and neither of them had ever wanted an ordinary life.

  “So have you helped MacPherson and his wife find out who killed Lord Strand?”