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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Rose McQuinn
- Sprache: Englisch
Rose McQuinn is invited to stay with her friend Olive, who has a small cottage on the Balmoral Estate. As Rose travels on the train with her trusty dog Vane and her niece Mabel, she wonders what exciting adventures await them at the Royal household. Little does she realise that within just 48 hours of their arrival, death will have visited the great castle . can Rose find out what happened and prevent any more bloodshed?
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Seitenzahl: 357
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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The Balmoral Incident
ALANNA KNIGHT
For Sandra and Donnie, with love
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
‘Danger comes in many disguises.’ So said my stepbrother Vince wearily considering the Beast snorting and casting clouds of steam onto the roadside as it awaited liquid refreshment.
But to begin at the beginning.
We were to have a summer holiday at Balmoral Castle, or rather in an estate cottage, for although Dr Vince Beaumarcher Laurie was a physician to the royal household, that privilege did not extend to members of his family. HM King Edward, now in residence for the deerstalking and the shooting season, did not care for children, not even his own, from all accounts.
‘Indeed, even the most innocent of situations can turn quite threatening,’ Vince continued back inside my house as he considered my shelf of logbooks from the year 1895. That was ten years ago when my career as a lady investigator began soon after I arrived back home to Edinburgh, wrapped in grief and uncertainty, refusing to believe that since my husband Danny McQuinn had disappeared in Arizona I was probably a widow. I had not the least idea what the future held or that I was destined to follow, somewhat hesitantly, in the footsteps of my father, Chief Inspector Jeremy Faro, a legend in his own lifetime.
In my case, the role had been unwillingly forced upon me by an accidental meeting in an Edinburgh store with an old school friend, who tearfully whispered over afternoon tea that a servant girl had been murdered and her husband’s odd behaviour aroused horrified thoughts that he might have been involved. She had no one to turn to. Would I help her? I had been so good at solving puzzles at school. And so I did and very successfully trapped the real criminal, not without considerable danger to my own person.
That was the first of my less dramatic cases as a self-styled ‘Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed’. Cases mostly of fraud, thieving servants, domestic incidents, clients all with good reasons for not wishing such problems to be put before the Edinburgh City Police and dismissed on lack of evidence. And what if the incident involved a close relative or those blackmailing letters bore the grim shadow of a former indiscretion?
My clients were mostly female. Except in the direst circumstances men were suspicious and publicly scorned the powers of a female detective, apart from an occasional gentleman of some importance in the city in a state of desperation. Threatened by indiscreet letters to an ex-mistress, in terror not only of publicity but of bringing about the end of a now happy marriage.
And then there were murders.
‘Yes, my dear,’ Vince had continued, turning his attention away from the logbooks with their accounts of homicides which I have already chronicled through the years. ‘You undoubtedly have had a charmed life.’ He laughed, tipping the contents of a hip flask containing some exotic liqueur into his innocent cup of Earl Grey tea: ‘Dangers can lurk in the least expected places.’
This less than profound statement I was to learn referred not to humans but in this instance to the latest addition to his accoutrements as physician to the royal household. The motor car was the very latest passion for wealthier members of society and ranked a trifle higher on the social scale than the bicycle which, ten years ago, I had adopted as the most suitable means of covering the two miles between my home in Solomon’s Tower on the lower slopes of Arthur’s Seat, and the city of Edinburgh.
Learning to ride simply by falling off and getting on again, one could only stop and jump off when the treadle was at its lowest point, the brake an uncertain plunger upon the front wheel. Consequently I was often carried on beyond my destination, to the alarm of onlookers, shocked by this apparition of a female riding perched on such a precarious vehicle and in danger of exhibiting her lower limbs.
But the bicycle was the swiftest thing on the roads. The change from horse-drawn to mechanically propelled vehicle did not take place without a period of transition during the last decade, when solid rubber tyres and the pneumatic tyre made the bicycle an acceptable means of transport for ladies. This daring new fashion soon caught on: ladies bicycling became the smart thing in society, lords and ladies had their pictures in magazines, riding in the park, wearing straw boaters, while ladies took to knickerbockers under their frocks. Scandalous and shocking was the cry, but really rather grand.
But Vince was enchanted by this new Rolls. Nicknamed the ‘Beast’, since it snorted and roared, and not yet quite reliable enough to rival the royal train, it was locked in that other royal residence at Holyroodhouse for use by HM or other trusted members of the family, and also by Vince, since he was regarded with particular affection by the King who had been wayward Bertie, Prince of Wales for such a long time and, on occasions when travelling, had had to rely on Vince’s discretion to ease him out of some rather indelicate situations.
Bertie loved a challenge and had transferred some of his devotion to horses onto the Beast. Out riding, however, he would pat his present favourite mount and remark: ‘It is quite extraordinary: you have been replaced by a snorting steaming engine with a ferocious roar instead of the gentle biddable creature with four legs that you are.’
Back in Solomon’s Tower, Vince was telling us that he had arranged this month in the country as a special late treat for my stepdaughter Meg’s seventh birthday. Vince’s wife Olivia had been persuaded to come from their London residence at St James for a short visit, bringing their youngest, Faith, with her. The two boys, more than a decade older than their sister, were firmly established with lives of their own. Jamie was now a young intern at St Thomas’s Hospital and Justin, a law student in his final year at Oxford. Faith, that late and unexpected child, frail and delicate, so unlike her sturdy brothers, was subject to every prevailing cold wind that blew.
Summers in Scotland were known to be notoriously variable and Olivia had consistently refused to risk the anxiety of a bedridden Faith regardless of the fact that her father was an excellent physician. He did, however, manage to overcome her fears, needing less persuasion this time. Olivia’s best friend from schooldays, Mabel Penby Worth, was also heading for a holiday in Ballater and they would be meeting for the first time in many years, their friendship sustained by an exchange of letters. Mabel, who had never married, was a career woman of sorts.
‘I know little of her private life, only that she writes for magazines and occasionally for The Times,’ Olivia had added in tones of awe. ‘And she travels a lot, often across to the Continent, quite alone.’ Suddenly the chance of spending a few weeks with this accomplished lady was irresistible.
Mabel was the reason for Vince’s presence in Edinburgh. As always, he had worked at the plan, smoothing out all the possible difficulties so that it sounded much simpler than indeed it proved to be. He would drive the Beast and collect Mabel who had been taken by hired carriage off the London train at Newcastle railway station and carried to Peebles to visit an elderly relative.
Peebles was also near the home of my husband Jack’s parents and a reasonable distance for the Beast to travel. Jack and I normally did the journey by train, however Vince produced a road map where the house was indicated and, certain that Mabel would enjoy this daring new experience, he would drive her back to Edinburgh where we would meet Olivia and Faith at Waverley Station, board the royal train to Ballater and thence the eleven miles to Balmoral.
Jack would only join us whenever his duties permitted. That was sad but inevitable. As Senior Detective Inspector Macmerry of the Edinburgh City Police, he was in the middle of a case.
‘Will we be staying at the castle?’ asked Meg. ‘Won’t that be terrific, Mam?’ she laughed, whirling me round a wild dance of delight.
‘Alas, no,’ Vince shook his head.
Meg released me and demanded sternly, ‘Why ever not?’
‘We will be very near the castle, in a cottage of our own.’
I knew there was no question of staying in Balmoral while Vince wrestled with plausible explanations to a now disappointed Meg, explaining that the cottage was very handsome, complete with every luxury for a royal person wishing to relax away from the trials of state. Abergeldie had filled this role adequately for HM in his days as Prince of Wales, but was now too public; he had devious private reasons for wanting his privacy other than a retreat from domesticity. The wild prince who had been Bertie still existed under the sombre royal crown and the less said about that the better, according to Vince. All he would say was to repeat that HM disliked the presence of noisy shrill children, and that included his own.
Mabel had written to Olivia that she intended staying in a hotel in Ballater to which Vince responded that there was no need for that, as the so-called estate cottage would have ample room for us all.
Olivia had looked doubtful, clearly recalling a vision of estate cottages as somewhat primitive in matters of sleeping accommodation and sanitation.
‘I told Livvy that we’d let Mabel decide about that when we see her,’ Vince said, adding a cautious, ‘after all, it is years since they met.’
Meg had turned her attention to other more important items. ‘Thane will love it too, won’t you?’ she said giving the massive deerhound a hug.
Glances were exchanged. No one had thought about Thane and anxious looks were diverted in my direction.
Meg had taken it for granted but here was a quandary indeed. In pre-Meg days Jack and I had cheerfully left Thane to his own devices. Feeding him had never been a problem. He was, in truth, a wild animal, still a hunter and as such made his own arrangements. There was plenty of wildlife on Arthur’s Seat to satisfy his appetite as well as keeping him exercised. There was no walking the dog required with Thane, he was too large and strong – the size of a pony, he made the hint of a dog lead absurd.
I looked at him sitting close to Meg. There had been a change in his habits since Meg’s arrival four years ago. Suddenly he was Meg’s dog and had spent less time out on the hill and more indoors, transformed into the role of a domestic pet. Seeing him lying contentedly before the kitchen fire or happily at Meg’s side, I had some misgivings.
Was this change an indication that Thane was feeling the weight of his years? Worse was the thought that this might indicate that he was soon to leave us. A future that seemed desolate and sorrowful for me, since Thane had been an integral part of my life for ten years, since the day when he had rescued me from the drunken tinkers on the hill. I had no idea how old he was then, fully grown and quite immaculate in appearance, his coat was shiny and neat; the mystery of his presence on Arthur’s Seat had never been satisfactorily explained. But in ten years he had not aged in the slightest and what Meg did not realise was that in the natural law of canines, they did not live as long as humans, and calculated by a factor of seven, Thane was now eighty-four years old. I looked for signs of age, a greying muzzle, a general slowing down. There was none.
Jack shared my anxiety, mostly on Meg’s account I must admit, although he made light of my fears; but refusing to countenance that Thane had always been an enigma, he would say: ‘She’ll get over it. He’s just a dog after all, Rose, he isn’t immortal.’
‘Try telling Meg that,’ was my reply. ‘I don’t envy you.’
We knew nothing of Thane’s origins, except that deer- and wolfhounds belonged in the pages of history. Deirdre had one with her in Glen Afric, King Arthur had one always at his side and in the present day, Sir Walter Scott was devoted to the breed with Maida at his side on his memorial statue in Princes Street.
I had also heard from a doctor owner a remarkable story that deerhounds were capable of renewing themselves.
According to his account, Thane would not visibly grow old. He would suddenly disappear. We would mourn his passing and looking out on Arthur’s Seat realise that he had gone to rest in one of its many secret caves. Having resigned ourselves to never seeing him again, we would get on with our lives. Then one day, a joyous bark and he would be back with us again.
The same dog? Well, not perhaps exactly the same, although Jack would say of course he was Thane. But we would never know the truth. It was magic and there was some consolation that Meg believed in magic.
One afternoon she had arrived from the convent school down the road at St Leonard’s, run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. Uncle Vince was on one of his rare visits and their delight was mutual.
‘How was school?’ Vince demanded after a final hug. ‘Are you good at sums?’
Meg threw down her uniform hat. ‘I do quite well, thank you, Uncle.’ A sigh. ‘But the nuns are much better at teaching us how to sew and do useful things like cooking.’ She frowned, looking at Thane who had rushed to her side. Stroking his head, she said: ‘There are so many things I want to know that they haven’t got answers for, and they get very cross when I insist.’
‘What sort of things?’ Vince asked gently.
Meg sighed again. ‘When I talk about magic, like you, Thane.’ Pausing to kiss his head, she looked up at Vince. ‘It’s very odd, but he seems to know what I’m thinking, as if he can read my mind sometimes. Better than Mam and Pa here, or anyone else,’ she added with an apologetic glance in my direction.
I knew that feeling well. Long before Meg came into our lives, Thane and I had shared this strange kind of telepathy.
‘It’s a kind of magic,’ she said. ‘How can they deny that when Jesus was magic? But when I try to tell the nuns that of course magic exists they just cross themselves and whisper that it is … is …’ and struggling to find the word, ‘blasphemy. They say I must be punished.’ Bewildered, she shrugged and looked at us. ‘But it isn’t wicked; if you believe in God, then that is a sort of magic, isn’t it?’
We were saved from being plunged into deeper waters of theology when Jack arrived.
As I made tea I only half-listened to the conversations, their laughter echoing round the ancient Tower. Jack and Vince, Meg sitting on her father’s knee. How alike they were, physically, anyway, and clever too. Meg was the brightest pupil in her class at the convent. So bright, in fact, that the nuns had to keep on moving her up into the next class. At that rate she would soon be with the eleven-year-olds.
Sister Josephine was perturbed, almost apologetic. ‘She is quite brilliant, advanced for her age, in every way,’ she added with a frown at my little gasp of pleasure.
She shook her head. ‘It isn’t quite natural, Mrs Macmerry.’ And the hand raised, about to cross herself but she remembered in time. ‘It distresses the other little girls when she seems to see things and know everything.’
I explained that all little girls were like that, a kind of natural jealousy and she smiled, looked relieved. ‘If you say so,’ and we left it at that.
When I told Jack about my visit, that the Sister had wanted to see me, he looked up sharply.
‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’
‘Far from it – seems our little girl is quite brilliant, well ahead of her class.’
Jack had relaxed with a grin of delight, proud as any father could ever be, until I got to the bit about seeing things. He shook his head. ‘Takes that from you, love, definitely not from my side of the family.’
We both laughed. Meg was not our child. She was Jack’s and I was her stepmother.
‘Wonder who she gets it from,’ he said and we both looked at Thane who also knew things before they happened. Not altogether rare in animals, this extra dimension – the sixth sense which had long ago been lost by humans, or most of them.
I called it my intuition, this awareness, an awareness I had reason to bless. My father, Chief Inspector Jeremy Faro, had it and the credit, he claimed, lay in our Orcadian background and the rumour that we had selkie blood in the family. But there was no way Meg could have inherited it.
I remembered fondly this family scene, Vince, Jack and Meg with Thane close at hand. A perfectly natural little seven-year-old sitting happily on her father’s knee, stroking Thane’s head. If she was different from other girls of her age it was because she had no interest in toys or dolls, loved books and was happy for hours with a box of paints, and where her classmates had a pet dog, cat or rabbit, she had Thane.
‘Children love small animals,’ said Jack approvingly. But Thane was huge and no ordinary dog, despite what Jack wanted to believe.
He was fooling himself. Thane had powers beyond human explanation. He was a powerful force in Meg’s life from that first meeting and it seemed that he was capable of infiltrating her mind. A scary thought, although he would never use that power except to protect and help her, but it made me uneasy for some reason.
Meg loved living in Solomon’s Tower and there had been many changes since she first came into our lives as a scared three-year-old who had suffered many trials and cruelties before I tracked her down, this orphaned child of Jack’s first, brief, unhappy marriage. At least some of the responsibility of Meg lay with me, for he had married her mother on the rebound since I had sent him packing. They were strangers, he knew nothing about her and was never quite sure if the child was his. When Margaret died shortly after Meg’s birth, much to Jack’s relief her childless, married sister Pam gladly took over the responsibility of his baby daughter and during those first three years of her life it was almost as if he tried to forget her existence. When I first set eyes on her, all my own misgivings melted away. I knew she was Jack’s and at their first meeting their likeness was undeniable. As a little girl she was his image. The sandy, slightly curling hair, the large hazel eyes, the wide mouth. Indeed, as the years passed she grew even more like him but with a gradual refinement of features hinting that one day she would be a young woman whose good looks a father would be proud of – if it were possible that Jack could be any prouder than he was of her at this moment.
I would look at them sometimes and sigh. Life had been good. Here we were, a happy family the three of us, four if we included Thane, Meg with parents who loved her and loved each other. She did not know it, but this happy family was because of her own existence, since having lost my beloved first husband, Danny McQuinn, in tragic circumstances I had consistently refused to marry Jack Macmerry. Meg’s presence had changed all that.
As I made tea, Vince had been telling Jack about the Balmoral visit. Jack came over and put his arm around me. ‘I’m sorry, love, that I can’t come too. It sounds such good fun. Pity about Thane.’
Meg was stroking Thane’s head. She looked up, said very firmly: ‘I’m not going with you. I’ll stay here with Thane.’
What a sacrifice, I thought, to love him so much. As we seated ourselves round the kitchen table, Jack said sternly: ‘You can’t stay here alone.’
‘Who is to take care of Thane if Mam and I are all away?’
In the normal way Jack would have done so. But as Jack was on a murder case with leads in Aberdeen and Glasgow, his movements from day to day were unpredictable.
And long before I met Jack Macmerry I was well acquainted with the situation that dominated a senior detective’s domestic life, its inevitability had stalked my early years, the rare holidays my sister Emily and I looked forward to with Papa. The last-minute changes, the tears and disappointment, and after I married Danny McQuinn and lived in Arizona where he worked for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, I had learnt to respect that. If a policeman’s life was not an easy one, neither was his wife’s. I knew what I was taking on. As Robert Burns put it, ‘the best laid plans o’ mice and men’ could well and often be asundered. I was fortunate, I could take refuge in my own career.
Meg regarded us pityingly. ‘I won’t be alone. Thane will look after me.’
Jack shook his head. He was at a loss to explain and I could see how he hated having to disappoint Meg who was no longer smiling, her happy mood lost, her small fists clenched, her lips quivering as she fought back tears. And before any of us could think up an answer she said: ‘I am not going – anywhere – unless Thane comes too.’
Vince, well served in diplomatic dealings with royalty over the years, stepped in. He put his arms around her and contemplated Jack and me over her head. ‘That is no problem, dear. Leave it to me. I’ll arrange everything. There are plenty of dogs in the stables near your cottage. One more won’t make any difference. We will take Thane with us, if your Mam and Pa approve, that is.’
How on earth would this work? I had qualms and Jack’s frown was doubtful but I sighed with momentary relief, echoed by Meg, who flung her arms around Vince. ‘Oh, thank you, Uncle Vince, thank you.’ And to Thane who showed not the slightest interest in this conversation as if it did not concern him in the least, ‘Isn’t that lovely, Thane? You will love it and we will have a splendid time – all those lovely grounds for us to play in.’
I wasn’t too sure about that, either, as I thought of the vast assortment of dogs and horses.
Jack obviously had the same misgivings. ‘Hope you don’t all end up in the Tower of London.’
CHAPTER TWO
And so the plan of departure took shape. I would drive down with Vince in the Beast to collect Mabel, who would stay overnight with us. The next morning we would join Olivia and Faith on the royal train in Edinburgh and continue the journey to Balmoral. As the motor car was not yet in general use, I suspected that we would be met on arrival at Ballatar Railway Station by the old style carriage, the same as used by the King’s mother Queen Victoria, but perhaps a safer and surer way for four adults, a small girl and a very large dog to travel the twisting roads to the Castle.
We were not to journey to Peebles alone with the Beast. On hearing Mabel’s collection address, Jack had consulted his maps. Penby House was only four miles from his parents’ farm at Eildon. And as it was his mother’s birthday next week, a perfect opportunity to call in, drop off a present. Meg could deliver it in person, giving Andrew and Jess Macmerry a visit from this adored and (from their point of view) too-rarely seen only granddaughter.
‘Meg put you up to this, Jack,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Truth is, she’s mad keen to have a ride in the Beast and she’s made something at school, a tea cosy, specially for Grandma.’
Meg could have asked for the moon, neither Vince nor Jack could resist her. I considered staying behind but Vince insisted there would be room enough for Meg between us in the front, with Mabel and her luggage in the back seat. I could only pray that there wouldn’t be rain to accompany us.
Vince merely smiled at that. ‘Umbrellas will be provided.’
And so we set off. Meg with an almost tearful farewell to Thane. ‘Why couldn’t he come along too? He could run alongside,’ she wailed.
‘No,’ said Vince firmly, ‘that is out of the question. A motor car will cause enough consternation where we are going without a dog the size of a pony.’
And so we set off, Meg clapping her hands in delight, thrilled beyond words at this new adventure, with some misgivings on my part. However, I got used to the looks of amazement from passers-by as Vince occasionally applied the horn, a sound like the wrath of God, and the Beast only let us down twice on the journey, requiring his liquid refreshment. The frantic search for water from a ditch had been overcome by Vince carrying a large bottle of water with us.
Jack had sent a telegram from the Central Office and at Eildon the Macmerrys were waiting to receive us. They did everything but put flags out. What a reception. Andrew went into ecstasies over the Beast which Jess regarded with some apprehension concerning the safety of its occupants, in particular her precious wee granddaughter. Her relief was evident when we reached the farm in safety as if we had travelled not merely the miles from Edinburgh but across the high seas from China on an old-style clipper.
The cosy farmhouse with its peat fire, a feast set out on a snow-white tablecloth. Pies, scones, cakes, biscuits, everything that became a banquet was visible. I was relieved that the pies did not include veal, observing that the fatted calf, happily grazing outside, had not been sacrificed.
Kisses and cuddles were in abundance while across the table Jess studied Vince with reverence. Normally she never stopped talking but she hadn’t a word to say, staring at Vince round-eyed. She almost curtseyed; overcome by his royal associations she didn’t know what to call him, something between Your Highness and Sir. I certainly gained prestige for possessing such a famous stepbrother.
With so much food in evidence, and drink, drams provided by Andrew, with small sherries for the ladies, Vince was having a whale of a time and, even knowing his capacity and aware of the hip flask, I hoped he would be able to continue the drive for Mabel, whose existence had been temporarily forgotten as the reason for our visit. ‘This lass you’re down here to collect,’ said Andrew, ‘whereabouts is she staying?’
This interrupted the serving of more trifle to Vince. As Jess called him ‘sir’ Vince’s eyebrows shot up and touching her hand gently, he said firmly: ‘I presume you’re teasing me, Jess Macmerry. I’m not “sir” to anyone but the stable boys.’ He took her hand, kissed it and smiles were exchanged. To Andrew he said:
‘Mabel Penby Worth is the lady’s name, she’s a school friend of my wife Olivia, visiting an elderly relative at Penby House—’
Across the table Andrew laid down his glass and said slowly, ‘Penby House, did you say?’
‘Yes indeed, I gather it’s just a mile or two up the road from here.’
‘Well, by all that’s holy,’ said Andrew thoughtfully. He looked quite shocked.
‘Fancy that,’ said Jess.
Vince laughed. ‘What’s wrong?’
Andrew shook his head, in the manner of one busily rearranging unpleasant thoughts. ‘Well, it’s just that – oh, I don’t know, but there’s always been a lot of gossip about the Penbys. Never very popular with the locals. Bad landowners. The old lady is the last of them, an invalid for years and not quite right in the head. Tried to commit suicide over an unhappy love affair, so the story went.’
‘That was donkey’s years ago,’ Jess put in. ‘And she’s been a recluse ever since. Poor soul.’
I was eager to hear more of this local scandal which was cut short as Meg bounced back into the kitchen from feeding the hens. Clocks were consulted, it was time to leave. Meg clutched to her adoring grandmother’s bosom, with a tearful plea to stay, Jess eyeing the Beast warily and embarking on a catalogue of possible disasters, despite Vince’s attempts at consolation.
‘What will happen if you get stuck somewhere?’ she demanded and with a protective arm around Meg. ‘That monster and our precious wee darling?’
Vince chuckled. ‘If you think our Beast is an odd-looking vehicle you should have seen its predecessor.’
Andrew nodded enthusiastically. ‘Aye, saw one myself at a cattle market in Stirling, in the eighties. That was a sensation! Terrified the crowds. For all the world like a hansom cab rattling along the road – lacking a horse! Weird!’
‘There the likeness didn’t end,’ Vince put it. ‘Like the horse it frequently stopped and had to be encouraged to proceed. In this case by restorative drinks of water.’
‘How did they manage that?’
‘Usually with a teacup from the nearest ditch.’ Vince shook his head. ‘Sometimes this disagreed with its digestive system and made it cross, so it blew up and spattered the driver with orange spray out of the boiler.’
They both laughed as Vince went on. ‘And at any steep hill it was not equal to the horse. It simply stopped dead, sat there breathing asthmatically while the luckless occupants had to get out and push.’
‘In the middle of nowhere, man, that’s a terrible thing to happen,’ said Andrew while Jess continued to clutch Meg, unconvinced about this strange-looking machine’s merits.
Vince smiled. ‘Ah well, the age of chivalry still exists. It was a code of honour that a moving motorist should not pass by on the other side, leaving stranded a less fortunate fellow motorist.’
Andrew said: ‘I remember fine reading about that. The fraternity of the road was to acquire a new meaning since the days of the highwayman and the Red Flag Act.’ He nodded doubtfully, ‘Aye, all well enough, but I still like to feel the solid warm flesh of a horse under me when I travel.’
Kisses were exchanged. We were on our way.
Warned that the house was remote and a little difficult without a made-up road, we were especially grateful for Andrew’s instructions.
His cut-short history of Penby House’s inhabitant had led me to expect a forbidding Gothic ruin but instead we approached a large characterless box-like mansion with many windows, perched on a small incline overlooking the Borders farmlands and a distant view of the Eildon Hills.
A short drive to the front door, in spite of an echoing bell, it remained ominously closed. Were we expected?
At last the door was opened by a pale young woman, presumably the maid. As we waited for her to announce us, the house smelt unpleasantly old, as if everything and everyone had gone to dust long ago. A vast cold reception area, an array of dark and somehow forbidding ancestral portraits lined the lofty staircase walls with uncarpeted treads guaranteed to echo every footstep.
Meg shivered. She was conscious of this air of desolation and held my hand tightly. ‘What is this place, Mam?’
I didn’t say so, but it had the cold unhappy air of an institution, and I guessed we were both reliving the warmth of that world we had left at the Macmerry’s farm. Love and laughter were long vanished from this house, had they indeed ever existed within these grim walls.
Meg was staring up the stairs as we waited for the maid to summon Mabel.
A sound of footsteps and a tall figure, Mabel Penby Worth, appeared from what was possibly the drawing room. The young maid who had opened the door to us was now at her side, carrying her luggage. Lily by name and, surprisingly, her personal maid, who was to accompany her to Ballater.
As for Mabel’s elderly relative, the reason for her visit, we were not to meet her.
‘Aunt Penby does not receive visitors these days.’ We were not really surprised for we had gathered from Andrew and Jess that she was a recluse. My imagination painted a Miss Havisham and I suspected that all three of us, Vince and I, and particularly Meg, were glad indeed to be leaving and deprived of the pleasure of that meeting.
Vince murmured that we were short of time but as we walked past an open door, I was conscious of another smell invading the emptiness.
Cigar smoke. Very prevalent and very expensive. Where was the man? Or did the old lady have eccentric habits too? We paused while Mabel had a final check on her items of luggage and I noticed on the hall table a few scattered photographs. One signed – of a younger King Edward, as Bertie, Prince of Wales and some other royals, indicated that Penby House had indeed seen better days.
Vince indicated the signed photograph. To Mabel he said: ‘You have met His Majesty?’
‘My mother lived here one summer when she was a girl.’
‘Did she meet him?’ asked Meg in tones of reverence.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ and the cold reply said the subject was closed.
We boarded the Beast, which wiped the smile of delight from Mabel’s rather sullen countenance when she realised she was to share the back seat with Lily and the luggage, since she was larger than Meg and I who occupied the front seat with Vince.
I turned, saw a shadow at a corner of the house, standing still, watching us. A working man, perhaps a gardener. Tall, lean, black hair and a long, rather pale face. He saw me looking in his direction and quickly withdrew. I felt almost embarrassed. Strange how any man who resembled Danny, even vaguely glimpsed, could still after all this time make my heart leap.
Later in our acquaintance when I asked Mabel did her aunt live alone in that vast mausoleum of a house, Mabel confirmed that she was a recluse and had no servants living in.
‘Her physician looks in fairly regularly.’ Had our visits coincided and was that the answer to the cigar smoke, quite unrelated to the man outside who was, to judge by his appearance, possibly the gardener?
I was puzzled why Mabel, one gathered by her conversation, much used to comfort and luxury, had taken the trouble to stop off en route to Edinburgh. As if aware of my unasked question, I was informed: ‘One feels duty-bound, family obligations – that sort of thing – when one is in the area, coming north.’ (Which of course, she was not. Peebles was quite a circuitous route from the direct train to Edinburgh.)
‘We used to visit in the old days, and it would have seemed quite callous to ignore her now,’ she went on, ‘one’s only remaining relative.’ There was a slight pause and I said: ‘So you know Penby quite well.’
She nodded, with a slight shudder. ‘It was always a cold house, never seemed to get warm, even in high summer. I suppose border houses are like that.’
She would have been pleasantly surprised had she been with us at Eildon.
CHAPTER THREE
Mabel Penby Worth. I wasn’t sure what I expected, perhaps a replica of gentle Olivia. Mabel was a surprise and I didn’t know quite why then, except somehow she wasn’t the image I had from Olivia’s description. She looked like a fighter, not the kind of woman who would take defeat easily. In fact, the personification of the women’s suffrage movement to which I was to gather she had dedicated her existence. A consoling thought, indeed.
I was impressed, we suffragettes could hardly lose with females of Mabel’s calibre on our side. Quite tall, robust in frame, a strong, determined countenance under that bonnet and a strong handshake to go with it, as did the sensible, rather mannish travelling costume, a long tweed tailored jacket and skirt and a wide-brimmed velvet hat.
Her maid Lily was an addition we had not been expecting, but Vince indicated that was an easy matter to sort out as he arranged them in the Beast, which did not altogether please Mabel who gave us a helpless look. As if to suggest there might be some other means of transporting Lily to Edinburgh. There was no alternative so Mabel sat as far away as was possible from one’s personal maid on the back seat of a motor car.
We had not the slightest sympathy for her. As far as I was concerned she had missed the whole point of the suffrage movement that all women from all walks of life were equal, or should be. However, Mabel soon forgot her discomfiture and waxed lyrical about this means of transport, sentiments which soon became urgent whispers of doubts when we had to stop several times on the hilly return journey, to relieve the Beast’s snorts and breathing problems with administrations from the water bottle.
Once in sight of Solomon’s Tower, she again waxed eloquent at such antiquity. While Vince returned the Beast to Holyrood before taking a hired cab to Waverley Station, we were home and Mabel looked disappointed, not to say actually shocked, obviously having second thoughts about the Tower, which did not stretch to accommodation for acquaintances, especially a modern, unmarried lady’s requirements, travelling with her maid whose voice we were soon to discover rarely rose above a whisper.
After a brief tour of the Tower, its reality of worn spiral stair treads, chilly stone walls with their tapestries in the somewhat shabby Great Hall failing to live up to her expectations of grandeur, Mabel seemed relieved to return to the warm kitchen and to sink into a worn but comfortable armchair.
‘I feel as if I know you already,’ she said, looking around our humble kitchen and I was not sure that this was a compliment. My few visitors were usually welcomed with a cup of tea and a scone. Mabel’s changed expression indicated that she found it quite extraordinary to be taking tea in the kitchen, obviously expecting that we would be seated at either end of the enormous dining table in the Great Hall. A direct descendant of the round table used by medieval knights it had been installed centuries ago when the Tower first came into being, not far short of the Middle Ages. And there it had remained simply because having been built in, it would have been an impossibility to remove.
I looked at Mabel whose expression indicated that having been led to expect great things, she was being let down. Tea in the kitchen with her maid, indeed, who she stared at resentfully from time to time as if she should be serving tea rather than being seated at the table and consuming scones alongside her betters.
As the conversation tended to flag, Mabel glanced towards the bookshelf, with the long line of my logbooks for the past ten years.
‘You have such an exciting life,’ and pointing at a poster I had forgotten to remove of the Women’s Suffragette Movement, of which I was the Edinburgh Branch chairman, she smiled.
‘I am sure we are going to be great friends, Rose, for we have much in common. One of my main reasons for choosing to come north is for our meeting in Aberdeen. Perhaps you already know about it. Dear Emmeline and Christabel are intending to be present, although that has not been advertised,’ she added in a whisper. ‘They are so well known, so they prefer to travel incognito—’
I had indeed heard of this great occasion, but dismissed it as an unlikely event for me to attend. Instead it now seemed well within my reach. For not only were the Pankhursts well known but achieving notoriety having smashed windows and gone to prison and suffered for the cause. My interest quickened. The mention of the Pankhursts and I was now listening intently: ‘They have long been my heroines.’
‘And mine,’ she laughed. ‘And I have the honour of being well acquainted with dear Emmeline over the years.’
My eyes widened. What a stroke of luck, one of my ambitions about to be fulfilled. To meet them at last …
‘My dear,’ Mabel was saying, ‘you simply must come with me. You would be most welcome considering that you have such an interest and a prominent role in our movement.’
Vince, who had just returned from stabling the Beast and heard this part of the conversation, nodded approvingly. ‘A jolly good idea, Rose, you can stay the night in Ballater or we will come and collect you both.’
It was then I had my first moments of disquiet. It was all too well planned, even to a meeting with the Pankhursts. Naturally suspicious through years of dealing with problems, I knew how readily things could go wrong. It sounded wonderful, too wonderful. All planned so meticulously, a visit long overdue from Olivia and Faith, seeing us all in a train heading for a holiday in, of all places, Balmoral Castle. Everything fitted in beautifully for everyone, even Thane.
I tried to shake it off, ignore one of my strange feelings, as Jack described them. A touch of ice in the heart, that something was about to go terribly wrong.
