A Knife in Darkness Read online

  She indicated the place on the floor where she had found Forman lying.

  ‘My husband said,’ she began thoughtfully, ‘that both he and Colonel Verney had had their throats cut from left to right, and that that meant it could have been a left-handed assailant in front of them or, more likely, a right-handed one behind them.’

  ‘He told you that, did he?’ Durris asked in surprise. Hippolyta chose not to correct him.

  ‘But Forman was tall, and he would have needed someone tall to do that to him. My husband suggested that someone could have stood on a chair, but that seems unlikely to me, do you not think?’ She had not been able to voice such a doubt to Basilia, and she did not want Patrick to know she had overheard his conversation with Dr. Durward. It was quite a relief to be able to air her thoughts.

  ‘It’s hard to picture,’ said Durris, and Hippolyta favoured him with a happy smile.

  ‘My very thought.’

  ‘But it could have happened,’ Durris went on. ‘The question is, what order were they killed in? Forgive me, ma’am, talking so freely, but –’

  ‘But I started it?’ she finished when he paused. He gave a little shrug.

  ‘Say that someone broke into the house to burgle it, and found that the residents were still awake. Colonel Verney is in the hall, maybe, while Forman goes to fetch something from the kitchen. I met the Colonel maybe twa three times: he was always in that chair, was he no?’

  ‘He was, I believe. Forman moved him about the place: I don’t think he could convey himself on his own.’

  ‘Then the burglar – wait, though, did a’body hear him cry out? Colonel Verney, I mean.’

  ‘No one has mentioned it. But if it was dark, perhaps he didn’t see the burglar?’

  ‘Was it dark? Why were there no lamps?’

  Hippolyta thought about it.

  ‘It was a light evening, but that hallway always seems to be dark. But the maid, Tabitha, she said she came down from settling Miss Verney for the night, and found the hallway in darkness. It was when she went to find a light that she was grabbed from behind, dragged into the parlour and locked in the press.’

  ‘Was the parlour dark, too?’

  ‘I don’t know: we could ask her.’

  ‘For if it was, and the burglar had blown out all the lights in the hall to hide himself before Colonel Verney appeared, then Colonel Verney could not have been coming from the parlour. Where else could he have been?’

  ‘In the dining room? In the servants’ quarters here? There’s at least one other door in the hall: it might be his library, or anything.’

  ‘Well: we’ll have to find that out.’ Durris made himself another note. ‘We’ll need to see what order things happened in.’

  ‘Why?’ Hippolyta was puzzled. Surely it was enough that both men were dead on the same evening?

  ‘Well, so that we can work out how everything happened, ma’am. Did – Forman, wasn’t it? – did Forman disturb the burglar who then chased him into the kitchen and attacked him – in which case yes, he would need to be tall – or did the burglar decide to attack Forman first, since he was the more dangerous of the two? He could have climbed on a chair and lain in wait, if that makes sense, in a darkened kitchen, killed Forman and then returned to dispose of Colonel Verney, too, knowing he could do nothing to defend himself.’

  ‘That is an unpleasant thought.’

  ‘My apologies, ma’am.’

  ‘Not at all: the whole business is unpleasant.’

  There was silence as Durris made his little sketches of the kitchen, floorboards creaking under his feet despite his soft tread.

  ‘There are no other relatives, ma’am, I believe?’

  ‘That’s my belief, too. There’s certainly no one else living here.’

  ‘But you’re by way of being a friend of Miss Verney?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘though of course we have not known each other long. Miss Verney has been staying with us since the murders were discovered.’

  ‘Aye, I see. Would you be so good as to come with me then to look at whatever other rooms are off the hall?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hippolyta, belatedly considering that she should probably mention such a thing to Basilia. But she was curious, too: did Colonel Verney sleep downstairs? What were his private quarters like? How did a gentleman who could not climb stairs arrange his life?

  There were two other doors off the hallway, both at the back in the even dimmer recesses under the landing gallery. The first was, as Hippolyta had surmised, a kind of library, where Colonel Verney must have done his business. There were not many books, and those there were were of an age to have been on their shelves for many years. One or two newer ones were military histories, and a couple of novels of the type Hippolyta had never been allowed to read. There were, however, two or three deedboxes lying open and empty on the floor, papers in orderly piles on the broad desk, an elaborate inkwell and a couple of much-used pens, and more papers folded into long strips and bound in bundles with string, again all very neat. Each bundle, Hippolyta saw, was labelled in a black, sloping hand.

  ‘Outgoings, 1827 – 1828’ was the nearest. ‘Vouchers, 1821 – 1822’. She stifled a yawn.

  ‘Did he do much business?’ asked Durris, fingering the papers. He slipped one out from a bundle, and unfolded it carefully. ‘“The Burns Mortification” – what’s that?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that! It’s a local trust for scholars – bursaries for university. Miss Verney said that the minister had asked Colonel Verney to become a trustee.’

  ‘It looks as if he was giving the papers a good going-over first,’ Durris remarked. ‘I wonder if there was anything here worth stealing?’

  ‘Nothing looks disturbed,’ said Hippolyta.

  ‘True.’ Durris refolded the paper along its original lines, and slid it precisely back into its bundle, then straightened the papers and returned the bundle to its place. If Durris had stolen anything, Hippolyta thought, he would have left no trace at all. ‘I wonder where the papers are usually kept? Was someone taking a chance when they were, maybe, not locked in the parish safe?’

  ‘Maybe he had found an irregularity in the trust, and someone was trying to hide it!’ Hippolyta’s father had occasionally mentioned irregularities in trusts: it was always a stressful subject.

  ‘Who were the other trustees, then?’ Durris asked reasonably.

  ‘Ah, the minister, Dr. Durward, Mr. Strachan, who’s a merchant, and the man of law, Mr. Strong.’

  ‘Oh, aye. Maybe not the most likely suspects for slitting people’s throats,’ he added, ‘with respect.’

  Hippolyta felt herself blush, and was cross.

  ‘Well, Mr. Strachan was threatening Colonel Verney only last Sunday!’

  ‘Was he, indeed?’ Durris looked directly at her for once, narrowing his eyes. They were grey, she saw, with a sense of calm that stopped her irritation at once.

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought it was. He was certainly very cross.’

  ‘Where was this? What did he say? – did you see this yourself?’

  ‘Yes, yes I did. It was outside the kirk. Our service had finished and Colonel Verney had taken his constitutional in his pony cart down to the village as we walked back ourselves, and we met everyone coming out of the kirk. I didn’t see him approach, but I suddenly heard him – and he was saying something about opposing any appointment that was made, meaning that Colonel Verney would be appointed to something, I thought. That would make sense, if he didn’t want the Colonel to join the trustees. He said the Colonel was an outsider and it was none of his business.’

  ‘Well,’ said Durris, making a note, ‘it might be the mortification, it might be something else. Did a’body else hear him say this?’

  ‘I don’t know: I didn’t notice anyone else paying particular attention.’

  ‘And what did the Colonel say?’

  ‘He was quite calm about it, said he hadn’t – what was it? He h
adn’t pushed himself forward, he had been approached. And then Mr. Strachan said the minister was a fool, or something to that effect.’

  Durris put away his notebook again, and made a gesture at the paperwork around them.

  ‘I’ll have to gang through this more carefully soon, in case there’s other business here that could point to a murderer. Shall we look at the other room?’

  They returned to the hall, and tried the next door. It led, via a little antechamber, into a bedroom. Hippolyta backed out hastily, but curiosity drove her to watch from the doorway. The room was not large, though there was space for the Colonel’s chair to be manoeuvred about from dressing table – which had the look of a campaign piece – to window to bed. A smallish wardrobe stood against the near wall, and a trunk that again had probably seen many a baggage train was at the foot of the bed. Durris opened it and glanced inside, murmured ‘Blankets,’ and felt around them, apparently, to his satisfaction. He opened the wardrobe but Hippolyta could see nothing of the interior: there was a cheval mirror on the other side of the room pointing in roughly the right direction, but Durris’ bulk blocked all the view.

  ‘Clothes,’ he said again. ‘Little drawers, too, with collars and so on. You’re no missing much, ma’am.’

  She pulled back, blushing again. It was easy to be too curious.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, sliding back the last of several drawers and shutting the wardrobe softly, ‘time to go and speak to Miss Verney, if you’ll let me.’

  Hippolyta sighed, hoping he would be kind to Basilia.

  ‘Where do you think best to talk with her? I should say that the dining room has been arranged for the coffins, so that might not be a good place.’

  ‘She’s in the parlour, is she no? With all the women from the funeral, no doubt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then I might as well go in there, eh? Talk to them all at once.’

  Goodness, thought Hippolyta: she was still not sure whether this sheriff’s man ought to be at the front door or the back door.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Ladies, this is Mr. Durris, the sheriff’s man.’

  Hippolyta abandoned him quickly at the parlour door and went to sit with Basilia, taking her hand. Durris was unperturbed. His eyes took in the room: the occupants, the elderly furniture, the cloth-covered box of the parlour organ, even, Hippolyta was sure, the door of the wall press where Tabitha had been imprisoned.

  ‘Good day to you, ladies,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry to intrude at such a time, but I was unaware that the funerals would be taking place so soon. You’ll ken that I need to ask some questions if we are to understand what happened and find the miscreant that did these terrible things.’

  Hippolyta glanced around the room discreetly. Mrs. Strachan’s beautiful face displayed a very proper mixture of anxiety and sorrow, which Hippolyta immediately tried to imitate. Mrs. Kynoch seemed to be aiming for the same, but her teeth gave her the look of a concerned rabbit. The Strongs were excited.

  ‘But nobody knows who did them,’ said Basilia. Durris regarded her kindly.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find that one person here might know one fact, and one person there might know another, miss, and eventually we’ll put all the facts together and discover the truth.’

  He put it so simply, but with a confidence that made Hippolyta, at least, believe him completely.

  ‘Mr. Durris, is the sheriff aware of any miscreants in the area?’ Mrs. Kynoch asked squeakily. ‘Has anything like this happened nearby?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs. Kynoch, surely we would have heard of it!’ exclaimed Miss Strong. ‘Such a shocking thing!’

  ‘Unless the sheriff had decided to hide it, for reasons of his own,’ added Miss Ada with dark relish.

  ‘The sheriff is not much in the habit of concealment,’ said Durris reassuringly. ‘And no, we don’t know either of any other events like this, nor of anyone in the area likely to carry out such an attack.’

  ‘Is it hamesucken, do you think?’ Hippolyta asked suddenly, remembering her father’s work. The Misses Strong, evidently similarly educated by having a lawman for a brother, raised their thick eyebrows at her in eerie union.

  ‘It could be hamesucken, it could be burglary with violence,’ said Durris.

  ‘What?’ asked Basilia in bewilderment.

  ‘Hamesucken is the offence of entering a person’s house with the intent of attacking him. The intent has to be there, of course,’ Durris added to Hippolyta, ‘for it might have been that a burglar entered the house and happened upon the Colonel, and panicked.’

  ‘Either is quite dreadful,’ said Mrs. Strachan suddenly, in her soft voice, and everyone turned to look at her. She blushed prettily.

  ‘Aye, but the motives are different,’ said Durris. ‘Now, the sheriff doesna ken of anybody suspicious nearby. Did any of you see anything odd, or anyone acting strangely?’

  ‘There are so many strangers in the town these days,’ said Mrs. Kynoch. ‘With the wells being so successful. It’s very hard to keep track of who’s here, and who’s staying where.’

  ‘Are they not mostly up at the Wells and at Pannanich Lodge?’ asked Durris. Hippolyta wondered where he was from – clearly not Ballater.

  ‘No, lots of visitors lodge in the village, particularly in the summer. Anyone with an extra room can find someone to stay in it,’ Mrs. Kynoch explained to him.

  ‘Well …’ said Durris, adjusting his glasses. ‘In that case let us work from the other end. Miss Verney,’ his gaze lighted on Basilia, ‘do you know of any reason why someone would wish to attack your uncle?’

  Basilia swallowed hard, and edged forward on the sofa, as if preparing herself for some kind of challenge.

  ‘It is not easy to think of such a thing,’ she said stiffly, and Hippolyta squeezed her hand. She found herself torn between wanting to protect Basilia and eagerness to hear any information she might have. Basilia glanced at her gratefully, great eyes wide, then dropped her gaze to the carpet, evidently searching her memory.

  ‘My uncle was a soldier, of course,’ she said. ‘Most of what he spoke of was his memories of soldiering. He had fought at Waterloo and received a sabre slash across his legs, which rendered him unable to walk for the rest of his days. He talked a great deal of his fellow soldiers and his travels in those days, but I do not recall any mention of anyone that he considered a personal enemy: I doubt any agent of Bonaparte would have troubled to seek him out especially to take their revenge. I don’t think he would have stood out that much on the battlefield.’ She gave a little fond smile.

  ‘What about family? Has he relatives besides yourself, Miss?’

  ‘He never married, and his parents and his brother and sister are all dead,’ said Basilia. Something in this response caused Durris to take out his notebook and write something carefully.

  ‘When did you come to be living with him?’ he asked.

  ‘I joined him in Bath about five years ago, when my mother died. My father, his brother, had died some years before that.’

  Durris noted that as well, and gave Basilia a rather assessing look, as if trying to gauge her age. Hippolyta reckoned Basilia would have been about fifteen, then, when she joined her uncle.

  ‘And when did you move up here?’

  ‘We came up here first the following summer – that would have been in ’25. He had felt no good effect from the waters in Bath, and the social season he regarded as oppressive. Someone had mentioned the wells here and he thought he would try them. We came up for the summer and stayed in the Lodge, and when we returned to Bath for the winter he found he missed the air here – Bath can be so stuffy, whether cold or hot. He made enquiries for somewhere to stay more permanently, and we finally found this place – not ideal, he admitted, but roomy enough – and we moved here in the wintertime, in January of ’27. It was bitter, that first winter! But my uncle loved it.’ Again that fond smile.

  ‘Since you have been living with your uncle �
� or in anything he referred to about the time between his leaving the army and your joining him – have you been aware of anything he might have done that might have caused someone to attack him like this? Or anything he owned that someone might have gone to such an effort to break in and steal?’

  ‘Goodness, no! He was well enough off, but he had no great treasures!’

  ‘Oh, treasure!’

  Miss Ada had perked up suddenly, and everyone stared at her.

  ‘Have you remembered something? Miss Strong, is it not?’

  ‘Aye, you’ll have met our brother,’ said Miss Ada dismissively. ‘The Jacobite treasure! That’s supposed to be buried somewhere at Dinnet House, is it not?’

  ‘That’s a legend, you silly goose,’ said her sister firmly.

  ‘But what if it wasn’t?’ She looked about the room, seeking support. ‘You’ve all heard the story, have you no? A boot full of silver, buried somewhere in the grounds.’

  ‘Which no doubt someone came back and collected years ago,’ said Miss Strong.

  ‘No, the fellow that buried it was hanged in Edinburgh! That was the story.’

  ‘Aye, story,’ Miss Strong reinforced. ‘That’s all it was.’

  Durris stood in silence, waiting for them to stop, and no one else interrupted.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said at last, when they had ground to a halt, ‘you may be right and you may be wrong, but we canna tell at the present moment. Has anybody else heard tell of anybody looking for Jacobite treasure hereabouts?’

  They all shook their heads, though Hippolyta suddenly remembered the night watchman’s supposed sighting of Mr. Brookes, up and walking, near the Strachans’ house. Could that have been what he was seeking? But he was nowhere near Dinnet House. Should she tell Durris about him? She decided that now was not the time, anyway. Nor, with Mrs. Strachan sitting so elegantly across the room, was it the moment to mention publicly her husband’s apparent attack on Colonel Verney on Sunday. Durris, however, evidently remembered what she had said.