Lately out of mourning, Eilidh wore a red feather and diamond studs like stars amid her ringlets. Her nose wrinkled as she sipped a glass of Burgundy, which, even from the other side of the drawing room, Saoirse could tell was too pale to taste of the best.
‘It’s not that we aren’t up to the job,’ Eilidh insisted, ‘but it’s a different job than we thought, that’s all.’
Since being in receipt of the family’s legacy, the sisters had become quarrelsome, the duty weighing upon them alongside their grief; their sister and her daughter, both gone too soon. As children they’d been encouraged to compete with each other. The girls had jostled over who was the best archer and who was the most well read. The McKenzies had family spirit but they cared who took the lead. Eilidh knew she had to stand up for her idea. ‘The dinner shall solve the clues for us,’ she continued, insistent. ‘We’ll make a game of it.’
‘We can’t share Great Aunt Berenice’s clues.’ Saoirse sounded shocked. ‘That’d be the height of imprudence!’
‘Perhaps. But we might share half a clue. A phrase to be deciphered. A tiny wee bit at a time. Maybe as we progress we’ll get the hang of it. We can hardly do worse than Granny and Mother, God rest their souls. It’s been years and years and we’ve twelve to go. We require assistance or it’ll be a millennium before the damn duty’s dispatched. This way Edinburgh’s finest wits shall be our teachers.’
Eilidh had often said that she was exasperated by Berenice’s legacy but this outburst was more strident than anything she’d ventured previously. ‘Why didn’t she just say what she meant?’ she added. This was a rhetorical question for both women understood why Berenice had not done so. She’d had to hide the crown in a desperate fix, unable to contact even her sister, who’d been just as foxed as they were. In summation, the crown had been hidden rather too well. The single clue unravelled had taken decades and had involved mathematics, Greek history, Scots law and an intimate knowledge of the flora upon Arthur’s Seat. It had been a shock when Aoife had finally found where to dig.
Saoirse considered all this before speaking. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll try a dinner.’
That afternoon, invitations were dispatched to Professor and Mrs Cockburn, Dr and Mrs Rutherford, the Misses Murray and with them their cousin Fitzpatrick Thom, visiting from Kew. Eilidh and Saoirse knew, of course, that Fitzpatrick was the grandson of Archibald Thom, the Duke of Cumberland’s strategist after the 1745 uprising and the man who, in a fit of pique at Berenice’s unrelenting support for the Jacobite cause, had pushed for their grandmother’s death warrant to be signed. The king’s brother, the duke, was nicknamed Butcher Cumberland for a reason, but dispatching women at the hanging tree was an unusual gambit even for him; especially educated and well-connected ladies. Both Eilidh and Saoirse recalledtheir great aunt complaining that she’d had to thole Archibald’s society after he’d killed her sister, in order to cover her own misdemeanours. She wasn’t the only Edinburgh resident who’d found themselves keeping company with the men directly responsible for the killing of their kin. To make it worse, Archibald Thom was, she said, mighty pleased with himself. He was up and down to London like a bouncing ball and couldn’t start or finish a sentence without letting slip the titled folk he had met there. He was so obsessed with hunting Jacobites that it became his only topic of conversation and his poor wife, Jane, was beside herself with boredom. It seems, however, that Archibald, though useful, had worn out the men he met at court quite as much as he’d bored his wife, for unlike other movers and shakers in the wake of the quelled uprising, he was never offered a title by King George. ‘I suppose an unlikeable fellow is an unlikeable fellow whichever side you’re on,’ Mhairi had reflected. So when Fitzpatrick Thom’s name came up, Eilidh and Saoirse decided to invite him to their first dinner. ‘After all, wouldn’t it be fitting if he was the one who helped us solve the thing?’ Eilidh said, feeling the heiress of her grandmother’s derring-do.
The evening started as usual. A chilled Burgundy. The table set. Then onion soup, followed by roasted stuffed capon, baked fish, beef shin pie, potato croquettes and an array of side dishes. And after all that, more than two hours in, the realisation that there was nothing sweet upon the table, not so much as an apple from the kitchen barrel.
‘I’ve come over quite Russian,’ Saoirse said, fanning herself, for the McKenzies generally favoured French service, everything laid on the table at once.
Eilidh stood up. ‘We charge guests for hospitality in this house,’ she announced with a giggle. ‘Cook’s puddings are sought-after and you must earn the privilege. Tonight we’ll havea sublime raspberry fool and an unctuous treacle tart, but it won’t be served until you’ve paid the toll.’ The toll, of course, was a riddle, which at length that evening, Dr Rutherford solved.
As they nursed brandies after the guests had gone at three in the morning, the sisters agreed the venture had been a success. However, they hadn’t anticipated the popularity of their idea. The McKenzie Sisters’ Riddling Dinners became an overnight sensation. The Cockburns, Rutherfords and Misses Murray told the tale about the town and before luncheon the following day Edinburgh was alight with the fun of it. The anticipation! The audacity of these women. The originality! What would have transpired had Dr Rutherford not come up with the solution? Would the Misses McKenzie have really withheld the raspberry fool? Several months later, it turned out that they certainly would when a different table failed and were packed off into the night swill-full of fortified wine but with no pudding; which that evening was toffee meringue with brandy cream and Cook’s speciality, iced apricot souffle. The following day, one of the guests, passing the sisters on George Street, leaned out of his carriage, most chagrined, and shouted, ‘You owe me a meringue, yet, you harpies!’ This incident made theScotsman, with a cartoon of the gentleman being comforted on the knee of his nanny, that he might have pudding after all if only he would be a good boy.
Now Sister Winifred gazes out of the window of the convent’s library, which gives out over the vegetable garden, where nuns with less money to endow than she and fewer marketable skills are howking tatties out of the freezing, muddy ground. She hadn’t expected her return to the West End to bring it all back so vividly. She most assuredly does not want these memories and feels a twist of shame at abandoning her family duty so long ago. There’s no question in her mind that she must reclaimit. Araminta, the dear girl, cannot be left alone. Though she’s showing promise, she requires guidance.
After the first riddling dinner, Fitzpatrick Thom was a holy terror to the women. Truly the heir to his grandfather’s obsession, he realised that the women were in possession of something both valuable and secret. They came to regret their cheek in inviting him for he dogged them so badly that not only did they instruct Brodie never to show the fellow up, but they went as far as to make discreet enquiries when they received invitations, to ensure he wouldn’t be present. On one occasion, Eilidh hid in a cupboard in the withdrawing room of a friend’s house on Heriot Row when Fitzpatrick called unexpectedly. The friend, obligingly and probably because she was not fond of the fellow either, got rid of him quickly.
‘He can’t know, can he?’ Eilidh said to Saoirse when she got home.
They decided that he might not know exactly but he certainly knew something. Perhaps he hoped to lay his hands on their treasure and finally achieve the peerage that his grandfather had failed to secure in the late 1740s. In the end the women laid false clues over the course of several riddling dinners. These would send Thom out of town as far as Roslin Chapel and the infamous drinking den underneath a row of cottages at Gilmerton. When he was caught trying to excavate the cellar of St Cecilia’s Hall off the Cowgate, he was recalled to Kew on a family matter. Now it seems he has passed his obsession to his son, but then Sister Winifred is not surprised. Such matters run in families as has happened in her own. She knows nothing of the Order of the Hermit. None of the women do. But the Thoms, she shudders, are unpleasant. She must protect the girl, she decides, whatever it takes.
Chapter Sixteen
Out in the carriage for the second time today, Araminta peers at the High Street. She reluctantly admits that Colonel Fraser was right, as she knocks on the roof to have Davey draw up at the point which marks the apex of Berenice McKenzie’s triangle. Araminta did not expect the place would feel so down-at-heel in daylight hours, so despite her promise to Winifred last night, she hasn’t brought her muff gun. Now she regrets it. Still, she climbs down, lifting her skirts over the stinking stream running downhill in the direction of Holyroodhouse. She’s fond of old buildings, indeed she and Johnathan live in a house that’s well over a century old, but this part of the city feels like a rookery for all its illustrious past. It’s difficult to imagine that her well-heeled McKenzie forebears ever resided here, though she supposes some of them must have. The tenements run to an impressive eight storeys and on the street there are costermongers and beggars. She takes heart at the sight of two gentlemen clutching advocates’ briefs, deep in discussion as they stride up the hill.
The building marked on Berenice’s map is only six storeys. Below it there’s a wool shop and the thick scent of shorn sheep seeps through the doorway. Unsure what she intends to do, Araminta climbs the steps to the front door above the shop and knocks. There’s no answer. She knocks again and at length a girl opens up. The child is no more than eight years of age and barefoot. She clearly finds the sight of a lady on her doorstep disturbing.
‘Miss?’ she asks nervously.
‘Might I come in?’
The girl steps back. Inside, there are more stone steps, curving upwards with only a grubby rope as a banister.
‘Who lives here, please?’ Araminta enquires.
The girl bites her lip and to loosen it, Araminta fishes a penny from her reticule. This has the desired effect. Once started, it feels like the child will never stop.
‘My kin, miss, my parents and my brothers and one sister and me. And the Robertsons. And the Lindsays. And the Macraes and the lassie Macrae and her husband though I’m not sure his name. And old Mrs Banks on the top floor with her cats and she has some doos an aw. And in the laigh, some poor folk.’
Araminta wonders how poor the people residing in the basement would have to be, to be considered poor by a girl with no shoes.
‘And in the back of the building?’
‘We’ve twa goats, miss, and ducks but mostly it’s a midden.’
‘Can I see?’
The girl nods enthusiastically and taking on the guise of tour guide, leads the way down the inner stair and through another door to the rear. The back of the building seems taller and Araminta surmises this is because it has been erected on a steep hill. A forlorn chestnut tree grows against the boundary wall and goats graze on the patchy grass. Turning back, Araminta notices a coat of arms carved into the stone on the first floor, but she doesn’t recognise the insignia. It’s a sign, she supposes, of better days, though she finds it hard to imagine that a building such as this would ever have housed the sort of family with their own crest.
