‘To Heriot’s Hospital, sir? Is that what you mean?’
‘Beyond there,’ Thom growls. Davey seems such a cheerful, simple fellow. He hates that. And he’s sure Araminta McKenzie Moore is laughing at him. The crown, the object of his mission, is under his nose and the damn woman is leading him a merrydance. In league with nuns, it seems she’s bamboozled him, playing cat and mouse across the city. Damn women and their damn shopping. ‘I won’t have it,’ he says, out of the blue.
‘Yes, sir,’ Davey responds obligingly.
‘It’ll be mine,’ Thom adds gruffly, and by this he means not so much the crown itself as the glory in which he will bask in London when he delivers it.
‘How many women has she met since she has been here?’ he pushes.
‘I don’t know who visits the house, sir. But she hasn’t returned any calls in the carriage.’
‘A nun,’ Thom pushes. ‘There’s been a nun.’
‘No, sir.’ Davey, again, can say this with complete honesty. He hasn’t seen Sister Winifred and is beginning to wonder if Mr Thom is deranged.
Thom’s eyes narrow. There’s something he can’t quite put his finger on but his instincts rarely let him down. The trouble is that there are no other members of the McKenzie staff to bribe. The butler is a family retainer of longstanding with, apparently, no personal proclivities upon which pressure might be exerted. McGhie approached the footman before the old woman died but Douglas was not amenable to his attention. Besides that, the maids of all work are too junior and McGhie in any case, judges them almost moronic. ‘I doubt they can distinguish between information and sheer nonsense,’ he said. Then there’s Cook, who scarcely leaves the basement floor. Thom lets out a disheartened sigh. He’s lost the trail. The castle. The visit to Heriot’s. The mound in the meadows. These all prove the crown’s existence. But the women got away with whatever they dug up. He hates having to doggedly follow – he’d rather lead – but it seems that’s his lot.
‘You’ll come tomorrow to Mr McGhie’s,’ he says as a parting shot to Davey, who he decides is better than nothing. Inthe meantime, Harry Thom knows he’ll have to press on. Somewhere there’s another clue. And to solve it the women will have to speak to each other. If he can catch them doing so, he’ll have another shot at taking matters into his own hands. They’re up to something, the witches. In the meantime, he’s hungry, and decides to return the horse and order an oyster pie and a pint of stout at a hostelry on South Bridge. It’ll give him an hour or two to mull things over.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sister Winifred and Eleanor spend the day hidden in the crypt of the old church. The maid has been put in enough danger, the old nun thinks, little of it even to the McKenzies’ advantage. In any case, Winifred intends to get the girl away. She must wait for darkness. The church is run down, almost abandoned since the canal was cut. Eleanor passes the time drawing with a stick in the dirt. Winifred perches on the ledge of a monumental tomb. She considers Araminta and what they have, so far, achieved together. The progress has not been inconsiderable though their running start was gifted by Eilidh. Now with a reminder of mortality at her back, it comes to Winifred suddenly that she hasn’t mourned her sister’s death. The McKenzies hadn’t spoken in such a long time, it’s easier simply to imagine that Eilidh is still at number four Glenfinlas Street, but in thinking that, Winifred is forced to think of Cillian Brodie. This leads her down a twisted path and what she finds herself remembering is his smile. She wonders if it’s changed over the years. The butler certainly wouldn’t recognise her now, she thinks; an old lady in a dowdy robe.
Come five of the clock, just before sunset, Winifred instructs Eleanor to swap clothes with her. Sulkily the maid hands back the golden box secreted in her stocking. The nun slips it into her pocket. She runs a hand over her grey hair which was sheared when she first entered the convent but has now grown long and sits in a tidy bun. It feels odd to be without her wimple. The brown habit she’s now wearing means nothing. She simply looks like a pauper.
As darkness falls the women tramp up the hill, skirting the Links warily and passing on the far side of the Golf Tavern. The walk stretches a good mile and they’re both hungry. ‘Are we going back to the convent?’ Eleanor asks.
Winifred nods. ‘You are,’ she says.
At the east end of Hope Park, Winifred knocks at Reverend Reid’s door and the youngest of the orphaned sisters he has taken in answers. Reid is in his sitting room. He takes a moment to recognise Winifred, out of her usual habit.
‘Good Lord,’ he says, ‘what’s happened?’
Winifred does not give a full explanation but elicits the reverend’s help. Food first. Bread and ham. Then an undertaking that he’ll personally deliver Eleanor to Winifred’s sisters in a closed carriage and that he’ll do so armed. Lastly, he agrees to lend her the key to a private ecclesiastical library in Forres Street where a residence has recently been taken over to house books and manuscripts which once formed the collection of the late Bishop of Aberdeen.
Fed, and confident Eleanor will be safe, Winifred ventures on foot across Hope Park, past the old city walls and down the Mound. Town is busy tonight, at almost eight of the clock, the houses along the fine vistas left and right are wreathed in light with fancy coaches coming and going. Outside, working men fall into conversation; mostly coachmen drinking as they wait. An owl hoots from a chimney as Winifred walks steadily onwards to Forres Street. Here she withdraws the key and proceeds through the doorway, closing it with a decisive click. The house is dark and silent. She lights a lamp on the hallway table and in the old dining room settles into a comfortable chair amid the smell of old books and singed wicks. It’s easy to find a lead and some paper. She doesn’t write the address, but merely draws a map; a shape she trusts Araminta will recognise – the route from Glenfinlas Street to this place. It’ll make little sense to anyoneelse. With this, she slips back out, along St Colme Street and up the hill, posting the note marked ‘MRS MOORE ONLY’ under the front door of number four Glenfinlas Street. The best she can do. Then she returns to the library.
Araminta arrives two hours later, sharp on ten. Winifred is waiting in the window, the lamp dimmed and the shutter cracked. ‘I found it,’ she announces, drawing the gold box from her pocket once her niece is inside. ‘It was buried on the Links.’
‘Have you solved the clue?’ Araminta asks.
‘I waited to open it.’ The nun pushes the box across the desk. Araminta picks it up. She runs her thumb along the surface, rubbing tiny pieces of grit between her fingers.
‘It was where we expected,’ Winifred says. ‘We’re getting close.’
‘The tenth clue,’ Araminta confirms, thinking of her list. The lid is stiff and the two women lean forward as Araminta opens it. Inside, there’s a line of shallow engraving. Winifred squints for the writing is tiny. Araminta, shifting to get the best light, reads the words.
‘She is on the wall, it says. And there’s another triangle here, engraved into the gold.’
‘A triangle... Perhaps, it’s the opposite apex,’ Sister Winifred says. ‘You visited there. A garden, wasn’t it?’
Araminta considers. ‘The garden wall was roughly cut stone. Almost rubble.’
‘Think, dear. Was there nothing else? Nothing at all?’
Araminta recalls the stone crest carved into the rear of the building on the High Street. ‘The Maitland family crest,’ she says. ‘Mounted on the back of the house. But that’s not a “she”, is it? A “she” can only be a person.’
Winifred shakes her head. ‘Berenice is nothing if not precise.’ She peers inside the gold box. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘there’s something on the bottom, close to the edge.’
