‘We’re not here about the palace. We heard a story about a child. Something to do with a dove?’
‘The doocot, you mean?’
Araminta has no idea but she nods enthusiastically.
‘Most folk come for the palace,’ the maid says.
Araminta beams and waits.
The girl sighs. ‘She was murdered, the wee lass. I cannae mind her name. They got the wrong man for it was her father in the end. They hung the wrong person, see. It was centuries ago,’ she finishes, as if such a thing might never take place in the modern age.
‘What has this murder to do with a dove?’ Araminta enquires.
‘They found the lass’s bloodied clothes in the doocot at Baron Ross’s rigg. The lost wee doo, folk called her then.’
‘I see. Where might I find the present baron?’
‘There’s no Rosses in the town now,’ the maid says, as if Araminta has asked about a two-headed dog. ‘The line died out a century since. The last of them never married. The doocot’s still there. On the other side of the High Street, up the hill. Almost as far as the new canal.’
‘Thank you.’ Araminta reaches into her reticule and hands over a coin. The maid closes the door.
The women turn back towards the carriage.
‘It sounds like a famous story,’ Eleanor says. ‘Hereabouts anyway.’
‘Infamous, more like,’ Araminta responds. She wonders if Berenice and, indeed, Clementina knew the Rosses. The McKenzie women were ever well connected and the story of the murdered child and the injustice of the wrong man being hanged has lasted. If Berenice showed her sister or her daughter a painting of Linlithgow and the image of a dove, it seems reasonable she might expect them to know about it.
‘We better search out this doocot,’ Araminta says. ‘Whatever that means.’
Eleanor laughs. ‘It’s adovecot, ma’am.’
Araminta grins at the absurdity of not being able to understand a word so close to the English pronunciation. ‘Of course.’
The men bring the tools, which do not look out of place for along the canal there are building sites with plots marked for new houses along the basin, two of which are under construction. A mason is chiselling stone beneath a scaffold. The dovecot is easy to spot, near the canal on private garden ground, at the top end of an old rigg. It’s tall, built of rubble with a rat course visible and pigeons flying in and out. The shape reminds Araminta of the beehives at the manor house across the Thames in Richmond, though this is larger. A hundred years ago there would’ve been nothing else round here, the dovecot would have been at the fringes of the little town, discreet in a way, though sturdily constructed. The walls, when Araminta checks, are thick. It’s a clever hiding place – notable yet ordinary. Berenice again did well. The small wooden door on the south side ofthe structure is locked. Douglas uses the hammer to smash it. Roosting pigeons flap into the trees.
With the door open, the smell takes Araminta aback. Douglas coughs and Davey retches. There’s a thick seam of bird droppings lining the dovecot floor and two dead pigeons, partly decomposed. The other birds have been pecking their flesh. Eleanor wrinkles her nose. ‘God,’ she exclaims. ‘Are you sure?’
Araminta nods. ‘I think so.’
Eleanor wonders if this is a better or worse place to dig than the plague pit, and comes to the conclusion that it’s worse. Brodie draws himself up.
‘In the dead centre, do you think, ma’am?’
‘Indeed, Brodie.’
The butler loosens his cravat and ties it over his nose and mouth.
‘It’ll be deep, I should think,’ Araminta says, and he ducks inside with one of the spades. The remaining birds exit at this intrusion in a pounding of wings though one plucky dove pecks at Brodie, who catches it gently and throws it upwards, through the doorway.
There’s more than a foot of guano, eggshell and bird bone but he gets through it, coming out only when his eyes are streaming. Davey sighs and, resigned, puts out his hand for the spade. A couple of men working on the boats glance in the direction of the dovecot but they don’t approach the unusual party. Then the back door of the house at the bottom of the rigg opens and a woman appears. She pulls a shawl over her shoulders and strides through the snowdrops poking through the thin grass.
‘What are you doing?’ she demands when she reaches the doocot.
Araminta puts out her hand. ‘My name is Araminta McKenzie Moore. I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘You can’t go poking about other folk’s property,’ the woman objects. ‘You’ve broken my door. What are you doing with my birds?’
‘It’s a long story. My great grandmother came to Linlithgow many years ago. I think she left something here. Perhaps she even knew Baron Ross.’
