‘I’m Angus McGhie. Come through.’
The office adds the scent of leather ledgers to the air, one of which is lying open on the desk. Mr McGhie sits down but does not offer Eleanor the other chair which remains against the wall. He smooths his moustaches as she stands as if in the dock. She suddenly feels as monochrome as a shadow. Mr McGhie is hale, his hair chestnut and his skin lit with a healthy glow.
‘You’ve arrived, then,’ he says at length. ‘I expected you yesterday.’
‘The ship ran into weather, sir. We docked this morning at Leith.’
‘Your address in Edinburgh?’
‘Glenfinlas Street, sir. Number four.’
‘Of course. Well, Miss Thrale, we’ve been waiting a long time for this visit.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have no idea.’
Eleanor really hasn’t, but she has never been in the position to turn down the shilling a month picked up on her day off from the gentleman in Kew, who sometimes asks odd questions about the mistress’s household. Letters received. Visitors at Christmas andEaster. Books that the mistress is reading. Over the months and years Eleanor has told herself that this contribution is ‘money for jam’. That is, until a few evenings ago when according to the ongoing instructions of her secret benefactor, she sent a message boy with a note simply marked X when she learned the mistress was leaving town. Later she sneaked out at one of the clock into the freezing darkness to meet the gentleman in his carriage, parked, as arranged, at the foot of the hill. He seemed excited. That’s when he gave her the scrap of paper that directed her here.
‘Has your mistress said how long she intends to stay?’ Mr McGhie asks.
Eleanor shakes her head. ‘She only said that she wants to get home to Richmond as soon as she can sort out her great aunt’s estate.’
‘But Miss McKenzie is not dead,’ Mr McGhie points out.
‘No, sir. She’s mortally ill, or so my mistress was told in the letter.’
Mr McGhie considers this. ‘The old woman attended the races two weeks ago and was at church last Sunday in her usual pew,’ he states, quite baldly. ‘She gave a spirited rendition of the hymns as I understand it.’
Eleanor can hardly comment on this although she thinks Edinburgh seems rather large for every one of its residents to know what the others are up to. That is the stuff of the village where she grew up, her father’s three sheep grazing on the common. She wants to ask if the gentlemen are planning to thieve Mistress McKenzie, for she will not be party to that. She has always assumed the gentleman with the shillings was a jilted suitor and harmless, but there’s an edge to Mr McGhie’s questioning which is making her uneasy.
‘I want to know what your mistress and her great aunt talk about. You will come on the daily, Miss Thrale, and let me know.’
Eleanor loiters. She wants to say with it being an hour from Glenfinlas Street and back, she might not have time to come every day, but McGhie opens the drawer of his desk and removes not one, but two shillings. ‘If you take a cab, I’ll instruct the boy to pay the driver,’ he says. ‘We don’t want them to miss you.’
Eleanor pockets the money and manages a curtsey. ‘Yes, sir.’
She walks back along Princes Street as fast as she can. As she passes the muddy wasteland at the bottom of the large mound that leads to the castle, it occurs to her that she should have asked the gentleman to supply a cab, though it’s too late now. When she gets to the townhouse, Eleanor worries that she’s been too long. Hoping for the best, she sneaks through the basement door and immediately it’s clear something is wrong. From the kitchen emanates the sound of wailing. A young, grubby kitchen maid with several teeth missing sits howling at a scrubbed pine table. The two housemaids stare at their well-blacked boots, holding hands, while Cook, wisps of greying hair peeking out from her cap, pours cheap Cognac into four pottery cups.
‘What’s happened?’ Eleanor asks.
Cook looks up. Her cheeks are wet. ‘God save us,’ she says, ‘the mistress has up and died. Why aren’t you with your lady, lassie? She’ll have need of you.’
Eleanor pulls off her shawl as she climbs the stairs. On the first floor, the drawing room door is open. Araminta perches on the edge of a canary-yellow sopha, her face even paler than usual. Eleanor loiters, realising that someone else is there; a long-faced gentleman who hands the mistress a glass of an odd, vivid-green mixture.
‘Thank you, Dr Anderson,’ the mistress says.
The doctor, who is middle-aged and wearing tan britches that are too large, hovers. ‘Down in one, Mrs Moore,’ he advises. ‘I’ve included a peppering of Dover’s powders. For the shock. I told your great aunt to restrict her usage of the drops. They’reexcellent for energy but in a lady of her age and condition... her heart, you see.’ He sighs. ‘The prescription is proving efficacious but patients find it moreish. The drops, once taken, mitigate against caution. I warned your great aunt. She was a good deal more ill than she appeared, that’s the truth of it.’
Araminta puts down the glass on a side table without venturing a drop.
‘We’d only just met,’ she says sadly. ‘Aunt Eilidh and I.’
‘You made it in time then. That was lucky.’
Presently, Araminta does not feel lucky. She stares out of the long sash-and-case windows at the leafless winter trees over the garden wall opposite. Another few hours and she would have undoubtedly found out more about her mother and, for that matter, her great aunt.
‘It’s strange how one feels known, immediately, by family. Miss McKenzie was, I believe, the last of my relations,’ she gets out.
