Deadly Legacy Read online

  Another hug for Thane, a whisper in his ear and Meg came obediently to Mrs Blaker’s side, took her hand and stared up at me.

  Mrs Blaker put an arm around her. ‘Would you like a doggie like that?’

  Meg grinned from ear to ear, nodding vigorously. Both looked at me and Mrs Blaker said, ‘I don’t suppose we could borrow—’

  ‘No,’ I said sharply, and although I didn’t expect her to understand I added, ‘Deerhounds need a lot of space, we have it here and on Arthur’s Seat. I would never recommend Thane’s breed as a domestic pet. Besides, he is more than that. He is a member of the family.’

  She frowned and said, ‘Yes, of course.’ And to Meg, ‘Perhaps Mrs McQuinn will let you come often and see your new friend.’

  An eager look and I said, ‘Of course, Meg. You come at any time. And your pa will be delighted to see you too.’

  That brought a shadow across Mrs Blaker’s face. ‘Please tell Mr Macmerry we are hoping to get the adoption business completed as soon as possible.’

  I opened the door. The carriage was waiting.

  ‘Goodbye, Meg,’ I said and held out my hand. She regarded this doubtfully.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give Mrs McQuinn a kiss, dear?’

  Poor Meg, I thought. Mrs Blaker knew even less about the feelings of small children than I did, or guessed, seemingly unaware that they perhaps found such demands unpleasant and quite embarrassing.

  However, Meg rose to the occasion. I knelt down – I didn’t have that far to go to be on her level – and she put her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. It made me want to cry – I have no idea why – but I hugged her, kissed her forehead and said, ‘Please come again, Meg.’

  Thane had accompanied the departing visitors and she darted a longing look in his direction and blew him a kiss.

  ‘Bye, Thane.’

  If dogs could bow in a gentlemanly manner, Thane would have done so. We watched them go and looked at each other.

  ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ I asked, and as Thane had no human words available, there were volumes that had to remain unsaid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mr Hayward arrived punctually for his appointment next day, and following me into the kitchen he walked over to the sideboard, and saying, ‘May I?’, he again took up the photograph of Vince with Pappa and the Queen at Balmoral that had fascinated him on his previous visit. Replacing it, he sighed and shook his head.

  ‘This house is full of memories.’ And turning to me he went on, ‘There is one other interesting fragment of information regarding the previous owner of Solomon’s Tower, my old friend Sir Hedley Marsh.’ And from his pocket he withdrew a framed photograph which he handed to me.

  ‘This is Hedley, as a young man.’

  I looked at it, looked again, stared. The resemblance to Vince was unmistakeable.

  Hayward smiled wryly and said, ‘I can see what you are thinking. The same thought struck me on my earlier visit.’ Taking a seat at the table, he said, ‘I told you Hedley believed he had a son. Tell me about your stepbrother, if you please.’

  ‘Vince was illegitimate; his mother was a servant in a big house in the Highlands, seduced – raped – by one of the guests. She bore Vince, who never forgave or forgot the blight of his birth—’

  Hayward held up his hand, shook his head and interrupted. ‘He was not the child of rape, or of seduction. Hedley, even as a young man, had high moral principles. This was no philandering middle-aged gentleman; he was the kind who loved only once in his life and that love, if lost, was lost for ever.’

  Again he paused, shook his head, his face full of sadness. ‘Poor Hedley. He fell deeply in love with that servant girl, came back for her, but found she had left and, as happened with extra servants acquired for the shooting season, no one knew where she had gone. He wanted to marry her and continued his exhaustive search over many years without success, disappointment turning him into a recluse, an embittered old bachelor.’

  He stopped and smiled. ‘I thought you would wish to know the truth about the previous owner. Whether you tell your stepbrother or not is up to you. Now, I must not detain you further. With your permission, shall we proceed to the reason for my visit?’

  And so saying, he opened his case and spread out the documents for my appraisal with a restrained air of triumph that hinted at some success.

  ‘I have been diving into the depths, Mrs McQuinn, and have come up with some interesting facts, some acquired from the National Archives, in fact. The Jacobite Rebellion was a troubled time in our history and there are some facts which have gone unknown to general researchers.’

  He paused, sighed. ‘Fortunately I have friends in high places.’ He produced a pen and tapped the papers. ‘First of all let us regard the map, drawn, most likely, by the prince himself, at a table, perhaps something like this one, in the house at Duddingston.’ He spread the two pieces side by side, leaving a gap of some six inches between them.

  ‘If you will recall, I believed they were both part of the same map, and indeed, searching my historic map collection, this speculation was correct. Here is an identical-looking map.’ And unrolling it he spread it across the table. He then placed next to each other the two portions he had taken away to examine – the right-hand piece the one Jack and I had found in the secret room, and the left included in Mrs Lawers’ legacy.

  ‘If you look closely at these two you will see there are some words scribbled across the base, almost illegible and almost certainly in the prince’s own hand. But most important perhaps, as you will observe, is that the middle portion is missing. And that portion, Mrs McQuinn,’ he said with a triumphant look, ‘if you will regard my similar map of the period, encompasses a section of Arthur’s Seat which includes Samson’s Ribs and indicates Solomon’s Tower as it looked originally, a mere pele tower.’

  He leant back, smiled and I asked, ‘But why had someone removed it?’

  He wagged a finger at me. ‘Do not be too hasty, Mrs McQuinn. That is something we still have to find out – the crux of the mystery. However, there is a piece of history which may not be known to you which concerns Prince Charles’s sojourn in Duddingston prior to the Battle of Prestonpans.

  ‘From the proceedings of the Court of Enquiry, there is a document from Lord Tweeddale, Secretary in Charge of North Britain, or Scotland, and resident in Pinkie House – you may know it, in Musselburgh and near the scene of the Battle of Pinkie fought in the time of the prince’s great-grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots.

  ‘Lord Tweeddale offered thirty thousand pounds for the capture of Prince Charles Edward Stuart on the 17th of August 1745. A week later, on the 23rd, the prince offered the same sum for the capture of Lord Tweeddale. A mocking gesture perhaps, but how did the prince come by this sum? The answer lies in the archives of the Court of Enquiry, Tweeddale’s report of the disappearance of thirty thousand pounds and his valet, one Simon Reslaw, a Frenchman who my lord realised too late was a Jacobite spy.’ He paused. ‘The prince was at that moment preparing to lay siege to Edinburgh, cannons trained on it from Arthur’s Seat. The city mercifully fell to him without bloodshed on the 17th of September, and the prince proclaimed his father James VII as the rightful king.’

  Mr Hayward chuckled. ‘There is a story that it was on the same day the prince acquired his nickname. A lady watching the ceremony from her window reported “ladys who threw their handkerchiefs and clap’d hands show’d great loyalty to ye Bonny Prince”.’

  That was all very well but my interest lay with that thirty thousand pounds. My eyes widened at such a sum.

  ‘A fortune, yes, even in our own time, but in the eighteenth century – impossible to envisage its significance.’

  Mr Hayward shrugged expressively. ‘How and where did he get the money, have such a fortune available, when he was at the start of a campaign with Highlanders and loyal adherents all desperately in need of cash?’

  And taking a drink of water from the jug on the tabl
e, ‘You are a good listener, Mrs McQuinn, are you still with me?’

  I laughed. ‘I’m intrigued, please go on.’

  ‘The answer lies with Simon Reslaw who had infiltrated himself into the Tweeddale household. His Lordship was something of a dandy and liked the idea of a French valet. Anyway, the letter indicates in strong words that Reslaw left in a hurry, discharged for theft.’

  Again he paused, looked at me. ‘You think he went off with the thirty thousand and carried it to the prince,’ I said.

  Hayward nodded eagerly. ‘I do indeed. That is my interpretation. But there is a flaw. I don’t think it ever got that short distance that separated Pinkie House from Duddingston or Prestonpans. Something happened en route and either Simon changed his mind, or lost his life. Anyway we lost track of him. His name was among the wounded after the battle when they were taken care of – both sides, English and Scots, for the prince, whatever his faults, was a humane man. So it was unlikely that he was at the disaster of Culloden—’

  He stopped, made a grimace and sighed. ‘The money was never heard of again.’

  ‘Perhaps he hid it in the house in Duddingston.’

  Mr Hayward shook his head. ‘I think that is unlikely. I suspect that he hid it in that missing section of the map. Here – somewhere on Arthur’s Seat. Consider the hundreds of caves, secret places where a man might leave treasure, intending to come back for it. But our Reslaw never came. Something happened to him. He died or fled.’

  Hayward sat back, smiled. ‘And that is all I have to report to you, Mrs McQuinn, just a fraction of the story, but it perhaps explains the two pieces of the map. I am sure Mr Macmerry will be particularly interested in the portion you told me was found here in the Tower.’ He paused. ‘I trust that Mr Macmerry is well?’

  I explained that he would be returning within the week and as Hayward took his leave Thane came loping down the hill towards us, leaping over the garden wall.

  The departing visitor regarded this huge apparition with apprehension, as might any stranger to the district, and I said reassuringly, ‘That’s Thane – he belongs here.’

  ‘Your dog?’ Mr Hayward was taken by surprise, and glanced from my slight shape to the huge deerhound who came and stood at my side. ‘More like a pony than a dog, if I may say so.’ And I could feel Thane wince as he continued, ‘A small dog like a pug would have seemed more appropriate.’

  At that Thane shook himself and with a haughty look in Hayward’s direction made what would have been in human fashion a dignified exit in the direction of the kitchen.

  Mr Hayward watched him and sighed, ‘Better than a houseful of cats, though. Yes, a definite improvement. Can’t stand the creatures, smelly brutes. Place for animals is outside, not indoors.’

  I wouldn’t have gone that far, I thought, closing the door on him and avoiding the creaky board which so irritated me as I entered the kitchen.

  His visit had given me much to think about, particularly Hedley Marsh. Now I had a clearer picture of the old man, the recluse taking solace for his loneliness by surrounding himself with an army of cats, investing in qualities of loyalty and devotion above human frailty and betrayal.

  Tomorrow I would visit Duddingston. Amy would be agog with news, and I thought of the Frenchman who had doubtless been taken only for questioning, dramatically interpreted as an arrest by Amy. But even returned as innocent, untold harm would have been done to his already damaged reputation. Poor fellow, shy and retiring, stripped of dignity, questioned, perhaps even threatened, for no other crime than preferring his own society to that of gossipy neighbours who wanted to know all his business.

  Perhaps he was Mrs Lawers’ killer, but I doubted that; my money was on the bullying man Amy had seen and his accomplice, the bogus Miss Hinton.

  My thoughts turned to another Frenchman, Simon Reslaw. A Jacobite spy living in Lord Tweeddale’s household in 1745. John Lawers had mentioned an ancestor who had served with the prince. Could Simon Reslaw and Justin Lawers be one and the same?

  A feeling of triumph. Someone in that family had passed down the secret of the Lawers legacy and generations of them had been searching for its whereabouts in vain ever since.

  And that led me to the intriguing question of the fugitive in the secret room of Solomon’s Tower one and a half centuries ago – was his name Simon Reslaw, aka Justin Lawers, and where had he hidden thirty thousand pounds?

  But as I climbed the stairs that night, I touched the panel that operated the door to the secret room, which I had not mentioned to Hayward. It wasn’t my secret, somehow, and I was cautious, even nervous about imparting that information to anyone. Ominous, even scary by night, I had never been anxious to cross its threshold even in daylight, where so little penetrated the gloom from the long narrow window invisible from outside, unlike in my cheerful room next door.

  Preparing for bed, I wondered if Hedley Marsh knew of its existence. Mr Hayward had given me plenty to think about regarding Vince’s lifelong bitterness, the inescapable blight of the stamp of illegitimacy, which had clung like a shroud through his formative years. How different it might have been, not only for Vince but for Pappa, who had married his mother and given her boy an education.

  And for the rest of us. Had Hedley found his Lizzie, she would never have met Pappa. Emily and I would never have been born.

  It made me shiver.

  Should I tell Vince that he had wasted a lifetime’s anger based on hatred for the unknown man who had fathered him and wronged his mother, when the truth was that his conception was worthy of any novelette? Not a sordid interlude but a tragic reality. He was not the result of rape but a love child whose father had, over the years, sought his mother in vain.

  Hedley Marsh must have often seen Vince, first as a small boy playing near the Tower, then as a young man, a student heading towards the golf course with his friends, when a closer look had made him suspect the truth. Shyly, slyly even, he had tried to strike up a further acquaintance. But Vince hated and detested the old man who seemed to fawn upon him.

  Would revealing too late the reason why he had been bequeathed Solomon’s Tower merely add another surge of guilt for his treatment of Hedley Marsh? Glad now I had not heard this story before Vince’s visit, I resolved to keep it to myself while wondering if Pappa, who had visited Hedley Marsh in his last days, knew the truth and had also kept silent.

  Solomon’s Tower, my home, was becoming a house of mystery – like the skin of an onion, revealing its secrets layer by layer, one by one. What others lay in store, patiently awaiting discovery?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We were in for one of our dramatic changes of weather. I awoke to look out of the window and discover that Arthur’s Seat was enveloped in thick mist. I was trapped in a cotton-wool world. Nothing beyond the windows but a great white shroud. A silence that penetrated everywhere.

  Opening the back door it was as if in that soundless world all life had been extinguished. Not even a seabird, a skein of wild geese or swans flying over to feed on St Margaret’s Loch. The garden birds were mute. None of the usual daily noises, the echo of a train’s whistle approaching Waverley, or horses’ hooves on the way to Duddingston.

  I always found this claustrophobic world quite terrifying, with not the slightest notion of when Arthur’s Seat would become visible again and I would breathe in the clear air, a captive released from prison.

  This phenomenon fortunately only happened twice or thrice a year and I had it explained, my limited knowledge of science taking in only that it had something to do with cold and warm air meeting, in clouds sailing in from the Firth of Forth.

  That sounded innocent enough until encountered first-hand. I knew people had been lost on Arthur’s Seat, had stumbled on rabbit holes, lain for hours with limbs seriously injured, or had fallen to their deaths from Salisbury Crags, caught out in the sudden descent of such weather.

  Normally Thane didn’t like it either and showed no desire to leave my side, or the com
fort of the peat fire, but today was different. Unperturbed for once, he let himself out by lifting the latch with his nose, to be immediately swallowed up by the swirling white mist.

  I didn’t like being left alone in the Tower and realised that this sinister weather added to my feeling of vulnerability, a condition that had worsened considerably since the break-in – the burglary that never was.

  In a curious way I would have felt less uneasy if he had stolen something, but the fact remained that he had come for a definite purpose and, having failed, he would come again.

  With that in mind, I kept my derringer in the deep pocket of my bicycling garments, well adapted to conceal a small weapon. During the night I slept with it under my pillow.

  Hoping that Thane would not stay out long, after tidying the kitchen I made up my bed. But he was still missing when I returned downstairs.

  I opened the door a fraction, to stare into that eerie white blanket which threatened to engulf me. I was indeed a prisoner until the mist lifted or at least thinned enough to see my hand before my face. There was no way I could go anywhere. Bicycling would simply deposit me in the nearest ditch in this invisible world.

  All I could do was find household tasks to employ my enforced idleness, avoiding that creaking floorboard which was getting worse.

  I darted a moment’s resentment towards the absent Jack enjoying the comfort and well-being of his parents’ house while simple domestic matters in his own home went untended.

  Taking out the two portions of the map Mr Hayward had left, I spread them side by side on the table. The missing piece intrigued me, especially as I knew from the map he had produced that it contained Solomon’s Tower. And remembering Simon, aka Justin, I decided on another search of the secret room.

  Perhaps I would find that missing thirty thousand pounds, but I wasn’t exactly hopeful as I carried an oil lamp and some candles upstairs and opened the panel into the secret room.