The Balmoral Incident Read online

  Once in sight of Solomon’s Tower, she again waxed eloquent at such antiquity. While Vince returned the Beast to Holyrood before taking a hired cab to Waverley Station, we were home and Mabel looked disappointed, not to say actually shocked, obviously having second thoughts about the Tower, which did not stretch to accommodation for acquaintances, especially a modern, unmarried lady’s requirements, travelling with her maid whose voice we were soon to discover rarely rose above a whisper.

  After a brief tour of the Tower, its reality of worn spiral stair treads, chilly stone walls with their tapestries in the somewhat shabby Great Hall failing to live up to her expectations of grandeur, Mabel seemed relieved to return to the warm kitchen and to sink into a worn but comfortable armchair.

  ‘I feel as if I know you already,’ she said, looking around our humble kitchen and I was not sure that this was a compliment. My few visitors were usually welcomed with a cup of tea and a scone. Mabel’s changed expression indicated that she found it quite extraordinary to be taking tea in the kitchen, obviously expecting that we would be seated at either end of the enormous dining table in the Great Hall. A direct descendant of the round table used by medieval knights it had been installed centuries ago when the Tower first came into being, not far short of the Middle Ages. And there it had remained simply because having been built in, it would have been an impossibility to remove.

  I looked at Mabel whose expression indicated that having been led to expect great things, she was being let down. Tea in the kitchen with her maid, indeed, who she stared at resentfully from time to time as if she should be serving tea rather than being seated at the table and consuming scones alongside her betters.

  As the conversation tended to flag, Mabel glanced towards the bookshelf, with the long line of my logbooks for the past ten years.

  ‘You have such an exciting life,’ and pointing at a poster I had forgotten to remove of the Women’s Suffragette Movement, of which I was the Edinburgh Branch chairman, she smiled.

  ‘I am sure we are going to be great friends, Rose, for we have much in common. One of my main reasons for choosing to come north is for our meeting in Aberdeen. Perhaps you already know about it. Dear Emmeline and Christabel are intending to be present, although that has not been advertised,’ she added in a whisper. ‘They are so well known, so they prefer to travel incognito—’

  I had indeed heard of this great occasion, but dismissed it as an unlikely event for me to attend. Instead it now seemed well within my reach. For not only were the Pankhursts well known but achieving notoriety having smashed windows and gone to prison and suffered for the cause. My interest quickened. The mention of the Pankhursts and I was now listening intently: ‘They have long been my heroines.’

  ‘And mine,’ she laughed. ‘And I have the honour of being well acquainted with dear Emmeline over the years.’

  My eyes widened. What a stroke of luck, one of my ambitions about to be fulfilled. To meet them at last …

  ‘My dear,’ Mabel was saying, ‘you simply must come with me. You would be most welcome considering that you have such an interest and a prominent role in our movement.’

  Vince, who had just returned from stabling the Beast and heard this part of the conversation, nodded approvingly. ‘A jolly good idea, Rose, you can stay the night in Ballater or we will come and collect you both.’

  It was then I had my first moments of disquiet. It was all too well planned, even to a meeting with the Pankhursts. Naturally suspicious through years of dealing with problems, I knew how readily things could go wrong. It sounded wonderful, too wonderful. All planned so meticulously, a visit long overdue from Olivia and Faith, seeing us all in a train heading for a holiday in, of all places, Balmoral Castle. Everything fitted in beautifully for everyone, even Thane.

  I tried to shake it off, ignore one of my strange feelings, as Jack described them. A touch of ice in the heart, that something was about to go terribly wrong.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hiring cabs are somewhat reluctant, to say the least, about taking animals on board. The presence of even tiny dogs can upset the horses. One of Thane’s proportions would be impossible, so it was decided that Vince, Mabel, the maid Lily and Meg would ride. I would take my bicycle and Thane would run alongside on our journey to Waverley Station, where the royal train carrying guests from England for the royal shooting party would be waiting.

  I had already decided that my faithful bicycle would provide excellent transport between the Balmoral cottage and Ballater. It would also provide something equally important, namely independence, used as I was in Edinburgh to making my own way.

  Jack and I waved the others off. I let them go ahead as I needed to attend to some last-minute details in the Tower, including a store of non-perishable food for Jack who, totally engaged on a murder case, was apt to forget such minor details. He was looking a bit sad and wistful watching the cab disappear down the hill and I knew the main reason for that. He hated the prospect of being parted from Meg.

  We looked at each other and he sighed, gave me a hug. This was the first time in four years since she had come back into his life that she had ever gone on holiday without both of us and I reminded him of his promise, that he would take leave and join us on Deeside.

  ‘Who knows? I might well be in Aberdeen soon and Balmoral isn’t all that far away.’

  ‘That’s great! When will you know for sure?’

  Avoiding my eyes, he shrugged. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, raised your hopes. Just a rumour.’ He grinned and touched his nose, a gesture I knew only too well, that meant he wasn’t prepared to disclose those rumours and what went on behind the scenes in Edinburgh City Police was none of my business.

  He followed me as I took the bicycle out of the barn, aware that he was longing to say ‘You will take good care of Meg, won’t you?’ I could read it in his eyes as we kissed and said goodbye and it stayed with me. His anxiety haunted me: this moment I was to remember later.

  As Thane and I whizzed down the road away from the safety of the Tower and Jack’s hand upraised in farewell, I had my first shaft of fear. We were such a happy, united family, but it is in the nature of life that things can change without warning. Could we stay always as we were now? And I said a little prayer, the bit about ‘delivering us from evil’, without the least idea then how much it was to be needed.

  As Thane and I reached St Mary’s Street we could hear the trains rumbling in and out of the station. We could see and smell the smoke, a sight that never failed to excite me and Meg would love it too. What joy trains had brought into all our lives, when I thought of the gruelling days of all those miles jostling about in a horse-drawn carriage.

  In the station, our first setback. A forlorn little group waiting for us with the news that Olivia and Faith would not be joining us after all. Vince had received a message via the stationmaster.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope!’

  Vince sighed. ‘Faith is poorly. Sick during the night. She has a fever, a slight temperature. Probably nothing to worry about, she has bouts like this often enough, but you know what Olivia is like.’

  He was calm about it but I sensed his underlying annoyance. As Faith’s father and an eminent physician dealing with royal patients he felt let down that Olivia could not trust him to take care of their own daughter.

  ‘She sends her apologies to everyone. We’d better get going.’ With a long-suffering sigh, he signalled the porters to load our luggage.

  Mabel sighed too, clearly disappointed. So many years since she and Olivia had met. This was to have been a special occasion, one of the main reasons for her coming all the way to Scotland.

  Meg took my hand, whispered sadly: ‘I was looking forward to having a new friend, Mam, specially one who is a sort of cousin.’

  She leant close to my side and I felt sad for her too. She had no family but Jack and me. As a tiny baby Meg had no memory of her own mother or, I suspected, of the kindly aunt who adopted her but
sadly died when she was three, leaving her in the care, if care could be correctly defined, of a ne’er-do-well uncle who shortly remarried. And that was when I caught up with her.

  She was so delighted to claim Faith as ‘a sort of cousin’, and being well in advance of her seven years, according to the nuns, three years between the two girls I hoped would make little difference.

  We walked along the platform where our train waited. Thane was not to have the indignity of the goods van, the rule with normal trains; he was allowed to travel with us.

  We were shown into a roomy, well-upholstered six-seater compartment, three seats to a side, Vince and Meg, Mabel and Lily, with the former looking as if she wished her maid could have been accommodated perhaps in the luggage van.

  With Thane lying on the floor between us, there was the sound of the engine gathering steam, the creak of wheels, and the excitement of a journey about to begin.

  Suddenly a figure dashed along the platform. A tall man, head down, rushing towards the train.

  ‘He almost missed it,’ said Vince.

  A whistle, the platform slowly vanishing, then Calton Hill and the last glimpse of Edinburgh.

  We were off. The great adventure for Mabel and Meg had begun.

  Meg had difficulty remaining in her seat, bouncing up and down, staring out of the window. ‘Isn’t this wonderful, Mam? “Faster than fairies, faster than witches, bridges and houses, hedges and ditches …”’ She laughed. ‘And it’s all happening out there, just like he wrote.’

  Thane had sat up as if he wanted a look too and she put her arms around his neck. This was her favourite poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson, driven into exile from his beloved Edinburgh by its atrocious weather to die in the South Seas, not from bad lungs but from a cerebral haemorrhage brought about by overwork. That was in 1894, the year before I arrived at Solomon’s Tower.

  ‘“… charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows, the horses and cattle …”’ Meg chanted and I smiled. From her earliest days with us she had loved having poems read to her and could soon recite them from memory.

  I looked at her. Where had she inherited so many talents? ‘You must be so proud of your little daughter,’ the nuns said, ‘so well ahead of her classmates.’

  Jack’s daughter, not mine, and again I thought about her mother. What had she been like? Jack never spoke of her. All I knew was her name, Margaret, the rest of their association contained in a sentence. A barmaid in a Glasgow pub he had picked up one lonely evening. Furious at my rejection, my refusal to marry him, in need of comfort he had too much to drink and went home with her.

  The consequence was this gifted child he had barely acknowledged as his own, until after many trials and tribulations four years ago, I tracked her down and brought them face to face. His fears that she might not be his were ended. Neither he nor anyone else could deny that she was his child, his image.

  A sigh of relief from me. And since at forty I had a history of miscarriages and could not have a live child, Meg had brought us overwhelming joy.

  Still, because it was in my nature to be haunted by mysteries I could not solve, I would have given much to know a great deal more about the distaff side of Meg’s origins.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The train compartment although comfortable had little room for manoeuvre. Opposite Vince, Mabel and Lily, Meg and I with Thane at our feet and my sketchbook which I never travelled without at the ready. This journey promised sketching opportunities, people and landscapes to turn into paintings when time permitted. Or even a portrait?

  I looked at the silent Lily, her eyes perpetually downcast. I hoped she would not mind being drawn and as my pencil flew across the page and her face emerged, I realised I had never heard her speak beyond a whispered yes or no and I wondered if she was English. Mentioning this to Mabel later, she laughed.

  ‘You do ask the oddest questions.’ And she shrugged, ‘I can tell you nothing about her. She came from a trusted friend, she performs all the duties required of a personal maid and that is all I need to know.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  Again she laughed. ‘You are such a strange person, Rose. I imagine that her background is very uninteresting and very boring, so I shouldn’t let it bother you either.’

  But it did, part of my nature as a detective is to want to know everything there is to know about everyone. Jack often found this curious too and raised his eyes heavenward at all my probing and apparently unnecessary questions.

  Still, each time I looked at Lily, she seemed more of an enigma, although I doubted if she would have understood the word. When the necessity of finding out who her parents were, and where she came from in a moment of crisis still to come, Mabel wasn’t much help either.

  Once, finding myself alone with her, I tried a few tentative questions but she merely stared blankly at me and shrugged. Perhaps she was deaf and embarrassed to admit it. That hadn’t occurred to me and I mentioned it to Vince, adding: ‘And I think she’s foreign.’

  But his reactions were like Jack’s regarding my unpardonable curiosity and, to a certain extent, Mabel’s as well. He shrugged and I knew another reason why women’s suffrage was so important: that we fought for every woman to have her rights from the poorest servant to the lady in her castle and every individual case was of interest to me.

  At my side Meg chanted: ‘“All of the sights of the hill and the plain, Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by …”’

  And so it was: Perth, Montrose, Stonehaven, a glimpse of the sea and Aberdeen’s cold granite, then westwards to Banchory, Kincardine O’Neil, Aboyne. All framed by hazy blue mountains, their nearness an illusion of wine-clear air and, closer at hand whizzing past the window, moors covered in great carpets of unending purple heather. Then like a solemn regiment on guard over the scene, sombre tall dark firs, majestic pines, remains of the vast Caledonian forest that had once covered this land, and nestling almost apologetically along the rail side, delicate silver birches, and dainty larches with drooping lemon leaves.

  And everywhere castles. Castles turreted, haughty, lived-in and prosperous. Castles dark, mysterious, enchanted, peeping out of thick woods, where a princess might sleep and dream for a hundred years. Castles ghostly, their roofless crumbling majesty long past dreams of human habitations. It was like some rich medieval tapestry, bordered in the sharp sunlight of a perfect late summer’s day.

  Meg clasped her hands in delight and pointing out of the window, quoted again from her favourite poem come to life: ‘“Here is a mill and there is a river, Each a glimpse and gone for ever.”’

  I laughed. ‘Not quite. Here we are!’ The train was slowing down.

  Ballater at last. Vince folded his newspaper. Mabel opened her eyes. She had not made much of the journey and statue-like at her side, Lily unmoving, unflinching – heaven knows what her thoughts had been about her fellow travellers. Thane stood up, stretched and yawned. He would not be sorry to get down onto firm ground again.

  We steamed into the station, its platform elegant, garlanded by huge displays of flowers as befitted royal connections. This was the end of the line and as we stepped down from our compartment, the train emptied of passengers, most in transit for Balmoral Castle. Around us a vast collection of shrill English voices, the mark of the aristocracy with their mounds of luggage, their servants, and their dogs.

  Meg pulled at my arm. ‘Mam, I’m needing,’ she whispered. No need to say any more, she couldn’t make the rest of that journey in such discomfort. Fortunately, no doubt bearing in mind the problem of long-distance travellers and the eleven miles further to the castle, there was a ladies’ waiting room with a lavatory. Something of a novelty, but Queen Victoria had had one installed especially for her convenience midway along the railway line to Ballater.

  ‘Come along, hurry!’ I said as we ran towards the sign. I hoped there were not ladies already queuing with similar need
s. As we approached, one emerged. Meg rushed in while I watched the colourful spectacle of this particular slice of English society awaiting carriages, aware from the Illustrated London News that after his morning ride in Rotten Row, the man of fashion was never seen without his frock coat and top hat of pearly grey, carrying stick and gloves. His lady would have an enormous hat on top of her padded hairstyle, her costume bedizened with ribbons, flowers, feather boa and carrying a parasol.

  Women’s fashions were created in London and Paris, the styles copied by home dressmakers, using the sewing machines which had come into general use in the late Queen’s reign and putting an end to the hard labour of hand-sewing long seams. The coat and skirt were now primarily in evidence, not only for the new breed of working-woman but also for the upper classes. Regarded as much more convenient and sensible when travelling, they had replaced the silk costume with its absurd bustles and hourglass shape.

  Trying to keep my eye on Vince and the rest of the party while I awaited Meg’s reappearance, I stood on tiptoe. My arm was suddenly grabbed by a large, stout lady, much flustered in countenance.

  ‘Don’t stand there dithering, gel.’ And so saying, she thrust two large hatboxes at me. ‘Give me a hand with these.’

  I stared at her. Thanks to my lack of fashion and unconventional attire, I had been mistaken, once again, for a servant.

  ‘My sister, Your Ladyship.’ A cold voice and Vince was at my side.

  The woman looked me up and down and turning her lorgnette on Vince said: ‘Ah, Dr Laurie, I trust you are well …’

  ‘Indeed, My Lady. Very well indeed.’

  Meg had joined us. Giving a chilly bow and without further introduction, Vince said, ‘Come, Rose,’ and raising his hat he marched us to where Mabel and her maid waited with Thane.

  But his face was flushed, annoyed and embarrassed by my encounter with English society.