‘There was someone outside the window!’
Finlay followed Ruth and Malcolm into the kitchen and saw her peering out. ‘Timothy?’
‘I’m not sure. It might have been a woman. I only caught a glimpse.’
‘I’ll tell the police.’ Finlay groped in his pocket for his phone. ‘Bloody man! He’s obsessed.’
‘Do you want me to go after him?’ Malcolm had followed Ruth to the window.
‘No! No, I don’t think there’s any point. He – she – will be long gone.’ She sighed. ‘He’ll get bored with spying on us in the end? Don’t bother the police again, Fin. As long as we keep the doors locked what can he do? He’s cross because he was caught out as a crook.’ She was trying to convince herself to stay calm.
‘He’s a stalker, Ruth.’
She shivered. ‘I know. But I suppose I’m a bit sorry for him.’
‘Why? Because he failed to trick you out of your inheritance?’ Fin was fuming. ‘Get real! I’m not asking the police to rush out here. But I am going to log the fact that he was here again and I’m having security cameras installed. And in future we must remember to always set the alarm. These things can escalate, Ruthie. You must not underestimate him.’
Ruth saw Malcolm studying her face and gave a sheepish grimace. ‘You must wonder what kind of people we are!’ she murmured.
‘You are people having to cope with a huge amount of stress,’ he replied gently. ‘I can’t deal with your physical stalker, but at least I can be of some use with the other one. And please don’t buy any more of my books,’ he added with a grin. ‘If they will help with your research I will gladly give you copies.’
Thomas
The man, Malcolm Douglas, is a strong and calming force. If anyone can persuade this stubborn young woman to see the light, it is he. Ruth, if you won’t listen to me, why won’t you listen to him?
My own story from this point is well documented. Little Frances thrived under the adoring care of Mama and Isabella, who wrote often. In turn I wrote long letters from Minorca to Mama and to Harry; I stopped writing to David, under the impression that he was no longer my friend, and so it was Harry who told me that our brother had married our cousin Margaret Fraser, returned to Scotland and installed himself at Kirkhill with the intention of supervising its restoration! I sent him a wedding gift from Minorca. I’m not sure it ever arrived.
Harry himself married a lady called Christian Fullerton and they were living, he told me, in Shoemakers Close while he furthered his career in the law. I confess I felt a pang of jealousy that my brothers were doing so well, but I enjoyed my life as a soldier and no one could deny that I, though the youngest, had the prettiest wife – though in retrospect I realise I had no idea what my new sisters-in-law looked like!
The garrison at St Philip’s Castle in Port Mahon was there to make sure it was held securely for the British. As neither the Spanish nor the French were at that time focused on war in the Mediterranean, we were not in a state of alert and I installed Fanny in a pretty house in the town and for the first time we found ourselves with a home of our own. My career progressed with promotion to senior ensign; I resumed my studies, reading widely, and was called upon to preach twice to the men in the absence of the chaplain who had returned home on leave. I found I enjoyed preaching, though perhaps it was the sound of my own voice I was beginning to enjoy! I also began to write in a more serious vein and study the reports of politics back in England.
Fanny and I were ecstatically happy together. I realise now how extraordinarily lucky I was to have found her. We married too young, of course we did, carried away on the tide of first love and rebellion and adventure, but to our delight and perhaps to our amazement our love grew ever stronger. My darling was the perfect match for me, reining in my over-enthusiasms, my tendency to pomposity (which I had not recognised, but she assured me might have been a problem without her gentle teasing) and sharing my love of books and plants, planning, even then, the garden we might one day create together when we returned to England.
If it hadn’t been for Fanny missing our little girl so much, I could have stayed happily in Port Mahon forever, but an opportunity for a further six months’ leave came up and it coincided with the discovery that she was expecting our second child so we embarked once more for London. As we stood at the ship’s rail looking out across the azure sea and as the beauties of the Minorcan landscape faded into the sea mist, my thoughts returned as they so often did to Andrew Farquhar. Had we been away long enough for him to have forgotten us? I could only live in hope but my instincts told me he was waiting and my instincts were always right.
39
Andrew Farquhar put his hand in his pocket and brought out a farthing. He passed it to the urchin who had brought him the news and smiled, well satisfied. So, Tom Erskine was back in town.
The coffee house was crowded, noisy and full of pipe smoke. He called for another cup of chocolate and reached for a newspaper. He kept an eye on the Gazette and he knew Tom’s regiment was still in Minorca, so what was he doing back here? The papers kept him informed of most things but his network of boy runners was more efficient. There wasn’t much he missed in this seething, festering city and anything he had missed he would soon discover.
It was still extraordinarily easy to obtain money, he found, when he put his mind to it. Keeping it was harder, but all he had to do was lay off the gin and porter and keep away from women.
He moved lodgings once and then again, each time to somewhere more salubrious, he bought new clothes – still inconspicuous – the kind of garments a lawyer’s clerk might wear, and he learned to walk with an unthreatening gait. Occasionally he carried a bag of books or papers to add to the image, but they tended to impede his nimble fingers. Constables, members of the Watch, Bow Street Runners, he could spot them at a hundred paces and melt into the crowd long before they came near him. If there was a patrol in the street he moved on; there were, after all, plenty of places where there was no one on the lookout. He was aware now that he was gaining something of a reputation. They called him the Invisible Man. He liked that.
The moment April and Timothy had left the car behind the Dump she reached for her phone. She hadn’t been able to use her laptop since they had moved here and there wasn’t much charge left in the phone. She would have to go back to the corner shop where Mr Singh let her plug into his boss’s electric every now and then and gave her a mug of coffee in exchange for a chat. Malcolm Douglas. She typed his name into the search engine. He was a writer. A good one. Real history books. It didn’t mention being a ghostbuster. As the battery died she filed away his name in her head for future reference.
Fanny was ill again. Abi knocked on the door and peered in. ‘Mr Erskine, she’s ever so sick. I think we should call a doctor.’ Thomas was sitting by the fire with William and Isabella. They had all moved back to London from Tunbridge Wells at the end of the season in time for the Michaelmas law term.
Isabella stood up. ‘I will go and see her. You stay there, Tom. Abi, I think I heard Frances crying.’
With no children of her own, Isabella was enchanted with her year-old niece, and endlessly hospitable to her brother and his wife. She dropped a kiss on her husband’s head. ‘We’ll dine soon, William. I’ll tell the servants,’ and she was gone, bustling towards the stairs.
The doctor’s diagnosis was an imbalance of humours.
‘Rubbish!’ Abi retorted under her breath when she heard. She didn’t think much of doctors. She had a solution of her own. The Hamiltons’ cook had a niece who was young and clean and willing to learn and loved children, being the eldest of seven herself. She could look after Frances, freeing Abi to take more care of her mistress. The arrangement worked well; the young woman, whose name was Martha, was an able, intelligent girl who learned quickly and within weeks was indispensable to the household. Little Frances adored her and Martha endeared herself to Fanny by making decoctions of dried chamomile flowers to dilute with warm water.
r />
The great John Wesley had in the 1740s written a book for the general manner of people who could not afford doctors. The book was called Primitive Physick, and all his followers owned copies. Isabella and Anne were both sworn devotees and Fanny, having studied it closely, decided it was infinitely preferable to the advice of the pompous doctor. For whatever reason, the remedies prepared by Martha worked. Fanny stopped vomiting and began to bloom.
It was a blustery October evening when Martha cornered Thomas in the hallway as he came in. She was clearly agitated.
‘What is it, Martha? Is something wrong with little Frances?’ He adored his pretty flirtatious little daughter and was constantly worrying about her though she seemed a remarkably healthy child.
‘Something happened this afternoon, sir.’ Martha twisted her hands together in her apron. ‘I was out walking with Mrs Fanny and little Frances and Abi and I lagged behind them only a few yards, sir.’ She looked scared.
‘What happened, tell me?’ Thomas felt his anxiety soar at the expression on her face.
‘A man came up to me. He was a well-dressed gentleman, sir, and he had a nice smile. He asked me if that was the Honourable Mrs Erskine, sir, and I said yes. I didn’t think, sir.’
Thomas froze. ‘And what happened next?’ He kept his voice level with difficulty.
‘He said I was to give her a letter, sir.’ Martha felt in her apron pocket. ‘There was something about him that frightened me. His eyes were,’ she stopped, visibly searching for the right word, ‘hungry, sir.’
‘And then what did he do?’
‘Abi turned round to look for me and he disappeared, sir. He was there one minute and then the next he was gone. I think he must have slipped up an alley. I didn’t know what to do so I thought I’d better tell you.’
‘You did right, Martha. Thank you.’ He put out his hand for the letter. ‘I don’t want my wife upset in her present condition. Go back to the nursery now and tell little Frances her papa will be up to say goodnight soon.’
The letter felt cold in his hand. He could feel the evil emanating from it even before he opened it.
Carefully written in a literate hand it contained a string of obscene threats and promises of what he would do to Fanny and to little Frances when he had them in his power. Thomas only glanced at the sheet of paper once then he dropped it in the fireplace. He reached for a spill from the jar on the mantelpiece, lit it from the candelabra and, putting a flame to the sheet of paper, he watched it burn, feeling very sick. It had been unsigned but he was in no doubt as to who it had come from. Andrew Farquhar knew that they had returned to London.
Thomas
Within a week we had moved back in with Anne and Selina Huntingdon. We felt safer in the larger household and if Fanny or the children went out it was with a footman in attendance.
Fanny, preoccupied with the coming birth, did not begrudge me my London friendships. I was a published writer now, having produced a much-acclaimed book on the shortcomings of the army, something which strangely did not seem to alienate my superior officers who promoted me to lieutenant. The book was published anonymously but it was widely known who had written it. I was making contacts I hoped would see me succeed in London society and, to Fanny’s joy, I appeared to have gained sufficiently in gravitas and respectability for my parents-in-law, who were pleased with their gorgeous grandchild, and the prospect of another on the way, to make the decision to forget the unseemly haste of our marriage. After what they presumably considered a timely exile to forget our escapade, and with me in the uniform of the Royal Scots, I found myself a guest in their house at last.
I met the great and the good of the literary world; at a dinner with Sir Alexander Macdonald I met and impressed Dr Johnson, no less, and, thanks in part to my brother-in-law William and to my former mentor and hero, Lord Mansfield, I began to move in legal circles. It was while I was visiting Lord Mansfield at his magnificent seat in Kenwood that I saw again Sir John Lindsay’s daughter Dido Belle. Mansfield had adopted her to be a companion to his niece and the children ran rioting round the great rooms and corridors of the house while we talked of politics and law, particularly the matter of slavery, which he made one of his especial interests; in a memorable case he had established that such a state had no basis in common law in England and as such came it to be recognised as the end of legal slavery in this country.
On one occasion I went to a trial presided over by Lord Mansfield to listen to the proceedings and he summoned me forward to sit on the bench beside him while he heard the rest of the case and it was at that moment that I acknowledged that since I was a boy all I had ever really wanted was to study law myself.
40
Ruth watched Finlay head off down the drive in his car. He had mentioned the boxes stacked in the garage. ‘They’re not mine!’ he had said as he climbed into the Daimler. ‘We’ll get Lachy to clear them out next time he comes. It’s difficult to fit the car in with them at the back there.’
Was it a suspicion? An instinct perhaps, inspired by the way Timothy was hanging round? She pulled open the doors, letting the sunlight in. Beyond the patch of oil on the floor where the car normally stood she could see cardboard boxes, two old suitcases, a couple of cheap plastic storage containers. She felt a leap of hope. She pulled the smallest towards her and levered off the lid, peering in to see a sheet of newspaper. Under it there were a dozen or so packages. She picked one up and unrolled the paper to reveal a bundle of silver forks. She stood staring down into the box, her heart hammering with excitement as she saw the family crests on the handles.
A sound behind her made her swing round, the forks still in her hand. Timothy was standing there, staring at them. ‘Those are mine!’ he burst out.
‘I don’t think so.’ The wave of fury that swept over her took even her by surprise.
‘Your father gave them to me!’
‘He did no such thing! You stole them.’ She dropped the bundle back into the box and groped in her pocket for her phone. ‘I’m calling the police! I’ve had enough of your trickery and forgery and your spying and following me around!’ Her voice rose, she was angrier than she had ever been. ‘You have made my life a misery, and it’s going to stop!’
She hadn’t expected him to leap at her. His face white with anger, he threw himself towards her, knocking the phone out of her hand. ‘Those are my things!’ he shouted. ‘Mine! You’re not going to call the police! You’re not going to get in my way again!’ As he lifted his hand to hit her, he lost his balance, staggering backwards with a cry of fright. Ruth was aware of a figure there beside her as Timothy half fell, recovered himself and lunged forward again. She managed to sidestep, looking round desperately for her phone but Timothy had recoiled violently and dodged away from her. With a scream of terror he began to run.
The police arrived shortly after Finlay. There was nothing they could do. Timothy was long gone, they already had his car number, they could only repeat their warnings to keep the doors locked and as a final gesture help Ruth and Finlay move the boxes into the main house.
‘Thomas was here. I saw him!’ Ruth waited for the police car to disappear down the drive before she told Finlay what had happened. ‘Timothy was about to hit me; he completely lost it! I know I told the police he changed his mind and ran away, but he changed his mind because there was this figure beside me. It was Thomas, I know it was. I don’t know if he was solid, but Timothy saw him and he turned and ran. He was terrified!’ She stared at him wide-eyed. ‘He was real, Fin.’
‘I believe you,’ Finlay said slowly. ‘Hopefully, that will scare Timothy too much to ever come back here.’ He led the way into the sitting room and threw himself down in a chair. ‘The policeman said it would only be a matter of time before they picked him up. They will give it a higher priority now he’s threatened violence.’
Ruth shivered. ‘I should go, shouldn’t I. I’m making your life difficult and if I’m not here any more he’ll leave you alone.’
/>
‘You will stay here as long as you want,’ Finlay replied firmly. ‘I’m not allowing that low life to chase any guest of mine out of this house.’ He paused. ‘As long as we can keep you safe.’ He smiled. ‘Forget him for now. Let’s have a look at the treasure.’
There were forks and spoons, pretty silver filigree dishes, a set of glasses, some of which were broken. Finlay held one up. ‘Oh, this is a complete tragedy. Look at these. They’re eighteenth century. See, the lovely spiral twists in the stems? And this.’ He held another up to the light. ‘This is an Amen glass. I’ve only ever seen them in the museum. The faithful used to drink the toast to the Jacobite Pretender and then smash their glasses, which is why they’re so rare. See, James Stuart’s face in the glass?’ He stood up and carefully set it on the mantelpiece.
There were several paintings, three of which were small portraits; several sketchbooks; scrapbooks full of pressed flowers and ferns; and in one of the cardboard boxes Ruth found her mother’s jewel box. She put it on the coffee table and opened it gingerly. It was half empty. She stared at it in dismay. ‘Her rings have gone. And there was a locket, I remember, and a charm bracelet.’
Finlay leaned forward and gently took the box out of her hands. ‘Don’t think about it now. If they’re sold, then there’s little chance of finding them. But you’ve recovered so much. Be positive.’ He put the box down on the coffee table. ‘Why on earth did he hide all this here?’
She gave a grim smile. ‘It seems like a good place to me. Where better? After all, we didn’t find it, did we? If Lachy hadn’t gone into the shed and moved it to the garage you might never have spotted it. And it meant Tim could keep an eye on me and the stuff at the same time. No wonder he kept coming back.’ She shivered.