Fanny was the mother now of three little girls, the apples of my eye, but we were presuming too much upon my relatives’ hospitality. I had to find somewhere to lodge us all together in safety.
And so I embarked upon my new venture, one which I hoped desperately would prove more lucrative than the life of a lowly lieutenant with little prospect of further promotion. Besides, I knew I would be good at it. I was not slow in putting myself forward in print or at dinner parties. I was good at voicing my views and my views were sound and passionately Whig and, after realising that my Scots accent was a drawback and even a source of mockery in some circles, I worked at lessening the effect of my rolling r’s and my Edinburgh lilt. All well and good. In the meantime, Fanny and I had to eat and clothe ourselves and it was all going to prove hard to afford.
I had seen nothing more of my bête noir. Andrew Farquhar had disappeared into the miasma of London low life and I fervently hoped he had lost interest in us. As far as I could tell, he had ceased to follow Fanny; that was all that mattered.
42
Andrew lay back on the bed with a sigh. The room smelt of soiled linen and spent lust. He reached out for the tankard of porter on the chest beside the bed and found to his surprise and disappointment that it was empty but for some grounds in the bottom which he spat on the floor in disgust. He already knew his stash of coins would be gone. He had slept too deeply, too long and too carelessly and the doxy who had shared his bed had no doubt crawled back to her pimp in triumph, the money hidden in her grubby cleavage, leaving no trace but the smell of stale cheap perfume on his pillow. He lay back with a groan, his arm across his eyes.
When he next awoke it was in time to hear a distant church clock chime in a rare gap in the sound of passing traffic outside the window. It was midday and he was hungry.
Stripped to the waist he stood at the pump in the freezing yard behind his lodgings, holding his head beneath the feeble stream of water until his brain began to clear. Dressed, his hair combed and knotted into a neat queue, he padded down the stairs, managed to pass his landlady’s door without being importuned for the rent and let himself out into the street, heading for the West End. Within an hour he had stolen enough money to buy himself a hot pie from a street seller and a mug of hot chocolate at the local coffee house. Retreating to the far end of the long table with his drink he helped himself to a copy of the Gazette from the rack and began to study the front page. Ten minutes later he was still sitting staring at the same paragraph. The Honourable Thomas Erskine had sold his commission in the army and had moved his family back to London. Mr Erskine intended to study law.
Law!
Andrew threw back his head and laughed out loud. He returned the paper to its rack and pushed his way out of the crowded coffee house and into the street. He needed to make some serious money in the next couple of hours and he had no need to study to achieve it. He was the best. Turning abruptly to cross the road he bumped into an elderly gentleman who was hesitating before trying to fight his way between carts and carriages to reach the other side. Escorting him across, his hand beneath the man’s arm, Andrew was at his most helpful and charming. He listened attentively to the old man’s effusive thanks, allowed him to shake his hand and watched him walk away, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane. When he ducked away down an alleyway two minutes later he had relieved the man of his purse, a fine pocket watch and a silk handkerchief. He was back on form.
‘It is going to be hard, my love.’ Thomas looked round the main room of the small house they had rented in Kentish Town. ‘But it will be worth it!’
Abi would sleep with the children in the larger of the two bedrooms, he and Fanny would have the second bedroom – so small it was scarcely more than a shoebox, and there was a closet barely large enough to hang their clothes. The main living room was where they would all live and would be where he would study.
He saw Fanny glance round at the shabby furniture, the scratched wooden table, the boxes which contained their worldly goods, still strapped and labelled from the last move, and his heart ached for her. She had thrown in her lot with him with so much excitement, so much unqualified love, and this was all he could give her. The door opened and little Frances crept in. She looked from one parent to the other and ran to her father, scrambling up onto his knee. She was a pretty child with long ringlets and large dark eyes that seemed wise beyond her years. He gave her a hug and gently pushed her back onto the ground. ‘Go and help Abi with the little ones, sweetheart,’ he said softly. Abi was with them still, loyal, unquestioning, frequently unpaid. To Fanny’s immense regret they had had to let Martha go. He sighed. He had to keep focused on the future.
The money from the sale of his commission would not last forever, but if he budgeted carefully he thought he could make it last the five years it would take to qualify as a barrister. These lodgings in the hamlet of Kentish Town, just north of London, were the cheapest he had been able to find. The terraced house was small, two-storeyed, built of the local grey brick and the area was pleasant enough, with fresh air for the children. Fanny would be safe here, and happy. He tried not to see the exhaustion and despair in her face as she glanced round the room. He would help her all he could, but the important thing was to qualify as soon as possible. With another sigh he bent to his book box and began to unstrap it.
Later he went out alone to walk along the bank of the River Fleet and clear his head. The air was fresh out here and away from the noise of the children it helped him to think. He had enrolled as a student at Lincoln’s Inn. To do so had cost him the sum of three pounds, three shillings and four pence. He was on his way. He could walk there from Kentish Town in less than an hour to attend lectures and already he had discovered a way to reduce the length of time it would take to qualify. If he obtained a university degree it would cut two years of study time. Having settled Fanny here and promised her a home of her own at last he wasn’t sure how he would break the news about Cambridge, but it had to be done and it had to be done at once.
As they sat together in the twilight the house was unusually quiet. Abi had cooked their supper and put the children to bed, falling asleep herself in her truckle bed in the corner of their room.
Fanny looked at Thomas fondly as he poured them both a mug of ale. ‘I thought we would settle and be happy here,’ she said with a gentle smile. ‘But you are restless as a cat about to give birth. Is it another idea?’ She waited, her eyes on his face. By this time she knew her husband only too well. It was like living with a grass fire, every moment threatening to spark and flare in another direction. ‘Go on, tell me what is eating you up, my darling.’ She reached across the table and took his hand.
She was silent for several seconds when he told her, then she made herself smile reassuringly. ‘Then that’s what you must do. It will reduce our penury by two years.’ She tried to make a joke of it, already hearing her father’s harsh voice in her ear: ‘You made your bed with this penniless good-for-nothing, so on it you must lie.’ Her father, less enchanted than his wife by the children, had refused to lend Thomas money, but her mother quietly passed her a few guineas each time they met. Fanny didn’t know where the money came from, probably her father, did he but know it, but she blessed Mama for it. She was no longer too proud to take it.
She had dreamed of attending dinner parties and soirees and balls with her dashing young husband, of joining the company of intelligent women, but her children had put a stop to that. Thomas could not afford to buy her gowns and wigs and jewellery. All the money they could spare from food and rent must go on Abi and the children. Already Thomas was beginning to look like a beggar, seemingly unaware of the shabbiness of his clothes. She had pleaded with him to see to his wardrobe but he was too immersed in his books and his writing to notice and his friends, enchanted by his wit and his ideas, seemed to forgive him sartorial blunders they would never tolerate in other men. She glanced across the room at their only table, the table where she and the children and Abi wou
ld eat in an ordinary world. Already it was strewn with books and papers and inkpots; she must warn her husband about leaving the ink within reach of small hands; little Frances had shown an extraordinary keenness for drawing. Thomas would make it all come right in the end, she reminded herself sternly. She had absolute faith in him.
43
‘Bradford and his sister are no longer living in their old squat.’ The young woman police constable perched on the edge of the sofa in the living room at the Old Mill House. ‘But they are still going back there from time to time. It was a tip-off following another investigation: a back-street business manufacturing false number plates we’d been watching. A woman turned up on foot and then left with a parcel under her arm. Our DC followed her to Muirhouse, where the plates were swapped onto the car she was driving.’ She looked slightly embarrassed as she added, ‘Unfortunately, it was a couple of days before they realised that this was the car connected with your case.’
‘Timothy Bradford’s car?’ Ruth was biting her tongue, trying not to interrupt the young woman’s monologue.
‘When they checked the original number to see if it was a stolen vehicle and saw it flagged they sent a couple of my colleagues round, but she was long gone.’ The policewoman glanced down at her hands. ‘Too slow, I’m afraid.’ She raised her head again and flashed Ruth a helpless smile.
‘How could they be so stupid?’ Ruth wailed at Fin later. ‘They could have had them! And they let them get away.’
Finlay shook his head in despair. ‘I should put them out of your mind. Timothy must guess there’s a warrant out for his arrest after he attacked you, and he’s lost the stuff he stole from you, so there’s nothing to hang around for. Let’s hope he’s cut his losses and gone off to try and fleece some other poor sod.’
Ruth sighed. Common sense told her that what Finlay said was true. ‘You don’t think he’d try and get into Number 26 again, do you?’
He scowled. ‘You’ve checked it, haven’t you? And the woman next door is keeping an eye on it.’
They went again, just to be sure.
‘So, hopefully we can have some peace now,’ Ruth said to Thomas later. Finlay had gone out for the evening and she was once more ensconced in the dining room with some new cardboard files they had bought when they were out. She looked around half hopefully but there was no sign of anyone there.
Her thoughts returned to Malcolm as, she had to admit, they did quite often. He intrigued her. He was an enigma, no doubt about that. A serious academic, a knowledgeable man and no fool, that was certain, and yet he genuinely believed in all this stuff which most – no, all – intelligent people dismissed as total garbage. She sat back in the chair and folded her arms. She liked enigmas.
It was a guilty pleasure walking through the countryside into London each morning. As Thomas kissed Fanny and the children goodbye and closed the door with relief on all the noise he knew only too well how much his wife had invested in his dreams and he was determined that, not matter how hard he had to work, he would make them come true.
The last person he expected to see on his walk was old Duncan Erskine, his father’s sennachie; his brother’s now, he reminded himself, as his brain tried to compute the strangeness of running into the man here of all places.
He held out his hand, but Duncan ignored it. ‘Were you coming to find me, old friend?’ he asked. ‘This is astonishing luck. Two minutes either way and you would have missed me. How are you?’
‘I came to say goodbye.’ Duncan bowed slightly. His face was grey and drawn and he looked immeasurably tired.
‘Goodbye?’ Thomas stepped back as a chaise rattled down the road past them, raising the dust. ‘But why? Have you left Kirkhill? Are you no longer in my brother’s service?’
‘Alas, no, but before I leave, I have warnings for you, my boy.’ The shadow of a smile illuminated the old man’s face. ‘You will do well now you have found your calling and one day you will have riches beyond everything you can imagine. Don’t let it go to your head. Remember your friends and beware your enemies.’
‘Enemies?’ Thomas repeated the word with a frown. He had not seen or heard of Andrew Farquhar since they had moved. As for riches, that was nothing more than a dream. To be able to put food on his children’s table and buy them new clothes would be enough reward.
Duncan did not reply. The morning stage from Highgate was approaching. The thunder of the four sets of hooves, the rattle of wheels, the blast from the coach horn were deafening. Clouds of dust from the hooves and the wheels swirled in the air. When it had passed, Thomas looked for the old man again. He had disappeared.
‘Duncan?’ he called. He turned full circle on the roadside, staring round. There were no turnings off the road here as far as the eye could see. He was alone.
44
Harriet had been plucking up courage for days. Ruth had made the biggest mistake of her life in trusting Malcolm Douglas. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became and with Liz and Peter out for the afternoon this was her chance.
It took just over an hour to drive across country from the coast at North Berwick into the border hills where the Tower House nestled in its beautiful valley. When she drew up beside the shabby four-by-four, she still wasn’t certain what she was going to say.
The barking dogs had alerted him to her arrival as, before she climbed out of the car, the front door had opened. She recognised Malcolm immediately.
She held out her hand with a frosty smile. ‘Mr Douglas? I am sorry to intrude on your privacy. As I believe she told you, I’m a friend of Ruth Dunbar. You may remember me? Harriet Jervase.’
‘Indeed.’ He took her hand and shook it firmly. ‘How could I forget you. Ruth did mention you, but not that you were coming to see me.’
‘She doesn’t know. We need to talk.’
He led her up the long spiral stairs to the second floor and into his study. A wood burner was throwing out heat and the two dogs lay down at once in front of it. He gestured her towards the only spare chair in the room and resumed his own in front of his desk, swivelling slightly so he was half facing her. The computer was switched on, the desk full of open books, a tall lamp throwing a pool of light onto the area around the keyboard. ‘So, how can I help you?’
‘I gather you claim to be some kind of psychic.’ Harriet sat down, still wearing her coat. The room was very warm and she was already feeling uncomfortable.
He leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk, his fingers loosely interlinked in front of him. ‘You sound cynical, if I may say so. Strangely so for someone who, I understand, is writing about Dion Fortune.’ His voice was low with the faintest trace of a Scots accent.
‘Ruth is very vulnerable,’ she replied, her tone repressive. ‘I don’t want to see her made a fool of.’
‘There is no possibility of that, I assure you.’
‘Do you have qualifications for what you do?’ Even as she voiced the question, Harriet knew how stupid it sounded.
His face remained serious. ‘I take it you are referring to my psychic activities, as you call them? No, I have no qualifications. I’m not sure what they would be? Perhaps you would enlighten me.’
‘Reputation. Experience.’
‘I have both.’
‘I saw no mention of them in any of the articles about you online.’
‘My activities in this area are my business. I don’t choose to broadcast them. And I ask my clients to keep them confidential, something that Ruth has presumably failed to do.’ He looked like a stern Victorian schoolmaster, she realised. ‘That’s sad,’ he went on, ‘if it means I can no longer go on working with her. Mutual trust is extraordinarily important in any area of this nature.’ He stood up. ‘I don’t think we have anything to discuss. I’ll show you out, Miss Jervase, if you don’t mind. I am, as you can see, working and I don’t normally see people without appointment. As a writer yourself I am sure you can understand.’
The two dogs had leapt to their fe
et and were standing by the door, panting with excitement. He went to open it and they ran ahead down the stairs as he waited for her to precede him.
She didn’t move. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend you.’
He inclined his head slightly. ‘I think you probably did, but I’m not offended. I just see no purpose in continuing this conversation. Ruth spoke very highly of your friendship and clearly trusts you. That’s fine. I hope you can give her the support I’m afraid I can no longer provide.’
‘Are you that touchy?’
He smiled. ‘No, Miss Jervase, I’m not touchy, I merely treasure my privacy. I make that clear to anyone who comes to me for help. I assume Ruth felt she could trust you, but sadly, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. I’ll leave you to explain to her what’s happened. I’m truly sorry as I thought I could help her. Now, please leave my house.’
She stood up, aware that she was dripping with perspiration inside her coat. The heat of the fire and the agony of embarrassment had combined to make her face scarlet. She walked past him without looking at him, on down the stairs, then out to the car. She climbed in and started the engine without a backward glance.
The narrow drive widened at its junction with the road; she pulled up onto the grass, killed the engine and sat with her face in her hands. Dear God, what had she done? What had possessed her? It was a full ten minutes before she groped in her pocket for her mobile and called Ruth. There was no reply. She didn’t leave a message. What was the point? The damage was done.
A packet of letters was waiting for Thomas when he returned to the house in the last week of the month. There was one from each of his brothers. He opened the one from Harry first. It was full of gossip. He and Christian had moved from Shoemakers Close and were now living in a lofty tenement in Halkerston’s Wynd which afforded them more space for Christian’s tea parties which, he said, were the toast of Edinburgh society and a way of keeping up with family and friends. Thomas paused wistfully in his reading to glance round the room in which he sat, imagining the scene. Here in Kentish Town they knew few people and had time and money for nothing save the basic necessities of life. As if reading his thoughts, Fanny put down her sewing and came to stand beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘It will be worth it,’ she whispered.