The Balmoral Incident (3 page)

Mabel Penby Worth. I wasn’t sure what I expected, perhaps a replica of gentle Olivia. Mabel was a surprise and I didn’t know quite why then, except somehow she wasn’t the image I had from Olivia’s description. She looked like a fighter, not the kind of woman who would take defeat easily. In fact, the personification of the women’s suffrage movement to which I was to gather she had dedicated her existence. A consoling thought, indeed.

I was impressed, we suffragettes could hardly lose with females of Mabel’s calibre on our side. Quite tall, robust in frame, a strong, determined countenance under that bonnet and a strong handshake to go with it, as did the sensible, rather mannish travelling costume, a long tweed tailored jacket and skirt and a wide-brimmed velvet hat.

Her maid Lily was an addition we had not been
expecting, but Vince indicated that was an easy matter to sort out as he arranged them in the Beast, which did not altogether please Mabel who gave us a helpless look. As if to suggest there might be some other means of transporting Lily to Edinburgh. There was no alternative so Mabel sat as far away as was possible from one’s personal maid on the back seat of a motor car.

We had not the slightest sympathy for her. As far as I was concerned she had missed the whole point of the suffrage movement that all women from all walks of life were equal, or should be. However, Mabel soon forgot her discomfiture and waxed lyrical about this means of transport, sentiments which soon became urgent whispers of doubts when we had to stop several times on the hilly return journey, to relieve the Beast’s snorts and breathing problems with administrations from the water bottle.

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.

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.

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 needs. 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.

‘Sorry about that, Vince,’ I murmured.

‘Don’t be silly. Not your fault.’ But it was.

‘Oh, there you are. What on earth happened to you?’ Mabel demanded. ‘I thought we’d lost you. In all this great mob, one should take care not to be separated.’

Explanations were made. ‘What is the delay?’ I asked, having expected a carriage to meet us.

‘After coming all this way,’ grumbled Mabel. ‘This is too bad.’

Vince agreed. ‘Tiresome. Typical of HM, I’m afraid. Gather he had a six-pointer in his sights.’

Meg looked puzzled. ‘A stag,’ I whispered, as Vince went on: ‘And of course, every spare carriage would be needed at the hunt.’

It was the usual procedure, one rare quality that the King shared with his formidable mother. Ladies also accompanied the hunt, and although they were not expected to carry guns and shoot at anything, it was an excellent excuse for a picnic and more robust liquid refreshment for the hunters.

Vince remarked to me later: ‘HM is a little unreliable as regards keeping appointments. One thing at a time on his mind, that’s his rule. Everything and everyone else must await his pleasure.’

We were not the only impatient guests. Yapping pet dogs, growling and barking, strained at their leads to get at one another. As for Thane, no need for means of restraint. He simply walked at Vince’s side and it wasn’t his reactions to all these dogs that intrigued me, but theirs to him. They looked up at him, most of them being only half his size, yet not a bark out of any of them. If dogs
could bow in reverence, that was how their behaviour might best be described.

I was amused and amazed and yet I should not have been for I had seen this reaction from other animals, even the wild white Border cattle. Whatever it was in Thane that we didn’t – couldn’t – recognise, it was obvious to the animal kingdom.

At last the sound of carriages approaching, a long line strung out with a few motor cars. And one was for Dr Laurie and party. A very large, handsome Rolls thoughtfully provided, behind the driver, seats to accommodate four passengers. And Thane.

There was only room for our hand luggage much to Mabel’s distress. She had to accept the reassurance that hers and the rest of ours would be collected by cart and arrive later. She looked with considerable disfavour on my bicycle which was being strapped onto the back of the Rolls and edged away as far as possible from Lily sitting next to her.

‘We’ll be seeing the castle at last, Mam,’ said Meg, seizing my hand in excitement. ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful?’

I smiled encouragingly, hoping that neither she nor the rest of us were in for a disappointment. Well, surprises are always welcome and there were plenty in store that only the very unimaginative would have classed under the heading of disappointment.

As we were moving off, Vince said: ‘Well done, so he caught it after all.’

I looked across as he pointed to a man who had pushed forward as if to be first in the queue for the carriages. The one who had rushed along the station
platform at Waverley as the train was moving off.

Now I had a better look at him. Tall, thin, dark hair that obstinately fell over his forehead, I felt a sudden chill, a flash of recognition. As we moved away and we lost him, I told myself this couldn’t be the same man I had glimpsed outside Penby House. I must be mistaken.

Was it merely because any man with a fleeting resemblance to Danny could have this strange effect on me? This longing to return to a past life and a love that was gone for ever.

Feeling guilty and disloyal, I thought of Jack and the weeks ahead without him. I was used to short periods of absence in Edinburgh when necessity led him in pursuit of criminals or as witness in a homicide, but on rare holidays we had always been together.

I would miss him and so would Meg. We could only hope for a couple of days at most where he might make a brief visit when matters at the Central Office were on hold and his absence allowed. I was to realise Meg felt the same when she was to ask with daily frequency: why can’t Pa ever be with us? or I wish we could hear how Pa is.

‘Shall I send him a letter, Mam?’

I encouraged her to do so, not expecting any reply since he was a poor letter writer, but I was in for a surprise. I had forgotten the bond of parenthood. There were shrill cries of delight at a constant supply of postcards from her pa. Indeed, so often she watched for the postman each day.

I was pleased, although I had never experienced this kind of devoted attention. It was yet another strand in the man I had married, and in all truth, I was content with
what I had and happy to leave some areas of his character unexplored. Confident of his love, I was grateful and yet guilty that I could never return it with equal passion, for I had been deeply in love only once in my life and I could never, I believed, recapture that experience.

The fact that a glimpsed stranger could vibrate some chord of forgotten delight was a fatal warning, but it was not until our paths crossed again that I knew, too late, not only unsettling emotions, but also dangerous areas best left unexplored.