Chapter Thirteen #4
‘You’ll not get out of this so easily, Thrale. You can’t quit, and I won’t dismiss you. We must seek to misdirect these devils and you are my tool for that job. This game,’ she adds coolly, ‘I mean to win it.’
Eleanor isn’t sure what the mistress is talking about but the atmosphere in the dark office shifts.
A grin spreads across Sister Winifred’s face as the old nun suddenly has a sense of outrunning the chase – a fire she thought long quenched.
Eilidh shouldered ten years alone at the McKenzie’s duty.
She outfoxed her pursuers and solved several of Berenice’s clues – a worthy legacy.
Now Winifred will have another shot at the duty she abandoned and beside her this time a great niece with admirable spirit.
Damn the past and all its ghosts. ‘By God,’ the old nun exclaims. ‘You’re a McKenzie after all. ’
*
Outside, in a doorway at the bottom of the lane, Mr Brodie shifts.
Earlier tonight, there were a number of matters troubling him, among them that twice now he had noticed the maid making her way into the house late from the direction of the mews.
So, a few minutes ago, he waited silently in the hallway downstairs, in the shadows.
Past ten, the mistress slipped down, not with Eleanor, but followed by her.
Brodie’s interest piqued, he loitered in the vestibule, listening as the women’s steps receded up the hill, then he sneaked after them into the darkness.
He was just in time to see a flash of apricot turn right down the lane on the north side of the church.
A few minutes later, from a vantage point on the corner of the square, he witnessed Eleanor pulled inside by Sister Winifred.
He considered that the nun might not be Saoirse McKenzie.
After all there must be a thousand sisters in the city.
But the truth is he knew it was she. Brodie never identified his lovers by their fancy clothes or the curl of their hair.
Not even by their smiles or the scent of their bathing oil.
Saoirse had the most elegant deportment in Edinburgh in her day, straight as a cypress.
Still the same, it seemed. Even in the dark.
Even at a distance. His cheeks flushed like a schoolboy.
His heart leapt and crashed into a pool of sadness somewhere in his belly.
Cautiously, he checked the church windows for any indication of what might be happening inside.
There was a vague light through one of the windows but it was impossible to hear what was being said.
Moving on, he sheltered in a door at the top of Charlotte Place and waited again.
He’s spent the last ten minutes there with his hands shaking, feeling sick.
Now Brodie hears the side door open and peers out, making sure to loiter in the darkness of the doorway.
The mistress and Eleanor disappear up the lane.
Once they’ve gone, the lit window darkens and Sister Winifred steps onto the flagstones.
She locks the door and puts the key in her pocket.
Brodie feels his heart turn over. He watches, rapt, as she walks past him, unaware.
She’s still elegant, though she must by now be in her seventies, ten years older than he is.
At Queensferry Street she mounts a Clydesdale tethered at the mounting bar.
Brodie smiles. Her frame is tiny by comparison to the carthorse, but up she goes, fearless.
As she rides away sidesaddle, he takes the risk of stepping out to stare at her receding figure.
The first time she went, he didn’t get to see her go.
‘My God,’ he breathes, once the street is empty. And then, lower, ‘Mo ghràdh.’ My love.
When she’s gone, he turns his mind to what on earth is going on.
Perhaps the maid isn’t having an affair.
Mrs Moore keeps saying she’s winding up her aunt’s estate, but as far as he can see there’s been little progress.
The family lawyer hasn’t returned to the house since the funeral.
Araminta has given no orders to pack Eilidh McKenzie’s possessions.
She doesn’t write to her husband, as far as he can make out; certainly not on the daily.
And, it seems, something has transpired between her and her maid.
Eleanor arrived plump, pleasant and curious about the household, but the last day or so the girl has hardly put a spoonful across her lips, not even last night when Cook made custard.
How does Saoirse McKenzie fit into this?
Did Eilidh leave private instructions – something to be undertaken by her sister and her niece?
Brodie takes a deep breath of freezing air.
He won’t sleep tonight but seeing Saoirse again has been worth it.
He glances behind, as if she might appear once more.
But Charlotte Place is deserted, only one buttery window above with a light still burning.
Nothing on Melville Street beyond. Turning, he slips into the mews and takes the garden gate resolving to find out what on earth is going on, and to help with it, if he can.