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“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “This will do very well.”
“Ye up from England?” she asked conversationally.
She made it sound like a foreign land, but then strictly speaking it was.
“Yes.” It was an opportunity he should not waste. There was certainly no time to spare. “Yes, I’m a legal consultant.” That was something of a euphemism, but advisable, and better than suggesting he was from the police. “Preparing for a trial concerning the death of Mrs. Farraline, up at Ainslie Place.”
“She dead?” the woman said with surprise. “How’d that happen? Still, she was getting on, so little wonder. Contesting the will, are they?”
There was interest in her face, and her assumption certainly caught Monk’s attention.
“Well, it really isn’t something I should discuss, Mrs. Forster…” He took a chance, and it was not contradicted. “But I daresay you won’t need me to tell you everything anyway?”
Her smile broadened knowingly. “Money ain’t always a blessing, Mr…?”
“Monk, William Monk,” he supplied. “Lot of money, is there?”
“Well, ye’d know that, wouldn’t ye?” Her eyes were bright brown and full of amusement.
“Not yet,” he prevaricated. “But I have my guesses- naturally.”
“Bound to be.” She nodded. “All that big printing works, been there ever since the twenties, getting bigger all the time, and that fine house up the new town. Oh yes, there’s a lot of money there, Mr. Monk. Well worth fighting over, I should think. And the old lady still owned a fair piece of it, or so I heard, in spite of Colonel Farraline being dead these eight or ten years.”
Monk thought rapidly and took a gamble.
“Mrs. Farraline was murdered, you know? That is the case I am concerned with.”
Her face was aghast.
“Ye don’t say so! Murdered? Well I never! The poor old soul. Now who in the good God’s name would have done a thing like that?”
“Well, there is suspicion it was the nurse who accompanied her on the train down to London…” He hated saying it, even in so slight a way and without naming Hester. It was almost like an admission that the idea was possible.
“Oh. What a wicked thing to do! Whatever for?”
“A brooch,” he said between his teeth. “Which she gave back, and before anyone missed it. Found it in her own baggage, by accident, or so she said.”
“Oh yes?” Mrs. Forster’s eyebrows rose with delicate skepticism. “And what would a woman like that be doing with the sort of brooch Mrs. Farraline would wear? We all know what nurses are like. Drunken, dirty and no better than they should be, most of them. What a terrible thing. The poor soul.”
Monk felt his face burning and his jaw tightened as if he would grind the words between his teeth.
“She was one of the young ladies who went out to nurse our soldiers in the Crimea-served with Miss Nightingale.” His voice was rasping and without any of the control he had sworn he would keep.
Mrs. Forster looked nonplussed. She stared at Monk, reading his face to see if he had really meant what he had said. It took her only a glance to assure herself that he did.
“Well I never,” she said again. She took a deep breath, her eyes wide and troubled. “Perhaps it was not her after all. Had ye thought o’ that?”
“Yes,” he said with a grim smile. “I had.”
She said nothing, but stared at him, waiting.
“In which case it was somebody else,” he said, completing the thought for her. “And it would be most interesting to find out who.”
“Aye, that it would,” she agreed, and shrugged her ample shoulders. “And I’ll not be envying you the task o’ that. They’re a powerful family, the Farralines. He’s the Fiscal, you know?”
“What about the others?” It was easy and natural to ask, and her opinion might yield something.
“Oh, well I don’t know anything beyond what’s said, mind. But Mclvor runs the printing business now, he’s Miss Oonagh’s husband, but he’s no a Scot, he’s from down south in England somewhere. No but he’s a good enough sort of man, they say. Nothing really against him.”
“Except that he’s English?”
“Aye. And I suppose he ca
“But not liked overmuch.” Monk said what she did not.
“Oh well…” She was loath to put it into words, but the agreement was there in her face.
“He’d be Miss Eilish’s husband,” he prompted.
“Aye, he would. Now there’s a great beauty, so they say. Not that I’ve ever seen her myself, y’understand? But they say she’s the loveliest thing ever to set foot in Edinburgh.”
“What else?’
“What?”
“What else do they say about her?”
“Why nothing. Isn’t that enough?”
He smiled, in spite of himself. He imagined what Hester would have said to a description like that.
“What is she like, her ambitions, her ideas?”
“Oh, for certain I never heard that.”
“And Mrs. Farraline herself?”
“A fine lady, so they say. Always was, for years back. Colonel Farraline was a gentleman, generous with his money, and she followed on the same. Always givin’ to the city. Poor Major Farraline, that’s the younger brother, now he’s a different kettle of fish. Drinks like a sot, he does. Hardly ever sober. Shame that, when a gentleman with all his opportunities goes to the bottle.”
“Yes it is a shame. Do you know why? Was there some tragedy?”
She pursed her lips.
“Not that I ever heard. But what would I know? Just a weak man, I suppose. World’s full o’ them. Looks for the answer to all o’ life’s problems in the bottom of a bottle. You’d think after a score or so they’d realize it wasn’t there-but not them.”
“What about the last son, Ke
She shrugged again. “Just a young gentleman with more time and money than sense. He’ll grow out of it by and by, I expect. Pity his mother isn’t here any longer to see he does, but I daresay the Fiscal will. Wouldn’t want him doing something stupid and spoiling the family name. Or making a foolish marriage. He wouldn’t be the first young dandy to do that.”
“Does he not work at the family business?” Monk asked.
“Oh aye, so I’ve heard. Don’t know what he does, but no doubt it would be easy enough to find out.” A strange expression lightened her eyes, curiosity, disbelief and a kind of begi
“Yes, I don’t suppose it’s likely,” Monk said judiciously. “But it could have been a maid. It’s possible, and I’ve got to look at everything.”
“ ‘Course you have,” she agreed, straightening her apron and making to move. “Well, I’d best be leaving you to get on about it then.” She went to the door and turned back. “And ye’U be here for a week or two, right enough?”
“I will,” he agreed with a shadow of a smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Forster.”
As soon as he had unpacked the few clothes he had brought with him, he wrote a short note to Rathbone, giving his new address at 20, Grassmarket, Edinburgh, and after a brief luncheon at the i
However, it was too early in the day now, and by di