A Grave Matter Page 12

  “What wasn’t right?” Gage asked after taking a drink of his ale.

  The innkeeper’s eyes narrowed in emphasis. “There was three men in that trap, but the one in the middle looked funny, all slouched o’er and pale. And he seemed familiar.”

  I clutched my sketch pad tighter to my chest, suspecting what was coming.

  “Weel, I yelled at ’em to stop, and the two on either side leapt oot o’ the trap and ran off into the night. I woulda’ chased ’em, and likely caught ’em. But there was the third one left to deal wi’. And he was sittin’ there motionless. We saw why when we got closer.” The innkeeper leaned in closer. “’Twas ole Peter McCraig, who’d been buried two days past.” He nodded sagely. “Those men were body snatchers.”

  I suddenly felt the urge to laugh, inappropriate as it was. But the innkeeper had clearly been called upon to relay this story numerous times, and had calculated its delivery for maximum effect. I lifted a gloved hand to my mouth to cough, smothering my humor. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gage’s mouth twitched. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one amused.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. Were they ever apprehended?”

  The innkeeper shook his head. “Nay. Though the horse was collected by a dealer in Kelso, who said he hired it oot. Last spring there was talk that the trap was claimed, but no one ever came for it.” His eyes hardened, staring off into the distance. “And noo, there ain’t nay more trap for ’em teh claim.”

  What that meant, I could only guess.

  “Did you get a good look at the men?” Gage asked, distracting him from whatever thought was giving him such spiteful pleasure.

  “Aye. I saw ’em weel enough.”

  “Would you be able to describe them for us? Perhaps well enough for us to make a sketch?” He dipped his head toward me and the sketch pad and charcoals I’d brought at his suggestion.

  “Aye. Sure I could,” the innkeeper declared.

  “Do you mind?” Gage asked me, a bit belatedly.

  How could I say no? After all, it was one skill set I possessed that he did not, and I did want to be useful. Even if that meant sitting in this sticky taproom for another half hour.

  I nodded.

  The innkeeper pushed himself up from his slouch. “Does this have somethin’ to do with the goin’ ons o’er at the abbey a few nights past?”

  “Something,” Gage answered obscurely.

  The three of us settled down at a table near the bar with a rather large gouge in it. One that I thought looked suspiciously like the shape of an axe-head. Just what went on in this pub?

  I tried to ignore whatever substance was stuck to the table—figuring the towel the innkeeper had set on the bar was probably not much cleaner—and balanced the sketch pad in my lap. Thankfully the innkeeper seemed to have a distinct memory—that, or he was making it up—for the session moved quickly. Once or twice I looked up to scowl at Gage where he sat rocking on the back legs of his chair, still nursing his tankard of ale. I hoped the glass was cleaner than the rest of this inn, or he was in for an unpleasant surprise. Or perhaps I should have wished the opposite.

  In any case, I finished quickly and Gage thanked the innkeeper, passing him another coin for the ale.

  After we climbed back into the carriage, I turned to him with displeasure. “Do you honestly believe these drawings are going to prove helpful?” A year and a half after the incident, with only a short glimpse of these two men in the dark, how on earth could the innkeeper’s description of them prove accurate?

  “I don’t know. But there was no harm in trying. Perhaps he got some of the details right. Like that scar across the one man’s forehead. Or the second man’s crooked teeth.”

  I continued to frown. He did have a point.

  “I know it’s long odds. After all, Peter McCraig’s corpse was stolen by traditional body snatchers, while with the late Earl of Buchan’s body, we don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

  “But they could still be the same men,” I said, finishing the thought for him. Perhaps they’d stumbled upon a more lucrative plot themselves. Or been hired by someone else for their experience in such matters—both with the snatching and the area. Either was a possibility.

  I sighed and turned to stare out the window at the village.

  Gage nudged my foot with his own, waiting for me to look at him. He grinned. “Cheer up. Or Mrs. Moffat will think I’m bringing her another corpse.”

  I arched a single eyebrow in annoyance. “Very funny.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mrs. Moffat lived in a tidy little cottage at the edge of the village. Barren bushes sat neatly trimmed beside the doorway, and trellises were attached to the walls on either side of the windows. I suspected in spring and summer the home was nearly covered in creeping roses and other flowering plants. Even in the dead of winter, one could sense the promise of the greenery and blooms to come.

  I’m not sure what I expected of the person who cleaned and prepared the bodies of the deceased, but it was not this charming home. Or the smiling middle-aged woman who opened the door to our knock. She could not have stood taller than five foot, even with her hair piled up under her neat white cap.

  When Gage informed her of the reason for our visit, she stepped back to usher us inside. “Oh, come in. Come in.” She closed the door behind us and took our coats. “And please dinna mind the mess,” she said hustling us toward a door on the other side of the parlor. “Children will be children after all.”

  What mess she was referring to, I could not tell, for the inside of her cottage was as tidy as the outside. Perhaps it was the overabundance of china shepherdesses decorating every available surface above three feet high, or the cluster of toy soldiers in one corner of the room. In either case, those things only proved the house was lived in.

  I’d half expected her to escort us into her work space where she prepared the bodies, but it was merely a sunny kitchen with white lace curtains. A loaf of bread sat cooling near the stove, its yeasty fragrance filling the air. She invited us to take a seat at the tartan-covered table to one side of her back door. I pulled out my chair and then hesitated, suddenly wondering if this was the flat surface she used to lay out the bodies. Though I thought I was being subtle, Mrs. Moffat noticed.

  “Lore, no, m’lady. The bodies ne’er come in here.”

  I flushed. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Nay, lass,” she interrupted, reaching out to place a hand over my own where it rested on the chair back. “It’s all right. I ken what I do is a bit ghoulish. And I wouldna be doin’ it either if it didna pay such good money.”

  She patted my hand one more time for good measure and turned to cross the room toward her stove. “When my Albert died, leavin’ me with four young bairns teh feed, I didna ken how I was gonna keep food on the table.” She set a kettle of water on the stove and began to spoon tea leaves from a tin on the counter into a plain white porcelain pot. “Then Vicar Timms came teh me with the offer of this position. The woman who’d done it afore had died. And perhaps it’s sad teh say, but it seemed like a godsend.”

  She turned and smiled, her hands pressed together over her skirt. “I ken it must be hard to understand, gruesome as the work seems—”

  “No,” I said gently, it being my turn to interrupt her. “It’s not hard to understand at all.”

  She regarded me thoughtfully, and I was certain she sensed more than I was saying, but she was gracious enough not to mention it. She simply nodded and turned to gather up a set of cups and saucers.

  I felt slightly ashamed of myself for making assumptions about the woman before I’d even met her. The fact that people did the very same thing to me had made me sensitive to the subject. But apparently that didn’t mean I was incapable of committing the same ignorant sins myself.

  I glanced at Gage as Mrs. Moffat set the cups before us and then pulled out her chair. He offered me a sympathetic smile, making me suspect he’d guessed where
my thoughts had gone.

  “Noo, what can I do for you?” Mrs. Moffat asked.

  “We’ve been told you prepared the late Earl of Buchan’s body for burial,” I said.

  She nodded. “I did. ’Twas an honor.” She paused to look between us. “Does this have teh do wi’ his body bein’ snatched from his grave the other night?”

  Gossip did travel fast, especially in small villages.

  “Yes.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve ne’er heard o’ the like.” She tipped her head to the side. “’Course, there was that incident wi’ ole Mr. McCraig. Ye’ve heard o’ it?”

  We nodded, having just come from hearing the details at the Abbot Inn.

  “Aye. Well, apparently, because o’ that, I have the unique distinction of havin’ prepared the same body twice for burial.” She scoffed. “As if that’s somethin’ to be proud of.”

  The kettle began to whistle and Mrs. Moffat rose to pour its contents into the teapot. “Have they found him then?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Uh, no. And if they do, it’s unlikely your services will be needed.”

  “I figured no’. The man’d be nothin’ but bones.” She set the teapot down on the table. “So what is it ye wish to ask me?”

  “Do you remember what was buried with him?” I asked, suddenly hopeful this efficient woman would be able to give us an answer to this question once and for all.

  She nodded decisively. “I do. Keep a record o’ all my clients’ effects, doon to the buttons on their shirts.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally.

  “I’ll be happy teh fetch the list for ye soon as we’ve had our tea.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure,” she replied and then asked how I liked my tea.

  Once we were all settled back with our cups, she turned to regard me again. “Was there an item in particular you’re curious aboot?”

  I smiled. Mrs. Moffat missed nothing. I imagined she’d make quite a formidable investigator herself, if she ever tired of preparing bodies for burial.

  “There is.” I set my cup down in its saucer with a clink. “I know this may sound odd. But was the earl buried with any unusual jewelry? A gold torc, perhaps?”

  Mrs. Moffat began to laugh. “Lore, that is somethin’ his lordship would do.” Clearly she understood the jewelry’s implication. She shook her head and giggled once more, as if imagining the deceased earl wearing a torc. She cleared her throat. “But nay, m’lady. The only jewelry I placed in the coffin wi’ him was a stickpin and a gold watch. I’ll check my records to be certain, but I’m fair sure. And I’d certainly remember a torc.”

  I nodded and took another sip of tea, staring at Gage across the table. If the earl wasn’t buried with the torc, then just what were the body snatchers looking for? Did they truly only come for his bones? It made no sense to me.

  “Although,” Mrs. Moffat mused, interrupting my thoughts. Her mouth pursed. “That disna necessarily mean he wasna buried in it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, once I was finished, the coffin was taken to Dryburgh House and reopened for the viewing before the funeral. Someone could o’ put it on him then.”

  So, truly, we had no way of knowing. Perhaps Mrs. Moffat and the earl’s nephew had not placed the torc in the coffin with him, but the old earl could have entrusted the task to a servant or friend. There was no way of knowing for sure unless we tracked down every person who had viewed the body before the burial, and even then there was no guarantee they would tell the truth.

  Gage and I thanked Mrs. Moffat, taking the list of the late earl’s effects she’d copied for us to compare with those that had been found, but just from a glance, I could tell there was nothing missing. Nothing but the earl’s bones.

  “Well, this is proving to be a fruitless excursion,” I griped.

  “Not necessarily,” Gage replied with infuriating calm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if the late earl was buried with a torc, it was done with some sort of subterfuge. Which makes it more likely that Collingwood’s claim is true. Or else, why hide it?”

  “Yes. But that only matters if it was, in fact, buried with him. How are we going to find that out?”

  “Patience. There’s still much to discover.”

  I considered throwing my boot at his head.

  • • •

  When questioning my aunt Sarah, we had discovered that most of the local aristocrats and gentry had attended the Hogmanay Ball, but there had been one person conspicuously absent—a Miss Musgrave, who lived with her parents on the western edge of St. Boswells. Their large, classically designed home sat but two hundred yards from the River Tweed and, interestingly enough, across the water from Dryburgh Abbey. From the south shore you could see nothing of the abbey ruins through the screen of trees along the north shore except the top of the abbey church’s south transept and a sliver of the west wall of what had been the refectory, but it was there all the same.

  The butler, a rather puffed-up man, reluctantly showed us into a parlor at the back of the house, where we were forced to wait for several minutes. As early as darkness fell in January, the sky had already begun to deepen toward dusk, and it was barely teatime. I studied the gray ribbon of the river outside the window rather than the ornamentation of the room around me. Mr. Musgrave—we’d been warned his wife was dead—was clearly more interested in displaying his wealth than comfort or aesthetics. The chair I perched on was covered in a lovely gold and cream toile, but hard, stiff, and garish given its position next to a canary yellow sofa.

  The man himself seemed to prefer simple black. He wore trousers and a double-breasted, calf-length frockcoat with what I suspected were padded shoulders, for I highly doubted the round man sported such a physique naturally. Fashionable Mr. Musgrave might be, but there was no comparison between him and Gage, even though Gage wore only a pair of buff riding breeches and a hunter green tailcoat—no padding necessary.

  Mr. Musgrave paused in the doorway to examine each of us before striding across the room to shake Gage’s hand. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he declared in a manner that told us he was not. “Business to attend to.” He gestured for Gage to take a seat next to me. “Noo, what can I do for you?”

  Clearly the man had no desire to indulge in idle small talk, so Gage got directly to the point. “We understand your daughter was ill on Hogmanay and could not attend the ball.”

  “Aye. Just a touch of the ague.”

  Gage cleared his throat. “Yes. Well, we wondered if we might have a word with her and any servants who stayed with her that night.” He nodded toward the windows. “We noticed part of your home faces the river, and the abbey, and we wondered if they might have seen anything regarding what happened there.”

  Mr. Musgrave sat forward on his chair. “I’m afraid I canna help ye. As I said, my daughter was ill with the ague. She wouldna seen anything.”

  “But if we could just confirm that with her,” Gage pressed before the man could rise to his feet.

  He narrowed his eyes. “I told ye. She didna see anything.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Mr. Musgrave’s mustache began to quiver. “She woulda told me. Noo . . .”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Gage said, a hard look entering his eyes. “But I’m afraid we must insist.”

  Mr. Musgrave’s complexion began to grow red.

  “Or I can ask Lord Rutherford to pay you a visit, and he can speak with her.”

  It was a viable threat and Mr. Musgrave knew it. My uncle was the local magistrate, and there would be curious questions from the townsfolk about his visit.

  He nodded jerkily. “Give me a moment.”

  “You know he’s going to interrogate his daughter now before she talks to us,” I leaned closer to tell Gage after the door closed behind our host.

  He smiled grimly. “Yes, but it can’t be helped.”

&nbs
p; About five minutes later, Mr. Musgrave returned with a young lady of about eighteen dressed in a pale lavender gown with puffed sleeves. They were trailed by a maid perhaps a dozen years older than her charge, her hands clasped tightly before her turning her knuckles nearly white. I couldn’t tell whether the woman was generally anxious around her employer or if she was nervous about the questions she knew we were about to ask.

  The girl looked even less confident—darting glances between us and her father, her face pale and drawn. I nearly told Gage we should excuse ourselves, and not bother wasting their time or ours. The women weren’t going to give us any information, whether they had any to share or not. And we would never be able to tell whether their nerves stemmed from withholding this information or Mr. Musgrave having threatened them into silence.

  But I held my tongue and rose to my feet this time, more to put the maid and the girl at ease than in deference to our host. I outranked them all, after all, and little as I cared to use that privilege most of the time, I wouldn’t mind exerting it over Mr. Musgrave.

  “Noo, tell them what ye told me,” Mr. Musgrave prompted his daughter. When she didn’t respond quickly enough for him, he nudged her in the back. “Tell them, Alice.”

  “I . . . I was ill in bed all of Hogmanay.” Her voice was soft and cultured, clearly well educated, as many wealthy merchants’ daughters were, in hopes of catching a titled husband.

  “I see.” Gage offered her a sympathetic smile. “You must have been very disappointed to miss out on the ball?”

  Her eyes blinked wide. “I . . . Yes, I was.”

  “I’m sure you were looking forward to dancing and laughing with your friends. I’m sorry you missed it.”

  She darted a look to the side where her maid stood just behind her and nodded.

  Curious.

  Gage seemed to have noticed it as well. “So you never got up? Never looked out the window?” he tried again.

  Miss Musgrave opened her mouth to answer but her father cut her off. “She said she didna.”