A Grave Matter Read online

  “That’s where the watchman fell asleep on the night Lord Fleming’s grave was disturbed?” Gage asked, raising his voice to be heard over the gusting wind.

  “Aye,” the rector replied. He shook his head. “I thought Geordie’d put all his drinkin’ behind him. But that’s the only explanation I have for him fallin’ asleep on the job like that.”

  “This Geordie, where might we find him? I’d like to ask him a few questions.”

  The rector tipped his head to the right. “Lives doon by the river, a mile or so from here. But I dinna think you’ll get much from him.” The muscles around his mouth had tightened, I assumed in disapproval of his drinking. I suspected it would be best if we visited the man earlier in the day, while he was more likely to be sober.

  We resumed our trek across the churchyard through the snow. It was clear no one had come this way, at least not since the evening before last when the snow started falling. The wind here blew quite strong with nothing to obstruct it, and I had to lift a hand to keep the hood of my cloak from being pushed back off my head. It was loud enough to make hearing each other difficult, so we remained silent as we approached the far corner.

  A pale stone obelisk rather than a headstone stood over the open grave—the soil a dark blot in the otherwise gray and white landscape. The wooden coffin down inside had been closed as best it could, and was now covered in pristine snow.

  “Lord Fleming’s clothing and effects were taken to Marefield House,” the rector replied in answer to Gage’s question, talking loudly to be heard over the wind. “And the coffin is otherwise empty.”

  “That may be so, but I’m afraid I’m still going to need to take a look inside,” Gage told him.

  My heart started beating faster, just like it had at the abbey. I wanted to protest, but I knew he was right. There might be some clue in the coffin that the others had missed, and there was no way of knowing unless he looked. But that didn’t stop me from thinking of the Nun of Dryburgh’s words, or prevent the feeling of sickening dread from washing over me.

  He removed his hat, looking around for a place to set it. I stepped forward to take it from him.

  “St. Mawr, would you mind giving me a hand?”

  My stomach dropped as I watched both men—the two closest to me in all the world—awkwardly drop down into the grave. The coffin made a hollow thud as they landed, and I could only hope the wood would hold both their weight.

  The rector stepped closer to the grave to watch what they were doing, but I had to turn away.

  “Watchin’ ye two lads, I almost wish this story would turn oot like the tale o’ James Goodfellow and the body snatchers,” the rector said, his voice rich with amusement. “Do ye ken it, Lady Darby?”

  “Ah, no, I don’t,” I turned to reply, carefully avoiding looking into the grave. I pivoted away again, ostensibly to keep the wind at my back and the hood over my head, but really I wanted to ignore what was happening behind me.

  “Well, James Goodfellow was walkin’ home late one night—they say after courtin’ a girl—and he happened to see a light in the churchyard here. Curiosity gettin’ to him, he snuck closer and saw a pony ’n cart hid in the glebe. Well, he gave the pony a skelp on the rump and set it runnin’ off.” The rector chuckled, while below him I could hear Gage and Trevor grunting in some sort of effort. “The thieves were forced to chase after it, and while they were gone, ole’ James crept into the graveyard, hid the body he found in the coffin they’d opened, and climbed inside himself.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him in wide-eyed surprise.

  He grinned, clearly enjoying my shock. “The body snatchers returned and hoisted the coffin onto the cart and drove off. ’Twas aboot ten minutes later that one o’ the men leaned against ole James and shouted, ‘Jock, this body’s warm!’ Well, James couldna miss oot on this opportunity, so he sat up and proclaimed, ‘If you’d been where I’ve been, you’d be warm, too!’”

  The rector threw his head back and laughed, and I cracked a smile, as much from watching his enjoyment as in appreciation of the story.

  “You can imagine how quickly those thieves took off after that. Left the pony ’n cart all to James.”

  I turned to look at the late Lord Fleming’s obelisk, curious whether this was one of the stories Lady Fleming had derided. It did sound a bit embellished, but it was certainly entertaining. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was any truth to it.

  I studied the obelisk’s inscription—Lord Fleming’s full name and dates. And then something at the top right corner of the surface bearing the engraving caught my eye.

  I frowned. It was a tiny red mark—a slash of color barely two inches long.

  I moved closer, leaning down to get a better look. It appeared to be very smooth, almost glossy. I reached out with my gloved hand to run a finger over it, but it did not smudge or come away on my fingertip. Tugging the glove off my hand, I ran my fingers over the cold stone again, suddenly realizing what the red substance was.

  “It’s sealing wax.” I gasped.

  “What?” Gage called up to me in confusion.

  “See this red mark,” I demanded in excitement, pointing to the spot in question. “It’s sealing wax.”

  Both men stared at me blankly.

  “There was a mark just like it on Lord Buchan’s gravestone.”

  Gage’s eyes widened and he rose from his crouch, where he’d been examining the inside of the coffin. “Of course! Why didn’t we think of it before? If the men doing the actual grave robbing are these criminals from Edinburgh, as we suspect, then it’s highly unlikely they can read. So how do they know which graves to disturb?”

  “The main person responsible must be marking them. Which means . . .” I stood up, turning to look around me “. . . he visited here recently.”

  “He visited all the grave sites,” Gage exclaimed, hoisting himself up out of the grave and then reaching down to help Trevor.

  Once my brother was on solid ground, Gage turned to address the rector. “Do you recall any visitors to the graveyard recently? Maybe in the last fortnight. Particularly any strangers.”

  The rector, who’d been observing our conversation in awed silence, stammered, trying to find his words. “Er, hmm . . . well, let me see. In the last fortnight?” He furrowed his brow in thought. “Well, we’ve had the normal parishioners.” He tapped his finger to his chin. “But no strangers. O’ course, I’m no’ always here. I’m often oot vistin’ those who are too sick and elderly to make it to the church.”

  Which meant our quarry had probably visited during one of those times. He’d been exceptionally clever up until now, and there was no reason we shouldn’t expect him to continue to be.

  The rector shrugged. “I’m sorry. The only guest I can recall is the young man who came with Lady Fleming’s nephew.”

  “Who was that?” Gage asked.

  He frowned. “I dinna recall exactly, but he was a Lord something-or-other. They were visitin’ the late Mr. Young’s grave.”

  I turned to the rector with a start. “Wait. Mr. Archibald Young?”

  “Aye, well, that’s the son’s name. His father was Alvin Young.”

  I glanced at Gage. “Was the friend who accompanied him a Lord Shellingham?”

  “Aye. That’s it.” The rector smiled. “Introduced him as his cousin, though on his father’s side. No relation to Lady Fleming.”

  “Do you think it’s a coincidence?” Trevor asked grimly, aware of the players involved.

  Gage’s nostrils flared like a predator picking up his prey’s scent. “I highly doubt it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Following my suggestion, and the rector’s directions, we drove along the road that roughly paralleled the River Teviot in search of Geordie’s abode. We found it tucked among the trees at a bend in the river. It was hardly more than a shack, with no windows and only one warped door. He yelled out for us to enter when Gage knocked on the rough wood, and when we stepped
inside, it was to find him seated before a table staring at a dusty, unopened bottle of amber liquid. His hair was uncombed and his face sported several days’ growth of a beard. From the look in his eyes and the slump to his shoulders, I suspected he’d been sitting that way for a very long time.

  He blinked up at us and heaved a weary sigh, his only reaction to the sight of three upper-class people standing in the doorway of his hovel. I didn’t know if he was resigned to us or too numbed by alcohol to care. The room was barely warmer than it was outside, and there was a distinctly sour odor coming from Geordie’s general vicinity, so I hung back by the door, allowing Gage to take the reins of the conversation.

  He briefly introduced us before moving straight to the reason for our visit. “We understand you were the watchman at the church graveyard on the night Lord Fleming’s grave was disturbed.”

  Geordie looked up at him with unresponsive eyes, his fingers still wrapped loosely around either side of the liquor bottle sitting on the table before him.

  Gage pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. “We were told you fell asleep, possibly with the aid of some strong spirits . . .” his gaze flicked down to the bottle “. . . and that’s why you didn’t hear anything. Is that true?”

  His gaze dropped to the bottle before him, one corner of his mouth tightening. “’Twas also windy,” he replied in a rough voice.

  I could understand that. The blustery weather this morning had made it difficult to hear each other a few feet away, let alone across an entire graveyard.

  But Gage did not sympathize so easily. “Do you know what I think, Geordie? I think it’s all a lie.” He spoke in a calm but implacable voice, leaning forward over the table. “I think you made that all up because you didn’t want to tell the truth.”

  Geordie’s hands flexed around the bottle.

  Gage sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “How much did they bribe you?”

  Trevor and I stood quietly by the door watching Geordie, wondering what thoughts were flickering through his head. Gage looked ready to sit there for hours, if necessary, until the Scotsman talked. Fortunately, it only took about a minute of this silent standoff before the man broke.

  “Five pounds,” he mumbled.

  Gage’s mouth twisted in skepticism. “Just five pounds? You must have been pretty desperate if that’s all it took.”

  Geordie scowled at the bottle. “’Twasn’t the money.” He finally looked up into Gage’s stern visage. “They gave me no choice. They said I could take the blunt an’ look the other way or they’d shoot me.”

  After what had happened to Dodd, I fully believed this explanation. The only wonder was that they gave the man a choice instead of killing him straight out. But maybe their employer hadn’t been happy with the mess they’d made of the snatching at Dryburgh Abbey. Maybe murder had not been on that man’s agenda.

  Geordie turned to appeal to me and Trevor when Gage said nothing. “What was I s’posed to do? I got a wife and bairn to feed.” His mouth screwed up and he muttered, “No’ that that’s done me any guid now. Me wife left an’ took the bairn when she heard I’d fallen asleep after s’posedly drinkin’. I swore I hadna. But she didna believe me.” His head sank lower on his shoulders.

  Gage reached out to wrap his fingers around the neck of the bottle, pulling it out of Geordie’s hands. “Well, starting back up now isn’t going to make her return.” He thunked the bottle down on his side of the wooden surface.

  Geordie shook his head. “She’s no’ comin’ back this time.”

  “She will when she hears about the caretaker these body snatchers killed in a graveyard just north of here.”

  He blinked up at him in surprise, and a light returned to his eyes. It was clear he didn’t know what to say, so Gage helped him along.

  “I’ll make sure the rector along with anyone else of consequence knows the truth, if you’ll help us catch these men.”

  Geordie sat up straighter and nodded vigorously. “Anythin’. What can I do?”

  He held up a hand to calm him. “All we need at the moment is information. Did you get a good look at them?”

  “One o’ ’em. The other three sorta hung back in the shadows.”

  “All right. Describe him.”

  Geordie squinted, thinking back. “He were tall, an’ real rough lookin’. Like he’d rolled in a trough. His hair were real oily. Oh, an’ he had a long scar across his forehead . . .” he lifted his finger to illustrate, drawing a diagonal from mid hairline almost to the ear “. . . from here to here.”

  Gage glanced back at me, and I removed the sketch of Curst Eckie from my reticule and handed it to him. He unfolded it and laid it on the table in front of Geordie. “Is this the man?”

  Geordie instantly perked up. “Aye. That’s him.”

  “What else can you tell me? Did they say where they’d come from or where they were going?”

  Geordie’s face fell again. “Nay. And I hid in the watchtower ’til they were gone.” He frowned down at his hands where they rested on the tabletop. “I didna want to give ’em any reason to change their mind.”

  Gage studied the scruffy man a moment longer and then rose to his feet. Geordie looked up at him hopefully.

  “I’ll tell the rector the truth about what happened, and hopefully he can relay that information to your wife.” He picked up the bottle of liquor. “In the meantime, I suggest you bathe and take care of yourself. Don’t give her any reason to believe you really have started drinking again.”

  “Wait,” I said, stepping forward.

  Gage paused in his progress toward the door. His brow lowered in displeasure.

  “Just one more question,” I told him and then turned to address Geordie, who was looking up at me with some misgiving. “Was there a woman? Perhaps someone who remained with the horses?”

  He shook his head. “I dinna see one.”

  I thanked him and then pivoted to go, ignoring Gage’s probing look. I had told him about Bonnie Brock’s sister and his claim that she’d run off with one of these men. It only made sense to ask whether she’d been seen since Geordie was the only person we’d discovered so far to have had a recent run-in with these body snatchers and lived to tell about it.

  A few minutes later as our carriage rolled down the drive, I peered out the window to find Geordie hurrying toward the river with some type of linen slung over his shoulder. I shivered at the thought of bathing in such chilly water, but I supposed the man had no other option. Most people were not as privileged as I was, with servants to heat and carry water for them, or advanced plumbing systems to deliver water from cisterns on the roof.

  Gage stared down at the crude label of the whiskey bottle in his hands and then offered it to Trevor across the carriage. “I imagine these are rather crude spirits, more fit to burn in a lamp than drink.”

  Trevor grimaced. “Worse. Best to just dump it out.”

  When we returned to the church, Gage leapt out to apprise the rector of the information Geordie had given us, leaving my brother and me alone for a moment. A somewhat awkward silence descended and I considered pressing Trevor about my concerns regarding him and the estate, but I realized there would never be enough time before Gage returned. So instead I asked if he planned to come up to Edinburgh in the spring.

  “Yes. Probably sometime after Alana’s baby is born.”

  I nodded, adjusting the kid leather of my glove on my left hand.

  “When do you plan to return to Edinburgh?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Certainly not until this inquiry is over. Maybe sometime in February.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure why this conversation felt so stilted, but I could tell that Trevor felt the strain as well. He kept his gaze fixed out the window.

  “Then you should know we’ve received our invitation to Lady Kerswood’s Burns Night Ball.”

  I groaned. “She’s still hosting those?”

  Trevor nodded regretfully.


  Every year Lady Kerswood hosted a Burns Night Ball in a poorly disguised attempt to outshine my aunt and uncle’s Hogmanay Ball. One year Lady Kerswood had tried to plan a ball on December thirty-first alongside my aunt, inviting many of the same people. When she received mostly regrets, the guests preferring to continue their annual tradition at Clintmains Hall, Lady Kerswood opted to move her event to Burns Night, pretending that was what she’d wished to do all along.

  Burns Night was traditionally celebrated on an evening around Robert Burns’s birthday, January twenty-fifth, and included readings of his poetry as well as Scottish food and music. Unfortunately, Lady Kerswood had transformed what would normally be a fun night into an overextravagance of all things Scots. She insisted everyone wear clan dress and talk in thick brogues, though she herself was exempted, claiming she was too delicate to manage it. And rather than wear Lord Kerswood’s clan colors, she instead decked herself out as Mary, Queen of Scots, or Flora MacDonald, or some other famous Scottish figure.

  For whatever reason, our aunt felt some obligation to attend, and insisted that the rest of us join them whenever we were in the area, no matter how much we loathed it.

  “Are you sure she included me in the invitation?” I asked, actually hopeful for once that I had been snubbed.

  Trevor’s expression was not amused. “She did. And don’t even think about trying to get out of it.”

  “Trying to get out of what?” Gage asked as he rejoined us inside the carriage. He wrapped on the roof with his fist and the horses set off again. He glanced from me to Trevor as we glowered at each other. I was the one to finally speak up.

  “Lady Kerswood’s Burns Night Ball.”

  “Burns Night? The poet?”

  “Yes.”

  Gage settled back against the squabs. “When is it? Am I invited as well?”

  “I’m sure you’ll be welcome,” Trevor replied.