Chapter 50

1980

Maggie

On the landing halfway up the Great Stair is the Douglas Room, and though it’s small, I liked to try to cram in all the visitors as there was so much to see.

“Here on the heavy oak door you can see the carving of a crescent. This is part of the Seton crest, which we also saw in the Charter Room. Just like in that room, there’s dark wood panelling all around. Over there is a seventeenth-century tapestry and here is a portrait of an unidentified young girl, dating from 1553.”

I stood aside as they all edged towards it.

“She’s clearly from a noble family, given her clothes and head covering – but also, only the nobility could afford to have portraits commissioned. And though we don’t know who painted it, the style is similar to Flemish portraits of that time.”

“Does it not say on the back who the girl is?”

I tried not to smile. Almost every tour, someone asked that question, as if no one had thought to turn the painting around.

“No, sadly not. There have been residents of Fyvie Castle over the years who insist it’s the earliest known portrait of Mary Seton, whose nephew Alexander Seton carried out so much work at Fyvie Castle both outside and inside. The stairs we’ve just come up, the Great Stair, which is technically called a wheel stair, was the biggest in the country when Alexander Seton built it in the late sixteenth century. Mary Seton was one of Mary, Queen of Scots’ four Marys, her ladies-in-waiting, also sometimes known by their French name, Marie. In 1553, she would have been twelve years old. When this painting is compared to later portraits of Mary 237 Seton, there are a lot of similarities, particularly in the colour of her hair and in her features.”

I paused for questions. There was always someone asking something if I merely mentioned the words Mary, Queen of Scots, but today, nothing. So I turned and pointed to the painting along from the girl’s portrait. “This is Margaret Hay, Alexander Seton’s third wife. As you can see, she has auburn hair and dark brown eyes. She looks quite different from Grizel Leslie, his second wife, whose portrait we saw earlier, with her striking blue eyes.”

“Why is she not wearing the necklace the other wife wore? You said it belonged to a set of Seton jewels,” asked an elderly man who was wearing a thick overcoat even though it was an unusually warm day.

“I was coming to that,” I said, turning back to point at the painting. “It’s thought that, because of this high, intricate lace collar she’s wearing, the necklace – which as you correctly say was part of the Seton parure – would have looked out of place. But also, it could be that by the time she married Alexander Seton, it was no longer in the family’s hands.”

“What, you mean it was lost?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t appear on any pictures after the portrait I showed you of Grizel downstairs in the little room off the library. Other than that, there’s nothing more I can tell you about the jewels.” I stopped there, thinking that I really must ask Mr David more about the parure; I was always fobbing the visitors off with that anodyne sentence.

I leant in towards them to relay the final piece of information about the Douglas room in a loud whisper. “There have been stories over the centuries that in this room, one of the laird’s wives was starved to death. When we were in the Seton Bedroom, I told you about the Green Lady who’s meant to haunt the castle. Well, some think it was Lilias Drummond, Alexander Seton’s first wife, 238 who was kept prisoner in this room, without any food, because she was unable to produce sons – therefore heirs – for her husband. She only had daughters.”

I watched them all grimace then I smiled. “But this is incredibly unlikely. As I said, this room is at the top of the finest wheel stair in Scotland, so there was no way that Alexander Seton, who must’ve been proud of his staircase, would have kept his wife locked in here, to starve her to death. He’d have shown guests all the way up here; surely a dying woman wasn’t locked in behind this door all the time. It was far too near the hubbub of the castle.” I shrugged. “Who knows, perhaps he starved her somewhere else.”

“Was it Lilias Drummond who ended up as the Green Lady? Has anyone seen the ghost at the castle?”

I shook my head. “Supposedly. But no one’s seen her here in this room. There’ve been stories, though, of caretakers having to go up to the Seton Room at night when the burglar alarm’s gone off. But when they investigate, all they find is something like an open window, which has been banging against the ledge and triggered the alarm. To my knowledge, nobody has actually seen a ghost.”

I looked around. They wanted to believe in this ghost. I must ask Mr David more about his aunt’s putative sighting.

“But who knows? All I can tell you is that I’ve certainly not seen her, and I’ve been sleeping at the castle for the past month.”

“Is Mr David available later, Mrs MacPherson?”

“Why do you ask?”

Was this woman ever anything other than frosty? “I hoped to catch him at some stage today, there are some things I wanted to ask him.” 239

“Nothing I can help you with?”

I shook my head. “No. Thank you, though.”

She opened a big desk diary and scrolled down the page with her finger. “I think he should be free now, unless you have a tour?”

“Just finished my morning one. I’ve got an hour till the next one.”

“Well, if you proceed to the Leith Tower, I shall phone Mr David and say you are on your way.”

“Thanks,” I said, bizarrely excited about seeing the only part of the castle I’d not been allowed in yet. The Leith Tower was for the family’s private use only.

I walked into the billiard room then through the door to the stairs leading to the Leith Tower. I noticed that the wood on the doors wasn’t as heavy and dark as in the other parts of the castle, and in fact this newer wing was much lighter and airier. I was about to knock on a door when I heard a voice behind me.

“Miss Hay. Please come into the kitchen.”

I followed Mr David into a large Victorian kitchen, which was wonderfully warm. The Aga was obviously on all summer.

He gestured for me to sit down and proceeded to fill the kettle.

“Tea?”

“Yes please.”

I shuffled in the rickety wooden chair and looked around. There was a family photograph on the dresser and I peered closely to see a younger Mr David with another boy – possibly his cousin Charles – and a man and woman, presumably one of the boys’ parents, all sitting around a piano in a grand room, not one I knew at Fyvie, although as I studied it I realised the view outside the window looked familiar. The man was dressed in plus fours and tweed jacket and the woman, in twinset, sensible skirt and brogues, reminded me a little of the Queen Mother. She was an attractive middle-aged woman with hair in a stylish perm and 240 strings of pearls around her ample bosom. The two boys were dressed in matching long shorts and school blazers and looked thoroughly bored.

“Is this you and your cousin?”

He turned around from the open pedal bin where he was dangling a tea bag. “Yes, I used to spend exeats with Charles here at Fyvie.”

I thought it might seem impertinent to ask more about the photo or his childhood, so I kept to safe ground. “What date is the kitchen from?”

“Around 1890. Of course, it’s far too old-fashioned now, but since we seldom entertain, it suits me fine.”

He put a mug of tea in front of me, lifted up a jug of milk that had clearly been sitting there for some time and sniffed it. Then he pushed it towards me and said, “Now, what did you want to speak to me about?”

“Well, there’s a couple of things I keep being asked about by the visitors and I feel my answers aren’t sufficient.”

He smirked. “And you have more scruples than your fellow guides and refuse to invent things?”

I smiled. “First of all, the Green Lady. You said ages ago that your aunt was the only person you knew who’d seen her. Can you tell me some more about that please?”

He swung back on his char, not shifting his gaze from my face. “Remember I said my aunt was in the early stages of dementia, so we don’t know if what she saw or said she saw was real.”

I nodded.

“But for some reason, she’d decided to go along to the Seton Bedroom in the middle of the night. She said when she opened the door, she was aware there was, as she called it, a presence. She went to sit at the dressing table chair and looked in the mirror. She hadn’t put the light on so the room was dark apart from some 241 moonlight coming in through the window. Then she said she could see something green hovering behind her in the reflection and she was so scared, she didn’t move, she simply watched the shimmering green drift over towards the window and linger for a moment before disappearing. She was convinced she also heard something.”

“What?”

“Don’t forget Aunt Ethel’s mind was already fragile, but she insisted she heard three words being whispered.”

I nodded. I could guess what was coming.

“‘He killed me.’ That was what she said she heard.” Mr David shrugged. “Utter nonsense, but she told the same story to my cousin and my uncle before he died soon after.”

“The same words that were heard on that radio programme.”

“Oh, you know about that, do you? Shocking publicity, we all thought at the time, but then we realised that, in fact, that’s what would draw in the crowds. So that helped persuade Charles he had to open some of the castle to the public. The thing is, Aunt Ethel’s mind was fine at the time it had been broadcast, so she must have remembered the shock the presenter experienced hearing those words when they listened to the programme again.”

I nodded. “Nothing else about that night?”

“Oh, yes, she’d gone to the window where the green figure had vanished and it was wide open. The caretaker always went round shutting and locking every window at night, but he’d obviously forgotten on that occasion.”

I took a gulp of tea. It was one of those horrible smoky teas I’d tried with Len at some fancy place he took me for afternoon tea. I didn’t like it then or now.

“Did she feel threatened?”

He shook his head. “She told us that, though she was scared at seeing something she was convinced was spectral, she felt the 242 ghost was benign.” He shrugged. “But as I say, this was clearly the start of her dementia.” He looked at his watch. “Anything else?”

“Well, the other thing is about those jewels, the parure the Seton family owned in the sixteenth century.”

His aloof, arrogant manner changed and he suddenly appeared rather cagey.

“What about it?”

“Visitors ask what happened to it, after they’ve seen the necklace on Grizel Seton’s portrait. I tell them it was part of a parure that was in the Seton family, including earrings and a brooch, but then I don’t know what happened to it after.”

“Quite the Miss Marple, aren’t you?” he sneered. “How did you find out about the parure? Only the necklace appears on the portrait.”

“I’ve got lots of archive materials from my university lecturer, and research I’d already done on the Seton family at the time Alexander lived here.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no one has any knowledge of what happened to it after that portrait of Grizel in the early 1600s.”

“Really? So has no one’s tried to find it?”

He sighed. “What do you think, Miss Hay?”

I loathed sarcasm anyway; coming from him, with his smug expression, I wanted to react, but was aware I needed to keep in with him.

“No historian or archivist has tried to trace it back?”

“No.”

I glanced at his face, full of disdain, and ventured, “I thought it might be in the safe in the Charter Room.”

“Do you actually think there are any valuables kept there? With all those people filing through that room every day?” He shook his head. “There is nothing there, I can assure you, and-” He stopped 243 and tilted his head. There was a phone ringing somewhere nearby.

“Excuse me,” he said, rushing for the door.

I waited till he was out of the room before tipping the horrible tea down the sink. Then I peered at the photograph once more. They were all dressed so formally, and apart from the mother, no one was smiling. Perhaps they were always that stiff; he certainly didn’t dress with formality these days – big jumpers and corduroy trousers were his style now.

I glanced at my watch then realised I’d only ten minutes before my next tour. I went out to the hall and heard him talking loudly on the phone. I thought I’d better go and gesture a thank you to him, so I followed his voice and came to the door of the small study where he sat in a tall desk chair, his back to me, oblivious to my presence as he bellowed down the phone. I was about to leave when I noticed a large portrait on the wall behind him. It was of an elegant lady, in a long red gown, painted in the 1950s I would say, by the style of dress and the hairstyle. It was the woman in the photo next door, who was presumably the laird’s mother, Mr David’s aunt.

I let out a gasp when I saw what she was wearing round her neck. It was the Seton necklace.