SUSAN WAS HELPING YOUNG ROBERT make the words ‘COW’ and ‘SHEEP’ with letter blocks on the floor when Mrs Scott entered in a panic and thrust a silver tray at her. For a moment, Susan could make no sense of it but then she peered closer at the item on the tray. It was a neat white calling card.
‘A visitor?’ Susan said. ‘Here – now?’
Mrs Scott nodded, confusion writ plain on her face. ‘A lady,’ she said. ‘Very finely dressed.’
Susan picked up the card. It said ‘Miss Jessica Knox’.
‘She’s downstairs,’ Mrs Scott said. ‘What do I do?’
Susan almost laughed. ‘What do you mean, “what do I do?” Surely you worked in a house before where there were visitors?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘I’ve always minded folk who were a danger to themselves.’
‘I see,’ said Susan, and now she did laugh. ‘So now you’re here with me, and we neither of us are used to social niceties. Well, I’m sure we’ll manage between us. The lady is Doctor Knox’s sister. Have you sat her on the sofa?’
‘Aye,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘I asked if I could take her hat but she said no. And I’ve given her nothing. Do I give her tea?’
‘No,’ Susan said. ‘I go down. At least, in other houses I would go down. But I wouldn’t seek to place you in a difficult position, Mrs Scott. Are you sure you’re content I won’t be a danger to her? Or myself?’
Mrs Scott’s cheeks flamed and Susan almost pitied her. ‘Of course I am,’ she said.
‘Well,’ said Susan, ‘you bring the tea on a tray and put the things on the table and then I will serve it.’
Mrs Scott looked relieved. ‘Will you go down now, then? The woman is in a queer state.’
‘I will,’ Susan said. She got to her feet and straightened her dress. ‘This is hardly suitable for an “at home”, but I can’t see it would be fair to expect that I would have been dressing for visitors for all these years, when none have ever come. Will you fetch Joanie, Mrs Scott? Someone will have to mind the children.’
Mrs Scott bustled off to fetch Joanie, and Susan made her way slowly down the stairs, pausing before the mirror to tuck a stray lock of hair back into her bun. She pinched her cheeks, so Jessie would not think her shocked, and held her head up high as she swept into the best room.
‘Jessie,’ she said.
Jessie sat stiffly upright on the sofa in her hat and coat. She watched warily as Susan came into the room and sat herself in the chair opposite.
‘You look well, Susan,’ she said, at last.
Susan said nothing. Even had she been minded to put the woman at her ease, she couldn’t in honesty return the compliment. Jessie was scrawnier than ever, her hair thin and lank under her hat, her eyes red and her nose and lips chapped.
Jessie seemed uncomfortable under Susan’s eyes, jumping to her feet after a few seconds and walking over to the window to look out at the wintry garden beyond.
‘It’s a bonnie place,’ she said. ‘Or must be in summer. I was never here before.’
No, thought Susan, you were in my place, keeping house in the house that should be mine.
Out loud, she said, ‘Mary is not with you?’
‘She is indisposed with her nerves,’ Jessie said.
At that moment, Mrs Scott bustled in with the tea tray. She seemed on surer ground with this – tea was tea, after all, whether it was being served to a visitor or to a lunatic. Well, the lunatic might have it colder, and in a beaker, but the business with the tray was much the same.
‘Cake, perhaps, Mrs Scott?’ Susan said, more to give the woman an instruction to follow than because she thought either she or Jessie wanted it.
Jessie took her seat again and Susan poured the tea. They drank in silence. During this time Susan had another chance to observe her, and saw that she was even more finely dressed than before. Her high-waisted frock and coat were made of some glazed brown stuff, elegantly tucked and gathered, with sleek grey fur round the neck, matching a trim inside the edges of the hat. A muff of the same sat beside her on the sofa, with a small, beaded reticule and kid-leather gloves. The muff was trimmed with pink and grey ribbons to match the hat, which additionally had a great lace frill dangling down. The general effect, Susan thought, was less than becoming, but no doubt fashion moved on in the world outside, and she had lost her sense of what was considered comely.
Mrs Scott came with seed cake, cut in small slices. Susan handed it and Jessie took a slice. She put it down directly, though, and with a glare turned to Susan.
‘You must do something about this business,’ she said, without preamble.
Susan blinked. ‘Business?’ she repeated. ‘What business?’
Jessie clucked her tongue. ‘You can’t be innocent of it,’ she said. ‘The whole city is in uproar, talking of nothing else.’
‘We live a lonely life, here at Lillypot,’ Susan said pointedly. ‘No one visits. No one brings us letters, or news. I owe all my knowledge of the town to what Robert tells me, and that is very little.’
Jessie stood up again and walked to the window.
‘There has been a great scandal,’ she said, staring out. ‘A pair of Irishmen and their wives have . . .’ She seemed unable to go on for a moment, but then she set her shoulders and continued. ‘They have killed a number of unfortunates, in the Old Town. One of the murderers turned King’s Evidence, but the other will hang for it.’
‘Horrid,’ Susan said. ‘But I don’t understand, Jessie. What is this to do with me?’
Jessie sighed and paced in an agitated manner for a moment before she came to the point. ‘They’re saying brother Robert bought the bodies for his classes.’
‘Oh,’ said Susan. ‘Is it true?’
‘Well how should I know?’ Jessie snapped.
‘Have you asked Robert?’
‘We’ve barely seen him,’ Jessie said. ‘He keeps to his rooms at Surgeon’s Square.’
‘How could they prove what bodies he had?’ Susan asked. ‘They’d all be cut up and buried, surely?’ It was an awful thought, Robert buying the victims of murder, but she remembered the bodies of her babies gone from the house before she saw them, and she found she could easily believe it.
‘They were, all but one,’ Jessie said. ‘But there’s a horrid wee man named Paterson. He works for Robert. Davie Paterson. He stood up in the court and told them he had bought a dead woman off the Irishmen on behalf of Robert, and others too. Oh, he was careful enough to say he thought the other bodies had died of natural causes, but now he is going from pillar to post saying that Robert had a hand in it all. He says Robert set the prices for the bodies himself, though he knew the gang were murderers.’ She made a strange gasping noise and buttoned her mouth tightly shut.
‘Do people believe him?’ Susan asked. ‘This man Paterson?’
‘They most certainly do,’ Jessie said. ‘A great gang of laddies attacked the house last night.’ Tears sprung into her eyes at that, and she searched in her reticule for a handkerchief, which she pressed against her eyes. ‘They smashed all the glass in the windows. We thought they meant to break the door down. They were only turned back by a great force of policemen.’
Susan found she cared little for the windows of the house in Newington, but she did wonder what this meant for her.
‘Will Robert be arrested?’ she asked. What would she and the children do, if there was no more money?
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jessie. ‘When the policemen came to demand he open his rooms so they could look at the bodies there, it seems he made great swearing at them and threatened to blow their brains out, but it seems he has been civil enough since then, and they have been civil with him. The scandal sheets are crying out that he should be taken up, but it seems to me they shout so loudly because they know there is no chance of it. I have heard that he has dismissed Davie Paterson, so he has been seen to deal with the guilty party.’
That sounded about right to Susan; Robert liked having servants do his dirty work for him.
‘So what would you have me do, Jessie?’ she asked. ‘When I am kept here and know no one and see no one. What do you imagine I can do about the matter?’
‘You can speak to brother Robert!’ Jessie cried. ‘Convince him we must leave Edinburgh for London, or Paris. He won’t go while you are here with your . . . children. But if you agree to come, or tell him you don’t mind if he goes, then we can be away from this place and the damned mobs on the streets. You don’t understand, Susan! I can’t go out! I can’t leave my own home!’
Susan stared at her for a moment, but found she could not be bothered even to hate her. She picked up the muff from the sofa and held it out.
‘I can’t help you, Jessie,’ she said. ‘Robert has done what he has done, and I suppose he must pay the price for that. And you have done what you have done, and you must live with that, too. Please go, and never come here again. I have no wish to see you.’
Jessie looked as though she would like to slap Susan, or pinch her, but she settled for snatching the muff from her hands and wrenching open the door. Hearing the commotion, Mrs Scott scuttled from the kitchen and opened the front door herself. Susan stood behind her as they watched Jessie make her way to the gate in the garden where her carriage waited.
‘Where’s John?’ Susan asked, as Jessie stared at the gate for a moment, expecting it to be opened, before she realised she was expected to do this herself.
Mrs Scott looked helpless. ‘John’s gone, Ma’am. He says he won’t stay here. He gave me this and told me to tell Doctor Knox to go to Hell.’ She thrust a folded piece of paper at Susan, as though it was hot. ‘He didn’t even take his wages.’
Susan took the paper from her, noticing that the woman’s hand shook. ‘Have we wine, Mrs Scott?’ she asked. ‘Or something else to drink? I think we both need it.’
When they were settled in the best room and both had drunk a steadying draught, Susan unfolded John’s paper. It was a horrible picture of a great Devil with garden shears, about to cut the stem of a plant on which grew a balding human head. The head was seen from the back, but the Devil held a lantern that cast its shadow on a wall to the side, and the profile was unmistakably Robert’s. In the background was a gallows, and under the picture were the words ‘CROPPING A NOX-I-OUS PLANT, OR, AN OLD VIRTUOSO APPROPRIATING A NEW CURIOSITY.’
‘N-O-X,’ Susan said. ‘Or Knox. So everyone knows?’
‘John said he was related to a wife named Wilson,’ Mrs Scott said. ‘She’s a cousin of his, I think. She had a laddie that was daft, and they’re saying these Irishmen killed him and Doctor Knox cut his body to pieces.’
‘Good God,’ Susan said, and she poured them both another glass of wine. ‘I hope it’s not true, Mrs Scott. But I’m afraid it is. I am very sorry for John and his family. What will you do now?’
Mrs Scott looked into her glass. ‘This is my place, here,’ she said, although she didn’t sound happy about it.
‘Looking after a “madwoman”?’ Susan said. ‘In the service of a doctor who has been buying the victims of murder? Passing on his own dead children’s bodies to him to do with them we know not what?’
Mrs Scott’s eyes filled with tears at the last. ‘I didna mean any ill,’ she said. ‘Poor babbies.’ Then she shook her head, business-like again. ‘I have a sister in Leith. I could go to her. If I needed a place for a while.’
‘I think it would be better,’ Susan said. ‘I don’t know what will happen, but I know it will do you little good to be associated with us. Who knows what stories might yet come out?’
Mrs Scott wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘But how could you manage on your own?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Susan. ‘But I think I must learn. The keys, please, Mrs Scott.’
Mrs Scott fumbled at her belt and unhooked the great ring of keys. She handed them to Susan, and then she took a great pull of her wine. ‘There’s a great deal of money in the desk in my room,’ she said. ‘Doctor Knox always left at least six months’ worth at any time, for there were such long spells when he didn’t come, and all the wages and merchants to be paid. The wee silver key on the ring opens the desk, and this’ – she fished under the neck of her blouse and pulled out a ribbon with a small brass key on it – ‘this opens the money safe you will find there. It’s fixed to the desk, you can’t pull it out.’
‘Thank you,’ said Susan. She put the key around her own neck.
‘Elsie has no situation yet,’ Mrs Scott said then. ‘Doctor Knox would give her no reference. She’s at home with her father near the High Street, working some days in a shop. I could ask her to come. She can cook well enough, although I don’t know if she would need to. I don’t think Mrs Foster would see you and the bairnies go hungry.’
Susan felt her heart lift at the thought of Elsie’s cheery face. ‘I think Elsie and I would do very well together,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Scott.’
‘I’ll go there now,’ Mrs Scott said, rising to her feet. ‘You know . . . well, you don’t know, but Doctor Knox keeps a pony trap at the big house along the road, the Bower, and pays for use of horses and a coachman whenever he might have need. If you want to go anywhere, you just have to go to the back door there and ask.’
‘I see,’ Susan said. ‘I had no idea there was anyone in that house. I thought they only came in summer.’
‘No,’ Mrs Scott said, ‘there are servants there all year round. I’ll go there now and they’ll take me to Elsie’s. I’ll bring her back with me, and bide till I’ve telt her all she needs to know.’ She paused at the door to ask, ‘Will you manage the fire and a bit of food for yourself while I’m gone? I’ll be a good while.’
Susan laughed. ‘I’m not an imbecile, Mrs Scott.’ Then a thought came to her and she turned again to the other woman. ‘Did you ever think I was?’
Mrs Scott stopped. ‘Not for a long time, lass,’ she said. ‘Before Doctor Knox brought you here, they told me you had tried to put a hand in your own life. I had no reason to doubt it, I’ve seen many poor souls that seemed just fine one moment, and did themselves a dreadful damage the next. One lass took a paperknife from a table and opened a vein in her neck in front of me. I tried to staunch the blood, but it gushed out no matter what I did, and she died under my hands.’ She shuddered. ‘I’ll never forget it as long as I live. When I first met you, you seemed frantic, but I see now that anyone would be, were they to be locked up in a place they didn’t know, alone. That woman that came today, she was the one that told me you seemed fine enough most times, but now and then a mania took you. I did wonder why she never visited, and . . .’ She tailed off, but then she looked Susan in the eye. ‘I never saw that it was right, if a woman suffered from mania, that her husband should be always getting her with child. But I liked it here, with the bairnies, and it was easy work, so I said nothing. I’m sorry, Mrs Knox.’
‘Susan,’ Susan said.
Mrs Scott nodded and went out. In a few moments, Susan heard the front door close behind her. She drank another glass of wine, and then she walked up the stairs to the children’s room and began a great pantomime designed to tell Joanie she should go down and make them all some lunch. At last Joanie understood and took herself off. Susan sat with the bairnies until she came back with bannocks and butter and cheese. Then she went back downstairs, opened the front door and walked across the garden. She opened the gate and stepped outside. Then she walked up the road. She walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, and no one tried to stop her. By then she was cold, and so she turned and walked back to the house.