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He nods.
“We can catch up after we’ve seen to your wounds.”
SEVEN
Gray’s wounds have been tended to, and we are in the coach heading to Annis’s house. We don’t have McCreadie, and without him, she might not even let us in. Gray left a note on our town house door, and that’s really all we can do. Well, no, we could see whether McCreadie stopped by his own apartment, but we don’t because Annis’s request doesn’t make sense on that count.
Strike that, Annis’s entire story doesn’t make sense onanycount. If her husbandisdying, then it’s logical for her to run to her brother, who has degrees in both medicine and surgery. It does not make sense for her to run to a criminal officer… unless she murdered her husband and is hoping a friend of the family can keep her off the gallows.
If my husband were at death’s door and I was worried about being charged with murder, would I want a detective I knew there? Yes. Not to “fix things” but to be damned sure they were handled properly. On that score, Annis is behaving logically. Except she’s a Victorian lady, with a husband about to die, and she’s expected to be on her fainting couch with her lady’s maid passing smelling salts under her nose. She isn’t, because she’s Gray and Isla’s sister, intelligent and clearheaded. Also, it seems, she’s not that broken up about her husband dying, which is going to help with the clearheadedness. It is not, of course, going to help with avoiding a murder charge.
While Gray and I tended to his wounds, he’d decided he would not golooking for McCreadie. He would leave a note at home and let McCreadie make up his own mind on the matter. Obviously, he didn’t dare write a note saying that his sister is about to be accused of murder, so he used a cipher the two had developed as children. Which is very clever, and also totally adorable.
As Annis lives outside the city, Gray had to wake Simon. His apology may have sounded perfunctory, and a few weeks ago, I’d have held that against him. I know better now. There are expectations on both sides, and Simon would be confused and maybe even uncomfortable if his boss profusely apologized for getting him up in the middle of the night. The true apology comes in the extra ten shillings he gives to compensate for the disturbance, which is easier for Simon to accept and definitely more appreciated.
We are in the coach now. As for why I’m there, the answer is simple: Gray presumed I was coming. I helped with his injury, and then he suggested I might want to “fix my toilet” while he changed his shirt. In other words, tidy up my hair and dress and face after playing doxy and going a few rounds with our attackers.
At that point, I could have said I’d rather stay behind. I certainly wasn’t doing that. He swept me along in his preparations, and I happily obliged, if only to find out what the hell was going on with Annis Gray.
AnnisLeslie,I should say. On the ride, Gray tells me that’s her married name. Lady Annis Leslie, in fact. His sister married an earl, which makes her a countess. Maybe that should explain why she calls Gray herhalfbrother and treats him like shit, but from what I heard, Gray was a source of embarrassment for Annis long before that.
The Gray family has four children. The first three are the “legitimate” offspring, being from both Mr. and Mrs. Gray. Then there’s the youngest: Dr. Duncan Gray. One day, Mr. Gray came home with a brown-skinned toddler, said that the child was his son and that the mother was no longer around to raise him and so Mrs. Gray would. Mrs. Gray recognized that the fault here lay with her husband and not the boy, and so Gray was raised as if he were her own.
As for the three others, Annis is the oldest. Then there’s a son, Lachlan, who washed his hands of both the business and the responsibility of caring for his female relatives. He tossed that on Gray’s lap and waltzedoff to… Where? What? I have no idea. I just know he isn’t around on a regular basis. Neither is their mother.
Despite my presumptions, Mrs. Gray is alive and well and living in Europe. When her husband died, she stayed a couple of years to help steady Gray in his new role and then left to pursue her own interests abroad, which her children—well, Gray and Isla at least—fully support. That’s where Isla is now: visiting her mother.
The coach leaves Edinburgh, which doesn’t take long at this time of night, the streets empty except for delivery vehicles. We quickly pass into the countryside, and we’ve gone maybe five miles when we turn in to a lane.
In Victorian times, we’re in rural Scotland. In the twenty-first century, I’m sure this is a suburb, the estate long since divided into residential lots. Is the main house still there, perched on a few acres? If so, it’d be worth a fortune.
The Grays have money. The Leslies vault over that. They are the wealthy elite, with both title and money. Annis did very well for herself, despite the “family scandal” of their dad bringing home an illegitimate child for his wife to raise.
It takes at least five minutes to get from the road to the main house. I say “main house” because I spot other buildings, although it’s too dark to tell their purpose.
The estate reminds me of ones I’ve toured with my nan. Is it possible I’ve touredthisone? After a while, they blur into one big “Can you imagine living in a place like this?”
Nan always said she could imagine it very well—she could imagine how quickly she’d become one of those Victorian madwomen in the attic, faking insanity just to get a room of her own. I never quite understood what she meant until I came to Victorian Scotland.
As spacious as the Gray town house is, there’s no place in it that’s truly private for Gray or Isla. The library, the drawing room, even their own bedrooms are subject to invasion at any moment, Alice sliding in to clean a hearth, me rapping at the door to see when they want tea. Don’t get me wrong—I wouldloveto have someone bring coffee and fresh-baked cookies for my morning snack. I would just prefer it to be dropped off by a delivery service. My condo is my private abode.
The house Simon pulls up to is big enough for an extended family of twenty-five. Even without that, there will be enough work for a staff of that size. To a modern person, a large staff seems like an obscene show of wealth. As I’ve come to understand, though, it’s a way of life. Gray and Isla don’t need four full-time employees and one part-time gardener. It’s partly to free them up for their private studies, but it’s also about offering employment. Even if that’s not Annis’s motivation, this massive estate still provides employment in a world where the options may be that or the poorhouse.
Gray has Simon drop us off at a side entrance, one I suspect is mostly used for deliveries and staff. I presume he’s being discreet, but when a woman in a housekeeper’s dark dress and chatelaine answers that door, he says, “Dr. Duncan Gray,” and there is no sign on the woman’s face that she realizes he’s anything other than some random tradesperson. In fact, as her gaze fixes on his face, her eyes narrow.
“A doctor?” she says.
“Yes,” Gray says, with the patience of long years of practice.
“A medical doctor?”
“Yes. I was asked to attend by Lady Leslie herself.”
The woman stays where she is, blocking the door. Her gaze drops to his medical bag and takes in his suit, but again it returns to his face and stays there, as if the rest cannot negate that part of the equation.
“Are you a foreign doctor?” she says. “You sound Scottish.”
I rock forward, ready to end this nonsense, when a voice from down the hall says, “Mabel, please let Dr. Gray in. He is not only a physician but Lady Leslie’s brother.”
