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.”
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.