I took a cigarette and let him light it.
That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.
It was so good to be flirting with someone a little, and to feel more like myself again.
Thank goodness Colette wasn’t around. I wondered how much time I had.
I stood back carefully, trying to keep the cigarette casual. Don’t think about it too hard, Julie.
Francis Dunbar lit his own cigarette. He flicked the match into a curious carved soapstone ashtray on his desk, turning away from me. He drew a long, slow, contemplative breath on the cigarette before he turned to me and said, ‘Thanks for your help, Miss Murray – I’m sorry. You’re Strathfearn’s granddaughter – Julia? Should I be saying Lady Julia?’
‘Julie. Julie Beaufort-Stuart. Lady Julia is correct, or Miss Beaufort-Stuart, but my name’s not Murray. Murray is my mother’s maiden name – Beaufort-Murray, actually. We keep the Beaufort. That’s from my grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Strathfearn. She was Juliette Beaufort. She’s French.’
He continued to gaze at me intently. I felt like a boring little animated edition of Debrett’s Peerage.
I said, ‘It’s all right for you to call me Julie.’
He shook his head – not saying no, exactly, but with an expression of bemusement, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘Only in this office,’ he agreed. ‘And only if you’ll call me Frank.’
‘Oh. Should I?’ I nodded, thinking about it. Then I repeated it, trying it out. ‘Frank.’ I gave him a little crooked smile. It was like tasting an alcoholic drink – and more intimate than the lighting of a cigarette. I hadn’t realised that using his given name – his nickname, even – would be more daring than giving him mine.
I probably didn’t have any longer with him than the time it took to smoke the illicit cigarette. I gazed at the disorder of his office, trying to discover a little more about him. There was the curious ashtray; and he’d got what looked like a miniature Ludo game board over on a back corner of his desk, shell playing pieces in place on dark and polished wood with intricate paisley designs set into it. Propped on the fixed shelves against the wall, along with piles of paper and bottles of ink, was a framed display of medals and service ribbons.
He wouldn’t have those there unless he was proud of them. He’d had to bring them with him from wherever he normally worked.
‘You did your training in the military?’ I asked. ‘In India?’
He stared at me, startled. I pointed at the souvenirs, and the medals behind him. ‘Good God, I took you for a clairvoyant!’ he exclaimed.
‘Just nosy.’ I laughed.
‘Canny though! Yes, I was an officer and an engineer in India with the Black Watch all through my twenties. It’s only been three years since I’ve been back, but it feels very far away now.’
‘You weren’t in the Black Watch at the same time as Angus Henderson, were you? The Strathfearn Water Bailiff marched with them in the Great War.’
‘Have the tropics aged me so much?’ Frank Dunbar exclaimed, running a distraught hand through his silver-shot hair. ‘I was in primary school when the Great War started!’
Now we both laughed. Oh, I loved this game. I was trying to make myself look older; he was trying to make himself look younger. I’d played this all the way across Europe and I’d got good at it. I felt it was safest to add only two years to my age instead of three this time.
‘Well, you have my sympathies. I won’t be eighteen until August, but it’s dreadful what they did to my hair in the hospital. It makes me look like I’ve only just finished primary school.’
Take that.
And then among the piles of paper on his desk I was startled to see something I recognised.
It was the brown envelope on which I’d written my note to Mary. It was face down so that the engraved return address was showing, and I realised that of course Francis Dunbar couldn’t possibly have any reason to be interested in my note to Mary. It was the scholar at the Ashmolean Museum he must have been trying to track down.
My rattled brain, focused on navigating stairs and the state of my hair, had shoved the missing Dr Hugh Housman aside. But Mother had started to say that ‘the contractor Mr Dunbar’ shared his meals with Dr Housman, so I did exactly what Frank had just done, and used a slow drag on the cigarette to give me time to think.
I suddenly had a lot of questions I wanted to ask him and I’d already confessed I was nosy. Also, if Colette came back and I was sitting there in the sun, she might think I’d wandered in here out of boredom and be more forgiving of Frank Dunbar than if she thought he’d lured me into his office himself.
‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ I said, waving my cigarette in the direction of his leather armchair.
‘Oh, please do. I should have offered.’ He scurried to pull the chair forward for me so I could sit in it and reach the ashtray on his desk. ‘I’m a terrible bachelor and I forget how to be polite sometimes. And you – you’re only just out of hospital. I’m so sorry.’
The contrite sincerity in his voice made me a bit embarrassed. I really hadn’t been meaning to play the fragile convalescent. I arranged myself on the edge of the chair, knees and feet tucked together demurely. Better not give Colette anything to worry about if she did find me here. I thought I could get rid of the damning cigarette pretty quickly.
‘Are you actually living here?’ I asked.
‘Aye, in one of the guest rooms in the east wing.’
‘Is that where the visiting scholar stays too?’
‘Dr Housman? Yes. But you’ve … you’ve never met him yourself, have you? You called me Housman when you answered the door.’
‘No, I’ve never met him. But my mother is worried about him because no one’s seen him for the past week. She was going to ask you if you know where he’s been.’
Frank shook his head. I didn’t know if he meant he didn’t know where Housman was, or if my mother hadn’t asked, or if he couldn’t say anything because his mouth was full of smoke.
‘I am just being nosy. I don’t know a thing about him except that he’s supposed to be cataloguing my grandfather’s archaeological collection,’ I confessed. ‘But look …’
I reached across the desk and picked up the envelope with Housman’s name engraved on the back, and flipped it over.