Scotland Hard (Book 2 in the Tom & Laura Series) (19 page)

21.
      
Edinburgh

Tom was shaken to wakefulness. It was dark outside and he had no idea what time it was.

“Wake up, laddie buck,” Bruce said impatiently and shook him harder.

Tom struggled to open his eyes and discovered that Laura and Alice were already awake and putting on their coats.

“Where are we?” he asked sleepily.

“The Laird is moving his household over to his rooms at the
Waverley
,” Bruce informed him. “It’s only a wee way, over on the other side of
Princes Street
from the station. He’s taking all his staff so you must come too.”

“I think we’re in
Edinburgh
,”
Alice
said excitedly. “There’s loads of snow on the ground and it’s still snowing.”

“I never much cared for snow,” Laura said with a disgusted sniff. “But the carriage has cooled down since we stopped so
I.
for one. shall be glad of a warm room and a comfortable bed.”

Bruce made no attempt to tie their hands. If they did try and escape, who would believe English youngsters over a Scottish Laird in his own country? Tom did not even consider the possibility as they hurried across the platform and through the ticket barriers. The ticket collector bowed to them before they set off across a wide cobbled road to a grand five-storey hotel on the other side.

A stone block above the main entrance had the word
Temperance
carved into it in large impressive letters.

Alice
read the word out loud, putting the syllables together as she spoke.

“Tem..per…rance, doen’t that mean we ain’t allowed to lose our rag inside?”

“You’re no supposed to drink,” Bruce said irritably as he bustled them towards the doors. “There’s them that thinks a drink’s bad for a man.”

“Not even water?”
Alice
asked, which made Tom and Laura smile.

“It refers to the drinking of alcohol,” Laura explained. “The Scottish male is prone to take such drinking to excess, and some in his country offer him rewards for abstinence, as well as places where they can go that are certain to be free of drunks.”

“His Lairdship drinks, I bet,”
Alice
suggested.

“I think these rules only apply to the
common man
,” Laura continued. “Lords are allowed to carry on as they will.”

“It’s eccentric when the rich and powerful do it, and disgusting when ordinary folk do,” Tom explained to a bemused
Alice
.

“Me dad would go spare if ‘e couldn’t get boozed up on a Sat’day night,”
Alice
remarked. “It ain’t natural for a man not to drink.”

Bruce interrupted their conversation with a stern warning as they entered the foyer.

“Now you be quite. The Laird’s talking to Mr. Cranston over there and he’s the manager of the hotel. He won’t be happy if you interrupt him,”

He directed them away from reception and towards a grand marble staircase. “We’ll be staying on the first floor where the Laird has his aine private rooms.”

“A man would have to be very rich to keep a set of hotel rooms for his personal use,” Laura remarked.

“Aye lassie, the Laird’s a very rich and powerful man indeed.”

They were hustled up two flights of stairs and down a corridor into a large stateroom.

“You’ll have to share, I’m afraid,” Bruce said as he pushed them into a small room with a double bed and a small sofa. It had it’s own bathroom, which delighted Laura as soon as she saw it.

Bruce withdrew from the room and they heard him lock the door behind him.

“Bags the sofa,”
Alice
said as soon as they heard Bruce walk away. “I know what adults get up to and I’ll keep me back turned and me eyes to me-self.”

Tom’s face blushed bright crimson at
Alice
’s attitude and knowledge of such things while Laura smiled delightedly.

“I expect that Tom’s far too tired for that,” Laura told
Alice
with a straight face. “So we can assign Tom to the sofa if you’d rather sleep on the bed with me.”

“It’ll be too soft,”
Alice
explained. “I had to sleep on the floor when they took me to Bertie’s, ‘cause I felt the mattress on the bed they gave us was going to up-an’-smother me, that I did. That sofa looks good and hard and it’ll do me fine. You should feed Tom red meat if ‘e ain’t up to being a man.”

This comment was too much for Tom who tried to grab the girl.
Alice
giggled and slipped behind Laura for protection. Laura blocked Tom’s path.

“She was offering me sound advice, Thomas,” Laura said with a broad grin on her face. “And what is it they say in the north? If the cap fits, wear it.”

Tom stopped trying to pass Laura and his face hardened.

“I could show you,” he told Laura in a half-threatening manner. She put her hands to his face and stroked his cheeks.

“I think that I might enjoy that,” she said thoughtfully.

She took her hands away and turned to
Alice
.

“But first there is the small matter of a good bath and you could certainly do with one, Alice Short.”

“What, in the water, with me clothes off?”
Alice
asked in horror.

Laura nodded with a knowing smirk on her face.

“Quite so, and I shall be with you to make sure you do it right. Then when you are dry, I shall take my own bath. Tom can wait out here and go to sleep. You were quite right about him, he does need feeding up.”

Tom watched the girls head for the bathroom with his jaw limp and his mouth open. He doubted that he would ever understand women. Even the comprehension of a young girls mind was turning out to be quite beyond him.

 
“End of the line,” a guard shouted as the train carrying
Cam
and her friends arrived in Waverly Station, Edinburgh. It was only minutes after Tom and Laura left the station.

“This is
Edinburgh
in
Scotland
. Imagine me bein’ in a different country.” Tricky said excitedly. It had all been too tiring for Ebb who had fallen fast asleep, but Tricky seemed indefatigable. Daisy had fallen asleep after they gave up trying to make sense of
Alice
’s message.

Whatever she had meant to say, the meaning escaped them all. Tricky became increasingly irritated as
Arnold
and
Cam
insisted he repeat the message endlessly. With each repetition, it had grown further away from
Alice
’s words.

Arnold
shook Daisy awake as
Cam
opened the carriage door.

“Excuse me, porter?”
Cam
asked the nearest man in the livery of the railway company.

“Aye lassie, what can I be doing for ye?” he asked in an accent so strong that
Cam
could barely understand him.

“Can you tell me where the nearest hotel is?”

The man’s accent was so thick it sounded like another language to
Cam
.

“Have ye no eyes in yer heed? The
Waverley
’s yonder.”

“Err, thank you,”
Cam
said and looked at the others. “Did any of you understand that?”

“Had you looked where he was pointing you might have seen the hotel across the road,”
Arnold
pointed out sarcastically.
Cam
had taken possession of all their money again and he was feeling peeved about it.

“It looks expensive,” Daisy said worriedly between yawns.

“We can’t stay out on the street,”
Cam
pointed out. “That white stuff on the ground is snow you know.”

“Well, in that case, what are we worrying about?”
Arnold
said resignedly. “It’s likely the money will run out long before we find Tom and Laura, however frugal we are.”

“It’s settled then,”
Cam
said decisively. “We go over to that hotel and book into the cheapest rooms. Someone wake up Ebb, will you?”

Cam
had to have words with the hotel doorman to get Tricky and Ebb into the foyer. Their coats, obviously too large for them and their street clothes gave them away as children far too poor to be staying at such a prestigious hotel.

By the time
Cam
reached the reception desk, she had concocted an appropriate story.

“We would like rooms for the night. My husband Arnold and I along with his sister Daisy are taking two orphan boys to their aunt. Unfortunately, we were delayed by an accident on the
London
to
Edinburgh
line and can no longer make our connection.”

The man on the desk nodded in understanding.

“Aye, I heard about the accident from the Laird. Does your husband lack a tongue? We aren’t used to wee lassie’s taking control of a man’s business in
Scotland
.”

“My husband is more than capable, but then, so am I,”
Cam
snapped back. “Is this an example of the warm Scottish hospitality I’ve heard so much about?”

“Keep your dander on, lassie. I was only asking,” the man said, not unkindly. “Can I take it that ye won’t be wanting the bridal suite?”

“A modest room will do just fine,”
Cam
admitted.

“Aye, well, it will have to be two rooms as we don’t allow more than three to a room. Would you be wanting a bath with the room, or will you make do with the one’s at the end of the corridor?”

“The end of the corridor will be fine.”

“That’ll be two shillings for the night, payable in advance,” the man said. Cam was relieved at the low cost, much lower than prices in
London
’s hotels, and she handed over the money almost happily.

Arnold
stepped forward and signed the register for them. He was given a sympathetic look by the receptionist, who had classified
Cam
as an English harridan. The man made a point of handing over the keys to the rooms to
Arnold
.

 
“You never saw them?” Saunders railed at Bertram Smee who ignored his outburst and poured himself another drink.

“Neither sight nor sound, I can tell you. If your child spies had ever set foot in these grounds I would have known about it,” Smee replied.

He proffered a glass of whisky to Saunders who took it from him irritably.

“The sale went well?”

“The sale went spectacularly well. Who would have thought the Hungarians would pay so much for a slip of a girl? We had some trouble before the sale as the girl proved highly resourceful and nearly escaped us. I’ve never been an animal before.”

“She’s a Class A, what did you expect?” Saunders grumbled.

“We lost the young magicians, Ebenezer Sweeting and David Hart. Their bodies are probably lying in a ditch somewhere. It was freezing last night and the locals haven’t seen hide nor hair of them. Not that anyone around here much cares, children are found dead all the time.”

Saunders grimaced and sipped at his whisky.

“I shouldn’t worry about the loss. They wouldn’t have fetched much anyway, though the Hart boy’s ability to see inside things could have proved useful in the right circumstances.”

“We even got the maid back,” Smee continued. “Madame Shultz used her as a decoy, to lure those who wanted the Young girl away from Lord McBride’s coach. Shultz planned to kill the maid when she reached her home, but apparently, she couldn’t wait and threw her out of the coach as soon as they were attacked. The girl bounced unhurt as country wenches will and obtained a lift back with some people on a cart.”

Saunders pricked up his ears at this news and immediately asked to interview the girl. A short time later, a nervous Jane entered the room. Her hands were flat against her sides and she leaned forward as if to shield her body.