Ghost Walk Read Online Free PDF Page A

track down thieving servants, or fraud by close relatives. Such a convenient arrangement thus avoided scandals well-to-do Edinburgh families were eager to avoid at all cost, which also meant paying handsomely for my services.
    Such were my thoughts as I sat in the train awaiting its imminent departure from Waverley Station.
    However, even here it seemed that there was no escape from the Little Sisters of the Poor. At the last moment, a young nun ran down the platform and entered my compartment. As she sank breathless into the seat opposite, I greeted her sympathetically about being just in time.
    She merely nodded and fixed her gaze beyond the window.
    Not wishing to be unfriendly I tried another tack and said: ‘Your summer fair was extremely successful I gather, apart from the change in the weather.’
    She stared at me and nodded vaguely as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She looked embarrassed and I realised I was presuming she was from the convent. Such institutions were hardly thick on the ground in Edinburgh and I was certain that St Anthony’s was the only one of its kind.
    She turned towards the window again and did not sink back into her seat until the train began at last to move.
    Feeling rather uncomfortable I realised that my presumption was a natural mistake since all nuns at first glance look alike in their dress and hoods.
    This one looked young enough to be a novice and as her attention was clearly elsewhere I made some mental notes. She had not uttered a word but surely a novice would not yet have taken a vow of silence.
    There was something in her expression, not nun-like serenity but an expression furtive and anxious. I thought about her urgent attention to the windows not as trying to avoid conversation with me but perhaps expecting someone to join the train. She had now relaxed. Was she pleased – relieved even, that we were now under way?
    Her nun’s garb too was incomplete. No cross or rosary and as she leaned back more comfortably and closed her eyes I caught a whiff of perfume. A quite exotic perfume. I could have accepted incense or lavender water but this was much too worldly for convent life. It aroused thoughts of seduction, of amorous eveningswith a suitor.
    My eyes travelled downwards to an elegant silk clad ankle in a fine leather shoe, far from the hard wearing practical footwear of the sisters.
    I didn’t look away hastily enough. Opening her eyes with a start as we came to the signals, she saw the direction of my glance and hastily thrust her feet out of sight under her robe.
    But I kept thinking about those shoes and stockings. Perhaps they were a present, and as a novice, this might indicate her last worldly fling before entering the cloisters. Her slim ungloved hands as she had rearranged her robe also gave cause for comment . Such nails, neatly manicured, pink and shining, slightly longer than was usual: I was observing the hands of a middle or upper class Edinburgh young lady who had never done a day’s manual work in her whole life.
    I was intrigued for I would never know the answer to this piece of observation, having fallen into the pastime I had learned from Pappa long ago. To while away the time on train journeys he had encouraged me to scrutinise fellow passengers secretly and make up character studies. After they left the train, we would discuss the results and decide who they were and what were their professions.
    For me there was only one conclusion. The young woman sitting opposite, despite her garb, was no nun, novice or otherwise.
    When the train reached our destination, to my surprise it was hers also. Which suggested the faint hope that she might have some business with the local church.
    Seeing her hurrying out of the station while I waited on the platform for the Macmerrys how I regretted that wasted train journey. It was unlikely that a Border stronghold of the Scots kirk would have more than one Roman Catholic church and had I been tenacious enough