Contents ( 57)
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
‘What do you mean?’
‘If we were going to light the exterior of a house after dark now, what would we use?’
‘Floodlights, I suppose, angled to beam against the building. Like the ones that illuminate Edinburgh Castle at night.’
‘Right,’ Toby agreed. ‘But this is pre-electricity, so what would have been the equivalent in 1816?’
Rachel thought. ‘Oil lamps?’
‘Maybe, but Braecoille was a really big place. It would have taken a lot of lamps to create a glow big enough to light the exterior of the place up at night. That would have been expensive even before factoring in the cost of the oil, if they could even find enough lamps to purchase and then store.’
‘True,’ Rachel acknowledged. ‘Well then, the alternative would have been…’ She paused, and could see, suddenly, where this was going. ‘Candles. Oh. God. Is that what happened?’
Toby nodded. ‘I think there’s a good chance that, if Eveline wanted to see the house by night, James would have done everything in his power to make that happen. Even if it meant lighting naked flames on every external surface of their house, including the roof. Stephanie Warren called me. She found evidence that in late 1815, someone at the estate ordered 150,000 candles. That had to have been a phenomenal number in anyone’s book, and was certainly far more than the estate had ever ordered in one go before. No one would ever need that many candles at once, would they? Unless, perhaps, they were trying to light something huge. Like the entire roof and every accessible ledge of a stately home.’
Rachel contemplated this in silence for a few minutes, looking up at the tower with a creeping sense of horror. ‘What if they saw it?’ she said. ‘What if they were both up there, looking at the house through the camera obscura, when one of those candles fell—’
‘It’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to prove that’s what happened for certain,’ Toby said. ‘But the newspaper reports of the time say that James MacDonald rushed into the burning building to try to save a trapped servant, so he wasn’t in the house when the fire started, but was close enough to try to assist. He could certainly have been here at the lighthouse – in fact, it’s probable, isn’t it?’
‘But that doesn’t explain why Eveline would be the only one to get the blame, if that’s what happened,’ Rachel said.
Toby shrugged. ‘Maybe she was the one who instructed the housekeeper to order the candles? To light them, even. She almost certainly would have blamed herself anyway, even if it was James’s idea, and perhaps she voiced that sentiment in the wake of the tragedy, which could easily have been misconstrued over time. Even if she wasn’t mentally ill, her grief and guilt must have been immense. If, in the throes of that, she said it was her fault… Think of the build-up. You said yourself she’d become a recluse. In the midst of that she’d built this ridiculous tower and then when it was finished she must have spent hours inside it. No one except James knew why, or what she was doing. There was probably some order that meant no servant was allowed into the upper levels of the lighthouse, because otherwise someone would have seen the hatch up into the camera obscura.’