Diary of a Victorian Shopkeeper, 12th November

The Imperial Hotel, with thanks to the Orkney Archives

There follows the fifth installment of the Victorian journal of Margaret Kirkness, cofounder of our family business. If you have not yet read the story of this document’s discovery, I suggest you do so before proceeding. At the end of the previous transcription, the Kirkness family were fretting over why Margaret had been arrested for a crime she didn’t commit: the murder of her husband’s grandmother, Mrs Groatie. Elucidation came from an unlikely source, the young servant girl, Mary Harcus.

Mary flushed a little and hesitated, twisting her hands together.

‘Please tell us what you know,’ I said, in as kind a voice as I could muster. ‘It may help us understand these vexatious occurrences.’

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I heard that one of the sailors was boarding with Mrs Scott while recovering from his injuries. I was filled with curiosity about this brave man…’

 ‘Magnus Simison,’ snorted Andrew. ‘Injured in a fight with a pavement.’

‘Little did I think we’d soon have a sailor in our own home!’ said Mary, and simpered. ‘Anyway, having found Mrs Scott’s in darkness, I made my way back along Albert Street. It was ferly deserted at that late hour, till I approached the Imperial Hotel, at which point a tall lady in a long black coat swept out the door. A peedie servant-boy went scurrying after her, and they marched off towards the Brig. ‘Unkan folk!’ I thought to myself. And decided to follow them.’

Andrew raised an eyebrow. ‘Young people must make their own entertainment in this town,’ he said.

‘I kept to the shadows all along Albert Street,’ Mary went on. ‘The lady looked neither left nor right, but went sailing on all the way to the crook of Bridge Street, at which point she turned into the Wynd.’

James leaned back, and put his hand to his mouth. He turned the involuntary gesture into a smoothing of his beard. Mention of the warren he grew up in never pleased him, but now the demise of his grandmother there must have made it even more painful to hear.

‘Go on, lass’ he said quietly. ‘What did you see there?’

Mary looked nervous, but continued. ‘What I saw greatly surprised me,’ she said. For the grand lady marched on till she reached Granny Groatie’s door, at which point she walked straight in – nary a knock or halloo.’

 ‘What in all that’s good could she want with Jean?’ I exclaimed.

‘That’s what I wondered,’ said Mary, ‘so I dandered up to the boy who’d been left standing guard at the ingang, making on I was passing by chance. He near louped out of his skin when I spoke to him. “Who are you and what are you doing?” says I.’

Andrew laughed. ‘The subtle approach,’ he said. ‘How did the boy reply?’

Mary frowned. ‘In some fremmit tongue,’ she said. ‘It sounded like, “Dinna fash yersel, quine, it’s neen o yer business. Keep yer neb oot.” I decided this boy was either a foreigner or an idiot, so I asked him slowly and loudly: “Who is your mistress?” Again he answered in a klatter: “At’s the Coontess Culsh. Nae deem in the hail o Aiberdeen his mair siller.”’

‘Aberdeen!’ said Andrew, and laughed. ‘Can’t be much more foreign than that!’ James silenced him with a look.

‘I could hear voices from inside Granny Groatie’s,’ said Mary. ‘At first it was the grand lady, talking in that preachy way her kind do.’

‘Mary! Show some respect,’ I said.

‘I couldn’t make out the words,’ she continued, ‘But then Granny skraiked, ‘Over my dead body!’ There was a bellow in reply and an instant later the door yirked open and out came the grand lady, her face like thunder. She sent her boy flying as she pinned out and away down the Wynd. He scurried after her like a rat.’

‘Did you go in to see Granny?’ said James.

Mary shook her head. ‘No need. Granny came to the threshold. She saw me and smiled. ‘Whar was that wife?’ I asked her. She looked at the grand lady’s back as she disappeared into Bridge Street. ‘She wanted something I have and she never will,’ said Granny. ‘Don’t fret lass, I’m fine. I’m blide to see thee and I’m blide to see the back of yin ill-farrant craetir. I’m just tired, very tired.’ And with that she went back in and shut the door.’

My heart was thumping. ‘James,’ I said, ‘You don’t think this lady did anything to Granny Groatie, do you? This was the night she passed over.’

He shook his head, frowning. ‘Dr Brass assured me she died of natural causes,’ he said. ‘No suspicious circumstances.’

Andrew set his hands down on the table so the crockery rattled. ‘If this dame skulking around in the dark is not suspicious, I don’t ken what is!’

At which point there started up a thunderous banging on the front door of the apartment, as if the hordes of hell were trying to break it down.

‘Who in God’s name is that?’ cried James. ‘And what do they want of us?’

To be continued.

The rare photograph of the Imperial Hotel in Albert Street is thought to date to 1902, but the building probably looked rather similar when the ‘grand lady’ stayed in it (but without the bunting and flags, which were put up to mark a royal event and therefore worthy of a photo.) The photo was uploaded to the invaluable Orkney Image Library in 2004 by the Orkney Archives, and reproduced here with thanks to them both.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 15th November 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.