The Unbelievers (29 page)

And so, the powers of justice took Arthur's life without any need for further violence on my own part. I had a moment's concern on the morning of Arthur's execution, when I remembered that George had set up a camera in the darkroom at Rock House which might, conceivably, have detected me. I was immensely relieved when Warner – whose loyalty to me as a lover was stronger than his sense of conduct as a servant – told me that he'd destroyed that evidence beyond all prospect of recovery.

Through my prison marriage to Arthur I came into the full inheritance of the titles and estates of the Bothwell-Scotts. I like to think I have done well, Elsie, through setting fair rents and paying fair wages to our workers. We have escaped the strikes which have plagued so many of our mining competitors, and through that have made tolerable profits which have helped me to build the lung disease sanatorium and retirement home for our workers. The glens of Sutherland will never be re-populated, but I have turned the wasteland of grouse-moors over to forests and stopped the gamekeepers from poisoning the eagles which soar over our hills. Our American plantations have been divided into smallholdings for the free negroes. In the great balance of things I believe I leave those parts of the world over which I have had power in a better condition than when I found them.

I must confess that recent events in Russia have quite impressed me – it must be a most exciting time to be there. Inspired by that, I have decided to bequeath the mines to the workers, to be held by workers co-operatives, or ‘soviets' as I think they are called where you are. I am also bequeathing all actively farmed lands on our estates, both sides of the Atlantic, to their existing tenants. The remainder – Dalcorn House and Dornoch Palace and their associated lands, the forests and hills of Sutherland, I appoint to be sold by public auction, with the condition that the war hospital be allowed to occupy Dalcorn until hostilities have ceased and the patients have died or recovered. The proceeds of these auctions are to be divided equally to help your own work to promote women's medicine and the work of our friend Dr Marie Stopes to ensure that women may enjoy reproductive freedom.

And with my death, and with the disposal of these assets, the titles and property of the Dukes of Dornoch shall become
EXTINCT.

 

Your affectionate friend,

 

Josephine