‘Indeed, I was happy to be home again,’ Clovis was saying. ‘I decided a few years ago’ – his face darkened denoting some personal tragedy – ‘that I had had enough of Edinburgh.’ He saw me watching him and realised that a reason was required. He said sadly, ‘My wife died.’ He gulped. ‘Childbirth.’ He hurried on. ‘Suddenly I wanted peace and quiet, I wanted back my old life, what it had been like before I met Jean.’ He gave a deep sigh. ‘I had been born here and here I would stay until I retired.’
‘That must be a very long way off.’
It was even worse than I had thought at first. Alarm bells were ringing. This was not a casual visitor where no one would remind him of twenty years ago. I could hear Jack telling him: Do you remember, Pete, that murder case you were on in Bute, the lassie who got the not-proven verdict?
He was smiling at my remark about retirement. ‘I’m forty-six, so it is quite early to make any plans.’
Twenty-six at the time of the case, I was thinking, how much would he remember of Sarah Vantry, aged sixteen, if they were to meet?
‘And I look forward to continuing a quiet life here,’ he added. ‘After Edinburgh, not much happens in Rothesay these days. A small constabulary, just eight of us and that includes Arran. People are very law-abiding – sometimes in summer we have problems with traffic and the tourists, but never anything really bad, like murder.’
I almost jumped. Like murder, he had said the fatal words. He was standing up, holding out his hand, saying how pleasant it had been to meet me. Apologies for interrupting my reading and that sort of thing.
‘Are you here alone?’
‘No, I’m with a companion, a friend from Edinburgh.’
‘Well, I hope you will both enjoy your visit. This is a great hotel, all you need is the blessing of better weather than this morning. Alas, we have no influence with the celestial weatherman. Do you like sailing, by any chance?’
I bit my lip. I wasn’t prepared to go into all that with a stranger. A shake of the head and at that moment, the office door opened and Gerald approached. The two men greeted each other, one might add, warily.
Clovis said, ‘You have already met Mrs Macmerry, of course.’ And to me: ‘Gerald is my adopted brother. I bullied him unmercifully but he’s too big for that now.’
Gerald smiled. He was certainly at least ten years younger than the policeman, who wasn’t inclined to linger. Giving me a final smile, he bowed over my hand. ‘Enjoy your stay, I am sure you will be well looked after. Perhaps we may meet again.’
Not if I can help it, I resolved, watching him with narrowed eyes, walking away, determined to keep him away from meeting Sadie face-to-face at all costs. Bidding Gerald goodnight, I headed for the stairs, wondering if I had stumbled on yet another danger, the possibility that he remembered what had happened in Bute twenty years ago. Policemen are trained to have good, solid retentive memories. Observation and deduction, remember – Pa had reared me on those three words.
I had a great deal on my mind and decided to wait up for Sadie, to warn her about Sergeant Clovis and Gerald Thorn. I didn’t imagine she would be late and expected to see the door open on her return with Harry at any moment. I was comfortable in the warm lounge with the log fire crackling away, so I went back to my history of Bute, constantly attended by one of the vast but strangely anonymous domestic staff who circulated the hotel. An order for a pot of tea and some biscuits consoled them. However, when the massive and aggressive-sounding grandfather clock boomed through its ritual of Westminster chimes and ponderously chimed eleven, I was yawning and heavy-eyed.
I decided to call it a day, and snuggled down for the night in my warm bed in the cosy bedroom, I didn’t open my eyes again until first light streamed through the windows.
Washed and dressed, there was no sound from Sadie, and thinking she had overslept, I knocked on the door. No answer.
Calling: ‘Breakfast time. Are you awake?’ I opened the door a crack, looked in and saw that the room was empty. Had she gone down already?
Another look revealed that the room was not only empty, her bed had not been slept in. I was somewhat shocked. There was only one conclusion, and that was she had spent the night elsewhere – and with Harry.
Downstairs in the restaurant, she was seated at our table.
Greeting her I said, ‘You’re early. I looked in, thought you might have overslept.’
I waited a moment, expecting some explanation or excuse. There was none and I told myself that I, respectably married, had no business being judgemental regarding Sadie and her morals. After all, I was not unused to such goings-on, as before returning to Edinburgh, my life for ten years in Arizona’s shack towns had included the only female company, that of saloon girls.
Helping herself to a slice of toast, Sadie said: ‘Oh, I woke at seven. I was hungry so I came down.’ But she avoided my eyes and I knew, even disregarding her empty bed upstairs, that it was a lie.
There was no more conversation. My breakfast arrived and the delicious bacon and egg had my full attention. The maid arrived with tea and toast, and buttering a slice, I asked: ‘Did you enjoy the film?’
‘Oh yes.’ There was nothing more to be said about last night, no question about how I had spent the evening. A quick change of subject as she asked eagerly: ‘Are we going to Vantry this morning? The weather looks good.’
I shrugged inwardly. Her behaviour was not my responsibility, nor was any concern for the absent Robbie. But I did wonder how this was all to end as we walked silently to the terminus, having observed how she and Harry had exchanged secret glances on the way out of the hotel. And the story about waking early had come so smoothly, I began to have doubts and wonder for the first time, was she an accomplished liar in more vital matters, such as our mission in Bute?
I decided to spare her undoubted feelings of panic by keeping to myself the meeting with Peter Clovis, or that he had been a policeman in Rothesay twenty years ago and might well have been involved in the murder investigation, and also that Gerald Thorn, his adopted brother, might have a long memory.
I resolved to do my best to keep Clovis out of Sadie’s way and any other policemen who might have long memories. How I was to achieve this I had not the least idea. It was just a further addition to a growing list of those she did not wish to encounter but, mercifully, we were only here for a few more days.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Armed with a local map, welcomed by a cloudless blue sky that looked as if it had never heard of such a thing as rain, we headed to the tramway terminus in the square. As we stepped aboard, there were other passengers seated, including families with small children.
We were fortunate to get the one tram per day that went on past the Port Bannatyne terminus to St Colmac, a short distance from our destination at Vantry. From the one window seat remaining, the landscape, obscured yesterday by heavy rain, now opened up to a splendid view over garden hedges of various habitations, hills and secret wooded slopes with the backdrop of a horizon of islands, like basking whales resting lazy and peaceful on a bright azure sea.
And across to the east at Kames Bay, an anchored flotilla of sailing boats, bobbing about in the water. ‘Aren’t they lovely,’ Sadie sighed. ‘I wonder which are the ones belonging to the hotel. I’d love a trip round the islands, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m not a very good sailor.’
‘I’d forgotten. What a pity. Anyway, we’re in luck today,’ she said as we alighted at St Colmac accompanied by the rest of the passengers who had continued the short journey from Port Bannatyne. ‘This is the day each month when there is a tour of the house, and this is the last this year.’
This was luck indeed. ‘How did you find that out?’ I asked.
‘Oh, Harry told me.’ I noticed that her face had coloured up at the mention of his name, as she went on: ‘For a shilling the tour includes tea and scones.’
A look at the family groups suggested that seemed somewhat excessive.
Sh
e shrugged. ‘I gather that the children get in for nothing.’
I wanted to know more about this proposed visit and when I said surely this was somewhat unusual, opening the doors of a house without historic interest to tourists, she gave me a wry look and sighed. ‘Well, it does include a look at … at the spot, you know, where it all happened. Isn’t it terrible,’ she giggled, ‘to think they have actually kept that alive as a popular tourist attraction? Bute’s one claim to notoriety.’
I thought they weren’t the first by any means to take advantage of a long-past murder as a coin-spinner. The King did it regularly by providing the same facility at the palace of Holyroodhouse when royalty was not in residence. Tours arranged with the additional attraction of the bloodstains of David Rizzio, Mary Queen of Scots’ ill-fated secretary, pointed out and still remarkably visible, although rumour had it, according to Jack, possibly kept up to date and in good condition by frequent applications of oxblood boot polish.
I felt that the tea would be a good investment. We stepped off at the signpost for St Colmac accompanied by the tourist families and headed past the standing stones, which were greeted by the children as a fine place for hide-and-seek, despite parental admonishments. As the road climbed the steep hill to Vantry, with a chill wind blowing in our faces I made a mental note that if we were to do this again we would take up the offer of the hotel’s motor car hire, with or without Harry or Gerald as chauffeur.
At last the house came into view, before disappearing as we approached to emerge at the end of a long, twisting drive of rhododendrons. There, open gates proclaimed a ‘Beware of the Dog’ notice, which seemed to belong to a suburban house rather than a stately mansion. A walk across a gravelled forecourt, beyond the sign marked ‘Entrance’, a sharp ascent of stone steps flanked by two rather time-worn and less than imposing snarling lions, and we stepped inside the massive studded door overlooked by a table where our coins were collected by an elderly man, who proved to also be the guide.
As those ahead of us were being admitted, Sadie touched my arm and whispered, ‘He’s the gardener. I remember him … Oh heavens!’ she added, pulling the blue hat’s brim well down. ‘I hope he doesn’t recognise me.’
It was our turn and as he took the money, I felt that he might have washed his hands first – his dirty nails, in particular, were hardly likely to impress tourists – and when I said this to Sadie, she laughed. ‘Come on, Rose, you’re probably the only one who noticed. You have a positive obsession about such things.’ And then she shivered. ‘It was really scary seeing him again.’
Over the threshold and into the vast hall with its marble floor, Vantry smelt old. A musty smell I recognised and associated with home at Solomon’s Tower; that indefinable yet strangely pungent odour went along with all old castles and had even invaded this solid Queen Anne mansion separated by some twenty yards from what remained of the medieval castle we had seen on the way in. I suspected from the skeletal, ruinous tower imploringly beseeching the skyline that the present building had been freely constructed from the original stronghold by a liberal use of those thirteenth-century stones.
Now with the guide trotting ahead, our footsteps echoing on the marble floor, we were staring up the oak staircase. Magnificent in structure, but steep, dark and somewhat imposing, my suspicions about the mansion’s origins were confirmed by the occasional appearance of ancient doors as well as a dining hall with a magnificent fireplace flanked by two forbidding, bare-breasted ancient goddesses. I wondered how the prim occupants of the late queen’s reign managed to digest their bacon and eggs under that fearsome gaze. Wholly out of context, it had doubtless belonged to the original castle, including some rather unexpected items of furnishing, massive ancient and faded tapestries of gruesome events in Greek and Roman mythology that hadn’t quite rerooted happily in their new abode and lurked somehow ill at ease in a seventeenth-century building.
We progressed slowly with the guide who did not provide us with his name but had a surprising catalogue of information about the exhibits that he had obviously learnt by heart. The rooms we passed through were large and cold and unprepossessing, and one suspected that occasional empty spaces against walls had once been occupied by objets d’art perhaps sacrificed over the years when major repairs to ceilings and roof were required.
The guide now hurried us on, Sadie keeping well away from the surge to the front of the exhibits he was at great pains and at great lengths to explain. Few had any historic interest, beyond the inevitable Jacobite connections. Despite rumour, did Prince Charlie ever set foot in Rothesay during his escape over to Skye? I thought not and regarded one of his gloves, conveniently dropped in his flight, carefully noted and preserved in a glass case, as an unreliable relic.
The door to the library was open, and passing by, we were allowed a mere glimpse inside, perhaps because it was occupied by Edgar Worth sitting at a table intent upon some writing.
He merely glanced up at this interruption and gave us a polite nod. There was no sign of Beatrice. And no doubt her ladyship also enjoyed sitting at that desk in the library when the doors were closed on the tourists, counting up the day’s total of shillings, I thought, as the guide threw up yet another door into yet another unexciting room with portraits of bygone Vantrys staring down resentfully at these intruders in their ancestral home.
I lingered by one portrait for a better look, and seeing what I considered as a fleeting family resemblance to Sadie, I took her arm and whispered: ‘That could be you.’
She wasn’t flattered and replied: ‘She’s no beauty.’ I could only agree. It had been a tactless remark, a plain rather doughish face, and Sadie was certainly the better-looking. Only the facial contours, the eye shape and the abundant chestnut curls bore any resemblance.
‘She has elegant hands.’
Sadie looked again and sighed. ‘Well, there’s your proof, if you needed any.’ As we walked on, Sadie looked at me and laughed. ‘You always go on about hands. I never notice them, but you seem quite obsessed.’
There was a reason for that. I had been scared since childhood when I heard that my great-grandmother Sibella Scarth had been taken from the sea as an infant near the shipwreck of a Norwegian merchantman. Although it was stoutly maintained by two surviving sailors that there were no women or children aboard, this had given birth to the rumour that she was a selkie because she had webbed fingers and toes. Despite reassurances from Gran, in childhood I had daily subjected my own rather short fingers and toes to a rigorous examination.
I outgrew that particular terror but it left me very hand-conscious and when I first met Sibella on my visit to Orkney ten years ago, I saw that she wore mittens and sister Emily whispered that no one ever saw her hands, she was shy about having webbed fingers.
As we progressed through the house, staying close to my side Sadie was keeping a very low profile, and in that dreadful hat, looking more like a servant than ever. She had a good reason for that, she said later, terrified that we might go into the library when she glimpsed from the back of the tourists the man sitting there. She wasn’t close enough to see his face but guessed it was Edgar.
My brief introduction to the Worths in the hotel the evening before had made her increasingly nervous about coming face-to-face with them. I had laughed away her concern then and she had later said: ‘If we had been recognised, they would probably have wanted to talk to us again, you being introduced as an authoress. It would have been awful.’
There were fewer rooms than we expected on display, and we were restricted to ground level. The tour continued duller than ever; we paused in a long corridor leading to the kitchens and were asked to admire large cabinets of china and crystal locked behind glass.
Like ourselves, the guided party was getting restless, especially those with bored young children.
The main attraction for the tourists lay ahead. The one place where they inclined to linger was staring up at that great oak staircase where the murder sensationally described
in the press handout, and briefly mentioned by the guide, had occurred. Clutching their offspring to their sides, one could imagine their thoughts: a sixteen-year-old girl, imagine one so young, so ungrateful and evil!
The tour was now almost over. The guide cleared his throat and murmured perhaps we might proceed without him to the gardens.
‘There is only one area where visitors are restricted. You will see a locked gate. Behind there are some of our special exotic plants, many are very delicate and were brought home by earlier Vantrys who travelled to exotic places abroad.’
This information was greeted by little interest from the tour, who showed a certain reluctance to leave the one fascinating gruesome spot in the house worthy of their shillings; now satisfied, the tour turned into almost a stampede towards the cafe. This was situated in what must have been the servants’ kitchen, lofty-ceilinged with an army of large, imposing bells perched high on one wall near the ceiling awaiting the summons and imperial demands of the long-past Vantrys.
A certain scramble ensued for places at the one long table and the guide regarded the assembly with the stern expression of a teacher overseeing school meals. Once we were seated, he announced that, besides access to the gardens, visitors were also permitted a walk around the terrace close to the house.
There was a question from one of the group, keen to explore the ruined castle, to which he replied, his gaze resting heavily upon the now unruly children, that as this was highly dangerous, it was not permitted except with an experienced guide. He obviously did not include this in the present tour and emphasised that warning notices throughout be carefully observed.
He hoped we had enjoyed our visit to the house with the well-rehearsed parting words, ‘We are not the first noble family to open our doors, even royalty do so now, I understand. Our present King is a man of the people.’
Murder Lies Waiting Page 8
