‘I didn’t suppose she would. She never looks at faces. Anyway, our label was probably transferred from somebody’s discarded carton. Wal, did you say that we had a customer in Bonnyrigg?’
Wallace nodded. ‘The man with the McSwale & Angus twelve-bore. You were right about the snot and dandruff. The chequering came up sharp and clean. But now the wood’s a paler colour than the rest.’
‘You’ve scrubbed away the patina from umpteen years of shitty fingers,’ Keith said. He took a moment for thought. Wallace was not up to tricky work with leather dyes. ‘Darken it with shoe polish. Then, when it’s dry, wax the whole stock. If he notices any difference, tell him to bring it in to me when I’m better. Have you done the blueing?’
‘Not yet. I’m just finishing the cleaning off.’
‘Careful of fingerprints. Wal, I want some gossip from Bonnyrigg. Ring up, see if you can get him to collect the gun from me at Briesland House. Better still, time it so that his wife comes for it. Wives notice the kind of thing I want to know.’
‘Will do,’ Wallace said. ‘Now, Keith, there are one or two bits of business. . . .’
Keith yawned in his face. ‘Sorry, Wal, I’m too tired. Think I’ll get Ronnie to run me home now.’
*
Keith spent an hour with the French photographs and then, tired from his expedition, took to his bed and slept through until the dawn. To Molly’s surprise he seemed to have lost interest in the mystery and next morning was back at work on his catalogue, typing clumsily, left-handed, at the word processor. When Molly was out of sight he exercised his right arm. It hurt like hell, but he thought that his use of it was improving. The Glorious Twelfth was now only four days off.
On the far from glorious tenth – the weather had turned to cold and drizzle – Keith was at work when Molly appeared beside him. ‘There’s a lady come to see you,’ she said.
‘And very welcome you are, too,’ Keith retorted. He ran his hand up the inside of her leg.
Molly pretended not to notice. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘A Mrs Threadgold.’
‘Tell her –’ Keith paused. ‘Threadgold? The lady from Bonnyrigg?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fetch her in.’
Keith covered the word processor and moved to his desk. He thought about his wife. Molly had been wearing stockings. She was used to the warmth and comfort of tights but admitted that they lacked glamour. So when she wore stockings they were for her husband’s benefit. What worried Keith was that the benefit seemed to be unobtainable.
He wiped the frown off his face as Mrs Threadgold entered – a slim, bird-like lady in her forties or fifties, wearing a blouse and skirt in trendy colours. ‘You have my husband’s gun ready?’
‘Do sit down. I don’t know if my partner’s finished it yet.’
‘Wallace left a gun here a few minutes ago,’ Molly said. ‘He asked me to show it to you. He’s coming back to speak to you after he’s done another errand. I’ll get it.’ She brought in a leather leg-of-mutton case. It had Mr Threadgold’s name on a label.
‘This is it, then.’ Keith started to unbuckle the case. ‘You’ll want to see it?’
‘Bless you, no!’ Mrs Threadgold said, smiling. ‘I wouldn’t know t’other from which. I’ll just take it along. How much is it?’
‘I won’t know until I see my partner. Never mind. I’ll send in a bill. But don’t run along yet,’ Keith said quickly. ‘I wanted to ask you about Bonnyrigg. Have you lived there long?’
Mrs Threadgold smiled again. She had a nice smile. ‘Twenty-two years. All my married life.’
‘Do you know a house called Hawthorns?’
The smile snapped off. ‘Hawthorns? My dear, I could talk for hours.’
‘Then we’ll be needing a cup of coffee to see us through.’ Keith looked up at Molly, who had waited by the door.
Molly hesitated. She knew that if she left the room for as long as it took to make coffee she might never catch up with the discussion. ‘Let’s all go through to the kitchen,’ she suggested.
‘Lovely!’ Mrs Threadgold prattled on as she fluttered after Molly. ‘I seem to have been driving all day and I’m parched. Bill won’t be back until next week, and I’m doing errands for him all over Scotland. What a pretty kitchen!’ she added.
Keith was quite prepared for interminable female chatter, but only on subjects chosen by himself. ‘Do sit down and tell us all about Hawthorns,’ he said. ‘Who lives there?’
Mrs Threadgold settled herself comfortably and placed her handbag neatly on the table. ‘It used to belong to a Miss Nettley. Such a charming old lady. We knew her well. Our garden, you see, backs on to the Hawthorns. Miss Nettley was what I suppose you’d call a good neighbour. Hawthorns’ garden must be quite half an acre but it was always perfect, and there was never any fuss even when the children kicked a ball over. But then she died – cancer, poor thing! – and she left the house to her niece, a young person called Duguidson.’
Keith had brought with him his packet of photographs. He drew out the enlargement showing the girl in Verteillac. ‘Is this her?’
‘That’s the girl. A flighty creature and a terrible neighbour. But, to be fair, I met her mother once, a real dragon, and I suppose the poor girl was desperate to get away from home. Being left Hawthorns must have seemed a godsend. But she couldn’t keep up a house that size on a student grant, so she and her brother opened the place up to fellow students. We’re handy to Edinburgh, you see.’
Keith produced the photograph of the young man beside the telephone-box. ‘Is this the brother?’
Mrs Threadgold only had to make a quick glance. She nodded. ‘I think his name’s Hugh. Well, they started off running a sort of co-operative hostel, but the inevitable happened. I mean, the most orderly students go into halls of residence or digs found by the university. The outcasts ended up in Hawthorns and it degenerated into a sort of commune. The house is becoming a slum and the garden’s gone to pot – quite literally, I mean, old cars parked where the lawn used to be, and I think the only thing cultivated is cannabis.’ Mrs Threadgold looked shocked and yet she twinkled slightly at her little pun.
Molly paused in the act of pouring. ‘Any particular sort of outcasts?’ she asked.
Keith knew that he could trust Molly to extract every ounce of human gossip. He left them to it for a minute while he fetched a copy of a motoring magazine. Mrs Threadgold was in full flood when he returned. ‘Not exactly hippies, nor punks, nor skinheads either,’ she was saying. ‘You see the occasional caftan or headband, and the men mostly look rather biblical. There’s one they call Creepy Jesus who I’d hate to meet on a dark night or in a lonely place. But in the main they’re reasonably clean, but intense.’
Molly made an enquiring noise. Mrs Threadgold took it to refer to the cream. ‘I won’t, thank you. My daughter says that if I don’t watch my figure nobody else will. Well, I’m past all that sort of thing, but there’s no point letting yourself go, is there?
‘What I was saying probably didn’t sound as if there was very much wrong with them, but it’s their manner. Arrogant. They seem to think that they know it all and they despise the rest of us and what we do and stand for. They ask the library for cranky books on organic diet and existentialism and Christian Science, and then act as if the girl’s incompetent because she doesn’t have them ready to hand. And woe betide you if you stand in their road. Some of them would walk right over you.’
‘They sound as if they’d be anti-bloodsports,’ Molly suggested.
Mrs Threadgold’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They’re anti-everything else. I never thought of it before but it would explain a lot. They know my husband shoots. They could hardly not, with him standing on the lawn most mornings, practising what he calls ‘dry mounting’ and frightening the cats. It would explain why they’ve taken such a spite at us. We have to lock the car in the garage overnight or the tyres are flat in the morning and worse. And we had to give up keeping hens because they just disappeared
. And, my dear, the graffiti! We’ve called the police time and again. They found feathers in the Hawthorns dustbin, but there was nothing to show that they came from our hens. And then, would you believe, they had the gall to ask Bill for a legal opinion. Something about inheritance. I hoped it might get them away, but Bill said there was nothing in it.’
‘It’s beastly when you can’t trust your neighbours,’ Molly said.
Keith, who never trusted any neighbour, broke in quickly. ‘Have you ever seen a dark blue Jaguar there?’
Mrs Threadgold thought about it but shook her head. ‘We hardly ever see the front of the house. It’s in a different street, one that we never go down.’
‘How about a red Morgan?’
‘One of those little three-wheelers with the engine out in front?’
Keith put down the motoring magazine in front of her. ‘One like this,’ he said.
‘Now I’ve given my age away, haven’t I? Yes, a red car something like that parks round the back from time to time. Overnight, usually. And about a month ago it was there for a full week with one wing all crumpled.’
By the time the coffee was finished they had filled in the details but without learning any more of significance. Mrs Threadgold said her thank-yous and got up.
‘You’ve been very helpful,’ Keith said. ‘I can phone you if I think of any more questions?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She headed for the front door and her car.
‘And you’d better take the gun along.’
*
Mrs Threadgold could hardly have been a mile on her way when Wallace put his head round the kitchen door. ‘Is there any coffee left?’
‘Mrs Threadgold finished the pot,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll put some more on.’
‘Don’t bother. She’s been, then?’
‘Took the gun away a few minutes ago,’ Keith said.
Wallace sat down as if his knees had given way. ‘She t-took it? I only b-brought it to show you. What did you think?’
‘Didn’t see it,’ Keith said. ‘What was wrong? Fingerprints showing up silver in the blueing?’
‘The – er – colour of the barrels came out . . . sort of different.’
‘Don’t look so worried. It happens to all of us. If the blue had a greenish tinge, that was because you contaminated the blueing solution with neutralizing agent.’
Wallace swallowed audibly. ‘Pink,’ he said at last.
Keith’s imagination refused to recognize the concept. ‘If there’s a reddish tinge,’ he said, ‘you had it too hot.’
‘P-pink,’ Wallace said desperately. ‘The exact, self-same pink of a new pair of cheap corsets.’
Keith sat with his mouth open. Molly set the percolator to work again. It was going to be needed. ‘Couldn’t you have rubbed it off and started again?’ she asked.
‘I tried that. The finish is as hard as steel, much harder than blueing. And with a lovely polish. I could never have got it off without wrecking the gun. I brought it round to get Keith’s advice.’
Keith had been turning over his past experiences and his recollections of elementary chemistry and he had come up with one possible answer. ‘What I think you must’ve done,’ he said, ‘was to use the browning solution I keep for antique guns and then used the neutralizing agent for a blue finish.’
‘Never mind what I must have done,’ Wallace said. ‘What are we going to do? We can’t have him turning up at Lord Whatsit’s shoot with pink barrels. He’ll never live it down.’
‘You could chase after her,’ Keith suggested, ‘and lend him another gun.’
‘That’s the only one that he hits anything with.’
‘Get the damn thing back,’ Keith said, ‘and we’ll re-do it together.’
‘You can’t,’ Molly said. ‘She was driving straight off to join her husband somewhere up north. They’re not coming back until after the twelfth.’
There was a depressed silence.
‘I suppose she didn’t say where they were going to be?’ Wallace asked.
Molly shook her head.
Keith was beginning to see the funny side. ‘You said the gun was a McSwale & Angus?’
‘Yes.’
‘When he rings up –’
‘And will!’
‘– to complain –’
‘That’s for sure!’
‘– tell him that Jock McSwale spent a lifetime trying to perfect a finish the exact colour of August heather, but that’s as near as he could get.’
Wallace brightened up. ‘Did he really?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. McSwale & Angus were ironmongers, somewhere around Buchanan Street. They used to buy guns by the hundred from the Birmingham trade, with their own name on them. They went bust some time during the reign of Edward the Seventh.’
Chapter Seven
Two cars and a Range Rover were halted where the first stretch of track dipped down to the gulley cut by a small burn. Ronnie stopped his Land Rover and climbed down. Keith and Molly followed.
The twelfth had dawned colder and a stiff breeze was ruffling Sir Peter Hay’s grey locks. He was engaged in anxious discussion with Hamish, his part-time keeper – a large and silent man, Hamish, who spoke rarely although his beard spoke volumes for him. It was speaking now, in furious twitches, of ruin and damnation.
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Sir Peter was saying. ‘It’s my fault you weren’t up here. But if we’d known a couple of days ago I could have got the Argocat down from up north and let those idle Yanks make do with a Land Rover and Shanks’ pony.’
‘Trouble?’ Keith asked.
‘Look for yourself. There’s no way to get a vehicle over the burn.’
They looked down. The wooden bridge over the burn had been destroyed. A fire had been lit in the bed of the stream, dry after the fine spell. The embers were still smoking.
‘Kids?’ Keith said. ‘Or tinkies? Or deliberate vandals?’
‘Who knows? The devil of it is,’ said Sir Peter, ‘that in this wind we’ll have to start from the far end. Are you fit to hoof it that far?’
Keith understood. Grouse can only be driven upwind when they are going home. ‘If needs must,’ he said. ‘But I’ll not be quick. I’ll set off now, and the others can overtake me.’
‘All right.’ Sir Peter scratched the back of his neck. He looked more harassed than Keith could remember seeing him. ‘I’ve got a meal for twenty packed in the back of the Range Rover and it’ll have to be humped to the top barn. And you won’t be fit to carry anything extra.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Keith said. ‘I can just about manage my gun, game bag and cartridges.’
‘How about one of these?’ Sir Peter handed Keith a lightweight transmitter-receiver. He had recently equipped the workers on his various estates with radios, primarily so that the equipment would be available for the control of large shooting parties.
Keith slipped it into his pocket. ‘I’ll leave Brutus with you,’ he told Molly. ‘I’ll take the old ’un. She’s just about as knackered as I am, so we’ll do well together.’
Molly put on her patient face. ‘If I’ve got to help carry the lunch,’ she said, ‘you could at least take this for me.’ She hung a camera around Keith’s neck.
‘I’ll get moving,’ Keith said, ‘before anybody thinks of anything else to hang on me. See you later.’
He set off. His gun felt unfamiliar under his left arm but hurt him if he shifted it to his right. The old spaniel frisked carefully over the heather. He called her to heel in case she disturbed the birds, although much of the heather on this part of the moor was too short for a good population of grouse. Sir Peter Hay was a thrifty landlord, indulging the estates rather than himself or his guests. The best pheasant-shoots on his land were all profitably let and the revenue ploughed back into machinery, land reclamation and afforestation, Sir Peter retaining for himself only a place in a syndicate on a modest shoot. With the stretches of moor in his ownership Sir Peter was equally frugal
, keeping for himself a moor which was so heavily predated from Foleyhill that it could make no economic sense if kept for grouse alone. The red grouse shared their habitat with black-faced sheep. The heather was religiously burned for grouse, which suited the sheep very well. But the sheep cropped the heather short, which suited the grouse very little. So Keith was not expecting much of a bag that day. But still, it made an enjoyable social outing to open the season. Sir Peter made up for the paucity of game by providing a sybaritic lunch. No beaters were hired, the beating being done by the guns who took turns to form a walking party. First time over, before the birds had learned caution, walking guns might get their share of the sport.
Keith came out of his reverie. He spared a smile for the thought of Mr Threadgold uncovering his gun, perhaps for the first time, on Lord Moran’s more prestigious moor. But his smile was fleeting.
His route climbed gently for a quarter of a mile, then crossed a stretch of level moor and dropped into the valley beyond. From the crest Keith could see the barn beckoning across the valley. It looked a thousand miles away. His legs were trembling. The gun began to weigh a ton, Molly’s camera a hundredweight.
He took it slowly down the hill. The rough surface was harder going than pavement or lawn, the short heather slightly better. From time to time his fellow guests, old friends mostly, strode past with insulting ease carrying great burdens of lunch and gear. Keith exchanged greetings with them and tried to look as if he could keep up if he wanted to.
By the time he reached the valley’s bottom Keith’s strength was gone. He lowered himself cautiously on to a rounded boulder. He could easily have fallen asleep except that the breeze came buffeting up the valley, bringing a chill foretaste of winter to come.
The next man down the hill was his brother-in-law, hugging a carton of bottles and with his gun slung in its sleeve over his shoulder. He seemed glad to set down the carton for a minute and to rest his broad rump on it. ‘You look knackered,’ he said.
‘I should do, because I am.’
‘I told you you would be.’
‘Everybody told me,’ Keith admitted. ‘Well, it was worth a try but I’ll have to give up. I’ll never make it up that hill.’ He waited for some caustic remark in reply.
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