“Do you live here on Skye, Mr. Kinmuir?”
“Please, call me James,” the young man said, flashing a smile. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong nose and a fringe of blond hair that gave him the look of an overgrown schoolboy. “At the moment, only during the summer months. The rest of the time I teach—at Flytes, a school just outside Edinburgh. I try to interest the boys in the Greats. Not that I get much thanks from the little brutes.”
This interested me. The implication was that he had to work—that he didn’t have an independent income. Perhaps his intention was to get his hands on his uncle’s estate. But if so, why would he alert Robin Kinmuir by sending him threatening letters?
I turned to his friend. “And you, Mr. Phillips? Are you on holiday here?”
“Yes and no,” he said. Rufus Phillips was a little shorter than his friend, with dark brown curly hair and exceptionally long eyelashes that gave his face a rather girlish look. “I’ve just left the Slade art school in London. I’m doing a spot of traveling and supporting myself by doing the odd painting, such as they are.”
“Rufus is being terribly modest,” said James. “He’s a wonderful portraitist; in fact, he’s working on an oil of my uncle. Of course, Rufus insists he doesn’t want to be paid for it. My uncle hasn’t seen it yet, but when he does, I think he’ll find that it really captures his—”
“My what?” said Kinmuir, slapping his nephew and his friend on the shoulders. “No doubt you’ll show me as the decrepit old fool I am. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste—sans everything—like Auntie upstairs.” He turned to me to explain. “I’m talking about Mrs. Veronica Kinmuir: I forget how old she is. She’s the wife of my father’s late brother. She is nearly blind from cataracts, hasn’t left the house in years, and talks mostly gibberish, childish nonsense. For a long time she didn’t want anything to do with me—treated me something rotten—but when she started to lose her marbles, I thought it only right to bring her here.” He addressed Rufus Phillips again. “I hope you don’t paint me as nothing more than a mess of jagged lines and crooked angles. The truth is I’m not sure I have an eye for art at all: the house is full of paintings, but I’ve barely given any of them a second glance. Yes, I’m a terrible philistine.”
Kinmuir scratched what looked like an insect bite on his throat.
“As for the avant garde, don’t get me started on that! Once I stood in front of a Picasso for a good ten minutes, shifting my position, walking around to take it in from different perspectives, but I couldn’t make head or tail of it—and I’m talking quite literally. If ladies weren’t present,” he said, nodding in my direction, “I think I would express myself rather more forcefully, if you get my drift.” He took a sip from his glass of soda water. “But you’re not here to listen to my gripes about the state of art today. Let’s leave these two scoundrels and I’ll introduce you to the group over there.”
He pointed to a trio of people standing in the far corner of the room, which comprised the local doctor, Jeremy Fitzpatrick—a man in his sixties who was completely bald—and two middle-aged sisters, May and Isabella Frith-Stratton. The pair of rather odd-looking women were complaining about the midges—they were simply terrible, such a pest, they said—and were pleading with the doctor to tell them how to prevent being attacked by the beastly creatures.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Kinmuir, addressing the Frith-Strattons. “I thought you’d like to meet a fellow author.” Their faces lit up for a moment before Kinmuir added, “And Mrs. Christie is about to get married. I’m right in saying that the wedding is going to be in Edinburgh next month?”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I’m here with my cousin, Mr. John Davison, to have a few days’ holiday before the ceremony.”
The sisters looked at me with an indifference that bordered on the hostile.
Robin Kinmuir cleared his throat and changed the subject. “As I was saying, Mrs. Christie here is a writer of detective stories. May and Isabella, who are twin sisters, write romance novels under… What name was it again?”
“Maybella Acton,” said May, pronouncing the name as if she were reading it from a catalogue. “A Heart United? Force of Destiny?”
I was none the wiser. And although I smiled with enthusiasm, no doubt my ignorance was quite obvious to the sisters.
“Perhaps the best-known is Bonds of Blood and its sequel, Bonds of Love,” added Isabella in a more natural manner. “But they’ve all proved very popular, particularly in the lending libraries. We find that people want to read something that takes them out of themselves, books that offer escape and romance. They don’t want to be reminded of the general awfulness of life, of brutality—of death.”
The Frith-Stratton sisters had obviously taken a dislike to me. An awkward silence descended on our little group, one that was broken by the doctor.
“Living out here and covering such a wide area, I don’t get much time to read at all,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick in his thick Scottish accent. “I’m afraid my reading material is confined to my patients’ notes and the occasional page of the Lancet.” I noticed that he had kind eyes and a warm smile. He had, it seemed, the perfect bedside manner of the country doctor, not like some of the more sinister medical men I had come across in the past.
“How did you and Mr. Kinmuir become friends?” I asked him, after the two sisters broke away from the group and accompanied Kinmuir across the room.
“Now, that’s a funny story,” he said, his eyes glinting with delight. “I’m not sure Kinmuir would thank me for telling you this, but he’s out of earshot…”
As I listened to the anecdote—which involved a drunken Kinmuir, a bolting horse, and a nasty bog—I noticed that there was a solitary figure standing by the window with his back to the room. From him there emanated an air of mystery.
The doctor continued to talk of his friend. “Of course, Kinmuir drank a good deal back then. But he managed to cut back—not like me, I’m afraid, drinking whisky as if there’s no tomorrow—and now he’s as fit as a fiddle, as they say. I examined him only a few weeks back and he’s as strong as an ox. I told him he’ll outlive the lot of us.”
But my attention had wandered to the enigmatic man whose face I could not see.
“That is amusing,” I said. “Now, tell me, Dr. Fitzpatrick, who is that man over by the window?”
The doctor followed my gaze. “The dark-haired one? I believe he is called—let me see if I remember—Mr. Simon Peterson. Seems a decent enough chap. Keeps himself very much to himself, though, as you can see. Not one for small talk.”
“Do you know anything more about him?”
“Only that he’s been here for a few days. Works in shipping, I believe. Very popular with the ladies. Sorry, that’s all I know. Why?” Dr. Fitzpatrick took another swig from his tumbler of whisky and said in a conspiratorial manner, “You don’t think he’s about to commit a… a murder, do you?”
“My imagination does run away with me at times,” I said, humoring him.
He lowered his voice. “And, by the way, don’t worry about the Miss Frith-Strattons. I think they took against you a little because of the news of your forthcoming nuptials. My impression is that they write about romance precisely because they don’t… well, because they don’t have very much of it in their own lives.”
“That is very sad,” I said.
“Rather like you and murder,” he said, laughing. “You write about it because you’ve never experienced it yourself. Or, rather, I hope that’s the case.”
“Indeed,” I said, trying to smile.
I recalled the words Davison had spoken to me when we first arrived at Dallach Lodge. Did someone really intend to commit a murder here? And if so, what could we do to prevent it?
* * *
Due to the death threats against Kinmuir, Davison had arranged to sleep in his dressing room on a camp bed. The next morning my friend reported that, despite the older man’s awful snores, the night had passed peacefully. He
said that he would continue to watch Kinmuir throughout the day, and it was my job to try to make a few gentle inquiries into the guests.
First I intended to explore the kitchens. I knew that one of the easiest ways to kill someone was by poisoning. I had tried to talk to the cook, Mrs. Baillie, the previous night—I said I was interested in seeing how she prepared certain Scottish recipes—but she was too busy to see me. Then she sent word that she had a few minutes to spare after breakfast.
Breakfast was a lavish affair with a sideboard full of silver dishes of kedgeree, bacon, sausage, black pudding, and eggs: poached, scrambled, and fried. Everyone was there apart from Mr. Peterson, who apparently preferred to take his breakfast in his room, and Dr. Fitzpatrick, who had stayed at the house overnight but left early to attend to a sick child in a nearby village.
I took a minute or so to study those gathered around the long table. Mrs. Buchanan, the actress, seemed to radiate light, but how much of her character was real, how much a self-conscious performance? Vivienne Passerini, the striking botanist, was like none of the stuffy English girls I had met: there was a spirit of adventure about her that I liked and admired. Then there was the boyish pair James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips, the young painter; they seemed as close as friends could be. And what was I to make of the Frith-Stratton sisters, Isabella and May? I noticed that May followed Isabella around like her shadow, walking to the sideboard behind her, picking up the same dishes, eating at the same time. The effect was like watching a strange and unsettling mime act.
My eyes came to settle on Robin Kinmuir, dressed in his tweeds, looking the part of laird of the land. As he tucked into a hearty breakfast, no one would ever guess that he had received a threat to his life. Perhaps the presence of Davison was doing something to soothe his nerves.
Davison watched Robin Kinmuir carefully—as he had at dinner the night before—making sure that no one leant over him to put something into his food or swapped his water glass or coffee cup for another. If a killer was present in the house, and if they chose to use poisoning as their preferred method of murder, it seemed unlikely that they would risk corrupting a whole dish. And there was only so much Davison could do. For instance, he could hardly examine everything placed in front of Kinmuir; neither did it seem fair—or prudent—to test what he was about to eat on the two black Labradors that had the run of the house. Everything Davison and I did had to be done with the greatest subtlety; we could not risk our cover being exposed.
After finishing his breakfast, Robin Kinmuir started to tell the table about the history of the ruined castle that sat on the ridge above Dallach Lodge. Although it looked medieval, in fact the family seat of the Kinmuirs dated only to the nineteenth century. The original mansion house, built in the seventeenth century, was extended by the famous Scottish architect James Gillespie Graham in the early nineteenth century. Thirty years later a fire destroyed a good deal of that building and a new mock-Gothic wing was added. By the end of the nineteenth century, when yet another fire consumed the building, the Kinmuirs decided to abandon the castle for the baronial lodge, which had also been designed and extended by Gillespie Graham.
“What with all the fires, it seems somewhat ironic that the family motto is ‘Resurgere ex cineribus,’ ” Robin Kinmuir observed. “ ‘To rise again out of the ashes.’ ”
As the polite laughter died down, Mrs. Buchanan looked along the table. “It looks rather murky outside,” she said. “What are our plans for the day? Oh, there’s no point asking you, Robin: no doubt you’ll begin your day by taking the dogs for a walk. But what about the rest of you?”
James Kinmuir was the first to answer. “Rufus was keen to go riding, but tragically we don’t have any horses: they all succumbed to some terrible infection and they haven’t been replaced yet,” he told us. “So instead it’s going to be a spot of shooting. We thought we might try for grouse, since it’s the first day of the season.”
“Well, don’t think you’re going to take the dogs,” said Robin Kinmuir.
“Don’t worry, Uncle, I won’t spoil your morning routine,” said James in a good-natured manner.
“I’ve always thought the grouse such a curious-looking bird,” said Rufus Phillips. “What with that bright red comb over its eye which looks almost like a wound. Of course, I’ve only seen them in paintings and in books, never in real life.” He looked at Robin Kinmuir, who was buttering a piece of toast. “Do you think we’ll be in luck?”
“I would think so,” Robin Kinmuir replied. “There will be plenty hiding in heather on the moor. James will show you. You should bag a few for supper, that’s for sure.”
“I disapprove of shooting, as Mr. Kinmuir well knows,” said Mrs. Buchanan. “It’s barbaric. I can’t stand the sight or the taste of meat. Like my dear friend George Bernard Shaw, I’m a vegetarian. If any of you are interested, I’d be more than happy to explain the reasoning, and I believe I have a few pamphlets upstairs. We can all lead perfectly healthy lives without eating animals.” As James bit into a piece of sausage, Mrs. Buchanan cast him a hostile look before turning to me and asking, “And, Mrs. Christie, what does the day have in store for you?”
“I thought I might take a walk down to the loch or up to the ruined castle,” I said. “I’m intrigued to see it for myself after hearing its history from Mr. Kinmuir.”
“I might join you,” she said. “I once took part in a performance of Hamlet in a ruined castle in Denmark. Absolutely thrilling… quite uncanny. One could almost feel Prince Hamlet’s ghost reach out and touch the back of one’s neck.”
“It must have been a wonderful experience,” said Miss Passerini. “Gertrude is such a fascinating part.”
Mrs. Buchanan expressed her displeasure with a quick flash of the eyes. “I played Ophelia, my dear,” she said with a thin, withering smile.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that…,” said Miss Passerini. “It was just…”
I excused myself from the table and made my way through the hall towards the servants’ steps to the kitchens below. Mrs. Baillie was sitting at a well-scrubbed table, enjoying a welcome cup of tea, while a couple of girls busied themselves clearing up the breakfast pots and pans. I introduced myself and told the cook that the dinner and breakfast were quite superb. I informed her of my forthcoming wedding and the fact that I wanted to extend my repertoire in the kitchen.
“You know what they say: ‘The way to a man’s heart…’ and all that.” Mrs. Baillie spoke with such a heavy Scottish accent that at first I didn’t understand her. She must have been used to seeing the rather blank, stupid look that crossed my face, because she repeated the sentence, enunciating her words as she did so.
My real purpose was to ask about the arrangements of the kitchen, who handled the ingredients and prepared the food, and how it was transported to the dining room. Then I hoped to find out a little more about the guests staying at Dallach Lodge. But first I needed to gain her trust. I suspected that the way to Mrs. Baillie’s heart was through her cooking, and I was right. As soon as she started to talk about the cuisine of Scotland and the Highlands, she could not stop. She described recipes passed down from her mother and grandmother and how she made her own sausages, of which Mr. James seemed particularly fond.
“So much so that he’s recently taken to nabbing them at breakfast,” she said, laughing. “I’ve told him the next time I find him stealing, he’ll feel the back of my hand on his behind. I don’t care how old he is.”
She went on to describe a range of dishes that I had never heard of, including Cullen skink, clapshot, cabbie claw, potted hough, and stovies.
“ ‘Stovies’?” I asked.
“Tatties: potatoes that are slow-cooked in a kind of stew with meat—anything you’ve got left over from the night before,” she explained. “It’s a good use of the leftovers when it’s only the master and—”
Just then we heard a loud scream from upstairs. At the sound of the noise, one of the servant girls standing by
the sink dropped the ceramic bowl that she had been cleaning and it smashed into pieces on the flagstone floor. Mrs. Baillie’s monologue came to an abrupt end and her mouth gaped like one of the dead fish I had spotted on the cold slab, gutted and ready to be cooked for lunch. I stood up, quickly thanked her, and ran up the back stairs and into the hall. In front of the door stood Mrs. Buchanan, who was in a state of shock. Her face was pale and her lips had almost turned blue. Her eyes seemed empty and hollow. I took her arm.
“What on earth has happened?” I wanted to ask about Robin Kinmuir but knew that I couldn’t mention his name in case the killer was watching; I had to pretend I had no advance knowledge that a crime might be committed. Where was Davison? Wasn’t he supposed to have been looking after Kinmuir. “Mrs. Buchanan?”
She tried to speak, but no words came out of her mouth.
By this point the others had started to gather.
“What’s wrong?” asked Isabella Frith-Stratton.
“We heard a scream,” added her frightened sister, just behind her on the stairs.
Through the front door came Vivienne Passerini, an unusual flush to her sallow complexion. “I heard a gunshot,” she said. “But I didn’t think anything of it because of the grouse shoot.”
At this, Mrs. Buchanan started to wail again. She put her hands on her ears so as to drown out the noise of her own screams.
“Mrs. Buchanan, you must tell me what you’ve seen,” I said, grabbing one of her hands.
Simon Peterson appeared at the top of the stairs, still in his dressing gown. He had an athletic, muscular body and his face and mustache bore traces of shaving cream, which only seemed to accentuate his handsome features. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
As I started to explain that we weren’t quite sure, another figure entered the house. Rufus Phillips looked like he had aged a good ten years. Dirt and something else—something that looked like blood—were smeared across his smart tweeds. As he opened his mouth to speak, James Kinmuir appeared in the doorway. Tears ran down his face and his blond hair was ruffled and full of mud. His white shirt and tweed jacket were soaked through with blood.
I Saw Him Die Page 2
