The Lammas Curse

by Anna Lord

  “Yes,” he nodded, still beaming broadly, “Lady Moira explained as much before you joined us, but she failed to mention your name. It is a great piece of luck!”

  While they were discussing what time they might all set off tomorrow, Mr Dee arrived, and the waiter followed hot on his heels brandishing menu cards.

  Mr Dee appeared full of nervous energy as he sandwiched himself between the Countess and his sister. He toyed with the stem of his wine glass, unfolded and refolded his linen napkin and even sat on his hands, alas, they shook so much during the meal his cutlery took on a jittery life of its own, tapping out a discordant tune on his plate. As if to distract from this, Miss Dee talked with great animation about the vast South African veldt, and she could indeed hold court when it suited her. The golf tournament was briefly discussed but no one mentioned the three deaths until the close of evening when the bill was being settled by Dr Watson who insisted that it be put on his account. It was Lady Moira who broached the subject.

  “I will be conducting a séance the night after next,” she addressed forthrightly to the Countess. “I will be holding it at Cruddock Castle. You and Dr Watson are cordially invited to join us for dinner prior to the event. I will let my son know I have invited you. He will be delighted to make your acquaintance though less happy about the séance. But the spirits of Lammas moor are restless and they must be given voice. The three recent murders have unsettled them and they wish to communicate their unhappiness to those responsible.”

  “Murders!” exclaimed the Countess, feigning shock. “I read that there had been three fatal accidents. But murders, you say!”

  “Now, now, Grandmama,” intervened Miss Dee in a sweetly condescending tone, “the detectives from Scotland Yard decreed them to be accidents. You cannot go about calling them murders. It will frighten and upset people.”

  “Tosh!” snorted the dowager. “Frighten and upset my son, you mean, because it might disrupt his plan to have idiots trampling a sacred site as they go about whacking a ball with a stick! And I am not your Grandmama, young lady! My son might be your god-father, but that does make me your kith and kin!”

  On that harsh note they parted ways and went to bed but none slept soundly. The Countess dreamed that Graymalkin had been overrun by hundreds of black cats, Dr Watson dreamed that his lovely niece had turned into a corn dolly, Lady Moira dreamed of dead spirits rising up from the grave wielding golf clubs, Mr Dee dreamed of chopping off his shaky hands, and Miss Dee dreamed of sinking the winning shot of the tournament just as a stray golf ball sailed through the air and hit her on the head, killing her instantly.

  Lady Moira and Miss Lambert were still fast asleep when Dr Watson and Countess Volodymyrovna rolled out of Edinburgh in a landau in the early hours of a frosty morning, just ahead of Fedir and Xenia in a wagonette laden with golf clubs, hat boxes, portmanteaux and travelling trunks.

  Hiring a wagonette had proved an easy task but hiring a landau in good condition with a decent pair of horses had proved more difficult. The owner of the landau would not be parted from his carriage or his fine chestnut mares and insisted on being hired as the driver. In the end, when the Countess learned the carriage driver was familiar with the area around Loch Maw, she decided it might actually be beneficial to have an extra pair of male hands at Graymalkin for the duration of their sojourn and agreed to his terms.

  The man’s name was Horace Horsefield. He had a long horsey face and a long silky mane of black hair which he tied back in a ponytail. They immediately christened him Horace the Horse, but not to his horsey face.

  They had opted not to take a train to Duns after Lady Moira informed them it was practically the same distance to Loch Maw from Duns as it was from Edinburgh to Loch Maw. Nevertheless, the journey swallowed up the better part of the day especially as darkness fell early in this part of the world. It was already creeping up behind them when they began skirting the western edge of the loch and by the time they reached the Marmion Hydro Hotel, where they decided to stop for dinner - grey day had turned into black night.

  Disappointingly, the Marmion Hydro Hotel did not live up to the glowing description in Sporting Life. It was actually a rundown hunting lodge that had seen better days and was redeemed only by the baronial style of architecture so popular in Scotland, with the mandatory pepperpot turrets that seemed to ooze eternal charm. To claim it had fifteen bedrooms seemed wildly optimistic. Half of the bedrooms could have been no bigger than broom closets. Nevertheless, its real saving grace was its position – perched on the edge of the loch and offering an uninterrupted view of the picturesque ruins of Lammas Abbey on the opposite shore, a view which was currently denied to them by a lack of moonlight.

  Mrs Ardkinglas, the owner of the hotel, was at the reception desk when they arrived. She was a stern-faced woman in her fifties, dressed entirely in black, with dark hair and piercing dark eyes. Some blowsy and austere widows-weeds did not do justice to her excellent figure. She came out from behind her desk and greeted them as if she had been expecting them. When they glanced quizzical she explained that Hamish Ross, the ghillie from Cruddock Castle, had informed her that the new owner of Graymalkin would be setting forth from Edinburgh that morning in the company of the famous author, Dr John Watson, and they would be sure to stop by on their way to the old tower.

  “I have kept some dinner on the stove for you,” she delivered in a thick Scottish accent that warmed the cockles of Dr Watson’s heart. “Some Mulligatawny soup and some smoked trout and buttered potatoes,” she said, leading them to a small dining room.

  “I have three hungry servants who will also be requiring a hearty meal,” the Countess addressed to Mrs Ardkinglas.

  “They can eat in the kitchen. I will make sure they are promptly seen to.”

  “Everyone else must be in the grand dining room,” observed Dr Watson, noting the one round table set for two in the centre of the round room.

  “The grand dining room is closed as we do not have many guests at present,” replied Mrs Ardkinglas. “You are the only dinner guests tonight so I have set the table in the round tower.”

  “I presumed you would be fully booked,” said the Countess, somewhat surprised. “I read that the caddies and assistants are all staying here. And there must be dozens of keen golfers eager to be part of a sporting spectacle?”

  “We were fully booked up until the third death,” she explained grimly. “The guests started to trickle away after that, frightened off by talk of dead spirits and curses and such, and when the tournament was halted indefinitely, and detectives arrived from Scotland Yard - that scared off the last of them. The assistants got the wind-up when a superstitious old fool swore he saw three witches in Jackdaw Wood. When he got a toothache and another fool got a sty, and another fool developed a limp, that was the end of them, they high-tailed it back to Duns as fast as they could run. And then last night two more players withdrew even though the tournament is now going ahead.”

  “Which two?” asked Dr Watson.

  “The two Canadians.”

  “That only leaves four players,” he calculated. “Mr Larssensen, Mr Bancoe and the Dees.”

  “Yes,” she confirmed unhappily before continuing. “The two Canadian caddies checked out this morning, quick to follow their masters. There are now only two caddies left and no assistants. Gardeners at Cruddock Castle have been roped in to help with the tournament so that it doesn’t fold.”

  “Would you like the golf course to go ahead?” quizzed the Countess.

  “Yes,” said Mrs Ardkinglas without hesitation. “It will be good for business. We don’t have many tourists venturing this way, just a few hikers and ramblers, mainly in the summer months. The serious stalkers and shooters prefer the Highlands. I had to give the Swiss chef his marching orders yesterday. If business doesn’t pick up I may have to sell the place to the Cruddocks. The old hunting lodge belonged to my husband’s family. It was my husband’s intention to turn it as a fine hotel but then,” she fal
tered and swallowed dry, “he died suddenly. I don’t think I can carry on much longer - not on my own.”

  That brief conversation gave them food for thought while they ate their dinner.

  After their meal, Dr Watson went to round up Horace, Xenia and Fedir and it was more bad news. Horace had heard the story about the three witches and nothing would induce him to travel through Jackdaw Wood after dark. They were forced to take rooms at the hotel and continue their journey come morning.

  Dr Watson, clearly a favourite Scottish son, was allocated the royal suite with the balcony and the best view of the loch. The Countess, having no Scottish connections, was consigned to the bedroom at the top of the tower, optimistically referred to as the deluxe suite.

  “That is the first time I have ever slept in my dressing gown and socks and in a room with no corners,” the Countess said first thing the next morning at breakfast. “I went to bed cursing Horace and his childish fear but now that I have warmed up I think it was better that we rested before completing our journey. Graymalkin is sure to look cheerier in the clear light of day.”

  “It may work against us,” quipped Dr Watson, humour restored after a good night’s sleep in a large and comfortable chamber with a cheery fire, “we will be able to see all that moss on the ceiling and the walls dripping with damp!”

  They were having a good chuckle when they spotted two men sporting tweeds, plus fours and golf bags, heading north towards Cruddock Castle.

  “They must be the last of the caddies,” commented the Countess, pouring some tea from a chipped Spode pot into china cups and passing one to her companion.

  “Mr MacDuff and Mr Brown,” supplied Dr Watson.

  “How do you know their names?”

  “I checked the hotel register this morning.”

  “Oh, well done!” she praised. “So the tournament recommences today?”

  “Not according to Mrs Ardkinglas. The weather in this part of the world has been bleak. Torrential rain has reduced huge stretches of the golf course to one giant water hazard. Hence, the players are being allowed a few days to practice teeing off and putting and so forth while the fairways absorb the excess water.”

  “That should suit Miss Dee. She will have time to try out her new clubs. I hope she wins. It would be wonderful to have a woman win.”

  “It would be even more wonderful,” he delivered dryly, “to have the best player win.”

  6

  Graymalkin

  The words Scottish and castle in the same sentence always conjured in the Countess’s mind’s eye an image of something proudly romantic, but Graymalkin was not that sort of Scottish castle. It was a byword for a bygone time, a time of clannish feuds and warring chieftans, of brutal Viking invasions and of bloody English insurgencies, a time of rape and pillage and slaughter, a time when Life was the enemy and Death was a friend.

  Graymalkin was conceived in fear, constructed between and betwixt the killings, and was somehow still standing at the dawn of the twentieth century. It was a forbidding fortress dramatically and inhospitably perched on a lonely, windswept, isolated crag that jutted out of the frigid waters of Loch Maw. It crouched behind a curtain wall of grey stone like a deformed dwarf, squinty-eyed, crook-backed, pock-marked - watching, waiting, hulking down, bracing for the next inevitable onslaught from the hyperborean barbarian to sweep down from the north and charge across the icy black water, gathering speed and strength - an enemy that would rip out its heart and drain its blood and grind its bones.

  The fortress appeared impenetrable until you spotted the one and only gap in the wall that led into a cobble-stoned courtyard. Here, could be found a set of weathered steps that hugged a windowless wall for dear life. They led to the first floor where all the main rooms could be found, apart from the kitchens, storerooms and domestic rooms which were on the ground floor, and the bedrooms which were higher up. Waiting to greet them at the top of the steps was Mrs Ross. She looked the spitting image of Mrs Ardkinglas, with her dark hair, piercing eyes, and stern features, right down to the blowsy and austere, black widows-weeds. They could have been identical twins - and indeed they were.

  The fortress had not been electrified and its reliance on candlelight and wood fires recalled darker times. There were bare stone walls up to nine feet thick in some places, numerous corkscrew stairs punctuated with archways draped with heavy curtains linking different levels and rooms, designed to confound any invader who managed to make it thus far. There were also oak floors, blackened beams, stone lintels, plasterwork ceilings and leaded windows set in niches. The sitting room boasted a huge fireplace with a mantelpiece carved from a single piece of granite. Thankfully, there was not a moss-covered ceiling to be seen and the walls were not dripping with damp. Tartan featured in most of the furnishings and the walls were hung with faded Mortlake tapestries and animal portraits of dogs and deer and horses. The corridors rippled with scold’s bridles and medieval weapons of war and antlers by the score – and it was here that the north wind gained entry through every crack and keyhole, and whistled like a thousand baby banshees schooling themselves for doomsday.

  Despite this, the Countess fell in love with Graymalkin the moment she stepped over the threshold, and Dr Watson felt a lump come to his throat – it was the house of his boyhood dreams. They spent the day familiarizing themselves with the layout of the castle, from the dank dungeon gouged out of the rock right up to the head-spinning ramparts then went for a short walk to admire the cascading waters of Fickle Beck. Before they knew it, it was time to dress for dinner. The occasion called for something luxe – an evening gown in black velvet and pink satin, embroidered with floral garlands and black lace. It was the night of the séance at Cruddock Castle.

  7

  Dramatis Personae

  Cruddock Castle sat majestically on a plateau called Maw Crag. It was a gothic revival masterpiece constructed of pink stone that glowed salubriously in the crepuscular light of a crisp autumn evening. Dr Watson and Countess Volodymyrovna might have been forgiven for thinking they were gazing at it through rose-coloured spectacles as they caught sight of it from the window of their landau. At its noble feet unfolded a verdant paradise, Lammas moor, now a golf course dotted with small lakes, sand bunkers and spinneys of silver birch that stretched southward as far as the eye could see, and in the dreamlike distance, like a plein air sketch by a master of perspective, sat the hauntingly beautiful ruin of Lammas Abbey.

  The dreamy vision did not end at the front doors of Cruddock Castle either. The dream continued inside where the entrance hall was a sea of pink and white alabaster with a dramatic colonnade of pinkish marble leading the eye to a spectacular staircase wide enough for a pair of giants, punctuated with balconies and mezzanines, and at every turning, gilded candelabras glittering pinpoints of vivacious golden light.

  The dream unfolded ethereally as dreams do, leading one into a gothic fantasy of fan-vaulting and flamboyant overstatement, a drawing room so richly crammed with several hundred years of continuous acquisition the eye didn’t know where to look and could settle on nothing for any length of time before flitting to the next exquisite objet d’art as it does when encountering a treasure-trove in a museum for the first time.

  Dr Watson’s and Countess Volodymyrovna’s arrival was announced with pontifical stiffness by the Scottish butler, and it was at this moment that the dream bubble burst.

  Dr Watson clenched as introductions were conducted. Only gradually did he unclench, realising that tonight he would have no trouble matching names to faces and remembering who was who. This was no colourless collection of homogenous faces that blurred into boring verisimilitude, but a distinctive and distinguished group of guests amongst whom he felt honoured to be included.

  First and foremost was Lola O’Hara. The waterfall of red hair made her an absolute corker and though she turned out to be somewhat older than her promotional photo had led him to believe, he would always regard her as the standout beauty of her time. Wome
n who are endowed with voluptuous figures do not often possess the virtuosity of their more lithe sisters, but Lola was the exception that proved the rule. Every move she made was a symphony of grace and style. She held out her hand as if she expected it to be kissed, and the doctor did not dare disappoint.

  Second was his lordship, a tall, dark and debonair man in his early fifties, with the trademark curling moustache that was the immaculate hallmark of war heroes, romantic poets and dashing millionaires. As a host he was savoir faire personified, attentive to his guests, affable and inclusive, putting all at ease with a deftness of touch that would have made him the envy of any man who witnessed him in action. He balanced a cigarette in one hand and a whiskey in the other as he steered himself and the two newcomers around the gilded gorgeousness on display, handling introductions with aplomb.

  Third was the Rajah of Govinda. His fierce expression, his mahogany skin, his exotic accent, all contrived to make him a striking and impressive figure, once met, never forgotten. He had a lethal handshake and a deadly-looking ceremonial dagger attached to an elaborate gold belt that circled a sumptuously embroidered tunic. The collarless tunic came to mid-calf, and the neckline and cuffs were banded with semi-precious gemstones – beryl, cornelian, garnet and sardonyx, to name but a few. A pair of tight trousers covered his legs and some jewelled slippers covered his feet. But it was the turban that caught the eye and held it. It wrapped neatly around his noble head and in the forefront sat a huge ruby brooch the size of a bird’s egg which pinned into place a shortened white peacock feather that gave the disconcerting impression of a third eye.

  Fourth and fifth were the platinum twins – Catherine and Carter Dee, looking as primped and pampered as two puffed-up poodles parading down the Champs Elysees on a lazy Sunday afternoon, gazing with disdain at all the interlopers befouling the pavement.