The Lammas Curse

by Anna Lord

  “Steady now. Steady as she goes,” he said with each uncertain step until she was back on terra firma - heart thrashing so fiercely she thought it might burst.

  “What the hell made you climb those stones?” he rebuked, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand now that the peril has passed and Thane had ceased his frantic barking.

  The Countess felt momentarily tongue-tied. She couldn’t very well blurt out that Miss Dee had recommended the view from the parapet. Though why had she? Did she know it was dangerous? Did she send her up there deliberately?

  “I, er, I thought it might offer a good view of the loch,” she stuttered, heart still jammed in her throat, thrashing madly. “I, er, I didn’t realize it was unsafe.”

  “Unsafe!” He took hold of her elbow and forced her around the heap of rubble to the other side where the topmost stone projected, suspended in fresh air. “It’s an accident waiting to happen!” he growled, stepping back from the stones and looking earnestly at the figure emerging sheepishly from behind a wall. “I will have some of the men dismantle this stack of stones before there is a fourth death! You can mention my intent to Lady Moira, but don’t allow her to embroil you in an argument on my account. Let me handle her objections. And don’t mention my plan to his lordship. I will speak to him personally.”

  Miss Lambert nodded to show she understood before turning to the Countess. “I don’t think you have been introduced,” she said, cheeks turning cherry pink. “Countess Volodymyrovna may I present Mr Hamish Ross, the ghillie from Cruddock Castle.”

  Ah! Of course! Miss Lambert’s passionate defence of ghillies suddenly made sense! She had assumed Hamish Ross to be the brother or uncle of Mrs Ross, but that was clearly not the case. Hamish Ross was about thirty years of age, strong and muscular, with a hardy handsome countenance and a mane of reddish-blond hair that is often called strawberry and goes hand in hand with a sprinkling of freckles.

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” the Countess offered with terrific understatement when she could trust her voice not to stutter. “I hate to think what might have happened if you had not been present. You must be Mrs Ross’s son?”

  He whistled for his dog, which came bounding instantly to his side. “I’m heading to Graymalkin now to see my mother. I’ll walk with you if you are going back that way and have no objection.”

  “I was on my way to Graymalkin too,” interposed Miss Lambert, cheeks glowing, “when I bumped by chance into Mr Ross. Lady Moira sent me to invite you to afternoon tea - 4 o’clock at Mawgate Lodge - and Dr Watson too, of course,” she added with a flustered smile. “Lady Moira believes that if we fortify ourselves with sandwiches and teacake and cups of Mr Twining before going to Cruddock Castle for the rehearsal we will survive Miss O’Hara’s tongue lashing. Miss O’Hara can be a bit of martinet when it comes to rehearsals and she will not allow supper to be served until about nine or ten o’clock when we are all famished and dying of thirst and totally exasperated with our failings to please her. I’ll walk with you and say hello to Uncle John.”

  “Martinet!” Mr Ross laughed harshly as they set off, Thane leading the way. “Miss O’Hara is more like a Witchfinder General pricking everyone with a sharp-tongued bodkin to make them bleed!”

  Miss Lambert and Mr Ross were invited to stay to lunch, a hearty Scotch broth, but they did not linger long at table which was for the best. It gave the Countess and the doctor time to study their lines. They retreated to separate quarters and stayed put until it was time to change into evening clothes. But the Countess’s focus was not all it could have been. Her mind kept circling back to the moment they entered the kitchen and found Mrs Ross studying a piece of paper on the kitchen table. The housekeeper had scooped up the paper and shoved it into a dresser drawer but not before the Countess had caught a glimpse of it. She was certain it was the same paper as the night before because of its size, and though it had a tracery of lines all over it, it did not appear to be a map. The lines appeared to be in the shape of a large tree!

  Jackdaw Wood loomed ahead of them and each time it seemed more and more like driving a carriage through an empty cathedral. The reverential hush, the pillars of trees, the lofty vaulted canopy, the feeling of being in a sacred place - all these things impressed themselves on the mind by degrees.

  Emerging from the wood reinforced the sensation. They came out of the woody darkness into what seemed like a blaze of light, the same as lurching from the dimness of a church into blinding daylight. They were passing the Marmion Hydro Hotel, no intention of stopping, the horses picking up speed, when they spotted the caddy for Mr Larssensen sprinting down the drive, frantically waving his arms, signalling for them to halt. Fedir jerked on the reins.

  “What is it?” called Dr Watson, poking his head out of the carriage window.

  “There’s been an accident!” the caddy shouted, breathless with running. “It’s Mr Brown!”

  Dr Watson immediately flung open the door and told the caddy to hop inside, instructing Fedir to detour to the hotel.

  “What has happened?” the doctor pressed as the horses galloped down the drive.

  “Mr Brown fell down the old well! They are dragging him up as we speak!”

  “I see,” murmured the doctor gravely, wondering how such a thing was possible. Old wells usually had a cover to avoid exactly such accidents. “It is Mr MacDuff, is it not?”

  “Yes,” the man confirmed, still panting.

  “My name is Dr John Watson.”

  “I know who you are,” replied the caddy. “I recognized your name on the hotel register when you first arrived. But it is not because you are a doctor that I decided to hail you down when I spotted your carriage. I know that you partnered the famous detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and I thought you might be able to shed some light on the death of Mr Brown.”

  “Death?” echoed the doctor as the carriage pulled up in a flurry of dust and they all leapt out, including the Countess who had listened to the brief exchange without interrupting.

  Mr Brown’s accident was the fourth fatal accident since the tournament commenced, and the Countess quickly realised it might well have been the fifth if not for the timely intervention of Mr Hamish Ross, though she did not share that realization with her friend.

  They passed through a secluded gate set in a stone wall at the rear of the hotel and stopped dead. Five men were tugging on a rope, hauling up a body with a heave-ho like sailors raising anchor. The old well was set in the paving stones just outside the kitchen, and yes, to one side was a wooden cover that could not have moved itself. The body came up with one last heave and plopped onto the stones like a giant fish stuck on the end of a giant hook. In reality, the hook protruded through the man’s thigh which was oozing blood and gore, indicating the body had not been long down the well. It was covered with filth and slime. Closer examination revealed that the large hook was in fact a meat hook, the sort used for hanging carcasses in a salting room.

  “Good God!” the doctor exclaimed with disgust. “Was there no other way to retrieve the body?”

  “None,” replied a man with a hare-lip, speaking for all. “The well is not as deep as it used to be since the cover went on but it has always been narrow, built for one bucket at a time, and the winding mechanism was removed some years ago.”

  The doctor turned to the Countess. “You may wish to go inside and join Mrs Ardkinglas. This is not a pretty sight.”

  She met his gaze with defiant determination. “This is nothing compared to what we witnessed in Devon,” she reminded reproachfully.

  “So be it,” he said, recognizing the futility of entering into an argument he had no chance of winning. “Who removed the cover from the well?” he asked of the hare-lip man.

  “It was already removed,” said hare-lip.

  “Well, it didn’t remove itself,” pointed out the doctor. “Someone must have shifted it.”

  “Yes,” agreed hare-lip, setting off a snigger of smiles among the other
men.

  “Who discovered the body?” addressed the Countess sternly before the men got too cocky and started running rings around them.

  “Me,” said a shy lad who had been hanging back by the kitchen doorway, he looked about twelve years of age. “I was taking slops out to the pigs and saw the cover pushed to one side and peered down the well and saw a pair of boots poking up with some legs attached to ‘em.”

  There was another chorus of sniggers followed by: Good lad, Robbie. Brave lad. Bonny boy. You did good, young Robert. The boy coloured and smiled with embarrassment.

  “Can you say how long ago this was?” pursued the Countess.

  Robbie’s brow puckered and he shook his head. “I cried out right away but I cannot say how much time has passed since. There was a lot of folk coming and going to have a stare, even Mrs Ardkinglas came out and it made her ill to look on it, she cupped her mouth and ran inside, and then someone shouted for me to fetch a rope and then someone shouted to fetch a big meat hook. I was running to and fro and forgot all about the pigs.”

  The Countess opened her beaded evening purse. “Come here, Robbie,” she said. “I am going to give you a shilling for being brave and acting sensibly.” When he stepped up proud as punch to collect his shilling she whispered in his ear. “I will give you another shilling if you can remember anything else about what you saw or what was said. I don’t want you to tell me now. I want you to think on it and come to me when you are ready. I am staying at Graymalkin. Do you know how to find it?”

  The young boy slipped the shiny shilling into his pocket and nodded. “Yes, m’lady,” he whispered back.

  “Good lad,” she smiled luminously. “And if you keep it a secret between us there will be a third shilling in it.”

  Dr Watson took over the interrogation. “Did anyone witness this accident?”

  His question set off a series of sniggers that culminated in several loud grunts and snorts.

  “Accident!” mocked hare-lip. “It weren’t no accident! A man don’t plunge headfirst down a well in broad daylight by accident! He were pushed!”

  Dr Watson scowled at his own stupidity and addressed himself to the other caddy. “When was the last time you saw Mr Brown?”

  Mr MacDuff who had been observing proceedings keenly, stepped forward. He seemed to have his reply at the ready and it was rich in detail. “We caddied eighteen holes this morning and returned to the hotel for our lunch. It had just gone midday. After lunch, Mr Brown and I had a cigarette out on the east terrace because Mrs Ardkinglas does not like us to smoke in the dining room or in our bedrooms. There was no cold wind so we enjoyed a second cigarette. After that, I went upstairs to have a kip and I presumed Mr Brown did the same. I was woken by the young lad when he screamed out. That’s my room up there.” He pointed to an open window on the second floor. “I looked at my pocket watch. It was twenty minutes past three. I put on my boots and rushed down the stairs and recognized the boots down the well as those belonging to Mr Brown. I shouted the order to get a rope. Someone else shouted for a meat hook. I do not know who that was. As the rope and hook were being fetched I spotted your carriage through the open gate and ran as fast as I could to flag you down.”

  “Thank you,” said Dr Watson. “May I commend you on a most thorough account of events in timely order? But I take it by your words that you do not know what caused Mr Brown to come into the kitchen courtyard?”

  “No,” said Mr MacDuff with a sorry shake of his head.

  “I spotted a poacher in the wood today,” volunteered one of the men.

  Dr Watson spun round to look at the speaker with the large axe at his feet. “What is your name?”

  “Ned, sir. I am the wood chopper,” he replied respectfully, doffing his cloth cap, noting the doctor’s eyes resting on the axe. “I saw a man in Crow Wood. He was moving furtive-like. I thought he might be a poacher but he coulda been a robber.”

  Several of the men murmured and nodded their heads. They thought this villain lurking in the woods settled the matter. Though why a robber would choose to remove a wooden cover from a well and shove a complete stranger down it head first is a question they did not ask themselves. A robber might kill to avoid being apprehended but he would choose a much more straightforward method so that he could make a run for it back into the wood before being discovered. No, the explanation did nothing to clarify matters.

  Dr Watson checked his pocket watch. Time was ticking away and daylight was fast fading and he was mindful of not incurring the wrath of Lady Moira by arriving any later than they already would do. And he could not make a close examination of the body without soiling his clothes and arriving at Cruddock Castle covered in fetid slime, thus upsetting Miss O’Hara’s rehearsal. He turned back to Mr MacDuff who had given the impression of being a man with common-sense, able to think on his feet.

  “I cannot stay any longer discussing this matter. I have business elsewhere,” he announced in clipped tones. “I will return tomorrow to examine the body. I am entrusting you and Ned to transport the body of Mr Brown into the cellar. I want the cellar locked and I want you to hold the key until I call for it. Do not let it out of your sight. I want the cover left exactly where it is lies now. No one is to touch anything. Please inform Mrs Ardkinglas that I want Mr Brown’s bedroom door locked and I want no one to enter the room until I give the say so. Any man or woman who fails to follow my instructions will have to answer to Scotland Yard when they arrive to investigate this murder. Yes, murder,” he stressed volubly, putting the wind up the men assembled in the courtyard by invoking The Yard who most likely would not turn up at all, and the only person to look into the death would be the easily intimidated constable from Duns.

  “Would you like me to hold onto the bedroom key too?” asked Mr MacDuff.

  “Yes,” said Dr Watson.

  “And would you like me to take the names of the men gathered here?” continued Mr MacDuff, proving his worth. “I have a notebook and a pencil in my pocket. I use them for keeping score at golf.”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Dr Watson. “Scotland Yard will be interested to interview everyone and will want the names of the men who are present. Well done, Mr MacDuff. I leave matters in your capable hands. I will inform his lordship of what has transpired here this afternoon and I will inform Mr Bancoe that he no longer has a caddy. I will return first thing tomorrow.”

  “Do you think that was wise?” posed the Countess when they were back in the carriage, heading north once more.

  “How do you mean?” queried the doctor.

  “Leaving Mr MacDuff in charge,” she clarified. “For all we know he could be the murderer. He had ample opportunity to shove Mr Brown down the well and there could be any number of motives.”

  “Such as?”

  “He may be jealous of his counterpart or jealous of the other golfers because he is a golfing tragic who never quite made the mark and begrudges them their success. Or he may want to sabotage the golf tournament for reasons of personal vengeance against his lordship – a lot of crofter families were forced to leave their homes and many ended up in workhouses when sheep farming on a large scale became more profitable for the landowners - or because he is a Spiritualist who believes the Lammas moor is a sacred site that should be left undisturbed.”

  “Or he may simply be a madman who enjoys killing,” gibed Dr Watson.

  She bit her tongue while she digested the sardonic retort but the matter of the fourth death overrode her bruised ego. “This death is different to the others.”

  “How so?”

  “There was no Wicca connection. I scanned the courtyard several times searching for some sort of symbol but try as I might I could not spot anything to do with witchcraft.”

  “Someone may have destroyed it before we arrived,” he suggested.

  “It is vital that you don’t drop any hint of it when you question the men tomorrow, and don’t eliminate Mrs Ardkinglas from your inquisition, though I think it will be youn
g Robbie who may be the most forthcoming. He won’t be on his guard like the men, he has nothing to hide, and he was first on the scene. If something symbolic of witchcraft was removed he would be the one to know it. I bribed him with an extra shilling and encouraged him to come to Graymalkin.”

  “Shilling or no, he may be too frightened to walk through Jackdaw Wood. I can question him tomorrow before I speak to anyone else.”

  She shook her head firmly. “No, don’t quiz him at all. I don’t want any of the men, including MacDuff, to think that the boy remembers anything other than what he has already imparted. If he doesn’t turn up at Graymalkin by the day after tomorrow I shall pay him a discrete visit.”

  Mawgate Lodge was an old stone gatehouse that had recently been extended to accommodate the dowager and her retinue of servants after the old lady announced she would not deign to live under the same roof as that Irish actress. It could best be described as a stately cottage - large but not grand, homely rather than ornate - the recent addition constructed in the traditional manner by craftsmen who took pride in simplicity rather than ostentation. It was a handsome and sturdy house that sat comfortably in its rural setting and was a perfect example of the architectural principles espoused by proponents of the Arts and Crafts Society, a new style that was proving more popular in Scotland than in England.

  They settled in the south parlour, furnished in an unfussy style in keeping with the clean and uncluttered lines of the house, which gave onto the loch via a bay window and on a clear day offered a good view of Graymalkin at the opposite end.

  Dr Watson felt torn between not spoiling the afternoon tea by mentioning the murder or mentioning it and thereby learning something useful from the two women. The latter won.

  “I must tender an apology,” he began tentatively. “The Countess and I arrived late because we were called upon to detour to the Marmion Hydro Hotel. Mr Brown was this afternoon found dead.”