by Anna Lord
“Someone must have suspected – Hecate perhaps?”
The watery eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes, you are a bright one. I saw that from our first meeting. Hecate would have guessed for herself whose hand was behind the deaths and whose hand was behind the witchy things, but she had blood on her hands already and so put about the story of supernatural happenings and unhappy spirits to confound the thing. It was a lark!”
“Why so? She is a Spiritualist. She believes in the spirit world.”
“That’s what made it so believable, dearie. When you want to spread an untruth always start with what is true.”
“What did you mean: blood on her hands already?”
“It was she who helped Crawford and his childless chit to spirit my babes away in the night. They could not have done it without her cunning.”
“That’s what you meant by: traffic in my affair. But why would Lady Moira do such an evil thing?”
“Why? Why? Why? Jealousy and hate - she resented me because of the hate she harboured for my sister who had had a child to her husband while she had not!”
“But Lady Moira did have a child to her husband.”
“Oh, no, dearie, she had a child to Crawford Dee’s father, the ghillie before Hamish.”
The Countess’s mind ticked over rapidly and in the rush she stammered. “But, but, that would make the current Lord Cruddock illegitimate!”
“Even more a bastard than Hamish!”
The repercussions were serious and far-reaching, though not where Hamish was concerned. There were no degrees of bastardry. You either were or you were not – and she should know it! “Who else knew of this?”
“Hecate, the queen of witches and the three weird sisters, tis all - we keep it to ourselves and the hell-broth bubbles - double, double, toil and trouble in the cauldron called resentment.”
Tormented and distracted to the point of madness, the Countess could stand it no longer. She pushed to her feet, rushed around the table and whipped off the blanket.
“Antlers! It was you who stole the antlers from Graymalkin the other night!”
“You looked out of your window,” tsk-tsked MacBee, scratching her head. “That was careless of me to stop and look back and to put the antlers on my noggin. But they were heavier than I thought and my arms were aching from the weight of them and I still had far to go.”
“I thought I must have been dreaming, but yesterday when I was giving Catherine and Carter a tour of Graymalkin I noticed the empty gap along the wall where some antlers had recently hung. Why did you take them?”
MacBee gave a lazy shrugged. “I thought I might do some decorating, spruce the old place up a bit. Who knows? I might get used to entertaining and hold an afternoon tea for my darlings to celebrate their success.” She began to sing. “Dandelion and nettle tea. Dundee cake for three! Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog!” She gave a short, shrill, hysterical laugh. “Do you want the antlers back? Take them, dearie, if that is what you came for.”
The Countess shook her head and returned to the table even more confused than before she whipped off the blanket, and tried to think how everything she had learned about what had happened long ago was related to what had recently happened and what was happening now.
“No, no, you may keep them.”
What did the purloining of the antlers suggest? Did it mean anything? Was it related to the murders? Only one fact sprang to mind.
“You are able to gain ingress and egress from the hotel, the tower and the castle at will?”
MacBee smiled furtively, an ugly, occult, evil smile that sent a cold shiver up the Countess’s spine. “I am a witch, a shape-shifter, a spell-spinner. I have the power to come and go as I please, dearie. I am the wind, the darkness, the night...”
“Oh, nonsense!” snapped the Countess, frustrated with herself, exasperated with her inability to see whatever it was that remained maddeningly elusive and out of reach - sensing too that she was being led by the nose, lured away from something MacBee did not want her to see. “Did you steal the Lammas tiara?”
MacBee did not laugh away the accusation and no blink of the eye betrayed her. “No, dearie, I did not. Why should I?”
“You stole the antlers,” reminded the Countess.
“I might make use of them in my decorating. Do you want them back?”
“No, no, keep them - you might want to destroy Lord Cruddock.”
“With the antlers?”
“By stealing the tiara!”
“I tried it on once and it did not fit. My head was too small. It fit Hecate’s fat head quite nicely. And it will fit that red-haired drab too. I have no call for tiaras.”
“Are you covering for your children? Is that it? Did they steal the tiara?”
“I cannot deny they are wrong-uns, like their father and his father before him and so on, but ambition is not the same as greed. I think not. I would look at the darkie if I were you.”
“Mr Chandrapur?”
“If that is what they call the one who creeps about like a cat. I know every hidey-hole and secret tunnel inside Cruddock Castle but I swear that black devil can walk through walls.”
The Countess frowned, she could not help thinking there was something she was missing; something MacBee was keeping back; something the weird sister did not want her to comprehend. Then she remembered Mr Brown.
“What about the fourth death?”
“Ah, yes, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. A few days before Mr Brown drowned in the well my sister was taking a fresh towel to his room and spotted a note he had been in the process of writing. He had ducked out to the latrine at the time. It said something like: I saw what you did. Meet me in the kitchen courtyard at twenty minutes after three on Thursday.”
“She mentioned the note to you?”
MacBee nodded. “I knew straight off that the note was meant for Carter and Catherine and that Mr Brown was intent on blackmailing them. My sister had given the girls the half day off, that’s why he picked that time. I lay in wait in the scullery. I saw when Carter arrived, painted up and clothed in theatrical tartan. I did not witness the murder because the scullery window does not give onto the well directly but when he hurried off I ran into the courtyard.”
“You threw the broom down the well?”
MacBee shook her head firmly. “No, he must have done that himself. It made me smile. There was nothing more for me to do. The man was dead so I went home.”
Dr Watson had been right about the blackmail and Mr MacDuff had been right about the clandestine meeting. How did he guess that? Did he see the note for himself? Was he in on the blackmail? There was something about Mr MacDuff that didn’t ring true.
“Thank you for the dandelion and nettle tea. It has a pleasing aftertaste.”
MacBee’s voice caught her at the door. “Are you going to hand my children over to the law?”
The Countess considered the question thoughtfully and slowly shook her head. “This Scottish play is not yet done. Something tells me there’s another act to go.”
MacBee seemed satisfied with her response. “Promise me you will not hand them over to the police until after the golf tournament finishes. Carter has had his moment in the sun. Catherine must have hers. Promise me.”
“Very well,” said the Countess uneasily. “You have my word.”
17
What Now?
“Sherlock would never have countenanced such a thing!” Dr Watson declared vociferously as he paced in front of the fireplace of their sitting room the next morning.
It was a dirty old day. Rain had set in early and had increased as the morning lengthened. There was no hope of venturing outdoors.
“I am not Sherlock,” reminded the Countess calmly as she stood at the window with her back to him, gazing pensively through the panes of glass pearled with raindrops.
“You claim to be his daughter!”
“Certainly, but to paraphrase Shakespeare
, I must be true to myself.”
“You claim to be a detective!”
“That does not make me a Witchfinder General.”
“Oh, good grief! A detective’s job is to solve the crime. We have done that!”
“We are missing something.”
“What are we missing?” he demanded, growing hot under the collar, not with pacing to and fro and not from the flames of the fire but from sheer exasperation.
“I don’t know yet.”
“You agreed the night before last that it was Carter and Catherine Dee.”
“I did not deny it,” she conceded, “but there is something else, something more. What about the missing tiara?”
“We came here to solve the golfing murders,” he reminded. “The tiara is an afterthought, an unrelated distraction. Not even his lordship is taking it seriously. Yesterday’s search was a mere charade, a vainglorious pantomime staged for the benefit of his distressed fiancé, his disapproving mother and Scotland Yard prior to their arrival any time soon.”
“Sherlock would never dismiss a theft in the midst of four murders.”
“Ah! You invoke him when it suits you and dismiss him when it does not!”
“Each action and reaction must be decided on its merit. We want the correct outcome, not the most convenient one.”
“If we do not act swiftly the Dees may slip through our fingers.”
“No. This is their home. This is their golf course. I doubt they will flee. Besides, where will they go? What will they live on?”
“The proceeds of the sale of the tiara will serve them very nicely in South Africa.”
The Countess turned to face him and shook her head. “No, I cannot believe it. I do not believe they stole the tiara.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The Countess did not wish to reveal anything about her meeting with MacBee yesterday. She still hadn’t thought through what she had learned and how it fitted in with what they had previously suspected. And though she felt guilty for not sharing the information with her companion in crime, she told herself he would merely run like a bull at a gate, or worse, act like a bull in a china shop, grunt and posture, smash and confuse, and in the destruction he would overlook something important. She needed time to think. This heated conversation was going some way to ordering her incoherent and jumbled thoughts but there was still something missing.
“The golf tournament?” she said sparingly. “It is their raison d’être. It has not yet played itself out. Mr Bancoe and Mr Larssensen will play a final round tomorrow for one last chance to better their score. And as much as the Dees might loath it, they must lump it. They will see it through to the end.”
Dr Watson grated out an unkind laugh. “The other two will not best the Dees no matter how many chances they get! Mr Bancoe concedes all is lost. You saw him at breakfast yesterday. He all but admitted it was hopeless. He doesn’t even want to play. It is another charade being staged for the benefit of Miss O’Hara’s paramour!”
“You don’t think it is being staged for the benefit of publicity?”
“That is a good point that Miss Dee mooted at breakfast. Miss O’Hara may have initiated it in the interests of her lover and his lordship may secretly acknowledge it in his heart of hearts though publicly disputing it, but he is not as stupid as he appears. Despite his drinking he is still an astute businessman who understands that we are on the cusp of a new century where the power of promotion will be paramount to the success of an enterprise. If he has a host of reporters on his doorstep and he wants to milk them for all they’re worth, why ever not?”
The Countess came to sit by the fire. She ran her finger over her lips as she tried to order her thoughts but all she could think was that her lips felt dry from the extreme cold and exposure to the elements. “You realize that if we expose the Dees as murderers then Mr Bancoe and Mr Larssensen will win the tournament by default.”
He sank into an adjacent armchair. “So be it! It happens! And what is the alternative? We let two murderers win? Is that what you are suggesting?”
“We do not know for certain they are murderers.” A moment of doubt crept up on the Countess. What if MacBee had been lying about the whole thing? Besides, MacBee had only witnessed the first murder and deduced from that event that her darlings committed the other crimes. But the theft of the tiara suggested that there was more than one crime happening here, which suggested there was more than one criminal or pair of criminals. “There are a few unanswered questions.”
“Such as? And don’t say the tiara. It is a mere sideshow. The likely culprit is Mr Chandrapur acting on behalf of the Rajah with the blessing of his lordship to avoid admitting he is selling it in order to avoid bankruptcy. That is why he is not bothered by the theft.”
His pronouncement made surprising sense and turned her train of thought on its head. “Very well, let us forget the tiara for the moment. There is Mr MacDuff.”
“MacDuff?”
“You said yourself he was no caddy.”
The doctor’s mouth puckered, pulled to left and right, then straightened itself out. “I concede there is a cloud hanging over him. But it may not necessarily be sinister. He may be an interloper - one of those men who try to ingratiate themselves with a famous person or event for the sake of big-noting themselves. That would explain his over-helpfulness with regards to Mr Brown’s murder. And twice I came across him in the golf pavilion on the days when he was not caddying. He was polishing Lord Cruddock’s clubs. It seemed a bit pathetic. I felt sorry for him.”
“I suppose he might be hoping to gain employment once the Lammermoor Golf Club takes off.”
“Yes, nothing sinister in that.” He pushed to his feet and tossed another log on the fire. “What other unanswered questions do you have?”
There were so many she didn’t know where to start, but they were all so vague. And she wasn’t sure they were related to the four deaths. There was the matter of the stolen antlers, but if she told him he would probably laugh in her face. There was the number 100 but he had already dismissed it as too far back in the mists of time to matter. There was the tea trade swindle and revenge best served cold but was it relevant? There was Lady Moira’s weird rhyme about birds during the séance but what did it mean? There was MacBee’s portentous threat against Lady Moira at the end of the play, or was it more of a desperate plea? There was the white fluff on the doctor’s sleeve but what did it have to do with the missing tiara? There was the orderly line of golf bags in the pavilion. What was it that disturbed her eye about one of the bags? There were the five bodkins. Why five? There was the map shaped like a tree that Mrs Ross was keen for her not to see. There was the fact Lord Cruddock and the ghillie were on a par regarding legitimacy, or should that be illegitimacy? There was Mr Chandrapur dropping the cup of tea at breakfast. Why did such a small thing seem significant?
The Countess clutched her head in frustration. Was any of it relevant? Or was it all just a meaningless sideshow, a historic distraction, a maddening jumble of coincidences? Was she too clever for her own good? Reading too much into things? Looking for answers to questions that had no answers because they weren’t even questions to begin with?
Right now the inside of her head felt like a game of Ouija with letters of the alphabet arranged haphazardly, random questions being voiced and answers being spelled out that didn’t make sense, a letter here, a blank space there, a number, and then just when she was beginning to discern a pattern, the whole thing being up-turned, thrown into disarray.
“None,” she sighed forlornly. “I have no other questions. But promise me you will not hand the Dees over to the police until the end of the golf tournament.”
“I don’t like to make promises like that,” he said gruffly though his tone was less blunt and less hostile than before. He was yielding.
“Promise me,” she pleaded softly.
“Catherine Dee must have gotten under your skin,” he needled unfairly.
&
nbsp; “Perhaps,” she conceded, wincing inwardly, yielding a little herself, “but I think it is important that we give it more time.”
“Why? What good will it serve?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted ruefully. “But there is nothing to be done today. Tomorrow you will caddy one last time and then we will go to dinner at the castle.”
“Oh, yes,” he remembered, “the wedding eve dinner.”
“I would like to question Lord Cruddock and the Rajah in private about the missing tiara tomorrow night.”
“Be discrete, for goodness sake. We don’t want the Dees to get the wind up and bolt. And we don’t need another murder!”
She dismissed his melodramatic concerns. “I am a model of discretion. Besides, I don’t think you want to throw the wedding into disarray by arresting the niece and nephew of Lord Cruddock on the eve of the big event.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, we want to be damn sure we have our facts right. Two more days cannot hurt. Very well,” he promised, hoping he would not live to regret his decision.
Dr Watson and Countess Volodymyrovna arrived unfashionably early for the wedding eve dinner at Cruddock Castle. The pontifical butler showed them into the drawing room and offered them a drink while they waited for the others to join them. He explained that Miss Dee and her brother were in the music room; Mr Bancoe and Mr Larssensen were in the billiard room; Lord Cruddock and the Rajah of Govinda were in his lordship’s private sanctum; Miss O’Hara was in her boudoir; and Lady Moira, Miss Lambert and Judge Cruddock had not yet arrived from Mawgate Lodge.
The Countess’s ears pricked at the name. “Judge Cruddock?”
The butler popped a cork on a bottle of French bubbly for the Countess and poured a whiskey and water for the doctor. “Judge Lennox Cruddock is Lord Cruddock’s father’s cousin. He arrived a day ahead of the wedding as he had to travel all the way from Glasgow and needed time to recuperate from the journey. He has opted to stay at Mawgate Lodge as he does not enjoy large gatherings since becoming slightly deaf. Moreover, his Scottie dog has become aggressive in old age and tends to snap at anyone who makes a fuss. Last year Nessie bit Lady Trefoyles on the hand, nipped the Countess of Lomond on the ankle and sank some fangs into his lordship’s leg. Nessie has also become incontinent and tends to leave puddles in inappropriate places. Miss O’Hara complained that all her shoes smelled of urine during Nessie’s last visit. Three pairs of silk court shoes had to be burned as the ammonia smell could not be shifted despite the housemaid’s best efforts,” he finished sniffily.
