by John Burke
At end of lunch, before getting back to their researches, Morwenna said: ‘You know, I reckon we do need to pay a visit to the site itself. And soon. We do need to establish exactly what artefacts are needed where. At the moment we’ve got just the bare bones of a croft. It needs to be filled with authentic echoes. How are you fixed?’
Lesley made it politely clear that she was going home for the weekend; unless, she added with what she hoped was a nice balance between amenability and scepticism, there was something urgent to be done. ‘I do need to check one or two final references in my proofs before I send them back.’
Morwenna was swift to say that of course the weekend would be a refreshing break for both of them, giving them time to assess or reassess their priorities. And, smiling, she wouldn’t dream of causing any troubles in the Torrance household.
‘Your husband.’ She made it sound chatty and relaxed. ‘He’s a Borderer?’
‘From way back, yes.’
‘And you — before you married, you were …?’
Lesley was instinctively sure that the woman had checked on every detail of this kind. But she said lightly: ‘I was a Gunn. From the north-east coast. Some distance from the Borders. What you might call a mixed marriage, Highlander and Lowlander.’
‘No sense of old antagonisms still smouldering?’
‘If you’re aiming to stir up a feud between my husband and myself, I don’t think it’d work.’
‘I wouldn’t dare. As a matter of interest, a lot of Gunns settled in Ontario.’ As they came out into the sunlight, she glanced at her watch. ‘Right, what’s next on the itinerary? Let’s wrap up the week. I’m in your hands.’
They spent the afternoon in the Pentland Folk Museum. Morwenna’s easy-going mood seemed to change as time went on. She sneered at a perfectly authentic linen mutch, complete with a wisp of string for tying under the owner’s chin; but was attracted by what to Lesley was obviously a modern reproduction of a bannock spade, made from compacted wood shavings. At the end of the afternoon, without warning she came out with what sounded almost like a challenge which had to be answered.
‘I’ve just remembered. I think I’m right. One of your ancestors who didn’t bother getting to Ontario could have been George Gunn. Ex-Army type.’
‘I’m afraid none of us ever dug very deep into family history.’
‘This one stayed on as under-manager of the Sutherlands’ properties in Assynt.’ Her conversational tone hadn’t changed, yet Lesley felt a chill accusation behind it. ‘Head of the clan, too — though he did nothing to stop their evictions from Kildonan.’
*
A colour supplement in one of the Sunday papers had a feature about Morwenna Ross and her current researches in Scotland. It devoted two paragraphs to the search for a colourful piece of clan history — the Ross Tapestry, a tantalizing mystery.
‘Makes a good story,’ said Nick. ‘But what’s so mysterious about it?’
‘I can’t help thinking of it as one of those old wives’ tales. A fantasy tradition like the fairy flag of Dunvegan, the predictions of the Braham Seer, that sort of thing.’
‘If you can’t believe in it,’ said Nick affectionately, ‘it probably never existed. Not exactly in the class of the Bayeux Tapestry, anyway.’
‘That was a great work of communal art, celebrating a great victory. Any humble Ross needlework could hardly have been in that league.’
‘Have any of your friends in London heard of this old treasure?’
‘Fleeting references in books, yes. About as reliable as a volume of Scottish fairy tales.’
‘Aren’t things liable to get out of hand? You’ll drown yourself in paperwork. This business of tracing your ancestors has become all the rage. Look at that page of ads.’ He turned the paper over. ‘All kinds of firms offering research in various magazines and on web sites. Modern technology bringing people closer together than we could ever have dreamed in the past.’
‘Sometimes with unpredictable results.’
‘Yes. Mind where you go, my love. I mean, this Morwenna female. Can it genuinely matter all that much to a well-heeled young woman with so many other activities all round her? Just playing along with her father-in-law’s senile notions, waiting to inherit while making herself indispensable — playing it clever?’
‘No, there’s more to it than that. She really is driven by … well … something. I wouldn’t want to be one to get in her way.’
The phone rang. She was the closer, and picked it up, though half expecting the caller to be ready to plunge into one of Nick’s local problems.
Beth Crichton was sorry to interrupt her at home, but felt there was news she would want to think about before she came into the office tomorrow. Nick raised a quizzical eyebrow as Lesley said, ‘But how much damage … actual artefacts or … oh, nothing we’ve collected so far then, but … no, I’m sure she will …’
As she put the receiver down, Nick said: ‘There are few things in the world more irritating than listening to one end of somebody else’s phone conversation. Now, do fill in the gaps for me.’
‘Seems that somebody’s already getting obstructive. There’s been some damage to the croft and the study centre. And the workers on the site don’t like the atmosphere.’
‘Too windy for them? Or plagued by ghosts coming out of the glens?’
‘Something more substantial than ghosts, by the sound of it.’
But she was haunted for the rest of the evening by the thought of spirits from the past — beings driven out bodily yet still somehow clinging with their roots in the soil, an earth from which they refused to be wrenched.
7
Walking up the familiar steps this morning, under the flutter of the Ross flag and in through the familiar side door beside the massive gilt-handled main door, Beth was at once aware of the equally familiar vibrations of an administrative panic. Instead of being in their usual offices, or the library or the computer room, key staff were clustered in the ground-floor reception room.
Ogilvie was in his element. Things going wrong were a justification for his innate pessimism about other people’s competence. Like a general summoned to the front to sort out tactics in a military campaign that had struck an unforeseen pocket of resistance, he knew which subordinates to blame, which ones to liven up, and which general procedures to be urgently implemented.
‘I’ve already briefed Pearce and McLellan and they’ll be taking all preliminary legal measures required.’ His voice rose half an octave on such occasions and he jabbed out each phrase emphatically as if to overrule objections before anyone had actually made any. ‘I’m preparing an urgent visit to the scene of these depredations myself. See what security measures have been neglected. Or never properly applied.’ Whatever the alternatives, he would predictably opt for the one which gave him most excuse to be peevish. ‘These contractors nowadays … security measures written into their agreement, for all the notice they ever take … I was unhappy with that company from the start.’
Which was unfortunate, thought Beth, since he had been the one to engage them.
‘What’s happened?’ She edged in beside Luke, and smiled a brief good-morning at Lesley Torrance.
Rather than showing impatience at having to go through the facts again for the latecomer, Ogilvie was happy to hear his own voice, shocked and denunciatory, cataloguing the outrage.
It appeared that the men at the restoration site had downed tools because their work was being systematically sabotaged. A section of wall put up one day would be reduced to a heap of stones overnight. The temporary access road needed for a JCB and supply trucks was repeatedly blocked by rubble or by a subsidence that could not have been natural.
‘No such thing as a night watchman?’ said Morwenna, tight-lipped.
‘They had one, but he handed in his notice. Probably bribed by that cabal of local landowners. I’ve said all along we’d have trouble with them. That’s why we had to engage a Glasgow firm to do the work
. There aren’t many skilled workers living in the region, and those that do are still as scared of the gentry’ — Ogilvie spat the word out — ‘as their old folk were. Haven’t changed much over the centuries, these Highland layabouts.’
Beth felt Luke flinch beside her. He was waiting, as she was, for Morwenna Ross’s reaction to this ill-judged slur on folk about whom, after all, this whole project had been set up.
Very coolly Morwenna said: ‘I’ve been thinking it was high time for a visit to the site anyway. Now is as good a time as any for a full appraisal. Analyse the setting for artefacts we’re accumulating, and at the same time see what these other problems involve.’
‘Och, I’d not be advising your coming yet, dear lady. Not until we’ve sorted out this setback.’ Ogilvie tried an avuncular smile. ‘Mr Ross would never forgive me if I let you run into any unpleasantness.’
‘Mr Ross has complete faith in my ability to cope with any situation which may arise. That’s why he sent me. And he sure will want my appraisal of the situation.’ She glanced about the room. ‘Who do you reckon we should take? I guess we’ll need Lady Torrance along to give her judgment on the placing of domestic objects — provided the basic structure hasn’t been significantly damaged. And in view of this recent disturbance, her past police experience may prove most valuable.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t flash a warrant card at folk any more,’ said Lesley.
‘Luke, you have all the legal and historical records off by heart. We may need you to pick out relevant bits of them on site while we’re evaluating the overall problem. And Simon’ — it was a patronizing rather than friendly use of his Christian name — ‘I’m sure I can leave all transport arrangements in your capable hands.’
‘Naturally. But I do still think —’
‘Shall we fix to leave an hour from now, say?’
As they all moved out of the room, Luke said to Beth: ‘And what will you get up to while we’re away?’
‘Any excitement that offers. Such as checking on our regular full-page ads in the autumn tourist brochures, and sorting out the left-overs from that last trade festival. My life is all go!’
*
The party had been gone less than half an hour when the switchboard asked Beth if she wanted to take a call from a Mr Randal Grant. She was surprised and a bit disturbed by her own readiness to do just that.
‘Miss Crichton? Nice to hear your voice again.’ His own voice was tinged with a mixture of friendly mockery and something mildly suggestive. She ought not to have found it agreeable, but she did. ‘May seem a bit pushy,’ he went on, ‘but I was wondering if you’d like to see me at work.’
‘I think you gave me a very clear impression of your work when we last met.’
‘The results of some of it, yes. Not the actual creative bit itself.’
Shockingly she heard herself saying, almost like some pouting little starlet: ‘We’re not discussing your speciality of nude poses, are we?’
A faint intake of breath whispered in the earpiece. ‘Not unless you want to make a definite date.’
‘Which I don’t.’
‘A pity. But I wasn’t having any such hopes, anyway. I merely wondered if you’d care to come along on an assignment I’ve got today. Get an idea how I go about things. Decide whether you want to use me. I mean, whether the mighty Ross empire would like to use me on its current project.’
Naturally he was following up his first approach. A nudge, a reminder of the reason for their earlier contact. Of course he wanted to contribute to the programme — and get paid for it.
‘I’ve already made a note of your qualifications,’ she said.
‘Oeuvre,’ he said. ‘Please call it my oeuvre. Sounds so much more dignified. And expensive.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘just what did you mean by me watching you at work? I mean, I can’t commission you to do anything specific for us. Not right at this moment, anyway.’
‘I have a customer. One of my come-into-our-stately-home shoots. Glossy magazine feature, with gracious chatelaine allowing the hoi polloi a look at her family treasures. A pretty routine job, as far as I’m concerned. But you could come along and pretend to be my assistant. Carry a bag, flourish the light meter, look efficient — if the act appeals to you?’
‘Why me? You’ve surely got your usual team. People like you usually work with a fairly close little group.’
‘I just hoped to impress you with my skill. So you’d engage me forthwith.’
She knew there must be any number of off-putting answers. But again somebody else seemed to be using her reflexes. ‘When would this be?’
‘This very afternoon. Rather short notice. But I gather the lady prefers to have it done while her husband’s away up north, or something.’
‘And where? Some reconditioned castle in the Borders?’
‘Not that far away. Lockhart House, off the Pencaitland road.’
‘Just a minute.’ A chill was tingling in the back of Beth’s neck. ‘That’s a bit weird.’
‘A lot of these old piles are.’
‘No, I mean … isn’t that the Ferguson home?’
‘It is indeed. As you’ll see, I deal only with the finest families.’
While the husband’s away up north … She had a creepy feeling she knew where that husband might be right now.
‘You do realize who the lady of the house is?’ she said.
‘Mrs Ferguson, not surprisingly.’
‘Mrs Ferguson now, yes. Nadine Ferguson. Before that she was a Mrs Ross. Our Mr Ross. James Fergus Ross’s second wife. A very nasty divorce. There’d always been bad feeling between the Rosses and this Ferguson character, and that didn’t help.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not up to speed on all these old dynastic feuds.’ He waited a moment, then said: ‘Well, then?’
‘Well what?’
‘I mean, this adds a whole new dimension to my invitation. Right now you’re all busy tracking down Ross memorabilia. Wouldn’t it help to snoop around his ex’s place? Her husband his old rival, and wife-stealer, and whatever? Might even find something that’s … strayed.’
Such as the mysterious Ross Tapestry? Beth gulped. ‘That’s crazy. I mean, we’ve no reason to suppose … that is …’
‘But you’re dying to have a look, aren’t you?’
*
Lockhart House was set back behind a high stone wall following every curve of the road. Each stone gatepost was topped with a mythical creature which Beth did not have time to identify. Inside, the long drive curved more crookedly than the wall, cunningly withholding the view of the house itself until the last possible moment, when it spread out beyond a three-arched bridge over an artificial burn.
Nadine Ferguson was waiting for them on the terrace, a nineteenth-century addition of incongruous yet impressive Caithness slabs to an eighteenth-century Palladian house. She had posed herself against one of the columns of the façade, a gracious hostess who would have looked more at home outside an expensive London or Edinburgh night club than this East Lothian retreat. She was wearing a bright floral Versace silk shirt and white slacks tight enough to show that her hips were too wide. She carried a Louis Vuitton bag for which she could have had little immediate use, and which she ostentatiously laid on a gleamingly polished table in the entrance lobby through which she led her guests. Above the main door was a coat of arms of dubious provenance.
Beth had an apprehensive moment when Mrs Ferguson stared hard at her, and tried desperately to remember whether they had ever met on Ross premises or at some official function. But of course she hadn’t joined the Foundation until after the divorce. The woman’s stare of possible disapproval might have been due to her not having expected the photographer to bring a young woman along with him, distracting his full attention from his hostess.
All publicity photographs of James Fergus Ross and Nadine together had been discarded from the files on orders from head office after the divorce. But Luke, of course, ha
d kept his own private little hoard. Beth recalled a couple of studies of the younger woman leaning forward to expose her cleavage while fawning up to Ross, who in turn had been caught with one of those simpering, silly grins that lecherous old men with younger partners produce for the camera. She was some years older now, but still leaned instinctively in that same way towards Randal.
Old habits died hard. Nadine Witherington had been a footloose Sloane, or its Morningside equivalent, whose father had given her a large packet of shares in a freight carrying firm which James Fergus Ross had intentions of taking over. She had done fashion shows for charity and featured regularly in the gossip columns of magazine colour supplements, once or twice in drugs investigations, once in and out of rehab, with bleary yuppies usually in attendance … until she began to realize that the endless partying was beginning to show. At a shareholders’ meeting addressed by Ross on a flying visit from Toronto she made sure of a personal introduction. It was time to give up the raves and hangovers and settle down with a rich widower, provided the accommodation was up to her exacting standards. And when she grew bored of all that, there was the thrill of being back in the gossip columns with tales of an affair and a high society divorce: the sort of thing that so many of her fashionable friends indulged in.
Here, her second husband’s residence was impressive enough. It had once been the home of the Keirs of Traprain, one of the few Lowland families to join Prince Charles Edward’s forces when they reached Edinburgh on their way south into England. Dispossessed after Culloden, their estate was taken over by a Northumbrian Forster, and passed through several families over the years. Inside, the ceilings of the house were a riot of ornamental plasterwork, in one room with the rose and thistle of the Union, in others harp and fleur-de-lys motifs. Moving from one room to another, Beth had little time to inspect each one in detail, but was conscious of cracks and discoloration in ceilings and window embrasures, musty carpets, and an overriding dampness. In the main drawing room, a frieze of classical motifs was broken by pseudo-marble heads of Greek or Roman gods, chipped into what might have been deliberate copies of ancient busts or a sign of neglect. They contrasted oddly with heads of shooting trophies jutting out of walls in no sort of balanced sequence.
