‘It would be taking a liberty, of course, but, as we have already put ourselves in an equivocal position, I think it cannot do much to darken our offence. Perhaps though we ought first to find out whether your friend is alone in the house.’
‘Well, I know where the kitchen regions are, so, swinging my bicycle chain in the approved fashion, I’ll go along, shall I, and take a gander around?’
Without waiting for an answer, she walked down the hall and through a green-baize door at the end of it. She came back almost at once and reported that nobody seemed to be about.
‘Did you try the kitchen door?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Locked, but neither bolted not barred, so the Kirkintillochs may have gone shopping.’
‘The…?’
‘Oh, the old wife told me they came from Kirkintilloch. Their name’s Corrie. And that’s another funny thing. If Mrs Grant’s description of the laird was correct, the Corries aren’t a bit the kind of servants you’d think he’d engage, nor would they be likely to stay if he did. They’re really decent people.’
‘I think, you know, that people take the work they can get. Now I will give one more glance at your sleeping friend and then we will take to the boat, if that is what you would like.’
The red-bearded man was still asleep, so down to the boathouse they went.
‘Unless you wish for my services at the oars, madam, I suggest I stay here and apprise you with three short blasts on my police whistle if the gentleman wakes up, or strangers approach,’ said George, who appeared to be enjoying himself. Dame Beatrice agreed to this plan, but asked whether he would not be bored if they left him by himself. After all, he was one of the party.
‘Thank you for inquiring, madam,’ he said, ‘but I have my pocket sketching block and a soft black pencil. The views are extensive and imposing, and the air is clement. I shall do very well indeed.’
So Dame Beatrice and Laura left him, and Laura soon had the boat out on the loch and was pulling round to the blind side of the house. As she rowed past the white, windowless façade, she could see that the loch broadened, and when she had rounded the house, and come to the back of it, she could also see that Tannasgan was not the only island in the loch; it was merely the largest. From where she was, four stony outcroppings, one thickly wooded, came into her view. On the further shore of the loch rose the high, bare slopes of Ben Dun which she had seen from the opposite side, and with their backs to the lower slopes of the mountain and their suspicious, inquisitive gaze fastened on the boat and its occupants, were a dozen or so of wide-horned, shaggy, Highland cattle.
‘A picturesque group,’ remarked Dame Beatrice.
‘Highland cattle always look so young for their age, and Ben Dun is a fine chunk of Lewisian Gneiss,’ said Laura. ‘Learnt that at College and I’ve always been proud of knowing it. Nevertheless, the mainland, at the moment, does not attract me, so what about exploring that island with the trees on it?’
‘A childishly pleasant idea. Pray manoeuvre us thither.’
The loch was shallow close inshore to the wooded islet, and Laura paddled cautiously to the land. They tied up to a tree and, Laura leading the way, followed a rudimentary path which began at the water’s edge and disappeared into the woods.
‘Made by the police exploring all avenues, I expect,’ she said. ‘Wonder what they expected to find? You’d think they would have stuck to Tannasgan. I suppose it didn’t yield any clues.’
Dame Beatrice offered no criticism of this view, and they continued to follow the little path as it wound in and out among the trees. Laura very soon changed her opinion.
‘It wasn’t made by the police. It’s more like a bit of landscape gardening. It’s been worked out. It makes the woods seem ever so much bigger than they are,’ she said. She realised another thing, too, and gave voice after about another hundred and fifty yards of motiveless perseverance. ‘Makes you think of Three Men in a Boat,’ she observed.
‘In what way?’ Dame Beatrice demanded, interested to learn whether Laura’s deductions coincided with her own.
‘You know – the maze at Hampton Court.’
‘I see that you recognise the silver birch we are coming to.’
‘That, and the clump of heather in the shape of a half-moon, and the cotton-grass in that circular swamp and the little trench where peat has been dug.’
‘Amazing! I had not realised quite how observant you must be.’
‘I’m going to take a chance and see whether I can cut the cackle and get to the centre. You’d better stay here. I’ll yodel if I’m lucky.’
‘Very well, child.’ Dame Beatrice was quite capable of a little rough walking, but she was prepared to respect and encourage Laura’s pioneering spirit, and remained where she was to await Laura’s call.
This came even sooner than she had expected. Laura had plunged through a tangle of undergrowth and was able, almost immediately, to announce that her inconoclastic plan had worked out. She yodelled happily. Dame Beatrice followed the trail and, in the clearing which formed the centre of the maze, came upon an extraordinary and most unexpected sight.
Laura waved a large and shapely hand.
‘Welcome to Battersea Park,’ she said. ‘What do you think of the monumental masonry?’
Dame Beatrice inspected the inanimate tenants of the clearing. They made a strange addition to the living vegetation of birch and pine.
‘Let us look more closely at these petrified fauna of another and more picturesque age,’ she suggested. ‘Let us inspect these phenomena of the imagination of mediaeval man.’
They inspected them. All were fabulous beasts rendered crudely but powerfully by the hand of some amateur sculptor.
‘I observe the basilisk, the gryphon, the werewolf (at the moment of changing from man to wolf – very clever, that!), the salamander and the gorgon,’ said Dame Beatrice, after she had studied the exhibits in silence. ‘I wonder why the salamander is in pieces and is covered in what looks like soot?’
‘I wonder whether he carved them himself?’ said Laura, ignoring the work of some iconoclast
‘Our slumbering red-beard?’ suggested Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes. I told you about his fixation on fabulous animals, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, indeed you did. The discovery of this very permanent-looking stonework raises the question of whether An Tigh Mór was really the dead laird’s home – or, rather, whether the house we have just vacated is An Tigh Mór. I shall be interested to talk with our friend when he is able to carry on a conversation. Some of your suspicions may be justified.’
After a further study of the group, which was carved in Portland stone except for the basilisk, which, owing to its serpentine shape, was of bronze, they were about to find out whether the path continued among the trees on the other side of the clearing when they caught the sound of George’s police-whistle. They returned to their boat and were soon on the return journey to Tannasgan. George was at the boathouse to meet them, his heavy spanner in his hand. Taller by a head, and leaning on a cromach, the red-bearded man stood beside him and helped to pull the boat in. Laura stepped ashore and held out a hand to Dame Beatrice.
‘Well, well,’ said the tenant of An Tigh Mór. ‘To what will I be indebted for this honour?’
Laura gravely introduced him to Dame Beatrice as ‘my host and benefactor of some days ago, of whom I told you.’
‘Is Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth my name,’ said the man. It was a statement and, Laura felt with some reason, an alias.
‘That’s a very fine cromach,’ she said, indicating the walking-stick.
‘Ah, but the callant here has a spanner.’ said Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth. ‘Up to the house with you, till you tell me what way you stole off like a thief in the night when I was after offering you hospitality for a week.’
‘Dame Beatrice wants a word with you first,’ said Laura, grinning. ‘We only waited until you woke up. Is the whisky out of you?’
He t
ook no manner of offense at this blunt question, but led the way to the house.
Chapter 11
The Big House Again
‘There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the ravens’ croak
In symphony austere.’
Wordsworth
« ^ »
‘NOW,’ said Macbeth, when they were seated in a well-furnished room whose windows overlooked the loch, ‘what will be your business with me?’
‘The death of the Laird of Tannasgan, whose house this was,’ Dame Beatrice replied. He looked at her out of his very bright blue eyes and puffed out smoke from the pipe he had filled and lighted.
‘What had you to do with the laird?’ he asked at last.
‘Nothing.’ Dame Beatrice gave back look for look.
‘Then his death will be none of your business.’
‘I do not endorse that opinion.’
‘Your reason?’
‘Mrs Gavin here, my secretary and close friend, may have been in this house, or, at any rate, in this neighbourhood, when the murder was committed. What is more, she has been followed and accosted by a man who was here at the same time as herself. He wants her to give him an alibi for the time of the murder – or thereabouts – and had made a considerable nuisance of himself.’
There was another interval of silence. Macbeth, his eyes now veiled, puffed away. Dame Beatrice waited. Laura, who had received no cue, stared at the carpet.
‘You wish me to say that I am prepared to co-operate with you?’ asked the red-bearded man at last. ‘I’ll need to give thought to that. I was bidden here by the laird. Did you ken that I was his cousin?’
‘No, that is news to me.’
‘And I am his heir.’
‘I see. That could mean that you had an interest of a selfish kind of his death.’
‘It could. Well, now, I hold to my opinion that you are meddling, but if it will rid me of your company to speir at me what I know, then speir away.’
‘You have been questioned by the police?’
‘I have that.’
‘With what result?’
‘They went away very discontented. I was just no help at all.’
‘Deliberately?’
‘No, no. There was nothing helpful that I could tell them. They speired at me where had the laird been, if, as I told them – and it’s the truth – he was away from home all that day. I told them that I was not in the laird’s confidence. Then I had to give an account in detail of my actions from the time I came to Tannasgan until the time of the death.’
‘Did you tell them that I was here for part of that time?’ asked Laura.
‘I did not. The death was nothing to do with a young lass like yourself.’
‘Very chivalrous of you to say so, but wouldn’t it have been wiser to have mentioned my visit? It’s going to be a bit awkward for you if it comes out now – perhaps for me, too.’
‘Havers!’ He gave the word all the contempt in the world.
‘I don’t think it’s nonsense,’ said Laura. ‘You see, I thought it as well to go to them and give them a full account of what I did and where I went that evening. I told them that I was here, and that you gave me food and shelter. Of course, I didn’t know your name, but I described you and the others, so, even if I were willing to keep quiet about it, I shouldn’t be able to now. If they question me, it’s bound to involve you.’
‘I see that. There’s the fellow who followed you and spoke to you, of course.’
‘And the other fellow, who gave me a lift to Freagair that same night. He knows I was here. He can confirm my story. And there’s the first fellow, the one who got me on to the island.’
‘Ay.’ He continued his furious puffing while he pondered. ‘I would advise you to communicate with the police and get them to deal with him. A man like that might be dangerous.’
Laura decided to change the subject.
‘It was you playing the bagpipes that night, I suppose?’
‘Your supposition is perfectly correct. Did you like my playing?’
‘Well, it was a useful cover while I got away from this house. In any case, I always like the sound of the pipes.’
‘And now,’ said Dame Beatrice briskly, ‘what about this account you’re going to give us of all that took place on Tannasgan and at An Tigh Mór on the day that Mrs Gavin turned up on the shore of the loch? You were good enough to take her in and give her food and shelter, but on that same night your cousin was killed and his body put into a barrel.’
‘Och, that!’ There was another long silence, then he said, drawing his thick brows together, ‘In a barrel was where he belonged, the drunken stot! Whisky Johnny should have been his name. But his death and the manner of it is the business of the police, and neither themselves nor you will get any more out of me than I’m prepared to tell. And what I dinna ken I canna tell, now can I?’
‘At least tell us one thing,’ said Laura.
‘And what would that be?’
‘Is this Loch na Gréine? – and is this house An Tigh Mór?’
He looked at her and put on a crafty smile.
‘You must just please yourself,’ he replied. ‘Maybe they are—and maybe they’re not. And now, if you’ll just excuse me, I have work to do.’
‘Will you allow us to borrow a boat to cross the loch?’
‘Ay. Tie up on the other side and somebody will be back to bring it over. How did you get here?’
‘I swam and then I rowed back for the others.’
‘You did? I kenned you were a braw lassie as soon as I set eyes on you. You swam, eh? Well, well, I’ll no insist that you swim back.’
With this he leaned back in his great armchair and closed his eyes. Laura glanced at Dame Beatrice and they walked to the front door and joined George who, spanner in hand, was keeping guard under the front windows. He seemed relieved to see them.
He rowed them across the loch and handed them out on to the little stone jetty. Soon all three were in the car. He turned it, with infinite care, on the rough grass and on to the road, and Laura, who was on the right-hand side of the back seat, glanced out. On the other side of the water stood a man, but it was not Macbeth. For a moment Laura could not place him, then it came to her who he was. She was about to draw the attention of Dame Beatrice to his presence, when he ducked into the boathouse and was lost in the shadows.
Dame Beatrice, who missed nothing, had noticed him, however.
‘So there was one more person on Tannasgan than we realised,’ she said. ‘I wonder whether the manservant Corrie was in the house after all?’
‘That isn’t Corrie,’ said Laura. ‘Corrie is older and shorter than that. No, that’s the young man I told you about – the one who met me in the rain and rather – well, it was a nerve, really – insisted on sending me over to Tannasgan. He was on the mainland side then, of course, and worked the signal and rang the bell to bring the boat over. I had no notion that he was actually connected with the place, though. I assumed he was out for a walk and had been caught in the storm, like me. In fact, I think, looking back, that I imagined he was going to cross the loch, too, and try to get shelter, but, when he walked off, I suppose I concluded he had a place of his own near at hand, or else was so wet that he couldn’t get any wetter.’
‘I wonder what, if any, his part is in the drama? Everything in this little adventure seems more than a little odd.’
‘Absolutely off-beat.’
‘This new friend, I must say, intrigues me. I wonder whether it was chivalry, or something much less admirable, which caused him to expedite your first visit to An Tigh Mór?’
‘Goodness knows! Anyway, there doesn’t seem any doubt that he believed I would be received and warmed and fed – unless he expected me to take shelter in the boathouse. However, old Macbeth took care of all that. You know, in spite of the battiness and the guile, I believe that old man possesses a
sense of humour.’
‘Indeed? It may be a macabre one, though, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, you’re thinking of the body in the barrel, but there’s no evidence yet that he put it there.’
‘I agree.’ There was silence while both stared ahead, engaged in thought and surmise, then Dame Beatrice added, ‘This furtive young man we’ve just seen interests me very strangely. He is quite a new factor in the case.’
‘The nigger in the woodpile, you mean? We’ve nothing whatever to go on in suspecting that, though, have we?’
‘No. All the same, I am glad I caught a glimpse of him.’
‘Would you know him again, do you think?’
‘Certainly I should. I saw him quite distinctly.’
‘You know, Mrs Croc. the more I think about it, the more certain I am that he had some ulterior motive in sending me over to Tannasgan that evening. By the way, where are we going next?’
‘Back to Mrs Grant. There are points which she must clear up.’
‘Such as which island really is Tannasgan?’
Dame Beatrice did not reply, but gave George directions. George eased the car on to the single-track road and they went westwards, and slightly north, on the way to Mrs Grant’s lonely and cut-off house. Nobody was at home.
Laura ceased hammering on the front door and tried the handle, but the door was locked.
‘Stymied,’ she observed. ‘Now what do we do?’
D ame Beatrice was saved from the necessity of replying by the arrival of a station wagon driven by a man whom Laura recognised as the passenger to Inverness whom she had met in the rain at the station. It seemed at least three months since she had seen him. He pulled up behind George, who was still in the driving-seat of Dame Beatrice’s car, and got out, raising his tweed hat with a smile of recognition.
‘Hullo,’ said Laura. ‘We came along hoping for a chat with your wife, but she seems to have gone shopping or something.’
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