‘There was a mention of the skirling of pipes.’
‘But there’s not necessarily any connection between that and the time of the murder, is there?’
‘As a matter of fact, there may well be a connection. At the enquiry – as you know, we do not hold inquests as they do south of the Border – the evidence was carefully edited for the Press, and trouble was taken for some details to be scamped if not suppressed, notably the limits of time between which the death may have taken place, and the fact that the barrel in which the body was found had contained rum. Now, young Mr Grant is very ambitious, or so he told us, and there is no doubt that he wanted a scoop for his paper big enough to allow him to try for a job on an Edinburgh journal. He not only saw the Edinburgh murder committed. He also knew by sight one of the two men who committed it.’
‘Did they also recognise him?’ demanded Laura.
‘He thinks not. He lives at Crioch, you see, and works in Freagair, and there is nothing to connect these men with either place. Except that he is a reporter and so gets to find out a good deal about local affairs, I do not suppose he would have known either of them. Unfortunately he cannot name the man. He knew him by sight, but not by name.’
‘Could he describe him?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Not very well. The description would have fitted a thousand men – maybe a hundred thousand. There was nothing in it that would help us.’
‘I see. Of course, he may not have wanted to describe him very clearly.’
‘What would you be meaning by that, ma’am?’
‘That the man may have borne the same surname as Grant himself. Just a while ago, Inspector, you suggested that we pool our ideas. I have one in particular which I am prepared to present to you. I am wondering whether the man involved was the Grant who lives at a house called Coinneamh Lodge, between here and Tigh-Osda.’
‘Any relation, would you say, to young reporter Grant?’
‘I doubt it very much. But there is a psychological angle here. Either one betrays a person of one’s own name with a certain amount of enthusiasm – a revenge reaction, let us say – or one cannot bear to bring the clan name into disrepute. In the case of young Mr Grant, I think he would take the latter view.’
‘It might well be. I shall see him again and put the point to him. Of course, he may be telling the truth when he says that he cannot name the man. Only one thing troubles me. The laird of Tannasgan is dead: murdered. What way is it that this Grant of Coinneamh Lodge is still alive? The murder of Bradan must have been an act of revenge. There can be little doubt of that. What way, then, has Grant escaped the murderer’s hand?’
‘Because he murdered Bradan, perhaps,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘That is, if you are right, and the murder was an act of revenge for the loss of the Saracen.’
‘Do you tell me that? Where is your proof?’
‘There is no proof that a court of law would accept. The psychological proof would lie in the remark which you yourself have just made. If Bradan’s death was an act of revenge, then Grant could not possibly have escaped the murder’s vengeance either, unless he himself is the murderer.’
‘That sounds logical, I admit. We ourselves have had strong suspicions of Mr Bradan’s son, but I am bound to admit that we have nothing on him at present.’
‘Is it not true that his father disinherited him?’
‘He says so, and as we know that Bradan was a wealthy man it seems likely that the laddie got his own back on him.’
‘What about Macbeth?’ asked Laura ‘He seems to be the heir. Wouldn’t he have had a pretty strong motive for murder? – to obtain possession, I mean.’
‘Well, there, you see, Mrs Gavin, you’re the strongest witness we’ve so far found in his favour.’
‘I have sometimes wondered whether the laird was killed on Tannasgan,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘or on the mainland.’
‘The Island of Ghosts!’ said Laura. ‘It sounds a sinister sort of name to me. Just the place to expect murder.’
‘There was once a monastry where this house stands,’ said the inspector, ‘but Norsemen from the Hebrides wrecked the place at the end of the eighth century, so I have read, and murdered the monks. That is the story and it goes on that the island has been haunted ever since.’
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘So it wasn’t Macbeth I fled from that night, but the ghosts! I knew there was something queer about this place!’ She looked over her shoulder fearfully and gasped to find a black-clothed figure standing just behind her shoulder.
‘Will I infuse the tea?’ asked Mrs Corrie.
‘Ay, Mrs Corrie,’ replied the inspector. ‘Ladies can always do with a tassie and so can I. You were saying, a while back, Dame Beatrice, that you have sometimes wondered whether Mr Bradan was killed here.’
‘I do not see how he can have been, and yet I cannot see how he could not have been. There is the skian-dhu, of course, but one cannot imagine even such an eccentric as Mr Macbeth entertaining Laura as he did, and asking her to extend her visit, if he had contemplated killing his cousin while she was in the house. Besides, unless the Corries were in collusion with Mr Macbeth and knew where the laird had been (we’ll say) incarcerated, why did Laura obtain no inkling of his presence and why did the young Mr Grant fail to obtain the interview that he wanted?’
‘Since you have interpreted the facts so far, ma’am, perhaps you know where the killing took place?’ said the inspector, smiling. Dame Beatrice shook her head.
‘I might hazard a guess,’ she said, ‘but it would be nothing more.’
‘Well, now!’
‘Tell me, first, whether the police know where it took place.’
‘We do.’
‘Then I will suppose that he was set upon in or near Inverness (since Edinburgh would have been too far away) and murdered on the wooded island where stand the carvings of the fabulous beasts.’
‘What brought you to that conclusion, I wonder? You mean that he ran into some sort of trouble in Inverness, but was actually murdered on Tannasgan?’
‘I did tell you that it was only a guess. One other thing that I know, however, is that Mr Bradan had interests in or near Edinburgh and that those interests were in shipping.’
‘How did you come to that conclusion?’
‘The fabulous beasts, Inspector.’ True to her half-given promise, she did not mention Grant’s regular visits to Inverness and Edinburgh.
‘The fabulous beasties, Dame Beatrice?’
‘Your men – no, I suppose it would have been the men from Inverness or Dingwall – must have seen them when they first searched these islands and rocks, and you appear to have seen them, too.’
‘Oh, ay, I’ve seen them, of course.’
‘Well, they must have had some significance. Not one of them, so far as I am aware, figures in Scottish legend.’
The inspector wrinkled his brow.
‘What way did you get on to shipping?’ he demanded. Dame Beatrice advanced her theories, bolstering them by describing the activities of herself and Laura. ‘So you thought maybe Mrs Gavin would be in trouble because she was in this house on the night of the murder,’ the inspector observed, when she had concluded her recital.
‘It took a little time to work out my theories,’ said Dame Beatrice blandly, ‘and we were not helped by the persistence with which the young reporter Grant dogged Mrs Gavin and waylaid her with requests for assistance in establishing his alibi. There was no doubt that he thought the murder was committed here. Once I had realised that he was in earnest about this, I began to wonder whether he was in any way responsible for the disposal of the body.’
‘You did, ma’am?’
‘Well, a mixture of the dramatic and the macabre is often a feature of the minds of his age and sex; then, he needed his scoop; then – and this, I think, Inspector, may be of the first importance – being a journalist and, as we know, an ambitious one, he may have found out something about the activities of Mr Bradan, a
nd he may even have come here in the first place to blackmail Mr Bradan into using his influence to obtain him a post in Edinburgh. Now, do please tell us what our dear Robert Gavin has been up to when he has not been fishing for sharks or whatever it was.’
The inspector studied his shoes.
‘Well, well,’ he said. He hesitated for a few seconds. ‘Ah, well,’ he added in a tone of resignation, ‘fair’s fair, I suppose, so – you’ll not be letting a word of this go further?’
‘Well, I did mention the loss of the Saracen,’ said Dame Beatrice.
Chapter 16
The other Side of the Herring-Pond
‘For under shore the swart sands naked lay.’
George Chapman
« ^ »
‘PITY it was Inverness and not Edinburgh,’ said Laura, ‘because in Edinburgh, according to my Uncle Hamish, there would be two chief possibilities. The Castle Esplanade is one, but, in this case, I should say, a most unlikely choice because I simply don’t think you’d dare to risk attacking anybody there, even at night. The other one I’m thinking of is the Grassmarket, where, after 1660, they brought Covenanters to be hanged. What about the Grassmarket, Inspector?’
‘Unfortunately, although I appreciate your knowledge of Scottish history, we know Mr Bradan was attacked in Inverness, Mrs Gavin. Well, now, about your good man.’
‘He might have told me he was on a job. What is it? – piracy on the high seas, gun-running, smuggling?’
‘Perhaps a bit of everything. He went to Florida as the guest of a millionaire whom he’d helped at some time, it seems.’
‘Saved his kid from some kidnappers who had followed the family from the U.S.A. to London at the time of the Festival of Britain in 1951. We seem to be haunted by kidnappers all through this business, don’t we?’
‘The millionaire seems to have taken some time to repay his debt, then,’ said the inspector, ignoring the question.
‘Oh, no,’ said Laura earnestly. ‘He was always badgering us to go. I was the one who stood out. I didn’t think I’d fit in with a millionaire’s environment and, until this Edinburgh Conference turned up and we thought’ – she looked accusingly at Dame Beatrice – ‘we thought, I repeat, that I would be needed to aid and abet, Gavin refused to go alone. Anyway, this time, when the invitation came, I insisted that he accept it. I think the prospect of the fishing clinched it, you know.’
‘You don’t care for fishing, Mrs Gavin?’
‘Salmon and trout, yes. Barracuda, sharks and tunny no. I feel they’re above my weight.’
The inspector looked at her long limbs and splendid body and shook his head admiringly.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘from the reports he has sent back to New Scotland Yard and they have passed on to us, it was not so very long before your good man was fishing for something other than barracuda. Maybe you’ll mind a letter you wrote your young son, with marginal illustrations?’
‘Oh, Hamish, yes. I’ve written to him a number of times since we’ve been up here – picture postcards mostly – and I did send him some rather exaggerated drawings of the fabulous animals—’
‘Ay, those that are on the small, wooded inch with the maze, and which Dame Beatrice believes are symbolic.’
‘Yes. I thought he might be interested. I wrote him a short ledgend connected with each one.’
‘You did, so? Well, the wee laddie, it seems, was so pleased with the drawings and the old tales that he must send the letter to his daddy, with strict instructions that it was to be returned. Well, your good man has an alert mind and a seeing eye, and he was intrigued to notice that running between a Florida creek, where the fishing party was in camp, and, apparently, somewhere in the West Indies, were three tramp ships named, respectively, Basilisk, Werewolf and Gryphon.’
Laura looked at Dame Beatrice and raised her eyebrows.
‘I suppose Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin was struck by the coincidence,’ said Dame Beatrice non-committally.
‘You may say that, ma’am, especially as he had had the Scotsman and the London papers flown out to him so that he could keep in touch with events at home. There was a wee paragraph copied from the Freagair Reporter and Advertiser which bore out what Mrs Gavin had written to her laddie and which gave the locality of the inch on which she seen the models of the fabulous beasties.’
‘Young Grant’s report to his local paper, of course,’ said Laura.
‘Well, Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin is a very canny man and the coincidence of the names seemed to him so striking that he sent word to London and suggested that Scotland Yard might like to contact the Customs and Excise people, or possibly Lloyds, and find out a little more about these sonsie wee craft. It did not take long to discover that no boats under these names were registered with Lloyds.’
‘No, but these are,’ said Dame Beatrice delving into the pocket of her skirt and producing a small black notebook. ‘Of course, it may be fortuitous that the first two letters in each name correspond with the first two letters in the names of the boats in question, but there is another coincidence which, I think, may be worth nothing. Did our dear Robert obtain any impression of the tonnage of the boats he mentions?’
‘He did. He points out that he is only estimating the tonnage, but it seems that he is well acquainted with boats of all kinds…’
‘The Clyde,’ explained Laura. ‘He spent a lot of his boyhood at Dumbarton and Greenock.’
‘Aha. Well, before you show me your list, mistress, I’ll quote you what Mr Gavin has to tell. Here it is: Basilisk, about nine thousand tons, diesel driven, type made on the Clyde in about 1938. Werewolf, about the same size, steamship. Probably built a little earlier – say in the early 1930s. Gryphon, motor-ship, modern, about four thousand five hundred tons. All ships appear to be well-found. Captains and crew drink together but are unsociable with other people ashore. Suggest may be engaged in illicit liquor trade or gun-running. (Always chance of revolutions in these latitudes).
‘Hm!’ said Laura. Again she glanced at Dame Beatrice. ‘Did your man at Lloyds give any more help?’ she asked her.
‘I think so. Will you give us your conclusions first, Inspector?’
‘No, no, ladies first, Dame Beatrice.’
‘Well, from the list supplied to me, I have formed the theory that when these ships are in British waters they may be called by rather different names. I have a footnote here which my friend provided in answer to a question I particularly asked.’
‘And that would have been?’
‘What had happened to a ship, probably based on Leith, whose name began with the letters SA. Well, as it happened, my informant at Lloyds was able to inform me that a ship based on Leith, whose lawful trade appears to have been that of a collier, blew up and burnt out in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. She was called the Saracen. She blew up, with all hands, and the cause of the explosion was unknown.’
‘What was the amount of the insurance?’
‘That I did not ask, but as my informant did not mention the matter, I take it that the insurance was adequate and the premiums not abnormally high, and that the underwriters had no proof or even suspicion of sabotage.’
‘Sabotage,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. ‘What gared you think of sabotage, ma’am?’
‘Simply that I cannot see why a cargo of coal, destined, it appeared, for Montevideo, should blow up at all. A fire, of itself, I could understand, but an explosion in such a ship sounds rather unlikely. Of course, I am biased by the fact that I believe these murders to be connected in some way with these ships which camouflage their names as soon as they are on the high seas. Then,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘we must get rid of that skian-dhu.’
‘That what?’ cried Laura. ‘But that and the barrel of rum are the most picturesque touches in the whole thing!’
‘We must get rid of the skian-dhu,’ her employer repeated. ‘It is a red herring so far as I can see.’
‘Now how on earth do you know that
, ma’am?’ demanded the inspector. ‘I ken well that you’re a distinguished member of the medical profession, but you did not even see the body, let alone perform a postmortem on it! We’ve been keeping very quiet about the other injury, but there’s no doubt whatever that we believe the knife-wound was the death wound, ay, and the murderer must go on thinking so, too. But what way…?’
‘Well, I confess that, in the beginning, I was as much in the dark as the rest of the public. It was something Laura said which made me think that the stabbing might be a gesture on the part of somebody who wanted the murder to appear an even more dramatic business than it was.’
‘Good Lord! That young ass Grant!’ said Laura. ‘But what pearl of great price fell from my lips to put you wise about the knife-wound?’
‘When it was known that it was an empty cask of rum in which the body was found. Do you not remember asking…’
‘Whisky! Of course!’
‘And, of course, if the skian-dhu had any place in the matter, it ought to have been connected with whisky. Rum goes…’
‘With a cutlass and not with a skian-dhu,’ said Laura, slapping her hand on the arm of the chair. ‘Well, Inspector, what do you say about that?’
The inspector’s smile replied to her, but he spoke as well.
‘About that, Mrs Gavin, all that I can say has been said already. “There’s a chiel amang us taking notes.” I congratulate you on your logic and your powers of deduction, ma’am,’ he added gallantly, addressing Dame Beatrice. ‘Of course, whatever activities are going on in the West Indies, South America or Mexico (or anywhere else, for that matter), is not our business at present. No, no. But what is our business is murder.’
‘Well, you’ve got two murders on your hands, then,’ said Laura. ‘There’s the man who was pushed under a car in Edinburgh and now the laird of Tannasgan.’
‘I doubt whether the incident in Edinburgh was intended to result in death,’ said the inspector. ‘You couldna guarantee that the man would be killed. I am inclined to look upon it as a disciplinary action. It was intended to frighten and maybe punish somebody who was threatening to sell out to the police. I must look up the files. They may well cast a good deal of light.’
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