Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 13)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Which reminds me,” murmured Miss Seeton, as, heading back to the castle, she once more passed the houses on the outskirts of Glenclachan, having walked the full length of the main street from Philomena’s cottage. “She said she was planning to stay in the village, but I have not seen dear Mel this morning. I wonder where she is.”

  Where Mel was was in bed, with a wet towel wrapped about her head and the curtains drawn against the light.

  Light in the Highlands is generally thought to be kind: soft upon heather moors, glimmering sweetly from lochs and burns, mellow where it filters through pine-tree branches to plant its pale brown kiss on the sleepy earth below . . .

  People who believe this have never spent several hours in the bar of a Highland hotel drinking double Lairigighs with the landlord and listening to the story of his life, as Mel Forby had done the previous night. And what a night it had been! She thought. At least, she would have thought, if only she’d had sufficient energy for thinking. Right now, all she wanted to do was hibernate until the Lairigigh, and its peculiar effect upon her memory, wore off.

  It had taken longer than Mel had expected for the drinkers in the bar to relax, and longer for Mel herself to stop feeling like the albino blackbird who’d seemed so at risk of being mobbed by everyone else. Wrapped in a white sheet . . .

  Nobody had made any further reference to her shroud, or if they had, she hadn’t heard them; and she’d managed to find no easy way of introducing the topic of winding sheets into the general conversation to warn everyone she’d caught that earlier remark, and wasn’t worried by it. Much. But it niggled her not to know what it might be the natives supposed she was doing in Glenclachan that made them want to stop her doing it—she might be sitting on top of the scoop of the century, if only they could be persuaded to unbutton. But it wasn’t just professional curiosity that made her want to know. She had, after all, a personal interest in whether or not she was bumped off.

  Or did she mean wiped out? Mel opened her eyes, moaned, gazed vacantly in the general direction of the window , and closed them again, thankful that Thrudd Banner was not there to witness her weakness. Amelita Forby, Fleet Street’s own Leather Liver, hung over in the Highlands and now not sure that being wiped out wouldn’t have been a better idea. At least she wouldn’t have gone on feeling so grim. Toasting forks and flames didn’t, as far as she knew, go up and down in such an uncomfortable way—or from side to side at the same time, either. What sadist had climbed up to hide in the rafters to ring those damned bells at her? And who in the world was playing bagpipes underneath her pillow?

  Bagpipes. “It’s the ghost of James Reid,” groaned Mel, recalling last night’s talk in the bar, and how the piper might well wish to be revenged upon a Sassenach . . .

  The man who had come looking for John Stuart Fraser had taken one of the corner seats and sat nursing a single malt with an expression Mel couldn’t quite recognise on his face. Gloom, mingled with gratification, was the nearest she could come to describing it—which seemed to make little sense; but the chatter of Hamish McQueest as he poured more whisky and attempted to make his guest feel at home meant she was unable to concentrate on analysing it properly. Mel sipped at her second double Lairigigh and pondered, while conversation, muted for a moment at the stranger’s entrance, began to build up once more.

  She caught snippets which made her wish she’d read more Scottish history before coming to the Highlands. “. . . never claimed the reward—and thirty thousand pounds was a tidy sum of money in those days!”

  “Aye, they couldnae find a single soul to betray Bonnie Prince Charlie, the English with their treachery and bribes. The clans were too loyal to the House of Stuart to fall for such blandishments.”

  “Six months in concealment, with soldiers by the hunnert on the watch for him, and safe away to France at the end of it all, still cocking a snook at the usurper. He’d a bonnie fighting spirit, the Young Pretender.”

  “Oh, but he had the English on the run,” someone gloated. “Lord George Murray and the rest of his fine generals forced him to retreat. If he’d only pressed on with his attack on London—”

  “Panic in the streets, and the usurper on the point of fleeing back to Hanover, and the Bank of England running out of money—aye, it was a sad day indeed when they talked him into marching north again.”

  “December the sixth, 1745,” someone said, and sighed, and shook his head. “Black Friday.”

  “After the glorious start at Glenfinnan,” sighed someone else. “His standard unfurled by the Duke of Atholl, blessed by the Bishop of Morar—and the clans flocking from miles about to join him. August the nineteenth, when the House of Stuart reclaimed its rightful own. Glenfinnan Day . . .”

  Mel jumped: five days’ time! She’d never heard of Glenfinnan Day, but clearly it was a date of some importance, in these parts at least. Almost everyone in the bar raised his glass in a toast, casting defiant looks in her direction, though Hamish McQueest, presumably with due deference to her status as his guest, did not.

  “We’ll no forget,” promised someone, as the drained glasses were set down, and people began looking to see who would buy the next round. “The House of Stuart still lives on, even in exile—aye, but who’s to know what time might bring about?”

  “Time will tell, true enough.” Heads were nodded sagely, and Hamish grinned at Mel as she perched on her stool, her ears flapping. He cleared his throat.

  “The House of Stuart may be all very well,” he remarked, as everyone turned towards him at the sound. “But it’s not what you’d call a sacred cause now—if, indeed, it ever was—which I take leave to doubt. You only have to think of the Chisholms, with their clan chief making sure to have a son on either side of the fight, so that no matter which king was on the throne, the Chisholms wouldn’t lose. Where is the sanctity in a cause like that?”

  “Ye cannae judge a cause by just one man,” flashed somebody in deep indignation. “There are aye folk who’ll make expediency their guide, instead of loyalty and honour . . .”

  “Honour there was, and to spare,” somebody else pointed out. “Thirty thousand pounds’ worth, remember!”

  “Flora MacDonald!” cried someone, banging on the table to the accompaniment of cheers and cries of “Aye, Malcolm, that’s true!” The whisky must have primed Mel’s memory, for she recalled almost at once school stories of how the Bonnie Prince had been disguised as Flora’s maid for his escape over the sea to Skye. She wasn’t going to cheer, though.

  Neither was Hamish. He pulled a face: perhaps he didn’t approve of men in drag. But when dark looks were cast at him, and people seemed ready to leave rather than fill their glasses again at his bar, he conceded that yes, it had been a stirring time, and Flora MacDonald certainly deserved the name of heroine.

  “Although,” he added aside to Mel, under the cover of much bustling as people came up to order fresh drinks, “what you’re never told is that Flora, with her husband and sons, went to America and fought against the Yankee rebels for the Hanoverian side—the same Hanoverians whose claim to the throne had been the whole reason for this fine Highland rebellion thirty years earlier . . .”

  The bustle was insufficiently loud: fresh looks of disapproval were directed against Hamish as he accepted payment for the last of the refills. It occurred to Mel that the landlord had an excellent sense of timing.

  “Loyalty and honour,” proclaimed one of the drinkers, in resounding tones. “Thirty thousand pounds!”

  “Yes,” said Hamish, “to our shame”—with an apologetic look at Mel—“the clansmen knew how well they could trust the empty promises of the English. We have to assume they’d never have seen a penny of that money, even if they had told the soldiers where the prince might be hiding—”

  “Which they’d never have done in any event,” retorted Malcolm, supporter of Flora MacDonald, amid further cheers. “It was a matter of pride for the lawful prince to be protected by his people—”

  “Eve
n to the death!” said somebody with a flushed face, and a glass that was yet again empty.

  “Like poor James Reid,” agreed Hamish. “An unlucky lad, there’s no denying.”

  “And that’s the English for you,” crowed another Scot, a gleam in his eye and his glass in his hand. “A toast to the puir piper, murdered at York!”

  Under (partial) cover of the subsequent hubbub, Hamish informed Mel that the said James Reid had been a piper in the regiment raised by Lord Ogilvy for the Young Pretender’s support, captured at Carlisle, and who used as his defence the plea that he’d been coerced into joining the rebellion. (At which point, Mel reckoned Hamish’s chances of having anyone buy another round that night had reached rock bottom. She wondered through the whisky fumes how the man ever made any profit at all.) The plea, reported the landlord with great relish, was refused on the grounds that, as the clans never went into battle without a piper, James Reid’s bagpipes must count, in the eyes of the law, as an instrument of war.

  “Executed at York, poor man,” concluded Hamish, to general mutterings and the sound of shifting feet. They’d be away back to their homes any minute, Mel decided, then heard herself giggle quietly at the infectious nature of the Highland brogue, even in her thoughts. How much Lairigigh had she drunk, without realising it?

  She tried to sit up straight on the bar stool. Had the landlord plied her with whisky on purpose—to deflect her, on behalf of his clientele, from asking too many questions? “If only I knew about what,” she murmured. The words echoed strangely in her head. Hamish looked a question at her, but she wouldn’t repeat her suspicions to him, of all people, oh no. You didn’t catch Amelita Forby out like that . . .

  Nor was Mel so caught-out that she failed to remark how, at long last, everyone was indeed giving the appearance of being homeward bound. Malcolm MacDonald drained his glass, scowled at Hamish, and pushed back his chair without making any attempt to collect the empties and carry them to the bar. Hamish, with a wry grin, surveyed the other drinkers doing the same. Nobody said anything; Mel suspected she’d better not try, in case she fell off the stool. A pity that she’d never got around to checking the menu for something to eat . . .

  The man who’d come looking for John Stuart Fraser was gathered up among a group of the most ardent neo-Jacobites as they hustled towards the door—

  Which was suddenly flung open by a near-giant with red hair and a face almost as red, as, in a voice to bring the plaster down from the ceiling, he roared,

  “So here’s where you’ve been hiding yourself away, Malcolm MacDonald, and trouble enough I’ve had on your account! I’m after a word or two with you—and I’ll not take no for an answer!”

  chapter

  ~14~

  EVEN NOW, THE memory of the red-haired man’s fury made Mel Forby wince. His voice had been one of the few she’d ever heard which merited in truth the adjective stentorian: she could hear it still, reverberating round her skull as she closed her eyes and sank back on her pillow . . .

  “I was speaking to you, Malcolm MacDonald,” thundered the newcomer, taking two gigantic steps into the bar before finding his path blocked by a small group of drinkers, who’d moved there, Mel realised, faster than she would have expected, with all the whisky they must have drunk. Not that she had noticed this movement—just a blink and a shimmer, and there they were, surrounding that enormous angry presence on the threshold, trying to hold him back.

  For how long they’d manage it was anybody’s guess. This man wasn’t just tall, and rather more than burly: he looked like someone who could toss two cabers at the same time and still break records when he did it. As he raised one huge forearm to brush aside the opposition, Mel heard the indrawn breath of Hamish McQueest beside her, presumably contemplating the damage his bar, not to mention his customers, would suffer if anyone started a fight.

  “Steady on, Campbell,” he said, in what must have been intended as a soothing tone. “There’s no need for all this commotion. You’re among friends here, you know, so—”

  “There’s one at least who’s no friend to me,” broke in Ewen, brushing the bodyguard from his arm and pointing with a massive forefinger in the direction of Malcolm MacDonald. “I see him plain enough, for all he’s skulking behind those who’d keep him hid—and as it’s him I’ve my quarrel with, Hamish McQueest, not yourself, I’ll thank you to quiet your tongue and mind your business!”

  Hamish opened his mouth to protest, but somebody else spoke first. “I’ll not hear myself accused of skulking by anyone, Ewen Campbell!” Malcolm, standing among a group of friends, now pushed them aside, the better to face his accuser. “You see full well that here I am—and doing my best to keep the peace, what’s more, by paying no heed to your blethering. And it’s all very fine to talk of trouble on my account! If anyone’s had trouble brought upon him it’s never you, but me, as well you know. I’m a rightful share of forty thousand pounds poorer, thanks to your crooked dealings—”

  “And what about the trouble I’ve had myself?” Ewen took three steps forward, as if those who would keep him apart from Malcolm had been mere children. “How much farther away in the hills have I to go in my searching now, with you and your threats and your shotgun waiting for me by rivers I’ve fished since I was a boy? Fifteen miles I’ve walked around Glen Spurgie the day, and nothing to show for all the waters I’ve waded and the journey I took to reach them. A whole day wasted, when I’ve as much right as any other man to fish the mussel scaups of Glenclachan—so I’m here to give you a warning, Malcolm MacDonald, that I’ll not waste the petrol money on you and your threats again. I’ll be fishing round the old beds tomorrow, and there’s nothing you can do that’s like to stop me!”

  “Oh, is there not?” Malcolm, stepping forward, seemed to Mel now almost as large, and certainly as angry, as ever Ewen Campbell might be. He doubled his fists, and Ewen put up his own. With his red hair, red face, and the dangerous red gleam in his eye, he looked likely to do a considerable amount of damage to anyone who crossed him.

  Hamish was not the only person who had suddenly turned stone cold sober. A chorus of warning, expostulation, and attempts at pacifying both would-be combatants arose at once from every corner of the bar—though the cries might have been no more than the distant buzzing of mosquitoes, so little notice of them did the two former friends take. Each began to forge purposefully through the crowd to reach his rival, and the crowd, in silent collusion, closed in again. With some judicious jostling, Malcolm was forced, muttering furiously, away from his target, while Ewen, whose language had grown violent as his forward intent was thwarted, found that the only route left him was the way back out through the door by which he’d entered.

  On the threshold, he stopped dead, and glared round in turn at everyone in the bar. The slit-eyed stranger who’d asked for John Stuart Fraser gulped as Ewen Campbell’s gaze met his own, and said, to nobody in particular, that none of this meant anything to him, that he was merely a visitor . . . But Ewen’s glance passed over him, lighting at last on Malcolm MacDonald on the opposite side of the room, in the midst of a press of protectors. His lip curled in a sneer.

  “Aye, you’re bold enough, MacDonald, when there’s others to save your skin—but just remember it’s a Campbell that you’ve crossed, and the Campbells never forget a wrong. You can bluster your fill, Malcolm MacDonald”—as Malcolm uttered a strangled reference to Glencoe—“but ’twill avail you nothing. I’m paying no further heed to your empty talk, and I’ll not even trouble myself to challenge you to fight it out man to man. I tell you straight, you’d best keep your eyes open in the days to come, because there’s to be fair shares at the fishing in future, and I’ve laid a claim to mine!”

  After such a magnificent exit line, there was only one thing left for him to do. Ewen Campbell raked the room once more with his glittering eye, turned on his heel, and went out through the door, closing it behind him with a slam the memory of which, the next day, still brought a groan to Mel For
by’s quavering lips.

  Outside, a bird was singing. Inside, its bed-bound and captive audience winced. Sounded more like a pneumatic drill than a . . . than a whatever sort of bird it happened to be. Miss Seeton would recognise it at once, Mel reminded herself, or her friend Babs Ongar, of course—

  Which memory made her straighten and struggle to sit up in bed. Babs Ongar—the Wounded Wings Bird Sanctuary—the young couple who’d brought the injured blackbird, who’d been such likely candidates for the kidnapping of Lady Marguerite MacSporran—Miss Seeton’s sketches, and Mel’s instinct that she would come up trumps again . . .

  “Fresh air and black coffee.” Mel announced this brisk prescription to her room with as much resolution as she was able to muster. “And the fresh air first, I guess. Better work up gradually to any sort of drink—ugh. Why do I have to use foul language like that?” She shuddered and swung her feet out of bed. She groaned again. “Serve you right, Forby. That reporter’s nose of yours is going to lead you into big trouble, one day. But if you want to consult with Miss S., you need to be out and about, not skulking in your room. You’re no Malcolm MacDonald—not,” she brooded as she swayed across to the washbasin, and began splashing her face with cold water, “that I blame him for trying to avoid a punch-up with Ewen Campbell. They’d have made rather a nasty mess of each other if there hadn’t been plenty of people around to stop them.”