Did You Declare the Corpse?

by Patricia Sprinkle

“Dinnae make a habit of careening through town. Now sit on yon bench with Neil, and Ian, you sit between them while we all catch our breath.” Ian protested and twisted, but the two younger men wrestled him onto the bench between them and locked their arms through his.

  Sergeant Murray pulled up a chair to the front of his desk, sat down, and looked at me and Morag. “Now suppose ye tell me fit this is all aboot.”

  I stroked Morag’s tangled hair. “It’s her story. Honey, can you tell the bobby?”

  Her voice trembled. “Ian will hurt me.”

  “And why should Ian hurt ye?” Watty demanded from the door. “It’s me who’ll skin ye—baith of ye—for ridin’ hell-for-leather through the village streets. Ye coulda killed yourselves—or somebody else.”

  “Hush!” I told him tartly. “Let the child speak.”

  He considered me a moment, then nodded. “Och, aye. I’ll just have a wee seat here by the door, then, and let my heart catch up wi’ my body. Go on, Morag. Fit dee ye have to say?”

  “Yesterday I saw—I saw—Ye’ll skin me,” she cried to her grandfather.

  He looked at her sternly. “Were you skipping school again?”

  She dropped her gaze and nodded. “Just a wee whiley. I was afraid for Barbara’s kittens. Ian doesnae like them in the house, so he told Barbara to leave them in the front garden. But they are beginning to creep everywhere. They could get onto the r-r-road!”

  “So you didn’t go to school yesterday morning?” I tried to hurry her on a bit.

  “Did, too!” Her face was nearly as red as her hair. “It was when we went out to play that I took a wee walk, like, to see how the kittens were gettin’ on.”

  I remembered that the school was up near Heather Glen, so Morag’s “wee walk” had been well over a mile each way.

  “The basket was in the yard, but—” She stopped, and I had the feeling she was deciding to leave something out.

  “Tell the whole story,” I urged her.

  Her eyes flashed. “I’m tellin’ it. I looked for the kittens, but I didnae see all of them until I crept up to have a wee peep in the window.” Her grin was like sunlight after a storm. “There were three o’ them, sound asleep under the table.” Clouds gathered on her forehead again. “But Ian was there, too, wi’ another mannie, and they were arguin’, like. Then Ian hit the mannie so hard he went staggerin’ like a drunk and fell with his head on the hearth.”

  “And hoo do ye know how a drunk staggers?” her grandfather demanded.

  “Och, I’ve watched Roddy leavin’ the bar.”

  That got a spurt of laughter from Constable Roy. Encouraged, Morag added, “But Roddy disnae fall doon spurtin’ blood all over the flair.”

  My breathing apparatus was malfunctioning again, and not from our wild ride. I met the sergeant’s eyes and saw his held the same concern. But before he could speak, a harsh voice demanded at the door, “Fit’s gan on? And fit’s this aboot blood on the flair?”

  Barbara stomped in, slightly winded, her hair disheveled. “The lot o’ them took off from my place like bats out o’ hell,” she explained to the bobby. “I’d hae been here sooner, but I had to come on my bike.” She turned back to Morag. “Fit’s this ye’re sayin’, noo, aboot blood on the flair?”

  Morag gulped and swallowed, but her eyes met Barbara’s bravely. “I saw Ian hit a mannie yesterday and knock him doon. His blood spattered all over your flair.”

  “Did not!” Ian said hoarsely.

  “Och, that wasnae a mannie,” Barbara said with relief. “I didnae like to tell ye, but Ian stepped on the wee black kitten yesterday when he came home for a flycup, and he killt it. He got its blood on the hearth and on the flair.”

  “No!” Morag shook her head. “ ’Twas a mannie. I saw him!”

  Barbara looked at Ian. “Tell her, then. Tell her fit you did.” Before he had a chance to speak, she turned back to the sergeant. “I came home for my dinner and found him scrubbing up the evidence. He’s aye been careful wi’ his hands but clumsy wi’ his feet. But Morag has aye been one for makin’ up fancy stories, too.” She peered down sternly at the little girl.

  The sergeant looked at Morag. Morag looked at Watty. “Tell them,” Watty said.

  “I took the wee black kitten,” Morag said in a whisper. “I dinnae steal it, exactly. ’Twas crawlin’ in the yard, and I caught it up to keep it from the road. But then I looked in the window and saw him”—she nodded toward Ian—“hit the mannie. I ran and took the kitten—without thinkin’, Granda knows. He saw it, did ye not, Granda?” Watty nodded.

  “Ian?” Barbara asked, her voice unsteady.

  “It’s all lies!” Ian leaped to his feet and lunged in her direction. As Roddy and Constable Roy wrestled him back to his seat, he shouted, “That lassie is lyin’ like a rug, I tell ye! I was paperin’ at the doctor’s yesterday mornin’. Ask him. He’ll tell ye. I was paperin’ his spare room.”

  Morag cast an anxious look in his direction, but the sergeant told her, “Ye’re in no danger. Roddy and Neil will hold him.” But he waited to make sure Ian was calmer before saying to him in a mild voice, “I was thinkin’ ye’d come home for a flycup, like, when you stepped on the wee kitten.”

  “It was a kitten,” Ian roared. “I never saw any mannie and neither did she.”

  Barbara shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and never took her eyes off Ian.

  “So tell me.” The sergeant leaned toward Morag. “Fit did this mannie look like?”

  “Old. Like Granda and her.” She pointed to me. “But his hair was white and he was tall as Ian. They were rantin’ and roarin’ at one another something awful. And the wee kitten was trembling so hard!” She stopped and tears filled her eyes. “I chust took it because it was scared. Honest. I’ll bring it back,” she told Barbara. “But if ye tell Mum about me skippin’ school and takin’ him, I’ll get in all sorts of trouble.” She turned to Watty. “Are ye gonna tell her, Granda?” She began to blubber. “She’ll never let me go down tae Barbara’s again. An’ I’ll never, ever see the other wee kittens. Please don’t tell. Please!”

  The men looked helpless, but I have raised two sons and helped raise four grandchildren. I’m not susceptible to tears. “You are going to make yourself sick if you don’t stop carrying on,” I warned. “Have a drink of water.”

  Barbara went to pour her a glassful from a pitcher on a nearby table. Morag drank slowly, obviously postponing the rest of her story.

  “Did the man ever get up?” I asked in a conversational tone. “The one you say Ian hit?”

  She set down her glass and shook her head. “I dinnae ken. When Ian bent down to look him over, like, I was afraid he’d see me in the mirror over the dresser, so I crept to the back of the house and ran through the hen’s gate to the pasture. I hid behind a boulder, waitin’ for his truck to leave. He took a very long time. Finally I saw him come out and load two boxes in the truck.”

  “And fit did ye dee then?” asked her grandfather.

  She looked as virtuous as an angel. “After he drove away, I came on down through the pasture to the road and went back to school.”

  “And fit did ye tell your teacher?” he demanded.

  Morag looked down at a scab on her finger and started picking at it. “I said I’d felt sick and had to go home a wee whiley.”

  “And the kitten?” I asked quickly, before Watty could speak again.

  Morag darted a quick look at Barbara, but Barbara was still watching Ian, and it hurt me to see her face. She so obviously wanted to believe him, and so feared she should not.

  Morag hung her head. “I kept him in my jacket and carried him to my room. Granda said he’d ask Mum if I could keep him.” She threw her grandfather another anxious look, but he was examining his nails. I remembered him broaching the subject the night before when he’d finished tucking Morag up for the night.

  The sergeant wasn’t interested in kittens. “You don’t know what happened to the mannie after that?” h
e repeated.

  She shrugged. “I guess Ian dug a hole and buried him.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that it was hard to believe she’d been in hysterics a few moments before. But she trembled again as Ian roared, “It’s all lies! Dinna believe a word of it.”

  Watty roared back, “Quiet, or it’s me ye’ll be answerin’ to.”

  The sergeant waved them both to silence as he leaned forward. “This could be very serious, Morag. Are you absolutely certain you saw this and are not making any of it up?”

  “Aye.”

  “And did ye hear any of what they were arguing aboot?”

  Her eyes slid to her grandfather. “Don’t lie, now,” he admonished her. “Tell the truth.”

  She heaved a huge sigh. “Well, I did, then. The mannie said the land was his, but I dinna ken what land. He said, ‘I’ll take care of you baith, but the land is mine. You’ve known that all along.’ And Ian said—he said—” She came to a stricken halt.

  “What did he say?” the sergeant urged.

  She threw a frightened look at her grandfather, then whispered, “He said, ‘I’ll see ye in hell first.’ I’m not supposed to say that word,” she explained to me in a normal voice.

  “You didn’t,” I reassured her. “You were just quoting what somebody else said.”

  She looked gravely at the bobby. “Will ye keep Ian here, so he cannae hurt me?”

  “Aye, I’ll keep him here until we get this sorted. You dinnae have to worry aboot him harmin’ you.”

  Barbara spoke again, her voice harsh. “And fit mannie was this, Ian, talkin’ aboot land and takin’ care o’ the twa of us?” Her eyes bored into his. “Fit mannie was it, then?”

  A flush rose in his face with his temper. “ ’Twas Hamish, if you must know! Come back to claim his inheritance, he said. Wi’ Dad’s will in his pocket, leaving him the entire farm. Wi’ the deed to the farm, as well. And wi’ plans to go in wi’ the laird to build a posh hotel with a golf course on our land! Said we had to know he’d return one day. Said we’ve had the livin’ o’ the land long enough. Said it was his and nothin’ we could do aboot it!”

  One gnarled hand crept up to Barbara’s throat. “Hamish!” She spoke his name as one she had spoken in secret for many years. “He came back, and ye’ve killt him?”

  “Dad left Hamish the farm, Babby. Nothin’ a-tall for us.”

  She stood still for a long minute, then lifted both hands and waved them in front of her face as if dissipating a fog. “May God forgive the lot o’ ye for all ye’ve done to me,” she cried. Then she turned and stumbled blindly out the door. We heard the creak of her bike going down the brae, and nobody said a word for a full three minutes.

  “Hamish retairned?” the sergeant finally asked, sounding stunned. “For sure?”

  “Aye.” The fire had gone out of Ian, leaving a sullen glare.

  “And you killed him?”

  “It was an accident,” he said truculently. “Like she said.” He nodded grudgingly at Morag. “I knocked him down, and he hit his head.”

  “Take him in the back,” the sergeant told Constable Roy and Roddy.

  He went struggling and swearing, as if he had expected that admission would secure his release. Morag looked up at me, puzzled. “Barbara is always sayin’ we must make allowances for Ian, he’s had a hard life, and he never had a mum, and his dad died when he was wee, and he’s had to work hard always. But she had all those things, too, and she’s not like that.”

  “It’s a matter of choices,” I told her, holding her close and feeling her tremble. “Barbara made good choices with the troubles she was handed, and she turned out good. Ian made choices that weren’t so good, and so far—well, he’s got time left to change. But remember, Morag. The choices we make shape who we become. That’s why you need to choose to go to school.” I figured I might as well get in a grand-motherly lick while I was at it.

  “Och, school’s a bloomin’ waste o’ time.” She wriggled down off my lap. “Are we finished now? I’m supposed to be helping Mum count the sheets.”

  28

  “Do you have anything to add to Morag’s story?” the sergeant asked when Morag and Watty had gone.

  I was thoroughly bewildered. “Jim Gordon was really Hamish Geddys?”

  The bobby nodded. “Could be. He dinnae even change his name much, because the Geddyses are a sept of the Gordon clan, and Hamish is the Gaelic for James.” He broke off and said, almost to himself, “Hamish Geddys, home after all these years, and struck down the day he arrives. What a waste.”

  “One of our group noticed his resemblance to Barbara as we came through the village.”

  “They were very like, now that you mention it.”

  “And Jim sat in the front of the bus the day we drove here, looking at the scenery like a man coming home,” I remembered. “He’d never cared about scenery before. He told Watty that he’d seen the Five Sisters of Kintail in a geography book, too. It must have been a Scottish geography. They aren’t in American geographies.”

  “They were in mine.” He nodded again, as if that were all the effort he was capable of at the moment.

  “And when I said I was looking forward to coming to Auchnagar—” I broke off. I didn’t need to repeat what Jim had said I’d find there. He had sounded as if he had known, though.

  “More important,” I went on, “Alasdair Geddys is said to have made extremely good whisky in these hills, and Eileen said some suspected Hamish worked with his father.”

  “Aye. I’ve heard that.”

  “Jim developed a recipe for an outstanding scotch in America, and used it to establish Scotsman Distillery in the north Georgia mountains.”

  That finally energized the sergeant. “I’ve had a bottle of Scotsman! An American policeman passing through boasted it was as good as any in Scotland. He sent me a wee bottle.”

  “Which cost him a wee penny,” I said drily. “But would a father leave his whole farm to one son instead of dividing it among his children? And how could Barbara and Ian have lived here all these years without proving their father’s will or showing anybody the deed?”

  He thought that over. “There’s no cause to show a deed so long as taxes are paid. Ye’d only need the deed if ye were sellin’ your land. And while the Scots rule of intestacy would divide the land equally among the three children—which we’ve all presumed happened when Alasdair died—he could have written a will, right enough, leaving everything to Hamish. Alasdair had a bad sickness several years before he drooned, where they feared for his life. That maybe gave him a wee taste of mortality and frightened him enough to write a will.”

  Seeing my expression, he chuckled. “I’m too young to remember, mind, but Alasdair is a legend around these parts, both for his whisky and his music. My dad loved to tell how Alasdair caught a chill, developed pneumonia, and was put in hospital in Aberdeen. The doctor fair gave him up, but Alasdair sent young Hamish home for a bottle of his own whisky and his fiddle. After drinkin’ one dram and playin’ one tune, so the story goes, he got out of his bed and went home cured. If he wrote a will soon after that, he maybe left everything to Hamish because he was almost grown, while Ian was still young. Alasdair would never have left a thing to a daughter, although nearly half his land came to him from his wife. It was the MacLaren farm that adjoined his, and she was the last of the MacLarens after her sister, Margaret, died.”

  I felt like he’d poured ice water over me. “Ian and Barbara are half MacLarens?”

  “Aye, their mother was a MacLaren.”

  “That was my mother’s maiden name, and it’s my given name, as well.” I couldn’t recall if I’d mentioned the name when I asked Barbara directions to the cemetery. She probably hadn’t been listening when I introduced myself that morning.

  He chuckled. “Maybe ye’ll be puttin’ in your own claim to the farm.”

  I shook my head. “No, but I came looking for relatives.” I nodded my head toward the back room
. “Seems like I may have found them.” I sighed. So many things were clear now. The conversation Dorothy and I had overheard in the fog, when Jim had assured somebody (Norwood?) not to worry about his parcel, he had title to it. And the incentive Laura had been looking for—why he had been willing to invest in Auchnagar.

  “The laird’s wife can probably give you the name and address of Jim’s first wife,” I told the bobby. “They must have met not long after he got to America, for they have a daughter who’s around thirty-five. She went to kindergarten with our tour-group leader.”

  He made a couple of notes.

  “Do you reckon Ian killed Norwood, too, since he was in on the land deal?”

  Sergeant Murray stood. “We’ll look into that.” His voice was courteous, but I was being dismissed. “Thank you for your assistance. You go on up the brae, noo, and maybe have a wee rest, after all the excitement.”