by Mary Stewart
‘No. They were never sold, though the lawyers thought they had gone with the others. My great-aunt may even have deceived them deliberately; I don’t know. I know she would never have parted with them. Her husband had asked her to keep them for me – keep them in the family, that is, but she didn’t want to be troubled with all the precautions and inspections since the Firearms Acts. In fact I’m not sure that she even attempted to understand them. She merely packed the pair of Purdeys away in a trunk in the attic, locked the trunk, and told no one, and it must have been assumed that they were sold with the rest of his things. She left a letter for me, and she did include the Purdeys in her Will, and told us where to look. I looked, yesterday, and found the trunk empty. So I went to the mainland to report it, and we have been in touch with the lawyers, the gunsmiths, and the salerooms. No trace, but from our description one saleroom – it was Christie’s – quoted us about thirty thousand pounds.’
‘So?’ Ewen’s air was still jaunty, but the syllable came tightly.
‘So it occurred to me that you, as my great-uncle’s ghillie, might even have known what his plans were for his “specials”. And putting that together with your visits to the house, and the guns’ disappearance—’
Ewen had himself in hand again. He appealed to the sergeant. ‘Do you hear that? And you call this grounds – grounds for suspicion? Isn’t it time you either made a charge and got it over with, or you damned well got out of here, and Mister Bloody Hamilton with you?’
The sergeant did not answer. His head was turned towards the door, where we could hear footsteps approaching. I glanced at Ewen, relaxed once more in his chair, as the door opened and one of the Customs men came in.
His eyes sought the sergeant’s, and he shook his head. ‘Nothing. Of course it’s only a rummage-search, but as far as we’ve gone, there’s nothing in that boat at all that hasn’t a right to be there.’
It seemed as good a moment as any for a change of scene. I carried a tray across and set it down on the table in the window. Outside it was full daylight. Soon the sun would break through the mist. I sat down by the table and lifted the pot.
‘Would anyone like a cup of tea?’
16
It seemed that the cliché of the detective story – that a policeman drinks nothing when on duty – did not apply in the islands. After that sea-trip through the damp mists of early morning, I didn’t blame them. The sergeant accepted a cup of tea, then gave a nod to the detective-constable which the latter seemed to understand. He took the cup I gave him over to Ewen, who accepted it politely, shook his head to the sugar-bowl, and then sat sipping, for all the world as if this were a normal tea-party and he was waiting for someone to start the conversation.
As, of course, he was. For him, so far so good. Plenty of talk, but no proof of anything but a misdemeanour, so keep quiet and let the opposition make the running . . .
I poured tea for the four of them, then went to refill the pot. When I had filled my own cup and sat down again by the table, the sergeant was speaking to Neil.
‘So would you tell us, sir, what happened tonight after you got back to Moila? You did appear to be pursuing Mr Mackay’s boat. Have you any reason, other than the suspicions you have told us of, and Mr Mackay’s visit to your house, when you say he did not break in, for pursuing him here, and in what looked like a dangerous manner?’
I saw Ewen smile into his teacup, and spoke. ‘Mr Fraser – Sergeant – may I tell you what happened before Mr Hamilton got back here to Moila tonight?’
He looked surprised. ‘Then you were not on the mainland with Mr Hamilton?’
‘That’s right. I was not. I didn’t even know he had gone to the mainland. When I saw his boat wasn’t in the boathouse I thought he might have gone fishing. I spent the night on the island where the broch is.’ I set my cup down. ‘I can’t pronounce its name. The one opposite Mr Hamilton’s house. In English it’s Seal Island.’
‘I know the one. Eilean na Roin. Yes, Miss Fenemore?’
The constable, Jimmy, was writing busily. I did not look at Ewen, but was conscious that he had gone very still. I cleared my throat. ‘I won’t make a long story of it, but I went across there after lunch, to the House. I thought I might see Mr Hamilton there. He has told you about his first visit here; we have met since that day, and he asked me to go over whenever I wanted to. Well, I wanted to visit the island – Seal Island – because Mr Hamilton had told me there really were seals there at low tide. I went to the house first, and he wasn’t there. Then I found that the boathouse was empty, so I assumed he was away with it, perhaps on the island, looking at the rocks on the far side – you know he’s a geologist, I suppose? – or else out fishing. Well, I went across and the seals were there and I watched them. A bit later I found that my watch had stopped, and I had misjudged the tide. When I found that I couldn’t cross by the causeway I went up to Mr Hamilton’s tent and made myself some supper.’ I looked at Neil. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’
‘Of course I don’t. You’re welcome.’
‘And just where is all this getting us?’ asked Ewen. He set his empty cup down with a thump on the floor beside his chair, and gripped the chair-arms as if about to rise. ‘Sergeant Fraser, do I have to say it again? Either you will show grounds for holding me, or you will please let me go, always providing that my boat is undamaged by your pals out there, or by my friend Neil’s lousy seamanship.’
The sergeant ignored him. ‘Go on, please, Miss Fenemore.’
‘I was hoping that Mr Hamilton might bring his boat in, and take me off the island, but he didn’t come, so I went into the tent and went to sleep. I woke a bit later, and thought by the light that enough time might have passed for the tide to have turned. I went outside the tent, and then I heard a boat’s engine. Of course I thought it might be Mr Hamilton, so I put my jacket and shoes and things on again, and went down to the causeway. Then I saw Mr Mackay. He must have berthed his boat in Halfway House and then come round the cliff path and down to the pier.’
Dead silence. I had never had a more attentive class. The sergeant sat back in his chair. As if at a signal, the constable took over. ‘You’re sure it was Mr Mackay?’
‘Certain. If you know the island you’ll know that the channel isn’t wide, and I was at the end of the causeway and he came right down to look in the boathouse. I suppose to check that it was empty.’
Ewen said sharply: ‘Guesswork or lies, what does it matter? Sergeant, can’t you see that there’s nothing here? Low tide was between quarter and half past four this morning. She was stuck on the other side till three o’clock or near it. Could you identify anyone at that hour, and in that light?’
‘If I was you I’d keep quiet, sir, and let the lady finish,’ said the sergeant. ‘Go on, please, miss. Never mind what you supposed. Just tell us what you saw.’
I took a deep breath. Somehow, telling my story in that charged atmosphere was like swimming against a strong current. ‘I saw Mr Mackay get out some binoculars and look at the tent. I had closed it. He must have thought – sorry, skip that. Then he turned and went in through the garden gate. That path leads to the house.’
‘Could you see the house from where you were?’ That was the sergeant.
When I said ‘No,’ he nodded, and I realised that of course he knew the house, too. I ploughed on. ‘I waited, and after a while – I put it at about half an hour – he came back, and he was carrying a bag over his shoulder. It was about the size – it could have been a duffel bag. It seemed to be quite heavy. He left it behind the boathouse and went back to the – that is, through the garden gate again.’
‘Ah,’ said Ewen, ‘we have stopped supposing, have we?’ The words were mocking, but when, caught off guard by the interruption, I met his eye, there was no mockery there. Anxiety, appeal, the knowledge that here, at last, was coming something that could be verified. That picture, that totally irrelevant portrait of Great-Uncle Fergus Hamilton, was still propped behind the boa
thouse, waiting to bear my story out, and to set the police searching for the duffel bag, which he must have dumped somewhere during the chase along the coastline. I remembered suddenly how Stormy Petrel had crept out of view behind the big rock stack, close inshore, presumably after Ewen had seen the Customs launch approaching. Had he dumped the bag there somewhere, to be called for later?
They say that a computer works a problem out, from given data, in milliseconds. It still has nothing on the human brain. In the micromoment when I reluctantly met Ewen Mackay’s gaze, I had gone back through all I knew of his story. The adopted boy, the good parents and their efforts to combat the bad heredity; the boredom of life on the quiet, remote island for an active, wild and clever boy with the added qualities of looks and charm. A boy who shared, with every other normal human child, the desire to be noticed, to be someone, to be important. And to the old gentleman at the big house, the Colonel, he did become important. Neil – presumably to damp Ewen’s pretensions – had used the word ‘ghillie’; Ewen himself had put it differently; he had been the old man’s ‘companion’ whenever he went shooting. It was possible that the boy had really liked the old man, and the Colonel seemed to have trusted him. Then the Colonel died, and the widow (could one, wise after the event, ascribe it to that legendary feminine instinct?) had found no place for him. So the boy, with possible dreams of a better ‘adoption’ dashed, had left Moila, and, in the congenial bustle and anonymity of a big city, had learned to use the cleverness and charm and the middle-class manners he had learned, and had done well by them until some mistake was made, and he paid for it. Paid for it: and here Mrs McDougall’s words flashed up on the computer screen, to be immediately blanked out and replaced by all I had seen and heard of Ewen myself since that Wednesday night. This was exactly what he had counted on before; other people’s kindness and pity were, to him, weapons to his hand. Great-Aunt Emily Hamilton was just another widow to be robbed. And for the moment it was up to me to see that he did not get away with it.
‘When he came back to the boathouse,’ I said, ‘he was carrying a large picture. An oil painting. He put that in the same place, behind the boathouse. Then he grabbed the duffel bag and set off up the cliff path with it. Neil’s boat came in soon after, and when we heard Ewen’s engine start we went after him. The duffel bag – well, never mind, that’s supposition. But the picture is still there.’ I drew a breath and said, not happily: ‘That’s all.’
‘Well,’ said Ewen, ‘I should hope it is.’ He got to his feet and held out his wrists in a consciously theatrical gesture. ‘I give up. I did go up to the Hamilton house this morning in the small hours, and I did take down a picture. I admit it. But it was not theft. It was Colonel Hamilton’s portrait, and I reckoned it was due to me. The Colonel always said I was like a son to him, the only son he had ever had, and Mrs Hamilton said that when she had gone I might have it to remember him by.’
‘She would never have done that. She disliked and distrusted you,’ said Neil, angrily.
‘And what would you know about that? You were never there, only on holiday from school, so what would you know about the way they felt about me?’
‘Plenty.’ Suddenly, between the two men, a real spurt of antagonism had sprung up. ‘And what you felt about them, too. Oh, yes, you got on fine with my great-uncle, but you and Aunt Emily never hit it off, and there are plenty of folk in Moila who know that and will swear to it.’
‘Then will you tell me why I should go to the trouble and the risk, yes, because I’m admitting I went into the house, and I did it while you were out because I knew fine that this was the line you’d take – why should I want the picture, if it wasn’t promised, and if it wasn’t that he’d been like a father to me, more than the one I’d had to call my own?’
There it was again, the indefinable but clear emphasis on the word ‘father’. It was clear to me because of Ewen’s earlier hint at a possible connection between himself and Neil’s family, the suggestion that the adopted son of the gardener might in fact be a Hamilton love-child, and hated therefore by the Colonel’s wife.
‘Probably,’ said Neil, in a tone nastier than I would have thought him capable of, ‘because you heard my great-aunt say that it was the most valuable thing in the house, and you’re too damned ignorant to know better.’
‘And was it?’ asked the sergeant, who, ignoring Ewen’s theatrical gesture, had seemed quite content to watch and listen.
‘Valuable? Heavens, no, it’s very ordinary. But it was like him, and so she valued it.’
Quite suddenly, I had had enough. I got to my feet.
‘Sergeant Fraser, if you’ll excuse me. It’s been a long night, and I want a bath and a change and some breakfast. The first two right this minute. Of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you have to, and if you’re still here when I come down I’ll see what I can manage for breakfast.’
He was beginning some sort of protest about that, but I did not stay to listen. I went upstairs and into my bedroom and shut the door.
I have not yet got it straight with my subconscious. It is possible, I admit, that I deliberately wasted time in the hope that it would be all over and the police, preferably along with Ewen Mackay, would be gone before I went downstairs again. I did not know whether in fact any charge could be brought; that would surely depend on whether the duffel bag could be found, and what its contents were. The picture, except in so far as it bore my story out, could be ignored. It was even possible, I thought, as I stripped off my slept-in clothes and reached for a dressing gown, that the whole situation would collapse into a mere incident of petty theft; it was the alleged theft of the guns that had brought the police across so quickly, and there seemed to be no way of knowing if Ewen had ever touched them. Was it, as he had bitterly pointed out, a case of ‘give a dog a bad name’? It was an uncomfortable thought, but there was nothing to be done except tell the truth and leave it to the professionals. I could hear them still at it, question and answer, when I crossed the little landing to the bathroom and shut the door. Then nothing could be heard above the gushing of the taps.
Back in my bedroom, still not hurrying, I dressed. As I was brushing my hair, a sound from outside took me over to the window, to see Archie’s Land Rover starting on its careful way downhill towards the cottage. There was someone with him – two people, I thought.
I whirled to look at the bedside clock. Surely the ferry was not in yet? It was not due for another half hour at least. My brother could not get here much before nine or half past, and I had been counting on this unpleasant situation’s resolving itself before that.
The Land Rover bumped down the last curve of the track, and came to a halt. Ann Tracy jumped out, with Megan behind her. Someone must have opened the cottage door, because I heard them come right in, and then a babel of voices and questions.
It could not be put off further. I went downstairs.
17
‘Here she is!’
‘Oh, Rose!’
Megan and Ann spoke together. They were both sitting at the table in the window. Just inside the door, which was shut, stood Archie McLaren. Seeing the boats at the jetty, he must have come with the girls to the cottage to see what was happening, and now, presumably, he would stay to see the drama out, and the ferry passengers would have to take care of themselves.
The scene in my sitting-room was certainly set for drama. Ewen still sat in the chair by the hearth, with Sergeant Fraser across from him, but the detective-constable had moved his chair to block the doorway to the scullery, and Neil was beside the fireplace, standing with an elbow on the mantelshelf. Someone had pushed the Calor gas poker into the dead logs in the fireplace, and added the rest of the peat from the hearth. The fire had caught, and was burning cheerfully.
‘Hullo, there. Good morning, Archie.’ I greeted the newcomers a little uncertainly, then – because doing something, anything, was better than standing there trying not to look at Ewen – went to pull the gas poker out of the
fire and turn it off. ‘An early call? Have you had breakfast?’
It was a silly remark in the circumstances, but it bridged the moment. Ann spoke breathlessly. She looked tense and excited.
‘Rose, we had to come . . . Of course we didn’t know anything like this had happened, the police being here, I mean, and Mr Hamilton, but when Archie told us, we knew we’d have to come and tell you what happened yesterday.’
I went across to the sofa and sat down, looking enquiringly at Sergeant Fraser.
He nodded. ‘Yes, it does have to do with this. It seems that while you were away on the island yesterday, the young ladies came down here. What they have told us may be important, but since you are the owner, the lessee, rather, of this cottage, we waited for you. Perhaps Miss Tracy or Miss Lloyd would repeat their story for you?’
I raised my brows at them. Megan, looking flushed and unhappy, shook her head. Ann leaned forward.
‘Yes. We came down here in the evening. Yesterday evening. We wouldn’t have disturbed you if you’d been busy, but we wanted to watch for the otters again. You weren’t at home, so we went up there –’ she gestured vaguely – ‘behind the cottage, and found a place we could watch from without being seen. You know, a hide.’
‘Ann.’ It was Megan, her voice low. ‘Not all that. Just finish.’
Ann took a breath. She seemed to have no difficulty in looking at Ewen. ‘All right. He came. Ewen Mackay there. His boat came in to the jetty. He got out and went to the cottage door and knocked. Because of what we had heard about him, we stayed where we were and didn’t say anything. He knocked again, but of course there was no answer. Then he went in. He had a key. We didn’t know what to do, so we stayed put and watched. He didn’t stay long – just went in and called out, as if he was checking to see that the place was empty. Then he went back to his boat.’ She paused. ‘Megan?’
‘No. You.’
‘He took something out of the boat, a bundle. It was wrapped in what looked like cloth, thick, but it was long, and stiff, not just cloths, I mean. He went round the back to that shed, not the loo, the tool-shed, and of course that was just below us and we saw it all. He was hurrying. He went into the shed. He wasn’t there long. When he came out he didn’t have the bundle. He went to the boat and then away.’
