Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder

by Bonnie MacBird

  ‘Well, that is all, Dr Watson. I do not know where he is at present.’

  There was a sudden commotion outside the room. The library doors were flung open and in rushed the groundsman, Ualan Moray, wet from the snow, and wild with panic.

  ‘Dr Watson. Thank God!’ He gasped and clutched his side, trying to breathe. ‘Come at once! My missing son, Iain! Mr Holmes! The icehouse!’

  ‘What icehouse?’ said I.

  ‘Down by the garden wall. Not used in winter,’ said Isla McLaren, coming forward. ‘Mr Moray, what has happened?’

  The old man was out of breath and could barely string his words together. ‘Mr Holmes – in danger – come!’

  ‘Bring our coats to the Great Hall. Now!’ cried the lady, and a servant dashed off. We both grasped Moray by an arm and took off at a run in that same direction. As we bundled into our coats in the Great Hall, we pressed Moray for more.

  ‘My youngest, Calum, found Iain’s knapsack buried in the snow down there this morning. I went and found the place unlocked but naebody there, so I brought Mr Holmes.’

  ‘Unlocked, you say?’ said Isla in alarm.

  The servants brought the three of us lanterns and we dashed outside into freezing cold. The snow was coming down in a blizzard now and the greyish white swirls lit by our feeble lanterns disappeared into the darkness. ‘Where is he now?’ I cried. ‘You said danger!’

  Ualan Moray pointed down the hill in the direction of the small mound I had noted earlier. ‘He is in the pit. The ladder is gone. Hurry!’

  I had heard of icehouses on grand estates but never had occasion to enter one. They had deep caverns some several storeys deep in which ice was stored for summer use. They could be dangerous in the extreme.

  ‘My God, Ualan!’ said Isla. She took off down the hill and we slogged after her.

  As we ran slipping and sliding down the incline, our voices threw clouds into the frigid air.

  ‘Why did he go into the pit?’ Mrs McLaren asked.

  ‘Looking for my boy. He wanted mair light. I went to fetch a second lantern.’

  ‘How long has he been in the ice?’ I cried.

  Next to me, Isla slid in the snow and she clutched my arm to keep from falling as we scrambled forward down the icy slope.

  ‘Nae mair than twenty minutes,’ said the old man.

  The mound was some two hundred yards away. The air was so cold it seared my lungs with every breath. The new snow was powder and we slid and sunk in to our knees. Still we stumbled, sliding and unsteady. ‘Mrs McLaren, you told me he went into town,’ said I.

  ‘That is what he told me!’ she exclaimed. Was she lying? I glanced at her and nearly slipped on a tree stump, tumbling forward into a drift. The lady went down with me and one of the lanterns went out.

  In a moment we were back on our feet, relit the lantern, and pressed on, panting with the exertion. The icy air tore into my chest in waves of pain. We half ran, half tumbled and slid the last yards, at last arriving at the low white mound like a berm that projected up from the ground near the garden wall. We followed Moray to the other side of it, not visible from the castle.

  From this side it was clear the small mound was a structure, like a child’s playhouse, But the ‘house’ was sunk strangely into the earth, buried up to its eaves, with ‘windows’ which were opaque, and presumably just for effect, barely showing at the bottom. The door had three locks but all were open and the door stood ajar, the snow heavily trampled in front of it.

  Moray tugged open the heavy door and we entered.

  All was dark within, and I felt a chill even colder than the snow. Moray held his lantern aloft. Just visible was a concrete floor, and in the centre a deep, black pit, ten feet across. I moved to the edge and peered into the unfathomable depths. ‘Holmes? Holmes!’ I shouted.

  There was no reply. My chest went tight. No sign of a lantern. His must have gone out.

  ‘How deep is this?’ I asked.

  ‘Two storeys. But there will be ten feet of ice in there now.’

  I looked frantically around for a ladder or any form of access. Mrs McLaren searched as well. There was nothing in the pit, nor on the walls.

  ‘Where was the ladder when you left?’ said I.

  ‘Fastened to the edge. Here.’ Moray indicated the strong hooks on the inside of the pit. ‘Where it always rests.’

  ‘Someone must have come in and taken it,’ said the lady. She turned to Moray. ‘You left the door unlocked?’

  ‘Aye.’ His voice caught in a sob.

  I continued to stare down into the black chasm. ‘Holmes?’ I shouted again down into the void. There was no response. Where was he? Where was the light he had brought down with him?

  ‘Was this here when you left?’ asked Mrs McLaren. I turned to see her pointing to a large bucket. I had not noticed it before. It was empty, and near the edge of the pit.

  Ualan Moray turned to it in surprise. ‘No.’

  A wavering, faint voice suddenly drifted up from below. ‘Watson? Is that you?’

  ‘Holmes!’ A thrill of relief came over me.

  ‘Bit chilly,’ came the weakened voice.

  ‘We are coming Holmes!’ I shouted. ‘Keep faith!’

  I turned to the others. ‘Moray, fetch a rope. And people to help. Quick, man. His life depends on it.’ Moray took off at a run. I moved back to the edge of the pit. ‘Holmes? Holmes? Can you hear me? The ladder was taken. Moray has gone for help. Are you all right?’

  ‘I have found two bodies, Watson. Fiona is one. I cannot be sure of the second. But—’

  ‘My God,’ said Mrs McLaren.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I called down again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Holmes?’

  ‘I shall get more help,’ cried Isla McLaren, moving towards the door. ‘In case Moray fails.’

  ‘Be careful. There is treachery about.’

  She shook her head as if I were foolish for saying so, and left at a run.

  Alone in the chamber, I took Moray’s single lantern and shone it around, searching for something, anything, to reach Holmes. There was nothing. I returned to the edge of the pit. I felt for my gun, and then remembered I had left it with Holmes.

  ‘Holmes, try to keep talking.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Can you speak? Talk to me.’ When a person freezes to death, sleep usually precedes it.

  ‘Tea. Nice cup of,’ came the weak voice.

  ‘Very good idea. Holmes?’ I had to keep him talking. ‘I had a bit of an adventure in Edinburgh. I want to tell you about it.’

  ‘Tell—’

  ‘I have the picture. It is not Donal McLaren.’

  ‘Ah—’

  ‘But there is more, Holmes.’ A second or two passed. ‘Holmes?’

  Silence.

  ‘Keep talking, Holmes. It was a piquant tale,’ I said. There was no reply. ‘Holmes? A fascinating tale. Are you curious? Can you hear me?’

  Silence for several seconds. Then at last, his voice, weaker than before.

  ‘Bucket of water. Someone threw—’

  Good God, he had been doused in water. The same person who had taken the ladder must have done this as well. Holmes’s clothes would be frozen solid. It was a miracle he was still alive. But he would not be for long if he could not be retrieved. I was torn. Would one or both of the others succeed in getting help in time? I knew only one thing. He could not be left here alone.

  CHAPTER 30

  Romeo and Juliet

  y the grace of God Moray returned in time with a rope and four men. We found strong hooks on the walls and tied the ropes to them. I insisted on being first into the pit, one rope laced like a harness around my chest, a second in my hand, and a lantern gripped between my teeth.

  It was a perilous descent but at last I stood on something solid, if terribly slick. I held up the lantern to send the feeble light around the pit. I quickly spotted the shadowy and macabre limbs of the two bodies Holmes
had found, protruding upwards from the grey moonscape of the mounded ice. But where was Holmes?

  I continued in a circle until I saw my poor friend, huddled over at one edge of the pit, and curled into a ball, his hands in tight fists. ‘Holmes!’ I cried out. He did not respond.

  I lunged towards him and slipped on the treacherous surface, tumbling onto to the sharp edges of the ice rocks and bruising my ribs.

  With difficulty I righted myself and clambered towards his unconscious form. I felt for a pulse. It was faint and his breathing was shallow. I managed to fasten my second rope around his waist and under his arms, and called up to the men above.

  ‘Hurry,’ I shouted. ‘Raise him now! We are losing him!’

  In the dim light of my lantern, I saw the rope tighten and his body began to lift from the ice, out of my hands and up into the darkness above me, silhouetted against the lantern light above. As he drew away from me I saw three pale faces lit from above peering down at us. Suddenly the depth of the coldness struck me in a wave of almost unimaginable pain. How had he endured nearly thirty minutes down here?

  ‘We have him,’ came a voice from above. Thank God.

  Then I, too, was raised from the pit and once on solid ground, rushed to attend my friend, shivering myself as I did so. While the others pulled the two corpses from the pit, it was the live victim upon whom I concentrated. Holmes had indeed been doused with water, and in the brighter light of the rescuers’ lanterns I saw that his clothes were eerily rigid, two thirds covered with a thin layer of crisp, new white ice. I wrapped him in blankets, listened to his faint heartbeat and began to help lash him to one of the sledges.

  I stared down at the noble face, white and still. Had we pulled him out in time?

  Meanwhile, the two frozen corpses, including the headless body of the poor lass, had been raised out by the others. The second body, as one might have predicted, was Ualan’s Moray’s missing son, Iain.

  I headed up the hill towards the castle with Holmes’s still figure on the sledge beside me.

  We were let into the kitchen area and quickly shown to a large room – a secondary food preparation room off the main kitchen which had an enormous fire at one end and an oven at the other. While I propped Holmes up in a chair near the fire and sent for fresh clothes from his room, two large oak tables in the centre of the room were cleared. There, the strongest servants, horrified but stalwart, placed the two bodies, which arrived shortly after we did.

  Holmes was barely breathing. Under my direction, we moved him briefly into the pantry, and after my quick inspection for frostbite, dried him thoroughly and changed him into warm, fresh clothes brought down by Mungo. He remained unconscious during this, his right fist clenched like a rock, and I could not open it to examine his fingers for frostbite. I had to let it go and moved him back to the second kitchen.

  His pulse gained strength as I enlisted the aid of two scullery maids to bring additional warm blankets and wrap him in them. I called for hot water bottles, tested their temperature, and placed one under each armpit, one on his stomach, another on his lap. Minutes later, I moved him back into the larger room, near, but not too close to the fire. We would have to be careful with this process because warming a frozen body too quickly could kill.

  My doctor’s bag having been brought down, I took his temperature and listened to his heart. A fatal arrhythmia could occur at any time during the rewarming, and because of this, any sharp movement was to be avoided.

  I called for warm brandy mixed with lemon and honey to start the warming from inside. To my relief, his eyes finally opened and I got him to take a few sips. That too would have to go slowly. His lips were blue and after a time, his body had begun to shake. That was a good sign.

  At some time during this process, Isla McLaren had entered the room, and now stared down at my friend in grave concern. ‘Dr Watson,’ said she, ‘Will he live?’

  I nodded, willing it to be true. ‘Very well then,’ said she. ‘The royal party has arrived for the dinner preceding the tasting. I will fetch the laird now, if he will break away.’

  As she passed through the open door to the main kitchen I got a glimpse of servants rushing about with slabs of meat, bowls of fruit, platters of cakes. The festive preparations for the royal visit could not be in stranger contrast to our own gruesome task. I quickly closed the door behind her.

  I glanced over at the stiffened remains of Fiona Paisley and Iain Moray. With a final look at Holmes, who was propped before the fire on two chairs and resting comfortably, I approached the two frozen bodies on the tables in the centre of the room.

  They were both caught in strange, contorted positions resembling nothing so much as dead beetles – arms and legs oddly bent, some sticking up into the air. These positions related, I presumed, to how they had ultimately frozen on the uneven surface of the mounds of ice. The girl’s headless corpse, white with frost as her head had been when presented on the platter, was perhaps even stranger than the boy’s. Her back was arched, and arms extended, fists clenched. It was hard to think of this form as human.

  The body of Iain Moray, on the other hand, was, like Holmes moments ago, covered in a white layer of thin, brittle, grey ice. This made him an eerie statue. His arms were extended forward and crooked, hands nearly touching, head tilted to one side, almost in a position of succour. He had once been a handsome lad, strong bodied, with a broad chest and shock of reddish blond hair, now frozen in a halo around his anguished face.

  Already the frost and ice had begun to melt, leaving dark patches here and there on both corpses.

  Ualan Moray stood over his son’s body, weeping silently.

  I became aware that a few of the kitchen staff were now huddled at the other end of the large room, eyes bulging in horror. Abruptly their gaze flew from the corpses to something over my shoulder. They screamed.

  I whirled to see Holmes. Now standing, he was an emaciated, ghastly apparition. He had thrown the blankets and hot water bottles to the ground. With his white shirt hanging off his thin frame, his face a ghostly bluish pale, he was a fright.

  ‘Watson!’ he croaked. ‘Clear this room!’ I nodded at one of the servants and the room emptied, all save Ualan Moray, lingering in grief next to the body of his son.

  ‘Sit down, Holmes,’ I said. ‘You are not at all well!’

  He did not, and instead stepped forward to view the bodies. His legs buckled but I rushed forward and succeeded in catching him before he hit the flagstones. He was shivering now, deep, rocking tremors. He raised a trembling hand and looked at it with a strange dispassion, as though it were not part of him. It was shaking like the palsy.

  ‘Devil take it!’ He took a deep breath and willed the hand to stillness. ‘Give me your glass, Watson! I need to examine the bodies.’

  ‘Not yet. They will keep.’ I picked up a warm blanket and threw it over his shoulders.

  ‘No, they are melting as we dawdle. The glass, I say! And get me a pitcher of warm water!’

  I had taken to carrying an extra magnifying glass at all times since our adventure with the Twice Dead Missionary some two years past in which a second lens had literally saved our lives, I handed him mine and he stumbled towards the contorted remains of Fiona Paisley. I placed a small pitcher of warm water nearby.

  Holmes bent close over the body of the girl, peering through my lens at her arm, moving slowly down to the hand. By the other table, Ualan Moray had begun to keen over the body of his son. Holmes gave me a quick look, nodding towards the door, and I gently took Moray aside.

  ‘Sir,’ I whispered. ‘Mr Holmes will find out what or who killed your boy. I promise. But he must work alone.’

  The man turned to me with tears. ‘My Iain,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Go to your other boy, Calum, Mr Moray. He will need you now,’ I said. Moray nodded, and allowed me to usher him out.

  I turned then to watch my friend. Holmes, still trembling, had begun to circle Fiona’s body, moving stiffly at first, lea
ning in to touch, pouring small amounts of warm water here and there upon the corpse, examining closely with the glass, fingering the frozen clothing. As usual, the exigencies of an exciting case inspired physical feats of endurance in Holmes beyond those which seemed humanly possible. Still shaking, he moved around the bodies – darting back and forth, quicker and quicker, precise and thorough, as in a macabre dance.

  After a time he seemed satisfied. ‘Take a look, Watson,’ he directed. I followed him, casting my own medical eye on the corpses. He pointed at bruises on Fiona’s wrists and forearms. But I saw no marks on the boy’s.

  Meanwhile, my concern grew for my friend. His lips were still blue, his body racked with convulsive shivers. ‘Holmes,’ I began. ‘You risk going into shock. We must get you into a warm bath.’

  ‘Later, Watson. These bodies will not wait.’ He turned back to his examination. There was still no sign of the laird. Had I not been so preoccupied with Holmes, I might have dwelled on Sir Robert’s curious absence.

  But moments later the man himself, kilted and ornamented, in full Highland dress, with lace cuffs, a jewelled dirk, and an ornate pistol tucked into his complex array, strode into the room, followed by Isla McLaren. Brushing past me and Holmes, he marched to the table where he cast his eyes over the frozen body of his daughter, took a quick glance at the boy’s corpse, and with a soft gagging sound suddenly turned his back to us.

  After several seconds he regained his composure turned to face my friend. ‘What has happened here, Mr Holmes? How is it that Fiona, and this boy—’

  ‘I am endeavouring to find out, Laird Robert,’ said Holmes. ‘I need time to examine these bodies. I want them moved to a cooler room.’ He shivered violently. I picked up another blanket and put it on his shoulders.

  If the laird noticed anything about Holmes’s desperate condition, he did not remark upon it. ‘Carry on, Mr Holmes,’ he said coldly. He gestured an older servant to his side. ‘See that Mr Holmes has what he needs. Block off the view from the other room, and warn everyone that if a word of this escapes the kitchen, the entire staff will be dismissed without reference.’