Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder

by Bonnie MacBird

  ‘I will handle them when they arrive,’ said Alistair. ‘And the laird’s doctor has been summoned as you asked, Doctor Watson.’

  Meanwhile my patient showed no signs of regaining consciousness.

  Charles had begun pacing in frantic despair.

  ‘But our stock! What are we to do?’ he cried.

  ‘We will end up selling off the lot anonymously to be combined into some insipid Southern blend,’ said Alistair bitterly. ‘And then our doors will close. A fine finish after more than a hundred years.’

  ‘Gentlemen, your brother lies pickled. Perhaps that should be your concern,’ said Isla McLaren in a sharp tone.

  ‘Donal’s body has clearly been there for years,’ said Alistair. ‘No doubt since the night of his party. But who put him there?’

  ‘Did you see Coupe? He knew what was in the cask,’ said the lady.

  But it occurred to me that with the exception of the laird, none of the family had expressed sadness or outrage at Donal’s grisly fate. I looked around for Holmes and my worries increased.

  A moan came from the laird. His eyes fluttered and I called for brandy. Isla McLaren had it in my hand instantly. He spluttered and choked as I held it to his lips. His eyes opened halfway and immediately squeezed shut again. His pulse was stronger.

  ‘Sir?’ I said. ‘Sir Robert, can you hear me?’

  Then he shouted, a terrible cri de coeur, ‘Donal!’

  In five more minutes I had him up and seated, with the family drawn around him in a grim circle. He sat pale and rigid, his eyes blinking as if seeing the world and everything in it for the first time. I was unsure of his level of awareness or whether he had sustained invisible damage. ‘Sir Robert, can you hear me?’ I tried to engage him, to get him to follow my moving finger with his eyes, but he was unresponsive. ‘Can you tell me your full name, sir? Where are we? What is this room?’

  He did not reply, merely repeating ‘Donal’ several times.

  ‘What is his state, Doctor?’ asked Isla McLaren. ‘Can you do something?’

  ‘I cannot yet tell. I am fearful of a stroke.’

  Charles soon got up and paced nervously in front of the fire. Alistair slipped out of the room. His wife remained at the laird’s side, attentive but at the same time remote – watching, listening, evaluating.

  But slowly the patriarch seemed to rally. ‘We … we … oh my God. How?’ he slurred.

  ‘Cameron Coupe had the skills and access to the unfilled casks, Father,’ said Isla McLaren evenly. ‘Clearly Donal was put into an empty cask the night of the party, or soon after, and it was later filled and has rested in the warehouse since. Which means he never went to India. Or the Sudan. Never served at Khartoum. And judging by what we saw tonight, Mr Coupe put him there.’

  Mrs McLaren, it seemed to me, showed remarkable level-headedness given the sensational character of unfolding events.

  The laird blinked at her. I am not sure he understood.

  ‘How can you know what happened at the party, Isla? It was before your time here,’ said Alistair, from in the doorway. He came in and stood before his father. ‘No police, yet,’ he added.

  ‘The lady is correct,’ said a sharp voice from behind Alistair. ‘Her logic is sound.’ Holmes stood at the door, dabbing at a cut on his forehead, his hair in disarray, his clothing torn.

  ‘Holmes!’ I cried.

  ‘Mr Cameron Coupe is being held in the next room. He admits placing Donal’s body in the cask. But he is not the murderer. Nor did he switch the casks to cause the events of tonight.’

  ‘Someone else planned tonight? Not Coupe?’ demanded Charles.

  ‘No, of course not Coupe. Did you not see his reaction?’ snapped his sister-in-law.

  ‘Holmes, you said Coupe placed Donal into the cask! The murdering scoundrel!’ exclaimed Alistair.

  ‘I said nothing of the kind,’ said Holmes with a schoolmaster’s asperity. ‘He did hide the body, but as for the killing, Coupe was only a witness, or what we might term a principal in the second degree.’ Noticing confusion in the room, he added, ‘Donal was killed by another.’

  ‘I say Coupe killed my brother!’ shouted Charles.

  Holmes had taken a position in front of the fireplace, holding his hands slightly behind him to warm them. ‘Cameron Coupe says not. And I am inclined to believe him.’

  Sir Robert stared up at Holmes. ‘I do not understand.’ His eyes focused, then went opaque, then grew sharp again. He was struggling for full consciousness.

  Holmes turned to me. ‘Is he compos mentis, Doctor?’

  ‘I am not sure, Holmes. He is only intermittently lucid. He may have suffered a stroke.’

  Holmes stared hard at the laird. ‘Sir Robert? You are a strong man. I am going to presume you can hear and understand me. It is time that you learned some hard truths, sir. You wanted answers today. Well, I have a great many of them for you now.’

  Holmes moved to one side of the fire and positioned himself in front of a large bookcase. He appeared to lean on it for support. I rose in some concern but he waved me off. Instead he took out his pipe and lit it, forcing everyone to wait. Charles snorted impatiently.

  Holmes looked up and took in everyone in the room. He finally locked eyes with the laird. ‘Sir Robert, I now know how both your son Donal and your daughter Fiona died, and at whose hands.’

  ‘Daughter?’ cried Charles. ‘Fiona?’

  Alistair laughed sharply. ‘Oh, of course!’ I turned to look at his wife. Isla McLaren was perfectly still, her face a mask. Had she known?

  ‘Daughter?’ said Charles again. His voice dropped to a whisper as the implication settled around him like a coal fog over London. ‘Fiona was your daughter? Our sister?’

  ‘We shall discuss Donal first,’ said Holmes. ‘I have examined the body. Donal McLaren was stabbed in the chest with a small, serrated knife blade. The body was well maintained in the high concentration of alcohol over all these years. Even as the percentage of alcohol declined due to evaporation, it was enough to preserve the corpse in near perfect condition. He was no doubt killed the night of his going away party and in view, or with the knowledge of, Cameron Coupe. Coupe then offered to hide the body for reasons he will have to explain to you. But he is prepared to do so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked the laird. It was clearly an effort for him to speak.

  ‘That the murder was the night of the party? Yes. When I visited your warehouse, Sir Robert, you noticed me examining the floorboards behind the row of casks set out as tasters. There I found some evidence of a long ago struggle, and a stain which I found suggestive. Using my pocketknife, I scraped a small sample from a crevice in the floorboards which in my room I later identified as blood. As Watson knows, I frequently carry with me the chemical means to make such an identification. As this area of the room was difficult to access it is likely to have remained more or less undisturbed since the time of Donal’s departure celebration. It was probable that this dried residue dated from that time. Coupe only confirmed my theory.

  ‘Next, the murderer. You mentioned that you arranged for Donal to have a safe posting to the Guards, but a less propitious placement for his friend in the artillery. I have two observations there.

  ‘You were correct about this young man. The name August Bell Clarion is well known to me personally from school days. While this is hardly proof, I know it was well within his ken to commit such a murder in a sudden act of pique at Donal McLaren.’

  ‘Why yes, of course!’ I cried, thinking of what I had learned at Fettes – but had not had time to discuss.

  Holmes threw me a puzzled look, but went on.

  ‘As to motive and timing, consider this. Clarion was a violently jealous sort, easily provoked. Your son was handsome, blessed with rich life prospects at the distillery, admired by women, and about to leave with a generous and relatively safe commission. Any one of these things could set off this vicious man, but in concert they offered a sure motive. I suspected th
at he was Donal’s killer, and now we have proof in that Cameron Coupe witnessed the act and confirmed it. Your son was stabbed by Clarion on the night of the party.’

  ‘But how did Donal’s body end up in the cask?’ asked the ever-practical Isla McLaren. ‘And perhaps more pertinent, how did that cask become singled out as the one to open tonight?’

  ‘That you must all hear first-hand,’ said Holmes. ‘Bring him in.’

  Coupe was dragged into the room by two burly servants, his hands bound behind him. He, too looked the worse for wear, his face bruised and bleeding. He was brought forward and now stood, pale and stoic before the laird.

  ‘Cameron Coupe!’ said the laird, as if seeing him, too, for the first time. ‘I trusted you as I would trust my son.’

  ‘Not so, my laird,’ said Coupe softly. ‘I was never family to you.’

  ‘Why?’ said the laird. ‘Why do that to Donal? And to leave him there—’

  ‘Ach!’ Coupe’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I did not kill him, sir, but … there is not an excuse that will send me easy to my grave.’

  ‘I thought better of you, Coupe,’ said Isla McLaren. ‘Why did you participate in this atrocity?’

  ‘Mrs McLaren, if you please.’ Holmes placed a hand on her sleeve and she recoiled in surprise. He turned to Coupe. ‘Mr Coupe had plenty of reason to hate Donal McLaren. He had been promised the running of the distillery by the laird. Is that not so, Mr Coupe?’

  At Coupe’s sullen nod Holmes continued. ‘But what happened that night to change things?’ he asked.

  ‘The laird announced that Donal would be given the running of the place upon his return,’ said Coupe.

  ‘Announced, you say, on that night?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the laird. ‘But to run it with you, Cameron Coupe, at his side. You and Donal were friends!’

  ‘Nae, sir. You did not know your son,’ said Coupe.

  The laird looked poised to object but stopped before speaking. The weight of the room was against him. He sank back.

  A silence ensued. Suddenly Isla McLaren’s clear voice rang out. ‘But if Donal died that night who wrote the letters from the wars?’

  Holmes turned to her with a grim smile. ‘Excellent question. August Bell Clarion was a master of forgery. I knew him at school, where he earned pocket money by writing papers for other pupils. More than once he caused trouble for others with this talent. He clearly took Donal’s commission and proceeded in his place, using his name.’

  ‘Then it was his bad behaviour that resulted in Donal – or who we thought was Donal – being sent into battle,’ said Alistair.

  ‘Correct.’ Holmes turned to the laird. ‘August Bell Clarion, posing as your son, was simply unable to keep his nature in check. His actions were dire enough to propel him out of the safety of the posting you had secured for Donal and onto the front line.’ Holmes looked sharply at the laird whose face had crumbled with regret. ‘Ah, I see you had a report of this event, whatever it was.’

  The laird looked down, ashamed.

  ‘And you believed it, sir. That tells me you knew your son’s real character. Perhaps you were being generous in your earlier description to me, which truly has been of no help at all.’

  ‘But we understood that Clarion died in battle in 1883,’ said Isla McLaren.

  ‘That was reported in the papers, yes,’ said Holmes. ‘Having some small history with the man myself, I investigated the report when I read of it. It was reliably corroborated. However, I now realize that whoever died in El Obeid on the ill-fated Hicks Expedition was not Clarion, but must have been some unfortunate soul whom the clever fiend induced to take his place.’

  ‘I will kill this scoundrel,’ swore the laird, rising unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘Sit, Father,’ said Alistair, taking the laird’s arm and guiding him back to his chair.

  ‘The war has done that for you, Sir Robert,’ said Holmes. ‘It was Clarion who served in Khartoum in the place of Donal, and he who died there. Watson has just returned from Edinburgh today with proof that Clarion was in Khartoum. He is pictured in a photograph of Gordon’s men, identified by Watson’s friend as Donal. No British survived the slaughter of the Mahdi’s dervishes.’

  The laird stared ahead, taking all this in with difficulty. ‘But all the time, Donal was still here, in the—’ The room was quiet, with only the sound of the crackling fire. A log fell further into the fire and sparks flew from it in Holmes’s direction. He edged away slightly from the swirling embers, brushing at his trousers.

  ‘But then what happened this evening, Mr Holmes?’ Isla McLaren’s cool voice cut through the silence. Alone amongst her family she seemed bent on stringing together a coherent narrative.

  Holmes turned to the cowed foreman. ‘Mr Coupe, here is your one small chance at redemption. Explain what you saw eight years ago, and what transpired this evening, exactly as you did to me in the distillery some minutes ago.’

  The man raised his handsome face up to the light and took a deep breath. ‘The night of the party, I came upon Clarion and Donal. They were fighting. Some girl I think, or the commission. Clarion said you had bought him a death sentence.’

  ‘I bought that boy a way out of gaol!’ cried the laird. ‘But my son?’

  ‘Donal laughed at Clarion, and so the fiend snatched a knife – that self-same blade which had just been given to Donal by his mother Lady Elizabeth – and he stabbed his friend in the heart. I witnessed the whole thing. Clarion looked up and saw me. He recognized instantly that I was … that I did not—’ Coupe looked down, ashamed.

  ‘You were what?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘I was not so terribly shocked.’

  ‘Perhaps relieved,’ Holmes suggested quietly.

  Coupe could not deny it. ‘Clarion then came over and embraced me, wiping blood on my shirt and hands as he did so. He told me I was in with him now, and if I told what I saw he would implicate me, but if I cooperated he knew I would have the running of the distillery.’ Coupe turned to the laird, eyes blazing. ‘Then later, after Khartoum, once again you overlooked me and gave it to Charles.’

  ‘But back to that night,’ prompted Holmes. ‘Clarion had you then, and he asked you to dispose of the body.’

  ‘I told him I would take care of it. And I … I—’

  ‘You hid the body in one of the casks being filled shortly after. That took some doing, but you were trained as a cooper. You noted the number. It was 59, I believe,’ said Holmes.

  ‘I did. God forgive me. It seemed a fitting end for Donal McLaren,’ said Coupe.

  ‘Donal was your friend!’ roared the laird, rising to his feet and swaying there, his arms raised as if to throttle Cameron Coupe. He stepped forward, but stumbled and was caught again by Alistair.

  ‘Sir,’ said Coupe, ‘your Donal was not the man you took him to be. ’Twas he and not Charles who bombed a neighbour’s distillery not so long before he left.’

  ‘I am no cowardly bomber, Father, how could you think so?’ said Charles.

  ‘Ha,’ said Alistair, ‘that is exactly what you are. Montpellier, Charles? I happen to know your idiot plan with that Frenchman, Jean Vidocq, to blow up Dr Janvier’s laboratory. I have the letter proving it.’

  Sir Robert turned to face Charles. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Not precisely,’ corrected Holmes. ‘I now have the letter in my possession. It is my opinion that the bomb was intended for a deserted laboratory, and at lunchtime, virtually ensuring no one would be there. A gesture rather than a terrorist plot. Am I right, Charles?’

  Charles looked from Holmes to his father in helpless guilt. ‘I was doing what any businessman would do. Protecting our investment. Advancing our cause. No one was to be hurt. We planned it most carefully … I thought you would be proud—’

  Sir Robert’s gaze lingered for a moment on Charles, then he turned to Holmes, focusing his red-rimmed, penetrating stare on my friend. ‘I hired you to find a killer and instead you destr
oy my family.’

  ‘I have no desire to destroy anyone,’ said Holmes. ‘Only to reveal the truth.’

  The laird turned on Cameron Coupe with sudden ferocity. ‘And you! You vile beast! Liar! You betray my trust and besmirch my dead son’s reputation—’

  Coupe looked around the room in defiance.

  ‘Sir Robert, you have not yet heard the worst of Donal,’ said he. ‘Little Anne! When Donal was six years old. She was only three when she vanished. Her brother Donal threw her down the medieval cistern at the end of the nursery hall. Four storeys down to an unimaginable end.’

  A collective gasp echoed throughout the room. Even Holmes looked surprised at this.

  ‘No!’ shouted the laird, staggering back. ‘Say it is not so!’

  Coupe choked out the next words with difficulty. ‘He told me so himself! Bragged of it, even.’

  The laird shook his head in bewilderment and horror. ‘Anne!’

  Charles stepped forward in a new show of bravado. ‘Father! Do you not remember? I tried to tell you, but you did not believe me.’

  The laird turned to Charles, aghast. ‘You were four. You could barely speak.’

  ‘But I saw it. I saw Donal do it,’ said Charles.

  ‘And you have stayed silent ever since?’ asked Isla McLaren. ‘Why?’

  Charles looked ashamed. ‘Donal told me he would do the same to me if I told.’

  ‘Your son Donal was a monster, sir,’ said Coupe. ‘I will admit that thinking of him in the cask, though I did not kill him myself, gave me no small pleasure over the years. This whole family is cursed!’ Coupe suddenly spat at the laird’s feet. Years of pent-up hatred found their release in this moment.

  Holmes nodded to me and I gently but firmly led the laird back to his chair and sat him down. The older man was shaking, with rage or shock I was not sure. His pupils were pinpoints.

  ‘I will now relate what happened to Fiona, at least most of it,’ said Holmes quietly. ‘There is one small detail that eludes me.’

  ‘My God,’ mumbled Charles. ‘Our sister.’

  ‘Mr Holmes! Tell us what you have found!’ said Isla McLaren.