by Sarah Maine
She turned back as the housekeeper began herding the staff round to the rear of the house, and saw that another figure was approaching the house on the rough track which led to the farm buildings. It was a young man, walking quickly, a lean young man in dark trousers and a white, wide-sleeved shirt. He was hastily pulling on a jacket as he strode towards them, a brown pointer bitch at his heels, and he pushed open the side gate, entering the curtilage of Muirlan House, and let it clang behind him.
The factor turned at the sound and frowned, censuring the latecomer. Theo also turned, and he broke off abruptly in midsentence to stare at the young man. Then he swung back to the factor in startled enquiry.
“Aye. Cameron’s come back, sir. About a week ago.”
The young man gave a curt order and the dog dropped to the gravel, panting slightly, and Beatrice saw that he was quite openly, almost brazenly, inspecting her as he approached.
And Theo stood, very still, and watched him come.
The newcomer switched his attention to Theo, gave a slight bow, and held out his hand. “Welcome home, sir.”
Theo looked down at the hand, then took it. “Welcome home yourself, Cameron.” He spoke slowly, almost carefully. “I hadn’t heard—” His eyes seemed to explore the young man’s face before he turned to Beatrice. “This is Cameron, my dear. Mr. Forbes’s elder son. Returned from Canada, it would appear.” The young man gave another small bow. “And this, Cameron, is my wife.”
Chapter 4
2010, Hetty
Ruairidh Forbes offered Hetty a lift back to her cottage, hastily brushing sand from the seat of the Saab and tossing an oilskin into the back, while he apologised again that her first encounter with the island had been so unpromising. “A very poor welcome for you,” he repeated, glancing across at her from the driving seat.
“It’s a shock.”
A shock. The word came nowhere close. She found she was gripping the door handle and so released it, flexing her fingers, and made an effort to smile. “And for you too, I imagine.”
“Aye. Incredible.”
From the car she watched James Cameron pushing the wheelbarrow back down the slope towards the other house and outbuildings. Were those shutters at the window? “Does someone still live there?” she asked.
Ruairidh followed her gaze. “Not now. The farmhouse belongs to my grandfather, together with the outbuildings. He was born in the house and he’d live there still if my grandmother hadn’t put her foot down.” He laughed suddenly, and she decided that he was a nice man. As they drove across the strand, he told her more: the farmhouse had been the laird’s house long before Muirlan House was built, and his family had served as estate factors for three generations until the big house was closed up. “I farm the land myself now, and use the outbuildings,” he said, “which is probably why I hold the keys for Muirlan House. Old habits die hard.”
By then they had reached the opposite shore and rejoined the road which skirted the bay, and he pulled up on the rough ground outside her cottage. “You’ve had a poor start, Miss Deveraux,” he said, “but will you come and eat with us tonight? You’d be very welcome.”
“I’d love to.” She smiled back at him. “If you’ll call me Hetty.”
“Aye, Hetty, then I will.” He drove off with a wave, promising to come and collect her later that evening.
She watched him go, then sighed and put her shoulder to the cottage door. After a couple of good shoves, it opened, and she was greeted by the musty smell of damp and soot which seemed to characterise the place. It had advertised itself as having fine views across the strand, which was why she had chosen it, but it was decidedly bleak. The kitchen floor was sticky, the lino in the bathroom glacial, and nothing was quite clean. She forced the door shut again and then stood a moment, staring across the room at last year’s faded calendar. Highland Games. Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Swirling kilts and skirling pipes. A fantasy Scotland.
She put the kettle on and half an hour later sat with her hands clasped around a mug of tea, her legs tucked beneath her, staring into the empty hearth and taking stock. A very poor welcome, Ruairidh Forbes had said, and the image of the cracked skull rose before her, the empty eye socket reproachful and forlorn. And so, in this place where she had sought refuge, she now confronted another violent death— And who, if anyone, had mourned that loss?
Suddenly it hit her again, that storm surge of grief, the yawning gap, a sense of being adrift that had stalked her ever since her parents’ death. An accident, yes, but sudden and violent, and even now, three years later, the thought of it could still overpower her.
Loss, was what people called it.
Such a little word.
But with enough potency to blow a hole right through her as it had done that day when she had answered an early morning phone call. A failed take-off, and then a crash, just beyond the runway. It had been weeks before the raw shock had begun to fade into grief, and even as grief numbed into acceptance, the void remained. Then her grandmother’s death two months ago had finished the job which dementia had begun years earlier, and she had found herself quite alone.
Sometimes she felt that she’d been sleepwalking ever since.
She went over to the window and looked out across the strand. The sky was overcast and the scene before her colourless. Coming here, without Giles, was the first real initiative she had taken in three years. The planned restoration work would give her a focus, she had told herself; it would mark a new beginning. But now this! She watched two sheep pass in front of the window, then stop to crop the grass on the little headland.
The bones didn’t actually change anything, of course, and were a matter for the police. Ruairidh Forbes seemed to think that the crime was an old one, but even so . . . And coming so soon after seeing the appalling state of the house, it felt as if her new start was over before it had begun.
She turned away from the window. Perhaps a fire would lift her spirits, if she could get the wretched thing to light. Last night the unfamiliar peat had defeated her. But it was worth another go, so she knelt at the hearth and began assembling paper and kindling, thinking that no one had explained to her how it was that James Cameron had been digging into the foundations in the first place. She’d have to ask. And she imagined the guffaws there’d be at the bar if he chose to describe the ludicrous picture of her climbing through the window, tearing her jeans as she was ordered out of her own property. It had evidently amused him at the time— Perhaps she’d ask Ruairidh Forbes instead. She’d warmed to him, a kindly man in this strange new world.
She watched the flicker of a flame come to life in the hearth, and remembered that surge of optimism she had felt the day before, when she had felt the rightness of coming here. For a while, as the hills of Skye faded over the churning wake of the ferry, she had been left in a sort of limbo where all around her the margins of sky, sea, and land had merged into a blue-grey wash, masked by clouds. But as they drew closer, the sun had backlit the clouds with a mother-of-pearl sheen and slowly burned through the veil, revealing the low contours of islands in a glorious welcome.
And arriving that way, at the end of a long journey, had seemed the right way to come, giving her a true sense of the remoteness of the place. Of its separateness.
Giles had tried to persuade her to come directly after her grandmother’s funeral. “Just to look. Get a measure of the place?” There was an airfield on a neighbouring island, he told her; they could fly up. “And there’s bound to be some old banger to hire once we get there.”
But that would have made the transition too sudden, and difficult as it was to make him understand, she had needed to come alone.
Giles had been enthusiastic about her plans for the house from the start, too enthusiastic. This was to be her scheme, her new beginning. And if he’d come with her he’d have taken control, taken the initiative away, as was his wont. She’d tried to explain to him how she felt, how she wanted to take things slowly, to consider, but he thought she
should push things along, get started, and he’d offered to find investors, maybe put money into it himself. Typical Giles behaviour.
She stared into the fireplace, where the flame was faltering, and tried to see Giles up here, in this remote and windswept place. Giles, in every essential, was an urban animal— And she thought again of the incident which had provoked her sudden flight. They had gone to a party held by an associate of Giles’s at a chic apartment overlooking the Thames, and the proud new owner had led her, a bottle tucked under one arm, the other uninvited around her waist, to look through a vast sheet of glass at the sun setting upriver towards London. “Turner-esque, don’t you think? Or should I say Blake-esque. Giles tells me Theo Blake was your great-grandfather.”
“No. My great-grandmother, Emily, was his sister. Half-sister, in fact.”
“Oh, I’d stick to the direct line if I were you. Great cachet, my dear. Flaunt it!” His protruding eyes shone at her. “Theo Blake, the mysterious recluse. Such extraordinary early talent and then the merely commonplace. Was he crossed in love, or did he drink?” His tone had nettled her and she had felt suddenly protective of the artist. Blake was a vague character in her family’s annals, but a painting of his, a wonderful and cherished seascape, had always hung in the bedrooms of her childhood.
Her host’s expensive aftershave had wafted over her as he inspected her glass, and she had pulled away. “As I said, the relationship’s fairly distant.”
“But you’ve got his house, I understand,” he said, leaning close again to refill it. “Lucky girl!” How like Giles to have told everyone. She wished he hadn’t. “And the classy hotel idea is marvellous. We must get you onto the gallery circuit, making the right contacts. I’ll speak to Giles about it. With your looks and pedigree, darling, the punters will flock to you.” Pedigree? Good God! “And I’ll be your very first guest.” His palm slipped from her waist to her hip, and she had looked around for Giles. The big brush-off would no doubt offend the man, but did she have to put up with him? Giles was watching from across the room, clearly entertained, and showed no sign of rescuing her. He just blew her a kiss and turned back to give his attention to a dark-haired girl beside him. Hetty felt a hand slip to her thigh, and as she turned sharply back, her host planted an amorous kiss on her lips, chortling as she pulled away, stiff-necked with affront. “Be nice, now,” he had said, and returned to the party.
Giles had come over then and flicked her cheek. “Lighten up, darling. It’s just his way.”
“Really.”
“And he’s a useful man to have on board. A big noise in art circles, you know, got all the right contacts.” She had turned aside, biting back a tart response, and watched as the party gathered pace and tempo: men in sharp suits moving in on women sleek in tight-fitting couture, working hard at image and impact, at being part of the tribe. But this was not where she wanted to be, and she had said so.
Giles, exasperated, had refused to take her home and had re-entered the throng. She had stood there a moment, watching him, then slipped from the room and found her coat, leaving the buzz fading behind her. As she descended in the external lift, she had looked along the Thames to the lurid sunset and thought again of Theo Blake’s painting, of white sands and the low sun dazzling across the water, and the idea of just leaving and coming up here, without Giles, had presented itself. Independence was one of the pluses of working freelance, and the only plus of having little work coming in. Copy editing, she was learning, would never make her rich.
And the idea of flight had grown as the taxi sped through the London streets to her flat. She could simply cut and run.
The flame in the hearth flickered, and then guttered, leaving a thin trail of smoke. But the grand gesture seemed to have stalled, foundering on bleached bones beneath the floor of a wrecked house. Would there be no fresh start? Would she have to return to London and find herself a real job, one that paid? The money her parents had left her, significant though it was, wouldn’t last forever. Quitting her job on the magazine after the accident had been necessary at the time but, in retrospect, reckless, and getting back into that sort of work was not proving to be easy.
She put aside her empty mug, restless suddenly and needing to be outdoors. Ruairidh Forbes had pointed out a co-op a mile or so down the road where she could get basic supplies, and a walk would clear her mind. And up here, under these big skies, she could think— By now Giles would have heard the brief message she’d left on his answerphone before catching the northbound train, and she wondered fleetingly what he would have made of it. She hadn’t told him where she was going, simply that she would be away, out of town, for a while. He might choose to think, or at least to report, that it was work related. She yanked the door open. And here, where there was no Internet or mobile phone signal, he could neither find her nor contact her, and she had gained the space she needed.
Chapter 5
2010, Hetty
Later she fell asleep in one of the armchairs and was woken by a sharp knock on the back door. She sat up, momentarily confused, to see that the light was fading across the bay. The knock came again, and she rose, glimpsing her unruly hair in the mirror as she went through to the kitchen, calling, “It’s open. Push at your side. It jams,” and she heard the thud of a shoulder against the door. It opened abruptly to reveal not the friendly policeman, as expected, but James Cameron, the collar of his donkey jacket turned up against the wind.
“Hallo again,” he said, examining the door-frame and running his fingers along the edge to find the sticking point. “Ruairidh’s been called to duty. Sends his apologies.” His hair blew across his eyes. “Murder and fire-raising in the same day, eh? It’s not always this exciting.” And he stepped uninvited across the threshold, followed by the cool evening air.
He seemed to fill the little kitchen, and he looked around with undisguised curiosity, taking in the chipped Formica table and rusty rubbish bin. “Dùghall doesn’t go for the luxury end of the market, does he,” he remarked, raising an eyebrow. “What does he charge these days?”
There was something disconcerting in his manner, and she ignored the question. “Fire-raising?” she asked instead.
“Arson.” He continued his survey of the room, kicking experimentally at a split in the curling lino floor, grimacing at the calendar. “A young ne’er-do-well celebrated his release by torching his family’s house. Seems his woman had found solace while he was inside.”
Arson? Such behaviour seemed out of place here. “And Mr. Forbes is taking him in?”
He shook his head. “Someone else’ll do that. He’s just dispersing the spectators and then he’ll be along, but he asked me to come and pick you up.” She murmured her thanks while he looked through the open door into the shabby little sitting room. “And I’ll give you these before I forget.” He dug his hand into a pocket and put a set of keys on the table between them.
“But won’t he need them?” she said. “To let the police get in, to take away—?” She faltered, staring at the keys. Going into the house alone now seemed impossible.
“He’s still got his. These are mine.” She looked up in surprise. “I’ve had them ever since thieves got in some years back and stole the fireplaces. Rather after the event we put better locks on and replaced the boarding. It still gets ripped off, of course, and then all sorts get in.” Amusement flashed in his eyes again, and she turned to get her jacket, not sure what to make of this man. “Some nosey soul must have seen I was working up there. Local lads, I expect, short of entertainment.”
“Working up there?” The words came out more sharply than she intended. “Doing what?”
He regarded her a moment before answering. “Checking the foundations. As instructed.” The amusement had gone and there was an edge to his tone.
“Instructed by who?”
“Dalbeattie and Dawson, of course.” He leant back against the kitchen unit and folded his arms, giving her a straight look. “Emma Dawson, to be precise.”
“You didn’t know?” He looked incredulous, as well he might. “So you won’t know what I told her?”
“No.”
“I told her there’s a bloody great crack tearing the west wall apart, and a few more storms will finish the job. And when it goes, it’ll bring the main gable with it.” He paused and gave her a sharp look. “I told her the job shouldn’t be contemplated, but she wouldn’t have it and told me to find out why the wall was cracked. So I did, and I got rather more than I bargained for.” He leant back, regarding her steadily, and when she failed to comment, he added, “You’ve got big plans, Miss Deveraux. A grand hotel, fine cuisine, shooting parties, golf . . .”
