Who Guards a Prince?
Page 26
“She’s expecting a small party to come up for the fishing,” said the Prince. “I’ve often loaned it out in the past. McHarg, tell me, how are you liking it here?”
“It’s fine,” said McHarg.
It had been the Prince’s idea. Gratitude had made Arthur more than willing to restrict his curiosity, and that of others, about McHarg’s part in the series of events which culminated in the violence in Maine. That was all that McHarg asked, a smoothing of his path to a resumption of something like normal life. But the Prince wanted him to have more, a reward, employment, something.
Finally, learning of McHarg’s marriage and intent to return to Britain not as a policeman (he had formally submitted his resignation) but as a private citizen in search of peace and quiet, he had offered him the job of estate manager at Gulvain, the small Inverness-shire estate which had been left to him as a child by one of his great-uncles and which he felt he could morally hang on to when he slipped out of public life.
McHarg had protested his ignorance of the work involved.
“We’re all going to have to learn new tricks,” Arthur had replied.
“You’re set on marrying the girl then?” McHarg had probed shrewdly.
“If she’ll have me. And I’d feel comfortable with you somewhere around me, McHarg.”
To which McHarg had answered, “I’ll have a wife. And soon a child. They’ll come first to me, no matter what. You should understand that, sir.”
Arthur had laughed and said, “I’ll settle for third. And don’t be deceived, McHarg. I’ll be over the estate books with a magnifying glass. I’ll maybe need the money!”
And so he had come here, alien at first, but not so alien as he expected. And ignorant at first, but quickly learning, and quickly teaching too that he did not take his job or himself lightly.
It was the kind of existence they both wanted, perhaps not forever, but certainly for now. Here they could grow together, take stock of their lives and experience, study the future of their child.
He had reassured Betty they were safe. It was all over. But he knew that he lied. There’d be a chain of succession, another Preceptor in another Lodge. Partington’s disappearance, Jopley’s and Elkin’s resignations, these were evidence of reorganization not dissolution, sops to confirm him in his silence.
They would know that he had only spoken as much as was necessary to preserve his own position. What point in saying more? Who would believe? More importantly, who was there to be sure of? All he asked was to be left alone.
There’d been only one voice from the past, a letter from Heather Davison full of affection and concern. He hadn’t replied. A man’s tongue that had become a dog’s tongue, and an old Volvo that had been tampered with while he ate dinner and drank brandy, lay between him and Tim Davison. There were some things he didn’t want to be sure of.
From now on he would take care of his own. Surely they had learned that he was capable of that?
Evidently they hadn’t.
There had been a visitor to the glen one dark January night. A mere boy. McHarg had not realized how young he was till he shone his torch onto the still features, cast in a pale mask of surprise as the head lolled at its strange angle from the broken neck. An apprentice, sent to prove his vows, he guessed.
He buried the body deep in the forest where the frost had not yet got the earth in its iron grip. The motor-bike the boy had travelled on McHarg dismantled and dropped piece by piece from his rowing-boat into the deepest trough of the loch.
There was nothing more he could do. Silence was perhaps the best message. Indeed it was the only message. He prayed there would not be a next time, but if there were, he would talk a little with his visitor, and listen too, before he killed him.
Rose le Queux, he told himself without much relish for the irony, had turned him into a Tyler after all.
One irony he did relish came to him a little later that day.
The Prince and Deirdre shared the McHargs’ lunch, indeed seemed well contented to sit out the rest of the afternoon with them.
Finally Betty had announced that it was time for her daily exercises and invited Deirdre to keep an eye on Angus while she did them, an invitation accepted with alacrity.
“McHarg will want you to try his single malt,” she said as the women went out of the room. “He’s got his own still up the mountain.”
“True?” asked the Prince, ready to believe anything.
“Not so. But I do have a friend. Here, try a dram of this.”
It was tried, pronounced excellent.
“Your wife calls you McHarg,” observed Arthur, smiling.
“It’s my name.”
“Yes, but…”
“That’s how she thinks of me, she says. She can’t change it. And it’s a usage that sounds well enough up here.”
“Yes, I can see how it would,” said the Prince. “Another twenty years and they’ll be calling you The McHarg.”
“Another twenty years and I’ll maybe answer to it,” said McHarg. “And you? How long will it take you to get used to not being a Prince?”
“Another couple of minutes should do it,” laughed Arthur. “Not that I am entirely without titles, you know. They are there for the asking if I want them.”
“And do you?”
“Not really. But people want me to have them. Do you know, for instance, this very month I was scheduled to be inaugurated as the new Grand Master of the United Celtic Lodge of Welsh Freemasons at Caernarvon Castle. It’s a family tradition, sort of. And the odd thing is, they still want me, despite everything. What do you think, McHarg? Should I let myself be initiated?”
And he was quite taken aback, even slightly offended, when McHarg gave himself over to a more wholehearted bout of laughter than anyone connected with the man could ever recall.
About the Author
Reginald Charles Hill FRSL was an English crime writer and the winner of the 1995 Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by the Estate of Reginald Hill
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5978-7
This edition published in 2019 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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REGINALD HILL
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