Bareback

by John Burke

  ‘Just a minute,’ Nick objected. ‘The written version of The Song may be a fake. And maybe some other documents from that mess. But you’re not going to say that the whole story of the Bareback Lass was dreamt up over the last century?’

  It was Lesley’s turn. She held out the other sheet she had removed from the pile.

  ‘Another fake?’ said Nick.

  ‘Have you ever dipped into the Border Papers?’

  ‘The local rags? Flower Arranging Society and pages of wedding photographs? Haven’t been here long enough to –’

  ‘Wonderful stuff.’ Makepeace was happy to plunge in again. ‘The Border Papers – wonderful! If I recall aright’ – he knew perfectly well that he recalled aright – ‘in 1840 the Commissioners of Public Records caused papers relating to the Scottish Border to be extracted from the general body of State Papers and bound separately. Later broken up so that some went missing. Don’t tell me you’ve found a missing letter – or a forged facsimile?’

  ‘This is the real thing. About to be destroyed in a fire, maybe – which is odd if Brown thought there was any chance of using it.’

  ‘Using it?’

  ‘Blackmail. Or getting some of the perks Cameron used to get for his . . . discoveries.’

  ‘Would it be too much to ask,’ said Nick, ‘if I could have a look at whatever you’ve come up with?’

  Lesley handed him the letter. He began to read, while Makepeace fretted impatiently for his own turn to come.

  SIR JOHN FORSTER, knight, warden of theste and medell marches of Englande anempst Scotlande, to Mr Secretarie WALSINGHAM, the xxth of June 1575.

  Right Worshipful Sir,

  My deutie remembrede. Maie it please your mastershippe to understande I have recevide your lettre, datit the xviiith daie of this instant; wherebye I understande that Sir Cuthbert Storey has declarde to my Lord President that I intend at a meeting with the Scottish warden this Wednesday next to hande over to him the Irvine girl of Kilstane for due punishment at his hands on a charge of March Treason. Wherof I marvel greatlie that Sir Cuthbert is not ashamed to reporte such false and forged informationes, and that he dare presume to abuse your honour or my Lord Presidente with such lyes.

  In truth, I can assure yr honour that the girl will not be handed over. It may be that we shall have to give assurances to the Scottish Warden that she shall face charges in this countrie, but you will be aware that she has done the countrie great service and would be in grave danger shoulde we make delyverie of her to Kilstane. That she shoulde have chosen to flee owte of Scotlande into our March before her spying on our behalfe should be revealed, with the aide of an Englysshe reiver she doth purpose to marry, means that we have lost a valuable source of information, but it is my advisement that we shoulde rather show gratitude for what she accomplysshed quhen in our secret servyce in the past than be bente against her future marriage, tho this be contrary to the laws of the Border.

  Most assuredly, Right Worshipful Sir, I shall resist any attempt by the Scottish Warden at our Daye of Truce to claim the girl back, since all they purport is her certaine death.

  From my house neghe Alnewycke, the xxth of June, 1575.

  Your moste assured at commandement.

  John Forster

  Nick looked at Lesley, marvelling, unable to find words for a full minute. ‘The Bareback Lass wasn’t a Kilstane heroine at all,’ he managed at last. ‘She was a spy for the English!’

  Makepeace reached greedily for the manuscript. ‘Sir John Forster was brilliant at getting his agents across the Border and at recruiting on this side. He used to boast he could get news out of the Scottish Marches and out of Edinburgh itself within twenty-four hours. That’s how he escaped troublesome enquiries from Queen Elizabeth as to what fiddles he was up to. Walsingham was a great believer in spying and undermining his enemies. He knew a fellow rascal when he saw one.’ He touched the dry paper reverently. ‘But I’ve never come across anything like this. I wonder if it ever got sent?’

  ‘Maybe it was just his first draft,’ said Lesley.

  ‘They often got a copyist to do the final letter,’ he agreed. ‘But I thought I’d come across most of the Forster documents in the Calendar and other State Papers. This is a new one on me.’

  ‘If it had been sent,’ Nick theorised, ‘somebody would surely have come across it in the archives – somebody like you – and the Bareback Lass legend could never have grown up.’

  ‘It never got sent,’ said Lesley decisively. ‘Maybe he felt at the last minute that he’d let fly a bit too vigorously at Sir Cuthbert Storey. Decided not to reply to Walsingham after all, but went ahead with his own handling of the Day of Truce.’

  ‘And the Bareback Lass didn’t ride to warn Kilstane of trouble. She betrayed it, beat it hell-for-leather in the opposite direction, married her Englishman, and lived happily ever after.’

  ‘I’d love to know, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d love to know what your precious Committee is going to make of it all,’ said Nick to Makepeace. ‘Their song’s a sham, their legend’s a load of nonsense.’

  ‘Like so many well-loved legends,’ Makepeace gloated: ‘a popular story woven from a few ill-digested facts into a deceptive pattern.’

  ‘To suit the prejudices of the weavers.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  Lesley looked from one to the other. ‘Do we have to tell them?’

  Nick stared. ‘An officer of the law, suggesting we should conceal evidence of a fraud?’

  Before she could fumble out an answer, the phone in the alcove rang. Lesley tensed. Any time a phone rang she expected news, a report, a breakthrough.

  ‘Dr Hamilton,’ Nick was saying. ‘Yes, of course. But why not tomorrow morning? We’ll all be at the Tolbooth to start the final Ride-out. You can lock it back in its right place then.’ There was some argument from the other end, and he nodded to himself. ‘Very well, doctor. If that’s what you want.’ When he had put the receiver down he looked from Makepeace to Lesley. ‘He seems very agitated. Very keen to have The Song returned to him without delay.’

  On impulse Lesley said: ‘Try not to tell him Brown’s still alive.’ She was not sure what had prompted her to come out with it; but was somehow sure that Rutherford would have done the same.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The armchair creaked as Nick lowered himself into it. Standing by the massive sideboard, Dr Hamilton said: ‘Ye’ll be taking a dram?’

  Nick’s fingers tightened on the envelope containing The Song. Presumably the Convenor kept some of his own special bottling at home as well as in the Tolbooth. ‘Thank you, no. I do have to drive home.’ And, he silently added, I do have a further need of my stomach lining.

  Hamilton took a decanter from the sideboard and poured a punctiliously calculated measure into a squat glass. Nick had to admire the unblinking steadiness with which he swilled the firewater round his mouth before swallowing.

  ‘Now, Sir Nicholas.’ Hamilton fixed a hungry glance on the envelope in his visitor’s lap, waiting for it to be handed to him.

  Nick said: ‘Dr Hamilton, how long have you been aware that this is a fake?’

  Hamilton took another gulp and looked stonily at him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’ In the days of his most tactful bedside consultations he could surely never have sounded so unconvincing.

  ‘How long,’ Nick persisted, ‘have you known?’

  Hamilton appeared to be gravely debating alternative diagnoses in his head. ‘You’ve been listening to some nonsense from Brown?’ There was a hint of some different, hidden question in his voice.

  ‘I . . .’ Nick began to regret not having accepted the offer of a dram. Holding a glass, fiddling with it, was a useful sort of punctuation. He made do with tilting The Song between his hands. ‘From all I’ve heard,’ he hedged, ‘there’s no way at this moment that anyone could speak to poor Mr Brown.’

  Hamilton’s taut features seemed ever so sligh
tly to relax.

  ‘But’ – Nick wasn’t going to let the impetus slacken – ‘what’s Mr Brown got to do with it?’

  ‘I grieve to say that Brown approached me recently with some very unsavoury propositions.’ Hamilton was sizing up Nick and what Nick might know, in the way that a doctor waits for a patient to betray tell-tale symptoms. ‘Between ourselves, Sir Nicholas, I fear that the question of certain fakes has indeed arisen. I assure you I was unaware of this shameful programme of deception during my tenure of the office of Convenor.’

  ‘I believe you. But when you did become aware of forgeries which made a nonsense of all the rituals of the Common Riding –’

  ‘Sir Nicholas! I’ll not allow that all of it has been nonsense. It may be true that for their own financial ends Brown and Cameron cynically concocted a few documents giving misleading impressions of certain aspects of the Ridings. They also came across others such as The Song which are, I now have to admit, dubious. A sad stain on our noble traditions. We were all so sadly misled.’ He was speaking now with a level but powerful anger. ‘All of us had thought so highly of Sebastian Cameron for unearthing historical documents and offering them at a reasonable price to the community when, he let it be understood, he could have found far higher reward from collectors and museums in the Borders and in Edinburgh itself. His finds all came straight to Kilstane. In return, people felt they ought to buy books from him – learned tomes, fine editions – just to help keep him going, even when they weren’t likely to read their purchases. The fine bindings looked rather splendid between their paperbacks and book club editions. And now we find much of it was a sham. Tragic . . . tragic.’

  ‘And Brown cottoned on, early on, to the forgeries? And blackmailed Cameron?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly. Rather, they went into partnership. I would imagine that Brown encouraged him to produce further forgeries and feed them to the public bit by bit.’

  ‘Don’t overload the market.’

  ‘I can envisage such a concept in their calculations,’ said Hamilton fastidiously. ‘But then Cameron died. I cannot see Brown as a forger skilled enough to take over the practice. Sooner or later the venture was bound to be exposed.’

  ‘As it has been,’ said Nick, ‘right now.’

  ‘But I insist, sir, that the introduction of a few false items into the picture in no way invalidates the basic truths of our tradition.’

  Nick allowed the grandiloquence to die away, and said: ‘Dr Hamilton, are you telling me you’ve never seen Sir John Forster’s letter?’

  ‘I thought that . . .’ Hamilton juddered to a halt.

  ‘You thought it had been destroyed in the fire?’

  Hamilton drained his glass but made no move to refill it.

  ‘Were you aware,’ asked Nick, ‘that Brown planned to set fire to the place? Burn papers which would have incriminated him in various dealings with Cameron. And claim hefty insurance for the shop and his own office upstairs. Wasn’t that how he’d set it up?’

  ‘I have never been apprised of what Brown may have set up, as you put it, nor have I taken any interest in the subject. Until recently I had no idea –’

  ‘Those papers he was so keen to burn must have been the papers that Archie Ferguson had with him the night he was murdered. You saw them before the fire – you must have done, or you wouldn’t know about the forgeries we’ve just been discussing. But why was Brown agreeable to getting rid of those as well as stuff bearing on himself? I’d have thought he’d have kept them to one side, to try getting a price out of you for his silence.’ It occurred to Nick, perhaps too late, that Hamilton might be capable of cool, ruthless killing. There were so many things he stood for in this town, and had stood for over so many years. He would not gladly surrender his position on his pedestal, or allow the traditions he had so steadfastly maintained to be ditched. But he would hardly, here in his own home, risk murdering Sir Nicholas Torrance. Would he? Nick took a deep breath and went on: ‘Did you come to some sort of agreement with him?’

  ‘Sir Nicholas, I don’t know in what capacity you assume the right to question me in this way.’

  ‘The police will be doing it sooner or later.’

  ‘I will tell the police all that it’s necessary for them to know. Perhaps it is just as well that Brown met the end he did, rather than face charges concerning poor Ferguson’s death.’

  ‘A strange end, managing to lock himself in. Or be locked in, and get trapped in his own fire.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have suffered.’

  ‘How can you say that so confidently?’

  Hamilton’s knuckles whitened as if striving to crush the glass between his fingers. ‘Smoke inhalation,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I have had experience in such matters, Sir Nicholas. Smoke inhalation would have suffocated him before the flames reached him.’

  ‘I think, Dr Hamilton, you’d better be prepared to make a statement to the police without delay.’

  ‘No!’ It was an unexpected outburst. ‘No, Sir Nicholas. Not until tomorrow evening. Or the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Dr Hamilton, I don’t think you realise the seriousness of this. If you have anything which’ll shed light on Ferguson’s death, on Brown’s fire –’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Ride must go ahead. You yourself were most insistent on that, no more than forty-eight hours ago. It must take place. It may be the last.’

  ‘It will be the last,’ said Nick sombrely.

  ‘If it’s allowed to proceed, before the truth of the forgeries comes out, and I’m allowed to take part, then . . . then I will discuss the matter with the police. You have my word.’

  Nick believed him. But he was not so sure that Rutherford, with years of experience and disillusion behind him, would trust a man in this situation.

  ‘There must be a last full ceremony,’ said Hamilton. ‘There has to be. Whatever distasteful evidence has come to light, there must be one final Ride-out. Not just a dismal fade-out.’

  *

  Rutherford stamped into the incident room and screeched a chair leg across the floor towards the table.

  ‘No good. Not yet. He hasn’t regained consciousness. I’ll be allowed back tomorrow morning – while everyone else in this town is galloping around playing cowboys and Indians.’

  ‘In the meantime –’

  ‘In the meantime, before I head for home, let’s see exactly what we’ve got.’

  ‘A few theories,’ said Lesley glumly, ‘and a lot of loose ends.’

  ‘Isn’t that the way it usually is?’ He stared at the blank table top, summoning up helpful visions. ‘Let’s start from the beginning.’

  ‘It’s all tied in with those forgeries, combined with an insurance scam. But we can be pretty sure Brown wasn’t expecting to be incinerated in his own fire.’

  ‘I said let’s do it from the beginning. Actual timetable, then slot in the motives where they’ll fit. Start from the afternoon Ferguson left his office, and pace it out from there.’

  ‘Guessing the route?’

  ‘I think guesswork and the truth walk pretty close here, Les.’

  After he had been talking for five minutes, Lesley found herself in reluctant agreement with him. At least his version made sense. If there were any flaws, they would soon show up.

  ‘Two unusual things. Ferguson went without lunch that Friday, and left the office early. Maybe a third: he took a batch of papers with him without telling Miss Elliot anything about them.’

  ‘And we can believe her,’ said Lesley, ‘when she says that was unusual. Normally I’m sure he would have kept her in the picture.’

  ‘Dead right. And after he had left . . .’

  After he had left, James Brown had rolled up. Maybe Ferguson had phoned him in the course of the afternoon, with a message important enough to bring Brown scurrying round even though they were due to meet that evening anyway. Instead of leaving things until the Committee meeting, as he had told Miss Elliot he would, did Brown in fact c
hase round to Ferguson’s home?

  ‘By that time Ferguson would have found the house empty. We know Kirsty was out and stayed out all night. And Hannah Ferguson had gone off on her dirty weekend, leaving him a note. I never met him, but I guess he’d have been in a bit of a rage.’

  ‘He was a downtrodden little man,’ Lesley recalled. ‘I can’t see him in what you’d call a rage.’

  ‘Dr Crippen and lots more like him were weedy little characters. But when they got mad, they got really mad. Downtrodden, all right. But that could have been the moment when he snapped. His wife was really thumbing her nose at him this time.’

  ‘But didn’t he have some notion of Sandy Craig’s plans to set up divorce evidence so they could remarry?’

  ‘There was that, yes. But we don’t know how much Ferguson knew. Or guessed. Or even believed it could actually be happening. Or whether he was party to it, and glad at the thought of being rid of her.’

  Whatever Ferguson might have known or half-known, it was still a humiliating situation. He could well have gone straight to his wife’s wardrobe to see if clothes had been taken, and if so, how many. And rooting about, he would have come across the quaich hidden at the back of the wardrobe. And decided to return it to its owner on his way to the Committee meeting?

  Maybe it was then that Brown appeared. And then what?

  ‘We know that Ferguson didn’t show up at the meeting, and that Brown was late. Also that Brown stopped at Black Knowe on the way to leave some insurance quotes for Sir Nicholas Torrance.’

  ‘And must surely have offered Ferguson a lift,’ Lesley took him up, ‘because it was a rainy night and his own car was missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘Mrs Ferguson had taken it,’ Lesley reminded him.

  ‘So she had. Mm.’ Rutherford leaned back in his chair and lit his second cigarette in ten minutes. ‘Wife gone, car gone. But at least he was going to get some of his own back, revelling in telling the whole Committee who had stolen the quaich. Letting the whole town in on it, eventually.’