The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  ‘Visit him?’

  ‘Why not? And anyway,’ said Leo, giving in to his curiosity, ‘how do you know him?’

  ‘His cousin’s a QC.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a small world.’

  ‘No, just a small country. So, how’s it going?’

  ‘I have my work cut out. There are numerous dubious characters up here.’

  ‘Well, be careful,’ she said, in spite of herself.

  Leo thought he could discern a male voice in the background. ‘My senses can detect a malign force up here.’

  ‘What utter twaddle.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s twaddle now? Funny, it wasn’t twaddle the other day, when you wanted me to uncover your spouse’s indiscretions in your hypocritical fit of self-righteousness.’

  She had hung up before he could ask her to go to the Mitchell Library for him, in order to research certain aspects of Satanism in rural Scotland.

  Leo, exasperated with himself for having allowed the conversation to heat up, launched himself onto the bed and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, meditating upon his unlikely female friend. She was a paradoxical sort of Proddy; disarmingly fair when discussing Irish history, then scathing about the Catholic Church. The fact that she surrounded herself with Tim friends and had indeed ended up marrying a Tim was oddly typical of the type. Stephanie had already started seeing Jamie when that liaison between her and Leo occurred. It was years into their friendship yet somehow inevitable, and afterwards it remained (usually) unspoken between them. But it had been very real at the time. Leo cringed as a memory of her taking part in a live broadcast debate flashed through his mind. Her hapless opponents were feminists who wished to persuade Parliament to curtail the sale of pornography. Stephanie, the consummate lawyer, argued brilliantly for her and her partner’s unequivocal right to enjoy dirty images as part of their healthy, vigorous sex life. It was fairly eye-watering stuff for Sunday morning television and Leo hoped desperately that his mother wasn’t watching. ‘Gosh!’ he said out loud as he thought back to their night together. ‘The very idea of us as a couple!’

  As for Stephanie, she soon regretted hanging up the phone. What if she could have been of real assistance? It was a murder inquiry, after all. She would text him tomorrow to find out what he wanted.

  12

  LEO had invited Fordyce to dine with him as his guest, a proposal that had been most enthusiastically welcomed. They had arranged to meet in the bar at half past four for a few preprandials, and, as Leo had hoped, Dreghorn had already run out of funds and buggered off. However, Robbie McKee was in situ. He was acting rather strangely, staring dead ahead, his lips moving as he mumbled to an unseen companion. Leo considered that it was as though there was some planetary influence working upon the man.

  The sunset gilded everything with a weird and bonny purple blush, and Leo felt quite uplifted as he ordered his first drink of the evening, feeling dapper in his classic-cut evening suit. He felt renewed by his hot bath; it had taken the outdoor chill from his bones and eased the stress he felt after his telephone conversation with Stephanie.

  Fordyce soon arrived wearing a faintly eccentric brown and cream houndstooth dinner jacket with a chocolate collar and matching bow tie. He was apologetic despite being only minutes late, and ordered a libation from Shona Minto, who was on duty, and a top-up for Leo. He noticed the notebook his friend had been studying, which was laid upon the bar, revealing the jumble of letters Leo had jotted down earlier.

  ‘Ah, I love a good puzzle!’ Fordyce said, before remembering himself. ‘Sorry, old stick, didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘Not at all, Fordyce. It is a translation of the runes we saw inscribed upon the thirteenth baron’s tomb. I reckon it’s some sort of cipher, and I can’t make head nor tail of it.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a go?’ suggested Fordyce. ‘I hate to blow my own trumpet, but I’m not completely useless when it comes to puzzles and brainteasers and such like.’

  ‘I’d be only too happy,’ replied Leo, remembering his chum’s speedy solving of the Times crossword that morning. He tore out the page and handed it over. ‘Fordyce, this solitary, James Millar – is his place easy to find?’ He took a sip of his vodka martini.

  Fordyce sighed, a pained expression on his face. ‘Look, old stick, I wouldn’t get a bee in your bonnet about poor James. He’s not what you’d think at all. Losing his wife didn’t make him angry; it just made him incredibly sad. Timid, actually. He’s a very gentle fellow. An absolute first-rater.’

  ‘Tell me about how he took to the wilds.’

  ‘He’s a big fan of all things Appalachian. So, after Carole died he decided to live the life. He plays his banjo, traps and hunts, distills moonshine. He may be deemed rather peculiar by some people’s standards, but he’s perfectly harmless. Finding poor Helen like that . . . it’s been really hard on him. It brought back a lot of dreadful memories.’

  Leo gazed out of the French doors. The lovely purple light had drained from the sky, which was marred with vast blots of charcoal, and the landscape had suddenly become incredibly gloomy, as though it was about to tip its ink-dark melancholy into the beholder’s heart. Leo thought of the north, of the lonely lights of Klondykers and extraction superstructures perched upon the deep, blackening water, of shadow rolling up the great sea lochs. Something impossibly desolate about the images brushed against his soul.

  ‘You’re not thinking of visiting him now, are you?’ asked Fordyce. ‘It’s miles away.’

  ‘No, no. The shadows ’gin to loom, such are the ephemeral days of this dismal season. I’ll go up tomorrow. For tonight, there is only warm company, excellent food and the finest wines with which to rinse our lusty palates. Slàinte!’

  ‘Bottoms up!’

  They raised their glasses and chinked them together, glad of each other’s companionship in this darkest of winters.

  13

  LEO had aimed to breakfast early before setting off to visit James Millar. However, as usual his best-laid plans were frustrated by the soporific effect of the previous evening’s alcohol. He still laboured under the illusion that he only required seven hours’ sleep per night; in fact he needed nearer ten after boozing, which was almost always. He devoured a plate of kippers, then sat reading the Guardian, tutting at the impenetrable commentaries therein, more and more of which seemed to be concerned with gender politics. Leo would often plagiarise an adage by declaring that his socialism was more rooted in Methodism than Marx. For one thing he tended to like Methodists; Marxists generally chilled him to the marrow.

  Ludwig informed him that he had received a text message. It was from Stephanie: ‘Wot is it u wantd me 2 do?’

  He replied: ‘Could you please visit the Mitchell Library for me? I require you to do some research.’

  In what seemed like a moment Stephanie, who could knock out a text at several times the rate of Leo, responded: ‘Closed for refurb. Soz.’

  ‘Damn and blast!’ he exclaimed.

  He came up with an alternative strategy, and called the operator who put him through to the University of Glasgow’s Medieval History Department, but it transpired that the professor with whom he was acquainted was on sabbatical, and unreachable at some remote Canadian mountain retreat.

  Defeated, he made his way through a rack of buttered toast and marmalade, and an entire pot of coffee (as well as a restorative early tot of The Glenlivet), glancing up occasionally to see if Fordyce had surfaced. By half past ten, as the dining room was being cleared of the breakfast things, he decided to call his friend’s room from reception. The phone rang several times before Fordyce answered with an indecipherable sound.

  ‘Still abed, Fordyce? Come along, the day’s a-wasting!’

  ‘I’m sick, old stick, sick!’

  ‘Have you come down with something?’

  ‘Yes, alcohol poisoning. I should never have started so early.’

  ‘I’ll be right up.’

  By the time Leo had arrived bearing
a glass of fizzing liver salts, Fordyce had propped himself up against his pillows. He looked deathly pale, but also faintly comical in his lurid emerald and chartreuse green silk pyjamas. He sipped the effervescent tonic gratefully then gasped slightly.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Excellent. So you’ll be ready to accompany me to the Witch’s Cauldron?’

  ‘Not that much better,’ Fordyce groaned. ‘I’m sorry, old stick, and I hope you don’t think me the most frightful bore, but you’ll have to make your own way. Do pass on my most affectionate regards to dear James.’

  ‘No matter. Just give me directions and, if you don’t mind, a loan of that stout walking stick,’ Leo said, pointing at an elegant staff leaning against the wall.

  ‘Of course, old stick, you may borrow my old stick,’ Fordyce said, with unintentional humour.

  Thus armed, Leo set off towards Glen Fallasky. He wore a knapsack containing a cold luncheon prepared by the hotel kitchen, a water flask and a bottle of Wild Turkey Kentucky sipping whiskey he had purchased from Bill Minto as a blandishment for Millar. Kentucky was in Appalachia, Leo believed.

  Robbie McKee’s Land Rover sat outside the hotel, the keys in the ignition. Presumably its owner had been too drunk to drive home last night. The morning was raw enough to rasp Leo’s lungs, which were still recovering from flu, but it wasn’t as cold as it had been, and quite bright, with the sun occasionally filtering through the cloud. Leo crossed the main road and noticed a little wooden plaque mounted on a garden gate bearing the carved lettering ‘EDEN’. He entered the tree line. A startled red squirrel looked up from rummaging through the carpet of dead leaves to reveal his pearl-white breast. Upon seeing Leo he raced up a bare lime trunk, his bright tail swishing behind him like a chestnut feather boa. Leo passed through some richly wooded parkland, catching a glimpse of the white rump of a fleeing roe deer. Many of the trunks were robed in thick layers of moss, and one mighty Scots pine lorded over the coppice like an aged monarch, draped in kingly verdant folds. Nearby ran what was presumably the perimeter of the Grey Lady’s grounds. This ancient, crumbling wall, crowned with masses of ivy, blushed lime with lichen in the thin sunlight. Huge wrought-iron gates guarded the entrance, beyond which a cinder track ran into oblivion amid a mass of laurel and rhododendron, and bare rowan and ash. Leo walked on, over the cold, spongy turf, taking care not to tread upon a clump of early Candlemas bells. A flock of visiting redwings sounded cheerfully above, their thin, high-pitched call heralding the coming season.

  Spring. Leo longed for it, with the virgin light of its hallowed days culminating in the great mysteries of the Holy Triduum. He loved the symbiotic manner in which the Church’s calendar mirrored the rhythm of earthly life while holistically paying due tribute to the great saints and seismic biblical events. Christmas, the Word coming into the world, the light of hope defying the death of winter. The Easter miracle resplendent amid nature’s own annual resurrection. The Church as a constant throughout fad and whim, a beacon in life’s stormy sea, mankind’s lamp of sanctuary, Waugh’s ‘small red flame’. A memory flashed into Leo’s mind of a golden tabernacle in a shadowy church on Holy Thursday: unclothed, starkly empty, the lamp put out, its fully opened doors somehow challenging the beholder to consider the Paschal Victim, like the Madonna in Michelangelo’s Pietà. Perhaps this time round he would finally cleanse himself of drink during Lent, which would come early this year, and feel entitled to celebrate the victory all the more once it came. Perhaps not.

  Leo then thought about Fordyce for a while. He imagined how liberating it would be to possess his temper. He would see Christ Jesus, and not potential hostility, in any stranger. He would be tolerant and understanding of folk, instead of seeking fault, which was his great sin. However, he consoled himself, it was easier for some people to be holy than it was for others. Probably the way one’s DNA is arranged defines one’s default mode of irascibility. Every individual human being had their own unique journey, and the key was in the striving to be a better person, to overcome whatever darkness was found within one’s soul. Furthermore, Leo’s loneliness, his perpetual hangovers and the pain he often endured from his damaged hands lent him a dyspeptic outlook, and his visions had lain bare too much of the beastliness in men’s hearts to permit him a particularly benevolent disposition.

  The woods gave way to the glen proper, which was a rather bland piece of Scottish countryside. It was a shallow strath, boggy and inclining at its sump, and punctuated only by sheets of snow and clumps of heather or gorse. The perennial flower of the latter species, a little miracle of the natural world, cheerfully scorned the washed-out pall of the season. The drab rattle of a hidden ground-nesting bird sounded from a laroch. Leo chose a natural path which ran up the left side of the bog. The odd stone or piece of planking wrapped in chicken wire had been strategically placed to bridge the soggiest parts. He trudged through a dense plantation of conifers – larch then Sitka spruce. It completely enclosed him for a while, but for the central mossy strip which trickled with water, and gave him a sense of being in an endless, mystical forest.

  Cursing his lack of fitness, he toiled up the gradient and had soon drained his flask of water. However, further on the country became somewhat prettier and the contour of the land less steep. The odd tree dotted the horizon and the water flow which had dissolved into the bog further down was a veritable torrent up here, running merrily along the valley floor. The views became better, too. To the west a white curtain of rain soaked a distant glen, and the sun blinked through and kissed the magnificence of Ben Corrach, highlighting its ravines and scaurs and corries like lines on an old man’s face.

  Eventually, Leo could see a spur on the hill ridge ahead, which Fordyce had instructed him to look out for, and he knew he was near the Witch’s Cauldron.

  James Millar spent his days smiling. Smiling with sadness, or smiling with joy at the honour of having known her, of having been married to her, of having loved her. Of having been loved by her.

  Sometimes she would visit him in his dreams, the gorgeousness of the experience always counterbalanced by the desolation he would feel when he woke up alone in the haggard pre-dawn light. Yet Millar still smiled, more often than not. Smiled with bittersweet sorrow, smiled with gratitude. But most of all he smiled in the certain knowledge that they would meet again, just as surely as the gloom of night would be pierced by the rays of sunlight that gently crept over the mountains like the caressing fingers of a lover.

  Leo heard Millar before he laid eyes upon him. More precisely he heard his skilful plucking of ‘Cripple Creek’ on a five-string banjo.

  ‘Earl Scruggs, eat your heart out!’ announced Leo.

  Millar was perched on a boulder next to a little camp fire, a man of forty wearing a lumberjack shirt under a sheepskin coat, blue denim jeans and outdoor boots. A milky blond fringe protruded from beneath a red and black tartan hunting hat, its ear flaps dangling loose. He had misty blue eyes and wore round-framed spectacles. He had a certain dreamy, distracted air and slow, deliberate movements. After a moment he smiled in greeting towards his visitor.

  ‘Leo Moran. Delighted to meet you.’

  ‘James Millar,’ the man replied in a mild voice, shaking Leo’s proffered hand. ‘But you already know that, I suppose?’

  ‘I came up here to see you. I’m a friend of Fordyce Greatorix.’

  ‘Fordyce is a special man. Such beautiful manners.’

  ‘He thinks very highly of you too.’

  The Witch’s Cauldron was a perfect hollow, generously embroidered with trees and shrubbery, its steep natural walls protecting its inhabitant from the worst of the wind. The stream had been dammed here to cause a cistern from which Millar could draw his water, and at the back of the hollow was his blackhouse, a simple but beautifully built abode complete with thatched roof. In places much of the undergrowth had been cleared and a patch of rich, fecund black earth had been tilled and planted.

  ‘Go
sh, when I heard of the Witch’s Cauldron I imagined a sinister place, but this is quite beguiling!’ said Leo. ‘What a wonderful home you have made for yourself.’

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps she was a good witch, whoever she was. Are you here about Helen?’

  Leo was taken aback by Millar’s directness, and wished he had prepared what to say in advance. He decided honesty was the best policy. ‘Yes. Look, I’ll level with you. I’m an amateur sleuth, and as such I don’t have any right to ask anything of you. But I just wondered if I could put to you a few questions.’

  ‘Of course. Can I get you some coffee?’ Millar offered, gesturing towards a pot that sat upon the fire. A greasy skillet sat on the grass, smelling of bacon fat.

  ‘Actually, I’d just love a glass of water, if you may be so kind. I’m fair puggled.’

  Millar ambled off and came back with a jam jar filled with water and a little wicker chair for Leo so that he could sit by the fire.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Leo, sitting down and surreptitiously wiping the rim with his handkerchief when his host’s back was turned, yet feeling somehow honoured at being bequeathed the man’s humble hospitality.

  ‘Fresh from a mountain stream.’ Millar smiled. ‘I don’t blame folk, you know.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For suspecting me. I mean, I understand that people find my way of life somewhat peculiar. And, of course, there’s what happened to my Carole and the fact that I found poor Helen’s body.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I am myself somewhat predisposed towards private, quiet living. Also, I have a personal allergy to throwing around unsubstantiated accusations. So I am not here to accuse you, Mr Millar.’

  ‘James.’

  ‘James. Believe me, there are plenty of suspects in this case. To an extent every man of military age in a ten-mile radius is one.’

  Millar noticed Leo’s nose twitching at the sweet smell of liquor on the air, and grinned. ‘Mum’s the word. Perhaps not the most prudent habit for a man with my medical . . . issues. But it keeps the cold out.’