At last she came out of the burn, having bruised her foot on a large stone half-buried in its bed. She dried her feet on the little bathing-towel she invariably carried with her (being one of those holidaymakers in everlasting quest of water in which to paddle, bathe, or swim) and scrambled back on to the road.
The inn was on the borders of Rannoch Moor. This moor was a wild waste of peat-moss, the extremity of desolation. The moor was on high ground and the railway from Fort William ran round it, coming south from Tulloch and down to Rannoch station, distant a dozen miles or so from the inn.
There was room at the inn. It was not the season of tourists. She found accommodation, washed, had lunch, rested for half an hour on her bed, and then set out to have a look at the moor before dark. She would have liked to get as far as Rannoch Loch, but it was too far distant from Kingshouse. There were other lochs, desolate and remote, but, although she admired their setting of sombre hills, dark trees, the lighter birches, and the melancholy peat-bogs and whispering, dreary reeds, they had not that appeal to her imagination which the mere name of Rannoch Loch could give.
“Till ye talk Rannoch Loch to the top of Schiehallion . . .”
Schiehallion rose behind the low hills fringing the loch, a beautiful, almost symmetrical peak with one long slope and another shorter, slightly sharper one, which rose behind a crude shoulder of wooded hillside rising dark from the water’s edge.
There was something of magic about Schiehallion. It was a fairy peak. Miles of stiff climbing might be had on its cliffs and larigs, but its peak looked fantastically delicate as it rose to a flawless point against the light grey of the sky.
On the opposite shore of Loch Rannoch were reeds and graceful birches. The windswept waters were washed in long, bright wakes that slanted across the loch, and burns tumbled in from the hills as though there were sudden surf on the placid stretches.
But these romantic glories were not for Laura. She could not reach Loch Rannoch in the time at her disposal.
Not altogether happy, for the solitude and lonely mystery of the moor had had a depressing effect upon her spirits, she had to return to the inn. The new road through Glencoe had by-passed Kingshouse, and it was left among the heather beside the almost disused Old Road that wound with serpentine bends between steep, rough cliffs and the ramparts of overhanging fastnesses.
Before she could reach the crossroads, however, at which four roads joined, one to Glencoe, another to Rannoch Station, the third, which forked three miles on, putting an arm on either side of Loch Tulla and leading to Bridge of Orchy and Dalmally, and the fourth, branching off into tracks down both sides of Loch Etive, she encountered a little procession which at first she took to be a Highland funeral. She stopped to let it go by.
It was not a funeral procession, however, although four men were carrying a fifth, and the fifth was dead. He was wrapped in a shepherd’s plaid and his face was covered. The four men carried him into a shepherd’s hut.
Laura, whose first reaction, during the beginning of her employment as Mrs. Bradley’s secretary and assistant, was to connect the fact of death with the theory of murder, followed the men to the door. There was a peat fire burning in the middle of the hut. The grave-faced men laid their burden carefully on the floor, and one removed the scarf from its face.
Laura walked into the hut. In accordance with a promise made to her mother, she always carried a small first-aid outfit when she was tramping. She went up to the group—four steps across the hard earth floor of the hut—and said abruptly, before they had noticed her entrance:
“First-aid wanted? I’ve got some bandages and things.” One of the men looked up quickly, and scrambled up from his kneeling position by the body.
“You mustn’t come here!” he cried.
“Why on earth not?” asked Laura, pushing him aside and taking the position which he had just abandoned. Then she saw what he meant. Something which seemed to be protruding from the shoulders of the corpse was causing it to lie in a slightly tilted, entirely unnatural position on the floor. Laura, watched by the men, turned the body sideways and saw the hilt of a knife.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “But you needn’t mind my seeing him. I shan’t faint.” She looked closely at the dead man’s face. “I don’t know him. Who is he?” A man she took to be the shepherd to whom the hut belonged, answered slowly, in careful English:
“No one here knows him. The laird and I were finding him on the moor.”
“There’s nothing we can do for him,” said the man who had first spoken. “I would advise you to get on your way. There’s a mist coming up. That is, if you’ve satisfied your rather unnecessary curiosity.”
Laura regarded him with dislike.
“As I suppose it was by your orders this man was moved from where you found him,” she retorted, “it is likely that you’ll have to explain to the police exactly why you chose to bring him here. You must have known he was dead. What’s more . . .” She jerked her head towards the body. The man stared a moment.
“A word with you outside,” he said abruptly. Laura, who thought that she might be able to gather where the body had been found so that she could report this important fact to Mrs. Bradley, went out with him.
“Look here,” he said, “I can see you’ve got your head screwed on pretty tight. Have you any medical knowledge? Are you a nurse or a medical student, or anything?”
“I know a bit about dead bodies,” said Laura cautiously and with some amount of truth. “Why? What do you want to know?”
“I wondered how long this fellow had been dead.”
“I didn’t see enough of him to be able to say,” replied Laura. “Let’s go and have another look. Not that what we say will carry much weight. The police will have their own doctor.”
She was very anxious to get another look at the body. Something about the man’s mouth had touched a chord in her memory. A second inspection of the body—the men making way for her this time—did not help her to determine the time of death. She knew little of rigor mortis, and, in any case, knew that she must not touch the body until the police had seen it.
The news had reached the inn by the time she got there. The body had been found not far from the track which led to Kingshouse from Rannoch Station at the head of Loch Lydoch.
“Had it been on that track (that isn’t a track) from Carrour,” said one of the guests, an Englishman named Farraway, “one wouldn’t be much surprised. More than one tramp has failed to report at Kinlochleven who decided to try a short cut across the moor.”
“The dead man was a tramp, then?” asked Laura. The afternoon was drawing in and was misty and chilly, and the company, such as it was, was round the fire, and conversation was general.
“I don’t know. I assumed he was. I can’t say that was mentioned. They’ve got the chap down at the shepherd’s hut, over on the moor, about two and a half miles south-west of these cross-roads.”
Laura did not mention that she had seen him.
“They may want us all to have a look at him,” interpolated another of the party. “Identification, you know.”
“How long had he been dead?” enquired Laura. The men stared and then laughed. Her matter-of-fact tone and manner seemed to them incongruous.
“We don’t know that, either. The police will bring their own doctor, I suppose,” said one of them.
Laura nodded, but again did not say that she had been at the hut. What reason she had had at first for wishing to see the body she herself would have been hard put to it to tell, but she was very glad now that she had insisted upon looking at the corpse. The most remarkable thing about the dead man was that his middle front tooth was missing. It might be coincidence, no more, but in view of Loudoun’s description of Mr. Ure, it seemed well worth while to add it to the report which she had prepared for Mrs. Bradley.
Next morning she set out early for Ballachulish along the old road through Glencoe. There were long miles to be covered before she reached the glen.
The great Shepherds of Etive—Buchaille Etive Mor and Buchaille Etive Beag—the Three Sisters, Beinn Fhada, Gearr Aonach, and Aonach Dubh, Stob Coire an Lochain behind the last two, and, further to the south, the mighty monarch Bidean nam Bian, rose beside and before her on the south. To the north the road was walled by the rampart-strength of the double-peaked Aonach Eagath and, nearer to quiet Loch Leven, the Pap of Glencoe.
The Glen was wild and gloomy, even on that bright summer morning, and it was with a thrill of excitement not far removed from fear that she took the road between its austere and almost overhanging mountains.
To Mrs. Bradley’s disguised but very real surprise, Loudoun made no objection whatever when she suggested that she could best complete her diagnosis by putting him under light hypnosis. He seemed interested in the suggestion, and asked several questions about hypnotism and its place in the treatment of mental and nervous diseases.
“We’d better have your room with the Menzies portrait,” she said, when she had given him enough information to satisfy him. “If you will sit down in a comfortable chair, and, as far as possible—but don’t worry too much about this side of it; it doesn’t matter much—clear your mind as though you were tidying a room, that will best provide the atmosphere we need. By the way, how would you tidy a room?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Loudoun, seating himself and leaning back comfortably in his chair. “I’m afraid I’m the sort of untidy beggar who would just shove the rubbish behind cushions and things. I mean, sweeping and dusting and a general turn-out would be beyond my scope, I’m sure.”
“Shove the rubbish behind cushions and things . . . well, that’s what you do mentally, too, I expect. Many people are the same. But, you see, one can only do that for a certain length of time. There comes a point when, in the room, the cushions can hide no more rubbish. The mind is the same. Then, because moth and rust do corrupt, queer things, and very unpleasant things, are apt to crawl out. That happened, didn’t it, to you? When did it begin? When did you begin concealing your unpleasant thoughts from yourself? Think back, and tell me.”
“It was when I was three,” said Loudoun readily. “My father died. I was with him. I mean, I saw his dead body.”
“Your father’s dead body? Nonsense! I thought your father was hanged. Whose dead body did you see?”
“My father’s. I know it was. He was lying by the side of the loch, under the small clump of birch trees. His right arm was in the mud at the edge of the loch. It had been hot that summer. The water had dried away from the edge of the loch. His face was staring straight up into the sky, and his eyes were open. I found him.”
“And he had been murdered?”
“He had a great gash across his throat. It was a dreadful sight.”
“So he was not hanged. He was murdered without benefit of clergy. You interest me intensely. Now then! Who murdered him?”
“Rory Loudoun. He wanted to marry my mother. I knew that, too. I had seen her in his arms.”
“So Rory Loudoun was hanged for murdering your father?”
“I don’t know. I was never told anything about it.”
“Then who was it brought you up?”
“My mother, and Rory Loudoun.”
“How much did old Minnie know?” demanded Mrs. Bradley, abruptly abandoning the cross-talk.
He looked startled, and sat up straight.
“She knows nothing! She wouldn’t remember!”
“Suppose she did remember; what could she tell?”
He subsided again, and breathed easily.
“Nothing. Whatever she remembered, there is nothing that she could tell. How did you come to hear of old Morag’s old wives’ tales?”
“Your name is Hector Menzies?” said Mrs. Bradley, leaning forward and holding his wrist.
“Alexander Stewart. I am Alexander Stewart.”
“And you talk to yourself in the night and pretend to be your father?”
“How could I do that? I tell you my father is dead.”
“Yes, he is dead. We know that. Tell me about your mother and Rory Loudoun.”
“I can’t, unless I tell you of Tobermory.”
“Tell me of Tobermory. What happened there?”
“It’s in the books, but they don’t know everything.”
Mrs. Bradley sighed and put away her notebook. She looked at the gently-breathing man for a minute or two, and then left him and went to find the twice-christened housekeeper.
Laura, in spite of her feelings, mingled of dread and excitement, as she followed the old road winding through Glencoe, met nobody but a painter, who, having set up his easel in a tiny corrie well above the road, was painting the available scenery with nervous inconsequence. She sat down on a pile of loose stones by the wayside and watched him. All the time she was there—twenty minutes, perhaps, for she smoked a very leisurely cigarette and ate some chocolate—he did not do more than the merest touching up of his work. She was curious to know what sort of a job he was making of the stream-savaged side of Aonach, and wondered how much her presence would be resented if she climbed to the corrie and asked to be permitted to look at the painting.
She was wondering whether it was worth the trouble of the climb when the artist stood up, looked at his work, then came to the edge of the bluff and waved his hand. Laura looked back along the road as far as she could see, and then forward towards the west, but there was no one. She could only conclude that the man was trying to attract her attention. She stood up, pointed to herself and then at him. He waved again. This time without doubt it was to her, for he made motions for her to join him. Laura scrambled up the bluff, and then in the track of the dried-up waterfall, until she reached the small flat pinnacle of rock whereon he had set up his easel and little stool.
“Good morning,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
The man, bearded but otherwise tidy, put his brush between his teeth and beckoned her to look at the picture. They both stood and stared at it in silence.
“Well?” said the man.
“Very nice,” said Laura judicially. “Rather too much coloratura about the tabasco, though. And the alignment of the epigasteric. Somewhat concentric, don’t you think?”
“I never use that jargon. Don’t understand it,” said the man. Laura thought this scarcely surprising. “The point is, is it like, or not like, would you say? Speaking as the man in the street. And what’s your name?”
“I never do,” said Laura reassuringly. “But, if I must, where is the stag, and where are the Highland cattle? Menzies.”
“If you’re so well up in art, you ought to be a bit more helpful,” said the man. “There’s something wrong somewhere, but, for the life of me, I can’t see what it is.” He grimaced, then smiled, his white teeth seeming whiter through the beard. “What is it, Miss Menzies?”
Laura could have told him, but she preferred to keep the news for Mrs. Bradley.
“Actually,” she said, “it isn’t too bad. It looks like a mountain, and that’s the great thing, isn’t it?”
“No. The great thing is, I suppose, that you might possibly spare a cigarette. I’ve run out, and it’s the devil of a nuisance just here. I do want to get this finished before I leave, and if I go tramping into Ballachulish, or somewhere, for fags, I shall lose the best of the light.”
Laura gave him her cigarettes and matches, bade him goodbye, and resumed her journey full of thought, excitement, and foreboding. She joined Mrs. Bradley at Craigullich in time for tea. She had lunched at the Ballachulish hotel, opposite the ferry across Loch Leven, and had had a rest and a good talk with Deborah and Jonathan. The boy Brian, who had returned with Jonathan and his wife on the previous day, whilst Laura went on to Kingshouse, was fishing from a boat on the loch in company with the innkeeper’s nephew, one Alan Macquarrie, on holiday from school.
She found Mrs. Bradley by the loch, in rapt contemplation of its stillness, and enjoying, at the same time, her tea. Loudoun, said Mrs. Bradley, was still
asleep. He had slept since lunch.
“We had a séance together,” said Mrs. Bradley with a ghoulish chuckle, handing tea and indicating the various plates and dishes, “and, except for the period during which he lunched—with excellent appetite, I might say—he has been asleep ever since. By the way, the old housekeeper thinks I’m mad to want tea out of doors.”
“You hypnotized him?”
“No, child.”
“I thought that was part of the treatment.”
“So did I. Mr. Loudoun decided not to avail himself of that part. He affected to fall in with my plans, but he was no more under the influence of hypnosis than I was, except for a minute or two at the very end.”
“How do you know he was hypnotized at the end?”
“He gave me some information I wanted. It was something he could not have meant to tell me, I think.”
“Well, look here, something else has blown up. A man has been found murdered on Rannoch Moor.”
“Murdered? Is that certain?”
“Anyway, stabbed in the back. I know it’s true, because I’ve seen him. Some idiots moved him from where he was found and brought him to a shepherd’s hut not far from the Glencoe road. It was well-meant, I suppose, but a bit of a sell for the police. Four men. I didn’t know any of them. One was a shepherd, one the laird, and the other two, I should say, were quarrymen over from north of the moor. Silly asses. Wouldn’t you think they’d know better than to touch a dead body?”
“What do you think they thought of doing with the body?”
“I suppose one of them was going to fetch the police. A mist was coming up, so I thought I’d better be going. I don’t know the moor, and I didn’t want to get lost, so I made tracks back to the inn. How have you been getting on? Apart from the hypnotism, I mean.”
My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley) Page 6
