It followed, from this, that if the death of Ure were intended to reassure (or, conversely, of course, to terrify) Loudoun, then Loudoun must know far more about Ure than he had written down on the puzzling script he had given Ian to read, and which was now in her own safe keeping.
The more she thought about the script, the more she was convinced that it had been shown to Ian to keep him at the house, and downstairs. It must have been prepared for the reading of any visitor whom Loudoun had happened to inveigle to the house that evening. Everything about it was suspect.
There was also the question of old Morag’s disappearance. It was true that she might have left Craigullich of her own free will, and she might have left in the morning. There was the strong supposition, however, that she might have left overnight, or been enticed or ordered away, or even kidnapped.
If, however, the Loudouns—one or both—had been concerned in the murder of Ure, if Ure it was, why have mentioned him specifically in the script? It was necessary to know when the murdered man had died before some of these queries could be answered.
Were the Loudouns really brothers, she wondered, and were they in collusion? Could the terrors of the Loudoun Ian had met have been occasioned by the fact that he was giving his brother an alibi for the time of the murder?
She was getting far beyond her data, she knew, in arguing thus, and yet she could not believe that Ian’s Loudoun and her own were one and the same person. She could not prove that there were two Loudouns, but the presumptive evidence was strong. She felt that if only she had proof she could go to the police, for, in view of the typescript, there might be something to gain by confronting one or other of the brothers with Ure’s body.
She had not yet proved that it was Ure’s body. She fully realized that. She resolved that if it proved not to be Ure she would wash her hands of the case. The trouble was that she did not see how to get the body identified. For one thing, Loudoun might have used a false name in the script. There need be no such person as Ure. A wild theory as to the identity of the murdered man had come to her, but she felt that she was theorizing too much already for a new theory—and a fantastic one—to be acceptable. Still, she docketed it for future reference. If it turned out to be not a theory but a fact, then the whole story of the Stewarts and the Loudouns would shake itself into place and make sober if cold-blooded sense.
There remained the question of who the Loudouns could be. She thought she knew the answer to this. Gossip rarely lied, although it frequently embroidered and distorted. It was likely that Janet Forbes had told all she knew. It was also quite probable that she had withheld scandal from what she would consider to be Laura Menzies’ young ears. It was more than possible that, far from shooting the wrong brother, Malcolm Stewart had shot the man who had broken into his life. Rory Loudoun might be innocence itself, but it was unlikely that his younger brother had been guiltless.
The evidence, according to Janet Forbes, who seemed to be (but, of course, might not be) an independent, unbiased witness, was in favour of the supposition that Lorna Stewart and the younger brother of Rory Loudoun had been in London together during the absence of Malcolm Stewart in Mesopotamia, and that Lorna had had a child. There was nothing against the theory that she might have had twins. The difficulty that presented itself, if this were the case, was, simply, that if Ure in the typescript meant Stewart in real life, why had Stewart, or Ure, not been in possession of Craigullich, his natural inheritance? How had the Loudouns obtained possession of the house and land, and why had Stewart to importune Loudoun to sell to him property which was already his own?
Chapter Six
★
Up with the white and red!
Geal is Dearg a snas!
War cry of the Clan Menzies
★
Laura proceeded blithely to Inverness by way of Kyle of Lochalsh, Loch Carron, Achnasheen, Loch Linchart, and Loch Garve. Strathpeffer and Dingwall led her to the shore of the Beauly Firth and thence to the ancient city on the Ness with its wooded islands. It was a most delightful journey. The rugged coasts by the Kyle of Lochalsh, the lovely shores of Loch Carron, the smooth and tender waters of Linchart and Garve contrasted with the quiet mountains of the central highlands and the grey tumbled seas of the Firth.
The hostel was easy enough to find. She had time to identify it before dinner, and went to bed full of plans for a splendid day when she should have fulfilled her mission by reading Mrs. Bradley’s paper before the learned doctors and divines who had come to hear it, and had time to spend for herself.
She discovered, when she reported herself at six o’clock in the evening as Mrs. Bradley’s representative, that one of the best bedrooms at the hostel had been allotted to her. This was a turret room with two windows on the long wall and another window where the long and the short walls joined. It was a double room, but the second bed had been pushed into a corner and there was left covered with a dust-sheet patterned in the centre with a large thistle worked in pink.
She changed her tweed suit for a frock, and strolled out into the grounds. The modest card of events which she had found upon the mantelpiece informed her that supper would be served in the refectory at eight o’clock. She was ready by half-past seven, and, not knowing quite what to do with herself for the following three-quarters of an hour, she attached herself to the old gardener, who was tending his strawberry plants.
His name was MacMillan and he was ready enough to talk. Laura introduced herself, and her Highland surname, it seemed, was a passport to his regard.
“We have all sorts here,” said the gardener. “In the months of June and early July, the professors. In late July and for the whole of August, schoolteachers and others on tour, doing the Highlands.”
His voice was eloquent. Laura nodded and waited. He went on with his work, however, under the impression that he had conveyed all that he meant to convey. After about ten minutes Laura observed.
“And what is it like at Easter? Better or worse?”
“Och! Losh! Dear, dear!”
The combination of the Highland and the Lowland exaggerations and emendations was too much for Laura. She laughed with a lack of moderation which, for some reason, won the old gardener’s approval.
“Ye may well say,” said he, looking, so far as one of such patriarchal aspect could contrive to do, extremely pleased with her. “I could say more,” he added, darkly.
“I’m sure you could,” agreed Laura. “I’ve come instead of Mrs. Bradley,” she added, feeling that the conversation ought not to be allowed to die down in case it proved impossible to resussitate it.
“Mrs. Bradley?” He looked up, interested. “Well, well! That would not be Professor Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley who is after writing the psycho-analytical treatises on nervo-psychopathology, would it now?”
“The same,” said Laura solemnly.
“And ye are representing her at the Conference?”
“Aye.”
“Well, well!” He scanned her narrowly, a trowel in his right hand and a sheaf of straw in his left. “Very good. Ye’ll have gone far in your time, no doubt. Have ye any examinations?”
“Well, Matriculation,” said Laura cautiously. “And I worked for Higher Schools, and might have got it, except that I was superannuated for six weeks, owing to a—a misunderstanding with the headmistress.”
“Och, aye.” He regarded her with respect. “That will be the London Matriculation. My son is a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford. You would understand that John Balliol was a Scotsman, of course. No the best sort of Scotsman, no, indeed, but—well, well!”
“Of course.” They regarded one another gravely. “I’m looking for a man called Loudoun,” said Laura, as though continuing the subject.
“Och, aye.” He considered awhile, then bent to his work. She waited for a quarter of an hour. Then he said, “Loudoun? From Ballachulish, no doubt.”
“Well, thereabouts,” said Laura. He shook his head.
&nb
sp; “I would not be knowing him.”
“Ah,” said Laura. “He had some relation murdered, believe, just after the war.”
“Do you tell me! That would be Loudoun of Craigullich. I mind well hearing of that. That’s strange it was. Well, well! And indeed, one Stewart—Malcolm Stewart was the name—was hanged for murder in 1919. That should have been Non-Proven. But they hanged him. Doubtless they were right, but—I dinna ken. I have argued in this way and I have argued it that. Well, well! Ye would hardly recollect it. And his kinsman, Seamas a Glinnhe, to be hanged before him. Well, well! Although, mind you, it was said to be his own wife gi’ed the police the hint!”
He bent again to his work, and Laura, crossing a tennis court and a stretch of beautiful lawn, answered the summons of a bell to supper. But she turned back half-way.
“The name couldn’t have been Menzies?” she inquired.
“Menzies? No, no. It was Stewart, and I minded me of Seamas a Glinnhe. He shot him—or so the wife whispered—and the name was the same. It is a strange thing that. Well, well!”
Supper among the professors at the seaside hostel was a combination of the sublime and the ridiculous; the sublime being rendered by the conversation, most of which was entirely above Laura’s head, and the ridiculous by the machinations of the cook, who took a fit either of religion or temper immediately after the soup and refused to travel further into the promised land of fish, joint, and poultry.
This demonstration of the artistic temperament created consternation; not, to do the scientific mind complete justice, among the professors, many of whom might as well have been eating cotton-wool for all they probably knew to the contrary, but among the servants of the hostel, who had a keen sense of hospitality, noblesse oblige and amour propre.
“What will we do?” enquired one of the maids of Laura, who, among so many fossils, gave some signs of belonging or appertaining to the human race.
“Easy,” said Laura, rising. “Lead me to the kitchen, and you girls follow out my instructions to the letter. Boot, saddle, to horse and away!”
The Highland mind being capable of interpreting a mood, and of following a self-appointed leader, the girls, giggling, followed her out, and the professors, blissfully unaware, for the most part, that Mrs. Bradley’s deputy had contrived to make the cook laugh and that the supper was, in consequence, saved, enjoyed (or suffered) the rest of their meal amid a babel of learned conversation. Even coffee was achieved, and at this point, Laura, who had regaled herself in the kitchen on cold viands infinitely superior, in her opinion, to the supper provided for the delegates, escaped to the fresh air once more.
“Did you suffer from Agnes McAllistair?” the gardener sympathetically enquired. “She has religion, that one.”
“It doesn’t seem to have improved her sense of Christian responsibility,” Laura remarked. “What was that you were saying about Stewart being hanged for murder in 1919? Was his name really Stewart?”
“His name was Malcolm Stewart of Craigullich, Lochaber,” said the gardener.
“I suppose that really was his name?” said Laura. “I mean, his name couldn’t have been Menzies?”
“His name was Stewart. I’m telling ye Malcolm Stewart was his name, and he was hanged for the murder of the man Loudoun. He was shooting him and throwing the body into a small wee loch that lies just east of the house. It was Non-Proven, I would have said. He hated the man; that was known; and the brother afterwards married on the wife. But there was no doubt about the killing, so said the law, and they hanged him.”
Laura went to bed thoughtful. There was one thing certain. Hector Loudoun’s dream was not entirely the product of a nerve-ridden imagination. A man had been hanged, and the name of that man was Malcolm Stewart.
She had other things to think of. In the morning, at ten o’clock, there was Mrs. Bradley’s paper to be read. The contretemps at supper had put her at ease about this. She no longer feared the professors. She despised them. Ultimately, she told herself, drawing Mrs. Bradley’s typescript towards her and commencing to glance along its lines (most of which she knew by heart already), the hand that cooks the supper rules the world.
The morning dawned brilliantly. She got up early, walked through the beautiful grounds of the hostel and on to the road, and strolled as far as the castle before she turned to come back for breakfast. Porridge, eggs and bacon, fish (comprising haddock and kippers), bannocks, oatcake, scones, toast and rolls, the finest butter, honey, and pots of Dundee marmalade, put heart into the delegates and fortified them against the coming session. From ten until one they sat in conference, and learned question and answer took so long that Laura, to her annoyance, did not have a chance to read Mrs. Bradley’s paper, although it was down on the programme for eleven-thirty. She was asked to begin the afternoon session with it at half-past two, and astonished the delegates by refusing, very abruptly and pugnaciously, to do anything of the kind.
“But it is down on the programme,” said the chairman, mildly.
“It was down in the programme for this morning,” said Laura firmly. She looked round upon the gathering. “These gentlemen are full of Scotch broth, salmon, hot roast beef, three vegetables, cabinet pudding, and fruit. They are in no condition to appreciate Mrs. Bradley’s paper on the Re-orientation of Psycho-Pathological Cases of Paranoia.”
“Well,” said the chairman; but his forthcoming remarks were forestalled by a learned professor of Biology who had begun the morning with his own paper on birds. This gentleman, leaning back in his chair, laughed heartily and infectiously. “Very well,” said the chairman lamely. “Perhaps in that case, Professor Anatole Ruski would give us his views on the Mendelian Theory of Heredity as applied to the folk of the Upper Ibaburi.”
Laura began to see clearly why Mrs. Bradley had elected not to come to the conference. Tea, however, like lunch, was supremely satisfactory, and the country surrounding Inverness supremely satisfying. She went to bed at ten, rose very early, and, not being the person to return by the same route as that which she had followed on the outward journey if there were any possible alternative, took the train which left Inverness station for the south-west, skirted Culloden Moor, dropped down across the River Findhorn as it wound among the mountains of Strath Dearn, ran beside the Spey to Kingussie, crossed the river five miles further on, and struck sharply southward to Dalwhinnie. Here, having changed her mind about going on to Dalnaspidal, she got out.
It was very much later in the day than she had expected, and she had nothing but a packet of chocolate in her pocket and her luggage in a rucksack on her shoulders. She set out to find somewhere to sleep and a reliable guide to put her, next morning, on the track which would take her by the easiest route to Loch Laggan and so to Glen Spean, by the Braes of Lochaber. She had no knowledge of the countryside, but found a room at the hotel and a Highland maid who advised her to take the secondary road northwards to Drumgask and pick up a bus or motor-coach out to Fort William.
MRS. BRADLEY, having placed part of her treasure trove in a watchglass, added glacial acetic acid and poked delicately at the result with a glass rod. She had already diagnosed the probable presence of blood on the bracken fronds by using the phenolphthalein test, but she was not certain of the age of the bloodstains, so, to her glacial acetic acid solution, she added two or three pinhead crystals of common salt. She then brought her mixture to boiling-point and transferred two or three drops to a microscopic slide and covered this with a glass slip. She then brought her solution to the boil again, and, when it cooled, the presence of blood was shown by the dark-brown crystals.
She put away her paraphernalia—it formed part of her hand-luggage wherever she went—and made a note in her tiny writing. She wondered how Laura was faring, but spared scarcely a thought for Ian and Catherine, whose adventures had been considerably more startling than those of her secretary and companion.
Laura set out for the station she was told she would find at Drumgask. There were eight miles of hill-road
to traverse, on either side of which rose the mountains of Badenoch. The road, which forked from the main road almost opposite the hotel at which she had spent the night, was deserted. The place she had left consisted only of a few houses, two hotels, and a shop, and was on the very lonely road from Struan which comes by the Pass of Drumochter, fifteen hundred feet up and running beside the Boar of Badenoch and the Sow of Atholl.
Laura’s secondary road was not so grand. As she approached Glen Spey from the more desolate and wilder Glen Truim the scenery became quite pastoral. Valleys, and even fields, took the place of the bens and the passes, and, upon approaching the River Spey itself, she encountered early motorists, driving westwards from Kingussie, the centre from which she hoped her bus or motor-coach would run.
She was almost sorry, as she waited at the roadside to flag a passing vehicle, to give up her walk. It was infinitely preferable to stride along in the keen, fresh air to standing or sitting in a public conveyance breathing in stale tobacco smoke and unable to see more than a portion of the scenery.
She looked at her watch. The day was yet young; Mrs. Bradley was in no hurry for her return; it might be as well to defer the business of catching a bus. One would stop at the hotel on Loch Laggan, she had no doubt. She decided to walk this further half-dozen miles, and, the decision made, humped her pack and set off down the road.
My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley) Page 8
