“In that case, the dead man on Rannoch may be Ure, but can’t be Stewart,” said Jonathan.
They walked to the abandoned croft, lifted the latch and went in. Jonathan, who had not expected to find anything startling, was more than surprised to find an old woman seated beside the peat fire which was smouldering in its tin bucket on the hearth in the middle of the room.
Mrs. Bradley seemed unconcerned at sight of her.
“Ah, Morag,” she said. “You are a long way from home.”
The old woman, who appeared to be unperturbed by their invasion of the house, drew her grey woollen shawl a little closer around her shoulders.
“I am very near home, I am thinking,” she replied.
“Oh, nonsense!” said Mrs. Bradley vigorously. “What makes you say a thing like that?”
“I have my thoughts,” said Morag. “But will you sit down, then, and take something to eat?” She got up and went to the cupboard. “Some cheese, perhaps, you will like, and an oatcake, yes.”
She set the food before them. They did not need it, but scarcely liked to refuse her hospitality. She made tea and told Jonathan to smoke.
“And now,” she said, “you have more to say to me.”
“A good deal more,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We have been most anxious about you. Where did you go on the morning after the murder?”
“The murder?” The effect of this word on the old woman was immediate and striking. “They’ll not have dared to kill Master James? Oh, the day, the black day that that should be coming to pass!”
She rocked herself, her grey head buried in her shawl. Mrs. Bradley watched her closely and decided that the grief and the horror were genuine. She waited for a bit, and then said gently:
“I see that you did not anticipate this news. We are trying to find out all that we can, and bring the murderer to justice. Will you not be on our side, and help us?”
But Morag made no reply. When she spoke, it was on another subject.
“The men that came here, and brought me here—who are they?”
“We don’t know. We think they are men who have been in prison. They are, or have been, criminals. We were hoping that you could tell us more about them.”
“I know nothing about them. My Hector sent me a message down to the clachan, and there I heard tell that my Alexander was in trouble and was wishing to see me. I left word for my Hector in the clachan by Dougal the Post, and went off to Appin, where it was said I would be finding my Alexander. There was a boat at Appin. The men you are speiring after were on board and I went with them, not knowing what way to think, and afraid all the time for Master James that was lying, they were saying, at death’s door.
“They put me ashore at a place of which I had no knowledge, and there they left me. It was night. I had no knowledge, none at all, of where I might be. A good body gave me a bed and food, and told me I was on Skye. I did not tell what had befallen. I was fearing she would not believe me. The next day I would have left, but she would not let me. I am thinking she knew very well I was in trouble. I was with her for so long I was ashamed, and myself a stranger! That was not good. One morning I saw the two men that had brought me away, and my Hector was with them. He called to me and bid me to go from them. He said I should be in great danger if I stayed near him. The two men threatened me. There was no knowing what I should do.
“I was there when my Hector was getting away. I tried to follow, but it was very dark, and I lost him. I went back in the morning to the croft and this little house. It was empty. I have stayed here, thinking that my Hector or the men would come back.”
“Good heavens! Didn’t you tell the police they had threatened you?” demanded Jonathan, who had listened in amazement and unbelief to this dramatic and incredible story. Morag shook her head.
“What are the police to me? I know what I know, and I think what I think, and I was knowing better than anyone else that when they hanged Mr. Malcolm it would not be the end for any of us. And now you say that Master James has been killed? It is nothing to the police. It is nothing now to anyone but me.”
“Mr. Malcolm?” said Mrs. Bradley. “You speak of Malcolm Stewart, who was hanged?”
“It was a long time ago. A very long time ago. I am not learned. I am not able to be telling you the year.”
“And why was he hanged?”
“He killed a man; and it was right he should be doing that same. Does that puzzle you?”
“No,” said Mrs. Bradley, looking at her intently. “It puzzles me less than you think. When we return to Lochaber, is it your wish to go with us? We have our own boat.”
“I am content here.”
“But the croft does not belong to you?”
“Those that left it are content that I should be staying.”
“The croft is the price of your silence, I imagine.”
At this, Morag looked up.
“It is the price of my silence,” she said. “It is the price of my pride. It is the price of my memories. It is the price paid to those that are gone by Morag Stewart.”
“Bats,” said Jonathan concisely, when he and his aunt had left the house. “Poor old girl.”
“Her remarks made pretty good sense,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Considering all things, I think her reticence was the result of what we might call the wisdom of madness.”
“But how much of her story was true?” demanded Ian, when Mrs. Bradley and Jonathan returned to the house. Mrs. Bradley shrugged, and Jonathan replied:
“Not a word of it, I should say.”
“Yet she must be an important witness if a trial is ever held,” persisted Ian. “If what Loudoun told us is true, then she must know far more about the family than anyone. . . .”
“Except Mrs. Forbes,” said Laura. “Did you expect to find Morag here?” she added.
“No,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “I realized, of course, that she had probably left Craigullich on some errand for Mr. Loudoun. It was not very likely that she had been kidnapped whilst Ian and Catherine were there, although it was possible that she left on the Tuesday evening. The question was where she had gone after leaving the house. That question has now, to some extent, been answered. Whether she was brought here in the manner and for the reason she has described to us, or for some other reason or by some other means, scarcely matters. I should like to confront her with the other old woman, servant to the second Mr. Loudoun, I confess. Later in the day I intend to return to the croft, taking Ian with me, if he has no objection.”
“Not the slightest objection,” said Ian. “After family prayers every morning in Gaelic, including dirge-like hymn-singing (varied, to my relief, this morning, by the unannounced entrance of the goat), I feel that I can bear anything.”
“I want Ian and old Morag to meet again,” Mrs. Bradley went on. “To him she may unburden herself in a way she would not to me. If I were sure there would be no danger, Catherine could accompany him. I confess I should welcome her views.”
“Well, look here,” said Jonathan, “let them both go. I’m all for the equality of the sexes when it comes to getting knocked on the head. I’ll crouch behind the wall, if you like, where Menzies hid that night he set Loudoun free, and charge in and help if there’s trouble. How are you as a runner, Mrs. Menzies?” he added, turning to Catherine.
“I sprain my ankle when I run,” said she, looking across at her husband, “but I’d like to meet old Morag again. I don’t believe she’s one of the villains of the piece. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense if she is. I do think she might be mad, but that scarcely matters, except that her story won’t be accepted in court.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Bradley, interested. “Proceed.”
“Well,” said Catherine, flushing a little as she spoke, “it seems to me that old Morag’s story must be partly true. As Mrs. Bradley says, she was sent off by Mr. Loudoun—our Mr. Loudoun—to get her out of the way. Well, why should he want to get rid of her? Simply because he knew that his brother, or what
ever he is, was coming to Craigullich, and old Morag would have given the game away somehow to Mrs. Bradley when she arrived to give him those psychology tests. All the same, there had to be an old woman there, in case Ian and I had mentioned old Morag to Mrs. Bradley. So the second Mr. Loudoun—Mrs. Bradley’s Loudoun—brought with him the old woman from Craig Mellan. That would account for the apparent discrepancy between our Loudoun’s statement that old Morag had been in the family since they were children, and the other statement made by the old woman brought by the second Mr. Loudoun, the one who has now been murdered.”
“Well, I’m going out,” said Jonathan, knocking out his pipe. “Who’s coming?”
Laura accompanied him. They had the MacIvers’ boat and went fishing. They caught no fish, and were almost swamped by a whale which, chasing a seal into Uig Bay, caused them to make for the shore at a speed which made Laura catch a crab and land on the small of her back in the bottom of the boat. Restored to position and regaining possession of her oars, she continued an argument she had begun about Mendel’s theories, identical twins, and the use of blood-tests in deciding parentage, and emerged victorious.
The lad Brian had gone off on a tramp very early in the morning, and had not returned by the time the other parties set out, so that he was not included in the activities of his elders, but had all his adventures, if not alone, at least not in company with his friends and relatives. He had taken plenty of food, was a lad who preferred, on the whole, his own society to that of his aunt and cousin, and caused no one the slightest anxiety until he failed to show up at sunset. Even then it was assumed that he had merely walked too far from Uig to be able to return that night. No one was anxious about him, since, so far as was known, neither Loudoun nor old Morag, let alone the gaol-bird gaolers, had ever so much as set eyes on him, and any family on Skye would give him his supper and a bed.
Chapter Eleven
★
The army of the chequered red!
An t-Arm Breac Dearg!
War cry of the Macquarries
★
Brian had left the house in the certainty—absolute although unexpressed—that he was going to have the best day of the holidays. He had enjoyed himself in his own way whilst his elders were chasing about on their inane and uninteresting pursuits (for he had been told little about the murders, and was at the age when the activities of everybody over twenty and under fourteen were unworthy of serious notice or even of destructive criticism), but he had strongly desired to accompany the party to Skye, and now that he had come there he proposed to employ his time profitably.
He had mapped out huge schemes for exploring the island, and had made some ingenious and ingenuous attempts to find out how long the party intended to remain on Skye. He had not succeeded, since they themselves did not know how long they would remain there, so he had resolved to make the best possible use of whatever time might lie before him.
He set out from Uig and walked northward to the Quiraing. His ambition was to begin his exploration of Skye by walking completely round the coast. The road from Uig northwards did not follow the coast, but a boy out on his own with a rucksack on his shoulders and ten shillings in his pockets was not prepared to quarrel with the vagaries of the island’s highways.
At Score Bay the road reached the sea again, and it occurred to Brian that it would be good to bathe. He changed his mind, however, upon calculating that so far he had covered only about seven miles. He tramped on, enjoying the solitude, across the low country at the northern end of the island, until he reached Kilmaluig, on the eastern side. At Flodigarry he had his lunch, and then, upon the advice of a motor-cyclist whom he met, he returned to Kilmaluig and climbed the height of Sgurr Vourlinn. From the top he could see Trodday and, further off, other islands which he could not identify, but which he supposed to be the Shiants and Lewis.
The wind was very strong on the hilltop, and there was considerable formation of cloud.
By walking southward he found that he could reach his objective, the Quiraing. This strange formation of rocks satisfied all his feeling for romance, and he spent an hour at least in clambering about the hiding-places and in scrambling to the hilltop and looking down upon the extraordinary castles of Nature with their pinnacles and walls, their battlements, and the small, deep mazes which were once the hiding-places for stolen cattle.
On one of the paths, when at last he left the Quiraing, he encountered a dog and then its master, a shepherd. Man and boy passed the time of day, and Brian asked the way back to the coast, as he thought the shepherd would know of a different route from the one by which he had come. He was taken by a rough path and set upon his way, and soon was back on the road and very near to a most enticing beach from which to bathe. He was tired and hot, and the thought of immersing his body in the keen, salt water was delightful. He had stuffed his bathing trunks into his rucksack, and it took him scarcely a minute to fling off shirt, shorts, socks and shoes, pull on his trunks and run down into the sea.
It was a golden afternoon on Skye; one of those perfect days of the middle summer before the later rains begin and the island earns its name of the Misty Isle. There seemed to be no one about. Later in the year there would be cars and tourists, but on that day he had the sea and the beach, as far as he knew, to himself.
He swam and floated, duck-dived, lazed, lay on his back and closed his eyes to the rainbow brilliance of the day, swam fast and then slowly, idled in the water, came out and lay on the sand, lost the heat that comes from exercise and grew warm again in the shadeless heat of the sun, went back to his swimming, and spent the best part of an hour in the mindless enjoyment known only to boys and the beasts, who share, with a common savagery, a common bliss of holiness and innocence in the pleasures which are natural to both.
At last, not weary of the drifting of a timeless afternoon, but conscious of a journey to be completed before he could get another meal—for, boy-like, he had consumed before midday every morsel of food which the lavish Mrs. MacDonald had packed for him—he came out of the water for the last time and was prepared to put on his clothes.
He had brought no towel, so he peeled off his trunks, wrung water out of them and out of his hair, sauntered over to where he had left his shirt, shorts, and socks—his shoes he had retained and had put off at the water’s edge, as the tide was on the turn and was going out—and spread his trunks on the rock behind which he had placed his clothes. He looked for his clothes, but they were gone.
Nonplussed, he tried to believe that he had mistaken the place, but could not convince himself of this, as no similar rock could be seen on that part of the shore. However, he searched with great diligence, his naked body drying in the sun, but had to admit, very soon, that his garments were lost.
He was in a sad quandary, and sat down to think matters out. He knew already enough of the people of the neighbourhood, both on the island and on the mainland opposite, to feel certain that they were the last folk on earth to walk off with clothing, either for the purpose of stealing it or as a practical joke. His first thought was that some of his own party, unknown to him, had also decided to explore the coast roads of the island and had played a trick on him, but he dismissed it almost immediately. He had formed a complete and correct estimate of Ian’s sense of humour, and did not believe that silly pranks were essential to its satisfaction. His cousin Jonathan he knew well. As for his aunt, he had heard her, in her mild but skin-pricking manner, to deplore and deride the practical joker as an infantile and often irreclaimable sadist, and never thought of her as even remotely responsible for the contretemps which had occurred. There remained Laura, an intelligent and completely intellectual humourist. The loss of the garments was a mystery.
Dismayed and annoyed, he surveyed his available assets: the shoes on his sand-ribbed feet, his rucksack—that had not been taken—and the damp trunks spread upon the rock. The very shortest route back to the croft of the MacDonalds, that by hill-road across the island to Uig
Bay, was nine miles or rather more, and it was not at all to his taste to traverse the passes in nothing but bathing trunks and shoes; neither was he willing to leave the scene of his loss without making some attempt to find his property, or, at least, to discover where it had gone. Unhappily, the afternoon sun was already descending westwards; the shadows cast by the rocks had begun to lengthen; a wash of gold was overspreading the sea, and the sky’s gold glow was already being cut by the black silhouettes of the peaks. It was time, it was more than time, for the stoutest-hearted tramp to be on his homeward way.
Brian had to content himself with but one attempt to discover in which direction his clothes had vanished. There was soft sand around the rock beside which he had laid them, and its depth prevented any footprints there might be from having definite shape. Besides, he was not certain that he could distinguish his own tracks from those of another person. Beyond and behind the rock was a grey pool, shallow and clear, formed by a rill which reached the sea sluggishly (if at all) through the sand. It would have been possible, Brian thought, for an enemy or a thief to have waded in the rill and through the pool almost up to the back of the rock, to have seized the clothes from the dry and tumbled sand, and to have sneaked back by the way he had come without leaving any spoor which an amateur hunter could detect.
Believing now that no clue existed to the whereabouts of his clothes, he pulled on the clammy woollen trunks, and searched in his rucksack for his map. A previous searcher, it seemed, had been through the rucksack already; the map was not to be found.
Less at a loss without a map (for he had memorized his route before he had started out) than furiously indignant at its loss, Brian was about to follow the course of the rill, which would lead him, he believed, on to the path he meant to follow, when he saw, at a little distance along the beach, a sturdy boy in dark trousers, a fisherman’s blue jersey and a Balmoral bonnet. It was young Macquarrie. Brian felt that the meeting of Stanley and Livingstone had taken place over again.
My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley) Page 15
