by Gwen Moffat
Beatrice appeared in answer to the knock and, seeing Miss Pink’s interest, remarked that her brother had brought home the tusk from Greenland: ‘The narwhal is called the unicorn of the ocean. Isn’t that lovely?’
She showed the visitor into a room that extended the width of the house. French windows opened on a terrace and Miss Pink was taken outside to admire tints in the birches opposite and the water chuckling among pink rocks below a stout fence of post and rails. There were two doors at the back of the house, one leading to the kitchen, the other open on a dim room Beatrice called the log cellar. There was a strong smell of sawn timber.
‘We took a tree down,’ Beatrice said. ‘We must get all the logs under cover before it rains, although there’s little sign of that. These autumnal days are delightful, but there’s a nip in the air when you’re out of the sunshine.
Come inside and we’ll have some coffee.’
The sitting room was homely, with white walls and old furniture that was mostly oak. The floor was parquet, the carpet oriental, its jewelled shades echoed by paisley cushions on a coral sofa. One wall was lined with bookshelves, but there was also a television set and a record player.
Beatrice came in with the coffee and they settled to small talk. Miss Pink didn’t mention the brother but after he had, as it were, obtruded twice on the conversation, she wondered how long her hostess could refrain from doing so. ‘We are well above flood level,’ she said of the river and, acknowledging a compliment on the garden, ‘We’re fortunate; there’s a man who comes twice a week to mow the grass and cut up dead trees and so on. We do all the light work ourselves.’
At that she looked uncomfortable and conversation dried up for a moment.
‘You don’t live alone?’ Miss Pink’s tone was light.
Beatrice was still. ‘I’m alone now,’ she said. ‘I lost my brother two years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He wasn’t ill for long.’ The tone was flat. ‘It was cancer. He was in hospital, but he came home at the end.’ She looked round the room and her lips moved in the travesty of a smile. ‘Life goes on, doesn’t it? Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘I was an only child. My father died when I was young, but I was devastated when my mother died. I was in my late forties.’
‘What did you do? I mean, how did you cope once you’d recovered from the shock?’
‘I worked,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I started writing stories and articles for magazines while I looked after my mother. She had a long illness. But I wasn’t alone after she died. I had, and still have, an excellent housekeeper. I’ve never been lonely.’ There was a silence which stretched too far. ‘There was always something to do,’ she went on, ‘even if I had to fabricate it. Unfortunately that gets more difficult with age, at the same time as the writing becomes easier. So I started to travel.’
‘Did that work?’
‘It worked very well. I was something of a mountaineer when I was younger and I’d always thought I would have made a good explorer. When I go abroad, I don’t exactly court danger but I don’t go out of my way to avoid it. And there’s nothing to bring back the old joy of living so much as a good dose of fear.’
‘I was the timid one,’ Beatrice said. ‘Robert was the explorer. He crossed Greenland by dog sledge; he was in Spitzbergen, Baffin Land, the Yukon.’
‘Robert Swan!’ Miss Pink was amazed. ‘Of course. The polar traveller. I knew the name was familiar.’
‘You must come one evening and see some of his slides. I’ll put on a show.’ Beatrice smiled engagingly. ‘He used to call me his producer. I always helped select the pictures for a new lecture, and he tried out his commentary on me. I was representative of his audience, you see. He knew how mountaineers’ minds worked but he didn’t understand people who stayed at home.’
‘Did you always live together?’
‘Since the war. I had two more brothers. One was killed in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma, the other was a bomber pilot. He was shot down over the Ruhr. Robert went through North Africa without a scratch. Afterwards he worked for oil companies – he was a geologist – but when our parents died and we inherited, he didn’t need to do that kind of work any longer, so he explored and lectured. We came here in 1950. He loved Sgoradale – for a few months at a time – and then he’d be off again to some wild corner of the world. Are you like that: unable to spend long at home?’
‘I’ve not yet found a home,’ Miss Pink confessed. ‘I thought it was North Wales, then Cornwall – where I still have a house. It doesn’t bother me; I’m not looking for a home. No doubt the right place will appear in due course.’
‘You’re good for the soul. When will you be free to come for a meal?’
‘I’m dining at the lodge tonight. Is tomorrow too short notice?’
‘Not at all. Everyone in Sgoradale has freezers. Tomorrow it is. Shall we say six-thirty since we’re to have a slide show?’
* * *
Miss Pink made her way along the street. The tide was high, lapping close to the green turf on the other side of the road. Across the bay a boat broke away from the steps and headed down the loch, the sound of its outboard coming over the water moments after it had picked up speed. She had meant to ask her hostess about Ivar Campbell’s background – what, in jargon, constituted his motivation. There had been no gossip from Beatrice Swan but, despite a conversation that had never overstepped the bounds of propriety, there had been a sense of self-exposure. Predictable, of course. There hadn’t been a sign of so much as a cat. Sgoradale would be a subjective place – heaven or hell or lotus-land depending on how you looked at it. In such an environment, Esme Dunlop’s gush and Campbell’s shiftiness did not seem excessive. Could they be defence mechanisms mutated in a rarefied atmosphere?
Miss Pink pondered the kind of eccentricities the MacKays might exhibit. She decided on a stiff walk from Fair Head to blow her mind clear and strengthen her defences for dinner at Sgoradale Lodge.
CHAPTER TWO
Miss Pink drove to Fair Point, left her car outside the gates of the lighthouse and started along a sheep path which meandered through heather towards a craggy knoll. From this pimple of a hill, Sgoradale appeared more than ever like an outpost of civilisation. Even its sheltering escarpment was diminished, for behind it the high ground stretched across Scotland, fretted with spires and elephantine humps of hills, with glimpses of water like scattered sapphires in the peat and, most distantly, grey ranges frosted with the first snowfall.
Sgoradale turned its back on this hinterland, facing down the loch past wooded islets to skerries that marked the open sea. The sides of the loch were steep and, near the water, they were clothed with hardwoods now patched with gold as the leaves started to turn. Beyond the mouth of the loch and across the Minch, the Hebrides appeared like a fairy land on the horizon.
Miss Pink was not deceived by the gentle beauty of the scene. She could visualise Atlantic gales driving across the loch, lacy waterfalls swollen to brown torrents, blizzards where now the lochans reflected blue sky. Strolling back to the car she passed a ruin: a gable end above a scatter of stones. She remembered the Clearances, when cottages were fired and crofters evicted (cats thrown back in the flames) to make room for commercially viable sheep. There was a smell of blood and soot and burned fur. She shuddered; elemental violence was terrible, but it lacked malice. That was a human attribute.
* * *
‘We have no local crime. No doubt we lose a few fish to the pot here and there, even deer, but I’ve seen no evidence of it. Poaching is traditional, y’know – wasn’t there a Norman king killed by a poacher? But they must follow up and kill a beast if it’s been wounded. Only criminals leave a wounded beast to die slowly. And poachers must not get caught; that’s another crime.’
Sir Ranald MacKay grinned impishly at Miss Pink and waited for her reaction. They were in the drawing room at the lodge – a wood-panelled room ornamented with the heads of dead an
imals. Lamps cast pools of light downwards and the place had that dim glow characteristic of Victorian interiors. At one time this building, all slate and stone, would have been cold comfort; now it was centrally heated and a log fire burned in the basket grate. Miss Pink, chic in grey cashmere, sipped her Tio Pepe and considered her response. Sir Ranald, a large man, balding but trendy in light tweeds and a tie the colour of egg yolk, was waiting.
‘No crime at all?’ she ventured. ‘What about drugs?’
‘You mean the hard stuff? Cocaine, heroin? Not locally. In Ullapool perhaps, or Oban, but even there it would be brought in by foreigners, Scandinavians probably; Sweden was first with the permissive society. And there are always the Russians.’
‘Glue sniffing?’ Miss Pink suggested, her ears alert to the sound of heels on the tiled floor.
The women who entered the drawing room were in sharp contrast to each other. The first was tall and thin, with the kind of bony elegance achieved by rigid dieting. She was wearing highwaisted gaucho pants with a bolero, all in white, a black shirt and gold chains with a pendant that was one large pearl. She was a tawny blonde with a mass of loose curls to her shoulder-blades. In that dim light, it was only her poise as she greeted her guest that suggested she was over thirty. Lady MacKay’s age was not public knowledge, but her string of romantic novels (notably their publication dates) proved that she’d never see forty again.
Miss Pink shook hands and turned to Flora MacKenzie, Coline MacKay’s daughter, Sir Ranald’s step-child. She was young, plump with the softness of puppy fat, her face delicately boned under the roundness, with large clear eyes. She had her mother’s tawny hair, but straight and cut short with a heavy fringe. She looked twelve years old, innocent but rich. Only the child of wealthy parents would come down to dinner in stained cotton pants several sizes too large, worn with a bulky blouson in shimmering colours that must have cost a fortune.
‘Glue sniffing?’ Coline repeated, helping herself to sherry. ‘Are we having that kind of party?’
Ranald said, frowning, ‘Miss Pink was asking about the incidence of local crime. I told her we don’t have any. Knox, the police constable, takes care of the drunks on a Saturday night, and if there’s a trawler in, the hands stagger straight across the quay and fall in their bunks – if they don’t fall in the water!’ He chuckled heartily.
Coline sat down on a sofa. ‘Nothing happens in Sgoradale,’ she said. ‘Except the weather, which can be very dreary, but then we’re all going to Bermuda in November, thank God! The only thing one can do here in winter is write, but I can do that in the sun too.’
‘Sgoradale can be lovely,’ Flora said. ‘Spring is gorgeous. And in summer it can be roasting hot – just like the Caribbean.’
‘The Caribbean doesn’t have trippers,’ Ranald said darkly. He looked towards Miss Pink. ‘Now that’s when we have crime; it comes with the gangs, the vandals – why, this June and July we had, what’ – he glanced at his wife – ‘five, six cars broken into? It was a gang from Inverness.’
‘It wasn’t proved,’ Coline reminded him. ‘No one was arrested, and there were two incidents after they left.’
‘How do you know they left? They weren’t seen, that’s all. They were probably camping on the moor and sneaked back to the car park through the woods.’
‘I haven’t seen a car park,’ Miss Pink said,
‘It’s not obvious.’ Ranald preened himself, ‘It’s a corner of the estate, in the woods just south of the village. Unfortunately, in hiding it away we made it vulnerable to thieves. There’s no attendant, you see.’
‘What was stolen?’
‘Money. Men take their wallets with them, but women leave their bags in the car: covered, but not always locked in the boot. Although, given this gang, a locked boot wouldn’t have stopped them.’
‘Did they take credit cards?’ Miss Pink asked, and had all their attention.
‘That never occurred to me,’ Coline said.
‘Were credit cards taken, dear?’
‘I don’t know. Never asked. Knox would know. Not important, is it?’ He regarded Miss Pink doubtfully.
‘Taking only cash implies an amateur. A professional thief could get a better haul by way of credit cards – provided he acted quickly – than he could by stealing cash directly from cars.’
‘They were amateurs,’ Ranald protested. ‘A gang of Hell’s Angels working their way round the coast.’
‘Was that the kind of crime you were thinking of?’ Flora asked politely. ‘Or were you suggesting we might be into ...’ she sought for the correct term ‘... capital offences?’
Coline sighed. ‘ “Capital” means the kind of thing you could be hanged for once, sweetie. I don’t think we indulge in murder and ... high treason? Nor even espionage, despite Campbell’s insistence that any of the villages on this coast could be harbouring a sleeper.’
‘A sleeper?’ Ranald goggled at her.
‘A spy.’ Flora was patient with him. ‘Like the KGB, or whoever, had put someone in Sgoradale – Campbell, for instance – ten years ago, complete with a wife (who’d be working for them too) and he lived a normal life until someone decided to base nuclear submarines in the loch, and Campbell would be activated. To get the plans of the submarines, or blow them up, or pervert the crews.’
‘Subvert,’ Coline corrected.
Ranald blinked. ‘You’ve got too vivid an imagination.’
‘No.’ Flora was cool, ‘I’m just observant – like Campbell. In fact, it was he who told me about sleepers.’
‘He mentioned contracts when I met him,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I might have thought he was talking about employment, but he took pains to emphasise the other meaning. Whether he meant he would accept a contract or thought himself the target for one escaped me.’
‘What kind of contract was he talking about?’ Ranald looked bewildered.
Flora said calmly, ‘He’d be wanting her to think he was a hit man.’ He made to interrupt, but she went on, ‘A hit man is hired to “take out” someone – meaning terminate, or kill, like culling stags. It’s a verbal contract.’
‘Good God, that’s Chicago stuff! Al Capone and – and Butch Cassidy.’ He rose and went to the sideboard where the drinks were. He looked back at his step-daughter. ‘Campbell told you all this?’
‘Where d’you spend your time? Miss Pink’s been here three days and knows Campbell has – what is it, Mum – folie de grandeur? And you’ve employed him for ten years and what do you know? You block things out.’
‘I know he’s barmy.’
‘He’s harmless,’ Coline said equably. ‘A good workman, an unremarkable family man – well, he doesn’t beat his wife ...’ She giggled. ‘Rose Millar says he’s started using the Post Office as a poste restante.’
‘He told me that,’ Miss Pink said. ‘How long has he been like this?’
Coline shrugged. ‘Probably since he came.’
‘He’s getting worse,’ Ranald said.
Coline sighed. ‘So long as he doesn’t upset Debbie.’ She turned to Miss Pink. ‘Local women won’t work in the house,’ she explained. ‘They think domestic service is degrading. Our cook’s on holiday and we’re managing with Mary MacLeod, who looks after the holiday cottages, and Debbie Campbell. Esme Dunlop will help out when necessary – this evening, for instance. She’s my secretary, but she can turn her hand to most things.’
‘She called on me this morning,’ Miss Pink said.
‘She said so,’ Ranald put in. ‘Said she thought she frightened you.’
Miss Pink’s jaw dropped and Flora looked at her with interest.
‘She had a look at the black colt,’ Ranald continued. ‘She inspects his leg every day.’
‘Don’t you do that, sweetie?’ Coline asked her daughter. ‘They’re your ponies.’
‘I do it,’ Flora said. ‘Every day.’
‘She thought he was moving a bit stiffly this afternoon,’ Ranald said. ‘She put a clean dressi
ng on. Animal cut himself on some wire,’ he told Miss Pink.
‘Couldn’t you change the dressing yourself?’ Flora asked. ‘Or you could have asked me.’
‘She wouldn’t trust me to do it.’ Again he addressed himself to the guest. ‘Esme’s as good as a man: she keeps an eye on the horses, the cattle, even the big trees – tells me when they need pruning or a branch gets dangerous; she keeps the pool clean, supervises the servants –’
‘She does what? Flora was strident. Miss Pink was not surprised; Ranald did seem to be piling it on.
He gave an embarrassed cough and glanced at his wife, who said, ‘We need all the help we can get – and she takes the grind out of writing as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I do love accolades,’ said a new voice, and Miss Pink turned to see Esme Dunlop. She wondered how long the woman had been there in the shadows.
‘Good evening, Miss Pink.’ She came forward, incongruous in high-necked, long-sleeved red moiré, very tall in her high heels. ‘Sable is doing fine, Flora; you’ll be able to start exercising him in a fortnight.’ She turned to Coline. ‘Everything’s under control,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ll be dishing up in ten minutes, OK?’
‘Perfect. Help yourself to a drink.’
‘Can I top up anyone?’ Esme looked brightly round the room and replenished other people’s glasses before pouring herself a small gin and drowning it in tonic. She sat down beside Coline and beamed. The others sipped their fresh drinks, all except Flora who, drinking nothing at all, slumped in a deep chair and regarded the fire without expression.
Esme said, ‘How did you find Beatrice, Miss Pink?’
The grapevine, thought Miss Pink. Aloud she said, ‘Well. Has she been ill?’
‘She took her brother’s death very hard.’ Esme’s tone was reverent. ‘She retreated into herself, you know? Shunned people. We had to be quite firm with her.’
