by Gwen Moffat
‘You were,’ Flora murmured as her stepfather nodded confirmation. ‘She was very much attached to Robert,’ he informed Miss Pink. ‘She told you about him? Yes, well, they never married, either of them, and then – the two brothers killed in the war, the parents dying shortly afterwards – they’d been a big family and there were just the two of them left. Yes, she took his death hard.’
‘He was a colourful character.’ Coline smiled. ‘I put him in a number of books.’
‘You don’t have explorers in your books,’ Ranald protested. ‘They’re all doctors and nurses or tycoons and secretaries: dull people.’
‘But with romantic souls. Robert was what all my heroes would like to be.’
‘Not me.’ He eased himself in his chair. ‘I like my creature comforts. Eight hours on the moor is as much as I can take in dirty weather. Best part of the day is coming down the glen and thinking of a hot bath ahead and a Scotch and a good dinner. The thought of eighty degrees of frost in the North-west Territories makes my blood run cold. D’you know’ – he turned to Miss Pink – ‘they didn’t have down clothing when Robert was young?’
‘You’d have coped superbly,’ Esme assured him. ‘Robert did. No one knows what they’re capable of until they’re stretched.’
‘You mean few people realise their potential?’ Flora asked. ‘We’re all inadequate personalities?’
Miss Pink studied the child carefully. The tone had been innocent, but not the sense. Flora was either old for her years or considerably older than she looked.
Esme had hesitated. She answered carefully. ‘Few people do realise their potential, but I don’t think that makes them inadequate.’
‘Why not?’ Flora asked.
‘Let’s say they don’t try hard enough.’ Esme’s tone became schoolmarmish. ‘Our potential should always be beyond our reach –’
‘What’s yours?’ Flora interrupted.
Esme checked and gave a small gasping laugh. ‘It’s not always revealed to us. I said no one knows what they’re capable of until they direct their powers.’
‘You mean like you radiate power, a kind of laser, and hope to pick up a target?’
‘You lost me.’ Ranald was shaking his head. ‘What’s there to get so intense about?’
‘It’s not an aggressive concept.’ Flora’s eyes widened. ‘Or is it?’ she asked of Esme who shook her head, momentarily silenced.
Coline excused herself and left the room. Flora said sweetly, ‘Would you like to live in Sgoradale, Miss Pink?’
‘No.’ It was too curt. She elucidated. ‘There’s a combination of violence and decadence that grates on me. I would find it an uncomfortable place to spend any length of time.’
‘Violence?’ Ranald repeated. ‘Decadence?’ Flora and Esme were staring – the one delighted, the other angry. Miss Pink realised that she was on her third sherry, and that on an empty stomach. Nevertheless, she was committed.
‘The violence is in the elements,’ she explained, ‘and a form of decadence in the sense that here is a remote community leading a leisurely life without stress. I wouldn’t feel stretched here. That’s one person’s opinion, but you did ask.’
‘You’d be bored,’ Flora said flatly.
‘Our lives aren’t leisurely,’ Esme protested. ‘There’s too much to do. I’m run off my feet. Not that I don’t love every minute of it,’ she added quickly.
‘I’m a man of leisure,’ Ranald admitted, ‘but only because I’m well looked after. I’m a lazy fellow, but I’m never bored. Always something to do, y’know: fishing, shooting and so on. Never idle.’
‘Decadent,’ Flora mused. ‘I like it. We sound like Roman emperors – beautiful and wicked, and into unspeakable perversions.’
‘Now what?’ Coline asked from the doorway. ‘I make one entrance to a suggestion of glue sniffing, now this. Miss Pink has raised the tone of our soirées. Shall we continue this discussion at the table?’
They rose and trooped out of the drawing room, their silent passage creating the effect of a subdued procession, or at the least, thoughtful.
‘Seriously,’ Flora began when they were seated – all but Esme, who had disappeared. ‘Seriously, doesn’t decadence go with violence?’
‘It bothers me,’ Miss Pink said happily, her appraisal of the silver, the napkins and the range of glasses having suggested that she was about to be served something better than ‘meat and two veg’ even though the cook was on holiday. She gave them an embarrassed smile. ‘You lead such cosy lives in contrast with the elemental forces around you. I couldn’t accept that situation. I’m more at home in a place like the American West, where people fit their environment: wild men in a wild land. Most of them own guns because no system of law can be imposed on a wilderness. I believe those Westerners who tell me that many more crimes occur, even serious ones, than come to light.’
‘That’s true of any country,’ Coline said.
Esme entered with a tray and went round the table serving plates of smoked salmon.
‘Home-caught,’ Ranald beamed. ‘And Campbell smoked it.’
But Flora was like a young dog after sticks. She caught the one her mother had thrown. ‘There are unreported crimes in Sgoradale?’ She was incredulous. ‘You just said nothing ever happened here except weather.’
‘Not Sgoradale, but generally speaking. No doubt in Glasgow ... Do you know how many people go missing every year?’
Flora leaned her elbows on the table. ‘No. How many?’
‘I don’t know, but thousands.’
‘You think they’re all murdered?’
‘A significant proportion of them.’
‘So where are their bodies?’
Ranald lumbered round the table filling their glasses. Coline looked at Miss Pink. ‘Your cue, I think,’ she murmured.
‘You could become a mystery writer,’ she told Flora, ‘or a forensic pathologist. You have an enquiring mind. May one ask your age?’
‘I’m sixteen.’ The girl regarded her levelly. ‘What happens to the bodies?’
Miss Pink wasted no time on surprise; she was now in her element. ‘Murder is easy,’ she said, it’s disposal of the body that’s the difficult part.’ She took a sip of her wine and glanced at her host, who was watching anxiously. ‘A Traminer?’ she ventured. ‘A nice choice.’ She turned back to Flora. There were candles on the table, augmenting the low side lights. The girl still looked twelve years old. ‘Well,’ she resumed, ‘bodies have been put through stone crushers and become part of a motorway; they’ve been baled inside cars and reduced to cubes of scrap metal in a breaker’s yard. You know about corpses in cement foundations, of course, and animal feeding stuffs. Do you want more?’
Flora smiled. ‘That’ll do for starters.’
The conversation veered. ‘Why do you need a policeman here?’ Miss Pink asked generally. ‘Surely there aren’t enough inhabitants to justify a constable?’
‘It’s a bigger community than you think,’ Ranald told her. ‘There are large families crammed into small houses. At one time the young people left to find work, but now they stay. Those already in the towns get priority for any jobs and, goodness knows, there’s a high rate of unemployment in the towns.’
‘There were some motor bikes about on Saturday night. They were local youths?’
He nodded. ‘There are the crofts on the lighthouse road, and a number around that you don’t see, hidden in pockets away from the
Lamentation Road. But there’s no crime, as such; however, that could well be because of a police presence. And there’s the harbour; boats put in for shelter or to unload a catch. In summer the population can quadruple, what with yachtsmen and caravans and visitors in the holiday cottages. Knox keeps a high profile in the season, particularly where ladies are concerned. The rest of the time I’d be hard put to say what he does, or where he is.’ People smiled at that. Miss Pink’s silence was polite but curious.
It was Coline who enlightened
her. ‘One morning the police car was parked in the nurse’s drive. That was all. I mean very early, at dawn. And it stayed there until Knox collected it, apparently when he got up and realised it wasn’t outside his house.’
Miss Pink preserved a careful silence.
‘The implication being that he’d spent the night in the nurse’s house,’ Ranald said. ‘Of course, he hadn’t. Who’d go home and leave his car behind, particularly a police car?’
‘A practical joke?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘Rather a naughty one.’ Coline stared into her wine. ‘Knox is a lady’s man, and Anne Wallace ... In a place like this, one has to be quite extraordinarily discreet, and Knox is. I think everyone is, including Nurse Wallace. Putting the police car in her drive was ... offensive; it was the action of someone not just calling attention to an extra-marital affair, but also to the cover-up.’
A silence followed, until Ranald said tactlessly, ‘We have some amusing moments in Sgoradale. Remember the streaker?’
Coline said, ‘Like the police car, that was a nine-second wonder, dear. If you’re on the loch in summer, you can see naked people sunbathing all over the place.’
‘He was in the car park!’ Ranald turned to Miss Pink. ‘Feller came galloping back to his car, starkers, couldn’t get in – no keys, d’you see – ran up to a couple, goodness knows what he said, they didn’t wait: chap started up and drove off like greased lightning. So the naked man disappears, comes back in a few minutes wearing a bin-liner!’
‘What had happened?’ Miss Pink asked, more curious than amused.
‘Dunno. Lost his clothes. Those Hell’s Angels were around – no doubt they stole ’em for a lark.’
‘Who was the witness?’ she asked. Ranald stared. ‘Who told you the story? Someone had to be watching.’
‘Another motorist was sitting in his car changing a film. He was in the pub that evening; next day the whole village knew.’
‘So if he lost his clothes and his car keys, he lost his wallet too?’
‘Evidently.’ Ranald sobered and stared at her in the silence. ‘And he didn’t report it to Knox,’ he said in wonder. ‘Why was that?’
‘Are you sure he didn’t report it?’
‘No,’ Flora said, ‘he didn’t. Hamish would have told me. He’s Knox’s son,’ she informed Miss Pink. ‘He helps with the ponies. The man got into his car eventually by breaking a window. There was a lot of that laminated glass in the car park; I was down there next day picking up litter.’
‘You didn’t tell us,’ Ranald said, ‘It wasn’t important.’
After the smoked salmon there was a saddle of venison and with it they drank a powerful burgundy. An association of ideas prompted Miss Pink to ask if the district nurse had enough work to keep her occupied.
‘More than Knox has,’ Coline said. ‘There’s a lot of elderly people and she travels a long way south, and inland. In summer time, like everyone else, she can be overworked: anything from sunburn to adder bites. The nearest doctor is fifteen miles away, at Morvern. Have you met the nurse?’
‘Not yet. I’ve seen her in the distance. Not young, I would say.’
‘Middle-aged but sprightly. Quite a good nurse on the whole, wouldn’t you say, darling?’ Ranald shrugged. ‘She took some stitches out of my foot; that’s all the professional contact I’ve had. Haven’t heard any complaints. Pleasant enough woman socially; knows her place. What’s this?’ – as Esme brought a bowl to the table – ‘Blaeberry fool.’
You’ll like that, Miss Pink. Cream from our own Jersey.’
* * *
The evening ended with Esme Dunlop insisting on walking Miss Pink home, an offer that could not be refused because they both went the same way. As they descended the drive by the light of torches, Esme took the older woman’s arm and squeezed it companionably. ‘It’s a bit rough,’ she said. ‘Can’t have you going down, can we?’
Miss Pink stopped and detached herself, ‘I prefer to make my own way.’
‘I didn’t mean to annoy you.’ They moved on slowly. ‘Do I intimidate you?’ Esme pressed with anxious curiosity.
Miss Pink considered the question. ‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘I think you dislike being alone and you avoid the condition by cleaving to people who are stronger than yourself. It’s rather overpowering.’
‘Rubbish. I’m a big hefty lady who crashes in where angels fear to tread and I scared the daylights out of you. Come on, own up. There are a lot of eccentric characters round here and you’ll have to learn to live with us.’ On the rough drive they wavered towards each other, touched and sheered away. ‘You come from an undemonstrative family, right?’ Esme’s tone was roguish.
‘And you?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘Me? What?’
‘What is your background?’
‘My mother’s dead. My father’s alive – in a nursing home. He’s senile; I can’t stand him.’
‘How does he feel towards you?’
‘It’s mutual.’ Esme hated the tables being turned. Before she could regain that equilibrium which could be so infuriating, Miss Pink pressed her advantage: ‘And what brought you to Sgoradale?’
‘Coline put an advertisement in The Lady. That was eight years ago.’
‘You do more than secretarial work, I’m told.’
‘I virtually run the place.’ She seemed to take it for granted that she should be discussed by her employers, ‘I’m one of the family now; in fact, they are my family. I don’t know what they’d do without me.’
‘You’ve made yourself indispensable.’
‘Do I detect a note of criticism?’
‘I was stating a fact. Isn’t it correct?’
‘Well, yes, but it’s traditional for these old families to have a steward to run the house and estate, even –’ she laughed deprecatingly – ‘even their lives to some extent.’
‘Sir Ranald’s is an old family?’
‘No. The baronetcy was created only in 1902. His grandfather was a jute merchant and made a pile of money, but now there’s nothing left except the title. And Ranald, of course.’
‘How did Lady MacKay lose her first husband?’
‘He ran off with a television actress, which is why Coline has custody of Flora. Not that Flora wouldn’t prefer to be with her father in London, but I don’t expect an actress in her twenties wants a sixteen-year-old stepdaughter under her feet.’
‘Why isn’t Flora at school?’
‘She left, and refuses to go back. Her mother’s got a problem with that child. It’s virtually a one-parent family, as you saw. Flora has no respect for her step-father, and there’s not enough to amuse her in Sgoradale. She neglects her ponies, borrows her mother’s car – or Ranald’s, or the Land Rover – and disappears for days at a time.’
‘How does she ... square the police?’
Esme gave a snort of derision. ‘She runs circles round Knox, the same as she does with her mother and step-father.’
‘And yourself?’ Miss Pink asked innocently. ‘An armed truce. I’ll stand no nonsense from Miss MacKenzie, and she knows it. I won’t have those ponies neglected, but I can’t force her to look after them, so I do it myself – like everything else that’s important.’ She changed the subject. ‘I see Anne Wallace is either dog-tired or has run out of library books. Her light’s out and usually she reads until midnight.’
They stopped and looked along the street which shimmered softly in the starlight. The night was calm. From the open sea came a whisper of water round the skerries.
‘You’d love it here,’ Esme said. ‘You should give lectures. I’ll draft a notice and have it printed in Inverness. We’ll put on shows in Morvern and Ullapool; the whole district will turn out –’
‘I don’t lecture.’
‘Oh, but you must! You have an excellent speaking voice, a good command of English and a vivid imagination –’
But Miss Pink had gone.
CHAPTER THREE
‘And fo
rty Embassy, please.’
‘You smoke too much, Debbie.’ Rose Millar reached for the cigarettes and started totting up the bill. Miss Pink, awaiting her turn in the store, studied Debbie Campbell: a thin pale woman in jeans and an Icelandic sweater. She turned, murmured some response to Miss Pink’s greeting, hesitated, then left the store.
Miss Pink bought a loaf and milk, exchanged views on the virtues of wholemeal bread and the likelihood of the weather breaking, then stepped outside to find Debbie standing a discreet distance from her open door. The woman said quickly, ‘I work at the big house: Debbie Campbell. You talked to my husband yesterday.’ Her eyes flickered to the doorway.
‘I did,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Won’t you come in?’
‘I shan’t take up your time; it’s just that if you want to go out with Campbell, I’ll tell him. I’m on my way home now.’
‘Is there much to see on the loch?’ Miss Pink knew that there was not at this time of year, but then that wasn’t why the woman wanted to speak to her. ‘I’m afraid I’d be taking your husband away from his work.’
‘He does pretty much as he pleases.’
‘A good workman is worth his weight in gold in a remote place.’
‘He’s a good worker, I’ll say that for him. Mind if I smoke?’
Poker-faced, Miss Pink said she didn’t and found the ash-tray she’d put in the sideboard. ‘How long have you lived here?’ she asked as they sat either side of the empty grate.
‘Ten years. We’ve got two kids, a boy and a girl. They go to school in Morvern; you’ll have seen the bus.’ It went along the lighthouse road, turned and came back, picking up children from the crofts. The kids were happy at school, Debbie said, happy in Sgoradale: ‘They’re too young to know better – ten and nine.’
Miss Pink was suddenly effusive. And both you and your husband have good jobs! There’s no bother about unemployment if people are prepared to work. And to travel. You had no worries about settling here in the first place?’
‘I didn’t have much choice. There was a baby on the way and Lady MacKay, she offered me a job in the house, and in a while Campbell was finding enough work to keep him busy.’
