When the company was again assembled, Jock struck a lively reel, in which all but Hugo joined in, Lady Amanda being popular as a partner due to the lack of ladies in the party. There were only four present, and Ralf Colcolough unashamedly claimed St John Bagehot for his partner, neither looking particularly put out by the situation, Colcolough taking the woman’s part, while Cook, returning to collect her precious haggis tray, was claimed by the master himself, evening things up considerably, with twelve dancers whirling around the floor to the almost tribal, primitive summons of the pipes.
The rest of the staff arrived and were urged to join in, making four more couples, as a grizzled old man who was the head gamekeeper, and not usually inside the castle, joined in. Only Sarah Fraser stood on the side-lines, but she was a big lump of a woman, with a scowling face, who, therefore, attracted no invitations to dance.
The climax of the evening was to be sword dancing, with Sir Cardew taking on the crossed, gleaming blades. Both guests and staff crowded round as he commenced to fling himself around between the knife-like edges of the swords, and all went well until someone gave Hugo a tiny push in the back, he involuntarily moved forward to preserve his balance, and stepped on the tip of one of the blades.
This dislodged the point at which the two swords crossed, and lifted one of them, Sir Cardew lost his timing, and suffered a nasty cut on the ankle as a consequence. As the blood ran down from his wound, the piper stopped playing, and all eyes were on their bloodied host.
‘It was nobody’s fault,’ Cardew admitted gracefully, nevertheless fixing Hugo with an accusatory stare. ‘I’ll get it fixed up and be as right as rain.’
This seemed to be the signal for the party to break up, as it was already nearly ten o’clock, and well after the household’s usual retiring time. As people began to shuffle around preparatory to going to bed, and Sir Cardew staunched the blood from his wound with a handkerchief, Hugo noticed several people taking nips from flasks, their backs to their host in case they were caught out.
‘Come on,’ urged Lady Amanda. ‘Let’s get back upstairs and see what Beauchamp’s left for us.’
‘?’
‘I do hope it’s champagne,’ she answered Hugo’s mute question.
As they mounted the stairs, he asked, ‘About that poem thingy – did that lot understand it all, or was it just me being ignorant?’
‘They were all in the same boat as you, dear Hugo. When Siobhan’s father died and he had to take over the address to the haggis, he was in a muck sweat, for he’d never paid it any attention over the years. It was Cook who taught it to him, word for word, by rote.
‘Oh, and don’t be fooled by Cook. She’s a lot older than she looks, her wrinkles being filled out with fat, and charmingly dimpled she appears too, but she’s been here since the year dot, and has been the greatest influence over Cardew as to his occasional Scottishness.
‘When he came back here, when his wife’s father was gravely ill, he hadn’t an idea about anything Scottish, with the exception of Hogmanay. Remember, he was brought through the nursery by a nanny, went off to prep school at eight, ended up in an English university, and came home, eventually, to find himself a complete stranger in the land of his birth.
‘Then he married Siobhan, and they eventually moved here. That’s when Cook took charge of him and gave him Scots lessons, so he didn’t look a complete fool, and the old head gamekeeper took him on for hunting, shooting and fishing, so that he could keep his end up with country pursuits. Her father had been the real thing, being educated at home, and never getting as far as university, but Cardew’s father wanted his son to have a better education and not appear overtly Scots.’
‘What about the rest of the guests?’
‘Exactly the same: part-time Scots, to a man, or woman, with the exception of Elspeth.’ Here she gave a little giggle, attributable solely to their pre-dinner cocktail and the wee nips they had had during the course of the evening. ‘Look around, Hugo, everyone’s as staggery as we are, after all their shifty little nips, for they didn’t get like that on Lucozade,’ and there was, indeed, a sway to the column of guests mounting the stairs in their wake.
‘Oh, excellent! It is champagne,’ she declared, throwing open the door of her room and seeing the large ice bucket with the top of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot sticking out of it.
A tray held four glasses, but they had not noticed Beauchamp or Enid, because they had been behind the curtains, looking out at the landscape through the tiny slit of a window. Hearing voices, they withdrew from their semi-hidden position and joined the other two, currently taking seats by the fire, which was burning much brighter than the previous evening, for it had been tended, sporadically although this had been, during the last couple of hours, by Beauchamp, who was a wizard when it came to making and maintaining a fire.
‘I took the liberty of requesting an extra load of wood, for what was left in here, and in Mr Hugo’s room, was certainly nowhere near adequate to provide enough heat to see you through until the end of the evening, let alone the morning.’
‘Jolly good show, Beauchamp,’ bellowed Lady A in delight.
As Beauchamp dealt with the champagne’s cork, his voice barely mouthed the word, ‘Beecham,’ but he was heard, nevertheless.
‘You’ll always be Beauchamp to me,’ his half-sister retorted, not able to see his mouth, which formed, but did not enunciate, the words, ‘I’m Beecham to everybody else, though.’
‘It’s snowing again, you know,’ interjected Enid, in an effort to dispel an atmosphere before it had sufficient time to form. ‘It’s heavy, too. If it carries on like this, we’ll probably have a foot or so by morning.’
This certainly distracted Lady A, for she replied, somewhat imperiously, ‘I certainly hope that will not be the case, as we plan to leave tomorrow, and I will not be imprisoned within these ancient walls any longer.’
‘Well, as you’re not God, you’ll just have to accept what you’re given, like the rest of us,’ replied Hugo waspishly. The thought of staying where they were any longer than necessary had been the reason for this sharp comment, and he followed it with, ‘No offence, Manda. Just stating the obvious. You know what I mean.’
Hugo didn’t sleep well that night. His room was undoubtedly warmer, and his hot water bottles well up to temperature, but he only managed to doze fitfully for some hours. At one point he awoke with a start, and fancied he saw a white female face, veiled in black lace, leaning over his bed, like the dead, about to kiss him, then lure him to the other side of the valle lacrimarum.
He became fully awake with a high-pitched scream, a noise loud enough to pierce even Lady Amanda’s snores, and bring her to his side, to see if he had suffered some medical problem, or maybe even a fall. She entered through the adjoining door to find him sitting bolt upright in bed, his mop of white hair sticking out in all directions, a look of absolute horror on his face.
‘Hugo, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ she declared, taking one look at him and deciding he must have had some sort of a fright, even if it was just a nightmare.
‘But I did! I did see a ghost!’ he almost shouted. ‘It was leaning over me, probably trying to devour me.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’
‘No, I tell you, it’s true! Take a look out of the door and see if you can see anyone disappearing down the passageway. If you can’t, it was definitely a ghost,’ he replied, and on this point, he was adamant.
Lady Amanda did as she was requested, but caught no sight of any figure hurrying away from Hugo’s room.
As she closed the door again, Hugo had managed to mount his high horse without any help from a leg-up. ‘It was a pale woman wearing a black veil over her face,’ he stated doggedly, folding his arms to emphasise the point, ‘and I definitely wasn’t dreaming.’
Seeing his stubborn expression, Lady Amanda didn’t try to dissuade him, merely offering to leave the adjoining door open, so that she could listen out for any monkey bu
siness.
‘You can’t hear ghosts,’ he declared, ‘unless they choose to rattle their chains.’
‘Well at least this one didn’t do that. If she had have done, of course, I might have heard her, and come rushing to your rescue.’
‘There’s no point in patronising me. I know what I saw.’
‘Of course you do, Hugo. Would you like one of my sleeping tablets? I always get a few from Dr Andrew if I know I’m going somewhere noisy, and I think the seven o’clock alarm-piper’s enough to waken the dead.’
‘I think I’ll take you up on that offer. If she comes back, I’ll be sleeping the sleep of the just, and, without chains, she can’t possibly wake me for another dose of the supernatural.’
‘That’s the ticket, old man. I’ll just go and get you one. You said you dreamt about ghosts last night, so it’s probably just a slightly more realistic attack of that feather.’
Before the sleeping tablet had had time to do its job, however, Hugo let out another high-pitched scream which had Lady Amanda back in his room at the double. ‘What is it now?’ she fog-horned. ‘Another blasted ghost?’
Hugo’s face was a mask of terror, as he pointed across to the adjoining wall, his bottom lip trembling with fear. ‘There!’ he whispered. ‘There on the wall! Can’t you see it?’
‘Can’t I see what?’ she queried, squinting at the wall in an endeavour to see what had inspired so much terror in her old friend.
Hugo took a deep breath before he could utter the word. ‘Spider!’ he whispered, beginning to gibber. ‘Huge! Monster!’
Lady A removed her slipper and made a pantomime of creeping up on the unsuspecting arachnid. Splat! ‘There you are, my lad, the nasty monster’s gone to the big web in the sky. Just you hope that it doesn’t come back and haunt you for I don’t have a ghost slipper with which to hit it. Or its mother comes looking for you,’ she added, with a modicum of spite, ‘Now go to sleep and let me get some rest myself, or I’ll be a wreck in the morning.’
Chapter Four
The next morning both Hugo and Lady Amanda were totally undisturbed by the piper, surprising though this seemed when they awoke. They made their way downstairs to break their fast and, shortly afterwards, the breakfast table was a babble of voices discussing the overnight weather. About eighteen inches of snow had fallen, and Sir Cardew had set the estate’s small snowplough out to clear the long driveway to the main road, such as it was.
‘We’ve all been asked to stay on, you know.’
‘We’ve no choice. We’ll never get out of here at the moment.’
‘Don’t tell me! The main road’s what we’d consider a lane in England.’
‘I can’t see a gritter coming out this far on such a tiny road.’
‘Did you know the phones are out? And I can never get a signal on my mobile, here.’
‘Cardew’s got a CB radio, so at least he can order rations to be dropped in by helicopter, if need be.’
‘Surely it won’t come to that? I’ve got a very important meeting the day after tomorrow.’
‘I should give up hope on that, old fellow.’
A loud shout from the old head gamekeeper, now named as Duncan Macdonald and standing in the doorway, drew everybody’s attention. Instead of making an announcement, however, he went over to Sir Cardew and whispered something in his ear, discretion having got the better of him at the last minute.
Their host rose from the table, asking to be excused for a few minutes, as something had come up concerning the estate work. ‘I wonder what that’s all about,’ Hugo said to Moira Ruthven, his table companion to the left.
‘Probably something to do with deer stalking. There’s nothing he likes better than a good tramp through the snow, with the possibility of seeing some wildlife, although Duncan thinks he’s soft in the head, only shooting them with a camera. Says that’s not what he trained him for, and that he’d never educated a sissy before.’
‘I say, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? Not everybody’s infused with bloodthirstiness.’
When he turned back to his place, he noticed that Lady Amanda was no longer at table, and he wondered idly where she had gone, deciding that it was probably a trip to the Jacques, of which she wouldn’t encourage discussion on her return, so he just got on with his breakfast, poor fare though it was.
When she returned a very short while later, she had that expression on her face that said: ‘I know something you don’t’. ‘What’s going on? What’s happened?’ asked Hugo, eager for news, but she rebuffed him, merely saying, ‘It’s not my business to say,’ squeezing this out between clenched teeth and pursed lips.
‘Come on, Manda. I can keep a secret.’
‘Can’t tell you.’
Before Hugo had time to go into a huff, Sir Cardew returned with a grim face, called the diners to attention, and said bleakly, ‘It is my misfortune to have to inform you that this house is now without a piper.’ At that, he turned on his heel and left them with no more explanation of this cryptic comment.
‘Manda!’ Hugo hissed fiercely. ‘You can’t just leave it like that! Has the piper resigned? Been fired? Run away? What the hell’s happened to him?’
‘Shhh!’ she hissed. ‘Pipie’s dead. The snow plough guys just found his body, covered with snow, on the drive.’
Lady Amanda had wasted no time in dragging Hugo from the table of now dispersing guests and steering him, sticks and all, outside, where they discovered an abandoned small snow plough, and an unpleasant hump of blood-stained snow, Duncan Macdonald guarding it from unnecessary disturbance. At what appeared to be the top end of the hump, the snow had been cleared away to reveal the piper’s face, blue and frozen from its icy covering.
‘What the hell’s wrong with his face?’ she demanded to know, for there was a bulldog clip on his nose, and his mouth was filled with something currently unidentifiable.
‘He seems to have a grand load of haggis in his mooth, and I think it’ll be found to be up his nose as well. His mooth had a wee bitty tape over it when I found it, but I pulled it off to restore a wee bit of the puir man’s dignity.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Macdonald,’ stated Lady A with her innate air of authority. ‘He should have been left exactly as he was found. Have you still got the tape?’
‘I dropped it there in the snow,’ he said, sulky at having been upbraided so.
Picking it up with her gloves, Lady Amanda popped it into her handkerchief and placed it safely in a pocket. Turning back to Hugo, she found him blanching a bit at the blood staining the snow, and she then demanded of Macdonald to know if any injury had been uncovered.
The answer was more unpleasant than they had expected, as Macdonald told them that the plough had only stopped when the driver had become aware of an obstruction on the normally clear drive, and that the maw of the plough had ‘done a wee bitty damage’ to the body, lying in such a vulnerable position.
‘Yuk!’ exclaimed Hugo, imagining mangled arms and legs.
‘Havers, man! It’s only a wee taste of blood. Sure the man was deid when the plough hit him, so he wouldnae bleed like a stuck pig, now would he?’ Macdonald said with disgust at such squeamishness.
‘Then get the whole man uncovered, Macdonald. How can you tell what did for him if he’s still covered in snow?’ Lady Amanda was taking charge of things just as she always did, without a thought for whose responsibility it actually was.
‘I cannae do that! Whatever would the master say?’ Macdonald was scandalised.
‘Do as you’re bid, Macdonald. It could be a case of bloody murder. How can the authorities be alerted if no one knows how he died? Do as I say and get that snow off the man’s body.’
Macdonald, recognising the air of authority in her voice, did as he was bid, and soon they could see the whole length of the piper, stretched out in the snow, the mortal wound that had felled him now visible to the naked eye.
‘There’s a clear wound in the abdominal area,’ stat
ed Lady A, in a steady and unsentimental voice. ‘Just turn him on his side, Macdonald – yes, I thought so. The man’s been run through with a sword, by the looks of it. It was no knife that made that wound, because it has both an entry and an exit wound, so the blade was long.
‘Can you just have a rumble around in his sporran, Macdonald? It seems to have something in it, as it has a bulge, and is not lying flat, the way it would if it were empty.’
Again Macdonald recognised the voice of authority and opened the sporran, but rolled his eyes at her, first, at this unwarranted intrusion into what he considered to be the master’s territory. He removed a silver hip flask of what proved to be whisky, with a note taped to it, and looked at his finds quizzically. Already wearing gloves against the cold, Lady A had no compunction whatsoever about asking him to hand over his finds, so that she could examine them.
‘Whisky!’ she exclaimed. ‘And that’s my hip flask. Look! It’s got my initials engraved on the cartouche! What a damned cheek! Someone’s been in my room! What a blasted cheek! But what the devil does the note say? ‘A wee dram afore ye go.’ What in blue blazes does that mean? Was it a gift, or did the murderer plant it there? And if he did, why? This’ll take some investigating, Hugo. We’ll have to get together, the four of us, and see what we can come up with. I’ll not have my name blackened with the suspicion of murder. Damned brass neck, trying to fit me up.’
Apart from ‘yuk’, Hugo had not uttered a word, and Macdonald had only reacted to orders due to his innate recognition of, and reaction to, the voice of authority. He now spoke, however, giving it as his opinion that the master should be out here assessing the situation, rather than a couple of his Sassenach guests, giving Lady A a dark look, which she interpreted as due to the discovery of her hip flask in the dead man’s sporran.
‘Nonsense, man,’ Lady Amanda upbraided him. ‘Hugo and I have had experience of this sort of thing before, and we know what we’re doing. Do you know if Sir Cardew has spoken to the Procurator Fiscal and organised a doctor and police presence?’ For a moment she had pleasant visions of solving this crime all on her own in the snowbound castle, emerging as the heroine of the hour.
Belchester Box Set Page 40
